Naturopathic Medicine Reduces Healthcare Costs

I just have to post this quickie because money is always a big concern when people are considering seeing a naturopath, but according to someone other than myself (god knows I’ll say it all day long), naturopathic medicine reduces healthcare costs and saves you money.

Naturopathic Medicine Reduces Healthcare Costs

Naturopathic medicine reduces healthcare costs and helps you find optimal health

In a 2011 study tracking individual use of health care options, researchers found that:

29% of those who use naturopathic medicine reduced their hospital visits!
30% of those seeing a naturopathic doctor reduced their visits to specialists
42% of people under naturopathic care reduced their visits to their GP
48% of people seeing a naturopathic doctor reduced costly prescriptions

The bottom line? Naturopathic Medicine reduces healthcare costs and saves money in the long-term.

Another study on Canadian postal workers showed that the inclusion of naturopathic medicine to their existing care significantly decreased their cardiovascular disease risk. A companion study showed that for those same postal workers the annual economic benefit to society was $1,138 per person treated and the cost savings to the individual or their employer were $1,187 per year. Yup. According to science, naturopathic medicine reduces healthcare costs. That is awesome.

The Biggest Loser Rapid Weight Loss – Why Isn’t This Real Life?

Rapid weight loss is what everyone seems to want and expect from themselves, in spite of the fact that it never seems to actually happen. Don’t you love TV shows where people go from morbid obesity to a relatively normal weight, losing what amounts to a couple of small children within a year? It gives hope that you can probably shed that extra 15 lbs in a week. Two at most, right? If those people on the television can lose 300 pounds in a year then surely 15 lbs in a week is reasonable. Except that in real life it doesn’t ever happen and the sad part is that it’s really easy to fall into the trap of beating yourself up about that.

Why Doesn’t Rapid Weight Loss Happen In Real Life?

Please be gentle with yourself – it’s not that you’re not strong enough or not dedicated enough, or sacrificing enough. It’s not happening because it’s darn near impossible. When you lose weight the first weight you lose is water. If you’re starting out at 450 lbs then there really are 20 lbs of extra water hanging around to lose in the first week. If you’re starting out at 250 lbs, all of your extra water is probably 8-10 pounds. If you only need to lose 15 pounds then maybe there’s only four or five pounds of water weight. It’s a whole different ball game. Of course you can lose the water weight quickly – just take the most inflammatory foods out of your diet. Lose the grains and dairy and processed foods and usually those pounds will drop off. But after that? Things turn real.

Rapid weight loss might be a myth, but real weight loss can and does happen. It’s just that there isn’t a shortcut.

There is a common misconception that fat weight doesn’t do anything, but research has shown that the fat in your body plays an important role in hormone balance or imbalance, toxin processing and storage and metabolic weight. When you go for serious weight loss you are asking your body to re-distribute those tasks to other tissues. That means detoxifying and eliminating the toxins stored in the fat tissue you’re trying to lose, re-adjusting your hormone balance (usually for the better, but it’s still a slow process) and changing your basic resting metabolism. Not to mention that for every pound of fat you lose your body needs to re-organize, eliminate or reabsorb A MILE of blood vessels. Whaaaa??? Literally a mile of blood vessels are necessary to properly feed and circulate each pound of fat and your body has to deal with that each time you gain or lose fat. Rapid weight loss sounds do-able but rapid elimination of a mile of blood vessels? Not so much.

The obvious complexity of fat tissue! Image by Philipp E. Scherer
Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, published by NatureMedicine.

The Unreality of Reality TV Weight Loss

I am in no way trying to minimize the accomplishments of the people who go on reality TV and actually do the hard work to lose weight and keep it off. Just remember that most of the people on TV reality weight loss shows are going from 6000 calorie all fast-food diets with absolutely no activity to 1500 calorie diets (usually cooked by someone else) with personal trainers pushing them around for hours of every day. Even if it’s possible for you to quit your job and devote your life to weight loss, it’s probably not possible to also pay a personal trainer, motivational coach and personal chef. It’s just not real life – which of course is what makes it fun to watch on TV.

Real Life Weight Loss vs. The Rapid Weight Loss Dream

Today all I want you to know is that real-life weight loss is different than “reality TV” weight loss. It happens in fits and starts, there are pauses in progress. Some weeks you might lose two pounds and some weeks you might not see the scale move at all. In fact, six weeks might go by where you’re doing everything right and the numbers on the scale aren’t changing. That is totally normal. It’s so easy to get discouraged and to be aiming for the numbers without paying any attention to how you feel, how your clothes are fitting or the tremendous amount of work your body is doing in that six weeks to normalize and re-adjust to this new you.

Even if you’re only losing two pounds a month, you’re still losing weight and getting healthier and making positive change. The best part is you’re learning the behaviors as you lose to help you keep the weight off for the long run. Just be gentle with yourself, be forgiving that you have to work in weight loss as a side activity and not as your whole purpose in life. That isn’t a bad thing. Rapid weight loss isn’t real life and setting that as your expectation just sets you up for failure. Celebrate every progress and take time to admire how much hard work your body is doing in the times that the number on the scale isn’t changing. It really is a big deal. Your body is an amazing tool and an amazing gift – sometimes it benefits from a little appreciation as well.

Beyond Paleo Diet – the Ideal Cave Man Diet

The paleo diet is hugely popular because for so many people it changes the way they feel completely and improves their health beyond measure, but it’s not exactly right for some people, hence the Ideal Cave Man Diet. The basic idea behind both of these diets is that your way-back ancestors (cave men in the paleolithic era) probably ate a diet that is closer to the optimal diet for your genetics. This is actually pretty sound logic, especially given how much food has changed in the last 100-150 years with the advent of the modern chemical era.

Paleo Diet Basics

Based on an ancestral way of eating from the paleolithic era
Human diet pre-farming and domestication of animals this means:
- No grains like wheat, oats, corn and rye
- No legumes like soy, beans, lentils
- No milk or dairy products because really how often would you hunt a nursing animal?
- No refined or unrefined cane sugar
- No artificial sweeteners
- No processed foods at all
- Diet based entirely on meat, veggies and fruit.
It’s easy to see why people feel better with this type of eating because everything they’re getting is nutrient dense real food (my favorite – nutritarian eating).

Paleo Diet Limitations

For people with a tendency towards inflammation the paleo diet is a mixed blessing. Many of the inflammatory foods, like refined carbohydrates, sugar and GMO grains are excluded from paleo, which is awesome. The problem is, of the allowed foods (meat, fish, veggies and fruits, limited nuts) the one that most people coming from a standard american diet (SAD) eat is meat. So paleo for the novice eater or non-health-nut can often mean “meatatarian.” Worse, it frequently means “baconatarian” which god knows is delicious, but not so good if you have clogged arteries already and a family history of early heart attacks.

Because of this, I usually give my clients the caveat of eating a “veggie heavy paleo diet” but really, what does that mean? It often creates more questions than it answers. Hence trying to simplify to the Ideal Cave Man Diet.

What Is The Ideal Cave Man Diet?

This is essentially the paleo diet, but with a nod to keeping your levels of inflammation down because unfortunately meat in large amounts can be inflammatory – so it’s the even-more-anti-inflammatory version of paleo. It’s not really a separate diet, but a modified way of looking at ancestral eating. Here’s what’s different:

More veggies – Veggies and fruits should be the centerpiece of every meal, with roughly twice the amount of veggie to protein (protein being meat, fish, some eggs).
Grains – Research has shown that people living in the paleolithic era did actually have some grains, some legumes and some starchy roots in their diet (which is not in the strict paleo diet). Keep in mind these would have been eaten in amounts you could stumble across in the wild, not amounts you would get from a farmed crop. This means very little and infrequently. So for ideal cave man eating this means:
- Tiny amounts of healthy non-GMO and non-selectively bred grains or legumes, eaten infrequently. So an occasional small serving of lentils, black beans, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat or teff is acceptable.
- The majorly “bred” grains and legumes are still out – this would include wheat, corn, soy.
Tubers – paleo diet has been pretty clear about no starchy tubers, like potatoes. This makes sense because often potatoes make a good grain replacement and so people go crazy with root veggie starch when grain starch is taken out. Research is clear though that tubers, albeit different ones, were actually a part of the true ancestral diet – with nut sedge being a clear example. Like grains I feel this gives some wiggle room to add tubers and root veggies back into the diet in moderation – this would include things like yams, sweet potatoes, beets, Jerusalem artichokes, sunchokes and turnip. Not perhaps as the center point of a meal, but in small amounts here and there.
Your Family History – If you or members of your family have serious inflammatory diseases including heart and cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, and even cancer then the ratios of veggie and fruit to protein should be different than those of a person without severe inflammatory disease. Ideal Cave Man Diet essentially tailors the ratios of these foods to keep the diet more strongly anti-inflammatory for those who need it.
Dairy – The strict peleo people are going to hate this, but there is really great evidence from the Price-Pottinger Foundation that small amounts of raw or fermented dairy in the human diet is linked to better structural growth, more bone stability and better reproductive success. Provided there is not a specific food sensitivity to dairy (which would make it unhealthy for you in particular) then small amounts can be added in to the ideal cave man diet, especially fermented dairy like yoghurt, kefir, cheese and fermented butter.

Sound Complicated? Hopefully This Graphic About Ideal Cave Man Diet Will Help…

The Ideal Cave Man Diet helps give you all the great things about the paleo diet, with a little more flexability to take your family history into account.

My whole take on nutrition is that every way of eating has to have some flexibility to take into account your particular needs – that means your genetic predisposition based on your family history as well as your own personal disease risk. Outside of that, there must be a little bit of wiggle room generally because it just isn’t healthy to eat exactly the same things all the time. There must be some variety and some variation and the ideal cave man diet makes a little more room for that than classic paleo. For more information about ways to personalize this type of diet you can also check out this article on personalized paleo.

Lifehack: Immune boost. Wet socks

I *love* *lovelove* free things that work and this is one of the best – it’s called wet socks or wet sock treatment and it is just as odd as it sounds, but it’s an awesome lifehack immune boost. First I’ll tell you how to do it, and then I’ll tell you why you might want to, because god knows anything to do with wet socks doesn’t really sound like something you’d want to do. I promise, it is.

How To Do Wet Socks

That sounds like the punchline to a joke. Here’s what you’ll need:

Plain cotton socks – any height but try to at least cover your ankles.
Wool socks that are as tall (high?) or taller (higher?) than the cotton socks. Really try to get wool because it stays cozy even when wet.
Water
A cozy bed

Here’s the Simple Method:

Find some plain cotton socks and run them under the faucet so that they’re fully wet.
Wring them out so that they are damp but not dripping
Put them on your feet and put the (dry) wool socks on over top of them
Go to bed and get a great night’s sleep.

What to Expect With Wet Socks:

Your feet will feel cold when you go to bed – that’s totally normal and they’re supposed to.
If you wake up int he night you will either be far too cold or far too hot, and far too hot is probably more common. That’s okay – just roll over and go back to sleep.
This will be an uncommonly good night of sleep – seriously.
You will wake up with toasty warm, mysteriously dry feet.

Why Do Wet Socks?

This is THE BEST FREE IMMUNE BOOST EVER. No joke. Essentially by making one part of your body cold while the rest of you is a normal temperature you are tricking your body into freaking out. Essentially your body can’t figure out what is wrong, so it starts to heat up your core temperature hoping to save your feet. At the same time, you boost your white blood cells in order to go out there and figure out what’s wrong. If they happen to stumble across other things that have nothing to do with your cold feet, like say the flu virus or a cold or that sinus infection you just can’t shake, well then all the better.

Essentially you are telling your body to go on high alert and so it does, which is perfect if you feel like you’re coming down with something or the guy who sits next to you has done nothing but cough for days. Your sleep during the wet sock treatment will be abnormally deep and satisfying and you will wake up toasty warm. The best time to use this lifehack immune boost is:

When you feel like you’re coming down with something
When everyone else in the house is sick and you’re the last man standing
When the guy next to you at work coughs on you constantly
When your kiddo comes home from preschool covered in snot
When you feel done with it all and just need an awesome sleep
When you know you’ve been pushing too hard and you can feel your body wearing down
When your lungs or sinuses have been congested and you can’t seem to break it up

Times not to do this:

If you can’t make time for a full night’s sleep – you’ve got to give your body enough time to work on this.
If you are taking prednisone, other steroids, or immune suppressing drugs because they will suppress your body’s response.
If you try wet socks and wake up in the morning with the socks still wet – this means your body just isn’t generating enough heat right now to do this thing properly.
Easy wet socks for you to try at home. This really is the best free immune boost ever.

The Benefits of Wet Socks:

You get an awesome night’s sleep
Your body spikes an artificial fever which helps your body to kill any unwanted bugs like viruses or bacteria
Helps break up chest and sinus congestion
Elevated white blood cells which helps stop infections from taking hold
Quicker recovery from illnesses
All of this is free and you don’t have to take any pills

Working with your body and with your immune system in this way means that you increase your bug-resistance and can stop the early phases of viruses or bacteria in their tracks because your body goes on high alert quickly. It’s so simple and it’s so brilliant. Wet socks or “wet sock therapy” is a great, easy, free lifehack immune boost.

Natural Ways to Beat the Flu

Flu season is here and as you know I’m not a huge fan of the flu shot, but there are some great natural ways to beat the flu. The best strategy is always to not get it, but if you do get the flu then we can also work on reducing the severity of the symptoms.

What is The Flu and Why is It Such a Big Deal?

The flu is actually an illness caused by the influenza virus, which passes around through the human population every year. This virus is so tricky because it spreads easily through respiratory droplets (sneezing, coughing, breathing loudly) as well as through contact with frequently touched items like door handles, door knobs, store counters and credit card machines. The influenza virus happens to mutate incredibly easy and has groups of interchangeable parts so it can sort and re-sort itself in unpredictable ways. It can also interchange parts with strains that cause disease in birds (avian flu) and farm animals (swine flu). All in all it’s unpredictable and causes a pretty severe set of symptoms in humans that also varies from year to year. Each year the strains of flu that sweep through the population are slightly unpredictable, but we take our best guess at what might be out there and then make the vaccines against that.

How Can You Prevent the Flu Naturally for Yourself and Your Family?

The biggest and most important ways to prevent the flu are also the most basic (and the most overlooked)

Wash your hands frequently when you’re around lots of people, before every meal, and before touching your eyes, nose or mouth.
Cover your mouth when you sneeze, preferably sneezing into the crook of your elbow, count-dracula fashion so that your hands don’t get covered in germs to spread around.
Get good sleep – your immune system will stay so much stronger if you give your body enough time to sleep and the right sleep environment.
Stay hydrated – your immune system works best if your hydration status is good.
Cut down on the sugar – all simple sugars like table sugar, honey, agave nectar and fruit sugars decrease the ability of your neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) to respond to threats. That means the more sweets you’re eating over the flu season, the less likely it is that your body can defend itself (more in the next couple of weeks!)
Homeopathic preparations of Influenzinum can be used to prep your body for flu season and help you to fight off the virus if you’re exposed. Look for a 30C potency and take 3-5 pellets under your tongue once weekly. This is safe for kids and adults.
Good natural antivirals like elderberry syrup can really help to prevent the flu even if you’ve been exposed. 1 tbsp per day for adults under normal circumstances and if you know that you had a major exposure you can take a tablespoon every couple of hours.
All the good basic immune boosters like zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, selenium, echinacea and colostrum can be used for flu as well, although they aren’t specific for the virus.
Dracula Sneeze poster from the University of Arizona Health Services. The easiest way to beat the flu is to not get it.

Natural Ways to Beat The Flu If You Have a Big Exposure

Yeah – your boss just came back to work after being out for an entire week and the first thing he did was cough on you. Great. Just great. Not to worry, there are a few great things you can do to boost your immune system like crazy to hopefully keep the flu away.

No sugar – give your body a fighting chance to keep your immune system up and eliminate all sugar for 24-48 hours. This includes table sugar, pastries, sweets, chocolate, honey, agave nectar, juices, fruit and sugars in other foods.
Dose up the elderberry – 1-2 tbsp every 2 hours that you’re awake
Aim for 10 hours of sleep. Nothing helps your immune system like sleep does.
Treat yourself to some at-home hydrotherapy like the wet sock treatment. If you haven’t heard me talk about this before – it’s AWESOME. This will be the entire topic of next week’s post. It’s just as crazy as it sounds and it’s also the best free immune boost out there.
Use some saline nasal rinse in a neti pot or just a regular nose spray and also a salt water gargle for your throat. This helps to make these environments less friendly to the flu virus. If you can do this right after your exposure then all the better, but if not then do it in the evening when you get home and again the following morning.
If you have some at home, the natural flu remedy oscillococcinum from Boiron seems to be able to stop the flu in it’s tracks. Just one dose after an exposure should do, but if you tend to over think things then feel free to take a second dose after 24 hours. 1 tube should be enough to dose an entire family of 4.
Echinacea extract has been shown in studies to help prevent the flu, and with a known exposure you can take a dropper full of the liquid extract every couple of hours or 1-2 capsules every couple of hours for the first 24 hours. If it doesn’t kick it after that then it isn’t going to.
You don’t have to do all of these, but try to really focus on supporting your body and giving it what it needs and use whatever tools you can. The most important things are avoiding sugars, sleeping and doing a good saline nasal rinse and gargle. The supplements can be added in just depending on what you happen to have at home.

Oscillococcinum from Boiron. A great tool in the flu-prevention kit.

How To Beat the Flu Naturally Once You’ve Already Got It

You tried everything you could, but this year’s virus is a strong one and you came down with the flu anyway… Here’s how to handle it.

Take time off work. Most people know that when they have the fever and body aches and chills then it’s a good time to call in, but just in case. Flu needs plenty of rest to heal and it can linger if you don’t rest up front so might as well enjoy just about the only benefit to the flu, which is a few days off of work.
Hydrate like you’ve never hydrated before. Fevers burn off a lot of moisture and so does all of that mucus. It is much easier to dehydrate when you’ve got the flu and much harder to fix it (plus being dehydrated gets in the way of your natural defense mechanisms and slows down your immune response).
Clean foods only – for a few days avoid the grains, dairy products and especially the sugar. Lots of chicken soup and simple to digest foods can be really helpful. If you don’t have an appetite then just focus on the water and liquids – broth can be tremendously helpful.
Sleep. Seriously sleep is a big part of when healing happens so sleep at night, sleep in the day, just sleep. You’re off work anyway – what could be better than falling asleep in front of a Seinfeld marathon?
Elderberry syrup can shorten the duration of the flu by 24-48 hours (which is about what tamiflu® will do as well). 2 tbsp three times daily for an adult.
Manage the symptoms. The congestion and stuffiness that can come with the flu gets better with NAC 600 mg between every meal. The body aches are helped by a hot bath with epsom salts, natural anti-inflammatories like turmeric or ibuprophen if you tend in that direction.
Fever is generally a good thing because it’s one of the ways your immune system kills viruses, but if it starts to get too high (which is rare with the flu) then take something like acetaminophen or a tepid bath to reduce the fever. My idea of too high in an adult would be 103-104* but figure out what your feelings are about it and stick to that.
Call your mom or dad if you can. Really nothing makes you feel better when you’re sick than talking with someone beloved.

Next week we’ll talk about wet socks because that one always makes people curious. All in all just take good care of yourself this flu season and if you do get the flu, don’t panic. Just look at it as a forced relaxation – sometimes your body needs that. The best natural ways to beat the flu really are the simple things like keeping a good diet, good hygiene and getting good sleep.

Foods That Cause Inflammation – Nutritarian Eating

Diets come and diets go, but inflammation lasts forever and at the end of the day there are some foods that cause inflammation no matter how trendy they are. The great news is that any diet or lifestyle change can be shifted so that it’s less inflammatory and even anti-inflammatory. For instance the paleo diet, which I love, can be done in a way that is highly inflammatory, or it can be done in a way that is highly anti-inflammatory so the most important thing is to educate yourself about inflammation and about ways to personalize your diet to your body. Also, in the never-ending quest to become more of a nutritarian (meaning to get more nutrient dense foods in my diet) this list is really helpful.

Some of the factors that can increase the inflammatory value of foods also have to be considered – like pesticides, herbicides or hormones in the food. For that reason I’m also giving you the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean Fifteen” lists compiled by Environmental Working Group. These are lists of the foods that concentrate pesticides within their flesh (and so should be bought organic whenever possible – this is the “Dirty Dozen” list) and the foods that hold on to the least pesticides and so can be purchased conventionally to save those organic dollars. Likewise products from animals that are conventionally raised using hormones and antibiotics are going to be significantly more inflammatory than products from animals who are raised organically, grass fed, or hunted. Therefore just choosing a better quality version of the same thing can help you to reduce inflammation.

Quick Food Guide: The Foods That Cause Inflammation

Do you know which foods cause inflammation? You can take this list to the grocery store.

For a free .pdf download of the food list, click on: FoodChartNew

As you can see on the Quick Food Guide, some foods are also more likely to cause inflammation in your body just because of the nature of the food itself. In general there are many of these that you probably could have guessed – white flour, white sugar, white rice, artificial sweeteners. Also the things we know are not so good, like partially hydrogenated oils and trans-fats. The great news is that focusing on increasing your foods in the anti-inflammatory list will help tremendously on the

Making Paleo Diet More Anti-Inflammatory

Paleo diet can be really meat-heavy and that is great for some people, but not for people with inflammatory disorders to begin with. Granted it’s already cutting out a lot of the inflammatory foods like white sugar, corn syrup, white flour, white rice. That is awesome!! The issue comes when people just eat meat three meals per day and forget about the veggies or the meat quality. Here are some tips to optimize your Paleo diet so that you’re not boosting inflammation:

Veggie-Bomb: Always get twice as many veggies as you get meat, and if you have an inflammatory condition like RA, autoimmune disease or cardiovascular disease then bump that up to 3 or 4 times the veggie to meat ratio.
Eat Quality: Make sure your meats are organic, grass fed and grass finished (for beef), hormone-free and antibiotic free. Quality is so much better than quantity with animal products.
Optimize the Organics: Check the “Dirty Dozen” list before you buy veggies to make sure you’re optimizing your organic food budget. It can get expensive, so getting it right really helps.
Be Active: Diet is only half of the inflammation picture and exercise and activity will go a long way to normalize inflammatory levels.
Hydrate: Drink plenty of water. Any protein-heavy diet puts some extra strain on your kidneys and if you’re a little dehydrated then this can start to impact how well you feel and your overall level of inflammation. At least eight 8oz glasses per day.

Why Is It Important to Reduce Inflammation?

Inflammation is linked to almost every major disease and disease category we have including:

Cancer
Cardiovascular disease including heart attack, cholesterol and stroke
Autoimmune disease
Chronic pain
Obesity
Mood disorders (brain inflammation)
Alzheimer’s disease and other neuro-degenerative diseases

The bottom line is that real food, real veggies, and minimizing the chemicals is always going to be the best route to keeping your inflammation levels down. Knowing the foods that cause inflammation can help you to make better choices at the grocery store.

Is Consumerism Killing you? Cash Register Receipts are Toxic.

There are plenty of problems with consumerism, but this one is reasonably unanticipated – because register receipts are toxic. In terms of neutral substances that I am not likely to consider harmful, paper generally ranks high on the list. The problem with thermal receipts is that it’s paper that is coated with massive amounts of BPA as a developing agent for the print. According to a University of Missouri – Columbia study, this issue is compounded by using hand sanitizer, creams or lotions before you touch a receipt. We’ll talk about that more in a second, but let’s cover the basics first. Also remember the new substitute for BPA, BPS, is TOXIC!

What is BPA?

According to Frederick vom Saal, Curators Professor of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU, “BPA first was developed by a biochemist and tested as an artificial estrogen supplement,” apparently, having been declined for medical use, the manufacturer found industrial uses for it. BPA (or it’s little sister BPS) is now used to make plastics soft, but the estrogenic effects are still there. BPA and BPS are most commonly found in:

Store and restaurant receipts
Airline tickets
ATM receipts
Plastic bottles and food containers
Linings of cans for canned food
Baby bottles
Dental composits

Many plastic water bottles currently available are proudly labeled “BPA FREE!” but that’s misleading, because they just substituted BPA for BPS which has the same endocrine disrupting effects. And obviously, the BPA hasn’t been taken out of anything that isn’t consumable – like the toxic register receipts.

BPA free is a load of B(p)S! And because of BPA register receipts are toxic.

What Does BPA Do To Humans?

BPA has strong estrogen effects. It has also been shown to alter signaling mechanisms involving hormones. Excess estrogen is strongly implicated in obesity, mood disorders, hormone disorders and infertility, breast and prostate cancer. Not to mention reproductive harm to fetuses – meaning exposure to BPA in utero may lead to reproductive problems for that child when they grow up. Seriously – if they can harm your unborn child, then register receipts are TOXIC.

How Much BPA do You Get From Touching Register Receipts?

This research study tried to establish a feel for how much BPA is absorbed with normal shopping behavior. Subjects BPA levels were tested before and after handling register receipts when the subject had previously used a skin product like hand sanitizer or lotion. Their levels were also tested after handling register receipts and then eating fries. The results? BPA is absorbed very rapidly in these conditions, which mimic normal human shopping. Vom Saal, the primary researcher, went on to say:

“Our research found that large amounts of BPA can be transferred to your hands and then to the food you hold and eat as well as be absorbed through your skin. BPA exhibits hormone-like properties and has been proven to cause reproductive defects in fetuses, infants, children and adults as well as cancer, metabolic and immune problems in rodents. BPA from thermal papers will be absorbed into your blood rapidly; at those levels, many diseases such as diabetes and disorders such as obesity increase as well. Use of BPA or other similar chemicals that are being used to replace BPA in thermal paper pose a threat to human health.”

The press release from MU can be found here. I have to say, I feel a little weird that we live in a world where register receipts are toxic. These things in our environment that we come into contact with on a near-daily basis shouldn’t be implicated in things like cancer and fetal reproductive defects. The important thing is knowing as a consumer how to protect yourself because clearly we can’t rely on our government doing it for us. Make sure you handle receipts, airline tickets and ATM printouts as minimally as possible and never after you have put on hand sanitizer or lotion. Also wash your hands before eating to make sure BPA you have touched doesn’t make it into your food. After all, if something as simple as a register receipt is toxic, just think of all the other things you come into contact with.

Keeping Your Breasts Healthy Naturally

In light of breast cancer awareness month I’d like to talk a little bit about keeping your girls healthy and happy and cancer-free. The fact is that there are lots of simple things you can do to stay healthy and help prevent breast cancer. Simple changes can really add up – but don’t forget the most important thing you can do, which is monthly breast self-exams. As with any cancer, breast cancer is easiest to treat if you catch it early and take definitive action and so checking regularly is just great self-care. Here’s my favorite way to remind myself:

Keeping Your Breasts Healthy Naturally:

Manage your estrogen – One of the biggest contributors to breast cancer is estrogen dominance, which means that your estrogen levels are too high relative to progesterone levels. We’ll talk about this in more detail because managing estrogen dominance is one of the most important considerations in keeping your breasts healthy naturally.
Don’t take extra estrogen if you’re high risk – if you have genetic risk or a family history of breast cancer than just don’t use birth control or HRT that adds estrogen into your system. That means no birth control pills, no implants, no shots, no patch. If you really need a birth control method that isn’t condoms, then consider an IUD – the Mirena IUD actually secretes a small amount of progesterone and so would be very balancing for a woman who normally has high estrogen. The copper IUD lasts longer (about 10 years for one IUD) but can cause heavy bleeding. Talk with your doctor to find a solution that is right for you.
Help your Breast tissue – dense or fibrocystic breasts are one of the precursors to breast cancer and also make early detection more difficult. Dense, disorganized or cystic breast tissue may indicate an iodine deficiency. Iodine helps your tissues to grow smoothly and in an organized pattern and so when tissues start to form nodules or changes in density patterns it’ may be an indication that iodine levels are low. Iodine deficiency can also affect thyroid and other hormone levels so this can be a complex problem. It’s really important to check with your doctor or practitioner if you have thyroid problems before you start taking iodine. GLA, the beneficial fatty acid from Borage or Evening Primrose Oil can also be extremely helpful for fibrocystic breasts and for keeping your breasts healthy in general. Breast tissue can change and soften with the right nutritional influences and this will help you with both prevention of breast cancer (which is more likely to appear in fibrocystic breasts) and also easier detection. Also for some women caffeine consumption contributes to breast density, sensitivity and nodularity and so limiting caffeine can be beneficial.
Limit the estrogenic chemicals in your life – cut out the phthalates (the chemicals that make plastics soft), the BPA in hard plastics (and if you don’t know about the horrible substitute they’re using called BPS then read up here), the chemical cleaning products, the pesticides and herbicides. All of these chemicals mimic estrogen in your body and so have the same potential cancer causing effects. Switch to organic foods when you can, especially in meat, milk, butter and eggs. The reason these categories are so important is because antibiotics and hormones are not permitted in organic meat animals or organic dairy animals, but are widely used in conventionally raised animals. If you’re high-risk then this is especially important but I believe every woman should protect herself and her children.
Exercise – This really does make a huge difference in every aspect of your health, especially your risk for chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. In terms of keeping your breasts healthy, exercise increases circulation, increases the rate of lymphatic detoxification in breast tissue and also reduces the total estrogen burden.
Breast self-exams – Breast self exams, as explained by the hunky gentlemen in the previous video who really just want to take care of your breasts (thank you god), help you to ensure that no lumps pop up quickly. You can use circular motions to feel the whole area of breast tissue, including under your arms on both sides. Look for lumps or knots. Also make sure you look at your breasts in the mirror – dimpling, puckering or inverted nipples can indicate a problem – especially if it starts suddenly. Also watch for sores or ‘bug bites’ that don’t go away – it is much more rare but there is a form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer that just looks like a sore or an itchy rash-like spot on the breast that doesn’t heal. Although, I’d suggest watching the video a few times to ensure you have it right. 🙂
Lose Weight – I know. I say that like it’s simple, right? The issue with carrying extra weight is that fat tissue generates its own estrogen and so carrying extra fat means you are also dealing with extra estrogen – and extra estrogen is the biggest and most important risk factor for breast cancer outside of the BrCA gene.
Eat your veggies and cut down on the meat and dairy – a more plant-based diet helps to reduce your risk and protect your body from many types of cancers, including breast. This diet gives you higher fiber (which helps detoxify estrogens) and more antioxidants and complex polyphenols that reduce your risk even further.
Screening – mammograms are suggested for women over 40 and although there is some radiation exposure they also help with early detection so talk with your doctor about what is right for you. For women who are truly high risk having a thermogram, or thermal imaging, of the breasts done yearly can be extremely helpful. Thermal imaging will show problem areas far before you would be able to feel a lump or find anything on a mammogram, although if a spot shows up you will still need to get a mammogram to pinpoint the exact location. Thermal imaging essentially acts as an early warning system that shows you what to watch. It also gives you the opportunity to take more aggressive steps if something does show up to prevent it from growing into cancer.

Managing Your Estrogen and Recognizing Estrogen Dominance

Estrogen in women is responsible for all kind of issues and generally it promotes cell growth, weight gain, and moodiness if it’s out of balance or present in high doses. Estrogen dominance is one of the major factors in breast disease including fibrocystic breasts and breast cancer. Keeping your breasts healthy means recognizing estrogen dominance when it is happening and working to reduce your estrogen burden. Some of the symptoms or indicators that you may be prone to estrogen dominance include:

Fibrocystic breasts
Breast tenderness and heaviness
Water retention in hands and feet
Irritability, mood swings
Depression
Uterine fibroids
PMS
Severe cramping
Heavy bleeding and clotting
Endometriosis
Family history of breast cancer
Breast cancer

Keeping your breasts healthy means reducing estrogen when it’s overloaded, and I’m guessing this woman is overloaded. SCREAMING © Erik Reis | Dreamstime.com

Reducing your estrogens:

30-50 g fiber daily
Exercise – at least 10 minutes daily
Magnesium supplement
B complex supplement
DIM or I3C
Lots of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale
Reduce caffeine
Reduce calorie intake or portion sizes to help yourself lose weight
Boost your water intake to flush out excess estrogen.

Broccoli, cabbage and kale may seem like a strange step, but there is a supplement with the active ingredient from cruciferous vegetables taken out and concentrated. You can find it under two different names. One is DIM (Di-indole Methane) or I3C (Indole 3-Carbanol). These are essentially the same thing, just at different points in the metabolic pathway. Cruciferous vegetables and both of these supplements are powerful estrogen “chelators”, which means that they bind to estrogen to help your body eliminate them.

Fiber and water are both important for this elimination pathway as well because estrogen binds to fiber in your digestive tract which stops it from being reabsorbed. Water helps to flush everything out of your system, estrogen included. Fiber and water are two of the most important steps towards keeping your breasts healthy naturally.

Losing weight is one of the most important steps you can take to balance your estrogen, simply because your fat tissue makes it’s own estrogen. How terrifying is that? In both men and women, fat cells actually make estrogen.

All of these seem like small steps, and it’s true they won’t change your estrogen levels overnight, but sadly, nothing will short of drugs like tamoxifen that are used in breast cancer. Still, taking these steps for three months will produce noticeable results in your PMS, mood swings, estrogen related weight gain and cycle. Also, if you happen to be using tamoxifen then it is imperative that you read this article about preventing tamoxifen resistance using melatonin.

Take care of your breasts ladies – it’s incredibly important. These days it seems like everyone knows and loves someone who has been touched by breast cancer. We all have mothers or aunts or sisters or friends who have faced this beast, but together we can help to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Make sure your friends know how to take care of themselves, raise your children doing breast self-exams and practicing good eating habits. It is never too early or too late to start keeping your breasts healthy naturally.

Johns Hopkins Scientist -Shocking Report on Flu Vaccines |REALfarmacy.com | Healthy News and Information

Just a quick update – great information on the hype surrounding the flu vaccine.

Johns Hopkins Scientist Reveals Shocking Report on Flu Vaccines |REALfarmacy.com | Healthy News and Information.

The Best Alzheimer’s Supplements

The last post talked a lot about healthy-living strategies for Alzheimer’s prevention, but it’s also important to know about the best Alzheimer’s supplements – especially when there are so many products to choose from. There is a limited body of research for natural supplements in Alzheimer’s disease, but some of the strategies are promising, and could often be used alongside conventional drugs for memory loss and dementia.

Ketogenic diet, Coconut Oil and MCTs

Perhaps the best known alternative therapy for Alzheimer’s disease, these three therapies are just different ways of skinning the same cat. The theory behind this therapy is that while your body can use many fuel sources, your brain is limited to glucose, or sugar, as a fuel. In order for your cells, including your brain cells to use sugar they have to be able to respond effectively to insulin signaling. If your diet has always been a little higher in sugars or starches, or if you have a genetic tendency towards blood sugar abnormalities including diabetes then you may not have good insulin signaling. The first sign of this is usually something called metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the first step along the path towards both diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

Coconut oil or MCT oil – one of the best supplements for Alzheimer’s disease. Photo by Aravind Sivaraj.

In good news, even if your insulin signaling isn’t so good, there is a back-door to brain fuel, which allows you to bypass both glucose and insulin. This back-door is called ketones. Ketones are made when your body breaks down fats for fuel instead of sugar and they can feed your brain even when glucose can’t. Ketogenic diets have been used to help children with epilepsy that is uncontrolled by drugs alone to reduce their seizure frequency and evidence with Alzheimer’s suggests that this could potentially be a good diet for neuroprotection in general. Ketogenic diets generally have a 4:1or 3:1 ratio of good dietary fats: proteins and carbohydrates (including starches and sugar) combined. There are urine test strips, called keto-strips, that you can use to test your urine to see if your body is in ketosis. Obviously this isn’t the easiest diet to maintain long-term so using fats that are more ketogenic, like coconut oil or MCT, can help.

Coconut oil is unique in that it contains a high proportion of a type of fat called medium chain triglycerides, or MCTs. Most of the fats that we eat in our diet are made of long-chain triglycerides, but the shorter MCTs are more efficient for your body to convert into ketones, and so are more able to fuel your brain if glucose isn’t working. If a full ketogenic diet is too difficult then using raw coconut oil, or the extracted MCTs from coconut oil can help boost your brain power. In fact, five tablespoons of coconut oil or MCT oil spread out through the day is one of the best Alzheimer’s disease supplements that we know of. In fact a pilot study published recently in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease indicated that neurons treated with amyloid-beta (which induces the changes of Alzhimer’s disease) were actually protected by the addition of coconut oil.

Antioxidants – Some of the Best Alzheimer’s Supplements Around

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is extensive oxidative stress throughout the brain and neurological system. This includes the typical free radical formation, as well as protein and lipid oxidation (which means free radicals steal electrons from proteins and fats), DNA oxidation (scary thought – stealing electrons from your genes), and neuron death. Many antioxidants have been studied (here, here, here and many other places too) to help prevent or reverse this type of damage including:

We should all age so well. The best Alzheimer’s supplements for this Female Buddhist lay rununciant at en:Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia (January 2005). Photo by Peter Rimar.

CoQ10 – This substance acts as an antioxidant and also stimulates energy production at a cellular level. Not only that, it helps protect your heart.
Vitamin E – especially the gamma-tocopherol form, which is more fat soluble and crosses into the brain more effectively.
Ferulic acid – this is a phenolic compound found in flax seeds, coffee beans, apples, artichokes, peanuts, fennel and other plants. It is a strong anti-oxidant and in animal studies has shown direct effects against breast and liver cancer.
Polyphenols – including quercetin (from many foods) and resveratrol (from red grapes or red wine). These are good anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants.
Alpha-lipoic acid – this fat-soluble (so brain-friendly) antioxidant will also help to lower blood sugars so that makes it one of the best Alzheimer’s supplements out there. It’s a double-whammy.
N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) – this amino acids helps your body to recycle glutathione, which is your master antioxidant. It also helps to break up mucus and congestion, which can also be helpful in an elderly population.
EGCG – this is the most-researched antioxidant from green tea and has shown benefits to brain health, heart health and aging generally.
Curcumin – this strong anti-inflammatory from turmeric has shown a tremendous preventative effect in Alzheimer’s disease and helps to protect your brain from oxidative damage as well as inflammatory changes.
Melatonin – this is your natural sleep hormone, which has the added bonus of helping Alzheimer’s patients to sleep more soundly – which is usually one of the worst issues for both caregivers and patients in late-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

The research evidence shows that each one alone has significant benefits, but that combining a variety of different antioxidants is the best strategy for Alzheimer’s disease. My favorite combination of supplements to start with would be alpha-lipoic acid 600 mg per day (take this one with food because the blood sugar drop on an empty stomach can be significant), CoQ10 400 IUs, and an antioxidant combo with vitamin A, E, and C in it at the minimum but look for some of the others as well. Also a cup or two of green tea daily and melatonin, 3-20 mg at night for sleep. Of course you should talk with your doctor before starting this or any other suggestion.

Magnesium for Alzheimer’s Disease

Magnesium levels in the brain help to increase the density and plasticity of brain synapses. This means your brain cells can connect to each other more frequently and with more flexibility – changing more effectively as you learn new skills. Unfortunately keeping magnesium levels high in the brain, or even in the body, can be a challenge with modern diets – here is my recent post on Magnesium in general. There are a couple of types of magnesium that might help with this:

Magnesium threonate – has been shown to be effective in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s. It improved brain levels of magnesium and prevented and reversed cognitive defects as well as synaptic loss. This form of magnesium is taken orally so the dose is limited by bowel tolerance because any magnesium that you take orally will cause loose stools if the dose is higher than your body can absorb at one time.
Magnesium Oil – this form of magnesium, which is usually magnesium chloride, is applied topically so there is no trouble with the bowel tolerance issue. There aren’t any research studies specifically about topical magnesium in Alzheimer’s disease, but logically this could be a good addition to the magnesium threonate to help restore magnesium in the brain and body. Magnesium oil can be applied several times per day and allows magnesium to absorb directly through the skin. Use caution on cuts or scrapes (or newly shaved skin) because it burns like salt water would.

Huperzine A – Best Alzheimer’s Supplement mimicking drug activity

Huperzine A, which is an Alzheimer’s drug in China, is sold over the counter in the US as a nutritional supplement. It is a plant sourced compound that has strong acetylcholinesterase inhibiting activity in the brain – just like the most common class of drug used to treat Alzheimers, which are cholinesterase inhibitors. This includes the drugs Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne, Cognex and Namenda. Huperzine A has also shown neuroprotective effects as well as the surprising ability to reduce iron levels in the brain – and this may also be beneficial in Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s Disease is debilitating and tragic, but there is so much we can do to both prevent it as well as to slow down the progression. The products that I consider to be the best supplements for Alzheimer’s is not a complete list of everything out there, but they are the supplements that I feel have the most credible research behind them. As a starting place the lifestyle steps in the prevention article should be priority one, followed by the addition of useful supplements including coconut oil, a mix of antioxidants, magnesium and huperzine A. Above all, it is helpful to work with a practitioner who can help to guide you in these times and make sure any supplements or nutritional changes you make will work well with any pharmaceutical medicines you are taking.