Rather Be Healthy

A couple months ago, I sent you a really tasty new healthy dessert/snack recipe that we called Danette’s healthy balls. You can see the original recipe on that page. Super simple and tasty.

Well, after experimenting with this recipe a few times, I’ve made a few modifications to it that lower the overall carbs while increasing the healthy fats and fiber in order to lower the glycemic response from this recipe.

The existing recipe with the oats is okay for highly active people that workout hard and can utilize the carbs from the oats well. And oats are one of the more “neutral” grains that have less antinutrient problems compared to wheat or corn.

But I still wanted to modify these healthy cookie dough balls for our own batches to be lower in carbs for a lower blood sugar response since I use these mostly in the evenings for dessert each night.

So what I did was replace the oats in the recipe with hazelnut flour, although any nut flour will work well too. Since the basis of the recipe is a jar of almond butter, I chose to use hazelnut flour instead of using almond flour and almond butter. That way, you diversify the fatty acid profile and the vitamin/mineral profile from 2 types of nuts instead of only one type. You can also add chopped pecans and walnuts for more variety.

If you choose to use peanut butter or cashew butter as the base of the recipe, you can use almond flour (which is easier to find than hazelnut flour), and that way, you still get a more diverse nutrient profile from the 2 types of nuts instead of just one.

I also added some other bells and whistles to this modified version to add more healthy fats and fiber. Notably, I added coconut milk instead of water, and also added a 1/3 cup of chia seed for extra fiber and vitamins/minerals.

I also used 1/4 cup real maple syrup instead of the 1/4 cup honey. This was mainly because raw honey is generally solid and doesn’t mix well, so real maple syrup worked better for me in order to mix everything together.

Oh, and I also added some cocoa powder, dark choc chips, and some pure cacao nibs for the extra taste and nutrition benefits of the various forms of cocoa.

Here’s the new version below which I just made 2 days ago and is the BEST batch I’ve made yet. These things are deeee-lish! My dad even made a batch of these recently and said he looks forward to having a few of these little gems with a cup of tea every single day as a mid day snack or dessert.

The ratio of sugar in these is very low since the majority of the recipe consists of healthy fats, protein, and fiber. The only real carb source is the maple syrup and it’s only 1/4 cup in the whole recipe, but the amount of balls this makes will last you at least a week.

The New Modified Healthy Balls Dessert Recipe:

* 1 full jar (12 oz) of almond butter, cashew butter, or peanut butter
* 1/4 cup real maple syrup (grade B has more nutrients than grade A)
* 2 cups hazelnut flour or almond flour
* 1/2 cup organic canned coconut milk (canned is creamier than the watered down cartons)
* 1/3 cup chia seed
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 2-3 scoops vanilla or chocolate whey protein (Chocolate Biotrust protein tastes the best in this mixture!)
* 2 Tbsp of organic cocoa powder
* 1/3 cup of cacao nibs
* 1/3 cup of dark choc chips (70% cacao or higher)
* 1 Tbsp of cinnamon
* pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl and continue to mash together with a large spoon for a few minutes until everything seems well mixed together. Roll into 1 inch balls and lay out on plates or waxed paper to put in the freezer (they need to be separate so they don’t freeze together). Once frozen, you can transfer all the balls to a tupperware container to keep in the freezer until any time you want a healthy sweet treat!

Try these and you’ll be BLOWN AWAY at how good these are!

Remember to make sure that you grab our new healthy anti-aging recipe manual that Catherine Ebeling and I have co-authored below:

82 amazingly delicious fat-burning anti-aging recipes (metabolism-boosting breakfasts, lunch, dinner, snacks, desserts, and more! All designed to help counteract the aging process for a leaner younger looking body)

This manual will give you endless ideas so you NEVER get bored with eating healthy!

PS — if you liked today’s recipe, please fwd this email on to any of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Statins are now among the most widely prescribed drugs on the market with one in four Americans over 45 taking them, and are the number one profit-maker for the pharmaceutical industry, largely due to relentless and highly successful direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns.

In fact, a recent study assessing the effect of direct-to-consumer drug advertising concluded that TV ads for statins may be a driving factor of overdiagnosis of high cholesterol and overtreatment with the drugs.1

Statins are HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, that is, they act by blocking the enzyme in your liver that is responsible for making cholesterol (HMG-CoA reductase).

The fact that statin drugs cause side effects is well established—there are over 900 studies proving their adverse effects, which run the gamut from muscle problems to increased cancer risk.

The biggest “sham” of all is that statin drugs, which millions are taking as a form of “preventive medicine” to protect their heart health, can have detrimental effects on your heart.

For example, a study published just last year in the journal Atherosclerosis2, showed that statin use is associated with a 52 percent increased prevalence and extent of calcified coronary plaque compared to non-users. And coronary artery calcification is the hallmark of potentially lethal heart disease!

Now, researchers have uncovered yet another MAJOR problem associated with these drugs. One of the major benefits of exercise is the beneficial impact it has on your heart health, and exercise is a primary strategy to naturally maintain healthy cholesterol levels. Alas, if you take a statin drug, you’re likely to forfeit any and all health benefits of your exercise.

As reported by The New York Times3:

“The drugs routinely are prescribed for those with high cholesterol and other risk factors for heart disease, and some physicians believe that they should be used prophylactically by virtually everyone over 50.

… [P]eople who should benefit the most from exercise — those who are sedentary, overweight, at risk of heart disease or middle-aged — are also the people most likely to be put on statins, possibly undoing some of the good of their workouts.

… In past studies, researchers have shown that statins reduce the risk of a heart attack in people at high risk by 10 to 20 percent for every 1-millimole-per-liter reduction in blood cholesterol levels (millimoles measure the actual number of cholesterol molecules in the bloodstream), equivalent to about a 40-point drop in LDL levels.

Meanwhile, improving aerobic fitness by even a small percentage through exercise likewise has been found to lessen someone’s likelihood of dying prematurely by as much as 50 percent.

… But until the current study, no experiment scrupulously had explored the interactions of statin drugs and workouts in people. And the results, as it turns out, are worrisome.”

Statins Can Undo the Benefits of Exercise

The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology4, discovered that statin use led to dramatically reduced fitness benefits from exercise, in some cases actually making the volunteer LESS fit than before!

The participants in the study included 37 overweight, sedentary men and women, all of whom had symptoms of metabolic problems, such as high blood pressure or excess abdominal fat. None of them had exercised regularly within the past 12 months, and most had slightly but not excessively elevated cholesterol levels.

Before the trial, muscle biopsies were taken from each participant to evaluate mitochondrial content, and their aerobic fitness was determined using treadmill testing. All participants were instructed to maintain their regular diet. The participants were then divided into two groups. One group was given a daily 40 mg dose of simvastatin (Zocor). The other group did not receive any medication. Both groups then began a supervised 12-week exercise program, walking or jogging on a treadmill for 45 minutes, five days a week. At the end of the three-month long trial, their aerobic fitness and muscles were retested. The results were astounding:
•On average, unmedicated volunteers improved their aerobic fitness by more than 10 percent. Mitochondrial content activity increased by 13 percent
•Volunteers taking 40mg of simvastatin improved their fitness by a mere 1.5 percent on average, and some had reduced their aerobic capacity at the end of the 12-week fitness program. Mitochondrial content activity decreased by an average of 4.5 percent

According to senior study author John P. Thyfault, a professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri5:

“Low aerobic fitness is one of the best predictors of premature death. And if statins prevent people from raising their fitness through exercise, then that is a concern.”

How Statins Might Undo Fitness Benefits and Make Your Heart Health Worse

The key to understanding why statins prevent your body from reaping the normal benefits from exercise lies in understanding what these drugs do to your mitochondria—the energy chamber of your cells, responsible for the utilization of energy for all metabolic functions.

The primary fuel for your mitochondria is Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), and one of the primary mechanisms of harm from statins in general appears to be related to CoQ10 depletion. This also explains why certain statin users in the featured trial ended up with worse aerobic fitness after a steady fitness regimen.

It’s been known for many decades that exercise helps to build and strengthen your muscles, but more recent research has revealed that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential role exercise can play in your health. A 2011 review published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism6 pointed out that exercise induces changes in mitochondrial enzyme content and activity (which is what they tested in the featured study), which can increase your cellular energy production and in so doing decrease your risk of chronic disease.

The researchers stated:

“Increasing evidence now suggests that exercise can induce mitochondrial biogenesis in a wide range of tissues not normally associated with the metabolic demands of exercise. Perturbations [changes] in mitochondrial content and (or) function have been linked to a wide variety of diseases, in multiple tissues, and exercise may serve as a potent approach by which to prevent and (or) treat these pathologies.”

Increasing mitochondrial activity is incredibly important because free radicals, which are toxic byproducts of metabolism as well as exposures to chemicals, pollutants and other toxins, can overwhelm your body’s defenses, leading to oxidative damage to cells and tissues that can destroy cellular proteins, lipids and DNA, as well as lead to the loss of mitochondrial function. In the long-term, irreversible damage in the mitochondria can occur, leading to:
•Lower threshold for physical exercise
•Impaired ability to utilize carbohydrates and fat for energy
•Insulin resistance
•Excessive weight gain
•Accelerated aging

If You’re on a Statin Drug, You MUST Take CoQ10…

If you take a statin drug without supplementing with CoQ10—or ideally, the reduced form, called ubiquinol, which is far more effective—your health is at serious risk. CoQ10 is used by every cell in your body, but especially your heart cells. Cardiac muscle cells have up to 200 times more mitochondria, and hence 200 times higher CoQ10 requirements than skeletal muscle.

Now imagine if you start straining your heart with exercise and not counteracting the CoQ10 depletion caused by the drug… it’s no wonder, really, that statin users couldn’t improve their fitness levels! There simply wasn’t enough mitochondrial fuel in their system. This is why supplementing with ubiquinol or CoQ10 is so critical when you’re taking a statin drug. A recent study in the European Journal of Pharmacology7 showed that ubiquinol effectively rescued cells from the damage caused by the statin drug simvastatin, thereby protecting muscle cells from myopathies.

Premature aging is yet another side effect of statin drugs, and it’s also a primary side effect of having too little CoQ10. Deficiency in this nutrient also accelerates DNA damage, and because CoQ10 is beneficial to heart health and muscle function this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness and, ultimately, heart failure…

Again demonstrating the necessity of CoQ10 supplementation during statin therapy, a recent study8 evaluating the benefits of CoQ10 and selenium supplementation for patients with statin-associated myopathy found that, compared to those given a placebo, the treatment group experienced significantly less pain, decreased muscle weakness and cramps, and less fatigue.

Statins also interfere with the mevalonate pathway, which is the central pathway for the steroid management in your body. This too could be a contributing factor as to why statins have such a detrimental impact on your ability to reap health benefits from exercise. As previously explained by Dr. Ron Rosedale:

“First and foremost, cholesterol is a vital component of every cell membrane on Earth. In other words, there is no life on Earth that can live without cholesterol. That will automatically tell you that, in and of itself, it cannot be evil. In fact, it is one of our best friends. We would not be here without it. No wonder lowering cholesterol too much increases one’s risk of dying. Cholesterol is also a precursor to all of the steroid hormones. You cannot make estrogen, testosterone, cortisone, and a host of other vital hormones without cholesterol.”

Beware the Health Hazards of Statin Drugs!

First, if you are a woman, it’s critical for you to know that statins are classified as a “pregnancy Category X medication” meaning, it causes serious birth defects, and should NEVER be used if you’re pregnant or planning a pregnancy. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration9 (FDA) also announced it’s considering additional warning labels for statin drugs. Among them are warnings that statins may increase your risk of:
•Liver damage
•Memory loss and confusion
•Type 2 diabetes
•Muscle weakness (for certain statins)

In all, statin drugs have been directly linked to over 300 side effects10, including:

Cognitive loss

Neuropathy

Anemia

Acidosis

Frequent fevers

Cataracts

Sexual dysfunction

An increase in cancer risk

Pancreatic dysfunction

Immune system suppression

Muscle problems, polyneuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet), and rhabdomyolysis, a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition

Hepatic dysfunction (Due to the potential increase in liver enzymes, patients must be monitored for normal liver function)

Exercise Is Important for Heart Health

As mentioned in the featured article, improving your aerobic fitness by even just a small amount can cut your risk of premature death in half. Clearly, taking a drug that decimates your CoQ10 stores, thereby contributing to worsening heart health in the long run, while simultaneously obliterating the benefits of exercise, is not a wise move for the vast majority of people.

Regular exercise is a cornerstone of healthy cholesterol management. I strongly recommend incorporating high intensity interval exercises, as this also helps optimize your human growth hormone (HGH) production.

When it comes to exercise, more is not always better. As I’ve learned in more recent years, the opposite is frequently true—especially if you’re seeking longevity and optimal health, opposed to winning athletic competitions. Granted, most people are not exercising enough, so this warning does not apply to most of you reading this. But it’s still important to understand that not only is it possible to over-exercise, but focusing on the wrong type of exercise to the exclusion of other important areas can actually do you more harm than good.

Research emerging over the past several years has given us a deeper understanding of what your body requires in terms of exercise, and many of our past notions have simply been incorrect.

For example, there’s compelling evidence showing that high-intensity interval training, which requires but a fraction of the time compared to conventional cardio, is FAR more efficient, and more effective. You can literally reap greater rewards in less time. The same can be said for the super-slow form of weight training, which mirrors many of the health benefits of high-intensity interval training. There’s compelling evidence that the best fitness regimen is one that mimics the movements of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, which included short bursts of high-intensity activities, but not long-distance running.

How to Optimize Your Cholesterol Levels Naturally

The most effective way to optimize your cholesterol profile and prevent heart disease is via diet and exercise. Seventy-five percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. Therefore, if you optimize your insulin level, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol and reduce your risk of both diabetes and heart disease.

There is NO drug that can cure heart disease, as the underlying cause is insulin and leptin resistance and arterial wall damage—both of which are caused by eating excessive amounts of sugars, grains, and especially fructose. So, in addition to regular exercise, my primary recommendations for safely regulating your cholesterol and reducing your risk of heart disease include:
•Reduce, with the plan of eliminating grains and fructose from your diet. This is one of the best ways to optimize your insulin levels, which will have a positive effect on not just your cholesterol, but also reduces your risk of diabetes and heart disease, and most other chronic diseases. Use my Nutrition Plan to help you determine the ideal diet for you, and consume a good portion of your food raw.
•Start intermittent fasting, which will radically improve your ability to burn fat as your primary fuel and thus help improve your insulin and leptin signaling.
•Get plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil, and reduce your consumption of damaged omega-6 fats (trans fats, vegetable oils) to balance out your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.
•Include heart-healthy foods in your diet, such as olive oil, coconut and coconut oil, organic raw dairy products and eggs, avocados, raw nuts and seeds, and organic grass-fed meats.
•Optimize your vitamin D levels by getting proper sun exposure or using a safe tanning bed.
•Optimize your gut flora, as recent research suggests the bacterial balance in your intestines may play a role in your susceptibility to heart disease as well
•Walk barefoot to ground yourself to the earth. Lack of grounding has a lot to do with the rise of modern diseases as it affects inflammatory processes in your body. Grounding thins your blood, making it less viscous. Virtually every aspect of cardiovascular disease has been correlated with elevated blood viscosity.

When you ground to the earth, your zeta potential quickly rises, which means your red blood cells have more charge on their surface, which forces them apart from each other. This action causes your blood to thin and flow easier. By repelling each other, your red blood cells are also less inclined to stick together and form a clot.
•Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively.
•Be sure to get plenty of good, restorative sleep.

Do You REALLY Need a Statin Drug?

That these drugs have proliferated the market the way they have is a testimony to the effectiveness of direct-to-consumer marketing, corruption and corporate greed, because the odds are very high that if you’re taking a statin, you don’t really need it. From my review, the ONLY subgroup that could benefit would be those born with a genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia, as this makes them resistant to traditional measures of normalizing cholesterol.

Remember, your body needs cholesterol for the production of cell membranes, hormones, and vitamin D, just to mention a few. Cholesterol is also vital to your neurological function. And there’s strong evidence that having too little cholesterol increases your risk for cancer, memory loss, Parkinson’s disease, hormonal imbalances, stroke, depression, suicide, and violent behavior.

Contrary to what pharmaceutical PR firms will tell you, statins have nothing to do with reducing your heart disease risk. In fact, this class of drugs can increase your heart disease risk—especially if you do not take Ubiquinol (CoQ10) along with it to mitigate the depletion of CoQ10 caused by the drug. To learn more about statins, please see my special report: Do YOU Take Any of These 11 Dangerous Cholesterol Drugs?

Poor lifestyle choices are primarily to blame for elevated cholesterol levels, such as too much sugar, too little exercise, lack of sun exposure and never grounding to the earth. These are all things that are within your control, and don’t cost much (if any) money to address.

The fact that statins can effectively nullify the benefits of healthy lifestyle changes like exercise, which in and of itself is important to bolster heart health and maintain healthy cholesterol levels, is yet another reason to think twice before opting for such a drug.

Also remember that the BEST way to condition your heart and burn fat is NOT to jog steadily for an hour. Instead, it’s to alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods. This type of exercise, known as interval training, can dramatically improve your cardiovascular fitness and fat-burning capabilities. You can still incorporate some of the endurance cardio into your routine, but make sure you take advantage of interval training. The new evidence suggests that this may actually provide MORE protection against heart attacks than long durational aerobic-type exercises.

If you’re currently taking a statin drug and are worried about the excessive side effects they cause, please consult with a knowledgeable health care practitioner who can help you to optimize your heart health naturally, without the use of these dangerous drugs.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Study: Forget a Word? Make a Fist

The simple body movement of clenching your fist may temporarily change the way your brain functions by boosting your memory, according to new research.

This trick works because making a fist can increase activity in your brain on the opposite side (so if you clench your right fist, activity in the left brain hemisphere increases).

If you’re right-handed, the left side of your brain encodes information while the right side helps you retrieve memories, while the opposite is true for left-handed people. Interestingly, researchers were able to show that by strategically clenching their fists, people were able to improve their memories significantly.

Fist-Clenching for Memory Improvement

In the study, 50 right-handed students were asked to remember a list of words. Those who clenched a ball in their right hand before memorization and in their left hand before recall boosted their memory scores by 15 percent compared to a control group.1

If you’re right-handed and you wanted to try this, you would make a fist with your right hand when you need to remember something, like a name or phone number. Then when you need to recall it, clench your left fist.

This trick has also been found to trigger emotions, with right-hand clenching leading to “approach” emotions controlled by the left brain, such as happiness and anger, and left-hand clenching leading to “withdrawal” emotions like sadness and anxiety.2

‘Brain Farts’ Versus True Memory Loss: What’s the Difference?

If you’ve reached middle age or beyond, you may have noticed that your memory is not as quick as it used to be. So-called “senior moments” happen to all of us… even those who are far from reaching their golden years. You forget where you parked your car, misplace your keys, forget the name of someone you met last week — all of these scenarios are part of life, and they’re completely normal.

Meanwhile, brain farts, or as neuroscientists call them “maladaptive brain activity changes,” are those “oops” moments when you make a really obvious mistake. These occur because your brain perceives many of your daily tasks as patterns, and may revert to its default mode network (DMN), the part of your brain responsible for your inward-focused thinking, such as daydreaming, during this time.

This can be a problem as the DMN competes, in a sense, with other areas of your brain for resources, and in order for you to carry out a task that requires focused attention, your brain must inhibit the DMN.

So if your brain takes a “time out” during a task that requires your full attention, a brain fart, such as sending an important email to the wrong person, is likely to occur. Fortunately, DMN blips are typically short-lived, and once you realize you’ve made an error your brain will likely kick into overdrive to try and correct the mistake.

On the other hand, changes in your memory function could be a sign that your brain is on a gradual decline — and it’s time for you to take action to protect and restore your cognitive function. How can you tell the difference?

Even Mild Memory Loss Is a Sign to Take Control of Your Health

Your brain should not feel foggy all the time, nor should you be experiencing episodes of forgetfulness that are so severe they interfere with your ability to function normally. Even very mild memory loss appears to be linked to the presence of the same type of damage seen in more serious cases of cognitive decline.

These mild changes in your cognitive function — once thought to be a “normal” sign of aging — is actually one of the first signs of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.3 So if you notice that your mind is not as sharp as it used to be, don’t ignore it — take action to help reverse, or at least minimize, further damage.

Do You Want to Give Your Memory a Boost? 5 Important Tips

Clenching your fists may work temporarily to give your memory a quick boost, but what about longer-term strategies to boost your memory and brain health? Embracing the strategies that follow may give a hearty boost to your brainpower, help keep you mentally healthy and ultimately even make you smarter.

1. Exercise

Exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by stimulating nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage. During exercise nerve cells release proteins known as neurotrophic factors. One in particular, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health, and directly benefits cognitive functions, including learning.

A 2010 study on primates published in Neuroscience4 also revealed that regular exercise not only improved blood flow to the brain, but also helped the monkeys learn new tasks twice as quickly as non-exercising monkeys, a benefit the researchers believe would hold true for people as well. To get the most out of your workouts, I recommend a comprehensive program that includes Peak Fitness high-intensity exercise, strength training, stretching and core work.

2. Vitamin B12

Mental fogginess and problems with memory are two of the top warning signs that you have vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12, or rather a lack thereof, has been called the “canary in the cobalamine” for your future brain health, and recent research has bolstered the importance of this vitamin in keeping your mind sharp as you age.

According to the latest research, people with high levels of markers for vitamin B12 deficiency were more likely to score lower on cognitive tests, as well as have a smaller total brain volume,5 which suggests a lack of the vitamin may contribute to brain shrinkage.

Vitamin B12 is available in its natural form only in animal food sources. These include seafood, beef, chicken, pork, milk, and eggs. If you don’t consume enough of these animal products (and I don’t recommend consuming seafood unless you know it is from a pure water source) to get an adequate supply of B12, or if your body’s ability to absorb the vitamin from food is compromised, vitamin B12 supplementation is completely non-toxic and inexpensive, especially when compared to the cost of laboratory testing. I recommend an under-the-tongue fine mist spray, as this technology helps you absorb the vitamin into the fine capillaries under your tongue.

3. Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats

Docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, an omega-3 fat, is an essential structural component of both your brain and retina. Minus the water content, approximately 60 percent of your brain is composed of fats—25 percent of which is DHA. DHA is found in high levels in your neurons — the cells of your central nervous system, where it provides structural support. When your omega-3 intake is inadequate, your nerve cells become stiff and more prone to inflammation as the missing omega-3 fats are substituted with cholesterol and omega-6 instead. Once your nerve cells become rigid and inflamed, proper neurotransmission from cell to cell and within cells become compromised.

Exciting research is showing that degenerative conditions can not only be prevented but also potentially reversed with omega-3 fats. For example, in one study, 485 elderly volunteers suffering from memory deficits saw significant improvement after taking 900 mg of DHA per day for 24 weeks, compared with controls.6

Omega-3 fats such as DHA are considered essential because your body cannot produce it, and therefore must get it from your diet. DHA-rich foods include fish, liver, and brain—all of which are no longer consumed in great amounts by most Americans. To compensate for our inherently low omega-3 diet, a high quality animal-based omega-3 supplement is something that I recommend for virtually everyone, especially if you’re pregnant. I prefer krill oil compared to all other animal-based omega-3s because krill oil is absorbed up to 10-15 times as well as fish oil, due to its molecular composition, and is less prone to oxidation (rancidity) because it is naturally complexed with the potent fat-soluble antioxidant astaxanthin.

4. Proper Sleep

The process of growth, known as plasticity, is believed to underlie the brain’s capacity to control behavior, including learning and memory. Plasticity occurs when neurons are stimulated by events, or information, from the environment. However, sleep and sleep loss modify the expression of several genes and gene products that may be important for synaptic plasticity. Furthermore, certain forms of long-term potentiation, a neural process associated with the laying down of learning and memory, can be elicited in sleep, suggesting synaptic connections are strengthened while you slumber.

Research from Harvard indicates that people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas after sleeping, but few realize that their performance has actually improved. Sleep is also known to enhance your memories and help you “practice” and improve your performance of challenging skills. In fact, a single night of sleeping only four to six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day. If you want a quick brain boost, a mid-day nap has been found to dramatically boost and restore brainpower among adults.7 You can also find 33 tips to help you get the shut-eye you need here.

5. Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels

Activated vitamin D receptors increase nerve growth in your brain, and researchers have also located metabolic pathways for vitamin D in the hippocampus and cerebellum of the brain, areas that are involved in planning, processing of information, and the formation of new memories. In older adults, research has shown that low vitamin D levels are associated with poorer brain function, and increasing levels may help keep older adults mentally fit.8

Appropriate sun exposure is all it takes to keep your levels where they need to be for healthy brain function. If this is not an option, a safe tanning bed is the next best alternative, followed by a vitamin D3 supplement. It now appears as though most adults need about 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D a day in order to get their serum levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the lowest they should be. Ideally, your serum levels should be between 50-70 ng/ml, and up to 100 ng/ml to treat cancer and heart disease. However, it’s important to realize that there’s no magic dosage when it comes to vitamin D. What’s important is your serum level, so you need to get your vitamin D levels tested to make sure you’re staying within the optimal and therapeutic ranges as indicated below.

Too Much Sugar Is Also Detrimental to Your Brain Health…

No discussion of brain health would be complete without discussing the importance of a proper, healthful diet, and with that comes careful attention to limiting your intake of fructose and other sugars.

A UCLA study published last year was the first to show how a steady diet high in fructose can damage your memory and learning.9 Rats fed fructose syrup showed significant impairment in their cognitive abilities—they struggled to remember their way out of a maze. They were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats’ ability to think clearly and recall the route they’d learned six weeks earlier.

Researchers concluded that a high-fructose diet harms your brain, as well as the rest of your body. So if you want to ensure your memory stays sharp as you age, learning the fist-clenching trick is a novel option. But in the long run, making sure you’re eating a healthful diet is the key to stellar brain health. In terms of fructose, you’ll want to limit your intake to 25 grams per day (or less), and 15 grams or less if you are overweight or have diabetes, pre-diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

How Vitamin D Performance Testing Can Help Optimize Your Health

Additionally, a robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for good health and disease prevention. Vitamin D affects your DNA through vitamin D receptors (VDRs), which bind to specific locations of the human genome. Scientists have identified nearly 3,000 genes that are influenced by vitamin D levels, and vitamin D receptors have been found throughout the human body.

Is it any wonder then that no matter what disease or condition is investigated, vitamin D appears to play a crucial role? This is why I am so excited about the D*Action Project by GrassrootsHealth. It is showing how you can take action today on known science with a consensus of experts without waiting for institutional lethargy. It has shown how by combining the science of measurement (of vitamin D levels) with the personal choice of taking action and, the value of education about individual measures that one can truly be in charge of their own health.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

We all strive for happiness and a sense of joy in life. Like many, you probably think achievements such as education, marriage, family and social/financial status can make you happy.

However, studies of happiness have found that these achievements have little to do with your happiness. And for millions of people, happiness remains a rather elusive goal…

Happiness can be identified as “whatever gets you excited.” Once you’ve identified that activity, whatever it is, you can start focusing your mind around that so you can structure your life to do more of it.

A sense of adventure and freedom can also ignite that elusive feeling of happiness. This doesn’t require expensive tickets to some far-flung destination—a walk in the woods can do the trick, or simply taking a different route on your way home from work.

More often than not, it’s the small, simple things in life that bring the most joy and are the most invigorating. In the featured article, Lynn Newman writes about what gives her joy:1

“When I attune to the simple things that give me joy, my body and spirit ignites! I feel truly alive and wildly happy. I feel free of the heavier burdens, beliefs, and complicated constructs that kept me stuck by focusing only on the ‘storms’ within me.”

13 Simple Tips to Live Happy, Wild, and Free

In her article, Newman lists 10 simple tips for living “happy, wild and free.” I’ve also added a couple tips of my own at the end.
1.Review the Happy List
I recently published a list of 22 things that happy people do differently. It was widely appreciated and commented on. So please be sure and review that list to find some novel additional behaviors that aren’t listed here.

2.Write a list of simple things that give you pleasure… and do them at least a few times a week
Writing down the things that bring you a sense of pleasure and happiness, and reviewing your list on a regular basis, can help you remember to carve out the time to do those simple little things that reinforce your belief that life is indeed good.

3.Get moving
Exercise boosts levels of health-promoting brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which may help buffer some of the effects of stress and also relieve some symptoms of depression. Rather than viewing exercise as a tool merely for losing weight and preventing disease – all benefits that occur in the future – try viewing exercise as a daily tool to immediately enhance your frame of mind, reduce stress, and feel happier.

One of the newest recommendations I have based on NASA scientist Dr. Joan Vernikos, who I recently interviewed, is simply to set a timer when you are sitting and stand up every 10 minutes. I even modified further by doing jump squats at times in addition to standing up. This will help counteract the dangerous consequences of excessive sitting.

4.Eat light—and right
What you eat directly impacts your mood and energy levels in both the short and long term. Whereas eating right can prime your body and brain to be in a focused, happy state, eating processed junk foods will leave you sluggish and prone to chronic disease. Ditto for over-eating, which can leave you feeling bloated and sluggish. My free nutrition plan is an excellent tool to help you choose the best foods for both physical and emotional wellness.

5.Take a cold shower
Exposure to cold temperatures via cold water may offer health-boosting benefits for virtually everyone. Taking a cold shower increases your circulation and helps minimize inflammation. It also tends to leave you feeling energized and invigorated, so it’s great first thing in the morning, or right after a workout.

6.Talk less – listen more
Talking less and listening more can help increase heart-centered communication. Listening helps you soak in the wisdom of others and allows you to quiet your own mind at the same time, allowing you to feel content while helping you gain different perspective.

7.Get some sun every day
Have you ever noticed how great it can feel to spend time outdoors on a sunny day? Well, it turns out that getting safe sun exposure, which allows your body to produce vitamin D, is great for your mood.

While I don’t agree with the author’s recommendation to slather on just any sunscreen, getting regular sun exposure is a critical factor for optimal health, happiness, and overall life satisfaction. Remember, if you use sunscreen, you are effectively blocking the sun’s rays, which means your body cannot produce any vitamin D. If you are going to be in the sun for an extended period of time, a non-toxic sunscreen may be necessary to prevent burning certain areas of your skin.

Getting a little bit of sun on bare skin each day is far better than spending hours outside on the weekends only, as overexposure could certainly be harmful to your skin. You always want to avoid getting burned. A better alternative to topical sunscreen is making sure you’re getting plenty of antioxidants in your diet from fresh fruits and vegetables. The carotenoid astaxanthin is particularly effective as an internal sunscreen to help protect you against UV damage.

8.Turn off the TV
Evidence shows cutting back on TV time can add years to your life. According to one study, every hour of TV you watch equates to a 22-minute reduction in life expectancy. Watching TV also has a major impact on your brain chemistry. In fact, the longer you watch, the easier your brain slips into a receptive, passive mode, meaning that messages are streamed into your brain without any participation from you. So, rather than turning off your brain, why not turn off your TV and mindfully engage in something from your list of pleasurable activities instead?

9.Create
As the author states, you don’t have to be an artist to be creative. Creativity can take any form, from gardening to cooking, to dancing and singing, to taking up a new hobby.

10.Enjoy nature
Spending time in nature is an excellent mental health “prescription.” And while you’re at it, take off your shoes (as long as it’s safe to do so). Walking barefoot, grounding yourself to the earth has a wide range of health benefits over and above the simple feeling of connecting with the Earth. Take up gardening, even if you have little room there is always enough space for a few plants.

11.Know the simple truth about yourself
Positive self-talk, affirmations and mantras can play a role in cultivating more happiness. I like the author’s take on this:

“With enthusiasm and confidence, state what you know to be true about your authentic self. Ask yourself, ‘What is true about myself right now in this moment?’ For example, I am enough, I am worthy, I am good, I am loved, I have what I need, or I am a success. State this affirmation out loud a few times to embody the essence of who you really are in this very moment. Take it in! Believe this and you are free!”

12.Express gratitude
People who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, and have more positive emotions. The best way to harness the positive power of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal or list, where you actively write down exactly what you’re grateful for each day. Doing so has been linked to happier moods, greater optimism and even better physical health. Remember, your future depends very largely on the thoughts you think today. So think positive thoughts of hope, confidence, love and success. A simple habit to start is to express appreciation at every meal, either out loud or silently, whichever works for you.

13.Laugh it up!
Laughing causes your body to release beneficial chemicals called endorphins, natural “pain killers” that contribute to your sense of well-being and may counteract the effects of stress hormones and cause blood vessels to dilate. Researchers have even found that just anticipating laughter can increase your endorphin levels, whereas laughing may help boost your immune system and reduce inflammation in your body, which is linked to a variety of diseases. So, if you’re going to watch TV, why not make sure it’s something really funny?

A Healthy Lifestyle Naturally Enhances Happiness

In many respects, a lifestyle that will optimize your health will also help you achieve a happier, more joyful state of mind. You cannot separate your physical health from your mental or emotional health. Once you adopt a happiness mindset, and even before you do, embracing healthy habits will help keep your mood elevated naturally even in the midst of stress. Happy people tend to be healthy people, and vice versa, so in addition to the tips offered above, the following lifestyle strategies will also help you achieve greater levels of happiness.
1.Use an effective stress-management tool, such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
2.Drink plenty of clean water
3.Limit your exposure to toxins
4.Consume healthy fats
5.Eat plenty of raw food, ideally organic and/or locally grown
6.Optimize your insulin and leptin levels by cutting out sugar/fructose and grains from your diet, and adding high intensity interval training to your exercise regimen
7.Exercise regularly
8.Get plenty of high-quality sleep

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As the temperature outside rises, cubical dwellers start to dream of pristine, sandy beaches and begin carefully plotting how many vacation days they can afford this year. Many others plan a last ditch effort to lose some weight before they have to wear a bathing suit in front of friends and family. Most of these people are missing out on three essential health tips that boast powerful benefits for little to no money. Vitamin D, fish oil, and coconut oil are absolutely essential for people looking to maximize their health without spending a lot of money this summer.

Vitamin D
Most people have heard about vitamin D but not enough people take advantage of its powerful benefits. Vitamin D helps to absorb calcium from the diet, creating strong and healthy bones. There is also research that suggests vitamin D plays a role in reducing the risk of cancer, hypertension, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and other medical conditions. There is very little vitamin D in the standard American diet and even eating a healthy diet will not provide the adequate levels required for optimal health. For this reason people must get out into the sun.

Summer time is the easiest time of the year to get natural vitamin D from sunlight because it is warm and more enjoyable to spend time outdoors while wearing less clothing. When people go outside and their skin is covered with clothing or sunscreen the vitamin D is not able to enter the body. The sunlight must reach exposed skin where it quickly converts cutaneous 7-dehydrocholesterol to the previtamin D3 that later is turned into vitamin D3 that the human body can use. It is recommended that everyone get at least 20 minutes of natural sun exposure 2-3 times a week to ensure optimal vitamin D levels. Please understand that this is not a suggestion to spend unreasonable amounts of time baking in the sun unprotected. Sunburn is dangerous and should be avoided. That being said, before you hit the shade or slather on protection, give a little thought to vitamin D.

Fish oil
Fish oil is well known for having a plethora of health boosting properties but it may also help protect people from sunburn. Rhodes et al conducted a study that examined the effect of fish oil on the risk of sunburn. They found that people who took fish oil were less likely to get sunburned than those not taking it. Because of this they also extrapolated that people habitually taking fish oil would have a lower risk of developing skin cancer over their lifetime. Although more research needs to be done on fish oil and photocarcinogenesis, this is an exciting point to add to the already impressive resume for fish oil.

Coconut oil
When spending an extended amount of time in the sun, sometimes protection is needed in order to avoid skin-damaging sunburn. The best protection is either to cover the exposed skin with clothing or use topical protection such as sunscreen. The problem many people run into is that conventional sunscreen products are loaded with dangerous toxins and chemicals. One alternative option is coconut oil. Coconut oil can be used alone as a barrier for sun protection (blocks up to 30 percent of UV radiation), taken internally, and is also the main ingredient in many homemade and natural store-bought sunscreen products. After sun exposure coconut oil is also useful as a skin moisturizer and sunburn ointment. Coconut oil has amazing anti-fungal and skin rejuvenating properties that make it perfect for this role.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v105/n4/pdf/5610738a.pdf

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/

http://www.greenmedinfo.com

http://www.healthstartsinthekitchen.com

About the author:
Kyle Price is a passionate and energetic leader in the field of health and wellness. He loves working with active young families and youth sports. He has a vision to change the dismal healthcare climate in America by promoting personal responsibility and educating people on making healthy lifestyle choices. His personal hobbies include: Scuba Diving, Motorcycles, Ultra light Backpacking, Mountain Biking, Crossfit, and public speaking.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Deaths from prescription drug overdoses have been called the “silent epidemic” for years, and now, with one American dying every 19 minutes from an accidental prescription drug overdose,1 it’s being described as “the biggest man-made epidemic in the United States.”2

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, recently highlighted the gravity of this issue, as many Americans don’t think twice about taking powerful pain-relieving drugs like morphine and Oxycontin.

But if you thought there was a chance they might kill you… the situation would most certainly change, and that’s why getting the word out about this leading cause of death is more important now than ever before.

Prescription Drugs are Killing People Every Day

The face of drug addiction in the United States is changing, and a significant number of older adults, particularly those in the baby boomer generation, as well as teens and young adults are struggling with both illicit and prescription drug abuse.

One of the most commonly abused drug classes are painkillers (opioids) like morphine, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and fentanyl. These drugs are not only addictive, they can lead to slowed breathing and death if too much is taken, and the risks are compounded if you add alcohol to the equation.

Congressional testimony from the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians stated that Americans consume 80 percent of the pain pills in the world,3 and once you start, they set off a cascade of reactions in your body that make it difficult to stop.

Dr. Gupta reported:4

“ …after just a few months of taking the pills, something starts to change in the body. The effectiveness wears off, and patients typically report getting only about 30% pain relief, compared with when they started. Even more concerning, a subgroup of these patients develop a condition known as hyperalgesia, an increased sensitivity to pain.

As you might guess, all of this creates a situation where the person starts to take more and more pills. And even though they are no longer providing much pain relief, they can still diminish the body’s drive to breathe.

If you are awake you may not notice it, but if you fall asleep with too many of these pills in your system, you never wake up. Add alcohol, and the problem is exponentially worse. People who take pain or sleeping pills and drink a couple glasses of wine are playing Russian roulette.”

Two Tragic Stories of Prescription Drug Deaths

Fatal prescription drug overdoses actually surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in 2007.5 Many of the overdoses (36 percent) involve prescription opioid painkillers, which were actually the cause of more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. To put this into perspective, in 2009, nearly 29,000 people died from unintentional drug overdoses, which is the equivalent of losing an airplane carrying 150 passengers and crew every day for nearly 6.5 months – a scenario that would simply be absolutely unacceptable in terms of public health risks.6

Since it’s all legal, no one is really cracking down on this growing drug problem that is wrecking lives each day. How could they, really? The U.S. government has done everything in their power to aid Big Pharma’s influence and profits, and you can’t increase drug sales while dissuading people from taking them at the same time.

Overdose deaths are highest among men and those aged 20 to 64. Steve Rummler, 37, for instance, received a prescription for hydrocodone to address his back pain, along with clonazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, for injury-related anxiety. He soon became dependent on the drugs, and then addicted, noting that while at first the drugs were a lifeline, “now they are a noose around my neck.”7

Hydrocodone, a prescription opiate, is synthetic heroin. It’s indistinguishable from any other heroin as far as your brain and body is concerned. So, if you’re hooked on hydrocodone, you are in fact a good-old-fashioned heroin addict. But most people assume that because it’s a “prescription” drug, it’s safe, or should not carry the same negative stigma as a street drug.

This is, sadly, far from the truth. Even after completing two addiction treatment programs, Rummler had a relapse and died at the age of 43 from mixed drug toxicity.

In other cases, the damage occurs much more quickly. Eighteen-year-old Emily Jackson took a single Oxycontin pill while drinking with a cousin, and that night died of respiratory depression; she stopped breathing while she slept.8

75 Percent of Patients Taking Popular Blood Thinners Are Given Wrong Dose

It’s not only people who are addicted to painkillers who die from accidental overdoses. Some are also harmed when taking drugs at doses prescribed by their physicians. In a study presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2012, researchers from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute revealed that 75 percent of patients taking Plavix or Effient, two common blood-thinning drugs, may be receiving the wrong doses, which would put them at risk of uncontrolled bleeding or blood clots.

Earlier this summer, Dr. Barbara Starfield from Stanford, who was responsible for deriving the data for the headline, Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death, tragically died from the wrong dose of Plavix.

While a simple blood test could determine whether patients’ blood is clotting properly, an indication the medication’s dose is appropriate, the test is not widely used.

The fact of the matter is, adverse drug reactions from drugs that are properly prescribed and properly administered cause about 106,000 deaths per year,9 making prescription drugs the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States. And more than 2 million others will suffer serious side effects. When you compare these statistics to the death toll from illegal drugs — which is about 10,000 per year — you can begin to see the magnitude of the problem the legally prescribed drugs versus recreationally used drugs, it is TEN times worse.

Make Drugs the Last Resort for Your Pain

Many of those succumbing to prescription drug overdoses started taking the drugs not to get high, but to control pain – often back pain. If you are suffering from pain, I suggest you work with a knowledgeable health care practitioner to determine what’s really triggering your pain, and then address the underlying cause.

Remember, along with exposing you to sometimes deadly risks, medications only provide symptomatic relief and in no way, shape or form treat the underlying cause of your pain. But you don’t need to suffer unnecessarily while you get to the bottom of your pain issues. The following options provide excellent pain relief without any of the health hazards that prescription (and even over-the-counter) painkillers carry:
1.Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which is a drug-free approach for pain management of all kinds. EFT borrows from the principles of acupuncture, in that it helps you balance out your subtle energy system.

It helps resolve underlying, often subconscious, negative emotions that may be exacerbating your physical pain. By stimulating (tapping) well-established acupuncture points with your fingertips, you re-balance your energy system, which tends to dissipate pain.
2.Astaxanthin: One of the most effective fat-soluble antioxidants known. It has very potent anti-inflammatory properties and in many cases works far more effectively than many anti-inflammatory drugs. Higher doses are typically required and one may need 8 mg or more per day to achieve this benefit.
3.Ginger: This herb has potent anti-inflammatory activity and offers pain relief and stomach-settling properties. Fresh ginger works well steeped in boiling water as a tea or grated into vegetable juice.
4.Curcumin: In a study of osteoarthritis patients, those who added 200 mg of curcumin a day to their treatment plan had reduced pain and increased mobility.10

A past study also found that a turmeric extract composed of curcuminoids blocked inflammatory pathways, effectively preventing the launch of a protein that triggers swelling and pain.11
5.Boswellia: Also known as boswellin or “Indian frankincense,” this herb contains specific active anti-inflammatory ingredients. This is one of my personal favorites as I have seen it work well with many rheumatoid arthritis patients.
6.Krill Oil: The omega-3 fats EPA and DHA contained in krill oil have been found by many animal and clinical studies to have anti-inflammatory properties.
7.Bromelain: This enzyme, found in pineapples, is a natural anti-inflammatory. It can be taken in supplement form but eating fresh pineapple may also be helpful.
8.Cetyl Myristoleate (CMO): This oil, found in fish and dairy butter, acts as a “joint lubricant” and an anti-inflammatory. I have used this for myself to relieve ganglion cysts and a mild annoying carpal tunnel syndrome that pops up when I type too much on non-ergonomic keyboards. I used a topical preparation for this.
9.Evening Primrose, Black Currant and Borage Oils: These contain the essential fatty acid gamma linolenic acid (GLA), which is useful for treating arthritic pain.
10.Cayenne Cream: Also called capsaicin cream, this spice comes from dried hot peppers. It alleviates pain by depleting the body’s supply of substance P, a chemical component of nerve cells that transmits pain signals to your brain.
11.Methods such as yoga, acupuncture, meditation,12 hot and cold packs, and even holding hands13 can also result in astonishing pain relief without any drugs.

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Hospital Errors Kill Well Over 180,000 Americans Annually – Why are Super-Safe Supplements and Natural Health Under Attack?

When Consumer Reports speaks, people listen – and this time the consumer advocacy agency is advising you on where to get your care – or not – if you need to go to the hospital. It’s the first time Consumer Reports has investigated hospital safety,1 and the results show hospital ratings don’t always match public opinions. Some of the most well-known hospitals got the worst ratings.

Except for the Mayo Clinic’s various campuses, which have exceptionally good scores, others like Mass General and Mount Sinai in New York, didn’t rate as well as you might expect. One hospital, Sacred Heart of Chicago, scoring an abysmal 16 on a 100-point safety scale was ranked the most dangerous in the country. A clinic in Billings, Montana scored the highest. Hospitals were ranked according to six critera:2
•Infections
•Communications about safety issues
•The degree to which you come right back in the hospital after you’ve been discharged
•Situations in which too many imaging tests that expose you to radiation are being done
•Common complications in unsafe hospital
•Death rates for several conditions

An Epidemic of Health Care Harm…

“Infections, surgical mistakes, and other medical harm contributes to the deaths of 180,000 hospital patients a year, according to projections based on a 2010 report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Another 1.4 million are seriously hurt by their hospital care. And those figures apply only to Medicare patients.

What happens to other people is less clear because most hospital errors go unreported and hospitals report on only a fraction of things that can go wrong.

‘There is an epidemic of health-care harm,’ says Rosemary Gibson, a patient-safety advocate and author. More than 2.25 million Americans will probably die from medical harm in this decade, she says. ‘That’s like wiping out the entire populations of North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It’s a man-made disaster.’

… ‘Hospitals haven’t given safety the attention it deserves,’ says Peter Pronovost, M.D., senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. Nor has the government, he says. ‘Medical harm is probably one of the three leading causes of death in the U.S., but the government doesn’t adequately track it as it does deaths from automobiles, plane crashes, and cancer. It’s appalling.'”

The above was written in Consumer Reports:3 To review the full listing of their safety scores, you need to be a Consumer Reports subscriber. However, there are also other sources that can help you evaluate the safety of a hospital, such as:
•Hospital Compare
•Leapfrog Group’s Hospital Safety Score

On Calling the Kettle Black…

Statistics like these make safety allegations against alternative forms of health care, including the use of herbal remedies and supplements in lieu of drugs, all the more ludicrous. Natural health modalities have repeatedly come under attack as being inherently risky. Risky compared to what? Clearly, these people do not know what they’re talking about when they claim conventional health care is superior to natural, holistic modalities.

Superior in what way? Putting you out of your misery quicker?

One such misguided person is Dick Durbin, current state senator of my home state, Illinois, which, as we now know is also home to the most dangerous hospital in the United States. I find this to be particularly ironic since Senator Durbin is a staunch pro-pharma supporter who time and again has tried to destroy alternative health and eliminate supplements. Earlier this summer, he tried to sneak in a last-minute anti-supplement amendment into an FDA bill. Fortunately, over 100,000 Americans called their Congressmen within 24 hours to defeat the amendment.

The Alliance for Natural Health reported:4

“One of the things we found alarming in this amendment saga was the amount of misinformation in Sen. Durbin’s speech on the Senate floor… Sen. Durbin [said], ‘No one tests dietary supplements… Companies that make these products may test them if they wish, there’s no requirement under law that they test them, and there’s certainly no agency of government that tests dietary supplements… There’s just no testing involved.’

This is completely untrue – supplement companies, by law, must comply with the Dietary Supplement Current Good Manufacturing Practices5 (CGMPs) and must conduct testing throughout the production process as well as testing the finished product for quality control. As with the pharmaceutical industry, the burden is on supplement companies to test their own products, because in the end they are liable should FDA choose to take enforcement action against them.

One reason we are so concerned about legislation like Sen. Durbin’s is that it is clearly intended to put us on a slippery slope toward a supplement pre-approval system – similar to the system being used by the European Union, where only those vitamins and minerals on the approved list may be used in food supplements, and only in very limited amounts. For example, if a supplement contains more beta carotene than is present in half a large carrot, it is banned. A regulatory framework like the EU’s is exactly what Sen. Durbin wants.”

Supplements Industry has an Unmatched Safety Record

Durbin is still on the war path against supplements, despite the fact that recent investigations in the US and the UK have concluded that supplements and herbal remedies have a sterling safety record. The UK-based, international campaign group, the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH-Intl) recently revealed data6 showing that compared to supplements, an individual is:
•Around 900 times more likely to die from food poisoning
•Nearly 300,000 times more likely to die from a preventable medical injury during a UK hospital stay, which is comparable to the individual risk of dying that active military face in Iraq or Afghanistan
Additionally, the data shows that adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs are:

•62,000 times more likely to kill you than food supplements
•7,750 times more likely to kill you than herbal remedies

The data, which was collected from official sources in the UK and EU, demonstrate that both food supplements and herbal remedies are in the ‘super-safe’ category of individual risk – meaning risk of death from their consumption is less than 1 in 10 million.

Similarly, the latest data from the U.S. National Poison Data System (2010 report),7 NO deaths were attributable to vitamin and mineral supplements that year. And, as noted by Orthomolecular Medicine News Service last year,8 Americans easily take more than 60 billion doses of nutritional supplements every year, and with zero related deaths this is an outstanding safety record:

“Well over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 165,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 60 billion doses annually. Since many persons take far more than just one single vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.

Over 60 billion doses of vitamin and mineral supplements per year in the USA, and not a single fatality. Not one. If vitamin and mineral supplements are allegedly so ‘dangerous,’ as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?”

Senators Durbin, Blumenthal “Deeply Concerned” about Poor Manufacturing Standards

While supplements may be one of the safest industries, there’s certainly room for improvement, especially when it comes to quality standards. The good news is that even when quality is lacking, the risk you take relates more to the fact that the product will not provide you with the same benefits as a high-quality product might, as opposed to posing a life-threatening risk to your health – like drugs do. Still, the fact that you’re more likely to die from drowning in your bathtub than from a supplement or herbal remedy, supplements are still being attacked as “dangerous.”

If Senator Durbin truly cared about the safety of individuals, then he should be spending more time addressing the abysmal safety record of our hospitals, and the rampant prescriptions of dangerous drugs. Especially since the most dangerous hospital in the US is right in his backyard. But no. He’s got smaller fish to fry.

Senators Durbin and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) recently sent off letters to the Natural Products Association (NPA), the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) and the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), stating:

“We are deeply concerned about the poor manufacturing standards that expose consumers to potentially serious health risks. To ensure consumer safety, we are eager to hear of the industry’s plans for improving the successful adoption of current manufacturing practices.”

The hubbub stems from a June 30 article in the Chicago Tribune, which claims:9

“Federal inspections of companies that make dietary supplements – from multivitamins and calcium chews to capsules of echinacea and bodybuilding powders – reveal serious and widespread manufacturing problems in a $28 billion industry that sells products consumed by half of all Americans. In the last four years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found violations of manufacturing rules in half of the nearly 450 dietary supplement firms it has inspected, according to agency officials.”

The article goes on to describe how supplements are produced in “unsanitary factories.” One New Jersey-based protein powder manufacturer is alleged to have been mixing powders and supplements in “a facility infested with rodents, rodent feces and urine.”

Serious supplement adverse events are so rare that media and supplement critics repeatedly roll out Total Body Formula’s problems from back in 2008 (as Dateline NBC did in its March 18, 2012, broadcast) to beat the anti-supplement drum. The Tribune’s reporter has a history of launching attacks against “alternative” medicine. The reporter’s inclusion of deaths linked to cough syrup made by a Panamanian pharmaceutical company in 2006 adds further proof of bias.

Beware the Double Standards

I’d like to remind everyone that the FDA allows all manner of contaminations in the processed foods you consume every day, and it thinks nothing of it.

For example, up to six percent of chips are allowed to have rot from pre- or post-harvest infection. Acceptable levels of mold go as low as 15 percent in canned tomatoes to as high as 45 percent for ketchup. Up to 30 fly eggs per every 100 grams of tomato sauce is okay, as is two maggots per every 100 grams of tomato juice. The FDA also will not mandate action unless 10 or more whole or equivalent Drosophila flies and 35 of its eggs are found per 8 ounces of raisins.

Ground turkey is allowed up to 49.9% positive testing for salmonella under USDA guidelines, with ground chicken allowed up to 44.6%. When it comes to food, a certain amount of bugs and other contaminants is considered safe by the FDA. I absolutely agree that the supplement industry needs to work hard to ensure high-quality products of high purity.

However, there’s no need to try to shut down the entire industry as unsafe, as all available data attests to the contrary! Can you get ill from a supplement or herb? Yes. But your chances of suffering a serious side effect or death from a drug is astronomically higher. Again, your risk of dying from an adverse drug effect is 62,000 times higher than that of a supplement. Your chances of dying from food poisoning is also FAR greater than having a lethal reaction to a supplement.

In the end it comes down to keeping things in perspective. If Congress wants to protect us from health care harm, they need to get their priorities in order. In response to Senator Durbin’s letter, the Natural Products Association replied, in part:10

“As the leading representative of the dietary supplement industry with over 1,900 members, including suppliers and retailers of vitamins and other dietary supplements, NPA has been the leader in educating the dietary supplement industry about current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs). GMP compliance is a serious issue and NPA has taken major steps to ensure our members are in compliance. NPA agrees consumers should have access to products that are safe and wholesome and we do not make excuses for any instances of non-compliance.

However, NPA believes the FDA’s reckless comments in the Chicago Tribune article distort the full picture of our membership’s overall safety record. In fact, supplements have an excellent safety record, but we appreciate this opportunity to provide more information to you…”

Although I do not promote the use of many supplements in general, believing it is far better to get your nutrition from food, there are exceptions to this rule, and if you choose to use them in lieu of drug therapy, you’re certainly reducing your risk of serious side effects. It is prudent, however, to make sure you’re using a high-quality product. Not only will this protect you from any potential harmful effects from contaminants, but such products will also offer the greatest possible benefits so that you’re not wasting your money on an ineffective product.

Big businesses have been buying up emerging supplement manufacturers similar to what we’ve witnessed in the organic industry. Nearly 70 percent of American adults are now taking supplements, and you can bet the drug industry and a few politicians will work hard to make this another model of control and profits for a few elite businesses. I’d recommend keeping close tabs on CT Sen. Richard Blumenthal and IL Sen. Dick Durbin. If you live in Illinois, please ask him about his inaccurate statements on the senate floor.

You can reach them here:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal:

90 State House Square, 10th Flr.

Hartford, CT 06103

Phone: (860) 258-6940

Fax: (860) 258-6958

Sen. Dick Durbin:

230 South Dearborn Street Suite 3892
Chicago, IL 60604
Phone:(312) 353-4952
Fax: (312) 353-0150

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

I’ve been warning you of the dangers of soda since I started this site over 16 years ago, and the list of reasons to avoid this beverage just keeps getting longer. Americans in particular get most of their daily calories from sugar, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in soda and other sweetened beverages.

Half of the US population over the age of two consumes sugary drinks on a daily basis,1 and this figure does not even include 100% fruit juices, flavored milk or sweetened teas, all of which are sugary too, which means the figure is actually even higher.

Many people mistakenly believe that as long as you are drinking fruit juice, it’s healthy even though it’s sweet, but this is a dangerous misconception that is fueling the rising rates of weight gain, obesity, fatty liver disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes in the United States and other developed nations.

It’s important to realize sugary drinks, soda and even fresh squeezed fruit juice, contain fructose, which has been identified as one of the primary culprits in the meteoric rise of obesity and related health problems—in large part due to its ability to turn on your “fat switch.”

So-called “enhanced” water products are another source of hidden fructose, and/or artificial sweeteners, which can be even worse for your health than sugar. I recommend drinking plenty of pure water as your primary beverage of choice instead.

Sugary Drinks Linked to 180,000 Deaths Annually

Preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions suggests sugary beverages are to blame for about 183,000 deaths worldwide each year, including 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000 heart disease deaths and 6,000 cancer deaths.

Among the 35 largest countries in the world, Mexico had the highest death rates associated with sugary beverage consumption. There, the average consumption of sugary beverages was 24 ounces per day.

Bangladesh had the lowest death rates. The US ranked third, with an estimated 25,000 annual deaths2 from sweetened drinks.3 (Many might have expected the US to come in first place, but remember that American processed foods contain far more sugars than other nations, so Americans also consume a lot of “hidden” sugar in products other than beverages.)

Interestingly, and quite disturbingly, the death rates associated with sweetened beverages were highest in those under the age of 45. According to the featured article:4

“[W]hile the connection between excess sugar and chronic disease is well-known, the latest research is the first to quantify deaths correlated with sugared drinks worldwide.

…To reach their conclusion, the scientists analyzed data from the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases Study and recorded how much sugar-sweetened beverages people drank, dividing up the data by age and sex. Then, they figured out how the various amount corresponded to obesity rates.

Lastly, they calculated how much obesity affected diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers and determined the mortality rates from these diseases, ending up with the number of deaths that could be attributed to consuming sugary beverages by age and sex.”

Co-author Dr. Gitanjali Singh told Time Magazine:

“Our findings should push policy makers world-wide to make effective policies to reduce consumption of sugary beverages, such as taxation, mass-media campaigns, and reducing availability of these drinks… Individuals should drink fewer sugary beverages and encourage their family and friends to do the same.”

As you may recall, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently tried to ban the sale of sugary beverages over 16 ounces in restaurants, food carts and theaters, but the day before the ban was scheduled to go into effect, a Supreme Court judge overturned it.5 Bloomberg has stated he intends to appeal the decision.

Personally, I believe the most appropriate strategy is to educate people on the facts about sugar consumption, and encourage personal responsibility. Taxation and eliminating sweet drinks from schools and other venues may have a beneficial effect, but to really put a dent in the problem, you need to be properly informed about the consequences of your choices. Voting with your pocketbook and avoiding purchasing these products will cause them to disappear from the marketplace as companies will not produce items that don’t sell.

Scientific Statement from American Heart Association about Sugar Consumption and Heart Disease Risk

In 2009, the American Heart Association (AHA) issued a scientific statement6 about sugar intake and heart health, pointing out that there is evidence for a relationship between the two. According to the abstract:

“High intakes of dietary sugars in the setting of a worldwide pandemic of obesity and cardiovascular disease have heightened concerns about the adverse effects of excessive consumption of sugars.

In 2001 to 2004, the usual intake of added sugars for Americans was 22.2 teaspoons per day (355 calories per day). Between 1970 and 2005, average annual availability of sugars/added sugars increased by 19%, which added 76 calories to Americans’ average daily energy intake. Soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are the primary source of added sugars in Americans’ diets. Excessive consumption of sugars has been linked with several metabolic abnormalities and adverse health conditions, as well as shortfalls of essential nutrients…

[T]he American Heart Association recommends reductions in the intake of added sugars. A prudent upper limit of intake is half of the discretionary calorie allowance, which for most American women is no more than 100 calories per day and for most American men is no more than 150 calories per day from added sugars.”

How Much Sugar Do You Eat or Drink Each Day?

Let’s start with soda. One hundred calories isn’t much. Just one 12-ounce regular soda contains about 140 calories; the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. Similarly, one eight-ounceglass of orange juice has about eight full teaspoons of sugar, and at least 50 percent of that sugar is fructose. Drinking just one eight-ounce glass of orange juice will wallop your system with about 25 grams of fructose, which is more than you should have the entire day…

Fructose has been identified as one of the primary culprits in the meteoric rise of obesity and related health problems, and while the majority of the problem is caused by the large quantities of high fructose corn syrup added to so many processed foods and sweetened beverages, naturally-occurring fructose in large amounts of fruit juice is also a problem. Fructose is also a likely culprit behind the millions of U.S. children struggling with non-alcoholic liver disease, which is caused by a build-up of fat within liver cells. Fructose is very hard on your liver, in much the same way as drinking alcohol.

Around 100 years ago the average American consumed a mere 15 grams of fructose a day, primarily in the form of whole fruit. One hundred years later, one-fourth of Americans are consuming more than 135 grams per day (that’s over a quarter of a pound!), largely in the form of soda and other sweetened beverages.

Fructose at 15 grams a day is unlikely to do much harm (unless you suffer from high uric acid levels). However, at nearly 10 times that amount it becomes a MAJOR cause of obesity and nearly all chronic degenerative diseases. As a standard recommendation, I strongly advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day. However, for most people it would actually be wise to limit your fruit fructose to 15 grams or less, as it is virtually guaranteed that you will consume “hidden” sources of fructose from most beverages and just about any processed food you might eat.

Did You Know?

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Don’t Fall for the Latest ‘Designer Water’ Fad…

As a general rule, I advise using water as your primary form of beverage. Many simply do not drink enough water these days. But don’t be fooled by slick marketing. There are a number of “designer water” products available, and none of them can really beat plain, pure water. For example, on April 1, Coca-Cola released its latest enhanced water product called “Fruitwater,” described as “a great tasting, naturally flavored zero calorie sparking water beverage.”7 Despite its name, the product does NOT contain any juice. Rather it’s sweetened with sucralose and “natural fruit flavors.” Sucralose (Splenda) is an artificial sweetener that, like aspartame, is associated with a host of side effects, including:
•Gastrointestinal problems
•Seizures, dizziness and migraines
•Blurred vision
•Allergic reactions
•Blood sugar increases and weight gain

Artificially Sweetened Water is a Recipe for Poor Health

Different artificial sweeteners have been found to wreak havoc in a number of different ways. Aspartame, for example, has a long list of studies indicating its harmful effects, ranging from brain damage to pre-term delivery. Sucralose has been found to be particularly damaging to your intestines. A study8 published in 2008 found that sucralose:
•Reduces the amount of good bacteria in your intestines by 50 percent
•Increases the pH level in your intestines, and
•Affects a glycoprotein in your body that can have crucial health effects, particularly if you’re on certain medications like chemotherapy, or treatments for AIDS and certain heart conditions

In response to this study, James Turner, chairman of the national consumer education group Citizens for Health, issued the following statement:9

“The report makes it clear that the artificial sweetener Splenda and its key component sucralose pose a threat to the people who consume the product. Hundreds of consumers have complained to us about side effects from using Splenda and this study … confirms that the chemicals in the little yellow package should carry a big red warning label.”

That was nearly five years ago, yet many are still in the dark about these health risks. Having healthy gut flora is absolutely vital for your optimal health, so clearly, any product that can destroy up to half of your healthy intestinal bacteria can pose a critical risk to your health! Many are already deficient in healthy bacteria due to consuming too many highly processed foods. This is why I recommend eating fermented vegetables every day, or at the very least taking a high quality probiotic.

Believe me, if you continuously destroy up to 50 percent of your gut flora by regularly consuming sucralose, then poor health is virtually guaranteed. So please, do not make “Fruitwater” a staple drink thinking you’re doing something beneficial for your health… Remember, pure water IS a zero calorie drink. You cannot find a beverage that contains fewer calories. If you think about it, why on earth would you choose artificially sweetened water over regular mineral water? If you want some flavor, just squeeze a little bit of fresh lemon or lime into mineral water as they have virtually no fructose in them.

Unfortunately, most public health agencies and nutritionists in the United States still recommend these toxic artificial sweeteners as acceptable and even preferred alternatives to sugar, which is at best confusing and at worst seriously damaging the health of those who listen to this well-intentioned but foolish advice. Contrary to popular belief, research has shown that artificial sweeteners can stimulate your appetite, increase carbohydrate cravings, and stimulate fat storage and weight gain. In fact, diet sodas may actually double your risk of obesity. So much for being an ally in the battle against the bulge…

The Case Against ALL Bottled Waters…

While we’re on the subject of commercially available water products, let me remind you that bottled water in general is a bad idea. Not only are you paying about 1,900 percent more for the same or similar water you get straight from your tap, water stored in plastic bottles have other health risks as well. The plastic often used to make water bottles contains a variety of health-harming chemicals that can easily leach out and contaminate the water, such as:
•Cancer-causing PFOAs
•PBDEs (flame retardant chemicals), which have been linked to reproductive problems and altered thyroid levels
•The reproductive toxins, phthalates
•BPA, which disrupts the endocrine system by mimicking the female hormone estrogen

If you leave your water bottle in a hot car, or reuse it, your exposure is magnified because heat and stress increase the amount of chemicals that leach out of the plastic. So the container your water comes in needs to receive just as much attention as the water itself, and plastic is simply not a wise choice from a health perspective … not to mention the extreme amounts of toxic waste produced!

What’s the Healthiest Beverage You Can Drink?

Sweetened beverages, whether it’s sweetened with sugar, HFCS, naturally-occurring fructose, or artificial sweeteners, are among the worst culprits in the fight against obesity and related health problems, including diabetes, heart- and liver disease, just to name a few. Remember that sweetened beverages also include flavored milk products, bottled teas, and “enhanced” water products. Ditching ALL of these types of beverages can go a long way toward reducing your risk for chronic health problems and weight gain. So what should you drink?

Your best, most cost effective choice is to drink filtered tap water. The caveat though is to make sure you filter your tap water. I’ve written a large number of articles on the hazards of tap water, from fluoride to dangerous chemicals and drugs, to toxic disinfection byproducts and heavy metals, so having a good filtration system in place is more of a necessity than a luxury in most areas. Remember, nothing beats pure water when it comes to serving your body’s needs. If you really feel the urge for a carbonated beverage, try sparkling mineral water with a squirt of lime or lemon juice.

Another option to consider is to bottle your own water from a gravity-fed spring. There’s a great website called FindaSpring.com where you can find natural springs in your area. This is a great way to get back to nature and teach your children about health and the sources of clean water. The best part is that most of these spring water sources are free! Just remember to bring either clear polyethylene or glass containers to collect the water so no unsafe chemicals can contaminate your water on the way home. If you choose to use glass bottles, be sure to wrap them in towels to keep them from breaking in the car.

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Iron is essential for human life, as it is a key part of various proteins and enzymes, involved in the transport of oxygen and the regulation of cell growth and differentiation, among many other uses.

One of the most important roles of iron is to provide hemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells), a mechanism through which it can bind to oxygen and carry it throughout your tissues, as without proper oxygenation, your cells quickly start dying.

If you have too little iron, you may experience fatigue, decreased immunity or iron-deficiency anemia, which can be serious if left untreated. This is common in children and premenopausal women.

But what many people fail to realize is that too much iron can be equally deadly, and is actually far more common than iron deficiency, thanks to a hereditary disease known as hemochromatosis.

This Health Issue Has Been of Major Importance to Me and My Family

This test saved my dad’s life 20 years ago when I discovered he had a ferritin level close to 1000. It was because he has beta-thalassemia. With regular phlebotomies, his iron levels normalized and now the only side effect he has is type 1 diabetes. The high iron levels damaged his pancreatic islet cells and now he has what is called “bronze” diabetes and so requires the use of insulin.

I also inherited this from him so this is a personal issue. Thankfully, I am able to keep my iron levels normal by removing about a quart of blood a year. This is removed not all at once but over a few dozen deposits.

I screened all my patients with ferritin levels and noticed nearly one-fourth of them had elevated levels. So I would strongly encourage you and your family to be screened annually for this, as it is SO MUCH easier to prevent iron overload than it is to treat it.

Ferritin Screen – One of Your Most Important Health Tests

Checking your iron levels is easy and can be done with a simple blood test called a serum ferritin test. I believe this is one of the most important tests that everyone should have done on a regular basis as part of a preventive, proactive health screen.

The test measures the carrier molecule of iron, a protein found inside cells called ferritin, which stores the iron. If your ferritin levels are low, it means your iron levels are also low.

The healthy range of serum ferritin lies between 20 and 80 ng/ml. Below 20 is a strong indicator that you are iron deficient, and above 80 suggests you have an iron surplus. The ideal range is between 40-60 ng/ml.

The higher the number over 100 the worse the iron overload, with levels over 300 being particularly toxic and will eventually cause serious damage in nearly everyone that sustains those levels long term. It’s important to find out if your levels are high because your body has a limited capacity to excrete iron, which means it can easily build up in organs like your liver, heart and pancreas. This is dangerous because iron is a potent oxidizer and can damage your body tissues contributing to serious health issues, including:

Cirrhosis

Liver cancer

Cardiac arrhythmias

Type one diabetes

Alzheimer’s disease

Bacterial and viral infections

Cancer researchers have also found new evidence that bowel cancers are two to three times more likely to develop when dietary iron is too high in your body.1

Risk Factors for Iron Overload

People with hemochromatosis are not the only ones who may accumulate more iron than is healthy. While premenopausal women who are menstruating regularly rarely suffer from iron overload, most adult men and postmenopausal women tend to be at a high risk, as they don’t have a monthly blood loss (one of the best ways you can get rid of excess iron is by bleeding).

Another common causes of excess iron is the regular consumption of alcohol, which will increase the absorption of any iron in your diet. For instance, if you drink wine with your steak, you will likely be absorbing more iron than you need. Other potential causes of high iron levels include:
•Cooking in iron pots or pans. Cooking acidic foods in these types of pots or pans will cause even higher levels of iron absorption.
•Eating processed food products like cereals and white breads that are “fortified’ with iron. The iron they use in these products is inorganic iron, not much different than rust and it is far more dangerous than the iron in meat.
•Drinking well water that is high in iron. The key here is to make sure you have some type of iron precipitator and/or a reverse osmosis water filter.
•Taking multiple vitamins and mineral supplements, as both of these frequently have iron in them.

Could Reducing Your Iron Level Be a Safer Alternative to Statins?

We may have garnered some valuable information about how iron drives inflammation from studying statins drugs, of all things. Statins are of course, cholesterol drugs. Statins have an anti-inflammatory effect on your body by reducing oxidative stress, which is something the drug companies tend not to disclose. The fact that statin drugs reduce inflammation, and reduce inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, may explain why statins decrease heart attacks in some people. This benefit has nothing to do with the action of lowering cholesterol, but rather the reduction of inflammation.

In a study published in the April 2013 issue of American Journal of Public Health2, researchers found that statins improved cardiovascular outcomes at least partially by countering the proinflammatory effects of excess iron stores. In this study, the improved outcomes were associated with lower ferritin levels but not with “improved” lipid status. Researchers concluded iron reduction might be a safe and low-cost alternative to statins. An earlier study in the American Heart Journal3 also showed that people with a lower iron burden had less risk for heart attack and stroke.

These studies add credence to what I learned a few years ago from Dr. Steven Sinatra, one of the leading natural cardiologists in the world, that statins’ only health benefit is that of reducing inflammation.

This may be helpful for a small percentage of individuals who have a very high risk of dying from a heart attack, but NOT for those who simply have “high” cholesterol levels. Statin drugs are vastly overprescribed and are not worth the risk for the vast majority of you. In some cases, they may actually increase your risk of stroke. If elevated iron is the driving force behind your inflammation and cardiovascular disease, then it makes far more sense to simply reduce your iron level, as opposed to taking a statin drug that has the potential for many adverse effects.

What to Do if Your Iron Levels Are Too High

The good news if you find out that your iron levels are elevated or you have hemochromatosis is that remedying the condition is relatively simple. Some people advise using iron chelators like phytic acid or IP6, but I tried that with my dad and it failed miserably so I would not recommend it. Donating your blood is a far safer, more effective and inexpensive approach for this problem.

If, for some reason, a blood donor center is unable to accept your blood for donation you can obtain a prescription for therapeutic phlebotomy. At the same time, you will want to be sure to avoid consuming excess iron in the form of supplements, in your drinking water (well water), from iron cookware, or in fortified processed foods.

Additionally:
•Certain phenolic-rich herbs and spices, such as green tea and rosemary, can reduce iron absorption4
•The primary polyphenol in turmeric known as curcumin actually acts as an iron chelator, and in mice studies, diets supplemented with this spice extract exhibited a decline in levels of ferritin in the liver5
•Astaxanthin, which has been researched to have over 100 potential health benefits, has been shown to reduce iron-induced oxidative damage6

The Ancient Origins of Iron Overload

How and why hemochromatosis – now one of the most prevalent genetic diseases in the United States – emerged is the subject of numerous theories and speculation – but its true history remains a complex mystery. In a fascinating article on the topic, The Atlantic7 recently highlighted the notion that everyone who inherited the C282Y mutation responsible for the majority of hemochromatosis cases got it from the same person. In other words, one distant ancestor passed on the mutation, which now favors people of Northern European decent.

No one knows the precise identity of the founder, but initial speculation that it was someone of Irish descent has given way to the possibility that it may have actually arisen in a Viking civilization or, even earlier, in a central European hunger-gatherer.

It takes two inherited copies of the mutation (one from the mother and one from the father) to cause the disease (and even then only some people will actually get sick). If you have just one mutation, you won’t become ill but you will absorb slightly more iron than the rest of the population, a trait that may have given people an advantage when dietary sources of iron were scarce.

Did the Hemochromatosis Mutation Emerge to Protect Humans from a Carb-Heavy Agricultural Diet?

There is speculation that the hemochromatosis mutation may have spread in ancient Europe around the time that man transitioned from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Unlike the Paleolithic diet of the “cavemen,” which by necessity included a relatively balanced diet of iron-rich meat, fish and plant foods, farming may have led humans to rely on an overabundance of grain carbohydrates. The featured article reported:8

“Fossil evidence indicates early European farmers stood roughly 6 inches shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors, a possible indication of malnutrition… Average height and life expectancy fell, as bone infections, dental cavities, and skeletal malformations associated with anemia rose. While the exact composition of the Paleolithic plate remains debated, most agree that European hunter-gatherers ate more meat than those in modern farming communities. And this animal protein was an excellent source of one familiar micronutrient: iron.

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.6 billion persons worldwide current suffer from the lack of red blood cells known as anemia — half of which may be caused by iron deficiency. One’s inner paleo might wonder whether this pandemic of iron deficiency began in the Neolithic era as diets bloated with carbohydrates replaced those rich in meat and fish.

Anemia decreases the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood; if marked, this will hinder an individual’s ability to stay healthy, find food, and reproduce. The C282Y mutation increases iron absorption, and it may have inadvertently protected carriers against this threat.”

The Hemochromatosis Link to the Plague

Another intriguing theory suggests that the hemochromatosis mutation may have protected against the Black Death of the 14th century, by preventing the Yersinia pestis bacteria from reproducing inside of human immune cells.

“During the Black Death, mortality may have been highest, up to 50-66 percent, in the British Isles — a future hotbed of hereditary hemochromatosis … In this most unsympathetic environment, minute DNA differences may decide survival or death. A genetic advantage would quickly spread through the island population — it would have less value on the mainland where plague mortality may have been lower,” the featured article reported.9

But this theory is challenged by conflicting information that suggests the plague bacteria use iron from its host to enhance its ability to infect cells. People with hemochromatosis may therefore be among the most vulnerable to succumbing to plague infections, which suggests the mutation may have nothing to do with survival. It could, perhaps, be an artifact of natural selection or there may be a different explanation entirely…

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One in four Americans over the age of 45 now takes cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, typically for the primary prevention of heart attacks and strokes.

Not only is their benefit for preventing heart disease highly questionable, but these drugs come with an avalanche of potential side effects, so much so that new research showed a staggering number of patients stop taking them entirely.

Half of Those Taking Statins Quit

A recent study of more than 100,000 people who’d been prescribed statins from 2000 to 2008 found that 17 percent of patients reported side effects such as muscle pain, nausea, and liver and nervous system problems.1

Two-thirds of those who reported side effects quit taking the drugs, and, the study found, half of those prescribed statins quit taking them at least temporarily, while 20 percent quit for more than a year.

The researchers noted that many of the side effects are “tolerable” or specific to only one statin, not the entire class, suggesting that people can remain on the drugs or switch to a different statin if problems arise. But the truth is that many statin side effects are quite serious.

Oftentimes statins do not have any immediate side effects, and they are quite effective at lowering cholesterol levels by 50 points or more (which may not actually have any impact on your heart disease risk). This makes it appear as though they’re benefiting your health, and health problems that develop later on are frequently misinterpreted as new and unrelated health problems.

Diabetes, Fatal Kidney Damage and Other Possible Statin Side Effects

With well over 30 million Americans now taking statin drugs, we’re witnessing a massive ongoing ‘live’ experiment, and many are putting their health on the line for drugs that offer little in the way of heart protection. Just last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would be requiring additional warning labels for statin drugs. Among them are warnings that statins may increase your risk of:
•Liver damage
•Memory loss and confusion
•Type 2 diabetes
•Muscle weakness (for certain statins)

Statins have also been shown to increase your risk of diabetes via a number of different mechanisms. The most important one is that they increase insulin resistance, which can be extremely harmful to your health.

Increased insulin resistance contributes to chronic inflammation in your body, and inflammation is the hallmark of most diseases, including heart disease, which, ironically, is the primary reason for taking a cholesterol-reducing drug in the first place. It can also promote belly fat, high blood pressure, heart attacks, chronic fatigue, thyroid disruption, and diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Earlier this year new research also found that taking higher doses of the statins simvastatin (Zocor), atorvastatin (Lipitor) or rosuvastatin (Crestor) increases your risk of acute kidney injury by 34 percent, a condition that can be fatal.2 Some experts are now urging that people on statins have an assessment of their kidney risks, similar to what used to be recommended regarding liver function.

Due to statins’ potential to increase liver enzymes and cause liver damage, it used to be recommended that patients be monitored for normal liver function.

The FDA removed this long-standing warning in 2012 and ruled that patients taking statins no longer need routine monitoring of liver enzymes, but instead can have liver enzymes tested before starting the drugs, and then only as clinically needed, which seems reprehensibly irresponsible. In all, statin drugs have been directly linked to over 300 side effects,3 which include:

Cognitive loss

Neuropathy

Anemia

Acidosis

Frequent fevers

Cataracts

Sexual dysfunction

An increase in cancer risk

Pancreatic dysfunction

Immune system suppression

Muscle problems, polyneuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet), and rhabdomyolysis, a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition

Hepatic dysfunction. (Due to the potential increase in liver enzymes, patients must be monitored for normal liver function)

Statins Might Make Your Heart Health Worse

The biggest “sham” of all is that statin drugs, which millions are taking as a form of “preventive medicine” to protect their heart health, can have detrimental effects on your heart. Take a study in the journal Atherosclerosis,4 which showed that statin use is associated with a 52 percent increased prevalence and extent of calcified coronary plaque compared to non-users. Coronary artery calcification is the hallmark of potentially lethal heart disease!

One of the primary mechanisms of harm appears to be CoQ10 depletion. If you take statin drugs without supplementing with CoQ10 (or ideally, the reduced form, called ubiquinol, which is far more effective), your health is at serious risk. CoQ10 is used by every cell in your body, but especially your heart cells. Cardiac muscle cells have up to 200 times more mitochondria, and hence 200 times higher CoQ10 requirements, than skeletal muscle.

Premature aging is yet another side effect of statin drugs, and it’s also a primary side effect of having too little CoQ10. Deficiency in this nutrient also accelerates DNA damage, and because CoQ10 is beneficial to heart health and muscle function this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness and heart failure.

Measure Your LDL Particle Number, Not Total Cholesterol, to Gauge Heart Disease Risk

Could it be that all of this focus on lowering cholesterol levels has missed the boat entirely? Certainly, because cholesterol is NOT the cause of heart disease. Your body NEEDS cholesterol — it is important in the production of cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps your brain form memories and is vital to your neurological function.

If your physician is urging you to check your total cholesterol, know that this test will tell you virtually nothing about your risk of heart disease, unless it is 330 or higher. One of the most important tests you can get to determine your real heart disease risk is the NMR LipoProfile, which measures your LDL particle number. This test also has other markers that can help determine if you have insulin resistance, which is a primary cause of elevated LDL particle number and increased heart disease risk.

The NMR LipoProfile test easy to get and all major labs offer it, including LabCorp and Quest. Most insurance policies cover the test as well. Best of all, even if your doctor were to refuse to order it, you can order it yourself via third-party intermediaries like Direct Labs, or you can order the test online, and get blood drawn locally. Two other ratios you should pay attention to:
1.HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio: Should ideally be above 24 percent. If below 10 percent, you have a significantly elevated risk for heart disease.
2.Triglyceride/HDL Ratio: Should be below 2.

Four Additional Risk Factors for Heart Disease

You’ll notice that none of these involve your cholesterol levels …
1.Your fasting insulin level: Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates like fructose and refined grains generates a rapid rise in blood glucose and then insulin to compensate for the rise in blood sugar. The insulin released from eating too many carbs promotes fat and makes it more difficult for your body to shed excess weight, and excess fat, particularly around your belly, this is one of the major contributors to heart disease.

Your fasting insulin level can be determined by a simple, inexpensive blood test. A normal fasting blood insulin level is below 5, but ideally you’ll want it below 3. If your insulin level is higher than 3 to 5, the most effective way to optimize it is to reduce or eliminate all forms of dietary sugar, particularly fructose, from your diet.
2.Your fasting blood sugar level: Studies have shown that people with a fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dl had a nearly 300 percent higher risk of having coronary heart disease than people with a level below 79 mg/dl.
3.Your waist circumference: Visceral fat, the type of fat that collects around your internal organs, is a well-recognized risk factor for heart disease. The simplest way to evaluate your risk here is by simply measuring your waist circumference. For further instructions, please see my previous article, Your Waist Size Can Be a Powerful Predictor of Hypertension and Other Chronic Diseases.
4.Your iron level: Iron can be a very potent cause of oxidative stress, so if you have excess iron levels you can damage your blood vessels and increase your risk of heart disease. Ideally, you should monitor your ferritin levels and make sure they are not much above 80 ng/ml. The simplest way to lower them if they are elevated is to donate your blood. If that is not possible you can have a therapeutic phlebotomy and that will effectively eliminate the excess iron from your body.

Diet Can Reduce Your Risk of Heart Attacks Better Than Statins

According to Dr. Barbara Roberts, author of The Truth About Statins, studies haven’t shown that statins are beneficial for women who do not have heart disease, even if they have risk factors like obesity or family history.5 Yet, a recent study found heart attacks were reduced by 30 percent among people eating a Mediterranean diet!6

The healthy eating proved to be just as beneficial, if not more so, than statin drugs claim to be. While I don’t recommend a Mediterranean diet, per se, a healthy diet, like the one described in my nutrition plan, is the cornerstone of any heart-protection “plan.” If you want to protect your heart health, I recommend reducing, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars (including fructose) in your diet, replacing them with mostly whole, fresh vegetable carbs and healthy fats. Also try to consume a good portion of your food raw. Examples of healthy fats include:

Olives and olive oil

Coconut and coconut oil

Organic raw dairy products

Avocados

Raw organic nuts

Seeds

Pastured eggs (raw, or lightly cooked with yolks intact)

Organic, grass-fed meats

To round out your heart-disease prevention program:
•Make sure you are getting enough high-quality, animal-based omega 3 fats, such as krill oil.
•Optimize your vitamin D levels, ideally through appropriate sun exposure as this will allow your body to also create vitamin D sulfate, which may play a crucial role in preventing the formation of arterial plaque
•Exercise daily, especially with Peak Fitness exercises
•Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively
•Be sure to get plenty of good, restorative sleep

Are You Taking a Statin Drug for No Reason?

That these drugs have proliferated the market the way they have is a testimony to the effectiveness of direct-to-consumer marketing, corruption and corporate greed, because the odds are very high — greater than 1000 to 1 — that if you’re taking a statin, you don’t really need it.

From my review, the ONLY subgroup that might benefit are those born with a genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia, as this makes them resistant to traditional measures of normalizing cholesterol.

If you’re currently taking a statin drug and are worried about the excessive side effects they cause, please consult with a knowledgeable health care practitioner who can help you to optimize your heart health naturally, without the use of these dangerous drugs.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.