Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Ways to be happier right away....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-30-2013

You can lift feeling bad by doing just a few minutes of a vigorous exercise.  To do it that vigorously you have to focus on doing it which shuts down thinking about feeling bad while you do it.  And then doing it sharply increases your blood flow and endorphins which also helps.

And, if you have been low on getting enough omega 3 oils, eating some wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils or taking omega 3 supplements, particularly DHA, your mood will be better after doing so a few days –sometimes even that same day.

But that still leaves a need to feel happier right away sometimes.

Recently I got lucky and read a presentation on 8 ways to feel happier right away. 

Separate research found that for some people doing things on that list every day has changed their whole lives for the better.


1.  The 8 had several on being nice to people or connecting to them in a positive way. 

a) Thank someone “First thing in the morning, send an email thanking or praising someone.” 

b) Spend money — on someone else

c) Give 5 hugs    Giving even one will help; and this can be giving one to someone who needs it or hugging someone who is OK with it when YOU need one.

d) Do 5 little nice things for others

“…. complete five acts of kindness over the course of a day”.  Besides what just happens that causes you to do this, deliberately add a few extra ones.

f) Spend time with friends 

And it added: 

2.  Do things you do really well. Deliberately plan some time each day to do things you do really well.  You not only will feel better, often you’ll be more effective at work and outside work with the leverage that gives you!

 3.  List things to do later you like and enjoy.

THIS one is astoundingly powerful.  It can be something little to do later today.  It can be something to do on an evening or weekend.  Or it can be six months off yet.

It can take as little as a few minutes to do yet you get to feel better NOW. And you can get that good feeling back in a few seconds any time you think of it until you get to enjoy it.

This is one of the most effective on the list AND can be done really fast when you need it!

4.  Remember the good things that happened each day -- even on mostly bad days!"  They found it’s doable to list at least 3.  And, it really helps!


It focuses you on real things that DID go well.  They were already there.  But noticing them and focusing on them, makes you feel a LOT better.

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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Still more ways to prevent mental decline!....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-25-2013

1.  High fructose corn syrup causes both an immediate mental performance drop off and helps cause long term mental decline!

According to new research at UCLA, ingesting high fructose corn syrup cuts mental performance.

One way it does this is by reducing the messages sent across synapses and so directly slows and reduces mental performance.

The research also indicated that ingesting high fructose corn syrup caused insulin resistance.  That in turn causes your body to be slow in turning down your blood levels of blood sugars.  Meanwhile other research found that this action directly causes development of Alzheimer’s disease.  They found this can happen even before fasting glucose or HBA1C tests as too high!

2.  Meanwhile, the researchers at UCLA found that adding more DHA had the reverse effect!  Mental performance was better, more messages were sent across synapses and the indicators of problems with sugars such as high triglycerides improved.

3.  Just recently saw an article on Medical News Today on the ways that Alzheimer’s and mental decline can be prevented

Mostly this article is a repeat, some better done than others in the article, of things that are themselves preventable that when prevented prevent Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.  

The good news is that it covered most of the ways that don't use supplements.

But the best news is that it had these two new things!

a)  It's known that people who keep learning, are well educated, who know more than one language well and/or who have an active social life, can show plaques of some underlying Alzheimer’s like damage but NOT have any memory or cognitive drop off.

Some of that is because doing these things, we now know, prevents much potential Alzheimer’s like damage from harming the connection between nerves or even by stopping further damage.

Some of that is the network effect of a big network because you can lose more from it than you can from a small network and still have the network function well.

But THIS has something exciting that's new.  If you have little drop off in circulation from high small particle LDL and plaque build up, you can have lots of amyloid plaques with no symptoms of mental decline.  80% of the people with both symptoms and plaque were in poor shape on high small particle LDL and plaque buildup.  

THAT may mean that here too you can have the amyloid plaque but NOT have mental decline if you keep your high small particle LDL and blood vessel plaque buildup low!

THAT we know how to do!

b).  It's hard to function well socially or be interested in life if you can't see or can't hear or are uncomfortable or have bad breath from poorly done dentures.

Those things push older people who have them towards Alzheimer's symptoms and damage.

We are beginning to know how to protect and restore sight.  We know some things that protect hearing.  And preventing tooth loss or getting implants instead of dentures can all help also.

Everything we can add that works or have people do in these areas prevents mental decline!

(Eating organic blueberries &/or taking bilberry extract and eating foods high in lutein and zeaxanthin are each known to help prevent most kinds of age related eye diseases.  Taking resveratrol seems to add to this effect; and there are lutein and zeaxanthin supplements.  I eat the organic blueberries and take bilberry extract and resveratrol and eat raw broccoli florets daily which are high in lutein and zeaxanthin.  By eating these foods and taking these supplements there are people who have experienced restoration of useful sight after it had initially declined.

Even better there is research that when built upon and approved can restore the retina and its nerves using stem cells.  Preliminary tests show that it works!)

(Avoiding loud noises or using ear protection as simple as inexpensive ear plugs and using extra care on volume from earphones -- does protect your hearing.

And it seems eating and/or taking a wide variety of carotenes is so ear protective it both reduces damage and allows hearing recovery if there is damage. 

In foods, strawberries, sweet potatoes, yams, squash, carrots -- and broccoli and other dark green vegetables are high in carotenes.  Tomatoes are high in the carotene, lycopene.  You are able to use more of these if you eat these foods with a health OK oil such as extra virgin olive oil or by eating them with nuts or avocados.  These vegetables can be steamed and tomatoes work best when really cooked down to tomato or pasta sauce.  You can also take lycopene and beta carotene as supplements.  But if you do, it has dramatically better health results if you add that to eating many of these foods every week or almost every day.  The good thing is that if you do both, you also will be less likely to get cancer and your health will be better.)

(There are also two sets of ways to prevent bad dentures! 

Don’t lose your teeth in the first place!  By brushing your teeth every day by brushing at the gumline well enough and by flossing every day and by good routine dental care, you will likely keep your teeth.  And, if you do that and still lose one, getting a crown or implant prevents the need for dentures entirely – let alone badly fitting ones!)

How to prevent Alzheimer's disease and dementia
http://mnt.to/a/4fS4
Researchers say there are certain lifestyle measures we can take to reduce our 
risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and dementia, including being physically 
active, eating a healthy and balanced diet, maintaining good cardiovascular 
health, and exercising the brain.


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Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Spirited  Survivors are BOTH....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-23-2013

Saw a quote the past Sunday.

It said that some people get to be a certain kind of person, maybe a very nice one, but they never change at all after that.

But some people are always changing in some way.  They keep moving forward and trying new things.  So they tend to surprise you from time to time.

The author who wrote that said that the people who keep changing are more alive and vital than the ones who are always the same.

I think BOTH things are critical to do.

The evidence supports that which is why I’m writing this post.

One set of things is the things you have tested to work well, being well organized and finding and using effective systems.  It includes ways to be prudent and not take risks you do not have to take and ways to test safely on a small scale first.  It includes finding and being true to your highest and best values.  These should mostly stay the same.

The other is to be fluid, spirited, dynamic, flexible, and creative and willing to try new things and be playful and to have a strong appetite for life.

The common view is that of this author.  People are either one or the other.

The fact is that the people who do best in life do both!

The evidence for this is abundant.

1.  I found that one area where this is true for sure under challenging circumstances is in the military.

a) Years ago a social psychologist who went on the write on creativity, E Paul Torrance, was asked by the US Air Force to see if he could find out how they could predict which pilots would be aces in combat.  That way they could be more effective in their selection and training.

The Korean War had just ended and they had F86 Sabre jet pilots who had flown in combat for him to study.  Some were jet aces and had been very effective in combat.  And some of the pilots had also flown in combat and had seemingly the same level of training but were less effective.

Simply put, the aces did both of these basic skills at the same time while the non-aces did not.

One Rorschach test result scores for how organized the perception of the person taking the test is while another tests for how flexible the perception is of the person taking the tests and whether or not they see things in motion at times.

The aces were high in both measures!  The non-aces were not.

Some pilots were risk averse and were extremely careful to check their plane and be sure it was in flying shape on every key measure.  Some were less determined and thorough in doing this.

Some pilots would try things to see if they worked and how the plane did when they tried them.

By doing both, Torrance found that the aces then could say, “Some people can’t take some kinds of risks in flying this plane, but for ME, it’s quite safe.”

They had parents who taught them both skills too Torrance found out. 

In important areas their parents were very strict and interventionist initially.  They were very thorough in being sure their son was completely trained to handle that area and knew how to avoid the dangers in it.  If their son did something before that, they could and did come down on him like a ton of bricks and be sure they controlled the situation.

But the key then was surprising.  Once they knew their son knew what he was doing well enough they weren’t just somewhat open, they left everything up to their son and were NOT interventionist or directive at all.  Their attitude seemed to have been, “It’s your life and you know how to handle that, so it’s your choice to make, not mine!”

b) A recent book by Rorke Denver about his life as a Navy Seal and as a trainer of Navy Seals shows exactly the same thing.  To succeed on real life missions, he and his buddies would often have to deal with unexpected challenges and fast changing and chaotic realities. 

Yes, they planned to be up to the flexibility needed to do that and worked on how to do it. 

But, they also were fanatically thorough in being totally sure to study in detail in advance what the most likely things were going to be AND to be totally sure that they had ALL the tools with them they needed and that each of those was in operating order.

2.  The very long term Terman study of the lives of intellectually gifted people starting with when they were children in California found this same thing too!

They looked at the people in this group eventually who had been most successful and healthiest and lived the longest.  They found that these people were very high in the first skill.  They were well organized and developed successful systems to manage their lives.  They were very prudent and skilled in avoiding avoidable risks.

But who among that group had the most interesting and enjoyable lives? Those were the ones who also were high in the second skill.  They traveled.  They learned new skills.  They did adventurous things occasionally.  They became dynamic, interesting people.

You can be well organized, careful, safe and effective and stable AND you can be dynamic and playful and make needed changes easily and keep trying new things and learning.

Your life will be better if you do BOTH and do them each well!  

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Monday, July 22, 2013

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 7-22-2013

This is one of my most promising reports for three reasons.

That’s true since last month which ALSO had good results!

1.  In addition to the 1 and a half pounds on the scale I lost last month, I lost another FOUR pounds since then!  So in the two months I’ve done the partial intermittent fasting, I’ve lost five and a half pounds.  (I’d rather not weigh less.  But since I’ve lost no muscle, it’s clear the weight lost was fat.  Adding muscle is a separate issue.)

2.  I also lost another half inch from my waist or a bit more! So in the two months I’ve done the partial intermittent fasting, I’ve lost a bit more than one inch off my waist!  THAT change shows FAT lost!  That’s great news!  (Progress on losing inches on my waist three months in a row is dramatically better than hardly any!)


(In case you missed it last month, I found the details on intermittent partial fasting just two nonconsecutive days a week and how effective it is for fat loss and health in:

The FastDiet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting by Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer (Feb 26, 2013)

It removes fat without lowering metabolism or boosting hunger AND resulted in MORE fat lost and no fat regain compared with cutting back every day! 

And, it has very valuable health benefits right away even before you lose all your fat – just like doing regular and vigorous exercise.

My LDL had gone up to 111 and is now 77 again since I began the intermittent partial fasting!)

3.  The third reason is that the progress in the month before last month, I lost 4 pounds and some off my waist was from LOTS of coughing for 4 weeks getting rid of a bid chest cold.

Before, when that happened, the following month, I GAINED weight and inches.  To have lost some of each instead the following month suggests a VERY robust effect for the partial fasting two days a week!

Plus, I am STILL struggling with some issues on adding muscle due to a persistent left shoulder injury.  But I think I may have got it improving and am rehabbing it slowly enough it will get better as my previous injuries have. 

Once I have got it healed, I'll be able to make progress again on my jump rope sessions for burst style interval cardio and the half of my upper body strength training it has been limiting.

Meanwhile I HAVE seen some progress in the other half of my strength training for upper body and for legs.

I even was making progress, before the injury, for the half of my upper body strength training the injury put on hold.

So as usual, it may take longer than I'd like.  BUT I AM losing fat each month and expect to continue to.

AND, I am doing exercises that WILL gradually add muscle as I recover from my injury and keep working to improve.

That means I now have a real shot at losing my belly fat from just those two things alone.

Plan to report more progress next time! 

The only bad news though is it is now very clear that since I weighed 6 pounds more than now without being fat as a young man, to still have 20 pounds or so of belly fat or fat right next to it now shows that I LOST 26 pounds of muscle since then!  Yikes!

The good news is that for sure I can lose the 20 pounds of excess fat.  I’ll just continue what lost me 30 pounds as I have been doing and keep up the intermittent partial fasting two days a week.


And I still think I can gain the muscle back. Though they seem forever when you have them, injuries do heal.  And the superslow exercises have been working for all my exercises except the ones using my injured left shoulder.  In those other exercises I am getting stronger and I look like my muscles are getting a bit bigger too.

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Friday, July 19, 2013

3 critically important stories on women’s  health....

Today's Post:  Friday, 7-19-2013

This post is a bit different.

Most of my posts are on how to successfully prevent or possibly reverse serious health problems.

(Huge  subject with dozens of things that work and new discoveries every week.)

This one is how to find out exactly if you are at risk right now;

How to do so with great accuracy.

How to do so in greater comfort and far less risks to your health.

It’s really important to do since you or you and your doctors can only fix problems or prevent them from getting worse if you know they exist!

Knowing each of these 3 things can save you grief, save you tons of money and even save your
life!

Any one of them can do so!

By all means consider getting each of them done!

(When I can, I plan to get the one that works for both men and women.)

I’m really grateful to Jenny Thompson of the HSI health newsletter for the first two.

And, I got lucky and found the third one today by accident while researching a company for my day job.

One tests for cervical cancer well enough to be VERY protective.

One is a more comfortable way to check for the dangerous forms of breast cancer that uses no breast compression, finds more of the real cancers, find far fewer cancers that aren’t actually there AND uses zero radiation!

And one is a test for exactly how high your total current risk of heart disease is that is dramatically safer than the two alternatives!  CAT scans use well over 40 times more radiation; and the method using invasive catheters has a death rate! This does NOT!

1.  It used to be that the guidelines suggested that most women should get a pap smear test once a year or once every two years.

Then a vaccine for the HPV virus that is thought to prevent the cervical cancer pap smears came out.

The guidelines changed to something like once every five years in part because of the vaccine and in an effort to save money in health care.

THOSE NEW GUIDELINES ARE DANGEROUSLY INCORRECT!

Use the original guidelines and have a pap smear done once a year or every other year.

If you develop cervical cancer, that’s so if it’s found it’s still at the stage that is 97% curable.

This isn’t the case if you are two and half to four and a half years late finding the cancer. It could kill you and it WILL cost you far more money and grief to treat.

On this subject, Jenny speaks with considerable authority.  She herself was getting the more frequent pap smears.  She DID test as having early stage cervical cancer and it was inexpensively and successfully removed.

THAT means it’s worth getting the more frequent pap smears even if you have to pay for it instead of your insurance!

Advice to the contrary is inaccurate and going by it could cost you your life!

What about the vaccine? 

If you happen to already have gotten every round of it, you may be less likely to get cervical cancer, you’ll be less likely to get genital warts or to give them to a sex partner.

But it cuts your overall risk of cervical cancer NOT by enough to get tested too infrequently if you did get it!

Vaccines that work even most of the time don’t always.  HPV strains NOT in the shot and other things cause cervical cancer.  And, if the strain that was in the shot got cancer started before your vaccine, you will still have the cancer!

Second, Jenny Thompson has written that the current version of this vaccine harms some of the people who take it.  She says that although the drug company involved has succeeded in hiding it from the public and even most doctors, a certain number of the women vaccinated by it have died or become quite seriously and permanently harmed.

Since many of those women were healthy teens or very young adults before that, this is truly scary if true.

I’m quite pro vaccine normally since why fight something you could have prevented instead?

That goes double if the vaccine is actually safe and almost all of the hundreds of thousands of people took it safely. 

And it goes double that if the people getting the vaccine were taking enough vitamin D3 at the time, 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day, because the vaccine is far more likely then to give them full and lasting protection.

Since you can avoid harm from cervical cancer with the more frequent pap smears, it looks to me like running the risk with THIS vaccine is a serious risk you do NOT need to run.

2.  Jenny Thompson of the HSI health newsletter sent out one in the last few days.

Here are her key quotes:

"....there's a much better breast cancer screening technique available right now. It's called Automated Breast Ultrasound System (ABUS).

Last year, the FDA approved ABUS for women with dense breasts. ABUS can spot dense breast tumors with far greater accuracy than a mammogram."

".... I promise you, any doctor can examine your breasts and tell you in five seconds if your tissue is dense."

"There's no breast compression (using ABUS), and radiation exposure is ZERO."

"Then, for good measure, it goes one better...

ABUS doesn't just spot dense breast tumors. With a new technique called elastography, ultrasound technicians can identify which tumors are actually malignant.

That reduces the rates of false positives and biopsies.

That means greater safety and peace of mind for ALL women."

She, to me, seems to also suggest that it works in all kinds of breasts not just dense ones.

Since the women who get false positive breast cancer readings are often really scared to death and severely stressed AND then have to get the invasive, painful, and expensive biopsies done, by avoiding that far more often, this ABUS technique is worth TEN times what X-ray mammography is worth.

But I think ABUS costs less to get!

There are thousands of women who would have been far better off using this test if it had been available before!

3.  You can know your chances of having worse heart disease or less heart disease in the future  by whether or not you live a heart attack starter lifestyle or the reverse –

and/or by using the many revealing blood tests from the basic lipid panel and blood sugar measures and the HSCRP test for chronically high inflammation.

BUT, although suggestive, if they find things that have been going on for months or years, these measures of heart disease and heart attack risks are indirect ones.

You still do not exactly know how severe your total risk and developed heart disease are right now.  You know things about future trends.

What does show how severe your total risk and developed heart disease are right now.

The invasive method using a catheter and sending dye into your heart arteries can do that.  But it has a death rate!

NOT at all worth running that risk in most cases!

And a CAT scan of your coronary arteries does that.  It doesn’t have a direct death rate but it’s not advisable for preventive use because it exposes you to something like 400 times the radiation of a normal X-ray!

The MUCH better news is that Hologic Inc has a much more limited test using something like 40 times less radiation that just looks at your abdominal aorta.

That’s close enough to your heart to be extremely accurate. 

It, like the CAT scan, measures the calcification and amount of plaque in your blood vessels.

 If both are high, your risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from things like sudden heart stoppage is also high. And you will have high blood pressure drugs don’t bring down much.

In that event, it will pay you to have your life insurance and will in order and to turn off ANY part of the heart attack starter lifestyle you’ve not already stopped!

The wonderful news about this Hologic test is how much safer it is – and, I believe, far lower cost it has without losing the accuracy you want!

Many women now don’t know their risk in these 3 areas or have been paying a horribly steep price in dollars or side effects to find out LESS accurate information.


Now, you may not have to do that!

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Thursday, July 18, 2013

Omega 3 oils help PREVENT cancer and are too valuable to not have....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-18-2013

Saw a report of a study a few days ago saying that getting an abundant amount of omega 3 oils tended to slightly boost the risk of the aggressive form of prostate cancer.

Since I know that the omega 3 oil DHA causes nerve and brain cell growth by causing the release of a hormone that does so, BDNF just like regular and vigorous exercise, it occurred to me that in some people that could go bad.

But since I value the large number of benefits such as preventing mental decline research says DHA & other marine based omega oils supply AND I do things to prevent all cancer, prevent prostate cancer, and prevent aggressive prostate cancer, I decided not worry about it.

I.  But a friend who has concerns about prostate cancer sent it to me for my comments.

And, since then I got some information about this study that suggests it was paid for disinformation based on incompetent analysis of the data. In fact, that looks quite likely because that study found things they stated as facts they found that multiple studies by competent researchers found to be exactly the opposite in real, unbiased studies!

Here’s what I sent my friend first: 

“Do NOT stop your fish oil.

This study is quite possibly not accurate and worth ignoring in my view.

Here's why:

1.  The discussion in this study includes that a study found vitamin E increased the risk of prostate cancer.

THAT study found no such thing it turns out!

Instead of studying natural vitamin E in normal doses and foods, that study examined the cheap man-made version of vitamin E that is NOT bioidentical and worse was previously known to have some side effects.  Even worse, they only looked at a double dose of it.

Natural alpha tocopherol when studied REDUCED the risk of prostate cancer when studied separately.

And, the gamma tocopherol version that is abundant in the pecans I eat, is even more effective at cutting prostate cancer risk!

The headline that vitamin E boosted the risk of prostate cancer was totally false in short.

Was this a simple mistake caused by inappropriate penny pinching?  Maybe.  But there is some evidence that it was part of a deliberate disinformation campaign to discredit supplements in the eyes of doctors and the less well informed public by the drug companies.

2.  Now this comes out saying that omega 3 is not heart protective and that taking it causes aggressive prostate cancer.

The first part of that is false.  And there is reason to believe the second part is false also.

High chronic inflammation causes heart disease and multiplies the effect of other causes of heart disease and increases the risk of many cancers.

(Omega 3 oils help prevent that or turn it down!)

To me the fact that this quotes that flawed "vitamin E" study makes the whole thing highly suspect.  My guess is that closer examination of this study will find similar flaws.

3.  If there IS such an effect because the oxidant effect of high omega 3 intake causes it, does that happen in people who eat foods high in antioxidants and take antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C and natural vitamin E and selenium?  I very seriously doubt it!

Both natural vitamin E and selenium REDUCE the risk of prostate cancer instead. 

4.  Given the very real benefits of omega 3 oils from fish, if there is some boost that's real after that, I think doing the other things that prevent prostate cancer such as avoiding tobacco smoke and taking curcumin and prevent aggressive prostate cancer such as eating raw broccoli & cauliflower is a better choice than losing the omega 3 benefits.

Next I added this:

II.  More thoughts on vitamin E and omega 3 supplements:

1.  Wrote last time about the research that, in the headlines, said vitamin E caused prostate cancer.  It did NOT.  What it found was that the cheap and inaccurate copy of natural vitamin E did so.  The real studies of natural vitamin E found it mildly protective in that regard.

And, the alpha tocopherol that is often called vitamin is only the best known of the EIGHT parts of the vitamin E complex.  There are four tocopherols and four tocotrienols.  (From Wikipedia:  "vitamin E is made up of four tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) and four tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma, delta")

Good for you foods such as extra virgin olive oil, avocados, and raw unsalted and un-oiled tree nuts have different mixes of the entire vitamin E complex.  I eat all of those!

Gamma tocopherol is strongly preventive of prostate cancer by the way.  It's high in pecans.  Do I eat raw pecans?  I certainly do!

Solgar makes a 200 iu of alpha tocopherol vitamin E with the natural form AND some mix of the other 3 natural tocopherols.  I take that once a day.

There is research suggesting that taking 400 iu or more a day may overdo its blood thinning effects with 800 or more very likely NOT a good idea.

I actually like that since it saves me money by not buying extra of something where the optimum intake is less!

2.  To put it simply, the omega 3 oils from wild caught fish & purified fish oil & the plankton and algae the fish get it from is too valuable in so many ways it simply is NOT wise in my view to not eat it and take it.

The psychological effects are extremely valuable!!

People who get an ample supply of omega 3 oils are less easily overstressed. 

They are much less irritable.  I MAKE SURE I take it AND Abbie takes it! (She is my wife.)

They are less likely to get depressed.

Ample supply of the DHA omega 3 oil boosts intelligence and prevents brain shrinkage and prevents mental decline because it causes the release of the nerve and brain cell growth hormone BDNF.

People evolved to get a ratio of one or two parts of omega 6 oil to one part of omega 3 oil.

But the average American gets 12 to 24 to one omega 6 to omega 3! 

Grains are high in omega 6.  The average American eats dramatically too much grain food with most of it high glycemic low fiber refined GMO wheat flour that also contains gluten.  They don't know to avoid the very high omega 6 oils from corn, soy, and safflower.  And, canola is too high in omega 6 also.  Those oils are also from mostly GMO crops. Corn and soy and canola are almost all GMO with canola 96% GMO.

But it gets even worse!  The average American eats tons of beef -- mostly as hamburger.  And those cattle are grown fast and extra large in part by force feeding them a diet almost exclusively made up of GMO corn.  So their fat is very high in omega 6 oils and bioconcentrated pesticides and herbicides.

The omega 6 oils in them is in the fat.  That's why for grain fed animals, removing most of the fat and buying leaner or leanest versions in the first place and eating less each have positive health effects!

The resulting very high chronic inflammation is a direct cause of heart disease and both vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

So to be in the healthy range -- AND avoid those diseases! -- you need basically to eliminate 95 to 100 % of those foods; eat NO wheat or at worst once a week; eat far less of even whole grains -- AND eat wild caught fish at least twice a week that is high in omega 3 oils and take omega 3 supplements daily and it looks like taking extra DHA is wise.

So, instead of giving up that huge set of extremely valuable benefits and health and mental protections, IF there is a bad effect on prostate cancer, I would do exactly as I am now! 

Keep getting those effects from the natural omega threes and DHA I get now AND keep doing the very large list of things I do to prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, and prevent aggressive prostate cancer.

Lastly, given the negative interest of the drug companies in letting people stay healthy by taking supplements --
 and the horrible example of the "vitamin E" study, I am far from convinced this research on omega 3 was done right or accurate in its conclusion.

To be fair, since DHA boosts the desirable growth hormone BDNF, it's possible that in some people that hormone or other normally desirable growth hormones it may boost is processed in a way that helps aggressive prostate cancer grow once it's established.

If THAT is established, it might make sense to stop omega 3 oils when treating aggressive prostate cancer.

In my view, cutting out the very high values and benefits of taking omega 3 oils otherwise is really unwise!

III. Then I found another analysis of the original study that shows it was deliberately quoted to say it helped show supplements were undesirable.  And I then wrote him this:

Got this in a recent that includes some of the real studies showing the opposite of the recent bogus study.

http://www.anh-usa.org/flawed-study-fish-oil-cancer/

Thought so AGAIN!

Note that it contained this:  "....the paper’s senior author made the following blanket statement in a press release: “We’ve shown once again that use of nutritional supplements may be harmful."

GOTCHA!  This study WAS deliberate and inaccurate disinformation paid for by the drug companies to discredit supplements.

He states what they PAID him to say.

Meanwhile it's comforting to read the reverse information by the honest and real studies of people eating fish and taking omega 3 supplements.”



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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Safer and more effective ways to use antibiotics....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-16-2013

Antibiotic use is critical to survive many bacterial infections and to prevent having people spend BIG amounts of time going to funerals every month as they once did 150 years ago!

Because of the irresponsible use of antibiotic by factory farmers in the United States primarily and some over-prescription by doctors we see a growing number of antibiotic resistant or very resistant bacteria.

This means we desperately need a better way to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria.

And, some of the antibiotics now used as a last resort for this have dreadful side effects.

Therefore, it would be nice to know how to use such antibiotics WITHOUT the side effects.

The great news is that within the past few days, Medical News Today had ways to do BOTH of these things!

1.   The first study had a way that was found to effectively kill antibiotic resistant bacteria with the same antibiotics that stopped working.  The solution they found to work is like a double check in chess.  The bacteria can resist the antibiotic that used to work or they can resist the added ingredient.  When you give them both together, the bacteria die off!

Before antibiotics, some bacterial infections of healthy people with strong immune systems did die off when they took colloidal silver.

What was tested to work and kill antibiotic resistant bacteria was to give the antibiotic that used to work AND the colloidal silver.

There are also some experiments with competing bacteria or viral macrophages as ways to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria that seem to work at least to some degree.

But this new approach sounds more effective and it likely is cheaper and works faster.

Don’t know about you, but I find this result a huge relief. 

I’ve read how bad it was before antibiotics and you got a minor infection from a run of the mill injury or had to have surgery and got an infection.  The result was often a nasty death within a week!

2.  Some of the newer antibiotics have rather serious side effects such as gravely bad tendon injuries when people take them.

Adding the silver to those antibiotics might allow for a smaller dose to be used or to be used for 10 days instead of 21.

But the other study had some effective ways to simply turn off the side effects!

They found two solutions.

I seems that these antibiotics cause their side effects and unwanted damage by oxidizing parts of you that you’d rather not harm.  They called this an “oxidant” effect.  It’s something like gargling with a strong bleach!

a) The first way was to use a different antibiotic without the side effects.

They found that antibiotics like tetracycline that stop bacterial growth instead of killing them directly tended to NOT have this oxidant and DNA damaging effect.

That suggests that using such an antibiotic with effective boosters of the immune system and probiotics might be helpful and effective.

(That might work better also if silver was added.)

b)  The other way was to combat the oxidation with a comparably strong antioxidant or several.

Glutathione is one of the most effective antioxidants known.  One doctor found it was always low in his sickest patients.  When he gave them intravenous glutathione directly more of them got well and the ones who got well did so faster.

The supplement NAC, n-acetyl-cysteine, causes glutathione release which is why it is such valuable and effective supplement.

While using the high side effect antibiotic they tried supplementing with NAC.  It worked!  The side effects were gone or dramatically less!

They did not try intravenous glutathione or adding other very strong antioxidants to the NAC.  But that sounds well worth trying.

3.  It occurs to me to try combining these for horribly resistant bacteria such as tuberculosis or the new strains of gonorrhea or MRSA or c. diff is worth trying.

A 5 part cocktail might be tried:

 1.  An antibiotic that kills bacteria directly or used to do so quite well – or one of the new ones that still works somewhat.

2.Add silver to ensure it works.

3.  Use moderately high dose NAC and astaxanthin and high dose vitamin C for antioxidants.  You could also try intravenous glutathione and vitamin C

4.  Add using tetracycline or a related drug to separately slow the growth of the bad bacteria.

5. And, add probiotics to separately attack the bad bacteria yet another way and ensure enough  probiotic bacteria survive the treatments to help prevent a recurrence or other health problems.

Some kinds of probiotics might be best used during treatment and other kinds might best be used just after treatment.

But even if this did not work when tried, the two things found that DID test as working are a huge advance.


It’s one that literally may save your life or mine one day!

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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Why FAR FEWER people should take statin drugs....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-11-2013

I.  A recent study headline says:  “Cardiovascular Benefit Of Statins Outweighs Risks, Big Study Reassures”

This is horribly irresponsible and totally inaccurate!!

OMG! 

The DATA say otherwise!

And more detailed and broad information on heart attack prevention and statin side effects say it’s even worse than the data suggests it might be!

As serious and harmful as this mismatch of conclusion to reality is in its effects, to some degree it’s understandable at least: 

Heart attacks and strokes now kill about half the people who die each year.  And many of these heart attacks happen to people still young enough to have expected to live productively another 20 years.

Though the effect is tiny, statins do reduce heart attack risk. 

Most doctors do not yet know statins are actually very bad drugs or that their protective effect is tiny at best or to whom statins should really be prescribed and how.  They want their patients to be healthy and since they think statin drugs protective and safe and know nothing else to do, they keep writing thousands of statin prescriptions.

But why is this a horribly bad and flawed practice?

Here’s what I’ve read of the data:  

For every 1000 people who take statins about 18 people will avoid having a heart attack. 

But look at the other end of this:  (98.2% of the people who take the statin drugs, pay the money, and suffer the side effects to pay for this tiny effect!)

About those side effects:

The DATA show this risk for so many is ONLY justified if there is NO OTHER WAY to cut heart attack risk.  They show the side effects totally outweigh this tiny amount of protection.

 The same study that was titled: 

“Cardiovascular Benefit Of Statins Outweighs Risks, Big Study Reassures”

Had this statement: 
“The current researchers did though find a 9% risk of diabetes in statin users.”

Oops!  That alone is FIVE times as many people as the 1.8% protected.  How is that consistent with the headline?!

Then there is the 3 % of the people taking statins who will get cataracts who would not have otherwise.

But there are four far worse problems here!:

1.  Doing vigorous or high intensity but brief exercise most days of every week is FAR more protective from heart attacks and deaths than taking statin drugs. 

It also slows aging and tends to prevent or turn off type 2 diabetes.  It helps people avoid obesity or to lose fat they keep off.  For lower high blood pressure, it’s more protective than the drugs for lowering high blood pressure and adding the drugs if people do such exercise adds ZERO benefit.  It helps prevent or even reverse osteoporosis.  It preserves balance and mobility and ability to be independent for older people.  And, it tends to prevent both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Here’s the truth: The more and better a person does such exercise, IF they take statin drugs, the statin drugs will tend to cause irreversible muscle damage particularly if they take the more potent statins or take higher doses.

THAT alone should make statin drugs a little used drug with a black box warning in my view.

2.  Mental decline is deadly serious in its negative effects on our economy.  People who have degraded mental ability cannot be fully effective at work and are not.  People who can no longer work because of mental decline not only do no productive work, they cost healthy people money and time that drains the economy.  And, people who die of mental decline when they could have been alive and productive also do no productive work.

How does that impact taking statins?  Taking statins prevents one of the most effective ways to prevent mental decline, the vigorous and regular exercise.  AND in many people it CAUSES nerve damage and memory loss directly.

3.  The CoQ10 depletion caused by taking statin drugs tends to make the people taking them feel older and more fatigued than they should be.  This too reduces work productivity.  It seriously harms the quality of life of the people taking the drugs.  And, it tends to help cause and worsen heart failure.

4.  But what about that 1.8 % of the people who are protected?  What if even that benefit is missing for most of the people who take statins?

This IS the case!  Worse, for a $150 genetics test, you can find out if you are in the majority for whom this is true according to an article by cardiologist, Arthur Agatson, MD.

A minority of people DO get better heart attack protection from statins.  But for most people the protection rate is closer to 1 percent or less!

What does that mean after reading the side effect data and taking it into account? 

To me it means that it is ignorant or totally irresponsible to prescribe statin drugs ever -- without giving this test FIRST.

Do most doctors know this yet?  Unfortunately most know nothing of this now.

Bottom line is that the practice of wholesale and mindless prescribing of statin drugs is very undesirable and should be halted not fostered with falsely titled studies!

II. What about the new information that statins reduce high chronic inflammation that causes other diseases and may be in fact how statins prevent the few heart attacks they do prevent?

It’s totally the same story as heart attack and heart disease prevention.

Have people STOP doing the things that cause it!  Have them take or eat the dramatically safer foods and supplements that reduce inflammation and you get FIVE times the reduction and prevention that you can get by taking statin drugs.

(Here’s one post I did on that:


Two more ways to reduce inflammation, Thursday, 10-8-2009.

III. And here’s a short list of the things that have OTHER health benefits instead of side effects to do that produce heart disease and heart attack prevention that is dramatically more effective than taking statin drugs:

Stop eating ANY trans fats or hydrogenated oils.  They are a direct cause of increased small particle LDL that in turn directly causes inflammation and heart disease. Worse, your body only can process a fraction of any you eat in a day.  So if you eat some every day, even a small amount, it builds up to very harmful levels and stays there.  Don’t know what you call that, but I call it heart attack starter!

Stop eating ANY high fructose corn syrup, most regular sugar, and refined grains and foods made from them.  Eating that stuff slams up your triglycerides to high or very high.  That means they ALSO are a direct cause of increased small particle LDL that in turn directly causes inflammation and heart disease. 

Nor does it help ingesting these things fattens and causes type 2 diabetes too!  The blood vessel and capillary damage from high blood sugar dramatically increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes!

Don’t know what you call that, but I call it heart attack starter!

What if there was something almost as bad as these first two things to avoid added together?

Unfortunately there is!

Every exposure to tobacco smoke whether from smoking or second hand smoke adds a bit of plaque as it gradually but inexorably causes heart disease!

Don’t know what you call that, but I call it heart attack starter.

Even worse, if you can imagine that, is this.  Exposure to tobacco smoke also triggers heart attacks in people who would have escaped them otherwise!

In my view, advice to stop these 3 heart attack starters totally AND to do the protective and vigorous exercises should be what all doctors prescribe instead of statin drugs.

What about people with existing very, very bad heart disease or who just had a heart attack they barely survived?

It’s too late to do much prevention I’ll grant you.  For those people, they should be given the genetics test.

Those it shows statins would help should get statins.  That would be an indicated and highest and best use.

They should also take 100 mg twice a day of the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 as this will reduce many of the statin side effects.

Those that show little benefit from statins on the genetic test would be better off taking niacin and sterol supplements and following the anti-inflammatory guidelines and taking or eating things like ginger and turmeric (curcumin) that are natural, effective, and mostly safe ways to lower inflammation.

Would that set of practices cut statin prescriptions by over 99%.  It would indeed!

How about increasing statin prescriptions instead as some advocate?

OMG! 

Given the facts here, that would be harmful, unnecessary, and totally irresponsible to do!

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Tuesday, July 09, 2013

3 MORE ways to prevent mental decline....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-9-2013

Last Tuesday, 7-2-2013, we listed three ways and a bonus link to a previous post with a whole set of other things you can do!

Believe it or not just since then, I’ve gotten 3 MORE ways to prevent mental decline and boost your current mental performance.

The first two have mostly to do with preventing brain shrinkage and doing so by growing new brain cells by releasing BDNF that is a growth hormone that specifically causes new nerves and brain cells to rebuild and repair your brain.

You need all your brain in good repair and normal size for it to work well.  But if you lack BDNF, not only does that NOT happen but you lose some of your brain’s white cells that are thought to wire the sections of your brain together.  When that happens, your mental performance declines, your memory is not as sharp, and your brain actually shrinks!

Worse, if you don’t correct this, it continues until you have a significant performance and memory drop off.

So, if there were two ways to successfully boost BDNF most days of every week, THAT would be well worth knowing AND using!

It’s well known that eating or taking the omega 3 acid DHA tends to preserve mental abilities.

 One researcher found that taking DHA with choline and uridine, a growth promoter found in Brewer’s yeast, caused new and better connected brain cells well enough he found some reversal in mental decline!

1.  The choline and the uridine apparently boost the effect.  But I just found out what powers this is that getting abundant DHA directly boosts BDNF with very positive mental performance improvements!

Dr Al Sears is not perfect.  I think some of his supplements are much more effective than others.  But his health articles and the research behind them are often superb.

(See www.alsearsmd.com to get on his email list.)

Recently, he sent an email with the following very important information:

People have gene called homologene 7245.  This gene helps you produce BDNF!

BDNF boosts every part of your brain when you have enough:

The synapses or connections between nerve and brain cells stay healthy & so does how well they work to transmit signals, memories, and other information.

You grow new glial cells which act as your brain’s immune cells, anchor neurons, and help clean up waste AND help you learn and access new information!

And, you develop new dendrites or messenger lines to add more connections or keep existing ones between brain cells!

Getting ample or extra DHA “kicks the gene responsible for BDNF production into high gear”!!


(DHA is one of the two main omega 3 oils in fish and other seafoods.  In addition, it is a very effective anti-inflammatory which has even more protective and health benefits!)

Researchers have documented some very useful results of this effect of DHA on boosting BDNF:

Recently researchers examined people with brain injury who got extra DHA and found that it restored their production of BDNF to normal.

In research published in the American Journal of Nutrition, researchers showed that breast-fed babies whose mothers took 200 mg of DHA per day outperformed DHA-deficient babies.

They had better hand-eye coordination and skills like “standing up, walking, going up and down stairs, and keeping their balance.”

Researchers at UCLA found that animals given high levels of DHA had significantly higher BDNF levels. “They were far more resistant to injury from brain trauma. And those who didn’t get enough DHA in their diet suffered from learning disabilities.”

A recent Japanese study had more good news: memory and learning ability improved dramatically with boosted BDNF production.

How can you get more DHA?  You can eat wild caught fish high in it.  Wild caught salmon has a lot of omega 3 oil and a high level of DHA.  Sardines are unusually high in DHA.  And you can take both DHA supplements and omega 3 supplements from filtered fish oil.  Jarrow makes a good DHA supplement; and Nordic Naturals makes a good omega 3 supplement from filtered fish oil.  Water packed sardines are the least expensive way to do this. 

I personally use all of the above except sardines because I can get DHA several times a day by doing so.  And between the different ways I ensure I get enough DHA!

2.  As you can see, getting enough BDNF has truly huge powers to prevent mental decline, prevent brain shrinkage of your white matter, repair your brain, and maximize your mental performance!

Are there any other ways to boost BDNF?

Yes! 

And it’s known to be extremely effective as a BDNF booster – AND to improve your brain blood circulation and protect your brain in other ways, have other multiple health benefits –AND it slows aging enough to add years of healthy life!

It’s when people get regular, and vigorous or high effort exercise most days of every week.  The wonderful news is that the sessions can be as short as 10 to 20 minutes a day.  So most people CAN find time for them.

Moderate exercise when done every week also works but takes much longer to do and is not quite as effective.

Even better, recent research shows that the longer you do such exercise every week, the greater the effect becomes.

(It IS very important to start at a quite easy level and force yourself to increase your efforts very gradually.  If you start out even at first at a high level or increase too fast you can get injured or trigger heart problems or get stress fractures.  The much better news is that by making slow BUT CONTINUOUS progress over a long period of time, you can get extremely fit and strong without these problems!

One key is that the sessions are short.  Super long exercise creates stress on the heart and has caused heart stoppage and fatal heart attacks.

Sessions of 15 to 60 seconds of high effort by contrast is extremely safe if you build up to it properly.  Also, super slow strength training with somewhat lighter weights is virtually injury free.  Using fast or jerky moves with heavy weights is much more likely to cause injury.

And, with the cardio, you can do your bursts of effort while walking or using a low impact exerciser like an elliptical trainer or a Nordic Track etc.

3.  Homocysteine is a blood marker for heart disease.  People who are high in it are more to much more likely to get heart attacks and strokes.

In heart disease it may act as an after the fact indicator because lowering it isn’t as protective for heart disease as many people once thought.

BUT, for brain protection homocysteine itself is dreadfully harmful! 

I’m including the information on how to lower homocysteine directly in this post because I got an email this week showing that high homocysteine is HORRIBLY bad for your brain!  And, it’s not a secondary effect! Homocysteine harms your brain DIRECTLY!

Improving your heart disease risk by exercise and eating right and stopping ingesting various kinds of heart disease starters lowers homocysteine.

And you can lower your homocysteine level directly by taking several supplements: 

500 to 1,000 mcg of vitamin B12 in a lozenge that is sucked or chewed to get direct access to your blood without poor digestion or reflux drugs from preventing your access to it; (Taking Metformin is also known to deplete B12.  So if you do, be sure to take this much B12!)

20 to 100 mg a day of vitamin B6: (More than 100 mg a day of B6 begins to be harmful.  So stay below 100.  I get 10 mg in my multi and 25 mg in my B-complex and take 50 mg which totals 85 mg.)

Folic acid of 800 mcg a day and eat foods high in folate such as greens and nonstarchy, mostly green, vegetables;

NAC, N-Acetyl-Cysteine 500 to 1,00 mg a day;  NAC also boosts glutathione and is a powerful antioxidant and direct protector of your health.

And TMG, 500 to 750 mg a day.  (Tri-Methyl-Glycine, also called betaine is a methyl donor which directly protects your DNA)

Why add this information to this post?

Check this out!

Dr David Blyweiss has an email newsletter, Advanced Natural Medicine  naturalmedicine@advancedalternativenews.com .

One of his emails this week had this:

High levels of homocysteine can lead to:

It’s apparently a direct cause of Alzheimer’s disease; and high levels of homocysteine lead to more amyloid plaques and tangles of tau, the direct evidence of the build-up of the damage of Alzheimer’s disease.

High homocysteine causes damage to your brain’s white matter. “White matter lesions are pockets of dead cells that can affect the way your brain transmits information to the thinking areas of your brain. It's now believed changes in white matter could be one of the earliest detectable brain changes in Alzheimer's disease.”

High levels of homocysteine cause brain shrinkage. “When key areas of the brain begin shrinking, your risk of dementia increases by more than three times. MRI scans can identify brain shrinkage up to 10 years before Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed.”

A while back there was a study of people with mild cognitive impairment and high homocysteine levels. Those who just took B12, B6, and folic acid “were able to lower brain shrinkage by a whopping 53%. And once their brains stopped shrinking, they started getting higher scores on cognitive tests.”

In summary, in addition to all the other methods to prevent brain decline and increase mental performance, you can

Take DHA and eat high DHA foods to boost BDNF. 

You can get the regular exercise that also boosts BDNF.   

And you can stop a cause of Alzheimer’s and brain shrinkage by lowering your homocysteine levels!

(See the post from last Tuesday, 7-2 for many more methods that work!)

In short, the people who say that mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease are not preventable, are totally incorrect because they simply don’t know how many things do so and how well they work!  

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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

3 Ways to prevent mental decline....

3 Ways to prevent mental decline....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 7-2-2013

This post has these three ways and a bonus link to a previous post with a whole set of other things you can do!

1.  The first one is to avoid a newly understood way to cause Alzheimer’s disease. 

(Excessive insulin release in type 2 diabetes and in people headed for it has always helped cause Alzheimer’s; but researchers just found out how strong and direct that cause really is!)

When you have an excessive release of insulin, this research found, you also release too much of a protein called amylin.  In the brain, the new research found, excessive amylin causes the same sort of tangles and damage to nerves that beta amyloid does.  And, it may make any beta amyloid tangles and damage worse too!

This is a really critical thing to know.

We already knew that the too high blood sugar average and surges of type 2 diabetes and the lifestyle that produces it, cause damages to the blood vessels and capillaries in your brain.  That drop off in circulation causes brain damage and vascular dementia if it’s too high and goes on too long.

This new information is a crusher! 

It shows that in addition to that increase in vascular dementia, the insulin surges and too high insulin go with too much amylin which causes Alzheimer’s directly at the same time!  Yikes!

The most effective way to prevent these effects is to stop the lifestyle that generates them and replace it with the lifestyle that prevents these effects instead.

That removes the biggest causes and replaces them with things that cause the reverse!

Eating more than the smallest and occasional intake of real sugar; eating and drinking too much sugar instead, eating or drinking any high fructose corn syrup, any regular intake of refined grains -- each tends to cause these blood sugar and insulin surges. Oops!

Drinking diet soft drinks and eating artificial sweeteners is not entirely safe for any of the major artificial sweeteners according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But far worse, recent studies show they cause much the same insulin surges as sugars!  (That’s likely why they tend to cause the abdominal obesity and type 2 diabetes found in other studies.)

a) So, to prevent these two causes of mental decline (and many other deadly health problems) drink no soft drinks; never buy or eat foods and drinks with high fructose corn syrup and always read labels to be sure to avoid it; eat real sugar only a few times a week or a month and in small amounts; stop buying or eating foods made out of refined grains; and eat and drink health supporting and zero to very low glycemic foods and drinks instead.

b) Instead eat foods such as low glycemic and nonstarchy vegetables, low glycemic fruits, beans and lentils, and nuts for those not allergic.  These foods also provide massive amounts of several kinds of health protecting nutrients. These foods are high in fiber and mostly low in calories.  Many of them taste good directly.  And many do when prepared well with added spices.  You can literally eat a LOT of them not feel too hungry, and not have the kind of extra rebound hunger and cravings at all that you get with the bad stuff.

b)  Do vigorous exercise most days of every week, particularly super slow strength training and burst cardio either in interval or variable cardio.  This directly burns sugars and prevents and helps reverse insulin resistance. The sessions can be effective in as little as 10 to 20 minutes a day.

The much better news is that by stopping these bad foods and drinks, eating the health supporting ones only, and getting this kind of exercise has many and dramatic other health benefits.

It slows aging; it causes fat loss and makes fat loss easy and easy to keep off; and it also prevents heart attacks, strokes, and many cancers!

2.  Avoid MSG, other glutamates such as potassium glutamate, and packaged snack foods that to be more addictive have several other kinds of glutamates too.

One of the doctors who writes on health, Russell Blaylock, MD, has taken the position for some time that these glutamate compounds help cause Alzheimer’s disease. He calls them excitotoxins..

On June 20th nearly two weeks ago, I saw an article on a drug that looked promising to reverse or slow Alzheimer’s disease.  That may or may not pan out or be side effect free enough to use. 

BUT the technical discussion of how it worked showed clearly that a high intake of glutamates caused some of the damage and Alzheimer’s disease.

The good news is that you get an extra bonus for avoiding MSG and these other glutamates.  They are proven fatteners!  The smaller the amount of them you eat, the less fat you will be!

The bad news is that it is quite difficult in the United States.  Besides MSG itself, you often find things like autolyzed yeast, natural spices, and spices as ingredients of packaged foods and spice blends.

Every one of those is a sneaky way to include MSG without saying so directly.

So avoiding MSG can be harder than it should be.  As an example, I like mustard.  But when I read the labels on almost every brand, I found “spices” listed as an ingredient.

Only Annie’s Naturals at Whole Foods makes a mustard without “spices” and is the only mustard I’ve found with no “spices” listed on the label.  Yikes!

3.  There is a supplement that BOOSTS mental performance without using energy boosters such as caffeine or drugs like amphetamines.

It lowers anxiety so you focus better mentally and are more able to explore trial solutions or new information than when you are too anxious or fearful.  You also can recall things you need far better when your anxiety is low.

You are more likely to take action and solve problems because of this in addition to learning better and doing better on high stakes tests!

It’s called Bacopa.  And the kind I take is from a company called Paradise Herbs.

You just read why I take it!

But in a recent email, Al Sears MD found that Bacopa boosts mental performance in several other ways too!

Besides the lower anxiety and lower heart rates I knew about, the people taking Bacopa for just 3 months had, also had:

Better spatial memory, memory accuracy, and ability to process visual information.

Better word recall, attention and ability to ignore irrelevant information when learning,
and better  memory scores.

AND, other studies found that taking Bacopa helped protect the brains of the people doing it from damage from Aluminum compounds!

4.  Bonus:

In a previous post, I covered some other ways to prevent or reverse mental decline.

There is an enormous amount you can do besides these three methods in this post!

That post literally has a whole set of other methods that work:



This post has other methods shown to prevent Alzheimer’s AND three methods that can help reverse the damage!

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