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.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Hospitals Are Some of the Most Dangerous Places
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Science That Distorts Research...And Setting The Record Straight
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.
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Nutricide and Pharmacide
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.”
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.”
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Redefining the Meaning of Nutritional Deficiencies
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
One Reason Why Organic Foods Are More Nutritious
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.
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.
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