The Nutrition Reporter™

The Religion of Nutrition

2011-02-25T13:20:00.001-07:00

I’ve been writing about nutrition for 30-some years. As I listen to people, I often hear less science and more of what could best be described as a variety of belief systems.

There are the vegetarian, vegan, and macrobiotic sects. There’s the church of low-fat eating. And there’s the pervasive belief that everything boils down to calories in and calories out, with exercise being the penance for overeating.

But the fact is, there’s very little science to support many common nutrition beliefs. They’re just beliefs. And having millions of adherents or thousands of experts repeat the same mantras doesn’t make these beliefs truer.

I know this sounds like heresy to many of you. And I’m not trying to offend anyone’s nutritional or religious sensibilities. But the only food we definitely know we were meant to consume is breast milk, in infancy.

In anthropology, the term “belief system” is usually used to describe a religion. And when it comes to nutrition, many scientists and consumers are so wedded to their beliefs that they’re not interested in adjusting their beliefs in response to new scientific findings.

I’ll give you three examples.

Saturated Fat. Millions of people believe that low-saturated fat diets will prevent heart disease. But the research now shows the opposite to be true. Saturated fat is either neutral or protective, according to an impressive body of research. It’s the refined carbs and sugars and the trans fats that seem to be the real problem in cardiovascular risk.

Why do so many people still believe that saturated fat is bad? It’s a matter of belief — shaped by studies that failed to factor in the effects of carbs, sugars, and trans fats, as well as publication bias favoring the sat-fat-is-bad belief.

Calories. Nearly everyone believes that, to lose weight, you have to either eat less or exercise more. But different types of calories prompt different biological responses. Nutrients that trigger insulin — think carbs and sugars — are more likely to result in weight gain, compared with protein. Protein has little effect on insulin.

The calorie idea was based on energy transfer in steam engines and the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. Biological systems — you are a biological system — are far less efficient and are governed by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Vegetarian diets. If you look at the history of human cultures, as anthropologists and other scientists have done, you’ll realize that there have been no completely vegetarian cultures. People simply didn’t have the luxury to be so picky about food until relatively recently. Yes, veggies are good for health, but so is unadulterated animal protein. Biologically, we’re designed as omnivores.

Vegetarianisms and its many forms are a belief system. Understand that I have no issue with any sensible vegetarian. However, I’ve met many vegetarians who don’t eat vegetables and prefer sugary soft drinks, bagels, and muffins. Should any of us be surprised that they are often overweight and have a lot of health problems?

Again, I’m not trying to offend anyone or their beliefs. Rather, I’d like to encourage people to gain a better understanding of what shapes their nutritional beliefs and to remain open to where the scientific evidence leads.

SOME REFERENCES:
Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, H FB, Krauss RM. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2010;91:535-545.

Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, H FB, Krauss RM. Saturated fat, carbohydrate, and cardiovascular disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2010;91:502-509.

Feinman RD, Fine EJ. “A calorie is a calorie” violates the second law of thermodynamics. Nutrition Journal 2004;3:9-13.

Feinman RD, Fine EJ. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics and energy efficiency in weight loss diets. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 2007;4:27 doi:10.1186/1742-4682-4-27.

Eaton SB, Eaton SB III, Konner MJ, et al. An evolutionary perspective enhances understanding of human nutritional requirements. Journal of Nutrition, June 1996;126:1732-40.

O'Keefe JH Jr, Cordain L. Cardiovascular disease resulting from a diet and lifestyle at odds with our Paleolithic genome: how to become a 21st-century hunter-gatherer. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2004;79:101-108.

Stepping Back from Political Fanaticism

2011-01-11T13:33:00.002-07:00

I live in Tucson, Arizona, just a few miles from where Congresswoman Gabrielle "Gabby" Giffords was shot in the head at a public meet and greet on January 8. Six people were killed, including a nine-year-old girl, and 12 (including Giffords) were wounded. Giffords is one of the sweetest people imaginable, someone who somehow remained untainted by the vicious tone of American politics. A democrat, she always worked with the republican party to get things done. This is the way politics should operate in achieving something for the common good.

The gunman was obviously nuts - would a sane person praise both "Mein Kampf" and "The Communist Manifesto" and then shoot 20 people? Our county sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, summed things up accurately when he stated that Arizona had become a "mecca for prejudice and bigotry." This was the latest event that put Arizona's nuttiness on the national stage. Too many people here in Arizona and around the country now feel it's socially acceptable to be totally unhinged and scream and shove, call elected representatives names, and, in this case, shoot away. Arizona suffers from a serious case of hardening of the attitudes, and Sheriff Dupnik is a sane voice in an insane state.

My own politics are left of center on most issues. (If you disagree, simply respect my views.) I am, however, a gun owner - but I'm not a hothead or wacko or paranoid. (My guns are strictly for self-defense, something suggested decades about by the two most liberal people I knew back then.) However, I am critical of many gun owners and the gun-owner community, where paranoia runs deep. Arizona has always been on the fringe and has had more than it's share of wacky politicians.

Thanks to a right-wing dominated legislature, and a right-wing governor, it is now legal for anyone over 18 to carry guns openly or concealed in Arizona; no training is required. This means it's more difficult to get a driver's license or a bottle of beer than to buy a gun and carry it under your shirt. (I've opted to go through gun training twice.) Now, the republican state government wants to allow teachers and students to be able to carry guns on college campuses. It's totally insane. Welcome to the modern day Tombstone and the OK Corral.

In response, some local talk radio hosts ranted about how inappropriate Sheriff Dupnik's comments about hatred and bigotry were, and call-ins spouted their own vitriol about the Sheriff. Sadly, they were too dumb to realize they were proving Dupnik's point about hatred and intolerance.

The local paper related comments that were posted on latimes.com, and washingtonpost.com: "So, Congresswoman Giffords, how's that Obamacare working out for you?" and "Too bad it wasn't Howard Dean or Al Gore." Sarah Palin, who targeted democrats on her website, including gunscope crosshairs on Giffords' district, now claims those weren't gun crosshairs but those of a surveyor's scope. And Glenn Beck posted a statement on his website that he's against violence, next to a photo of him holding a gun. These people are out of touch and delusional.

If there will be any good that comes out of this tragedy, it will be that people and politicians will learn to turn down the level of vitriol and viciousness and political jingoism. After all, it could just as easily have been a republican who was shot. It's time to turn down the volume and look at the things we have in common, even when our political views differ. It's about respecting our differences the way you would want other people to respect your differences.

Turn down the volume folks. Listen with respect. Seek to understand rather than to persuade.

Vitamin E and Stroke Risk

2010-12-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the British Medical Journal, a news release from the publisher, and news stories published around the world was nothing less than misleading and alarming. The article, based on an analysis of nine previously published studies, reported that vitamin E supplements increased the risk of stroke.

Wait a minute! The study and all the negative publicity were deeply flawed.

First, none of the individual studies had found an increased risk of stroke. Second, the dosages varied from 300 IU to 800 IU of vitamin E daily, some using natural and others using synthetic vitamin E. The studies ranged from about a year and one-half to 10 years, the subjects varied from middle-age to seniors, and some were healthy while others were at high risk of cardiovascular disease (and whom were likely to be taking several medications). With this disparate data, the researchers concluded that one additional person in every 1,250 taking vitamin E would suffer a hemorrhagic (bleeding) stroke, whereas about 2.6 additional people in 1,250 would be less likely to suffer an ischemic (clotting) stroke.

You would think that the significantly greater reduction in ischemic stroke would be the subject of headlines. But it wasn’t. The researchers downplayed the benefits, and headlines warned that vitamin E increased the risk of stroke.

Here’s what else you need to know: you are far more likely to suffer an ischemic stroke. That’s because 90 percent of all strokes are related to blood clots. You are far less likely to suffer a hemorrhagic stroke; they account for only 10 percent of all strokes.
Even though this study was poorly designed, it showed that vitamin E supplements significantly reduced the risk of the most common type of stroke, whereas it slightly increased the risk of the least common stroke. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist – or a statistician – to figure out that the benefits:risk ratio of vitamin E supplements is strongly in your favor.

Mixed Messages for Health Care

2010-12-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Two recent newswire stories caught my attention. One article noted that there will be a significant shortage of doctors as “baby boomers” hit their 60s and 70s. The other story noted that too much health care is unnecessary and harmful.
Am I the only one who saw a contradiction here?

The second story, sent to newspapers by the Associated Press, noted that “More medical care won’t necessarily make you healthier—it may make you sicker.” The article went on to report that as many as one in three medical tests and treatments aren’t needed.

Fewer medical tests might not be a popular idea among people who keep asking their doctors to identify the cause and then to treat their aches and pains and other health problems. But I would agree, at least to an extent – conventional medical tests and treatments are overused, while nutritional assessments and treatments are sorely underutilized.

In the United States, medicine is a “for profit” business, and most doctors earn a living through some sort of intervention, such as by prescribing a drug or doing surgery. When a patient asks for help, his expectation is that the doctor will do something. Of course, doctors are trained to intervene, and income is related to ordering more tests and doing more interventions. Sometimes the result is iatrogenic disease – physician-caused illness.

Although I believe most doctors are sincere and do want to help their patients, they also know the economic realities of medicine. But not everyone is so sincere. Some years back, I happened to be meeting with a hospital administrator on the morning the government announced that it was reducing Medicare payments to doctors. The administrator was livid. “Do you know what the doctors are going to do?” she asked rhetorically. “They’ve got big mortgages and boats and kids in college. They’re just going to wheel in more patients so they (the docs) don’t have to take a cut in income.”

So, do we really need more doctors? Or unnecessary tests and treatments? Or do we need more doctors who think in terms of more efficient and lower cost nutritional therapies?

Vitamin D: The "Safe" Official Recommendation May Be Dangerous to Your Health

2010-11-30T13:34:00.003-07:00

In a report issued today by the Institute of Medicine, a committee of physicians and researchers cautioned against taking large amounts of supplemental vitamin D and calcium because they are unnecessary and potentially harmful. However, the committee did recommend slight increases in the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) for calcium (1,000 to 1,300 mg/d) and vitamin D (600 IU/d).

If you follow the advice of the Institute of Medicine, you'll increase your long-term risk of disease.

It’s always safer for researchers and physicians to take the more conservative approach when recommending supplements—except that it reveals a naiveté about clinical nutrition and can lead to chronic nutritional deficiencies and harm to patients. That is the case with this cautious increase in the RDA for vitamin D, combined with a warning about high-dose vitamin D supplementation. Maintaining the status quo by saying “no” to higher dose supplements carries relatively little risk, at least for doctors. It's a very different story for the average person, though.

The truth is that three of every four Americans are deficient or marginally deficient in vitamin D, a number that most likely gets even worse during the winter months when people huddle indoors. (Ginde AA. Arch Intern Med, 2009;169:626-632.) By refusing to acknowledge the scale of vitamin D deficiency, and the easy and inexpensive means of treating it, the committee from the National Institute of Medicine is guilty of malpractice. The committee members have reversed the Hippocratic Oath, from “first do no harm” to “first do harm.” Their action, or lack of action, is simply unconscionable.

The situation was made even worse by incredibly sloppy reporting in newspapers, particularly by Gina Kolata of the New York Times. In her article in today's NYT, she simply related a summary of the Institute of Medicine’s report without critical comment by any expert on vitamin D, such as Michael Holick, M.D., Reinhold Veith, Ph.D., or Robert Heaney, M.D. No mainstream reporter would be so uncritical in echoing a self-serving news release from politicians or corporations. But then, the committee did not even include a recognized expert on vitamin D, so the cautious nature of report may have reflected the fact that the committee members were out of their depth.

The cost of ongoing vitamin D deficiencies will mount with susceptibility to infectious diseases and a greater risk of cancer, heart disease, and depression. But then, there is much more money to be made on treating these diseases than on preventing them.

Too Much to Do ... and Only One Jack

2010-08-12T16:30:00.002-07:00

Has it really been months since my last post?

Apologies. I've been very busy writing and traveling and lecturing about nutrition and health. And reviewing the edited manuscript of my next book, on fatigue and energy, to be published in March 2011.

Enjoy the blogs posted below.

Jack

Attacks on Multivitamins

2010-08-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

I like to read what other newsletters and magazines write about vitamin supplements. The Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter, Reader’s Digest, and even Prevention recently published long articles attacking multivitamins. These rabid attacks cited widely criticized scientific articles, and by repeating misinformation, they may have misguided and harmed millions of people.

As one example, the Tufts newsletter claimed to investigate the “top 20” multivitamin supplements (apparently those sold in drug stores) and warned that they don’t contain enough calcium and vitamin D for bone health, not enough antioxidants for eye health, not enough DHA (one of the omega-3s), not enough ginkgo, not enough bilberry, and not enough probiotics.

First, I could quibble about ingredients in multivitamins, but these formulas have never been intended as the end all of
supplements. They’re basically a form of nutritional insurance, one that’s needed more than ever given the disastrous state of malnutrition in the United States and other Western nations. It’s physically impossible to pack ideal amounts of every nutrient into a capsule or tablet.

Second, in its diatribe against multivitamins, the nutritionally conservative Tufts newsletter indirectly suggested that, if people wanted higher potencies of some nutrients or herbs, they should go buy standalone supplements of calcium and D, lutein, antioxidants, DHA, ginkgo, bilberry, and probiotics. After all, if you can’t get enough of these nutrients in a multivitamin, it only makes sense to make up the difference with whatever individual supplements are important to your health.

There is so much good research supporting the benefits of taking a high-potency multivitamin. Taking a daily multi reduces inflammation and your risk of heart disease, cancer, mood problems and many other health problems.

I have long recommended that people take at least a high-potency multivitamin, and I continue making this recommendation. Given the millions of Americans (and others) who do not get adequate nutrition, it only makes sense.

Who Says You Don’t Need Supplements?

2010-08-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

A recent article on supplements in the New York Times said what we’ve all heard a hundred times before: “Doctors and nutritionists say that people who eat a normal diet generally don’t need nutritional supplements, even if they exercise vigorously.”

The problem is such statements have absolutely no foundation.

First, what exactly is a normal diet? The definition varies among cultural and ethnic groups. Is it normal to eat the typical American (Western) diet, rich in sugars, starches, and unhealthy oils? Is it normal to eat on the run, out of boxes and microwave ovens?

Second, even if you assume that a normal diet is one consisting of fish, chicken, veggies, and other whole foods, are you really absorbing adequate amounts of the nutrients in foods? Eating healthy foods is certainly important, but poor absorption means you may not be getting those nutrients.

Third, drugs almost always interfere with nutrient absorption and utilization – and half of Americans take at least one prescription drug. Acid blockers (where prescription or over the counter products) reduce absorption of vitamins B12 and C and probably others. Antibiotics, oral contraceptives, and other common medications interfere with many of the B vitamins.
If you want to take the guesswork out of what you need and don’t need, find a nutritionally oriented doc who can measure your blood levels of nutrients. Such measurements aren’t perfect, but they do provide an idea of what you’re absorbing.

The idea that eating right means you don’t need supplements belongs in the wastebasket, along with another stupid idea: taking supplements and you’ll just make expensive urine. The truth is that everything that goes into the body eventually exits in one form or another. So if someone tells you that vitamins only make expensive urine, remind them that the $30 steak and $50 bottle of wine they had in a restaurant made even more expensive  urine.

Food Addictions and Overweight

2010-08-12T16:26:00.001-07:00

Each new year prompts millions of people to go on diets and sign up for gym memberships to lose weight and get back into shape. Within a month or two, most people resume their former eating and sedentary habits, leading to an annual weight gain.

Why are the vast majority of Americans now overweight or obese? There are many reasons, including the lipogenic effects of high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, and simply eating too many empty calories, most of which are cheap mass-produced carbohydrates and fats.

A commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal focused on what I have long believed: that unrecognized food addictions are a major factor in overweight and obesity. The concept of food addictions, the authors wrote, is controversial – but there are many similarities to drug and alcohol addictions. Powerful cravings and withdrawals symptoms are signs of food addictions. And interestingly enough, anti-opioid drugs seem to reduce food cravings.

There are many factors behind food addictions. Some foods, such as wheat and dairy, contain trace amounts of natural opioids. Sweet foods stimulate the brain’s production of its own opioids. Some foods lead to increased dopamine levels – one of the brain’s pleasure neurotransmitters.

Breaking food addictions is like dealing with any other addiction: It’s going to be rough for a little while. But once an addiction is broken, most people gain a renewed sense of well being. During this process, it certainly helps to be mindful of what you put into your mouth – and to stop rationalizing that a little bit of this and a little bit of that won’t hurt. Just as a little bit of tobacco, alcohol, or cocaine will sabotage some people, little bits of problematic foods will reestablish food addictions.

Up and Down Media Reports

2010-08-12T16:24:00.001-07:00

The media roller coaster continued with recent news reports on the good and bad of nutritional supplements – all without providing any real context.

In one study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers combined either niacin (a form of vitamin B3) and a statin drug or the drug Zetia with a statin (a combination known as Vytorin). The niacin combination worked far better in terms reducing the thickening of the carotid artery, a major blood vessel.

As good as niacin is, the finding was neither new nor surprising. Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, discovered that niacin lowers cholesterol back in 1955 – and it has been approved by the FDA for that purpose for more than 50 years.

Meanwhile, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study claiming that supplements of the B-vitamin folic acid increased the risk of cancer. The study was a statistical shell game. Folic acid allegedly increased the risk of cancer by 38 percent, but the results were not statistically significant.

If you read the actual study, not just the panicky newspaper and web news, you would have learned that 70 percent of the subjects were current or former smokers, all of the subjects had a high risk of cancer, and nearly all of the cases were lung cancers. Omitting this information was nothing less than sloppy journalism. So, if you smoke, should you stop taking your vitamins or stop smoking?

Gotta Answer That Call? Check That Email? Read That Text?

2010-01-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

In the 1970s—and yes, in a galaxy far away—I discovered the addictive power of Space Invaders, one of the first digital precomputer games.

I was at a holiday corporate retreat. One of my coworkers, Rob, and I discovered what was essentially an electronic pinball machine. The screen showed wave after wave of attacking enemy space ships. Our job was to blast them into oblivion.

Space Invaders practically became an addiction. We probably spent every quarter at the resort destroying digital aliens from outer space.

Flash forward. Space Invaders has morphed into email, texting, and twittering. We don’t need huge pinball-like machines anymore, just a cell phone and apps to experience the same dopamine rush and addiction.

Calls, emails, and texts are so addictive that California and a few other states have banned all but hands-free cell phone use when driving a car.

But you can multitask, you say? Think about that painfully slow driver in front of you, yacking on her cell phone and oblivious to the fact that she really can’t multitask. (Hint: you’re probably no better.) There’s the texter who killed a bicyclist. And yes, there’s the pedestrian whose emailing stopped when he was run over crossing the street.

But it’s not just bad habits states are trying to ban. And it’s not just stupidity. It’s addiction.

The New York Times has published several articles in a “driven to distraction” series, focusing on how drivers screw up when they’re making calls, emailing, or texting while driving. Another article focused on the absurdity of the Type n Walk app, which uses the iPhone’s camera to track the sidewalk ahead while you’re looking at your phone.

On one level it’s silly and absurd. On another it’s totally neurotic.

Technology has helped fuel what I call impulse-addictive behavior in my book, The Food-Mood Solution. Think obsessive-compulsive disorder or gambling addiction. You know it’s bad, but you can’t stop.

For many people it’s near impossible to resist the electronic ping. It has to be read and responded to immediately.

We’ve forgotten our basic prerogative: Just because a telephone rings doesn’t mean we have to answer it. That’s what Caller ID is for. Ditto for emails, texts, and twitters.

So why can’t we just ignore the beckoning technology?

A both a social scientist and a nutritionist, I naturally see connections between society, food, and mood. Our brain’s biochemistry ultimately depends on nutrition.

Technology has also changed the way we eat. Faster. Cheaper. Junkier. Yep, fast food is the nutrition equivalent of a twitter.

But junk food doesn’t give the brain the nutrients it needs to function.

So many of us get shortchanged when it comes to B-complex vitamins and omega-3s (fish oils), two of the most important groups of nutrients influencing mood and behavior.

So, if you have impulsive-control problems, I have a couple of suggestions. Consider slowing down enough to eat some real food. And taking a B-complex vitamin formula or one or two fish oil capsules in the morning. And, yeah, being a little more mindful.

You might just find that you’re back in control of your technology. Not the other way around.

Mmm Mmm Mmm Bad … Campbell’s Soup is Mmm Mmm Bad

2009-12-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

Campbell’s is like the Microsoft of the soup world. The company dominates the soup business, but it’s products…well…taste like crap.

Their soups are at best bland and mushy. Some contain so much salt that they’re the human equivalent of a salt lick. For example, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup provides a whopping 890 mg of sodium per serving, and 2,225 grams of sodium for a standard 10.75-ounce can.

Campbell’s now owns Swanson, the maker of various chicken broths and stocks. Until recently, Swanson spiked its tasteless products with monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer. But MSG is well documented as a cause of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.

I’m not joking. Every Chinese restaurant used to boost the flavor of its meals by adding MSG. But a fair number of customers complained of neck and muscle aches afterwards, the result of MSG. So now, a lot of Chinese restaurants don’t use MSG anymore.

But I digress.

Swanson recently introduced organic chicken, beef, and vegetable broths. Sounds like a great idea, right?

Well, on the company’s web site, the Swanson folks fess up to the fact that their broths contain 550 mg of sodium for each one-cup serving. A typical bowl of soup would contain about two cups, so that would add up to 1,100 mg of sodium. And maybe one blood-pressure cuff.

But no where on the Swanson website is a full listing of the products’ other ingredients. Ditto for the Campbell website. This is more than just peculiar, because even such junk-food hustlers as McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks list all of the ingredients in all of their products on their websites. (For example, a venti-size Starbucks banana coconut frappuccino with whipped cream provides 730 calories, including a quarter-pound of sugars.)

So that left me wondering what Swanson and Campbell might be hiding.

So I clicked to contact customer service and wrote a brief email asking for a complete list of ingredients for the Swanson Organic Chicken Broth. Sounds simple enough, right?

A few days later, campbellsoup@casupport.com responded:

“All of our products have nutritional labels that include the calorie, sodium, fat, cholesterol and carbohydrate content for a single serving. However, it is important to note that product recipes change frequently and ingredients are periodically added or replaced. Therefore, we suggest that you check each package for the most current nutritional information...
“I hope I've been able to answer your question. Please contact the Consumer Response Center or visit Campbell's website if you have additional questions.”

So I wrote back and said that they had NOT answered my question. And I also wondered, adding a list of full ingredients to the website can’t be all that difficult, could it? After all, it’s got to be easier to update a web page compared with…say, reformulating the ingredients in an industrial-size soup manufacturing facility.

Finally I went to both my local supermarket and Whole Foods, but did not find Swanson’s organic broths on the shelf. So their ingredients remain a mystery to me.

And after all this, I’m left wondering: Why couldn’t Campbell’s just be more up front about their ingredients and list them on the company’s website. Unless they really want to hide what’s in them.

‘Tis the Season: Sugar ‘n Stress

2009-12-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

It’s baaccccckkkkkkk…

That time of year, that is.

From Halloween through New Year’s Eve, all too many of us find excuses to be gluttons, from nibbling on leftover Halloween candies to all-out binging. I call it, ominously, the “SS” time — for sugar and stress.

There’s no denying that we expose ourselves to way too many holiday stresses, not the least of which are family, traffic, and shopping at the mall. When we’re stressed, our eating habits slide almost immediately. We delay eating or skip meals entirely. Then, when we’re crashing, we overeat, usually on junk foods.

And that’s a perfect prescription for making stress even worse.

Our brain’s biochemistry depends on what we eat. Or don’t eat. Neurotransmitters are built upon nutrients, particularly amino acids (protein building blocks) and B-complex vitamins. Even our genes depend on nutrients to work properly.

When our blood sugar falls and we crash, ancient parts of our brain light up. We become aggressive, irritable, impatient. Eating a sugary or starchy food solves the problem quickly, but starts a new up-and-down blood sugar cycle.

So, what can you eat to stress proof yourself?

A little bit of quality protein, such as fish or chicken, stabilizes blood sugar. So do high-fiber veggies, which include almost anything except potato.

Protein provides the amino acids you need to make serotonin and GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), which are calming neurotransmitters. They also provide the amino acids to make dopamine and adrenaline, two energizing neurotransmitters. Sugar and starches don’t provide any of this, so the more junk food you eat, the more you starve your brain.

We were all taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So begin the day with a little protein, and you’ll be more even tempered much of the day. An egg will do the job. So will a bowl of steel-cut (not instant!) oatmeal. Add some high-fiber fruit, such as an apple or some berries. Then be sure to include a little protein at lunch and dinner too.

If you’re taking prescription antidepressants or anxiolytics, better eating habits will help your meds do a better job.

To convert those amino acids to neurotransmitters, your brain needs the B-complex vitamins and vitamin C.

The Bs have been known as anti-stress vitamins since the 1940s. They are nature’s mood lifters and also take the edge off stress-induced anxiety. The B vitamins also play roles in breaking down food for energy, important if the season’s pressures and obligations tend to wear you down.

If you manage your stress and eating habits now, you just might not need to make a resolution about weight loss come January 1. That alone could put you in a better mood.

Copyright 2009 Jack Challem, www.nutritionreporter.com

Vitamin D May Help Protect Against the Flu

2009-10-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

Maintaining high levels of vitamin D this winter may enhance protection against the H1N1 flu, according to an analysis of deaths and complications from the 1918-1919 flu pandemic.

William B. Grant, PhD, of the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center in San Francisco, and Edward Giovannucci, MD, ScD, of the Harvard University School of Public Health, investigated the number of deaths and incidence of pneumonia associated with the deadly flu 90 years ago.

They found that the fewest deaths and cases of pneumonia occurred in two southern American cities included in the data analysis. Residents of those cities would have had the highest sunlight exposure and vitamin D production during the previous summer. The greatest number of deaths and pneumonia cases occurred in northern cities – those with less sun exposure.
Grant and Giovannucci noted that the fatal complications of flu result in part from a secondary bacterial infection, such as pneumonia.

Vitamin D is needed for the body’s production of cathelicidin, an antibacterial peptide that has been shown to fight tuberculosis and septicemia. Vitamin D also protects against endotoxins, which are released by bacteria when they are destroyed.

Reference: Grant WB, Giovannucci E. The possible roles of solar ultraviolet-B radiation and vitamin D in reducing case-fatality rates from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States. Dermato-Endocrinology, 2009;1:1-5.

The Downside of Multitasking

2009-10-16T09:16:00.001-07:00

Multitasking – doing two or more activities at once – has become part of the way of doing things.

There’s no way to completely avoid multitasking, but I have often argued against excessive multitasking. My reason is simple: it’s difficult for a person to do two things at the same time equally well. If you doubt me, just think about all the times that slow drivers were yacking on their cell phones in front of you. Their driving suffered because their phone call dominated their attention. You’re no better if you try to multitask.

Recently, researchers at Stanford University in California compared college students who did a lot of multitasking with those who did very little. The researchers figured that students who did the most multitasking would be better at it. They were wrong. It turned out that the students who did the most multitasking weren’t very good at it. The more they multitasked, the worse they were in terms of being easily distracted and filtering out irrelevant information, according to an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Why the surge in multitasking, including texting while driving, in recent years?

I believe there are two reasons. One, many new technologies, such as email, cell phones, and texting have encouraged distracting, impulsive-addictive behavior. Two, poorer eating habits, including excessive amounts of caffeine and junk foods low in B vitamins and omega-3 fats, have altered the biochemistry of millions of brains, leaving many people more susceptible to distractions and uncomfortable simply being alone with their thoughts. The solution? Healthier foods, perhaps some supplements, and learning to be mindful and in the moment.

More Thoughts on Health-Care Reform

2009-09-09T11:14:00.003-07:00

Whatever your political thinking happens to be, you can’t deny that the American health-care system is dysfunctional and in serious need of improvement. The late Emanuel Cheraskin, MD, DMD, once said it best: Medicine is America’s fastest growing failing business. His thinking applies to the entire health-care system, not just medicine.

Why does health care keep getting more expensive? One reason is that the current hodge-podge system is based on earning money through interventions – e.g., physician visits, tests, hospitalizations, surgeries, and prescriptions. I’m not against making money, but the incentive is for every part of the system to encourage more and more interventions, and the costlier the better. Money is made off illness; no illness means no profit.

As a consequence, there is little desire by anyone in health care to reduce the number of interventions or their cost. Nor is there much interest in saving money, because saving a few billion dollars translates to a company losing a few billion dollars in profits, and no company wants to lose money.

I do believe there is a need for some type of universal coverage. Indeed, my European associates are aghast at the thought that one of every six Americans does not have any insurance coverage to defray the cost of needed medical care. And those who do have insurance often have to haggle with their insurers about what procedures are covered and what are not. Quite simply, universal coverage is the ethical and moral way to treat our brethren.

But providing some type of universal insurance of medical coverage is not a solution in itself. Costs will eventually increase, and there will eventually be more pressures to cut services or ration care to rein in costs.

Real improvement in health care must come from a concerted effort to prevent disease and to reduce the need for medical care. I believe this would be best done through improved eating habits, greater physical activity, and other positive lifestyle changes. Without a genuine program geared toward prevention -- perhaps something along the lines of government efforts to curb smoking -- the costs of a health-care system (regardless of who pays) will eventually lead to its collapse.

Maybe someone will figure out that the health-care system could profit big time from prevention-oriented interventions. At least that's my hope.

The Swine Flu -- How Serious and Some Ways to Enhance Your Resistance

2009-07-25T19:32:00.001-07:00

The swine flu, or H1N1 influenza virus, emerged in Mexico this past spring. The timing was uncharacteristic of most flu viruses, and so was its genetic makeup. H1N1 bore an uncanny resemblance to the 1918 flu virus, which killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people worldwide. The 1918 virus initially appeared mild, seemed to disappear during the summer, then reemerged with deadly virulence in the fall and winter. Unlike most types of influenza, it tended to affect healthy people in their 20s, triggering a self-destructive immune reaction in people with the most robust immune systems.

Will this year’s H1N1 virus follow the same pattern as the 1918 flu? At this point, there is certainly the potential, but no one knows for sure. It’s too soon to panic, but it would be smart to prepare. I’m stocking up on some supplements, just in case.
I believe it’s important to take some key supple-ments daily for general protection, and then to ramp up the dosages on the first day of symptoms, before virus concentrations increase and the immune system overreacts. My flu-protection plan consists of the following:

N-acetylcysteine (NAC). This potent antioxidant is unsurpassed for suppressing flu symptoms. I take 500 mg daily, doubling this over the fall and winter. I’ve taken up to 5 to 6 grams daily to suppress flu and cold symptoms.

Vitamin D. I take 5,000 IU daily, but will briefly go up to 25,000 to counter flu or cold symptoms.

Vitamin C. Bowel tolerance increases during sickness, so take at least 2,000 mg daily and increase this to 10,000 mg or more to fight infections.

Selenium. This mineral helps prevent the creation of viral mutations that can damage the heart. Take 200 mcg daily, but increase it to 400 mcg if you’re fighting a flu or cold.

L-lysine. This amino acid inhibits the growth of viruses. I take it only when fighting an infection,  500 to 1,000 mg daily.
Zinc lozenges. These also help suppress cold and flu symptoms. Follow label instructions.

Oscillococcinum. This homeopathic remedy also seems to help. Follow label instructions.

Don’t forget: The office, family gatherings, and air travel are great opportunities to share infections. Wash your hands frequently, and if you’re sick, please stay home.

The “Single Cause” Fallacy

2009-07-25T19:29:00.001-07:00

One of the foundations of modern medicine is that each disease has a single cause – identify the cause and a drug treatment will follow. The idea certainly helps with the marketing and sales of drugs, but it denies the complexity of most disease processes.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared that cancer would be cured by 1976. Over the years, we’ve read hundreds (if not thousands) of promising news releases and scientific papers suggesting that the “latest” discovery could very well lead to a cure, or at least to effective treatments, for cancer. Despite all of the research – hundreds of billion dollars of funding – the death rate from cancer between 1950 and 2005 has decreased by only 5 percent. In contrast, deaths from heart disease decreased by 64 percent during this time.

Although all types of cancer share many features, such as the proliferation of abnormal cells, cancers can have many different causes. Alterations in gene function are at the root of cancer, but they can result from any number of factors, including poor nutrition, elevated hormone levels, and environmental toxins. Damage to some individual genes, such as the p53 and BRCA, certainly increase the risk of cancer.

But the research increasingly shows that cancers don’t develop because of one or two genes that go bad. Rather, cancers are the consequence of a lot going wrong and going out of control. An analogy: instead of one musician hitting a bad note, cancer is more like all of the musicians in an orchestra repeatedly hitting the wrong notes.

So if cancer does not have a single cause, what’s the best way to tackle the disease? The only sensible approach is to emphasize prevention – eating better diets, taking some nutritional supplements, exercising, and creating an environment with fewer environmental toxins.

I don’t think we’ll ever eliminate cancer or identify a “cure,” but through mindful living we can certainly reduce the risk of cancer and the number of people who must undergo surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation – treatments that often produce as much suffering as the disease itself.

Sugar Wars – Nothing Natural About Them

2009-07-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

Despite the worldwide economic recession, one type of business seems to be profiting: candy shops.

Most of us have our comfort foods. It may be chicken soup, a slice of pizza, or a chunk of chocolate. A recent article in the New York Times reported that business in candy shops is booming. Business is especially good for inexpensive sweets, such as Hershey Kisses, compared with more expensive indulgences.

Interestingly, this sweet-tooth trend coincides with another trend, a shift from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) back to old-fashion sugar (sucrose). Begin-ning in the 1980s, HFCS became the sweetener of choice in processed foods, soft drinks, and candies. It was sweeter than sucrose, had a longer shelf life, and less expensive. Consumption of HFCS skyrocketed, while sucrose consumption plummeted – though the average American’s consumption of all added sugars has continued to climb to about 160 pounds per year.

Sucrose is a chemical compound, whereas HFCS is a blend of fructose and glucose, which leads to different metabolic effects. HFCS does a better job of raising triglycerides (a marker of diabetes and heart disease risk), and is more likely to lead to weight gain (in comparison to sucrose).

A lot of people (including me) complained about HFCS, and the giant junk food companies apparently listened. They’ve started returning to sucrose as a sweetener in frozen dinners, tomato sauces, salad dressings, and other products. With incredible audacity, companies are now describing sucrose as natural and healthy.

Natural and healthy? While HFCS does appear worse than sucrose, that doesn’t make sucrose a healthy alternative. The ideal dietary solution is to emphasis fresh foods and to avoid packaged foods, especially those with any type of added sugar.

The Mind-Body Connection

2009-07-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

Many people remain skeptical of a clear body-mind connection – that our life experiences and emotions can have a profound effect on our hard-wired biology. While animal studies have clearly shown that a mother’s style of nurturing can affect her offspring’s lifelong behavior and physical health, scientific studies showing a clear mind-body link in people have been limited.

Now, researchers have clearly shown that the behavior of some genes can be permanently changed by psychological factors during childhood.

Researchers from McGill University in Montreal compared two groups of brain cells. Some cells were obtained from people who had been abused as children and later committed suicide, and other brain cells came from people who had committed suicide but who had not been abused as children.

The researchers, writing in Nature Neuroscience (2009; doi 10.1038/nn.2270), explained how they investigated specific stress-response genes and cell receptors for cortisol on brain cells. When people are stressed – as in the case of children who are being abused – their levels of cortisol, a key stress hormone, swell.

In most people, the brain increases the activity of stress-response genes and the number of cell receptors involved in clearing cortisol from the brain. However, these genes were roughly 40 percent less active in cells from people who had been abused as children. In other words, being abused permanently changed the activity genes that would have helped buffer the effects of stress later in life.

The biological explanation for this mind-body connection lies in the science of “epigenetics.” Every one of our bodies’ cells contains about 20,000 genes, which can be considered our “hardware.” Epigenetics is more like our modifiable genetic “software.” Nutrition, stress, and toxins are among the key modifiers of our epigenetic programming, which turns genes on and off. Amazingly, epigenetic changes caused by nutrition and experience can be passed from one generation to the next.

In Praise of Evolution

2009-02-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

The never-ending arguments about evolution and creationism (or intelligent design) mystify me. I can’t understand why one of the most beautiful and fascinating aspects of biology is so controversial.

Evolution is all about change, adaptation, and dumb luck. It’s nature’s version of the Las Vegas crapshoot. It’s exciting, and sometimes scary.

From a biological standpoint, evolutionary changes result from a genetic roll of the dice (every time an egg is conceived) or from mutations (random changes to our genes). Most of these changes don’t mean a thing, a few alter our appearance or increase our risk of disease, and once in a while they give us nature’s version of seven-eleven.

Cancer is a good example of evolution in action. Cancers evolve, and they are a microcosm of the entire evolutionary process. I doubt that anyone would ever argue that cancer is just a theory.

Cancers develop from mutations that change the programming of our genes and the behavior of cells. When doctors treat cancer with chemo or radiation, they destroy the weakest cells, but cells with treatment-resistant genetic mutations survive. That’s natural selection—part of the evolutionary process—and that’s why most cancers eventually return.

The randomness of evolutionary process can be unforgiving or serendipitous. You never know how the dice will roll. A moth born bright yellow becomes easy pickings for a bird. But a moth of a different color may blend in to its surroundings, survive, and pass its lucky genes onto another generation.

A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin noticed how different beaks among Galapagos finches were adapted to different types of food. Birds born with maladapted beaks couldn’t feed themselves and so they died off, whereas birds with beaks suited to a particular island’s food sources flourished.

Segues from one species to another take a long time. Monkeys did not turn into human beings overnight—their evolution occurred through a lot of minor changes over millions of years. That’s a difficult time scale for most people to imagine. After all, many of us have trouble imagining what life was like 100 years ago.

It takes my breath away when I think about how life changes through the evolutionary process. I wish I could see a time-lapse film depicting all the little biological changes in the transition from primates to humans, or how mammals returned to the sea and became whales and dolphins. But the millions of years these changes take make that kind of film impossible.

Don’t ask me why all this happens or how it got started. I’m pretty humble about things like that, and rather than ascribe them to one thing or another, I’ll admit that I just don’t know. I can live with not knowing.

I do believe that the irony in all this is that creationists have also evolved. They’ve evolved from a literal Biblical explanation of life on Earth to the more clever argument of intelligent design. I believe that’s a good example of change and adaptation. Too bad they don’t see their own evolution or appreciate the wonder of how life evolves. I think it’s the greatest show on Earth—maybe not in the heavens, but definitely here on Earth.

How to Achieve Real Change in Health Care. Is Anyone Listening?

2009-01-23T12:36:00.003-07:00

A physician I knew (he died at a ripe old age) once quipped, “Medicine is America’s fastest growing failing business.” And unless we refocus our entire approach to health care, it’s going to grow and fail even faster.

Most proposals for health-care reform have focused on either expanding the availability of insurance or reducing the costs of prescription drugs. While necessary, these approaches are essentially extensions of a dysfunctional health-care system, and they fail to correct its fundamental flaws.

Health care (of which medicine is part) is an oxymoron. It’s really a disease-care system that continues to exist only because of the rationing of treatment. Millions of people are excluded from health-care coverage, and others must deal with huge out-of-pocket expenses or simply do without.

The solution I envision would transform this disease-care system into a genuine health-care system. The only way to accomplish this, at a price this nation can afford, is to emphasize prevention.

I don’t mean inoculations or well-baby checkups, although they certainly should be part of any health-care system. Nor do I mean near-compulsive cholesterol and blood pressure checks, although they too have a place.

Rather, I recommend that the incoming Obama administration fund a large federal and state campaign that tackles prevention in a way similar to how government discouraged the use of tobacco products. The anti-tobacco campaign has largely worked, and one focusing on prevention can work as well.

Focusing on prevention is imperative. Unless we reduce the demands placed on disease care, the current or extended disease-care system will eventually collapse financially.

Nearly all experts agree that most chronic health problems result from poor eating habits, a lack of physical activity, and other lifestyle issues, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. These are behaviors that can be modified to reduce the risk of disease, and less disease means lower health-care costs.

It’s important that this campaign convey the message that each and every one of us is a partner in our own health. We can’t abuse our bodies and then expect doctors or magic pills to reverse the damage, regardless of who pays. We must acknowledge our personal responsibility for staying healthy and do a much better job of eating more nutritious foods and staying reasonably fit.

I would make nutrition the foundation of any health-care campaign, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s the basis of our biology and biochemistry. Second, two of every three Americans are now overweight or obese. More than 23 million have type 2 diabetes, and somewhere between 40 and 100 million have some form of prediabetes. These are signs that our eating habits and lifestyles are truly warped. Ominously, these health problems increase the risk of heart disease and most other chronic degeneration diseases.

There’s no need to get distracted by arguments over which diet is best. Everything I’ve learned about healthy habits boils down to emphasizing fresh foods over almost anything that comes in a box, can, jar, bottle, or bag. It’s as simple as that. Opt for a piece of fish or chicken and some vegetables instead of a burger and fries in the drive-thru. And yes, eat smaller portions.

Physical fitness is important as well. While we don’t have to build Schwarzenegger-type bodies, we do need to realize that all the time we spend in front of televisions and computers helps make us fat. Just going for a daily walk improves blood sugar and weight, and obviously the more we do, the better off we’ll be.

Food companies could certainly be given incentives to help spread the word about eating better and becoming more physically active. They could also retool some of their food products to wean people off junk foods. After all, the health of their profits will at some point depend on the health of the nation.

A consortium of medical societies, food-industry lobbying groups, and vitamin supplement associations could also help underwrite consumer-education campaigns geared to preventing disease.

Even the Food and Drug Administration could play a role by clearly discouraging the use of hydrogenated oils and caloric sweeteners, maybe by requiring warning labels on some packages. The FDA could also streamline the now complicated processes of making health claims for foods and supplements.

Doctors may dismiss my proposal by saying that patients want a quick fix (code word for prescription drug) and aren’t compliant with dietary changes. But the studies show that one-on-one nutrition coaching and follow-ups do result in compliance and consistency.

Will there be resistance to what I propose? Of course they will be. Every billion dollars saved in disease care will translate to a billion lost in drug company and hospital profits.

But something has got to give. As a nation, we’ve got to get off our duff and make some changes. It’s far easier, better, and less costly in the long run to prevent (or lower the risk of) disease than to struggle to treat it. Furthermore, as people get healthier, they will also have more energy, use fewer sick days, and be more productive. That can only be good for our economy.

We need more than a Band-Aid when it comes to reforming health care and controlling costs. I hate to say it, but for a permanent cure, health care needs major surgery followed, of course, by a lean diet and time to heal. This process will certainly take more than a couple of years to yield clear benefits, but so did the campaign to reduce tobacco use.

Early Diagnosis Is Not Prevention

2009-01-22T10:16:00.001-07:00

Several years ago I wrote about a disturbing example of what George Orwell called “double-think” – holding simultaneous contradictory views. At the time I focused on mammography, which has often been promoted for “preventing” breast cancer.

Mammography, however, has nothing to do with preventing breast cancer. It’s a diagnostic tool. You can have a hundred mammograms performed, but they won’t prevent a single case of breast cancer. (In fact, a recent study suggested that mammograms might even increase the risk.) Once diagnosed, a patient will usually be pushed into a medical maze with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

The idea that early diagnosis equals prevention is returning. Recently, a story in the New York Times kept referring to colonoscopies as a way of “preventing” colon cancer. When I emailed the editor that colonoscopies don’t prevent colon cancer, she steadfastly defended her writer’s choice of the word.

Huh? Early diagnosis is not the same as prevention. Confusing the two is double-think.

Meanwhile, a supermarket ran an ad in my local newspaper encouraging people to get various medical tests from a portable testing lab. People could pay for a “heart disease prevention package” or a “stroke and aneurysm prevention package” of tests.

The tests are fine if you want them and if you want to pay for them. But they do not prevent cancer or cardiovascular diseases. They too are a form of early diagnosis.

If such tests do reveal serious health problems, then you have a choice: you can enter the medical maze and subject yourself to drugs and surgery, or you can improve your eating habits and lifestyle. But once in the medical maze – the same one that confuses early diagnosis with prevention – odds are that you’ll be pushed toward the more aggressive and more expensive therapies. After all, the point of early diagnosis is only partly to help patients. The other part is to make money off you.

The Controversy Over Vitamin C and Cancer

2009-01-10T09:08:00.001-07:00

A recent study – in cells and mice – was published in the journal Cancer Research and immediately followed by newspaper and internet headlines screaming that vitamin C interfered with the cancer-killing effect of several chemotherapeutic drugs.

The finding contradicted several promising studies – in cells, animals, and people – showing that large amounts of vitamin C enhance the body’s ability to fight cancer. What gives?

The study, conducted by researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, used an awful methodology. That’s what gives. I’ll explain.

Most of the vitamin C found in foods and supplements is chemically known as ascorbic acid. The Sloan-Kettering researchers did not use this type of vitamin C. Instead, they used dehydroascorbic acid, which is the “oxidized” form of the vitamin, and found that it reduced the effectiveness of chemo drugs on cells. Meanwhile, in the mouse study, the researchers used dehydroascorbic acid in doses known to be toxic.

No one in the entire world sells dehydoascorbic acid supplements. In fact, when dehydroascorbic acid is formed in the body, it is quickly broken down because of its inherent toxicity. It makes absolutely no sense to (1) call dehydroascorbic acid vitamin C or (2) to use it in cancer experiments.

Several studies have successfully used large amounts of real vitamin C to destroy cancer cells in cell experiments, animals, and people. The current theory is that large amounts of vitamin C – large intravenous doses of vitamin C in people – generate hydrogen peroxide, which functions as a natural chemotherapeutic agent but does not harm normal cells.

Pediatricians Ensuring Vitamin D Deficiency in Children

2008-12-18T19:26:00.002-07:00

One of the ironies in health care is that drug treatments laden with dangerous side effects will almost always be quickly adopted by conventional physicians, in part because of aggressive and shrewd marketing by pharmaceutical companies, but doctors fret over the alleged dangers of nutrients.

In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics took the “bold” step of recommending a doubling of the amount of vitamin D for infants, children, and adolescents. The previous recommendation had been for 200 IU daily of vitamin D beginning sometime during the first two months of life. The new recommendation called for 400 IU of vitamin D daily starting within a few days after birth.

Unless your head has been in the sand, you have seen many articles describing the remarkable research on vitamin D. Nearly everyone becomes deficient during the winter months, when the sun is too low to stimulate production of the vitamin, and large percentages of the population are deficient throughout the year.

As a result, even generally conservative and cautious physicians, such as Walter Willett, MD, of Harvard University, have been recommending 1,000 IU of vitamin D daily for every infant, child, and adult – with a doubling of this dose for people with dark complexions (who are more resistant to the vitamin D-producing effect of sunlight on skin).

So while the American Academy of Pediatrics has increased its recommendations for vitamin D, the organization essentially chickened out when it came to a meaningful recommendation. By proposing that infants and children receive only 400 IU of vitamin D daily, the Academy has ensured continued, widespread deficiencies.

Glucosamine and Chondroitin Do Work in Osteoarthritis

2008-12-18T19:21:00.002-07:00

A couple of months ago, researchers published the latest findings of the Glucosamine/Chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT), a study that compared these natural building blocks of knee cartilage against the drug Celebrex and placebos. Based on  x-rays of the subjects’ knees, the researchers concluded that none of the treatment groups fared any better than the placebo group, according to their report in Arthritis & Rheumatism.

A valid study? It helps to track the history of the GAIT study.

In 2006, the researchers reported how the different treatments affected symptoms of knee osteoarthritis after just six months. At the time, they wrote that there was no reduction in pain or swelling. But the study actually showed that people with the most pain had significant benefits from a combination of glucosamine and chondroitin supplements. In fact, these supplements led to greater pain relief than with the drug Celebrex. No conclusions could be drawn from people with mild osteoarthritic pain because such cases are difficult to assess.

In the latest GAIT report, the researchers acknowledged numerous problems with their data: the progression of osteoarthritis among people taking placebos was less than half of what had been anticipated. That alone would have skewed all data from the study, yet the researchers still argued that glucosamine and chondroitin were of no value.

My friend Jason Theodosakis, MD, author of The Arthritis Cure, told me that the study had three methodological problems – fatal flaws, if you will. First, the number of subjects remaining in the study was too small to achieve statistical significance. Second, the study ran for only two years, whereas other studies have shown that three years is the minimum time needed to demonstrate regeneration of knee cartilage. Third, the x-ray instruments used to measure joint-cartilage deterioration or growth was not sophisticated enough to make clinically meaningful measurements.

Despite all of these limitations, glucosamine hydrochloride supplements did lead to an improvement in joint cartilage compared with all of the other treatments. Inexplicably, however, people taking a combination of glucosamine and chondroitin experienced the greatest progression of joint damage. (I’m guessing, but it is conceivable that the patients taking glucosamine and chondroitin had such a great reduction in pain that they became too active physically, and in the process they injured their tender joints.)

Meanwhile, a separate article by the same researchers, published in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, found that people taking chondroitin supplements benefited from substantial reductions in joint swelling. Essentially, the researchers published positive findings in one journal and negative findings in another journal. My head was left spinning.

Medical Journals, B Vitamins, and Cardiovascular Disease

2008-12-18T19:17:00.002-07:00

Most medical journals claim to publish “peer-reviewed” articles, implying that the research has passed the muster of qualified physicians or researchers. In practice, many journal articles lack any substantial critical analysis before publication.  I believe this is one reason why so much poor-quality research, especially research critical of nutritional therapies, finds its way into print. Then, once in print, this junk science becomes an urban gospel – repeated in the form of poor advice to patients and in newspaper articles. The real peer review occurs after publication, often months later as letters to the editor, and without any newspaper headlines. Consider the following study as an example.

Earlier this year, researchers from the Harvard Medical School published a study in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) in which female health professionals took either B-complex vitamins or placebos for an average of 7.3 years. The vitamin supplements lowered levels of homocysteine – a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases – but did not seem to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

The study was touted as proof that B vitamins were worthless when it came to lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke. But four months later, in letters to the editor of JAMA, other physicians pointed out what should have been obvious early on: the study’s subjects, who were doctors and other medical professionals, were unlikely to be deficient in folic acid. In fact, the blood levels of the vitamin were normal in more than two-thirds of the subjects, meaning that they were less likely to benefit from supplements.

The original researchers acknowledged the critics’ comments and responded in part by writing that the folic acids’ lack of benefit “may not apply to populations with a greater prevalence of folate deficiency.” So, the vitamin might work after all.

The body’s use of folic acid is strongly influenced by genetics. Some genetic variations – an important variable – increase individual requirements for folic acid. These genetic variations were not assessed in this study, so it is very possible that folic acid supplements did benefit some people, but not others.

Vitamin D - Miracle Vitamin? Or Simply Correcting a Common Deficiency?

2008-10-08T09:53:00.002-07:00

Vitamin D is on the fast-track toward nutritional sainthood – that is, of being declared a miracle vitamin.

Indeed, the research shows that vitamin D is required for healthy bones and to maintain the skeletal muscles that hold our bones in place. It helps prevent type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Vitamin D fights infections and may also have anti-depressant benefits. Vitamin D seems necessary for a maintaining a healthy heart. And perhaps most dramatically, vitamin D protects against many different types of cancer, including those of breast, colon, and prostate. All of these benefits point to the fundamental importance of vitamin D in health.

But I’ll argue for a moment that almost everyone is looking at the health benefits of vitamin D from the wrong perspective.
Studies have consistently shown that low levels of vitamin D (either marginal levels or outright deficiencies) are common among both sexes and all age groups, from infants through seniors. The consequences of inadequate vitamin D are nothing less than catastrophic, contributing to the risk of all the diseases that vitamin D supplements correct. As Evan Shute, M.D., once told me, vitamins prevent what they also cure.

The risk of a vitamin D deficiency can be reduced simply by taking a a capsule containing 1,000 to 2,000 IU daily. The benefits might seem miraculous, but they are not a true miracle. They are the result of correcting a single vitamin deficiency.
The conventional medical and dietetic view is that vitamin deficiency diseases were common through the 1940s, but that they are rare today. But this conventional view is wrong – often dead wrong for the people affected by such deficiencies.

It’s incredible that, in 2008, a lack of vitamin D  is widespread, not just in the United States, but throughout Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world. And if we looked just a little harder, we would find deficiencies of other vitamins and minerals also to  be common. Imagine much much better off people would be if somehow we managed to eliminate all vitamin deficiencies.

Hospitals Are Some of the Most Dangerous Places

2008-10-08T09:46:00.003-07:00

Ads touting the benefits of particular hospitals are common in big city newspapers, but on a recent day, I was struck by the sheer number of full-page ads for hospitals. In particular, one ad read: “For a healthy heart...eat properly, exercise daily and visit St. Francis, the hospital with more of the best cardiac specialists than any other hospital...”

What do hospitals have to do with disease prevention? Virtually nothing.

Visit St. Francis or any other hospital? Unless you need the ER, you may very well be putting your life at risk.

Years ago, while researching an article on the Navajo reservation, I learned that Native Americans had a specific word for hospitals – it translated to “the place where people go to die.”

The truth is that hospitals are among of the most dangerous places in our modern world, and you would do your best to stay out of hospitals. They’re a great place to contract “nosocomial infections,” a euphemism for infections contracted in hospitals. This doesn’t mean that hospitals and surgery don’t help a lot of people. They do, but there are serious downsides – e.g., death – while being hospitalized.

It turns out that whenever physicians go on either a strike or a work slowdown, the area’s death rate decreases.

I’m serious.

When physicians began a major work slowdown in Israel in 2000, the death rate decreased by 68 percent. When Israeli doctors went on strike for a month in 1973, the death rate during that month dropped by 50 percent. No one had seen such a dramatic decrease in death rates since the previous doctors’ strike 20 years before.

In 1976, doctors in Los Angeles went on strike to protest increases in malpractice insurance. You guessed it – the death rate decreased by 18 percent. That same year, doctors in Bogota, Columbia, also went on strike, and the death rate went down by 35 percent.

These aren't the ravings of a lunatic, believe me. Even the British Medical Journal has reported these amazing reductions in death rates when doctors go on strike and disrupt the treatment of people in hospitals.

The risk of death in hospitals also seems to relate to the magnitude of intervention, with more aggres-sive interventions increasing the odds of dying. In a recent study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients were more likely to die when treated entirely by critical-care physicians in intensive care units (ICUs), compared with patients treated entirely by noncritical-care physicians. You might argue that patients in ICUs are more seriously ill, but the researchers accounted for these differences in the severity of illness.

The problem lies with the pharmaceutical and surgical interventions that lie at the heart of modern medicine. Aggressive interventions are dangerous – and deadly – compared with more conservative therapies, such as nutritional medicine, especially for chronic diseases. Going to a hospital invites such interventions, and doctors often forget their Hippocratic Oath: first do no harm.

References: Siegel-Itzkovich J. BMJ, 2000;320:1561. Mendelsohn RS. Confessions of a Medical Heretic. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1979:114. Levy MM. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2008;148:801-809.

Science That Distorts Research...And Setting The Record Straight

2008-08-20T12:35:00.003-07:00

I was recently in England to lecture on nutrition and to sign copies of my book, Stop Prediabetes Now. (See www.stopprediabetesnow.com.) While there, another negative study on vitamins was published, one that claimed vitamin supplements increased the risk of death. The study’s findings were repeated there and around the world – uncritically. Some consumers, interviewed on TV, were actually afraid to continue taking their vitamin supplements.

The study, by Goren Bjelakovic, MD, and published via what is known as the Cochrane Database, was a rehash of his highly criticized study last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was old news – and bad science.

Bjelakovic’s findings of a so-called significant increased risk of death from vitamins were not significant at all. The study wasn’t even a study – it was a statistical machination of 67 previously published studies, many of which had shown clear benefits from vitamin supplements. Bjelakovic focused on studies in which deaths occurred, choosing to ignore more than 400 studies (from his original pool of research) in which no deaths occurred. In poker, this is called stacking the deck, or outright cheating. Many of the subjects in the studies were seriously ill or terminal, vitamin dosages varied greatly, and the duration of supplement use ranged from a month to years. Bjelakovic had no idea of the causes of death, which might have included car accidents, interactions from prescription drugs, and children suffocating their terminally ill parents.

During the same week, I happened to visit the food hall at Harrod’s, the pricey London department store that prides itself on both quality and expensive goods. Curious, I looked at the ingredients list on tins of cookies. Incredibly, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (i.e., trans fats) were the first or second ingredient in most of these products. Basically, Harrod’s magnificent food halls had turned into a hall of the worst kinds of junk food. Trans fats are arguably the most dangerous ingredient in processed foods.

Bjelakovic would have provided a far greater service if he had focused on the dangers of artificial food ingredients, such as the trans fats in Harrod’s cookies and hundreds of other common manufac-tured food products. When we take vitamin supple-ments, we often do so in part as a “countermeasure” to protect ourselves against some of the harmful additives whose presence is often not questioned  at all.

A Safer Therapy for Brain Cancer

2008-08-20T12:29:00.002-07:00

Politics aside, the diagnosis of brain cancer is awful. And although there are survivors, the results of conventional treatment are pretty dismal. When I heard that Senator Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with malignant glioma, I immediately thought of a dear friend who was diagnosed in 2001 with malignant brain cancer. He remained pretty sharp mentally, aside from some forgetfulness, until shortly after he began radiation therapy, when he rapidly went downhill.

The current therapeutic vogue for brain cancer is the gamma knife, which is supposed to be a precise beam of radiation that destroys the tumor and nothing else. So they say. There is collateral damage – if not from the radiation striking normal cells, then from the creation of toxic necrotic disease as the cancer cells die. In 20 years, the gamma knife will probably be viewed as barbaric as we now view bloodletting.

A few days after Kennedy’s diagnosis made the headlines, I accidentally came across a medical review paper published last year, in which the author described cell, animal, and three small clinical (human) studies using gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) to treat gliomas and other types of brain cancers.

GLA is an anti-inflammatory plant oil sold at every health food store in the county. In the human studies, GLA was injected directly into the tumors daily for up to 20 days (obviously something you can’t do at home). Most of the people treated with GLA were alive and well almost three years after diagnosis. They experienced few if any side effects.

None of this means GLA is a cure for brain cancer, or any other type of cancer, for that matter. However, it is another very promising alternative and complementary therapy – one I suspect that Senator Kennedy’s doctors probably have never heard of. (By the way, I did email Senator Kennedy’s office about the GLA study.)

Skeptical? You can read the actual journal article for free by going to www.pubmed.gov, typing “Das UN glioma” (without the quotation marks) into the search box. Share this important article with your doctor and your friends. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to encourage the use of a safe and nontoxic therapy for brain cancer.

Reference: Das UN. Medical Science Monitor, 2007;13: RA119-RA131.

Nutricide and Pharmacide

2008-05-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

As I look at the increasingly bizarre world around us, I think two new words seem appropriate: nutricide, the killing of people by serving them junk foods; and pharmacide, the killing of people by over-prescribing pharmaceutical drugs.

Read the labels of almost every supermarket food sold in a box, can, jar, bottle, or bag, and you’ll find that they contain far too many ingredients that serve large-scale processing but are slowly lethal to con-sumers ingesting them. I’m referring to various sugars, trans fats, interesterified fats, excess salt, and soybean oil as the top offenders. The fast-food companies are no better, serving up their breaded, deep-fried, hydrogenated goodies.

The folks at McDonald’s, KFC, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Campbell, and so many other makers of processed food are killing people by way of overweight, dia-betes, and heart disease. They’re guilty of nutricide.

Unfortunately, some so-called health food and natural food products aren’t much better. I recently attended the Natural Foods Expo show in Anaheim, California, where more than 3,000 companies showed their products to over 50,000 visitors. Many of the products were great – meats from organically raised animals, organically grown produce, and even relatively healthy snack foods.

But there were also too many attempts at feel-good knockoffs of conventional junk foods: “health food” soft drinks with as much sugar as a Pepsi, energy bars with as much sugar as a Snickers, chocolate soy milk with more sugar and calories than regular chocolate milk, ad nauseam (a term that seems particularly appropriate). And people wonder why two-thirds of Americans are overweight.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry has cooked up their own solution to the ills caused by all these unhealthy foods: heavily advertised drug panaceas that, in most cases, have side effects worse than the disease itself. Each year, more than 700,000 people get hospitalized because of adverse reactions to drugs, and more than 100,000 people in hospitals die from their medications, all of which are approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. They’re all guilty of pharmacide.

Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, a pioneer in nutritional medicine, recently pointed to the debate about whether anti-depressant drugs were really better than placebos. “This is a phony debate, almost like trying to figure out how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin,” he told me. “Even if the drugs are 10 percent better, they are so much more toxic than any placebo that a placebo should be preferred.”

Redefining the Meaning of Nutritional Deficiencies

2008-05-08T21:49:00.000-07:00

Many of us were taught that vitamin deficiencies were horrible diseases such as scurvy, beriberi, and pellagra – each often characterized by the body literally falling apart. Relatively common 100 years ago, these diseases are now considered rare.

But it is a mistake to consider these "classic" deficiency diseases the first sign of compromised nutrition. Rather, these diseases consist of the final burst of symptoms – what some people in medicine refer to as "total system failure" – before death.

It is equally foolish to believe that nutritional deficiencies are rare today. Often the signs of marginal nutritional intake or early deficiency are more difficult to assess, in large part because their symptoms may be vague and because health-care professions simply don't bother investigating them.

For example, a vitamin C-deprivation study found that the first signs of deficiency were not those of scurvy, but rather irritability and fatigue – two extremely common symptoms. That should not come as a surprise because 30 to 48 percent of Americans do not consume the "recommended" amounts of vitamin C, indicating that their nutritional status is marginal at best.

Studies show similar patterns with other nutrients. A study of magnesium intake in the elderly found that one-fourth of subjects did not consume the officially recommended daily amounts. Similarly, 93 percent of Americans do not consume the recommended levels of vitamin E. In another study, researchers reported that 98 percent of patients hospitalized for hip fractures were either deficient or had marginal blood levels of vitamin D.

Vitamins and minerals directly or indirectly play roles in the thousands of biochemical reactions that occur in our bodies every second of the day. Without them, these chemical pr ocesses become sluggish or cease. The situation is analogous to using yeast to make dough rise. If yeast is not present, the dough does not rise to make bread.

Yet the average person, subsisting on fast foods and convenience foods (instead of fresh wholesome foods), most likely has a marginal intake of many vitamins and minerals. As chemical reactions slow down, any number of symptoms are likely to emerge. The situation is further complicated by the use of pharmaceutical medications, nearly all of which interfere with nutrient absorption or utilization.

It makes no sense to wait until the symptoms of nutritional deficiencies become fulminate. It's far more fascinating and exciting to discover how nutritional deficiencies and imbalances can cause a wide variety of otherwise inexplicable symptoms.

One Reason Why Organic Foods Are More Nutritious

2008-04-30T08:16:00.002-07:00

For years, dietitians, pesticide makers, junk food companies, and Big Agriculture have argued that organic foods are a waste of money. They often point to the enormous crop yields – i.e., supposed superiority – of conventional corporate farming.

Organic farming is based on sustainable agricultural methods, in which soil nutrients are replenished with natural fertilizers and chemical pesticides are avoided.

A few small studies have strongly suggested that organic foods have higher levels of many nutrients. Several years ago, researchers found that plants increased their production of antioxidants to protect against weather and insect stresses. Pesticides obviate the need for these natural defenses, resulting in lower antioxidant levels.

New research points to a fundamental flaw in high-volume farming. Biochemist Donald R. Davis, PhD, of the University of Texas, Austin, and his colleagues analyzed levels of 13 nutrients in 43 food crops between 1950 and 1999. They used U.S. Department of Agriculture data for their comparison.

Although overall crop yields increased many times during this time, levels of six nutrients decreased. For example, protein declined by 6 percent, and vitamin B2 went down by 38 percent. Calcium, phosphorus, iron, and vitamin C also had substantial declines.

After further investigation, Davis and his colleagues attributed the decrease in nutrient levels to a “dilution effect.” Although plant yields per acre increased, the root systems of plants were not able to improve their assimilation of nitrogen and minerals, which are needed to make protein and vitamins. In other words, growing more plants per acre is equivalent to having more mouths for the soil to feed. That means smaller portions of nutrients per plant.

The lesson? You can’t fool Mother Nature.

A Sea of Pills — Natural and Unnatural

2008-04-09T07:14:00.001-07:00

Too often, health magazines and alternative medical journals read a little too much like conventional medical journals. The parallel is odd, even uncomfortable.

Most medical journals publish drug ads for a variety of ills, along with articles describing the benefits of various drugs. The ads are doctor-oriented versions of the commercials you frequently see on television – ads to help you sleep better, have less heartburn, lower cholesterol, improve your mood, be less shy, and have better erections.

The pitch is not just for the seriously ill. The underlying message is often based on arousing your fear of disease, discomfort, or, as the case may be, a soft penis. Take a lot of pills and all your problems will disappear, assuming that the side effects don't produce new problems.

Health magazines and alternative medical journals often follow a similar tack. An ad in a recent consumer health magazine pitched products for blood sugar, eye health, sports injuries, hormone replacement, bone health, immunity, and prostate health – on a single page!

Articles in some of the alternative medical journals aren't much better. They commonly include long lists of vitamins, minerals, and herbs – a natural polypharmacy for preventing and reversing the same health problems described in conventional journals.

Granted, I think there's research behind these supplements, and they're safer than drugs. But when both conventional and alternative recommendations point only to pills, something is seriously wrong.

We live in a pill-oriented society. We've been bred to believe that a pill, whether natural or synthetic, is the solution for our health problems. It's easy to forget that the foods we eat – wholesome versus junk – is of fundamental importance. After all, a dinner of fish and veggies provides a diversity of nutrients not found in any supplement. Similarly, physical activity and stress reduction foster good physical and mental health.

I'm a firm believer in the health benefits of nutritional supplements. The scientific evidence behind their use is sound. But let's be careful to not use supplements only as a natural way of mimicking drugs. Fostering good health demands that we eat, not just swallow.

Does Cholesterol Matter? Apparently Only If You're On a Cholesterol-Lowering Drug

2008-04-01T17:00:00.004-07:00

The makers of Zetia and Vytorin (which combines Zetia and Zocor) recently announced that their aggressively advertised cholesterol-lowering drugs failed to slow the development of fatty plaque in arteries. In fact, the drugs actually promote the formation of plaque in arteries, which fuels heart disease and increases the risk of a heart attack. The announcement – in a news release, not a medical journal – came after long delays in reporting the findings of their study.

Why the delays? Follow the money. Sales of the two drugs added up to $5 billion in revenues in 2007.

The news release was the first of several fascinating and bizarre reports on Zetia and Vytorin. Even though the drugs don’t prevent heart disease, the American Heart Association quickly issued an official news release in defense of the drugs.

If you’re confused by that, just follow the money trail again. According to an article in the New York Times, the American Heart Association gets $2 million a year from Merck/Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceutical group that markets Vytorin.

The failure of this and other recent cholesterol-lowering drug trials has renewed a long-simmering debate about the role of cholesterol in heart disease. Cholesterol is a symptom -- get that, a symptom -- not a cause of heart disease, and Vytorin and other drugs merely alter a symptom. In fact, cholesterol has long been known as only a weak indicator of heart disease risk (American Journal of Epidemiology, 1977;105:281-9). Half of the people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels.

What then causes heart disease? The answer is a variety of factors, most of which are no-brainers, such as prediabetes and overweight, which result from excess intake of refined sugars, processed sugar-like carbohyrates, and trans fats. This dietary pattern elevates blood sugar, insulin – and, yes, cholesterol. Even the oft-recommended high-carb diet for preventing heart disease raises cholesterol and triglyceride levels. That's because, in most people, elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels reflect sugar and carb intake, not fats.

If all this isn’t strange enough, consider one more recent report. The average cholesterol level of Americans is now lower than it was back in 1960 because of all the cholesterol-lowering drugs that have been prescribed. At the same time, two-thirds of Americans are now overweight –- the number one risk factor for diabetes and heart disease. In effect, Rome is burning while medicine fiddles with cholesterol.

The Tipping Point - Applied to Nutrition and Health

2008-03-22T08:26:00.002-07:00

Each of us, as individuals, has our nutritional tipping point. And societies as a whole also have their nutritional tipping points as well.

The term “tipping point” comes from the field of epidemiology. It originally referred to when epidemics rapidly accelerated, or reached a tipping point at which large numbers of people were affected. Malcolm Gladwell writes about such phenomena in his book, The Tipping Point.

Thirty years ago, when I first met with Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, one of the pioneers in nutritional medicine, we talked a little about how poor nutrition might set the stage for a societal catastrophe. With great foresight, he said that a tipping point would come when our society has more sick people than healthy people to take care of them. That situation would lead to social and economic collapse.

People often reach a tipping point in their moods, such as when they are overwhelmed by stress or explode in anger. There are also tipping points in the progression of diseases, such as when cardiovascular disease reaches a crescendo known as a heart attack or when a tumor becomes clinically recognizable, or terminal.

People seem to function – perhaps get by – even though their nutritional intake may be marginal. They may not feel their best, a sign of less than optimal nutritional biochemistry. Many studies refer to their subjects as being “apparently healthy” because they have no overt signs of serious disease. But “apparently healthy” often means that they have not yet reached their nutritional tipping point.

Fatigue, one of the most common of all symptoms, may be a sign that we’ve hit our tipping point for poor nutrition and too much stress. We end up having too many things to do, but without the nutritional support to fortify us. Prediabetes is another tipping point, as would be any fulminant disease. The question is: what is your tipping point, and what are you doing to avoid it?

Tackling the High Cost of Health Care

2008-03-22T08:18:00.002-07:00

Any way you look at the cost of health care – or rather, disease care – in the United States, it's extraordinarily expensive. If you pay your own health and medical insurance, or at least contribute to its cost through your employer, you know that the premiums and copayments are always increasing. And the cost of health care is going to get much worse.

Different experts come up with different numbers, but they're all pretty chilling. In one analysis, health-care spending is expected to double from $2 billion annually to $4 billion annually in just 10 years. That amount would add up to one out of every five dollars spent in the United States. Another analysis projects that more than $8 billion dollars will be spent just to cover the new Medicare prescription drug plan over the next four years. I know, and you probably do as well, many people who take five to 10 prescription medications each day, putting them and our nation at risk of financial ruin.

There are many reasons behind these enormous increases in health-care spending. One is the aging of the population. Another is the aggressive advertising by pharmaceutical companies to sell their proprietary drugs. Still another is the competitive hospital environment – though many hospitals are technically nonprofit, they seek earnings and market share the way any for-profit corporation does. More disturbing, the number of for-profit hospitals is increasing rapidly, whereas the number of nonprofit hospitals is quickly shrinking.

With so many businesses and organizations intent on profiting from disease care, genuine efforts at prevention get the short shrift. After all, many businesses would suffer financially if large numbers of people got healthier and didn't need drugs and medical services. Yet our financial security, as individuals, families, and a nation, depends on significantly reducing the costs of medical care.

Improving eating habits and encouraging people to take dietary supplements to prevent (as well as to treat) disease is a sensible, low-cost approach. Nutrients are cheaper than drugs, and they correct the underlying causes of disease, not just its symptoms. With this credible approach to preventing disease, drugs and hospitalization would be reserved for when there is no reasonable alternative. It would certainly require a retooling of our economy, one that would probably be greater than retooling from manufacturing to high tech, but the economic payoff would (along with our health) would be impressive: healthier people are more productive people.

Spread the word. Explain this to your friends, your employer, and your insurer, and convey these thoughts to your senators and congressman. We have to start sometime, and there's no better time than now. The alternative, sometime in the future, will be economic collapse.

About That Study on the "Dangers" of Lowering Blood Sugar

2008-03-06T08:22:00.002-07:00

You may have heard about the U.S. government-funded diabetes study that was abruptly shut down in February 2008. The study involved the aggressive medical (not nutritional) treatment to lower blood sugar in people with diabetes.

The idea behind the study was that reducing blood sugar levels to near normal levels would improve the health of people with diabetes. It turned out that people in the study with the lowest blood sugar levels were far more likely to die from a heart attack, com-pared with people who were not treated as aggres-sively. Newspaper stories questioned the rationale of lowering blood sugar too much in people with diabetes.

Meanwhile, a second and similar study, directed by Australian researchers, did not find a higher risk of death. However, the second study did not seek to lower blood sugar as much and, based on initial reports, and did not involve either as many prescrip-tion drugs or high doses.

Make no bones about it: elevated blood sugar is dangerous, and even modest increases in blood sugar increase the risk of heart attack.

But the researchers in the American study used a panoply of drugs – not nutrition – to reduce blood sugar. The patients’ blood sugar did in fact decrease, but the drug treatment simply modified a symptom – high blood sugar – while the underlying disease process continued.

The fatalities may have been further complicated by the interactions of the various drugs. The patients were given a variety of FDA-approved drugs for treating diabetes, including metformin, thiazoli-dinediones (e.g., rosiglitazone), sulfonylureas, exanatide, acarbose, and insulin. Insulin alone can increase the risk of a heart attack. One doctor was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the treatment was “brutal” and had little relevance to real-world treatment.

This was yet another unfortunate – and deadly – study showing that more drugs are more dangerous than fewer drugs. So much for the Hippocratic Oath of first doing no harm. The ideal approach to treating diabetes (and prediabetes) is through nutrition and supplements. I’m yet to hear of anyone, diabetic or not, dying from good eating habits.

(To read more on the safe prevention and reversal of prediabetes, get excerpts from my book, Stop Prediabetes Now, at www.nutritionreporter.com)

Intravenous Vitamin C Gaining More Attention for Its Cancer Fighting Benefits

2008-02-26T19:29:00.004-07:00

This post could save your life – or the life of someone close to you.

Thirty years ago, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling advocated high-dose vitamin C as part of the treatment of cancer. His recommendations were based on a small number of patients who had been given either oral or intravenous (IV) vitamin C. Subsequent clinical trials at the Mayo Clinic failed to demonstrate any benefits from oral vitamin C, and the therapy was rejected by conventional medicine.

Recent experimental studies, however, have found that IV vitamin C can raise blood levels of vitamin C 25 to 70 times higher than those achievable through oral supplements. That’s significant because such high doses are toxic to cancer cells, but not normal cells.

To explain, large amounts of oral vitamin C increase blood levels up to 70 to 220 μmol/L – far less than the 1,000 μmol/L needed to destroy many types of cancer cells. With IV vitamin C, blood concentrations can be increased up to 14,000 μmol/L of blood. In a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Mark Levine, MD, PhD, of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues described three people treated with IV vitamin C and other supplements. Two of the patients are still alive, and the third (a long-standing cigarette smoker) lived much longer than expected.

One of the cases was a 49-year-old man diagnosed in 1996 with a primary bladder cancer that was starting to metastasize. The tumors were removed surgically, and the patient declined chemo and radiation therapy. The patient decided to receive IV vitamin C at the Bright Spot for Health, a nutritional medicine clinic in Wichita, Kansas. He received two 30-gram IVs weekly for three months, followed by 30 grams once every month or so for four years. “Now, nine years after diagnosis, the patient is in good health with no symptoms of recurrence or metastasis,” wrote Levine and his coauthors.

In a separate report published in the Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal, doctors described the safety of high-dose IV vitamin C in 24 late-stage terminal cancer patients. The patients were given 10,000 to 50,000 mg of IV vitamin C daily. Most had been deficient in vitamin C before treatment, and side effects were infrequent and mild.

Levine and his colleagues believe that vitamin C produces large amounts of hydrogen peroxide, a potent generator of free radicals, inside tumors. The mechanism is similar to conventional chemotherapy, but without the side effects.

However, a recent report in the journal Nature suggests another mechanism to vitamin C’s benefits. Cancer cells produce large amounts of the enzyme lysyl oxidase, which promotes metastasis. However, an earlier study found that vitamin C inhibited the activity of lysyl oxidase.

If you'd like to read the scientific basis for what I've written, check out the references below at www.pubmed.gov. For more general information on nutrition and health, explore my website at www.nutritionreporter.com

Scientific References: Padayatty SJ, Riordan HD, Hewitt SM, et al. Intravenously administered vitamin C as cancer therapy: three cases. CMAJ, 2006;174:937-942. Riordan HD, Casciari JJ, Gonzalez MJ, et al. A pilot clinical study of continuous intravenous ascorbate in terminal cancer patients. Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal, 2005;24:269-276. Erler JT, Bennewith KL, Nicolau M, et al. Lysyl oxidase is essential for hypoxia- induced metastasis. Nature, 2006;440:1222-1226. Kuroyanagi M, Shimamura E, Kim M, et al. Effects of L-ascorbic acide on lysyl oxidase in the formation of collagen cross-links. Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, 2002;66:2077-2082.

Maintaining an Acid-Alkaline Balance

2008-02-10T12:16:00.000-07:00

When I first heard, years ago, that acidic foods could somehow contribute to disease, I thought the idea was pretty far fetched. It struck me as a particularly odd prohibition against eating certain foods.

Recently, I became a believer. It turns out that acid and alkaline foods do have a bearing on health, but that the science has often been misunderstood or misrepresented. (See the article that follows.) The body functions best at a neutral or slightly alkaline pH. The problem has nothing to do with whether foods are acidic or alkaline per se. Rather, it’s about whether foods have an acid or alkaline effect after digestion and when they reach the kidneys.

Because the body strives to maintain a neutral pH, acid-yielding foods trigger the release of calcium and magnesium from bone and ammonia from the protein in muscles. The calcium, magnesium, and ammonia neutralize the acid, but they do so at a serious price: both bones and muscles weaken, over the long term setting the stage of osteoporosis and age-related loss of muscle mass and strength.

The principal acid-generating foods are animal proteins, grains, dairy products, and any food with a lot of added salt. The salt yields both sodium and chloride, which shift the body toward an acidic pH. Large amounts of animal protein release sulfuric acid through the metabolism of sulfur-containing amino acids, also contributing to an acidic pH.

Potassium bicarbonate, which is sold by prescription, can reduce acidity. Some other mineral supplements, such as those in citrate and carbonate forms, can also reduce acidity.

But the biggest alkaline effect comes from eating lots of fruits and vegetables. Even citrus fruits and tomatoes, which are acidic, have a net alkaline yield. That's because fruits and vegetables are rich in potassium and bicarbonate, both of which produce an alkaline pH. Eating 35 percent of your calories as fruits and vegetables is enough to maintain alkalinity – and help preserve your bones and muscle.

And Speaking of Acid-Alkaline Balance…

A lack of magnesium and calcium can contribute to many serious health problems including arrhythmias, osteoporosis, migraine, and fatal heart attack. The body’s levels of these essential minerals are strongly influenced by dietary levels – and by whether the overall diet produces an acid or alkaline load.

Ragnar Rylander, PhD, Thomas Remer, PhD, and their colleagues at the University of Goteborg, Sweden, studied 85 men and women, most in their sixties. The researchers measured the subject’s urine levels of magnesium, calcium, potassium, and acidity over 24 hours.

Rylander and Remer found that both magnesium and calcium losses in the urine were highest when urine was the most acidic. The loss of magnesium was not influenced by magnesium intake.

“Magnesium deficiency could thus, apart from insufficient intake, partly be caused by the acid load in the body,” wrote the researchers.

They also noted that “the Western diet induces a chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis.” Reference: Rylander R, Remer T, Berkemeyer S, et al. Acid-base status affects renal magnesium losses in healthy, elderly persons. Journal of Nutrition, 2006;136:2374-2377.

Statins: A Cure Worse than the Disease

2008-01-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

The ads for cholesterol-lowering statin drugs – Lipitor, Crestor, Vytorin, and others – feel like a feeding frenzy. Their makers have turned a symptom -- elevated cholesterol -- into a disease that must be treated with urgency. It has paid off royally – Lipitor sales alone are now over $12 billion a year. The problem is that the "cure" is often worse than the "disease."

An article in the journal BioFactors (2005;25:147-152) described 50 cardiology patients who were plagued with a variety of symptoms, including statin-induced cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that has nothing to do with cholesterol. Other common symptoms included fatigue, muscle pain, breathing difficulties, memory problems, and nerve disorders.

Statin drugs inhibit an enzyme involved in synthesizing cholesterol, but the same enzyme is also needed to make coenzyme Q10, a vitamin-like substance that was the basis of the 1978 Nobel prize in chemistry. CoQ10 is essential for life,r normal muscle function, and energy production in the body.

The 50 patients were treated with CoQ10, the dose averaging 240 mg daily, for almost two years. The prevalence of muscle pain among these patients decreased from 64 to 6 percent between their first and latest medical exam. Fatigue decreased from 84 to 16 percent, breathing difficulties from 58 to 12 percent, memory problems from 8 to 4 percent, and nerve problems from 10 to 2 percent. CoQ10 also improved heart function and reduced “statin cardiomyopathy” in half of the patients.

The pharmaceutical industry is well aware of the dangers posed by statins -- and the health benefits of CoQ10. Merck, the maker of the statin drug Zocor, owns two use patents (#4,933,165 and 4,929,437) that combine CoQ10 with statins to prevent and reverse statin-induced cardiomyopthy. To knowingly hurt patients and withhold treatment is nothing less than unethical.

Why Nutrition Should Come Before Any Other Therapy

2008-01-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

We all have our biases, and mine tilt me toward the use of nutritional therapies above all others.

I don't discount the others – I just don't see herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture, drugs, or other therapies having the same fundamental importance as nutrition.

Why do I feel so strongly about nutrition? It's simple, really. Nutrients provide the building blocks of our biochemistry. Even our genes require nutrients for synthesis, repair, and regulation. All of the proteins, enzymes, tissues, and other substances that make up our body originate with nutrients.

I believe that most of what goes wrong in our bodies is related to inadequate or unbalanced nutrients interacting with our genes and stresses.

How can you determine your nutritional status? The most accurate way is through blood testing of nutrient levels. When it comes to dealing with chronic diseases, it only makes sense to identify nutritional deficiencies and imbalances before proceeding with any kind of therapy. Changes in diet and supplements usually can lead to quick improvements.

Unfortunately, as you well know, modern medicine and health care may little attention to nutrition.

While herbs are far better and safer than drugs, I think it is prudent to first identify and correct dietary problems, especially in chronic diseases. Herbs are rich in antioxidants, but they also contain substances that seem to work through pharmacological means. In other words, their constituents may not always be a normal part of our biochemistry.

I feel the same way about homeopathy. The theory behind homeopathy – that smaller and often undetectable amounts of substances have stronger therapeutic effects – often dumbfounds people. However, molecular biology has taught us that extremely small amounts of substances can have profound effects. Just consider that all the growth hormone in your body would fill no more than 1/40,000th of a teaspoon. Again, I believe that nutrition should come first. While homeopathy might sometimes cure, it does not nourish the body.

After nutrition, I believe that stress reduction and physical activity are paramount. Stress triggers changes that increase our nutritional and biochemical requirements to restore homeostasis. Physical activity increases biochemical activities, so nutrients are put to better use. Again, there's no way to escape the fundamental importance of nutrition.

Read more about nutrition at www.nutritionreporter.com.

Herb-Drug Combo Dangers...Or Medical Scare Tactics

2008-01-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve just read, for the umpteenth time, another article on the supposed “dangers” of herb-drug interactions. This one, published in one of the largest-circulation health newsletters in the United States, was titled “How to Avoid Dangerous Herb-Drug Interactions,” with the subtitle of “Harmful Effects Can Occur When Taking Popular Supplements with Commonly Used Medications.”

You'd think that people are dropping like flies. That's just not the case.

Let’s put all this in perspective. Are there potential risks from mixing herbs with prescription drugs? Yes, there are. But there are far greater risks from prescription drugs alone and from taking two or more drugs, a very common situation.

An estimated 106,000 people die each year from medications prescribed in hospitals—where you would think the most rigorous controls would be in place. More than 2 million other hospitalized Americans experience serious reactions to prescription medications. God only knows how many people outside of hospitals have serious side effects or die from their medications.

How many people died last year from taking herb or vitamin supplements? Hmmm...let me see now...wow...not a single person.

Articles on the dangers of herb-drug interactions overplay relatively rare problems. This particular article emphasized problems combining chile pepper extract, ginger, and green tea with drugs. Unknowingly, the author was attacking foods that are major components of many ethnic diets.

Many doctors would like to control all of the variables in a person’s life to reduce the risk of negative interactions. But it’s an impossible task. Go into almost any Mexican restaurant and you'll find meals with chile. Ditto for Asian restaurants and ginger and green tea.

Then there are the variables related to genetics, stress, nutritional deficiencies, and a host of other factors affecting what herbs or drugs do in our bodies.

Trying to control all these variables is an impossible task. Frightening people about rare problems with useful herbs (as condiments or traditional remedies) doesn’t do a lot of good. The real solution, if physicians are willing, is two-fold: one, recognize the dangers that drugs pose by themselves and prescribe them only as a last resort; and, two, to evaluate patients as individuals in the overall context of their diets, meds, and lifestyles.

As always, you can read more about nutrition and health at my main web site, www.nutritionreporter.com.

Vitamin D - More Better than Less

2008-01-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

Until the past several years, doctors and dietitians were usually scared off by the thought of vitamin D supplementation. Evidence that’s now recognized as terribly archaic suggested that supplemental vitamin D could be toxic in amounts modestly above official “recommended” levels.

What has changed? Vitamin D is needed for both strong bones and strong skeletal muscles, which hold up those bones. A huge body of research has found that a minimum of 800 IU of vitamin D daily is required to reduce the risk of falls and fractures among the elderly. The latest research indicates that adequate vitamin D levels can reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other diseases.

Some dosage recommendations go far higher, and even the ever-cautious researchers at Harvard University are now suggesting higher dosages. In a interview, Harvard‘s Walter C. Willett, MD, DrPH, told me that many people could benefit from supplements containing 2,000 to 5,000 IU of vitamin D daily.

Still other researchers, such as Reinhold Vieth, PhD, of the University of Toronto, recommend upwards of 10,000 IU daily. Simply spending 15 minutes in the summer sun, in walking shorts and a tee shirt, enables your body to make 10,000 IU. Contrast these numbers with the meager Reference Daily Intake (RDI) of 200 to 500 IU. Food sources of vitamin D are limited, and it‘s common for people to develop marginal vitamin D levels or outright deficiencies during the winter months when they are exposed to little sunlight.

Get out a map, and if you live north of Phoenix, Arizona – 35° north – you probably don't get enough winter sun exposure even if you spend lots of time outdoors. That means you should most likely supplement with vitamin D. If you spend most of the year indoors, regardless of your latitude, you may never adequately build up your vitamin D levels, meaning that you will probably benefit from year-round supplementation.

The Risk of Genetically Modified Foods

2008-01-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

In a study recently published in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology,
researchers re-analyzed data from Monsanto-sponsored experiments in which a type of genetically modified corn (MON863) was fed to laboratory rats for three months. The data had been company confidential until a German court ruled that thepublic could have access to the data for 90 days.

Using this data, French researchers found that consumption of the genetically modified corn led to disturbing changes in the laboratory rats. Male rats lost an average of 3.3 percent of body weight, while female rats gained 3.7 percent weight compared with controls. The animals showed signs of liver and kidney toxicity. Blood sugar levels rose, and the animals had a 24 to 40 percent increase in triglyceride levels, which would point to a greater risk of diabetes and heart disease.

The MON863 produces an insecticide that kills the corn roundworm, but like other synthetic pesticides, it appears to have broader deleterious effects. The genetic modification of food tampers with the normal biological evolution of plants in ways that would not likely occur in nature. By consequence, these changes can affect the genetic programming of species that consume them. The specific mechanisms may be subtle and as yet undetermined, but it's clear
that genetically modified foods can have unwanted health consequences.

Our genes are particularly sensitive to toxins and to low levels of nutrients and toxins, with the
consequence being an increased risk of cancer and other diseases, and risk may be passed to offspring.

A single toxin might not have much of an effect on our health. But when you add it to the thousands of other toxic chemicals in our food and environment, we move closer to our individual tipping points – the threshold at which our innate ability to defend ourselves and repair genetic damage falters. We may not be able to control all of the hazards in our foods
and environment, but it is irrational to unnecessarily expose ourselves to any more than we must.

Monsanto has promoted genetically modified foods as a way of increasing crop yields and reducing worldwide hunger. Such statements are more selfserving media spin than altruism. No decrease in world hunger can be attributed to the use of genetically modified foods. Rather, Monsanto and other companies have created a “need” and new agricultural markets for unnecessary and harmful products. We may actually be better off with less than more
corn, one of the most common food allergens.

What Should You Eat?

2008-01-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

“Black raspberries may prevent cancer of esophagus.”
“Blueberries may help old folks keep their smarts.”
“Green tea may reduce prostate cancer risk.”

These are a few of the many news headlines I’ve recently read while tracking the latest nutrition research. Any number of foods or their nutritional ingredients are regularly touted as superfoods, functional foods, or nutraceuticals. Unfortunately, such headlines are often misleading.

You’re not going to significantly reduce your risk of disease or achieve optimal health by eating a bowl of black raspberries every day. They’ll certainly taste great and will provide some health benefits, of course. But good health doesn’t result from eating a single food – it comes from healthy eating habits.

In other words, think in terms of the forest, not trees, nutritionally speaking.

Eating a healthy diet isn’t all that mysterious. If you follow two simple rules, you’ll be on the right track most of the time.

First, eat mostly fresh foods instead of processed and packaged foods. Fresh foods look something like they do in nature. For example, a salmon filet looks like part of a fish, which a fish stick does not. As a general rule, fresh foods received less tampering compared with processed foods. Most processed foods have added sugars, refined carbs, sodium, or unhealthy fats – or all of them – adding up to high-calorie nonnutrients.

Second, eat a diverse selection of foods, including quality protein, healthy fats, and a lot of vegetables. A diversity of foods translates into a bounty of nutrients, many of which have not been extensively studied and as a result don’t garner a lot of headlines. For example, a recent study reported that curcumin, the active compound in the spice turmeric, blocked inflammation through 97 distinct mechanisms. That’s just one spice, out of hundreds of options to choose from at your local market.