Exercise provides outstanding protection to people with high blood pressure

Exercise provides outstanding protection to people with high blood pressure....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 4-26-2012

The recent news on this is dramatic if the conclusions of the researchers are accurate.

1.  What we already knew gives substantial credibility to their conclusion too.:

a) We already know that right after you exercise as your body recovers from the effort, your blood pressure goes down.  And it will often then be lower than it was before you began exercising.

b) We know that your average blood pressure all day is usually lower on every day you exercise than it is on days when you do not.

c) We know that regular vigorous exercise almost every day gives you considerable heart protection.:  

Your resting heart rate goes down because your heart is stronger.  

Your potentially harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides go down and your protective HDL goes up.  

Research has found that this is because exercise directly reduces the small particle LDL that causes heart disease in your blood.

Imagine pouring sticky sand into an engine where the sand is fine enough it sticks in the chinks in the engine.  Small particle LDL does exactly that to the insides of your blood vessels because it's so tiny it literally sticks into the molecular chinks in your artery walls.

Beside lowering LDL overall, exercise converts a lot of what's left to larger particles that roll harmlessly over your artery walls like tumbleweeds.

So, by doing this, exercise gives you considerable heat protection just from that.

But there's more!  There's a LOT more!

Just like your blood pressure, after you exercise, your level of chronic inflammation that also tends to cause heart disease goes down.  So you get that protection too.

And, recent research found that the effect of exercise on your heart protection improves every year the longer you exercise.

Lastly, aging tends to increase heart disease risk.  But work at Stanford found that regular, vigorous exercise dramatically slows aging!

2.  So what did they find out in the recent research?

Last Thursday, 4-19-2012, HealthDay news had this:  “Exercise May Help Patients With High Blood Pressure Live Longer

Large study…found inactive people fared worse at all blood-pressure levels”

“Exercise reduced the risk of death in people with high blood pressure during the course of a new 12-year study.”

(Large is a justified use because they included more than 434,000 people!  That means their conclusion is statistically extremely strong.)

This is the dramatic part:  “The researchers also found that inactivity increased the risk of death during the study approximately the same amount as would an increase in blood pressure of 40 to 50 milligrams of mercury.”

That quite literally is a HUGE difference – almost incredibly so!

And, it makes a big difference in safety and quality of life to you if you have or ever get high blood pressure.

Here’s why:

115 over 75 is desirable and almost heart disease risk free blood pressure. 

Forty points higher on the diastolic or second reading is about 176 over 115.  But that is a level that is so high and above 160 over 100 that statistically it’s been found that your doctor should have you take drugs to lower it!

And, fifty points higher is about 192 over 125 almost high enough your doctor would send you to the ER for emergency treatment!

THAT is how spectacular they believe their results are!

Wow!

It’s simple. 

People who learn how to do vigorous exercise safely by building up to it gradually and giving themselves periodic short rest breaks as they exercise are so protected, they may be safe taking NO drugs to lower it even if their readings are sky high.

For sure these results suggest that if you take lower doses of some blood pressure drugs that in you have few side effects and get your blood pressure down to about 152 over 90 or less.

Then exercising will give you far better protection than loading on more drugs or higher doses and suffering though poor qualify of life and risking serious side effects.

But that outcome is exactly what many doctors now routinely and often do instead!

This research says that you are actually safer if you exercise instead.

That means the standard of care for high blood pressure should move immediately to little or no treatment with drugs for most people and significant and focused efforts to help people with high blood pressure get safely into regular exercise.

But there’s more here too!

One kind of exercise, Tai Chi, when done every week, lowers blood pressure from stress relief by an average of 17 over 11.

And, turning off drinking all soft drinks and eating junky foods and eating the DASH II diet with extra vegetables and some extra virgin olive oil and even a small moderate intake of red wine, lowers blood pressure almost that much.

That means that people now who hate their horrible quality of life taking high blood pressure drugs, have a real shot of increasing their safety while gradually stepping down to zero the drugs they take!

If this is you or someone you know.  This isn’t just good news, it’s life changing good news!

(Important note:  Recent research found that such exercise will harm you if you take statin drugs. 

But that’s OK since there are far better ways to prevent heart disease than taking statin drugs for almost everyone who isn’t in the ICU with a recent heart attack.

See our recent post:  “Statins do prevent you from benefiting from exercise!” posted on Thursday, 4-5-2012.)

Better than calcium supplements

False headlines and; the truth about vitamins and minerals, Calcium.... Today's Post: Tuesday, 4-24-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more. Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements.

 Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs. The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

 (Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective. But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

 So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.” But the truth is far different. Very different!

 1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial. There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you. This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

 2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012. We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012. We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C on Thursday, 4-12

 Last week, on Tuesday, 4-17 we covered vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

 This week we cover calcium. There is important news about calcium!

There are supplements you should take if bone health and strength and avoiding osteoporosis are important to you. There is also something you must do and something you must NOT do.

But the new information is that taking calcium supplements may NOT be a safe way to improve your results!

For calcium, and for most people, eating foods high in calcium is much safer and will give you enough calcium. Unfortunately, taking calcium supplements and particularly taking them on an empty stomach worsens and may help cause heart disease.

It seems that calcium goes into your blood stream fast enough that it tends to add calcium to plaque in your blood vessels new research found.

Did you know that how calcified your plaque is has been found to be a more accurate predictor of future heart attacks than most other measures?

Conceptually that makes sense. If your blood vessels are flexible even if they are narrowed and there is a clot it may push aside the narrow blood vessels and not stick anywhere.

But if your blood vessels are so much less flexible they are like stone pipes, the clot will stick and shut down blood flow.

Having inflexible blood vessels also increases your blood pressure which makes heart attacks and obstructive strokes more likely. NOT good!

Many doctors don’t yet know this information. And many women had their doctors tell them to take 500 or 1,000 mg a day of calcium or more to keep their bones strong. Many women and doctors are still doing this.

Worse, taking calcium by itself without the other things we list below is ineffective at strengthening bones or doing much to prevent osteoporosis!

 Ouch!

 So the rest of this post has two parts.

1. The main one is what does work to strengthen your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. (Taking calcium supplements is NOT needed by most people for these things to work.)

 2. What if you have unusually low blood calcium &/or have high blood pressure which too little calcium can make worse or your doctor who you find worth keeping otherwise insists you take some anyway?

 Isn’t there a safe way to take some calcium? There might be. And we say what that is.

 1. What does work to strengthen your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. (Taking calcium supplements is NOT needed by most people for these things to work.)

 a) Eat FOODS that contain calcium most days of every week.

 Lowfat dairy protein foods work. Nonfat yogurt, nonfat cottage cheese, 2% lowfat milk and yogurt, occasional high fat but high flavor cheese like parmesan, and cheese from cows fed only grass all work. As long as you don’t do it more than a few times a month, full fat cheese is likely OK but with the saturated fat and omega 6 from grain fed cows, you should limit it to that.

 Nuts if you aren’t allergic, broccoli florets raw or cooked, most dark greens, and beans and lentils and black-eyed peas also have calcium.

 b) Besides the lowfat dairy, and nuts if you aren’t allergic, and the beans and lentils and black-eyed peas, eat other health OK protein foods, several times a week. Eggs, wild caught fish, and occasional beef from 100 % grass fed cows or lamb from grass fed sheep and some skinless poultry of lean and fat trimmed meat a few times a month all can work. Like everything else in your body, your body needs protein to build new bone. And many of the foods such as lowfat dairy, and nuts, and beans and lentils and black-eyed peas have both protein and calcium.

 c) Take 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3!

 Research found that people who have enough protein and calcium from food and take that much vitamin D3, tend to build and maintain strong bones. People who are deficient do not.

 Extreme vitamin D deficiency makes bones so weak they named the disease rickets. Even healthy bones otherwise tend to bend instead of staying straight! Since people live inside so much now, you will likely be somewhat deficient if you take less than 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. And the Vitamin D Council that tracks the latest research on vitamin D, just recommended taking 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 as likely enough to put you close to or into the optimum blood level of vitamin D. (A blood level of 30 or less is quite deficient and NOT good for your bones. 30-49 is somewhat deficient. For strong bones you want to be at 50 or more.

 d) Regular exercise is critical to bone health! Strength training and weight bearing exercises such as walking and hiking and running or using a NordicTrack doesn’t just build muscles and fitness, the regular extra stress on your bones causes them to grow and get denser and stronger in a way that both leaves them healthy and a bit flexible and stronger. (The medications for osteoporosis tend to make bones denser but weaker and brittle and no longer able to self repair. Most people should never take them.)

 Strength training and interval cardio, even bursts of fast walking not only work directly on your bones, they cause your body to release several kinds of growth hormone. So, taking calcium supplements is NOT needed and looks to be harmful.

 BUT regular and vigorous exercise for at least 10 or 15 minutes most days of every week is ESSENTIAL to have and keep strong and healthy bones!

 e) Come as close to never drinking any kind of soft drinks again as you can possibly manage!

 The phosphoric acid in them makes soft drinks, both regular and diet, have a brisker, sharper, mouth feel to make them seem more refreshing.

 But every exposure leaches calcium from your bones and tends to directly cause osteoporosis in anyone who fails to do everything else right. Oops!

 Since both regular and diet soft drinks are proven fatteners and causes of many other chronic disease according to the research. I think it’s well worth trying something else to drink!

 Try filtered water, tea, green tea, coffee, lowfat milk, and occasional real fruit juice or vegetable juice. Try iced coffee or tea or real juice with water that’s carbonated only with no sweeteners or phosphoric acid. Even red wine, dark beer, and whisky is better for you than soft drinks -- as long as you drink little enough at a time you avoid accidents that break your bones!

 f) Eat foods high in magnesium and take 200 to 800 mg a day of magnesium. Magnesium is like vitamin D3 in that your body strengthens and maintains your bones dramatically better when you get enough. And most Americans do NOT get enough magnesium. Worse if you have to take heartburn or acid reflux drugs you must supplement with magnesium since the low stomach acid give you less from the foods you eat. Foods high in magnesium include nuts if you aren’t allergic and most dark green vegetables.

 g) Getting enough nonstarchy vegetables and drinking tea or green tea tends to give you enough vitamin K1. But also taking a vitamin K2 supplement has also been found to add to your bone strength.

 h) Taking 3 mg a day of boron also strengthens bones. Doing so also helps you stay a bit more alert all day which is why I began taking it. One source even says that like eating raw broccoli, taking boron cuts the chances in men of getting the aggressive form on prostate cancer in half. (It might do the same for women for breast and ovarian cancers though I know of no direct test of that.)

 i) Taking menopause reversal hormone drugs that are not natural compounds was found to be less heart protective than initially hoped and to increase somewhat the amount of cancers women got.

 But for women where menopause caused a drop in bone strength, it may be safe to take bio-identical hormone replacement. A doctor who has successful experience using this treatment might be worth trying. This might make sense for some women with osteoporosis where menopause clearly helped cause it.

 It makes sense that this way of doing it would be less likely to have negative effects. (Vitamin E is a proven example: Taking the artificial version of vitamin E in high doses increased the incidence of prostate cancer. But the test of real vitamin E found less!)

 j) What if you need some extra bone strengthening at first? Is there a supplement for that?

 Yes. It has two drawbacks -- one is certain and one it may or may not have but might.

 Strontium is in the same group of elements as calcium and tends to appear with it in smaller amounts in nature.

 That means if you eat lowfat dairy, you will likely get some.

 But when taken in larger amounts, as a supplement, strontium has been found to make bones denser and stronger.

 Taken on an empty stomach, strontium can cause stomach upset. So if you take it, take it after one of your larger meals each time.

 Some people have more problem with this than others.

 The other potential problem is that denser and stronger may not be enough if it makes your bones more brittle.

 Because strontium is a natural substance your body and bones in you and your ancestors likely have adapted to it so this may well not happen.

 And, doing all the other things first and for sure also doing them will make this potential drawback far less likely I think.

 If your bones have lost enough density, you might need to use very light weights in your strength training and build up quite slowly. But if you can walk safely, you should at least do that and the very light strength training.

 If I had low bone density, I’d try strontium. But I’d do everything else listed here first and keep doing it! 

2. What if you have unusually low blood calcium &/or have high blood pressure which too little calcium can make worse or your doctor who you find worth keeping otherwise insists you take some anyway? 

Taking smaller amounts of calcium after your 2 largest meals is far safer than taking twice that on empty stomach. 

So consider taking 250 mg right after one of your two largest meals and again after the other.

 Doing this instead of taking 500 or 1,000 mg of calcium once a day on an empty stomach is much safer! 

Doing this slows the release of the calcium enough it may then be safe to do.

 Also, there are now several marine calcium supplements that essentially give you the calcium as a food component in a concentrated food high in calcium.

 As I understand it, they are concentrates from seaweed high in calcium.

 That would also make the calcium more bioavailable for bone making while minimizing the powdered rock in your blood vessel effect you get with calcium carbonate or calcium citrate.

 For women with existing osteoporosis or who eat too little or are unable or unwilling to eat dairy foods, taking smaller amounts of calcium after large meals from this kind of supplement might be safe and effective.

Note though, it’s not worth doing at all without the 3,000 iu plus of vitamin D3 because without the vitamin D it has no bone strengthening effects at all according to what I’ve read.

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post: Monday, 4-23-2012

Since last month, the good news is that I’m still making most of the effort to lose my excess fat and keep off what I lost.:

I still eat on my every other day fewer calories and no grain plan. I still avoid soft drinks and junky packaged foods and bad ingredients. I‘ve maintained my new cut back from 7 times each four weeks for sugar at breakfast to 3 times. And, I’m still doing my jump rope, Nordic Track, Kettlebells, and my strength training with my bodyweight and my new heavier dumbbells. I still log all my exercise sessions.

I even maintained keeping a log of my variable food intake after dinner.

The Ok news is that my waist measurement remained the same.

However, since last month I gained another pound on the scale.

.Maintaining my program including the new heavier dumbbells plus the new sugar cut back should have lost a pound or two instead or remained the same but lost some on my waist.

What happened?

I got laid off from my day job and we had to pay a bit more on income tax than we thought within 2 days of each other. The good news is that I only went two days before my new job kicked in and it’s going well too. (It may turn out to be better than my old job.)

But my record showed that I ate more in my after dinner snacks instead of less and drank 2 more drinks a week than the one more I was already drinking.

Hopefully the stress will get less and the better effort I started the last two nights on my after dinner snacks I’ll continue successfully almost every day until next month – AND after that.

The idea I had to make the lower calorie and higher protein food nonfat cottage cheese a more appetizing substitute for my excessive almond butter intake by adding some powdered paprika IS working. So that will help.

And, I’ve cut back on my alcoholic drinks before successfully. So I do have a shot at doing both.

Between focusing on that and my job doing well, I expect to do better by next month.

Meanwhile, I have a shot at better future results from a strategy I’ve ended this post with for several months. At my new job I have enough more knee room under my desk, I may be able to get one of the tiny bicycle style exercisers and begin using that a few hours a day. (They are just pedals and a support stand for about $150. Not fancy; but an extra 200 calories a day on it will trim off some fat.)

(I now need to lose 10 pounds total to return to my goal weight. And, I still need to lose at least four to 6 inches off my waist.

According to pictures I’ve seen, I’m now at about 25 % bodyfat or a bit more. To remove my abdominal fat, according to those same pictures, I also need to add enough muscle to stay at or just slightly below my goal weight AND lose about 12% to 15% of my current bodyweight as fat.

This translates into losing 21 to 29 pounds of fat while gaining 11 to 19 pounds of muscle.)

I'm finally putting the initial plan in place to add the muscle. But the fat loss part still needs some work. And so does my total calories of exercise and activity. I average 1400 calories a week now. But 3500 would be better. The good news is that there may be a 2100 calorie a week fix I can actually do. The next section repeats that from last time.

* X * X *X *

(Future improvements still planned:

Eventually I’ll also need to get a specialized minibike or other seated leg exerciser I can use while seated at my desk and another I can use while reading at home or at my home computer.

They don’t yet make those that I know of but most people today need them. Given the health harm of sitting too much and how many people do that, these minibikes or other seated exerciser for your legs and chairs that match them well are coming soon I think.

Walking burns about 300 calories an hour. (200 if you are skinny and walk slowly to over 500 if you walk really fast or walk somewhat fast but are much heavier.)

Using a seated minibike or other seated exerciser that you use much less effort on but keep moving slowly most of the time you sit can easily burn 50 calories an hour.

Then if like many people today you sit for 6 hours a day, you could easily add an extra 2100 calories a week by using a seated minibike exerciser most of the time you sit at home or at work. That would help people lose about 2 and a half pounds a month for a few months once they got into the habit of always using one.

If I’d used one of the seated minibikes since I began my current fatloss plan, I’d still need to add the extra muscle to be at my goal weight. But I’d be trying to add muscle weight to get back to my goal weight! That’s because I’d be 10 to 15 pounds less fat.)

I’ve also had an idea for awhile. Before sewing machines had electric power, they had an under the work area treadle that was designed to be effective but avoid distracting the person sewing from doing their sewing.

It may be possible to find an antique sewing machine and find a manufacturer to make a design of that treadle mechanism that would do the same for people working at a desk.

It’s proven to do the job needed in actual use!)

I’ll let you know how my additional planned changes and efforts work next month.

Solutions to drugs that keep you fat 7—Birth control pills....

Today's Post: Friday, 4-20-2012

Friday, 3-9-2012, our post “Some drugs can keep you fat” listed several kinds of general strategies to drugs that tend to fatten you or keep you fat. For most of them, there is a better drug or a way to improve your condition that avoids using that drug.

Friday, 3-16, we covered anti-depressants since some of those can keep you fat. Some don’t including Zyban aka Wellbutrin that helps some people quit smoking.

Friday, 3-23, we covered blood pressure lowering drugs.

Friday, 3-30, we covered drugs for type 2 diabetes.

Friday, 4-6, we covered statin drugs. (There are far better ways to protect your heart. And statins cause the exercise that is essential for beneficial and permanent fat loss harm you instead.!)

Friday, 4-13, we covered Corticosteroids. (Some problems those help are hard to treat without them but your doctor may be able to help you use them in a way that minimizes the fat gain. The better news is that for asthma, using corticosteroids can almost always be temporary.)

Today, we cover Birth Control pills.

Since they contain estrogen, birth control pills can cause water retention. My wife took them back when they had even more estrogen than now and added weight to her breasts and had her hips widen. That’s not necessarily bad and is somewhat normal. But both effects do add pounds.

The good news is that there are 3 solutions.

1. One solution is to have your doctor prescribe a lower dose estrogen birth control pill.

These are usually effective at birth control and are far less likely to make fat loss and weight loss harder.

Three I've read about are: Yasmin (Drospirenone and Ethinyl Estradiol); Norgestimate/Ethinyl Estradiol combo; & Norethindrone Acetate and Ethinyl Estradiol combo.

I saw the side effect lists and none of them sounded fun to take.

BUT, you may have few side effects on one of them or find one that for you the side effects are minor or just go away after you have taken it for a bit. Most drugs have different side effects for different people. The thing you need is a doctor who knows these drugs and will work with you to find the one that works for you. And, birth control pills are more effective and easier to manage than most other kinds of birth control.

The important thing for avoiding problems with your fat loss is to see if you can avoid higher dose estrogen birth control pills.

2. The second solution is to use IUD’s, inter uterine devices. For women who have had children already or simply don’t do well on birth control pills because they get too many side effects or forget to take them and women who a 98% or 99% prevention rate is OK instead of the near 100 % of the pills, IUD’s can be great.

The woman I knew who used them found them effective and trouble free.

So if finding a birth control pill you can take OK simply doesn’t work, you may find getting an IUD can be a real solution. IUD’s do NOT add any fat or weight. Here again, ask your doctor or find one who knows IUD’s and has had successful experience with using them.

3. Making your figure more feminine and adding water weight don’t add much fat or harm your health.

So the third solution is just to work a bit harder and more thoroughly at eating right, exercise, and the small calorie cut backs that avoid the famine response.

This one is particularly important if you have lots of fat to lose. If you use this solution, you’ll still lose most of it over time even taking the birth control pills.

A good strategy would be for those who remember to take pills OK is to try the pill solution first and the IUD’s if that doesn’t work.

But to use the third solution no matter what.

Slash your heart attack risk with more vegetables....

Today's Post: Thursday, 4-19-2012

Most Americans today eat very little nonstarchy vegetables. They may have onion on or in some foods or some lettuce and tomato on a sandwich or hamburger. But that’s about it.

I recently found news that this may change for the better. Eating more nonstarchy vegetables that we already knew to be heart healthy and to reduce excess body fat due to what it tends to replace is effective and important.

But it seems that eating an abundant amount of nonstarchy vegetables each day apparently also prevents the genes that tend to give many people heart disease from doing so!

Part one: Instead of eating an abundant amount of nonstarchy vegetables each day many people tend to eat bread or buns made with refined grains or packaged foods like potato chips or other packaged snacks and commercially made baked goods or packaged desserts.

Worse, these foods tend to be made out of excess salt, high fructose corn syrup, excess sugar, hydrogenated oils, or cheap omega 6 oils such as soy and corn oil—besides the refined grains.

We’ve posted on how refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, excess sugar both in foods and soft drinks either increase triglycerides and lower HDL or tend to spike blood sugar and insulin. (These effects also tend to fatten you and cause type 2 diabetes.)

That combination means these cheap foods increase the number of small particle LDL particles in your blood. These are small enough they stick into the chinks of your blood vessel walls and cause the plaque build up that is a major cause of heart disease.

Eating foods that contain hydrogenated oils also has been directly tested to increase the number of small particle LDL particles in your blood. That’s why the push to ban hydrogenated oils in foods. But most commercial baked goods and many other foods still contain them.

Eating excessive omega 6 oils is also common. They are in refined grain, the fats of animals fed grain, and cheap omega 6 oils such as soy and corn oil.

Eating those foods increases chronic inflammation which tends to damage the insides of your blood vessels which your body then overdoes patching which tends to cause the plaque build up that is a major cause of heart disease.

Clearly editing out from 90% to virtually all of those foods from what you eat and drink protects your heart. Continuing to consume them every day as staple, like tobacco smoke, is virtually certain to cause heart disease.

The DASH II and Mediterranean diets leave out these foods and drinks and have a lot more nonstarchy vegetables; and wild caught fish; and very fat trimmed meats and poultry; and beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas.

The Mediterranean diet also uses extra virgin olive oil instead of margarine made from hydrogenated oils, instead of butter from grain fed cows, and instead of cheap omega 6 oils such as soy and corn oil.

So getting on one of those two diets or their combination and stopping your consumption of the heart disease producing foods and drinks by itself slashes heart disease and your chances of getting a heart attack or stroke.

This is a huge and effective way to protect yourself from heart disease.

Part two: A few days ago I got an email from Mehmet C. Oz, MD, and Michael F. Roizen, MD with the title:

“Prevent Heart Attacks by Eating Fresh Fruit and Vegetables” which said that one of the most common causes of inherited heart disease is the gene called 9p21.

(This is something I very likely have because both my father and his mother had heart attacks. She died and he got heart failure in part from the heart attacks he survived & which did contribute to his death. So for me and my family, this is significant news.)

But the good news they report says that important recent research shows that eating an abundant amount of vegetables and some fresh fruit somehow turns off or “down-regulates” the effect of the gene 9p21.

That means that in addition to all the heart disease producing things you can replace by eating more nonstarchy vegetables and eating some every day, eating them is directly protective besides! That’s really good news!

Eating more nonstarchy vegetables and eating some every day is like getting a bullet proof vest against heart disease between what you stop eating and the direct protection you get!

I loved this example they put in their email;

“ Say you and your neighbor have the gene.” (9p21)

“You're not a nutritional saint (dessert happens) but your diet is also packed with carrots, broccoli, spinach, berries, apples, and artichokes.

Your neighbor eats a typical American diet (meaty, sugary, salty, fatty).

Your healthy eating lowers your heart attack risk. Your neighbor's? It doubles.”

I also liked their closing comment:

“If every American stopped smoking, started walking, managed stress, and ate a ton-o-veggies, heart disease could go extinct. Make it happen in your house.”

False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, vitamin A....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 4-17-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more.

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements. Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

(Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different. Very different!

1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial.

There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012.

We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C last week on Thursday, 4-12

This week we cover vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

The animal based form of vitamin A or its synthetic form, retinol, has that name because it is essential to the retina of the eye and when deficient produces night blindness. Some vegan vegetarians get that unless they take vitamin A supplements. (Lacto vegetarians often drink vitamin A fortified milk and some cheeses have vitamin A. So does butter.. And ovo vegetarians get plenty of vitamin A from egg yolks.)

The needed amount of retinol ranges from 300 mcg or 1,000 iu a day for toddlers to 1200 mcg a day or almost 4,000 iu for women who are breast feeding. For adults, 900 mcg or a bit less than 3,000 iu is about right. A supplement of 2500 iu a day for adults might make sense for example. It definitely would for vegan vegetarians. 5,000 iu taken every other day after the first week would also work.

With the animal or retinol form, the safe upper limit really is about twice that. That means that 5,000 iu of retinol is the maximum you should take long term. Before this was known, people took 10,000 or even 25,000 iu and ran into real problems. Some doctors prescribe 10,000 iu a day for people with upper respiratory disease on a temporary basis only. The next section shows why they do that. Bottom line, unless a doctor prescribes it, never take more than 5,000 iu a day of retinol. (That’s about 1500 mcg.) [100 mcg = 330 iu]

The oxidized form, retinoic acid, Wikipedia says, acts as a hormone like growth factor or catalyst. The NIH article shows that this has dramatic benefits all over your body:

NIH says this:

Vitamin A is a group of compounds that play an important role in vision, bone growth, reproduction, cell division, and cell differentiation (in which a cell becomes part of the brain, muscle, lungs, blood, or other specialized tissue.) [1-5]. Vitamin A helps regulate the immune system, which helps prevent or fight off infections by making white blood cells that destroy harmful bacteria and viruses [1,6-10]. Vitamin A also may help lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) fight infections more effectively.

Vitamin A promotes healthy surface linings of the eyes and the respiratory, urinary, and intestinal tracts [8]. When those linings break down, it becomes easier for bacteria to enter the body and cause infection. Vitamin A also helps the skin and mucous membranes function as a barrier to bacteria and viruses [9-11].

The carotenes, particularly beta carotene, can convert to retinol to some degree. But in foods that conversion is only a twelfth as much as full strength. The better news is that you can get more than enough carotenes in foods if you eat enough plant foods high in them. And, you can’t get too much of them to convert to retinol. So, carotenes from dietary sources are not toxic even in quite large amounts if from food. Apparently once you convert enough of them to retinol, your body stops the conversion.

The good news is that the carotenes and carotenoids in plant foods have spectacular and multiple other health benefits.

One study found that the people with the highest blood levels of alpha carotene were dramatically healthier in almost every way than people with low levels. (Canned pumpkin and pureed carrots have the most alpha carotene directly.)

People who eat multiple foods every week with many kinds of carotenes are less likely to get cancers in general I’ve read. And this may even help reverse some cancers. Some doctors have even used a multi-carotene and carotenoid supplement for that purpose.

People who eat multiple foods every week with many kinds of carotenes have been tested to have far less sunburn sun damage to their skins from sun exposure than people who don’t. This specifically may help prevent melanoma. The rising rates of it may be from more people eating junk foods and less vegetables than they once did in fact.

And, the carotene lycopene -- found in tomatoes most often and best absorbed from cooked tomatoes or tomato sauce with oil, ideally extra virgin olive oil – tends to prevent or slow prostate cancer according to some studies that made the cover of TIME magazine. (It had already been found that men who ate a lot of cooked tomatoes and tomato sauce with extra virgin olive oil get fewer cases of prostate cancer.) The 30 mg of lycopene a day in that study can now be taken as 3 10 mg capsule each day also.

I now both eat the tomato sauce and olive oil on most days and take 30 mg a day of the supplement Lycopene myself.

Last but far from least, when you eat enough carotenes and carotenoids, your skin gets a slightly reddish glow that studies found causes people to see you as healthy even if they don’t realize it or know why!

The best animal sources of retinol, the animal form of vitamin A that are commonly eaten are calves liver, chicken livers, and cod liver oil.

Butter, cheddar cheese, and egg yolks are decent sources too.

The best plant source, something I just found out on Wikipedia today, is Dandelion Greens.

Most dark green, leafy vegetables and yellow and orange and red vegetables tend to be high in carotenes and carotenoids. Kale and spinach leaves are good sources.

Broccoli is high in the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin that are also critical to eye health and many of the greens are also high in them.

Carrots, Yams, Sweet Potatoes, pumpkin, and most other kinds of yellow and orange squash are high in carotenes and carotenoids.

As with tomatoes, these vegetables are good for you raw. But you may get far more carotenes and carotenoids absorbed if you eat them in a salad with extra virgin olive oil or when they are cooked with extra virgin olive oil.

Apricots and cantaloupe also have some carotenes and carotenoids.

The last reason to get carotenes and carotenoids from foods is that one source I read once said there were over 20 kinds in carrots alone.

Some of those may benefit your health as much as the far fewer better known ones.

If you eat a variety of these foods, you’ll bet an ample supply of them.

That’s likely why the high blood level of alpha carotene acts as a marker for good health.

Solutions to drugs that keep you fat 6—Corticosteroids....

Today's Post: Friday, 4-13-2012

Friday, 3-9-2012, our post “Some drugs can keep you fat” listed several kinds of general strategies to drugs that tend to fatten you or keep you fat. For most of them, there is a better drug or a way to improve your condition that avoids using that drug.

Friday, 3-16, we covered anti-depressants since some of those can keep you fat. Some don’t including Zyban aka Wellbutrin that helps some people quit smoking.

Friday, 3-23, we covered blood pressure lowering drugs.

Friday, 3-30, we covered drugs for type 2 diabetes.

Friday, 4-6, we covered statin drugs. (There are far better ways to protect your heart. And statins cause the exercise that is essential for beneficial and permanent fat loss harm you instead.!)

Today, we cover Corticosteroids.

Corticosteroids are essential tools to improve some health problems.

But the longer you take them, the more fat you tend to gain. You can also gain water weight which can add to the drop in mobility this can cause.

The strategy is to use them temporarily, use lower doses, or take planned breaks such as taking them every other week or 10 day period, use a lower dose – or use alternative ways to combat the condition. But that depends mostly on what you have and only partly on which doctor you work with.

(If it’s possible to do these things without harm and your doctor won’t, that’s different. In that case, you need a different doctor who is experienced in doing them effectively and safely instead.)

If you have to deal with such a condition, your doctor will likely endorse the very health oriented lifestyle upgrades in eating that produce fat loss and help you keep it off.

Doing those eating right upgrades will keep you healthier and minimize the damage. So you will gain 20 pounds with the corticosteroids instead of 80. With luck, you may even not gain instead of gaining 50 pounds.

But for exercise, your doctor may well know reasonable limits and guidelines as to what you can do safely and not do.

1. For asthma, particularly allergic asthma, such drugs as prednisone and methylprednisolone can be used as a very powerful and effective off switch.

This is great for emergency use because when needed it can make you a lot more comfortable and even save your life in some cases.

I took them once for this reason and was astonished at how effective the prednisone was.

The good news for most people is that finding ways to remove things you are allergic to from where you work and live or change things to move you away from them, can help you not need steroids to manage your asthma long term.

Then once those steps are in place, you can usually stop the corticosteroids. IMPORTANT note, with this class of drugs, dropping immediately to zero dose, can be very hazardous. You have to very gradually step down the dose over several days or a week.

Sometimes de-sensitization shots can turn off enough of the allergy to help.

And, I’ve known that taking quercetin as a supplement and eating foods like red apple peels and onions high in quercetin can turn down allergies. Some people find it makes them more energetic. (I eat the foods but have not tried the supplement for energy.)

I found out yesterday that a study found that taking 2,000 mg of vitamin C a day can cut back allergic reactions by 38 % or more AND it begins to do so within a week of starting to take that much. Note that it’s more effective to take the 2,000 mg a day in divided doses.

(I take that much vitamin C for heart protection, 1600 mg early in the day and 500 mg after dinner. I had noticed I very rarely had any allergic asthma or hay fever symptoms in recent years but didn’t realize the vitamin C may have helped bring that about.)

Better yet, fat loss reliably improves asthma because your lungs quite literally have more room to work!

And, best of all, there are several drugs that can help prevent asthma. So once you have gotten allergens out of your life to the best of your ability and started on those, you can usually stop taking corticosteroids all the time.

There are also drugs that turn down your allergic reactions without making you sleepy. Just be extremely careful to never double the dose with some of them. With those, it’s better to skip one than take two by accident.

So, for most people, taking corticosteroids for asthma can & should be a temporary step.

Using corticosteroids to treat rheumatoid arthritis and some types of cancer, is completely out of my area of knowledge. Unlike asthma, I’ve never had them myself.

1. But, with the rheumatoid arthritis, eating right for fat loss can help in two ways.

To the extent you are successful in minimizing the weight you gain or even increasing what you still take off, your joints will be under less stress and hurt less.

NOT eating the foods such as corn oil and soy oil and hydrogenated oils made from them and refined grains and the junky desserts and snacks made from them, helps lose fat. But it also lowers chronic inflammation.

Eating smaller amounts of the most fat trimmed meat and poultry that are fed grains like corn and soy that are high in omega 6 also does that. So does eating wild caught fish or meat from animals only pasture fed or 100 % grass fed instead of fatty grain fed meat. So does eating beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas and nuts and low fat dairy for protein on some days.

Taking omega 3 supplements and eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 also helps.

With far less extra inflammation from eating badly, you might be able to take a lower dose of steroids or periodic breaks from them. That’s an experimental question and between you and your doctor.

Rheumatoid arthritis can be severe enough it might not be possible to do this in your case. But if it is possible for you, this kind of eating right will decrease your pain and inflammation and may open the door to you to do these things and have the corticosteroids add less weight and fat.

(I’ve no idea if you would find them helpful. But there are two supplements that might help turn down rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

Taking 4,000 to 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 at least until your blood level tests above 60 might help. There is some research showing that D3 tends to prevent autoimmune disease. I’ve not heard of any showing it helps after the fact. But the evidence I’ve seen is that taking that much D3 is safe and has many other health benefits. So, if I ever got an autoimmune disease, I’d continue taking that much as I do now for the other health benefits.

And, although I’ve not seen the research, if it remains available, I have heard that taking the supplement DHEA has helps turn down autoimmune diseases for some people.)

3. Cancer treatments are still in their infancy at this time. However, to the extent you have a cancer where corticosteroids help and there are other treatments that work, in some cases, it may be possible to use corticosteroids at first and then gradually stop as is possible with asthma.

So with asthma, long term use of corticosteroids is very likely not needed. For rheumatoid arthritis and cancers where they help, it may be possible to take less or not take them every single day.

By using those strategies, eating right for fat loss, working with your doctor, and getting what exercise is safe, you can at least minimize the fat gain from taking corticosteroids or escape it altogether.

False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, vitamin C....

Today's Post: Thursday, 4-12-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more.

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements. Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

(Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different. Very different!

1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial.

There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012.

We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

This week we cover vitamin C.

Except for making the symptoms slightly less for some people and sparing people who do a lot of vigorous exercise some colds, taking extra vitamin C doesn’t prevent colds or shorten them otherwise according to the research.

But taking larger doses does reduce allergies and, although this is less certainly proven, it does look to help prevent heart disease and other circulatory problems.

It tends to prevent or improve depression and may also slow aging.

People who eat little or no junk food and do eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and have one glass of real fruit or vegetable juice each day tend to get enough vitamin C to avoid scurvy.

Taking the 100 mg a day of vitamin C in most decent multivitamins also is enough to prevent scurvy.

The other benefits require taking 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C in divided doses.

Vitamin C’s main value is as an antioxidant.

Most plants and animals can make it themselves from glucose but people, other primates, and guinea pig rodents cannot.

Having enough glutathione helps vitamin C do more antioxidant work by resetting it to start over after it acts as an antioxidant.

Taking the amino acid NAC causes the body to release more glutathione so likely would help vitamin C do more.

Your body uses more vitamin C when stressed, sick particularly when fighting off bacterial infections, or when injured. Vitamin C also helps make and replace collagen and neurotransmitters.

100 mg a day which many people get from food is enough to prevent scurvy. People who eat only junk food and never take vitamins may not.

Taking more vitamin C than that as a supplement is thought to add significantly to your protection from heart attacks, obstructive or ischemic strokes, and other problems caused by reduced blood circulation.

Researcher Linus Pauling and Dr Matthias Rath also has said that due to its effect on collagen repair you will have far less damage to your endothelium, the inside surface of your blood vessels, by taking 500 to 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C.

Since the patches your body makes on such damage tend to build up plaque inside your blood vessels over time, they say this is a significant cause of heart disease you can prevent by taking that much vitamin C.

A strong argument for this case Dr Rath makes is that animals who make their own vitamin C make more than the equivalent of 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C AND never develop heart disease.

I read of a study that found people who took that much vitamin C and deodorized garlic at the same time even showed some reduction in plaque in their blood vessels.

I take 1600 mg of vitamin C at the beginning of my day and 500 mg a day after dinner because I find this persuasive.

I also eat berries, apple sauce with no sugar, bananas, and raw broccoli florets and drink 100 % cranberry juice once a day every week and eat other fruit and vegetables as I have the opportunity. These foods have vitamin C and other key nutrients and also may well have co-factors to make vitamin C more effective.

Completely avoiding tobacco smoke and getting enough exercise and avoiding foods that also cause plaque build up such as hydrogenated oils, too much sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and refined grains is also critical because doing the reverse has been shown to cause plaque build up. Eliminating those foods also helps you become and stay less fat.

Similarly getting enough omega 3 oils and limiting foods high in omega 6 reduces chronic inflammation and eating spices like ginger and turmeric that reduce inflammation both help to prevent the damage to the insides of your blood vessels that also cause plaque build up. Using only extra virgin olive oil is a good way to avoid the cheap and harmful oils high in omega 6. Eating super low fat versions of protein from grain fed animals or better yet eating wild caught fish and meat animals fed only grass instead helps avoid excess omega 6 oils. So does eating beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas instead of grain fed meat. Taking omega 3 supplements also helps. Not eating refined grains and only eating 100 % whole grains in careful moderation also help you avoid excess omega 6 oils.

Note that virtually eliminating eating any foods made from refined grains helps you prevent heart disease both ways! It will also help make you less fat and stay that way.

If you do the reverse of these things, extra vitamin C may limit the damage; but it may not do enough by itself.

But I believe that adding the extra vitamin C to doing these things adds to the protection they give you and that it can help repair some of the damage if you don't do it perfectly or did not know to do so in the past.

Then too studies have found that getting this extra vitamin C and other antioxidants allows you to do more vigorous exercise without getting sick.

There is also reason to believe that the extra vitamin C and the neurotransmitters it helps your body make prevents or lessens depression. In fact, I think I saw a study to that effect.

There also was a study that taking that much vitamin C helped prevent some of the shortening of your telomeres. That plus the antioxidant effect tends to slow aging.

Also, Wikipedia has information showing that taking 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C reduces virtually all allergic reactions by almost 40 % within a week of beginning. If you take that much all the time, it may do even better than that.

"Vitamin C is a natural antihistamine. It both prevents histamine release and increases the detoxification of histamine. A 1992 study found that taking 2 grams vitamin C daily lowered blood histamine levels 38 percent in healthy adults in just one week.[79] It has also been noted that low concentrations of serum vitamin C has been correlated with increased serum histamine levels.

Wikipedia also has this: " A balanced diet without supplementation usually contains enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy in an average healthy adult, while those who are pregnant, smoke tobacco, or are under stress require slightly more.[83] However, the amount of vitamin C necessary to prevent scurvy is less than the amount required for optimal health, as there are a number of other chronic diseases whose risk are increased by a low vitamin C intake, including cancer, heart disease, and cataracts."

They also note that taking more than 2,000 mg a day of vitamin C can cause diarrhea. If you get that, one way to stop it is to take part of your vitamin C at one time of day and the rest later in the day.

I do that. But I also do it to ensure my body has access to enough vitamin C all day since it is water soluble and I dislike using time release supplements or drugs when I can easily avoid it.

To be fair, many of the benefits of taking over 500 mg a day are less verified than I’d like.

I find the information suggesting 2,000 mg a day or at least 1,000 mg a day in divided doses of vitamin C daily persuasive.

It seems to work for me. My blood indicators for heart disease are almost all at the high optimal level. I look at least 10 to 15 year younger than my chronological age. And, despite having allergic hay fever and asthma as a child, I never have them now.

But at minimum, it’s clear you should take at least 100 mg a day of vitamin C. And eating enough fruit and nonstarchy vegetables each day not only will tend to give you that much vitamin C but dramatically improve your health in other ways.

Now you have a quick survey of vitamin C and the case for taking more this 100 mg a day minimum each day.

What you do with it is up to you!

Why light smokers should quit and why exercise helps....

Today's Post: Wednesday, 4-11-2012

I once worked for a man who smoked 5 cigarettes a day. I said I’d heard smoking was harmful enough he should quit. (He was a really nice guy so I didn’t want him to be harmed.)

He simply ignored my suggestion that he even try. His main reason was that he smoked so little it just wasn’t that harmful.

I wish I’d known then what I know today.

But now you will know!

A recent story reported research that found that smoking 3, repeat THREE, cigarettes a day regularly boosts your heart disease risk by 72%!

For most people, statin drugs reduce your risk by 1%. Even the people with the genes where statin drugs are somewhat effective only get a 41% risk reduction.

That means that relatively speaking even smoking 3 cigarettes a day creates a huge increase in your risk of getting a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

And, most smokers like my previous boss, don’t yet know that every exposure to tobacco smoke causes a measurable increase in your heart disease risk. Since that includes plaque build up, the effect is also cumulative. The more it happens, the stiffer and more closed up your blood vessels will be.

Of course smoking far more than 3 cigarettes causes even more heart risk.

Worse, tobacco smoke has been found to trigger heart attacks in people who otherwise would have escaped them.

Too bad I didn’t know to ask him then if he knew these things. Clearly he did not.

Maybe if he knew them, he would have quit. I think he’d have been more likely to try and make much more of an effort to do so.

Most smokers have heard that smoking causes lung cancer and he may have heard that too.

But although 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer, 75% die of something else. So smokers have just assumed they would be in the group who would escape and kept smoking.

But commercially grown tobacco contains the radioactive element polonium and tobacco products – not just the smoke – causes 30% or more of ALL cancers. The polonium gets into the blood of tobacco users. And your blood goes everywhere in your body.

Oops! Who cares if you escape lung cancer but get fast acting pancreatic cancer or brain cancer?

So between the very high heart disease risk that with certainty harms ALL smokers and the much worse real odds of cancers that actually is in effect and the fact that even smoking 3 cigarettes a day is that harmful, no smoker would voluntarily keep smoking if they were in any kind of good mental health.

If they are addicted to nicotine and have never heard of these facts, however, quitting is far less likely.

There are even a large group of less educated, lower class smokers who think smoking is not dangerous at all and see no reason whatever to quit.

Now you have read this post, you are no longer in any risk of being in that group.

You now know better!

And, if you know any smokers who are very light smokers, you now know what to tell them so they know why they should quit.

Why exercise helps:

A recent study found that smokers who also managed to exercise regularly had a lower risk of getting cancer and lung cancer.

Of course, anyone who manages to exercise regularly will have lower risk of getting cancer likely including lung cancer. But it’s nice to know it protects smokers somewhat too.

But exercise has even more value for people who quit smoking or are trying to do so.

People who exercise from before they quit and keep doing it while they quit and keep doing it are twice as likely to succeed in quitting smoking or more than people who do no exercise.

But there are reasons this is so and extra benefits for people who exercise.

Smoking short drags helps people wake up but even shorter sessions of vigorous exercise do too.

Smoking slow drags during good times and after dinner and when you are stressed is a conditioned stress relief process. But yawning and both shorter sessions of vigorous exercise and overall regular exercise both relieve stress and increase your ability to tolerate stress.

That means that people who quit smoking and exercise have something effective they can do to get the effects of smoking.

And, since they are more energetic and less stressed all the time that also helps.

People who quit AND exercise gain less fat and can lose it later more easily than people who don’t exercise.

Best of all, once you quit, regular exercise will help you prevent the things smoking was heading your way and reduce the damage smoking caused you more quickly.

Solutions to drugs that keep you fat 5—how and why to avoid statins....

Today's Post: Friday, 4-6-2012

Friday, 3-9-2012, our post “Some drugs can keep you fat” listed several kinds of general strategies to drugs that tend to fatten you or keep you fat. For most of them, there is a better drug or a way to improve your condition that avoids using that drug.

Friday, 3-16, we covered anti-depressants since some of those can keep you fat. Some don’t including Zyban aka Wellbutrin that helps some people quit smoking.

Friday, 3-23, we covered blood pressure lowering drugs.

Friday, 3-30, we covered drugs for type 2 diabetes.

Today, we cover statin drugs.

It is not at all yet widely known that taking statin drugs works to prevent permanent fat loss.

It does & we explain why and what to do instead.

Nor is it well known that most people don’t benefit much from statins and a one time genetic test for about $150 can tell you and your doctor if you are in the majority of people who hardly benefit from statins.

Regular vigorous exercise most days of every week are critical to protect your health and for permanent fat loss.

Many of the health benefits you lose fat to get from health benefits to feeling better come much faster from beginning and safely and slowly building up to doing vigorous exercise most days of every week.

Your heart risk blood indicators all improve from the lipid panel with HDL & LDL cholesterol and triglycerides to blood pressure to fasting glucose and HBA1C to measure blood sugar levels.

And the calories burned both during AND after regular vigorous exercise allow you to lose fat and keep it off but eat enough more food that you don’t feel hungry too much or trigger your famine response. That allows you to lose fat until it’s all gone and keep it off.

You do still have to upgrade what you eat and drink and find ways to eat more health OK protein foods and fiber and otherwise cut back calories to lose fat at all.

But although exercise is not enough by itself short of doing it ten hours a day, six or seven days a week, it has proven to be necessary and essential for fat loss and particularly so for fat loss you keep off.

But I just got the news yesterday that if you take statins, doing regular vigorous exercise most days of every week will harm you instead of making you healthier.

That means that once you harm your muscles by combining statins and regular vigorous exercise most days of every week, you may be unable to ever do it again.

Worse, the better job you do on the kinds of exercise that burn the most calories, the more certain and severe this harm will be.

So statins prevent you from using one of your most effective weapons against excess fat!

Almost as bad and quite likely a related effect, taking statins depletes your energy on a cellular level. That means that you feel less like exercising and burn fewer calories even when you are sedentary. You’ll feel and to some degree actually will be far older than people. One statin is also known to cause insomnia. Lacking enough sleep also depletes your energy plus it has been found to tend to fatten you!

The good news is that taking statins by almost everyone is completely unnecessary.

It IS a good idea to get your LDL well below 120 & the range from 70 to 105 looks desirable.

But by doing the lifestyle upgrades that cause fat loss—including the regular vigorous exercise most days of every week—is one of the best ways to do that.

It also increases your protective HDL cholesterol and sharply lowers your triglycerides and blood sugar if they were high before. This is far more heart protective than just lowering LDL research at Harvard found because it indicates your small particle LDL that is the kind that causes heart disease has gone down a lot!

Eating the junk foods that contain trans fats and hydrogenated oils directly increases your small particle LDL that is the kind that causes heart disease. These foods also tend to make you fat and harm your health from their other ingredients. So the more you eliminate these foods, the less you will need statins at all! And, it will help you lose fat and keep it off by giving you an extra reason to avoid these foods.

In addition, eating foods high in soluble fiber and sterols and taking sterols each lower LDL cholesterol.

Eating beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas is a great way to get enough fiber and protein to feel full at reasonable cost. That makes them great fat loss foods!

But each of them is high in soluble fiber so eating them often also lowers LDL cholesterol.

Eating apples and non-instant oatmeal such as rolled oats or steel cut oats also does this.

The nonstarchy vegetables and lower glycemic fruit -- and nuts for those not allergic -- that help fat loss also have soluble fiber and sterols. So eating enough of them to work for fat loss also lowers LDL cholesterol

Even better, you currently do not need to buy or eat margarine to get extra sterols. You can get and take sterol supplements.

The supplement I have used is Natrol Cholesterol Balance. It is inexpensive and works well. I take 3 tablets a day.

Both a recent study and my own blood tests show that adding these foods and taking sterols in combination lowers LDL.

The best news is that the foods and drinks it is necessary to stop consuming or dramatically limit for fat loss cause heart disease.

They slam up your triglycerides and lower your HDL cholesterol. The work at Harvard shows that this means they increase your small particle LDL that causes heart disease.

These include regular and diet soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup, foods made with refined grains, and eating excess sugar otherwise.

The average American gets over 25% of their calories from this junk. You can replace the little real food value with real foods that have 2 to 5 % that many calories and actually be LESS hungry!

If you have been ingesting this stuff and stop, that alone will cause you to lose something like 20 % of your starting bodyweight as fat over 6 months to a couple of years!

But the huge extra benefit is that this is so heart protective even the people who test as getting some protection from statins will no longer need to take statins since they are already doing so much better at protecting their heart!

Lastly, you can take as little as 300 mg of niacin once after each of your two largest meals each day. (Whole Foods sells it in that strength which is what I take.)

You will occasionally get the flushing from this that feels and looks like a mild and temporary sunburn. But it’s good for you and won’t happen often.

This is extremely heart protective because it lowers LDL and increases HDL and lowers triglycerides.

So by avoiding statins but doing all the things that help you lose fat and keeping them up plus taking these two supplements does three things.

You feel much better and have more energy instead of less.

You lose more fat and find it easier to keep off.

And, your heart protection will go UP not down!

By the way, I do these things and my LDL is averaging about 75 down from 130 initially. Most people who take enough statins to damage them don’t get their LDL that low. My HDL is usually in the 90’s and my triglycerides in the 40’s.

The research suggests you can do the same!

Statins do prevent you from benefiting from exercise!....

Today's Post: Thursday, 4-5-2012

My Dad survived a couple of heart attacks. At the time, the doctors saw his cholesterol was high and prescribed statin drugs.

At the time, that was what they knew to do. Unfortunately, the information in this post explains why taking the statins was a very likely a major reason he developed heart failure.

He had other health problems. But gradually the heart failure limited his life so much and it cost so much in money and time in the hospital to drain the excess fluid, he entered hospice care and died because he stopped getting that treatment. He thought that if they didn’t know how to make him better, it was harming his wife by draining the family funds and living half his life in a hospital bed with poor quality of life the rest of the time with eventual failure anyway was not worth it to continue.

So I feel quite strongly that now it’s known that statins not only produce this effect but caused the exercise that could have helped his heart heal likely harmed it instead and limited how much he could do, that statins only be used rarely and for the shortest possible time if used.

Vigorous exercise is such a powerful force for good health that it not only prevents or dramatically postpones so many illnesses AND slows aging, that a drug that causes that same exercise to harm you instead, is a drug most people should never take

We’ve already posted that statins are not as good as niacin as a heart protector and heart attack preventive for most people. (There is a genetic test you can get for about $150 to see if you are in the majority group for which this is true.)

We’ve also posted that niacin and sterols and NOT eating the things like hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup and excessive sugar and foods made from refined grains and oils and foods high in omega 6—or drinking soft drinks AND doing regular vigorous exercise AND eating real foods -- all in combination -- give you dramatically better protection than taking statin drugs. (Completely avoiding tobacco smoke is also a HUGE help.)

That’s true for everyone!

Unfortunately, most doctors only know that they’ve heard statin drugs give some protection and don’t know how or what to do to get their patients to do the lifestyle upgrades.

Worse, though some of the more informed cardiologist know about the genetic tests, most of the other doctors prescribing statins have not heard of this or don’t know how to use niacin well.

So, a huge number of Americans now take statin drugs. The article I found that’s the basis of this post said it’s over 20 million. I think that estimate is on the low end

So, if statin drugs are really too harmful to use except in very rare cases for people the genetic tests show are actually benefitted, it would be extremely important news that millions of Americans and their doctors should know right away.

I just got that news earlier this week. That is precisely the case.

I’d known that the side effects of statins did not justify having anyone take them who has not tested to be in the group who get decent benefits. And, I’d known that even for those people there are cheaper, safer, and more effective alternatives.

I’d known that some to most people felt energy depleted and old and tired much more after starting statins. That’s because the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 your body uses to keep the power centers in all your cells, the mitochondria, healthy and working, is depleted by taking statins.

I’d thought that simply by taking 200 mg a day of ubiquinol, this problem might be mostly alleviated. I suspect it may be lessened somewhat. Certainly no one taking statins should do so without taking the ubiquinol!

But one of the least pleasant and most dangerous side effects of statins is increased muscle pain and damage -- including fatal damage in some cases.

What if the ubiquinol didn’t prevent this because statins also made genetic changes that made any vigorous exercise harm your muscles by preventing them from repairing themselves?

Then no one in their right mind would take them & no ethical doctor would prescribe them to anyone not bed ridden in the hospital from a recent heart attack – even in people who test in the group who get good heart attack prevention from statins.

The horrible news is that this is exactly what statins do!

That means anyone taking statins who is getting regular vigorous exercise for health protection or to decrease type 2 diabetes or for fat loss or for any other reason is now being harmed.

Worse, the better job they do on exercise and the more of it they do, the greater the harm statins cause.

The research even suggests statins cause sharply increased oxidative damage and aging even in sedentary people.

Mercifully the study showing these things made the New York Times:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/do-statins-make-it-tough-to-exercise/

Meanwhile, until this information and its implications reach all doctors, you may still have far too many of them think prescribing statins is a good idea.

This information shows it’s not at least 99 % of the time.

Have you had the genetic test that shows you actually are in the group that statins protect well and had it say yes?

If not, get the test! And, if you aren’t in that group, speak to your doctor about alternatives!

If you are in that group, ask to do your very best with niacin and sterols and avoiding tobacco smoke and the lifestyle upgrades for 6 months first.

They are effective enough you may no longer test as needing to lower your LDL cholesterol at all. Your HDL will also be higher and your triglycerides will be much lower.

This new information shows enough overall health harm from statins, it’s worth making a lot of extra effort to avoid taking them or continuing on them!

False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, B vitamins....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 4-3-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more.

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements. Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

(Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different. Very different!

1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial.

There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, last week, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012.

This week we cover B vitamins

Deficiency causes different effects for each of the B complex vitamins.

But the common theme is that B vitamin deficiency for most of the B vitamins harms your nerves and brain and causes mental illness and even dementia.

In fact, some elderly people who don’t eat enough food or eat too little foods with B complex vitamins or no longer make enough stomach acid to digest B vitamins well from food develop apparent dementia.. (This can also be tested by giving the person B12 shots; and the other B vitamins can also be given in a starter dose in this way I read.)

But having them take B complex vitamins and B12 in a sublingual form that is absorbed directly from the mouth often reverses the dementia. And, where they had poor memory, it often improves.

Younger people and vegan vegetarians who eat foods high in B complex vitamins and take B12 in a sublingual form that is absorbed directly from the mouth are much more likely to stay healthy and mentally sharp

B vitamins help you get energy from the food you eat and make red blood cells. So a deficiency in all of them can reduce the access of your cells to glucose and oxygen.

Avoiding that energy drop is critical to resilience when you are stressed and avoiding depression from lack of energy.

Drinking alcohol in more than moderate amounts depletes your B vitamins and vitamin B1 in particular.

The simplest way to get enough of the basic B vitamins is in supplements.

Two tablets of the Solgar supplement, Stress Formula, B Complex with C plus the B vitamins in a basic vitamin mineral supplement is the best way to get the basic B vitamins.

This formula was originally created to match the amounts of the different B vitamins to what your body actually uses. (The B complex formulas that just give you 50 mg of everything overdoes some things and underdoes others. So I think it’s not a good idea though it is better than none at all.)

1. Some B vitamins it’s quite valuable to take more of.

Niacin we covered in last weeks post is almost in a class by itself due to its protection for your heart and circulation.

Vitamin B5 also has heart protective effects. So I take 25o mg a day extra.

Choline also has heart protective effects due to its boosting of your HDL levels. You can take lecithin as a supplement which contains choline. I do that. But the best way is to get choline from food. It’s particularly high in wheat germ and egg yolks.

B6, B12, & folic acid have extra protective effects.

And, taking some extra may be a good idea for B6 and folic acid. I take 50 mg a day of B6 plus my B complex and multi add 25 mg more for a total of 75. That makes the magnesium I take work better and has other benefits. It may not deliver extra heart protection but doe seem to deliver extra protection against mental decline.

I take 400 mcg of folic acid in my multi & 800 mcg in addition. I also eat raw broccoli florets daily for folate, the form your body actually uses. Like vitamin B6, it may not deliver extra heart protection but does seem to deliver extra protection against mental decline.

But the more vegetarian you are in what you eat, the older you are, or if you take Metformin or Acid Reflux acid blocking drugs, the more B12 you need. So I take 1,000 mcg a day of extra B12 as a sublingual tablet. (I take an Acid Reflux acid blocking drug and am over 65. My wife does also as she takes Metformin.)

Taking that much B12 also ensures that a kind of anemia that you can get from being deficient never occurs. Since taking extra folic acid can hide that kind of anemia – which I do, it makes it important that I take the B12 too.

2. And some can be harmful if you take too much.

Mostly B vitamins tend to be safe since they are water soluble and your body easily removes the excess.

a) We just covered that if you take extra folic acid, it’s important to also take extra B12. So, if you take extra folic acid, for sure, take the extra B12 too.

I take some extra B5. So I get total of over a bit 250 mg a day. You can get heartburn if you take over 1,000 mg a day of B5, so my recommendation is to not take more than I do.

b) The two most important B vitamins to not take too much of are niacin and B6.

Niacin we covered last week. But briefly, if you take over 1,000 mg a day you should get liver function tests from your doctor.

The good news is that taking 600 to 1,000 mg a day of niacin plus other lifestyle upgrades is enough to deliver substantial protection for your heart & circulatory system and your brain.

B6 is the one to be most careful of. Taking too much B6 causes peripheral neuropathy and numbness. Instead of protecting your nerves, too much B6 harms them.

1,000 mg a day of B6 will cause this effect. Over 300 mg a day may cause this effect is people more sensitive too it. So the most B6 that looks to be safe to take and keep taking is 200 mg a day. And, to be conservative, I take 75 mg a day from supplements to stay well under 100 mg a day.

It also makes sense to eat foods high in vitamin B complex vitamins. The ones in supplements are not all of the B complex vitamins. So adding the ones in food can improve your health results. And, the more B complex vitamins you get from food, the better your overall balance of your B vitamin intake will be even for the ones in supplements.

Egg yolks and wheat germ are 2 of the best sources for all the B vitamins. So is liver.

Most meat, poultry, and fish are high in B vitamins. So are beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas – except for B12.

Whole grains and nutritional yeast or “Brewers” yeast, and dark molasses are high in B vitamins.

So between the foods and the supplements you can get an optimum amount of vitamin B.