FDA threatens access to effective supplements…

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 8-30-2016

I.  In 1994, a law was passed, called DSHEA, that guaranteed the public access to supplements mostly consisting of vitamins and minerals and food and herbal extracts and a few other beneficial substances found in foods or herbs.

Since 1994 the supplement industry has found another 60 or so such substances that have health benefits – very important health benefits in some cases.

Because of the food ingredient base of these supplements, with few exceptions these supplements have had a sterling safety record. 

(All of them combined have a much better safety record than aspirin by itself!)

Now, with many thousands of users for years they have ALREADY had much more thorough and varied testing than any drug goes through. 

And, it’s not even close.  These supplements have had more people using them but all of the very largest drug testing programs can afford to study.

The hundreds of thousands of people who prevent heart attacks and strokes and osteoarthritis and relieve pain more safely than drugs in some cases -- and more -- by taking these supplements are getting benefits and health protection they cannot get from drugs.

So depriving these people of those supplements and that protection would certainly harm them.

But there is an even bigger issue than just harming individuals at stake.

 Because of this protection from disease of hundreds of thousands of people, the millions of dollars that they would otherwise have had to pay or burden taxpayers with for less effective medical care have NOT happened.

Because of the high costs of the harmful and fattening foods and drinks the average American has been consuming and the few people who get the exercise they need and smoking --

AND the baby boom generation cascading into the over 65 years when they are most likely to need medical care, we are already facing continuous increases in health care costs.

This is already so much the case it is harming our economy!

It would be a disaster for this to get even worse in amounts this large.

Now the drug companies want to have the FDA remove the public access to these 60 supplements so that they can make patented versions they can sell decades in the future.

This ensures their monopoly and makes them undeserved money.

But it removes safe and effective supplements from the public and just at this time when boosting health care costs more would be criminal negligence to do.

Now the FDA has finalized a “Guidance” that enables them to do exactly that!

It’s not needed to protect the public.  And the harm it would do individuals and our economy with this added increase in health care costs simply cannot be tolerated.

So this guidance must simply not be allowed to go forward.

II. But in addition to that, this problem exists in the first place because of a structural defect in the current FDA and how it’s funded.

The FDA is an important federal agency that is supposed to regulate food, and drugs, and supplements.

But it is badly underfunded. So much so that their real source of income is the testing fees for drugs.

So in practice, the FDA has become mostly an agency of the drug company’s interests with Federal authority to regulate.

This means that it tends to do a poor job in regulating all three things.

They haven’t enough money to do effective and win-win regulation of ethical food providers and supplement companies.

And, they have been too willing to approve drugs that are not effective or only partly effective which have bad and occasionally fatal side effects.

The drug companies are their main source of income.  So the FDA tends to do what those companies want them to do. 

Unfortunately this often means the FDA acts in ways that harm the public interest and give the drug companies undeserved money.

The bad news is that the FDA needs far more funding from the US government; AND it needs three separate parts that are funded and managed separately:

One for drugs; one for food; and one for supplements!

Since the better doctors and pharmacists tend to know which of the older drugs are safe and at least somewhat effective, the public is somewhat protected against this system.

But the regulation of the supplements for weight loss and muscle building and youth restoration that are not effective – or much worse contain drugs NOT listed on the label -- the FDA already has the authority to regulate and prevent the worst of these things.

They aren’t funded for it and don’t do much of it. 

They do not need to hand the safe and effective supplements that do exist over to the drug company monopoly to do this job.

They just need more funding and separate management that ensures they do well what they already have the authority to do.

If the part of the FDA that regulates supplements was separate and adequately funded, they might actually do this that they don’t do much of now.

And, since this part of the FDA would NOT be paid by the drug companies, the FDA would NOT be trying to rip off the supplement companies and the public interest to the sole benefit of monopoly drug companies as it is now doing!  

Ways to fix 10 fatloss blocks  II…

Today's Post:  Thursday, 8-25-2016

A few posts back we covered the basics of fat loss.

Yesterday, I got an email saying that to lose fat you keep off, lose all your excess fat, and lose fat if something blocks your fat loss, there are 6 common causes that you may need to check and fix.

Then I found 4 more in a Reader's Digest that I thought worth including.

So this post has those and some ways to fix them.

6 Weird Reasons You Can't Lose Weight in a Sharecare email, 8-17 had these:

1.  Prescription medications

2.  Certain medical conditions

3.  Menopause effects

4.  Your friends

5.  Stress

6.  Bad habits

And the Reader's Digest article added these 4 I think worth listing of their 8 they listed.

7.  You eat when you're distracted

8.  You dine out for every meal

9.   You rely on dieting alone

10. You starve yourself.

Last week, Thursday, 8-18-2016, we covered the first 4:

1.  Prescription medications

2.  Certain medical conditions

3.  Menopause effects

4.  Your friends

This week we cover:

5.  Stress

6.  Bad habits

7.  You eat when you're distracted

8.  You dine out for every meal

9.   You rely on dieting alone

10. You starve yourself.

5.  Stress

“The impact stress can have on your weight is two fold, according to Brown. Stress not only ups your cortisol levels, leading to an increase in appetite, he says, but it can also lead to emotional eating, often causing us to reach for high-fat, carb-heavy comfort foods like pizza, sweets and chips.

Stress can also keep you up at night, and several studies have shown strong links between weight gain, obesity and lack of sleep.”

This is a tough area but there are three ways to prevent it from blocking your fat loss.

a) The fat loss block is from the stress effects listed. So one way is to attack the effects directly.

The first way is to learn and use things that slash emotional eating and cravings. 

If you eat health OK protein foods and oils and vegetables often prepared and spiced in a way that tastes good to you AND you completely stop what Dave Asprey calls Kryptonite foods and drinks like soft drinks and wheat food and junk oils and high fructose corn syrup AND you don’t limit calories too much,

you will simply stop having the cravings that eating too little and the Kryptonite foods and drinks cause by themselves.

And if when tempted by Kryptonite foods you focus on how harmful and fattening they are and how the makers are making money selling them to people who don’t know this AND you completely avoid focusing on their taste, that too is proven to help.

That’s because your actions follow from which part of your brain you are using.  When you think about those harms with your thinking brain and stop thinking with your emotional brain only, you have control and no or far less cravings.

This has actually been verified by brain scans by the way!

Another way is to learn the “sleep hacks” and energy boosters that enable you to sleep well and keep up your energy level even when you are stressed.

Daily vigorous exercise most mornings even if just for a few minutes and getting up at exactly the same time each morning and close to the same time most evenings and wearing a sleep mask so your eyes have darkness when you are sleeping and many more help do this.

The information in the Bulletproof Diet by Dave Asprey has advanced techniques too.  But just doing these easy basics can make a huge difference.

Also, it’s a bit messy to use unless you are quite careful.  But his MCT 8 oil product, Brain Octane is a way to power your brain and have usable energy without using excessive coffee or sugar.

My own trial of this is in its early stages; but if you need a mood or energy pick me up badly,

there are two ways to use this to get it instead of using any soft drinks or any kind of sugar!

Bullet Proof’s Dave Asprey found that combining a tested to be low in mold coffee with ghee or unsalted butter from grass fed cows and his Brain Octane, you get a much better lift from the caffeine and avoid many of the side effects like feeling jittery that he believes come from molds in many kinds of coffee.  AND, you get the brain boost from the MCT 8 too!

I’m trying just adding a Tablespoon of his Brain Octane to a quarter cup of the coffee at my day job to boost my afternoon energy.  Bringing a thermos with Bulletproof Coffee might work better.  But just using the coffee at work does seem more effective with the Brain Octane added.

Another way to de-stress in the evening after work without drinking extra wine or eating a junky sweet treat is to reread a novel that is very involving that you enjoyed reading before.

A lot of the stress and tiredness from jobs that require thinking or decision making is that the parts of your brain that do that work literally use up their available energy and neurotransmitters.  AND, a study found that this kind of reading directly gives that part of your brain a recharge!

b)  The other way is to turn down the stress by solving the problem or escaping its effects.

If you find a way to get help from someone who has the expertise to solve the problems you face or even some friendly and supporting help in  working on it yourself, that often slashes the stress you are under.

Another useful technique is to avoid high risk, low reward choices which enables you to escape the stress that they often cause.  These are often simple like always wearing your seat belt and not running red lights without even looking at the cross traffic. 

Tony Robbins and Peter Drucker supplied these two helpful strategies.

Tony Robbins found that many people cannot think of a way to solve a stressful problem.  But when he asks them to imagine a few things that MIGHT help they often come up with several ideas.  Often the best of those or a combination of them WILL solve the problem!

Peter Drucker found that effective executives often succeeded when they could NOT do certain things and looked blocked.  He found what they did was to list ten or twelve things they COULD do and then get busy doing them. 

c)  The third way is to simply turn down the physical stress reaction long enough to rest your mind. 

Learning how to enable yourself to sleep well fits here.

Some people find that yoga or Tai Chi or studying another martial art does this. 

We list the other two first because not everyone has access to these.  But those who do get good and very good results from them.

6.  Bad habits

“If you’re not happy with the number on the scale, take stock of any habits that may be working against you – like skipping breakfast, not getting enough sleep or losing track of what you’re eating and drinking throughout the day – and then adjust accordingly.

“It’s about recognizing all of those little things,” says Brown.

And remember – real, lasting weight loss isn’t about temporary diets and dropping pounds fast. It’s about investing in your health for the long haul, and being proud of the small changes you’re making to better yourself.”

“Nothing motivates patients like success,” he says. So celebrate every one, even if they’re small, or slow going.

[He’s absolutely correct.  The lifestyle upgrades you make and keep doing that support health and fat loss enable you to stay healthy when others do not and keep off the fat you lose!]

Many people find that the best solution to these is to find out what substitutes that support fat loss are and do those instead!

If you are rushed for breakfast, find a way to eat a fast high protein breakfast at home or just after you arrive at work.

Also eating what you should be eating on a regular schedule and doing your exercises on a regular schedule become a time efficient habit that works FOR you.

And it cancels out NOT exercising or eating badly by habit by replacing them with good habits.

It’s Thursday today so I did 20 minutes of leg strength training before work; and I’ll have lowfat organic cottage cheese with tomato sauce, some extra virgin olive oil and a multiple spice curry I eat using two kinds of organic turmeric for dinner.

I have a similar protocol for each day from Sunday through Noon Saturday.  The only time I get creative and eat differently is Saturday night most weeks.

This makes our shopping trip very similar each time; and it ensures I eat right and exercise.

So ADDING this kind of good habit can erase bad habits—besides just working to stop the bad habits!

A similar themed Reader's Digest article added these three common blocks to fat loss:

7.  (From Reader's Digest)

“You eat when you’re distracted”

“Do you see crumbs or smudges on your computer keyboard, the touch screen of your phone, or your TV’s remote control? That’s a telltale sign that you’re doing other things while you’re eating. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for multitasking, and I definitely have days when I eat in front of the computer. Here’s the problem. Ask me how it tasted and I might not be able to tell you, because I was preoccupied by my work.

Researchers in Ireland interviewed a group of 66 adults on what made portion control difficult. One of the main factors, they reported, were elements of the eating environment—socializing with friends and family, watching television, or working on a computer or phone—that diverted their attention away from what they were eating.”

Other studies of people who watch TV -- both things they like and whatever is on to keep their mind occupied – while they eat some kind of junk food snack just eat it on autopilot until the container is empty.

This can relieve stress temporarily but it causes fat GAIN that the people who do it have ZERO control over while it’s happening.

Do this instead.  Don’t buy those things at the store and never have them at home.  Then eat a small snack that is filling and enjoyable but not fattening or blood sugar boosting BEFORE or AFTER you watch only TV the programs you enjoy most. Almond butter on celery works.  So does guacamole by itself.  So does some raw walnuts and a few organic raisins.

And, mute the ads for junk foods that are heavily advertised on TV.  The advertisers know the foods are harmful and fattening.  Why watch and listen to their ads when you’d prefer not to be fat?

8.  “You dine out for every meal”

“Occasional indulgences are not the problem. What is: We are eating out more and more often—over a 40-year period from 1970 to 2010, we nearly doubled the percentage of calories we get from food away from home. And we are all too often unaware of how many calories are in the dishes we eat. A study of fast-food eaters in Philadelphia and Baltimore found that they underestimated their meal by up to 400 calories!”

We’ve posted on this before.  An effective way to reduce the calories and reduce how fattening a restaurant meal is to you, do these few things:

Send back the cheap bread they serve you first and order a small salad to bring you right away with any salad dressing on the side or none or extra virgin olive oil only.

Also, order one glass of wine – or two if celebrating -- to have right away with the salad.

Then have no alcohol after dinner.  This is WAY less fattening than stuffing down rolls or bread and also having after dinner drinks.

Order and eat only protein foods and vegetables.  Ask that no potatoes or fries or bread be included or send them back to be tossed out if they come anyway.

This also makes the meal much less fattening.  AND if the protein entrée is good and the company is good and the before dinner wine is good, you’ll still enjoy eating out!

The other way is to bring more health OK meals from home for lunch or socialize at dinners you cook at home.  That gives you more control and costs less too!

Then with part of the money you save you can eat at better restaurants who are more used to your style of eating and serve better food.

9.   “You rely on dieting alone”

“ While you can lose weight even if the only movement you make all day is walking from your bed to your desk chair, it’s much easier and faster to drop pounds if you combine diet and exercise. If you are burning an extra 200 to 300 calories per day, that’s 200 to 300 calories less you have to carve out from your diet to get the same calorie deficit. Plus, exercise generates natural endorphins, so you feel better and have more energy even if you are a little hungry. All of which makes it easier to stick with the diet.

And once you’ve lost the weight, exercise has also proven to be key to keeping it off. According to the National Weight Control Registry, established in 1994 to identify and investigate the characteristics of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off for more than a year, 94 percent increased their physical activity in order to lose weight, with the most frequently reported form of exercise being walking. To keep it off, 90 percent report that they exercise an average of an hour a day.”

a) This badly understates the fat loss and keeping it off value of strength training!

If you are younger and can work out at a gym even two days a week with--one or two days between--doing deadlifts and squats or deadlifts and leg press and you gradually add weight until you are quite strong, you’ll add enough muscle that so much more of the calories you eat feed your muscles it will be dramatically easier for you to lose fat and keep it off.

Surprisingly, if you are older strength training is even MORE important to lose fat and keep it off.

“Dr Al Sears said this in his email today:  “If you do nothing to stop sarcopenia, you will lose about three pounds of muscle every decade. By the time you're 80 you could drop 35% to 40% of your muscle mass.¹”

The ads for the Perfect Workout, an effective strength training service even people who have never done strength training before can use and get results also stresses this fact.  

It’s extremely important because the process is an automatic fattener that will add fat to people who don’t strength train!

That’s because when you lose 3 pounds of muscle and just keep eating the same you gain 9 pounds of fat and 6 pounds on the scale.

And, without strength training that happens every 10 years!

If you invest half an hour two times a week you can totally prevent it from happening to you!

Also every time you do effective strength training or some form of brief but intense cardio with rests even if the total session is 10 minutes or less,  you burn extra calories for several hours after the exercise from the work your body does to rebuild and restore the muscles you just exercised that much.

So those two kinds of exercise can ALSO help you lose fat too. 

(The one pitfall to avoid is to eat fattening foods or more calories of health OK treats than even this extra calorie burn as a reward.  Eat the same but with extra protein and get your rewards when you look at the scale or in other ways instead!)

10.  “You starve yourself. “

So you trigger your failsafe famine response; get strong rebound hunger; and lose your energy to move or exercise.

Excess hunger blocks fat loss and even causes fat regain!  So that is NOT at all what you want to have happen.

Mercifully there are several ways to avoid it.

The more protein you eat, and the more health OK fats you eat, and the more strength training you do, and the more nonstarchy greens and other vegetables you eat, the more likely it is you can cut your calorie intake enough for some fat loss AND avoid this famine response.

Avoiding excess sugar and all forms of free fructose and artificial sweeteners also helps you avoid excess hunger while losing fat and keeping it off.

Adding strength training also enables you to lose fat and keep it off while eating MORE.

The other thing to do is to limit your calorie cut back to 20 or 30 % and avoid going over that.

Doing partial fasting three separate days a week or fasting more completely once a week can do this with less hassle because of the food prep time you save.

So, if you do it right, you can lose fat you keep off without excess hunger.

Follow these techniques to lose fat and keep it off without that kind of hunger and you will succeed!  

Some foods have BAD herbicides....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 8-23-2016

We’ve long posted that the several ways of eating that produce good health all have in common to eat a lot of vegetables each day and at least once serving of fruit.

And, because of what a high number of servings this is when you eat this way per week and how many weeks in even a year or two, let alone a lifetime, we’ve posted that it’s essential to make a special effort to ONLY eat organic vegetables and fruit.

The argument that the risk from eating produce that has been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides is low because any one exposure has a low risk is bogus.

If you eat even 4 servings of vegetables and one of fruit a day, that’s 1825 exposures a year and 365,000 in 20 years.

If 1,000 exposures to an herbicide can harm you; and you don’t eat almost 100 % organic produce, you’re looking at being harmed 365 times!

And, if one out of 100,000 exposures can cause severe harm that many exposures will harm you 3 or 4 times that severely.

In the United States today, it’s likely impossible to eat 100% organic produce.  But if you arrange to buy only organic produce and do so reliably, you can approach 98% at least.

We already know that Roundup with its glyphosate is heavily used on GMO crops where the point of the genetic modification is to make the food crop survive its heavy use.

So if you avoid eating corn and canola and the other foods that are GMO and heavily sprayed, you can avoid the harms from glyphosate or at least cut them way down.

Since the grains fed animals fed grain are heavily sprayed with herbicides, avoiding protein foods that come from animals fed grain avoids a BIOCONTRATED exposure to the herbicides used.

But in the United States, I found out in a recent email from

Alliance for Natural Health USA

    with the article at:  http://www.anh-usa.org/as-bad-as-glyphosate/

that there is another threat to your health -- harming your love making and reproductive abilities in particular -- that is as grave a health threat as Glyphosate.

It also is used on foods that most people eat including one kind of oil some people think of as a health food.

Here are some quotes from that article:

[As I often do, any comments I add are in these kinds of brackets.]

"As Bad as Glyphosate? Atrazine likely is bad or even worse AND it builds up in ground water too!

What the EPA did report, however, vindicates the research of Tyrone Hayes, PhD, who found that atrazine exposure was chemically castrating male frogs.

Atrazine does not typically kill animals outright, but has been shown to adversely affect their developmental, hormonal, and reproductive systems. In its draft report, the EPA also acknowledges that adverse effects on animals can occur at exposure levels much lower than previously thought.

The EPA is expected to release its assessment of atrazine’s impact on human health later this year.

But the risk to farm children is already known to be particularly severe. One analysis of towns in the “corn belt” found that tap water in some communities contained fourteen times the legally allowed amount of atrazine.

In some towns, infants reached their maximum lifetime safe dosage of atrazine in less than four months. This analysis was done in the late 1990s—and levels are almost certainly worse, since more and more of the stuff is being dumped on crops each year.

Its use is banned in Europe because they found it contaminated ground water enough to be problematic and as a chlorinated hydrocarbon it lasts for over 22 years once it reaches that level.”

I looked up the crops atrazine is used on in the United States and found that the water in many of the cities that are in farming country or on the Mississippi River that drains them have dangerous enough tap water to be worth paying up for filters for your drinking and cooking water and the water you use for bathing or showers.

Here’s what I found:

Atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the United States, is intentionally applied to crops, especially corn, sugarcane, pineapples, and sorghum.

It's also used on "Triazine Tolerant (TT) canola" AND Golf courses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine has a map of the states likely to have dangerous atrazine levels in their drinking water:

Roughly the states from the Southern part of South Dakota to Kansas East to Southern Michigan and Ohio and the cities on the Mississippi river from there (St Louis to Memphis to Little Rock and downstream from there and heaviest in Iowa and Illinois.)

Also, if atrazine is used on sugar cane and pineapple in Hawaii, some cities in Hawaii may be affected.

If cane sugar is from atrazine sprayed sugar cane and beet sugar from sugar beets is mostly GMO, most sugar likely has Glyphosate or Atrazine residue.

Almost as bad, 96% of canola oil is from Triazine Tolerant (TT) canola which is GMO and also sprayed with atrazine.

1.  This suggests that not eating most beet or cane sugar may be wise, not just because excess sugar is bad for you; but because such sugars may contain these herbicide contaminants.

Because I’ve not seen sources of organic, nonGMO beet or cane sugar – or molasses that comes from sugar cane, it may be that the only safe kind of sugar to eat is raw, local honey and real maple syrup. 

2.  Canola oil even from organic sources which is supposed to be nonGMO such as Whole Foods uses is harmful due to its high amount of pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils.  I even saw on Mike Geary’s website that it contains some hydrogenated oils, which cause heart and other diseases.

This atrazine information means that the canola oil many people use IS from GMO canola and is even worse for your health.

So the canola oil you may know to avoid already and factory farmed sources of protein and sugar and high fructose corn syrup made from corn was all well worth avoiding.

Now you know a second reason to avoid these foods!   

My monthly fatloss report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 8-22-2016

A.  Here's the key news.  Not good as yet, unfortunately.

1.  I gained about one pound from 163 to 164. 

My chest and hips were the same as last month.

But I gained about half an inch on my waist

I gained that pound in the week between last Saturday, 8-20 and the Saturday before, 8-13 despite eating a bit less on the things I intended to eat less. 

But I was under unusual stress and had some extra food on Sunday, 8-14.  (It was steamed carrots; so I think the pound of weight gain and the one half inch gain on my waist was the extra stress.)

Also, by NOT losing 2 or 3 pounds that week and the other week last month where I wanted and tried to do so, my fatloss progress for the whole month was pretty much not there.

Clearly I need to add more muscle and change what I eat to supply less calories those two weeks in order to make progress.

a) I’m going to start going to the gym three or four weeks a month.

b) And, I’ve a plan too to cut my calories on my two cut down weeks.

c) Lastly, I’m about to add a supplement that has a track record of improving sleep quality and day time energy AND also shows muscle gain and fat loss from the belly area -- perhaps because of those things.

I may or may not get confirmation right away on the muscle gain or fat loss.  But the greater day time energy and sleep quality I’ll know about soon!

The supplement that I’m trying -- to get more energy without drinking more coffee or tea -- is Bulletproof’s, MCT 8, “Brain Octane.”  According to them, MCT 8 is one of the two versions that power your brain best and the best or mildest tasting of the MCT fractions.

It just came as I had it shipped to my part time day job.   It is quite usable! It’s close to tasteless and about the same consistency in the cold coffee I added it to as coconut oil that is blended  to be liquid at room temperature.

By the next report in four weeks, I’ll be able to report on how well it did on providing me extra energy and mental clarity without more coffee.

And, in addition to that, it’s said to enable you to do intermittent fasting without excess hunger or rebound problems by providing your brain energy without your normal food intake.

By next month, I’ll have my first test result:  In a month, were there any weight losses or inches lost, from two days of partial fasting and two days of more thorough fasting?

2.  Surprisingly bad news on the new scale!  In round numbers it cost me $90 and is no better at all than the $30 two scales I already had.

It did come in time to try it last time & this time.

If it IS more accurate, it says I weigh a pound more than they do. 

Every Saturday that is closest to the 18^th of the month, I weigh myself both before breakfast and after breakfast. . (My breakfast and milk and water weigh about 1.5 to 2 pounds.)

Both my old and new scales showed I gained close to that much weight

(They sometimes have not!)   Did the new scale show that?  Nope.  It said I gained no weight at all.  Oh my. It did that last month AND this month too!

For three times as much money, it is no better at all. (I think it will weigh up to 400 pounds though where the cheaper ones top out at less than that.)

In fact, I think it may be the worst of the three.  So, I’m continuing to take the average of those other less expensive two to get a somewhat accurate reading.

So, I don’t yet have a digital scale small enough to use at home in a small space to recommend to you.  The ones in my doctor’s office that are actually accurate, are available for sale but cost over $800 and are a bit large for home use since they have the height measure too.

Some company must have an accurate floor digital scale with no height measurement to make it oversize that costs a good bit less than $800.

In today’s world, with a working scale that does the job, it should be technically possible and there IS a huge untapped market for one:

Almost all of us trying to lose fat or add muscle will buy one if we simply find out which company!

(I’ll keep you posted on that one!)

B.  Other topics:

1.  So far the other things I’ve been doing for food and exercise are still preventing me from gaining significantly more fat or losing muscle which most men my age ARE doing.

So, I keep doing them and do what I can to improve them.

2.  And, my heart health measures recently were excellent again -- plus my blood pressure is still a bit better. 

(As of this last measurement, I’ve lowered my LDL cholesterol from 130 or more to 65 with no drugs needed at all. My HDL is still 99 and my triglycerides are 35.

Last week my blood pressure readings went up a couple of notches because of the stress; but because of the new supplement and the two low dose blood pressure drugs it went from quite good to just barely at the lower side of high blood pressure & on the first reading only.

This is still MUCH better than it was during weeks with comparable stress before.

3.  I continue to get slightly stronger each month even though I cannot yet get to the gym to use their heavier weights.

On the tricep dumbbell exercise that I do, I can now do as many reps with 50 pounds that I once could do with 40 pounds and 35 pounds before that.

On the dumbbell curls I can now do as many reps with my new 45 pound dumbbell as I could do with 40 pounds before that.

So, once I can get to the gym and repeat this process with the much heavier barbell exercises for my legs, butt, and lower back, I believe I can finally add some additional muscle mass and weight.

I’ve learned the process and am quite confident I can repeat it.

Conclusion:

The new supplement that may power more fat loss than I’ve managed and give me more energy too, is the big story this time.

By next time, I may have encouraging initial news.

I look forward to seeing if it does those two jobs for me!    

Ways to fix 10 fatloss blocks….

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 8-18-2016

A few posts back we covered the basics of fat loss.

Yesterday, I got an email saying that to lose fat you keep off, lose all your excess fat, and lose fat if something blocks your fat loss, there are 6 common causes that you may need to check and fix.

Then I found 4 more in a Reader’s Digest that I thought worth including.

So this post has those and some ways to fix them.

6 Weird Reasons You Can’t Lose Weight  in a Sharecare email yesterday, 8-17 had these:

1.  Prescription medications

2.  Certain medical conditions

3.  Menopause effects

4.  Your friends

5.  Stress

6.  Bad habits

And the Reader’s Digest article added these 4 I think worth listing of their 8 they listed.

7.  You eat when you’re distracted

8.  You dine out for every meal

9.   You rely on dieting alone

10. You starve yourself.

1.  Prescription medications

Many drugs prevent fat loss or even cause fat gain!

Many of them are, from what we’ve read, undesirable or ineffective drugs.  And other ways to make the condition better not only don’t block fat loss, they are more effective solutions.

In other cases, there are other drugs that do that job as well but don’t block fat loss that your doctor or pharmacist can help you find.

Here’s a quote from the Sharecare article:

“ “About 60% of my [obese patients] are on antidepressants,” says Dr. Brown, “and that’s one of the most common [medications] that leads to weight gain.” Some allergy medications and beta-blockers for cardiac issues can also interfere with weight loss.

It’s important to remember that you should never abruptly stop taking something you’ve been prescribed. Instead, speak with your doctor about your prescriptions and the possible side effects. He or she can usually offer alternatives that won’t work against your weight loss.”

The antidepressants currently in use increase serotonin in the blood where it causes problems while vitamin D3 if you take 5,000 iu a day or more.  So D3 does help some people and the antidepressants currently in use tend not to.  So the alternative methods in the book by Stephen Ilardi such as D3 and exercise and sleep improvement and social engagement do help. So this solution is to stop the antidepressants.  But they are addictive and can be quite challenging to stop taking.  But by doing so and using the other methods that do help, it is possible to stop antidepressants from blocking fat loss.

Beta blockers and statins can often prevent the exercises that help prevent heart disease and turn off depression and help with fat loss from making you fit and delivering those benefits!

Statins even often cause muscle damage and type 2 diabetes.  Fortunately, many other things DO cut heart attack risk AND the death rate from heart disease quite a bit more effectively than statins.

Mercifully, the foods and drinks that CAUSE you to become fat also are heart attack starters! So totally stopping them all makes fat loss MUCH easier.  And, doing so reduces heart disease more than taking statin drugs.

Not only that, the most effective known way to cut heart disease risk and the death rate from heart disease is to eat 6 or more servings a day – or even approach that many – of organic vegetables other than potatoes.  And that too helps fat loss.  Many people who successfully start doing this lose 25 pounds of fat with no effort to eat less!

In addition, as I’ve found by doing it myself and have posted on, many supplements from DHA to deodorized garlic improve your heart health blood indicators as much or more as statin drugs.

Beta blockers are less harmful but do prevent exercise from being effective.  And like antidepressants, they are addictive and challenging to stop taking.  So they too tend to block fat loss.

This solution is harder but doable.  Things like yoga and tai chi and even other martial arts training often block overactive stress reactions better than beta blockers.

So does improving your social support network and becoming better at solving the problems that stress you.

And, there are other effective drugs to minimize high blood pressure to replace that effect of beta blockers.

Some antihistamine allergy relief medicines are anticholinergic drugs which have recently been found to also sharply increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

So it’s important to find a way NOT to take those and take other drugs or use other methods instead.

Replacing them is harder but there are 3 ways that can help:  Getting the desensitizing allergy shots works; for some milder allergies 500 mg a day of quercetin works without side effects; and better dust cleaning and air filters can also help.  (I once had some allergic asthma due to pollens in our local air.  While I was waiting in the ER for treatment, the super filtered air in the hospital from their excellent air filtration system cut my asthma in half.)

And for some things a knowledgable doctor or pharmacist can help.  For example, some birth control pills cause weight gain and block fat loss.  But some don’t!  So taking the ones that don’t instead can help.

2.  Certain medical conditions

Here’s a quote from the article:

“Some medical conditions can also cause you to hold on to or gain weight, despite your best efforts.

For example, a sluggish thyroid can slow your metabolism. [Treatment by a doctor who knows how to test for low level low thyroid and how to treat it can reverse this.  And ingesting absolutely no MSG not only directly helps with fat loss, it removes a common cause for low thyroid!]

Polycystic ovarian syndrome interferes with insulin levels in a way that can make it hard to lose weight. Cushing’s syndrome ups your body’s production of cortisol, causing weight gain around the midsection.

Insulin resistance affects your body’s ability to use insulin properly, increasing glucose levels and making you more susceptible to weight gain.

If you think a medical condition could be to blame for your weight woes, schedule an appointment with your doctor for an evaluation.”

And bring this list to have him or her check first!

Insulin resistance and too high blood sugar result from ingesting the foods and drinks that fatten you.  So totally stopping doing so can eliminate the need to take insulin or other drugs to do it for you.

Similarly, the same exercises, higher intensity, short duration cardio with rests; and effective strength training tend to reverse insulin resistance AND they also help with ensuring good health and help you lose fat too!

And, if you have done those and stopped any statins and still have some high blood sugar, the drug Metformin not only works, it HELPS cause fat loss.

If you can manage to use those methods instead of using insulin, it can make a huge difference in your ability to lose fat!  (Note that taking the methyl B12 lozenges helps avoid the one bad side effect of Metformin of reducing B12 levels.)

3.  Menopause

Here’s the quote from the article:

“The same changes responsible for symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings could be to blame for lackluster weight loss.

“Hormonal fluctuations do contribute to weight gain,” says Brown. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Studies have shown that changes in hormone levels cause the body to store more fat cells in the abdomen, leading to unwanted belly fat. Metabolism also slows during menopause, causing some women to gain around 10 pounds on average.”

In the early stages of menopause when this happens, recent research shows a woman’s heart health risk goes way up.

So by getting a low dose bioidentical estrogen patch AND following an inflammation preventing fat loss diet can do the triple of reducing this heart risk, helping the woman have less harsh symptoms, AND preventing this fat gain.

(See the book Anticancer for details; and eat a high vegetable, no grain version of the Mediterranean diet. 

Foods like avocados, raw tree nuts, for those not allergic, and extra virgin olive oil have been found to be satisfying and heart protective and NOT support the inflammation that grain oils like corn and soy an canola do.

Similarly eating wild caught fish and sustainable seafood lowers inflammation and has heart protective effects.

Eating these foods you can eat well and be less fat AND have less inflammation and heart disease too!)

4.  Your friends

“It’s great if you have supportive friends that motivate you in your weight loss goals. But if you have the kind that would prefer you join them for a beer after work rather than hit the gym, they could be derailing your plans, says Brown.

Researchers from Harvard found that if a friend becomes obese, than your chance of becoming obese goes up by 57% (if it’s a close friend, your risk increases 171%!) Why? Researchers seem to think it has to do with social norms – being overweight is more acceptable if your friends are overweight.

To stay on track, surround yourself with people who encourage healthy habits. “

Two ways to do this are to:

Challenge yourself to become like those who teach exercise and healthful eating and fatloss who are NO  longer fat and to read their work and watch their videos.

Another way to do this is to socialize with fatter friends on Facebook instead of going out to eat with them!

Just ran out of time today.  So the remaining 6 topics will be in future posts.