How to tell if drugs are best avoided....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-24-2014

Technically the FDA is supposed to look at whether or not a drug is safe or has unacceptable side effects and whether or not it does the job it is or will be prescribed for.

 They might do this if all their funding came from the government and the government taxed the drug companies to generate the needed funds.

The reality is that in the United States the FDA is funded by fees paid to it directly by the drug companies.

So the FDA is a vendor to the drug companies.

That means that the drugs it OK’s or leaves on the market may not be safe or effective if the drug companies are already making money on them.

It also means that if lifestyle upgrades are a more effective and protective long term solution to a problem, the drug companies work very hard to ensure doctors only hear the drug company’s side of the issues involved.

There are 3 solutions if you want to avoid these problems:

I.  Don’t use the three classes of drugs where the drugs are not that effective; have quality of life damaging and or health damaging side effects; and some even are hard to stop safely.

a)  Unless you have been tested with the $150 genetic test that shows you are in the minority who benefit from statin drugs; are hospitalized; and just had a heart attack, don’t take statin drugs.  They have no effect on your chances of dying either from a heart attack or other reasons.  They cause more people to have low energy; harm from exercising; and type 2 diabetes than the very small number of nonfatal heart attacks they prevent.

Eating 6 or more servings of vegetables a day; getting vigorous exercise most days of every week that you built up to gradually; and completely stopping any eating or drinking of foods and drinks made of heart attack starters like high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils and refined grain wheat flour.  THAT set of things strongly prevents heart attacks and has many other health benefits AND cuts your risk of dying of any cause by 42 to over 60%.

b) Virtually all drugs to lower high blood pressure have comparable problems.  Almost all of them have dreadful impacts on your quality of life.  And they cause health problems with some even causing death to some people who take them.

Research has found that unless your blood pressure is over about 160 over 100, the lifestyle upgrades that prevent heart disease provide such strong protection that taking blood pressure drugs are a harmful waste of money because they add zero increase in protection.

c)  Anti-depressants today are also NOT a good idea.  The original tests found no effect beyond placebo and even when they seem to work in individual cases, the people involved had to take them for several weeks before getting any effect at all.

Worse, they are addictive and have other nasty side effects that get worse when you try to get off them.

Meanwhile the Ilardi Protocol developed by Stephen Ilardi and talk therapy based on the work of Martin Seligman, PhD do work for over half the people who use them. People who use them well have an over 75% cure rate.

Secondly, since minor brain damage causes some cases of depression following the lifestyle that cause your body to repair and regrow your nerve and brain cells can gradually turn depression down or off. 

Since the current drugs are so ineffective and have so many bad effects, the best treatment is to skip them entirely and rely entirely on the drug free methods that have been tested to work.

(At least in this area there is some reason to hope for better drugs.  In Medical News Today an Israeli development may have found a class of drugs that are effective and take effect immediately.

And, in the last few days it was announced that a metabolite of Ketamine that does turn off depression almost instantly may be a safe drug to take.  This HNK also has the instant depression lifting effect but does NOT have the anesthetic and hallucinogenic effects of Ketamine.

This means that doctors will then be able to turn off depression with one of those two drugs while the people put the other nondrug methods in place and use them long and well enough for a permanent cure.

Now, the failure rate of the nondrug methods comes from the people being too depressed to use them or become skilled in their use.  These new drugs would solve that problem.)

II.  Jenny Thompson is not perfect; but she is very well informed and most of her health letter consists of listing drugs that are harmful of don’t work or both.

She publishes the HSI eAlert email. In a recent email she lists an osteoporosis drug that was banned in Canada & Europe.  And, the FDA’s own panel suggested they do the same and remove the drug from the market even though it was approved initially.

It seems it has NO effect in preventing fractures and DOES cause cancer!

(This drug is called Calcitonin-salmon, Fortical ,and Miacalcin.)

But the drug you need to check may not be in a current email and unlike me you may not want to read that much about health issues every day.

III. Since the FDA is not a good source and you may not want to follow all of Jenny’s emails but want to look up a specific drug that you want to be sure isn’t such a drug, you have two choices.

You can look up the drug and its side effects online using WebMD and Wikipedia and other sources.

Sometimes that will do it as you may take a drug that the new drug has a bad interaction with or find out the new drug has a common side effect that you absolutely want no part of.

But isn’t there a responsible place that lists the worst drugs that should have been removed from the market but have not been?

Yes!  It was in Jenny Thompson’s email about the harmful osteoporosis drug, Calcitonin-salmon.

"Public Citizen, which has had this drug [Calcitonin-salmon] on its "Do Not Use" list since 1995, has done all it can to get this dangerous med off the market. And the FDA, which obviously has no concept of how to do its job of protecting us, has refused to act."

Their information arm on drugs does have a for fee subscription service at http://www.worstpills.org/

If you are older and often encounter new drugs at your doctor’s office, you might want to subscribe.  Or you may have a community health library or in some areas your public library may subscribe.  In our area the Stanford Health Library offers such expertise and may subscribe and has trained staff to help you research specific drugs in multiple ways.   

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 6-23-2014

(My measurement each month is done on Saturday morning on the date closest to the 18^th of the month.) This month Saturday, 6-21 was my measuring day.

This month’s report is a mixed review with some positive and some negative.

I both gained some leverage and lost some.  And, I’ve had my ability to use my new know how to force more progress temporarily preempted by the rest of my life

1.  Here’s my immediate progress section first:

I gained a pound on the scale.  BUT my waist measured what it did last time.

I may have gained some of that pound as muscle and definitely avoided gaining any fat I gained on my belly.  So for a month that was not great on leverage, this was a decent result.

Here’s why:

Because I had less time and money and my wife had less time this past month, we made no new progress on eating more vegetables.

However, because I was able to maintain some of the recent increase with faster to fix and less expensive vegetables and DID make some progress on my strength training, I maintained my progress basically.

2.  One of the almost all vegetable dishes I was able to take time to make the month before last, I didn’t have time to make this month.

But my wife made a smaller amount just for her and upgraded the recipe a bit as a dish good enough for a once a week treat meal or taking to potlucks.  So, I’ve included that from last month in case you’d like to try it. 

I’m also including it since the more recipes you have that are very high in vegetables that produce superb health results with almost no calories -- and very low or zero in harmful and fattening ingredients, the better you can do in your own program.

And, two versions of her upgrade are here.

Month before last, I created a dish I call “Sweet Slaw” which is a slightly reduced calorie slaw but with a LOT more flavor and a bit sweet but with no added sugar. 

(It also uses zero soy or canola oil based mayo substitutes they somehow can legally call mayonnaise but are not.  Real mayonnaise has only olive oil and egg yolk.  To make things simple and easy to fix, this recipe just uses extra virgin olive oil. More on that below.)

When I served it freshly made month before last, my sweet slaw turned out well enough we could take it to potlucks. My wife was actually impressed by it!

So, here’s the recipe I used last month:

We got a head of organic green cabbage and a head of organic red cabbage and an organic yellow onion and some organic raisins—all from Whole Foods. We also got a package of organic carrots.  The one lemon I got was not organic this time as I bought it at another store.  (Since we didn’t use the skin, that’s likely OK.) But Whole Foods carries organic lemons for next time.  The component that is most important to get only the organic kind is the raisins!

I made about a half cup each of shredded and diced components out of the green cabbage, the red cabbage, some of the carrots, and the onion.  Then I added about half a cup of the organic raisins.  I put all these into a large metal mixing bowl. 

Then I used a very efficient, “smash” style juicer and put all the juice of that one lemon in.  Then I added two Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive oil.  The brand we use is relatively light and mild.

Then I stirred all these ingredients until the slaw was well mixed.

The health and nutrition this set of things delivers is extremely high: cruciferous vegetables, carrot with all kinds of carotenes and a large serving of onions.  The raisins have grape nutrients and micronutrients and minerals.  The extra virgin olive oil is a health OK oil. And the lemon has some other health benefits.

And, between the buffered lemon juice by combining it with the olive oil, the natural sugars in the carrots, and the raisins -- the slaw was modestly but not excessively sweet.

(Plus this recipe has no canola oil* nor did I have to make our own real mayonnaise at home to make this slaw.  Real mayonnaise uses extra virgin olive oil only.  The foods that are labeled as mayo in the stores use canola and or soy oil are health damaging substitutes – NOT mayonnaise.

*In case you are unfamiliar, canola oil is far too high in omega 6 oils, is made with heavy chemical refining that tends to leave some of that residue, and over 90% if not 95% of all canola oil is made from GMO rapeseeds.)

When I served my sweet slaw freshly made it was relatively sweet.

But the same dish after it had been in the refrigerator a day or two later, was no longer sweet enough to taste as sweet.

So, my wife made her version with the smaller amount just for her and added a teaspoon of honey from Whole Foods that was organic and from a source that only used honey from local bees in the area of the company providing it.

Her version was about three times sweeter and was still that sweet after being in the refrigerator a day or two.  And, the amount of added sugar was quite small for such a big sweetness boost.

A way to get that sweetness boost with even less sugar would be to use the juice of two lemons instead of one and a tablespoon of erythritol which recently was found to be a super low calorie sweetener that does NOT cause the rebound hunger or the harmful effects of the artificial sweeteners.

My guess is that the best tasting version would be to add one teaspoon of that kind of honey to my version.  With the larger size of my version, the boost per serving of sugar would be even less than her version.  But the honey would add some honey taste too by doing this.

3.  The new method I added last month for strength training seems to be helping me get stronger with small enough increases to allow for more continuous progress in strength than what I was doing.

I already was alternating sessions where at one I’d use weights I already could do moderately slow reps with 10 times or more and at the other I’d use weights enough heavier to only be able to do 5 times or a bit more with that same moderately slow rep style.

Both versions were challenging and gave me a great workout.  

What I’m now doing is a progression where at the session with the lighter weights, I’ve begun gradually going from the two I’m up to where the first two repetitions are much slower and the rest of the ten at the moderately fast speed also.  I am about to be able to do the first three that way and still do 7 more at the faster moderately slow speed.

Then, once I can do all 10 that way, I’ll repeat the process where I add an isometric to each repetition where half way through the superslow reps, I’ll hold the position for the same count.  Then once I can do that for all 10 reps, I think I’ll then be able to jump the weights I use at both sessions to the next level.

It’s working so far.  And, I do seem to be getting stronger by doing it!

4.  The two sessions of progressive short sets of high intensity, interval cardio have been a mixed review.  But the overall news is good.

(I kept my weekly session of 4 sets of back to back abdominal exercises and my weekly 10 minute session of intense variable cardio on my Nordic track where I was already at a high level I’d worked up to gradually.)

The sessions I’ve been doing of a kettlebell lift overhead have gone from two sets of 14 to three sets of 28 and I’m on track to get to three sets of 77 by just adding 7 to one of the three sets each week.

This may get delayed as it bothered a minor injury in my right hand I got opening a jar.  But if I can heal that without stopping the kettlebell lifts I’ll do that.  If not, I may have to cut back to two sets of 14 or less until it heals.  But the process is clearly working and doable and not causing injuries on its own. So the long term prognosis is excellent!

The session of similar leg exercises was simply overdoing my leg exercise.   Between my two strength training days for legs and the fact that the Nordic Track on the slight incline works the front of my thighs as much, adding that set of fast leg exercise was not working at all. It kept my legs from getting enough recovery time.

So, I scrapped it and now do a second set of my already established 4 set abdominal interval cardio routine.  That worked fine and my legs feel much better now!

This is the end of my monthly report;

but I’ll keep the next section for those who are new to my monthly report or want to review it from time to time.

Background on the direction I’m pushing my food intake to lose my remaining fat:

Previously, I’ve described the work of Joel Fuhrman, MD and his very high nutrition, low calorie plan – a vegan vegetarian eating style with lots of beans and lentils and NO grains.  (My sweet slaw recipe would work well in his plan for example.)

Also last time, I described the research and resulting eating style found by Weston Price nearly 100 years ago!:

“Weston Price and his work studying earlier and traditional eating styles in people still using them AND with very good health and very little if any obesity, found that virtually all of them DID eat some animal foods and/or seafood.  This ensures they get many nutrients not in plant foods and that are essential to good health.  (They also did NOT eat grains.)

Most people know that vegans need to supplement with vitamin B12 to stay healthy.

Most would do well to supplement with iron and zinc.  Some who rely too much on grains and eat too little of the dark green vegetables and nuts, would do well to supplement with magnesium while slashing the grains and adding lots of dark green vegetables and some nuts.

But Weston Price found that there was another nutrient of almost greater importance than all of those put together that some animal protein and animal fat from naturally fed animals contains.

We now know it is important for strong bones and teeth and heart disease prevention.  Even better, people who want to be vegan for sustainability or religious reasons can get it now as a supplement.  It’s vitamin K2.

K2, it seems, directs calcium to go into your bones and NOT go to or to even come out of your blood vessels!

Note that most of these peoples did eat Dr Furhman style the other 80% or 90% of the time!

In addition, in my own case, I want to be more muscular than I am now.  And instead of weighing 141 pounds to lose my last 24 pounds of excess fat, I’d prefer to also gain 21 pounds of muscle to weigh 161 pounds.

The protein intake needed to support the gains I want is about twice or more what is in a Dr Furhman eating plan.

But, so far, even with more effective strength training exercise and some increased in strength I likely have only gained a pound at best -- and my at my age only be able to add a couple more.

That means I should jump from about 15% his style to at least 75% if I want to lose my belly fat, my reflux, and my slightly high blood pressure.

Since I want those things enough if I cannot have them by adding muscle, I’d better move my diet from 15% his style to 75%.

I won’t look the way I want.  But I won’t be as weak as I’ll look!  I’ll be faster because I’ll be stronger at a lower weight.  And I’ll get great leverage on stopping my few health problems and living longer.

If the information is accurate and I can make that change that well, I should lose at least 9 pounds and maybe as much more as 18.  The average of those is about 147 -- less than I weighed in high school.  And  losing 9 pounds net to 156 pounds would about put me at my high school weight.

So that’s next on my “to do list.”

The key to making it happen:

As I’ve already posted on getting a Vitamix to help me get to the 75% Weston Price/Furhman style that will remove fat best.  And Vitamixes do and will make it more doable for everyone else.

(My sweet slaw was very good.  But it took 30 to 40 minutes to make.  My wife’s braised Kale took about 15 to 20 minutes to make.  Making a sweet slaw drink with the VitaMix from the same ingredients would take more like 10 minutes.  And, making a kale soup would take about 10 minutes with the VitaMix --- or an unheated version as a juice would take about 5 minutes.)

Also, I’ve recently found a second system to eat in a style about 98% the same as a Weston Price composite style with its own proven health benefits besides!

Adopting it however, is at least twice as doable! 

It’s in a new book called, “The Wahls Protocol” by ms Terry Wahls, MD.

She had literally been put into a wheel chair and prevented from working by MS.

It occurred to her that if she evolved and ate a set of foods with ZERO harmful ingredients that might help reverse this set of affairs. 

She discovered that real foods have hundreds of micronutrients and complementary nutrients in addition to the things like vitamin C and beta carotene, etc.

So, Dr Price realized that it might be possible to not only get all the known nutrients from foods only with no supplements needed; but that by working until she had ALL the known nutrients completely supplied she might get enough better nutrition for it to have curative powers on her MS too.

With some help at first and extremely high motivation, she worked at it until she got it done!

She went from being quite ill and physically limited and feeling unwell to being completely mobile and virtually cured from the MS AND feeling unusually healthy and energetic even compared to herself before she became ill!!

WOW!

How does that help me or us eat that way?

IN two ways:

She did NOT have to fish or hunt or get ingredients only available a hundred years ago and half the world away.

She got all almost all her foods at her grocery stores!  She lives in Iowa.  So I seem to remember she had to buy her seaweed online.

(I now own and have read her book.)

The second way that her book helps make this way of eating more doable is that, the recipes she developed were mostly foods she also fed to her family also.  So she has found versions and recipes that taste good or OK to people not eating them for the health value!

That’s great!

It’s beginning to look as if a combination of using a VitaMix and recipes like hers and my Sweet Slaw begin to be an eating style even I can do every week and virtually every day!

And, other people who want permanent fat loss or dramatically better health can do them too!

(In my version I’ll likely keep dairy foods and eggs from animals fed their natural diet and I’ll keep eating beans and lentils in part to keep my protein intake high enough to support the muscle gains I want.  But I may cut back on them somewhat as well to enhance my fat loss.)

Pain relief without opiates or OTC pain killers....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 6-19-2014

Pain relief without opiates or OTC "pain killers" in over Fourteen ways!

At the end of May, Dr Al Sears listed some methods he found to work in an email he sent.

In A below, I've listed some from Dr Sears with some of my additions and comments in [ ] style parentheses.

Then in part B, I list several others that are as effective and some even more effective than the ones in his list but are not in his list.

By all means try the ones in the two lists that sound like a fit to you and try the ones that look to be most effective if you can.

Since neither opiates nor OTC pain relievers help heal the underlying problems and have dangerous side effects, I think a good case can be made to not use OTC pain relievers at all!

(The methods listed here avoid the liver and hear damage that the OTC pain relievers cause in some people and the too easy to do overdoses in most people.)

And be extremely careful of using opiates which you DO need a doctor's prescription to use and where an overdose can kill you.

Their best use is for pain so severe you can't think straight or sleep without pain relief that strong.

Even then, using the minimum tolerable dose for the shortest possible time is the best policy with opiates.

A.  Dr Sears' list:  

I [Dr Sears] use natural pain relievers that will help you get going again and get right back in the action.

You probably won’t hear about any of these from a standard medical doctor.

But I can tell you from years of use in my practice, they’re safe and effective – and completely free of dangerous side effects. Just a few of the ones I recommend are:

1.  Rutin – This powerful flavonoid is anti-inflammatory and improves circulation, which can often relieve soreness and swelling as well.  [Figs and organic apples are high in it.  So is buckwheat and gluten free buckwheat flour.  Figs may be the most desirable source and organic apples the easiest to get.]  [Because rutin does cause increased blood flow with a blood thinning effect, ingesting it by itself is likely safe.  But if you are taking a blood thinning drug, the combination may not be safe. If you are in this situation your life may depend or working carefully with your doctor!   For that reason, I don’t think well of those drugs for most of the people who now take them.]

2.  Ginger – Studies show ginger can reduce discomfort, tenderness and irritation in the muscles and joints by as much as 25 percent.1

Ginger contains 12 different compounds that fight excess inflammation.

Some block the enzyme which triggers it. 

Some lower pain-receptor and nerve-ending sensitivity. 

Together they work as well as any over-the-counter remedy you can find.

[You can get ginger supplements.  Used well in foods, peeled and diced ginger can add a lot of flavor and feeling of warmth.

I use a spice bottle capful in chilled water every morning.  It does seem to work.  And I like the feeling of warmth just after I do that.  My blood indicators for heart disease and inflammation also improved since I began doing that!]

Yucca – At one time, there were more than 100 universities and institutions around the world investigating the natural healing properties of yucca. 

3.  Yucca also has protective plant nutrients called saponins, which may elevate the body's production of anti-inflammatory cortisone. 

When you ingest saponins, they seem to block release of toxins from the intestines that inhibit normal formation of cartilage.

Yucca is mostly used in combinations that help arthritic and joint tenderness and discomfort, and for sediment caused by excess inflammation. Adding the yucca plant to your diet will help wash out the harmful poisons that cause aches and irritation.

[Red wine is also high in saponins.  Burgundy, zinfandel, and pinot noir have the most.  Saponins also lower LDL cholesterol. I take so many supplements I don’t think I’ll add yucca. But I do drink those kinds of red wine often.]

4.  Papain – This is a proteolytic enzyme that comes from Carica papaya fruit.   Papain can help you if you suffer from excess inflammation and joint discomfort. 

It helps increase your body’s own pain threshold, helps you recover more quickly from injury and reduces circulating free radicals that lead to inflammation.

Papain helps relieve non-inflammatory irritation, too, because it helps remove the cellular waste products that build up in the joints and cause tenderness and discomfort.

[I find I don’t like papaya.  And I’ve heard some people are allergic to it.  If I decided to use it, I’d get it in a supplement I think.  At least when I tried papaya I got no allergic effects.]

B.  My list:

1.  Devil's claw and the 2.  Shea oil in the FlexNow supplement are anti-inflammatories that do not cause stomach bleeding or excessive blood thinning like aspirin.  The makers of FlexNow also claim it boosts cartilage formation.

Shea oil is unusually unlikely to cause any allergic reactions and is used in hypo-allergenic personal products for this reason.  It is also NOT high in omega 6 oils.

3.  Taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 prevents many of the injuries that would otherwise need pain relief—in one test of athletes who get a lot of injuries it cut the amount of injuries per season in HALF!;

And, taking that much vitamin D3 speeds healing of any injuries that you do get.  

(Sometimes taking 5,000 iu a day extra at first or for injuries taking extra time to heal can help.)  AND, a recent study also found that men who take that much vitamin D3 STOP getting many chronic pains entirely.

4.   Turmeric and the Curcumin in it are cousins of ginger AND have similar anti-inflammatory and pain relieving effects.  

(Since they also help prevent cancer and Alzheimer's disease, along with many others, we strongly recommend almost everyone one take these and use turmeric in some of their food.  For those purposes they work MUCH better if you take or eat them with black pepper.)

Since I initially wrote this, I’ve seen research that turmeric and curcumin with black pepper may be the most effective anti-inflammatory in this list!

C.  Following the low inflammation lifestyle in all its parts tends to prevent some damage from high chronic inflammation, speed inflammation reversal from real injuries, and prevent some pains.

For example, high chronic inflammation CAUSES osteoarthritis.  So following this lifestyle not only makes any osteoarthritis you have hurt less, it causes you to have LESS osteoarthritis to begin with!

(Eat virtually no grains; rarely if ever eat animal fats or proteins from animals fed grain instead of their natural diet; avoid using all high omega 6 cooking oils such as soy, corn, canola, and safflower oils; use extra virgin olive oil instead. AND take omega 3 oils supplements and DHA supplements and eat low mercury fish high in omega 3 oils and only wild caught fish.  This gives you a very anti-inflammatory intake and your omega 6 and omega 3 oils will be in balance. 

People who do none of these things take in so much more omega 6 oils than omega 3 oils, they have sky high chronic inflammation.  That not only makes them get more pain, it tends to cause osteoarthritis, Alzheimer’s disease; heart disease; and many cancers!)

D.  For muscle soreness from exercise there are several other remedies that work. Some of them also speed healing.

1.  50 to 60 minutes of whole body massage including careful but direct massage of the area that is sore DOES lower soreness pain because it improves your general circulation and circulation to the sore area so much, it speeds healing and removes damaged cells and inflammatory compounds!

Not everyone can access this one.  But if you can, it is proven to work!  

Often you can massage the sore area yourself.  You can find the most sore area and massage it hard enough to increase its circulation and relax it a bit and do it without making it hurt too much by doing it.  Even 30 seconds of this one time can help.

2.  Taking the amino acid citrulline was found to lower soreness from exercise.  It also works with arginine if you take that, to cause growth hormone release and lower blood pressure when it's high.  It's a bit expensive and apparently it works best to take two or three 500 mg capsules twice a day.

3.  Taking the glycemic LOWERING sugar ribose before exercise may help you perform better by helping your mitochondria extract energy from ATP.  And, taking it both before and after exercise hard enough to cause soreness was found to reduce the soreness.

4.  Slow deep breathing through the nose before exercise and between sets and when you can at all DURING the exercise boosts circulation and its effectiveness enough to lower muscle soreness I just found out.

5.  Use topical capsaicin to cause the area to become slightly but temporarily more sore and feeling hot.  Two things then happen.  Your body works to reverse this excess and overshoots a bit.  THEN, on top of that, the capsaicin turns off some of your nerve's pain transmission too!

(You have to be SO careful NOT to get the capsaicin cream in your eyes or on other parts of you that aren't sore, that in my own case, I reserve this for soreness bad enough to keep me from sleeping well. And, I use the bottom of an empty supplement container or a Q-tip to apply it.  Then I wash my hands too very thoroughly just in case!)

Despite its limitations, when I've needed it, this method has helped me get pain relief WITHOUT taking OTC pain relievers!

6.  Recent research also has found that taking the extract of Montmorency cherries cuts inflammation as well as turmeric or ginger or better in some cases. 

One study found it even helped prevent injuries and speed the healing of injuries. 

Another study found taking it both mornings and just before bedtime caused people with severe insomnia to average over an hour more sleep each night!

Other cherry extracts have similar effects but I’ve not seen research showing they are as strong.  Currently I’ve not been able to get the extract of Montmorency cherries and take one of the other since I have access to it at my local Whole Foods.

7.  Oxytocin is the feel good hormone that’s released when you give or receive affection and hugs.  It’s also released during love making and when you climax.  You can even release it when you self pleasure -- particularly nipple stimulation.

You can also get it as a nasal spray.

When it’s high you can often feel unusually good -- even blissful in some cases.

If it’s high you can feel so good it overrides any minor pains.  But recent research also found that increasing oxytocin significantly speeds the healing of injuries too!

By using these methods you can make times when you would otherwise want an OTC pain remedy MUCH less frequent. 

And, I’ve found even if you have them on hand, you are rarely tempted to use them!  

MSG fattens AND makes the fat harder to get rid of....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-17-2014

A.  MSG has been shown to increase fat gain even when the same foods without MSG do not.

To stay healthy and fully functional and look reasonably good, it’s important to avoid getting or staying fat.

If you are fat now, it’s equally or more important to permanently get rid of most or all of the excess in ways that boost your health NOT harm it.

The ideal is to eat and drink things that make this easy to do. 

For those who aren’t allergic raw, unsalted, and not oiled tree nuts do just that.  People who eat them take in more calories but are less fat and weigh less!

Green and nonstarchy vegetables allow you to eat large amounts of food, feel full, and take in very few calories and huge amounts of key nutrients of hundreds of kinds.

Three things do the exact opposite!

1.  High fructose corn syrup or high amounts of sugar or fructose in liquid form cause you to take in calories that do NOT make you less hungry.  Hello soft drinks! Then the fast blood sugar boost causes an insulin response that drives down blood sugar. THEN you get hungry for more.

Got that?  You take in fattening calories without reducing your hunger.  Then you get hungry! Bingo, the perfect fattener!

2.  Except for soft drink industry backed research, the rest show that diet soft drinks are even more fattening.  (Worse, the artificial sweeteners range from unsafe for some people to unsafe for everyone which recent research found is the case with Splenda/Sucralose.)

3.  MSG

MSG has been shown to increase fat gain even when the same foods without MSG do not.

The study of foods in multiple areas of China done many years ago when the ethnic foods were less eroded by “Western” influences found that people who used a lot of MSG were considerably fatter than people eating very similar foods who ate very little if any MSG.

Incredibly this was so even though both groups ate about the same number of calories a day.

This means that if you use quite a bit of MSG, you will be a good deal fatter even if you don’t overeat on the calories in your food.

So, the converse is true.  If you want to be trim or less fat without hassle, NEVER ingest MSG.

Where do you find it in your foods? 

To this time, although it could change, all fast food restaurants use MSG in virtually everything.  Almost all packaged dinners & snacks have MSG.   (It’s not only somewhat preservative, it’s somewhat addictive and adds an extra flavor boost to foods that would otherwise not taste very good. And, it’s cheap!)

But most unfortunately, that’s far from all.  Many people don’t want MSG in their food already.  But makers of condiments and spice blends like to use MSG because it’s cheap and gives their product an extra flavor kick.  And, there is not yet any law or rule making it mandatory to disclose MSG as MSG in all foods.

Two things happen to allow these companies to use MSG but not tell you on the label.  The use something that means MSG but doesn’t call it that or they pretend it’s spice and list it as such.

If a food has MSG on its label, don’t buy or eat any.  But also include foods that list autolyzed yeast, “natural spices” or just “spices.”  If it lists any of those as an ingredient do not buy or eat any!

For example, virtually ALL mustards and ketchups list “spices” on their labels except the 365 house brand and Whole Foods and those from Annie’s Naturals which is also sold at Whole Foods.

You really have to read the labels every single time to avoid MSG.  Even Whole Foods still carries spice blends and condiments that contain MSG.

(Note that the right amount of horseradish paste can give you a similar flavor kick in such condiments.  But you have to be careful since it is such a powerful and concentrated food. 

The much better news is that where MSG makes you fat and may also cause brain damage, horseradish is a cruciferous vegetable and very effective as a cancer preventer!)

B.  MSG has been shown to cause damage over time to the thyroid if you ingest very much of it too long. That also causes obesity by slowing metabolism.

Many women find they get fatter after menopause or even before it as they get older than 35.  But all women who have low thyroid do.  They have a bit less energy and their metabolism gets lower.  They eat the same as they used to do – maybe even good foods that normally are not fattening.  But they use fewer calories and gradually add extra fat.

We now know one cause of this is eating MSG over several years. 

So, if you don’t want this result AND that extra fat, do NOT ingest MSG.

C. The recent study we quote in this post even found evidence to suggest that MSG also causes fatty liver disease AND makes the fat it adds harder to lose than fat gained in other ways!

We list the link to that study next and quote from it some.

(Note that they say in their discussion that cutting back on calories does NOT remove fat gained from ingesting MSG.

The bolding of that section I did; but the researchers clearly thought it a serious finding.

The last thing you likely want is to eat something that not only makes you fat but the fat it adds to you is harder than normal to get rid of!)

“Monosodium glutamate, obesity and fatty liver disease   Thursday 29 May 2014

The commonly used food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) has been linked to obesity and disorders associated with metabolic syndrome including progressive liver disease.

A new study that identifies MSG as a critical factor in the initiation of obesity

and shows that a restrictive diet cannot counteract this effect but can slow the progression of related liver disease.

   is published in Journal of Medicinal Food, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The paper is available on the Journal of Medicinal Food website.

Makoto Fujimoto and a team of international researchers from Japan, the U.S., and Italy monitored the weight gain and development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and its progression to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis in MSG-treated mice fed either a calorie-restricted or regular diet. They report their findings in the article "A Dietary Restriction Influences the Progression But Not the Initiation of MSG-Induced Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis."

"Although MSG has been deemed a safe food additive, its dosage, interaction with other drugs, effects on vulnerable populations, and effects on chronic inflammatory diseases and neurological diseases are unknown," says Co-Editor-in-Chief Sampath Parthasarathy, MBA, PhD, Florida Hospital Chair in Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Central Florida, Orlando, in the Editorial "How Safe is Monosodium Glutamate? Exploring the Link to Obesity, Metabolic Disorders, and Inflammatory Disease." The findings by Fujimoto et al. "may have far reaching implications, as childhood obesity is a major problem across the globe."

From:

Monosodium glutamate, obesity and fatty liver disease

http://mnt.to/l/4nyZ

The commonly used food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) has been linked to

obesity and disorders associated with metabolic syndrome including progressive

liver disease.

Doable way to partly reverse and stop aging....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 6-12-2014

1.  How many of your telomeres are short determines how fast you age.

As many of you know, telomeres are the caps at the end of the strands of DNA that enable you and your cells to make perfect copies to repair or replace as needed.

Short telomeres cause that DNA to copy with some flaws when they get short enough.

When your telomeres get short enough, it causes aging or imperfect copies.  And, separate research has found that short telomeres also tend to cause heart disease and cancers and other diseases that become more common in much older people.

In an article recently, Dr Al Sears explains that it’s not the average telomere length that counts but how many of your telomeres are short.

This part of this post has a summary of what he said in his article and what to do about it.  But to make some parts of it clearer, I’ve added most of his article right after that.

The good news is that even shorter telomeres tend to be salvageable with more length than I’d thought they had.  There are ways to make them longer which solves the problems.

So, if you know how many of your telomeres are short, you know if you have a problem or not.

AND, if you know doable ways to lengthen your telomeres that are short you can dramatically slow aging and prevent disease if you use these methods.

The great news is that there is a relatively doable and inexpensive way anyone can make their short telomeres longer! 

People once paid up to $4,000 a month for a drug like compound that caused your body to make or release telomerase which did seem to work. 

This new method can come close to zero added cost – perhaps $50 to $100 a month at the very most and likely less than that.

2.  You can get an exact measure of how many of your telomeres are short at http://www.lifelength.com/index-eng2.html . 

But you don’t need to know that to use the method that will make your shorter telomeres longer. You can simply start using it right away.

3.  Short is relative and you can rebuild all but the very shortest telomeres!

Telomeres are long enough that even the shorter ones have enough left to rebuild from that you CAN make them enough longer to no longer be short.

4.  The most powerful and affordable way to do that is with a very high intake of real folate.

That's highest in liver.  But it's also high in a robust intake of dark green vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, other nonstarchy vegetables, and in beans and lentils.

(The Wahls' Protocol which stresses all those foods except the beans and lentils is very high in these foods including liver.

Her observation that eating a good bit of these foods every day seems to "youthen" her patients who follow it apparently IS accurate for this reason!)

5.  You used to have to pay several hundred dollars to thousands a month to buy a telomerase activator that has some theoretical risk of increasing cancer to achieve this.

Getting extra folate from your food almost every day solves BOTH these problems!

For what fast food lunches cost -- or even less, you can come close to buying that much of the key produce -- even organic -- at Whole Foods. 

And, you can make it doable to take it all in for several hundred dollars to buy the new and quieter VitaMix ONE time!

 -- NOT every month for the rest of your life.  VitaMixes are very well made and tend to last for many years even decades.

AND, these vegetables that are high in folate almost all of them PREVENT cancers!!  Kale, Collard greens, Broccoli, Cabbage, and many others are cruciferous vegetables are very high in folate AND each have several kinds of compounds that prevent cancers

Here’s Dr Sears’ article.  [My comments in it are marked off by this kind of bracket.]

-----Original Message-----

From: Al Sears, MD

To: David

Sent: Mon, Jun 9, 2014 9:11 am

Subject: Get a new telomere life

Never miss an issue, add AlSearsMD@email.AlSearsMD.com to your address book!

View this email in a browser

Doctor's House Call    Al Sears

Al Sears, MD

11905 Southern Blvd.

Royal Palm Beach, FL 33411

June 9, 2014

“Dear David,

I have great news for you … we figured out how to give your telomeres new life.

Let me tell you why that’s important…

You know by now that telomeres are the little countdown clocks at the end of your DNA. Longer telomeres signify better health. Shorter ones signal faster aging.

In fact, your telomeres shorten relentlessly, especially with the environmental assaults on our cells we experience every day, until they get critically short.

When you get enough critically short telomeres, it’s game over. It causes permanent cell damage.

Your telomeres control your healthspan and your lifespan by shortening. When too many get short, the cell self-destructs.

This doesn’t mean you have a disease. But having critically short telomeres does put you at greater risk for many chronic diseases and sends your health on a downward spiral.

LifeLength   Steve Matlin is the CEO of Life Length.

For example, people with telomeres only a little shorter than average have a 320% greater risk of heart attack.1 The risk increases even more when the telomeres are critically short.

Unless you can reverse the loss.

Fortunately, we’ve figured out how to do this, and give you a new telomere life.

You get to start over…

Because as it turns out, those critically short telomeres are the ones most positively affected when you do something about rebuilding them.

Right now, the only way to measure critically short telomeres is with a test from my colleagues at Life Length. The CEO, Steve Matlin, and his team recently came to visit me in South Florida. He also invited me to speak at a dinner they had.

Life Length’s test is unique. Most labs can only measure “average telomere length.” Only Life Length tells you how many critically short telomeres you have.

The “average” telomere length measured by other tests isn’t as accurate. Every telomere in a cell won’t have the same length. Some may have a really healthy length.

Others may be in trouble. And you need to know how many are in trouble.

How short is critically short? Look at it this way. Telomeres are so tiny they’re measured in units of nucleic acids. We call them “base pairs.”

Each telomere starts out with about 10 to 15 thousand base pairs. Critically short means they’re down to fewer than 3,000 base pairs.

The good news is, even if yours are critically short, you can still reverse the loss.

We have found that when you use a telomerase activator, it miraculously goes to the critically short telomeres first. And we now have telomerase activators that aren’t just experimental. You don’t need a protocol, and they aren’t so expensive anymore … so that average people can afford them.

The rest of your telomeres may be fine, and you’ve still got time. But now you can identify and do something about the short telomeres that are causing the end of a cell’s life.

Now, you can give those cells a new telomere life. You can measure your telomere health by visiting Life Length here. [ http://www.lifelength.com/index-eng2.html . ]

So first things first. Today I want to tell you something you can do right now to decrease the number of cells that are going to get to the point of having critically short telomeres.

Boost your folate intake.

Folate or folic acid is one of the B vitamins. You might know it as vitamin B9. It plays a crucial role in protecting telomeres.

Studies show those with the highest folic acid levels have longer telomeres.2 And people with low folate have shorter ones.3

Folate works because it can counteract an amino acid we all produce that shortens telomeres. It’s called homocysteine.

High levels of homocysteine in your blood can triple the speed at which your telomeres shorten.4 One of the reasons homocysteine has such a terrible effect on telomeres is that it cuts off telomerase, the enzyme your body uses to rebuild the telomere.

Folate restores the action of telomerase, allowing your cells to give your telomeres a new life.5

How do you get folate?” “….Calf’s liver is one of the richest sources with 215 mcg in just 3 ounces. Dairy, poultry, meat, eggs, and seafood are other good choices.

Among vegetables, dark leafy greens are a good source. Especially try spinach, broccoli, asparagus and Brussels sprouts. Lentils and beans will also give you a good amount.

You can also take a folic acid supplement. I recommend getting 800 micrograms per day for your telomeres.

[This is extremely inexpensive and costs less than $5 a month to do.  But folic acid is not quite as effective as the folate actually in foods.  In addition, the foods have many similar compounds and other compounds that help make the folate more effective.

I take that much folic acid AND am working to get my intake of liver and vegetables up high enough to have this effect.]

[I’ve posted recently that eating 6 servings of vegetables a day has been found to cut your death rate from all causes by 42%. 

Clearly this works in part by helping people who do it to eat LESS of the junky foods that are the causes of diseases that kill otherwise.

But given the research on the effects of short telomeres also causing those diseases, this telomere lengthening effect of eating that many vegetables is likely a cause also!]

Incredibly good news about turmeric....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-10-2014

1.  A few years ago, I read that eating foods spiced with turmeric and taking curcumin supplements that come from turmeric had a consistent track record of preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

So I began taking turmeric once a day and eating curry style spiced dishes with turmeric two or three times a week.

This is protection I want! It was then.  And, it is now.

2.  Then I happened to have a blood test of my heart risk indicators. 

I had been pleased to drop my LDL cholesterol reading from 130, a bit too high, to about 100 to 105 by eating a bit more foods like beans with soluble fiber, taking a sterol supplement, and taking a bit more niacin. 

The blood test after I began eating and taking the turmeric for several months found my LDL cholesterol was about 76 when it had been 106 the time before!

Was it the turmeric?  Yes.  I read in Dr Dean Ornish’s book, Spectrum, that turmeric had indeed been tested to lower LDL cholesterol significantly.

I was impressed because that was a big drop when my LDL was already relatively low!

3.  Then I found in the book Anti-Cancer that turmeric also was a strong anti-inflammatory and that one effect of eating or taking it was to lower high chronic inflammation.  AND, that effect prevented many cancers or sometimes helped turn off cancers!

AND, research quoted in the book found that taking or eating turmeric and curcumin with a teaspoon or two of black pepper made it more bioavailable.

And the doctor who wrote the book said the research showed the anti-inflammatory and other cancer protective effects went up 200 times!

I would have been impressed with 10 times more effective.  And, I’ve added the black pepper every time since.

So to sum up, taking curcumin or eating foods spiced with turmeric and always including black pepper helps to prevent Alzheimer’s disease; by lowering LDL cholesterol AND high chronic inflammation, it helps to prevent heart disease; and it helps prevent cancer.

No wonder the doctor from Stanford, John B. (Jack) Farquhar, who founded their Institute for Research in Disease Prevention after reading some of this research firsthand, began including turmeric at every meal!

4.  You may not have known these things.  But there is even better good news!

a) Not only does doing this help clear Alzheimer’s disease damage from your brain, we now know it PREVENTS that damage to begin with!

Not only does doing this cut down your LDL cholesterol, the new research shows the LDL it removes is precisely the dangerous small particle LDL that causes heart disease that you WANT most to get rid of!

Doctor Russell Blaylock, MD is a neurologist and expert on effective methods in preventive medicine.

In an email I got last week-end he sent this:

a) “The latest research convincingly suggests that most disorders of the brain are the result of prolonged inflammation. Usually, brain disorders result from low-grade smoldering inflammation.

The inflammation can have many sources, including viral infections, inhaling exhaust fumes, toxic metals (mercury, lead, cadmium, manganese, iron, copper), minor strokes, autoimmune diseases, food allergies, and brain injury.

Inflammation in the brain is triggered by a very complex series of reactions within brain cells. When the brain becomes inflamed, specialized immune cells called microglia secrete toxic chemicals including free radicals, lipid peroxidation products, excitotoxins, and immune messengers called cytokines.

These caustic chemicals slowly damage critical areas of the brain, destroying synapses (the connectors between brain cells) and dendrites (the branched ends of brain cells that transmit signals in the brain). Eventually these chemicals lead to the death of brain cells, or neurons, themselves.

The neurological disorder that develops with inflammation depends on the areas of the brain most affected. For example, in Parkinson’s disease it is the midbrain (substantia nigra and striatum).

In Alzheimer’s disease, it is the hippocampus, frontal lobes, parietal lobes, and discrete areas of the brain stem that are most affected.

Yet in all of these age-related, neurodegenerative disorders we see common changes, including:

• High levels of microglial activation

• Evidence of excitotoxicity

• Free radical damage

• Accumulation of oxidized lipids and proteins

• Elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines

The hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of nasty-looking microscopic substance called amyloid plaque.

In the past, it was thought that a special form of amyloid plaque, called fibrillated amyloid, was the culprit. Now we have learned that a special form called amyloid oligomers is most toxic to the brain.

These oligomers act like caustic balls of goo, slowly burning neurons and connections around them. The brain reacts by activating microglia (its immune cells) in the hope of removing the oligomers.

Instead, the immune cells become the problem. They begin to secrete caustic chemicals of their own — mainly inflammatory immune chemicals and excitotoxins (glutamate, aspartate, and quinolinic acid). We call this process immunoexcitotoxicity.

Immunoexcitotoxicity also occurs with head injuries, strokes, exposure to brain-toxic metals, certain pesticides/herbicides, and brain infections. It is a universal reaction when the brain is disturbed.

Curcumin has shown itself to be the king of anti-inflammatory substances, equal to the

most powerful pharmaceutical drug.

Curcumin is a flavonoid (an organic compound) extracted from the spice turmeric. It is the curcumin that gives the spice its bright yellow color. Turmeric, a native plant of Asia, is in the family of plants called Zingiberacae, and is a relative of ginger.

The spice turmeric contains a number of compounds, but the most important are the curcuminoids: curcumin, demethyoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcumin. Curcumin is the principal flavonoid in turmeric, making up 2 to 5 percent of the plant.

Turmeric is a staple of the Indian diet. Not surprisingly, colon cancer rates in India are a fraction of those in the West, and Alzheimer’s disease is one-quarter as prevalent.

Because Indians mix turmeric with fatty foods, it is absorbed very well.”

b)  As I’ve posted quite often, research done at Harvard found that your level of triglycerides closely tracks – as in almost identical to – the level of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes heart disease directly by being so tiny it enters the cracks in your blood vessel walls and harms them.

Then your body releases inflammatory compounds and works to patch over the damage causing the buildup of plaque which tends to harden and to close the blood vessel over time.

That means that if you find something that slams down your level of triglycerides, it is extremely heart protective.

In a health email from a Chiropractor I once went to, this piece of news showed up last weekend also!

“Previous research showed turmeric and curcumin also fight inflammation and oxidative damage--two processes that help a number of diseases to appear and develop, including Type 2 diabetes.

One study published in the journal Nutrition showed how turmeric normalizes insulin and triglyceride levels while boosting anti-oxidant defenses. Triglycerides are a type of fat.

Turmeric keeps triglyceride and insulin levels low, effectively reducing the risk for numerous health conditions like metabolic syndrome, heart disease and diabetes.

The Nutrition study conductor, Shelia West, found that levels of triglycerides decrease about one-third in a meal prepared with the spice. The decrease occurred even when oily sauces high in fat were consumed.”

I was impressed with turmeric and curcumin before these two pieces of good news.

Now what was a supplement and spice I thought important has become one of my strongest recommendations to anyone wanting good health!

High sugar intake triples fatal heart attacks....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 6-5-2014

Consider the following possible scenario:

You or a friend of yours get 25% of your calories from sugar and high fructose corn syrup and fructose in fruit juices and those things in energy drinks or fructose from agave syrup.

(The average American has been doing just that.  Most likely still are. Fortunately many are learning not to keep doing this.)

You visit your doctor who tests your blood and finds your LDL over 160 and your triglycerides over 300.

Your doctor says your high LDL along with your high triglycerides puts you at high risk of a fatal heart attack.

He also says you should take a statin and prescribes one for you.

1.  Is he correct that you are at a high risk of a fatal heart attack? 

YES.  Very much so!  Recent research says even without measuring your blood lipids your intake of that much sugars TRIPLES your risk of a fatal heart attack! 

And, the high LDL and super high triglycerides -- confirms that you DO have that risk because of ingesting so many excess sugars!

2.  Is he correct that the statins will protect you from a FATAL heart attack?

Surprising to most people and to far too many doctors, the answer is NO.

Statins cut the risk of a non-fatal heart attack according to the research in only about 3 out of 100 of the people who take them. 

Worse, most people have the heredity where only one out of 100 of the people who take them get even that protection.

The studies also found that taking statins had zero effect, repeat zero effect, on the rate of FATAL heart attacks!

3.  Of course you don’t want to have a fatal heart attack and you are at that high a risk, aren’t there things you can do to protect yourself and wipe out that risk?

Fortunately yes.  There are several very effective things you can do that work very well.

Why not do those?

What are they?

A.  Turn off the cause!  Just in case you might be short on time before you would otherwise have a fatal heart attack, do it completely and right away!

(Knowing what I know, that’s what I’d do in your place.  I can’t prescribe that you do it as I’m NOT a doctor nor am I licensed in your state as one!  But I can tell you the research shows you are at severe risk if you don’t and very well might become safe if you do!)

Slam shut your intake of excess sugars and drop your intake of sugar to 5% of your calories you eat or less.  You can still have a few treats a month with real sugar and get that low. I did that.

If you really get into it you can eat a bit fewer such treats and get to 2%.  I’ve almost gotten there myself now.

I did that by simply cutting how much real sugar I ate in half about three times.  I now only have real sugar with my oatmeal once every two weeks.  (And, I now only eat oatmeal every other day and use only the whole grain rolled oats.)

 Or you can have the same number of treats that would have got you to 5% of your calories from sugar, but make them homemade and use erythritol instead of sugar a bit over half the time or recipe.  It turns out that unlike artificial sweeteners that make things that don’t taste super sweet not taste good and cause rebound hunger as if you ate real sugar, I just saw research showing that erythritol does neither thing! It’s totally safe as it is naturally in many kinds of fruit.  And, in such low moderate use it has virtually no side effects.  (Other sugar alcohols eaten in larger amounts do cause stomach upset and gas; but in that amount erythritol does NOT.)

Stop drinking all soft drinks. Use no artificial sweeteners. Stop drinking any energy drinks and drink coffee or tea with no sugar instead. Stop eating all fast foods or packaged dessert treats.  Read labels on every single thing you buy to eat or drink that has a label and if high fructose corn syrup or ANY hydrogenated oils are listed as being in it, buy and ingest something else! Do NOT use agave. 

Drink no fruit juices.  Eat the whole fruit or part of one or take the supplement instead.  (I eat organic wild blueberries and avoid drinking the juice.  And, I stopped drinking cranberry juice and take cranberry extract instead.) Eat no foods made of wheat -- even 100 % whole wheat -- and all foods made of refined grain wheat flour because both act just like high fructose corn syrup in the body in their effects. And cut all other grains back to zero or close to it.

(Check EVERYTHING that has a label.  The catsup I used to buy contains high fructose corn syrup as did other products I used to buy and eat.  Now I never buy or eat these foods!)

Is eating 25% of your calories from sugar really that harmful?

YES!  That’s been proved true five different ways!

a)  A study found that high intake of added sugars tripled the risk of fatal heart attacks and came to me in a health email from the Chiropractor I once went to.  The research was done at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  And, I’ve copied it below in this post at the end of it. 

b)  A study I found within the last few months on Medical News Today had a study that found eating a lot of sugar in a short period of time caused direct harm to the hearts of the people who did it!

c) Eating a diet that high in added sugars has been proven to drive up your level of triglycerides enormously.  Work done at Harvard found that means it also increases your level of the small particle LDL that is so tiny it gets into the molecular chinks in your artery walls and causes damage and inflammation which your body then patches with the plaque that causes less blood to flow and causes heart disease.  Triglyceride readings of over 200 or worse, over 300 are common when that happens.  To be reasonably safe they need to be below 100 and below 50 is better!

d)  Eating a diet that high in added sugars, causes type 2 diabetes and high blood sugar lower than that but high enough to harm you.  (Taking statin drugs causes type 2 diabetes in 9% of the people who take them which makes it an even worse idea.)

The added sugars create crystal spikes on all your LDL including the kind that normally is safe. Then they tear into your blood vessel walls causing heart disease and even destroy capillaries if it goes on long enough.  That doubles the heart attack risk for men and quadruples it for women!

e)  Eating that much sugar means that you take in 20 % more calories than people who eat the same as you did of real foods.  After a couple of decades of doing that you wear that 20% as added pounds of fat.

And, other studies show that just being that fat sharply increases your risk of heart disease by itself.

The better news is that if you have done that and completely stop eating that much excess added sugars, WITHOUT being any hungrier and maybe even being LESS hungry, after two or three years you will lose all that fat! 

Bonus:  So, if you weigh 250 and should weigh 180 and are 70 pounds overfat, if all you do is stop all that excess sugar, after a few years, you will weigh 200 and have lost 50 pounds of your excess fat!

B.  Do things that are heart protective and lower your triglycerides too.

Eat onions often.  Take deodorized garlic and eat minced or crushed raw garlic occasionally.  Eat wild caught fish that is low in mercury but high in omega 3 oils.  Take omega 3 oil supplements and DHA supplements.

Do short sessions of exercise most days of every week.  Then, once you have stopped all excess sugars and added those things that lower triglycerides, very gradually increase the intensity of each session. 

This has been shown by research to lower your triglycerides and the amount of small particle LDL you have and increase those effects every year you keep doing it!

Bonus:  It also slows aging AND cuts your risk of dying from any cause by at least 20%!

C.  Add the most effective technique known to cut your risk of dying from any cause and most of that effect is from cutting your risk of dying due to heart disease.

Few people yet know it’s that effective yet!  And, it can be done IN ADDITION to the other two things!

Recent research in the UK found that people who eat 6 servings of real vegetables a day or more had a 42% lower death rate from ANY cause than people who did not!  And, of that 42%, 24% was from the reduced chances of dying from heart disease!

(Potatoes, particularly French Fries don’t count.  They have to be green or nonstarchy vegetables or  less starchy ones like sweet potatoes or summer squash or carrots that are high in carotenes.) 

Why are they so effective?!

Clearly one reason is that they fill you up enough it makes stopping all those sugars dramatically easier to do!

But the other reason may cause 90% of the effect.  Every single vegetable has hundreds, repeat hundreds, of micronutrients.

That’s in addition to all the known vitamins and minerals you can take that they also have!

See the new book, The Wahls Protocol for more information.

Stopping the bad stuff and adding vegetables has so much power the lady who wrote it and did the research to find her way, turned off her MS that had put her into a wheel chair and prevented her from working.  She now walks around the hospital where she works.

Her clinical trials also found her methods make losing all your fat pretty much automatic without making you hungrier.

By all means take these actions to protect yourself.

I’ve been impressed by the huge amount of the high quality research showing it’s wise to do so.

Here’s the quote from the email I got about the study that found a high intake of added sugars tripled the risk of getting a fatal heart attack.

The lead researcher found the results, “Sobering.”

“Having a sweet roll with your morning coffee, a large soda with lunch and a scoop of ice cream after dinner puts you in the highest risk category for a fatal heart attack. The aforementioned sugars are called “added sugars” because they are not included in the foods themselves.

These added sugars are over and above the large amount of sugar contained in processed foods. Your chance of dying prematurely from heart problems is three times greater than for those persons who eat only natural foods or foods with little added sugar.

For most American adults, sodas and fruit juice drinks are the largest source of added sugars. For someone who normally eats 2,000 calories a day, even consuming two 12-oz. cans of soda a day substantially increases the chance of premature death.

Lead author of the study Quanhe Yang of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the results sobering. Yang and colleagues analyzed national health surveys from 1988-2010 that included questions about diets.

The team used national death data to calculate the risks of dying during a 15-year follow-up. Overall, nearly 30,000 American adults, aged 44 on average, were involved in the study.

“Too much sugar does not just make us fat. It can also make us sick,” said Laura Schmidt, Health Policy Specialist at the University of California at San Francisco. Schmidt wrote an editorial accompanying the study in last month’s Journal of American Medical Association Internal Medicine.

The study focused on sugar added to processed foods and drinks, or sugar sprinkled in coffee and cereals. Even foods that do not taste sweet have sugar added like breads, tomato sauce and salad dressings. Natural sugars in fruit and some other foods were not counted in the study.”  

Selenium cuts prostate cancer AND BPH....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-3-2014

Dr Al Sears is far from perfect.  But on most subjects he is right at the state of the art and clearly has the goal of helping people take control of their lives and stay healthy.

Furthermore, he must have a first rate research team finding him useful things that do this that he can email those on his email list.

Since he is a man and knows many of the men on his list want to avoid prostate issues, he does cover it from time to time.

1.  I already know a large number of things which I do that prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, prevent cancers from spreading, and prevent the aggressive kind of prostate cancer that can actually kill you.  I cover those in brief in part 3 of this post.

2.  From time to time I’ve seen coverage that getting enough – but NOT too much – of the mineral, selenium helps prevent cancers.

So I’ve taken 200 mcg a day of selenium in yeast for quite some time.

More recently, I read that getting enough selenium helped boost male libido AND that eating a brazil nut a day actually was enough more bioavailable than the supplement, if you want the beneficial effects of selenium, it’s best to eat a Brazil nut a day.

Since then I do both.

NOW I find out from Dr Sears that I may have cut back my possible prostate cancer by up to an additional 50%!

Even better, though I have BPH, I may have less and have fewer urinary problems because I’ve done that!

Here’s what research Dr Sears reported in his email about 5 weeks ago:

                                                                                                                                   

“….Today I want to tell you about one of the simplest ways you can keep your prostate healthy and protected. I’m talking about the mineral selenium.

In a study done at Harvard, where they were looking at results from the famous, Physicians' Health Study, Harvard researchers found that men who got the most selenium had the healthiest prostates.

This was true even for men with high PSA levels. If they were in the group with the most selenium, their prostate cancer risk dropped by 50%.1

The remarkable mineral selenium (Se) suppresses tumors (gold), kills cancer cells (pink), protects cells (green), and helps cells work better and stay young.

Source: Cancer Res. Apr 1, 2009; 69(7): 2699–2703.

A 50 percent lower risk shows up in many clinical trials for selenium and prostate health.

One study took 1,300 men and split them in two groups. The first took 200 mcg of selenium a day, the second got a sugar pill. The authors called the results “striking.” The overall risk of prostate cancer was almost 50 percent lower in the selenium group.2

Another eight-year clinical trial of over 5,000 men found similar results: those with normal PSA levels at the beginning of the study who took selenium saw their risk for prostate cancer drop more than fifty percent.3

Selenium is even protective if you already have prostate cancer, according to The Netherlands Cohort Study of almost 60,000 men. The data was presented at a recent American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.

The Swedish and British researchers officially published those results last month. As I read the study, what I found most interesting was that as you get more selenium, your risk for prostate problems drops.

People with the highest selenium had the lowest risk for prostate cancer.4

Geographic studies have found that in parts of the world where soil and diet are low in selenium, rates of prostate cancer are significantly higher.5

In fact, “Keshan’s disease” is named after a province in China where people weren’t getting enough selenium.

Men should be especially careful about getting enough selenium. It’s your prostate’s best defense.

In a new animal study, selenium stopped prostate bloating and growth. Selenium prevented the animals from getting BPH,6 which is an enlargement of the prostate that makes you have to pee all the time. BPH can lead to LUTS (lower urinary tract symptoms), which can lead to prostate cancer.7

You should get at least 30 micrograms and up to 200 micrograms of selenium a day.

It’s a small amount, but that doesn’t make it easy to get. We can’t get selenium in high amounts in fruits and vegetables anymore because of soil depletion.

The best foods for selenium are organ meats from grass-fed animals, garlic, nuts or fish.

Fish is loaded with selenium. You can get all the selenium you need from a can of tuna or a serving of swordfish. If you are concerned about mercury in big fish like tuna or swordfish, you can go with cod. Three ounces of cod has 32 mcg of selenium.

Organ meats like chicken livers or turkey and chicken giblets have a lot of selenium, too. For instance, one chicken liver will give you 140 micrograms of selenium. Muscle meat has less selenium. Three ounces of cooked beef have 35 mcg.

One medium egg has 14 mcg of selenium.

If liver and eggs aren’t your speed, you can eat some nuts. An ounce of walnuts has 5 micrograms. Almonds have a little less. A cup of almonds gives you 2.5 mcg.

One variety of nut offers a full day’s worth of selenium in just one bite. It’s the Brazil nut. Brazil nuts grow in the Brazilian jungle where the soil is rich in the anti-cancer mineral. Just one single Brazil nut eaten right out of the shell will provide you with 100 mcg of selenium.”

Since I take 200 mcg of Selenium and average eating a Brazil nut a day and eat Salmon, Eggs from hens fed on pasture, and nuts, and chicken livers at times, my selenium is likely at the top of the range that is safe.

That’s why I REALLY liked this statement:  “People with the highest selenium had the lowest risk for prostate cancer.”

3.  Are there really that many more ways to prevent prostate cancer and aggressive prostate cancer in addition to selenium?

YES. 

Here’s a fast list:  I already know a large number of things which I do that prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, prevent cancers from spreading, and prevent the aggressive kind of prostate cancer that can actually kill you. 

a)  Ways to prevent cancer:

Get your exposure to second hand smoke, nicotine, and tobacco products down to as close to zero as you possibly can manage!

This stuff is remarkably potent as a cancer causing agent.  It causes about 30% of all cancers.  Worse, up to half the people in Oncology wards in hospitals with serious cancer are there because of tobacco or tobacco smoke exposure!

The tobacco itself is carcinogenic we recently found it as it contains the radioactive element Polonium.  So if you breathe its smoke or use some kind of smokeless tobacco that touches it to the mucous membranes in your mouth, nose, or throat, the radioactive Polonium in it goes everywhere in your body that your blood does.  So any kind of cancer anywhere in your body from brain to pancreas to colon to leg bone cancers can be from tobacco or tobacco smoke exposure.

Tobacco smoke has dozens of carcinogenic compounds in it.  And the hot smoke from using a cigarette lighter has about 10 times that many and they are even more carcinogenic.  (Smokers who use lighters are MUCH more likely to get lung cancer than those who use matches.)

Take curcumin from turmeric or eat curries with a high turmeric content both with black pepper.  This prevents  many cancers, lower your chronic inflammation which also has heart protective effects.  Doing this ALSO helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and lowers your LDL cholesterol.

Take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.  Doing that has a dramatic number of health benefits. 

(Taking vitamin D2 is at least a third less effective and unlike D3 taking extra may not be totally safe. 

People routinely get that much D3 from sunlight exposure and some even get four times that much during summers with no ill effects.)

That much D3 makes your immune system so much more capable of killing harmful things and so much better at recognizing what to kill it is far more likely to kill off developing or developed cancers than if you didn’t have that much.  At the same time, you are less likely to get or continue having autoimmune disease if you take that much D3.

Eat a lot of raw and lightly cooked cruciferous vegetables.  And eat a lot of onions and garlic or take deodorized garlic.

Both kinds of vegetables prevent cancer and the more often you eat them, the better they work!

Eating that many vegetables also cuts your chance of dying from any cause by 42% and 24% of that is from cutting your risk of death from heart disease.

Avoid any pesticides or herbicides in your home and yard that you can; eat animal protein foods and their fats only from animals NOT fed grains heavily sprayed with pesticides or herbicides as it bioconcentrates in their fat; and mostly buy only organic produce.  Wild caught fish, and meat and grain and eggs and dairy from animals only fed their natural diets that have NOT been sprayed avoids that problem.

Avoid industrial carcinogens and solvents and all excess radiation.

Exercise regularly most days of every week without totally overdoing the intensity.  Doing that slows aging which prevents cancer and lowers chronic inflammation which help prevent cancers.

Doing it all can be a challenge.

But taking the curcumin with black pepper, taking the D3, and eating the organic vegetables, and exercising ARE doable and have so many other benefits, please consider doing them all.

b) Ways to prevent prostate cancer.

Eat cooked tomatoes or purred tomatoes with a health OK oil or fat such as extra virgin olive oil or avocados &/or take 30 mg a day of lycopene.  Both things prevent prostate cancer and stop slow growing prostate cancer from growing.

Eat nuts and avocados and use extra virgin olive oil and take vitamin E as alpha and mixed tocopherols from natural sources.  The gamma tocopherol and other tocopherols you get by doing this prevent prostate cancer.  That DOES work and has been tested to do so.

AND, do NOT take the cheap artificial alpha tocopherol as good studies found it may slightly increase prostate cancer instead.  NOTE that the headlines saying vitamin E caused prostate cancer were totally inaccurate.  They tested the cheap and harmful substitute only!

Take 3 mg a day of boron.  Dr Sears found a study saying doing so also cut prostate cancer in half!

c)  Ways to prevent aggressive prostate cancer:

Eating raw broccoli florets or cauliflower florets at least once a week cuts your chances of getting the aggressive form of prostate cancer in half. 

(Since I read that, I have eaten raw broccoli florets an average of more than once a day!)

d) Way to prevent metastatic cancers:

On Tuesday 5-13 last month, we posted on the discovery that if you cause your HDL to be high and your LDL low, it blocks cancers from spreading out and moving to other locations.  And, we posted about a dozen ways that work to do both!

Can you prevent or slow down slow growing prostate cancer?

Yes.  True you may already have it when you start these actions or get it some way you didn’t cover.  But you can get your chances of success to over 90%.

Can you avoid aggressive prostate cancer? 

Yes.  True you may already have it when you start these actions or get it some way you didn’t cover.  But you can get your chances of success to over 90%.