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Up and at ’em with B vitamins

October 3, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Read below and see if any of these ring a bell:

heart disease
hypoglycemia (low blood sugar)
neuritis/neuralgia (nerve pain)
depression and/or anxiety
weakness & fatigue
exhaustion after eating a meal
poor or lack of appetite
cravings for sweets
headaches, noise sensitivity
insomnia
nervousness
forgetfulness
severe apprehension/uneasiness
unusual fear, rage, or hostility
hallucinations
a constant and almost debilitating fear that something terrible is going to happen

You may be asking what these things could possibly have in common. Well, I’ll tell you. They are all symptoms of B-complex deficiency syndrome (BCDS).

We take for granted that in our culture of abundance, people could suffer from such a seemingly archaic syndrome. Everything is fortified with B vitamins right??? But that is also the problem. B vitamins are co-factors (helpers) for many enzymes in the body. No B vitamins, no properly working enzymes. Highly processed foods often leave the body with a negative B vitamin balance because they require B vitamins to be digested, but then put nothing back in to your system. It’s like overdrawing your bank account. The chemically-synthesized versions that are added back into the food during the fortification process are not the same as the naturally occurring versions of these vitamins. In fact, some of the B vitamins, like B4, cannot be synthesized.

So if you ate a lot of junk food or drank a lot of alcohol this holiday season, that sluggish, anxious or depressed feeling you’re having may be more than just a case of the “Mondays.” That feeling may be your body’s way of saying “I need REAL food! I need REAL B vitamins- STAT!”

An interesting note here is the children are especially sensitive to insufficient amounts of B vitamins and it often shows up first as mental and emotional instability. If you have a teenager, you know this full well. So if your child starts to show symptoms like those above, good food and a quality B vitamin supplement, like that from Standard Process, may be warranted before a prescription for powerful psychoactive drugs.

The information in this article is intended for educational purposes only and is not meant to diagnose or treat any symptoms you may be having. Consult your physician before stopping or starting any medications or natural supplements.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anxiety, B vitamin deficiency, B vitamins, cravings for sweets, depression, fatigue, fearfulness, forgetfulness, heart disease, hypoglycemia, weakness

The solution to our healthcare crisis: less sick people

October 1, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

There has been a lot of talk and energy as of late surrounding our need for a health care overhaul in America. Many “solutions” have been proposed, some viable, some not. But they all seem to have one thing in common- they just treat the symptoms of the problem instead of fixing the actual problem.

Given that we are talking about fixing a system that generally operates on symptom-based model instead of a problem-based model, this is no surprise. So what is the actual problem and how do we fix it?

The real problem is this: too many people are sick.

Sounds too simple right? When put that way, it almost sounds as if more medical coverage for more people will fix the problem. However, when we say “sick,” we’re not talking about sore throats and fevers that a course of antibiotics can fix up in a week. In this case, we’re talking about chronic illnesses, things like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Illnesses that take a lot of time and money to fix.

Furthermore, these are considered preventable diseases. Most of us know that by making better food choices and staying active, we can significantly decrease our risk of developing heart disease or diabetes as well as the myriad of complications that can arise from such degenerative diseases.

However, just a brief look at the statistics will show that though we may think we know how to stay healthy, few us actually are. Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. Over 60% of the adult population in the U.S. is now considered obese. The treatment of Type II diabetes is now costing us over 1.4 billion a year. And when you think about how much money is spent year after year treating more and more citizens with these diseases, its no wonder that our premiums for health insurance are growing exponentially while covered services are cut drastically and pundits are predicting the eminent bankruptcy of Medicare.

We need less sick people in this country. But if we know what we should be doing to stay healthy, but aren’t doing it, how do we get to a place where we have less sick people and more money to take care of those who are sick when they are sick? Stay tuned as we look as some solutions for creating health and wealth for our future.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Soy: Health Food or Health Hazard?

September 29, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Ah soy, the miracle food of the health conscious. Whether you intend to or not, you probably eat more soy then you think. It is second only to corn in terms of how much of it is grown each year in the U.S. Soybean oil is in just about any food that comes in a box, a bag or a can it seems, and if not the oil, soy lecithin really is in just about every thing in the supermarket. In fact, I challenge anyone reading this this to find a packaged/processed food that does not contain soy lecithin.

So, soy in some form, seems to be in just about anything we eat these days. The question of the day is whether or not this a positive thing for our health.

In a word, no.

You may find that answer surprising. You’ve probably heard that foods like tofu and soy milk are great alternative protein sources to animals foods, which have been vilified for their saturated fat content. If you have heart disease, you may have been told by your doctor to consume more soy products in order to lower your cholesterol. Or perhaps you have been told that soy foods will ease menopausal symptoms. If you are a committed vegetarian or vegan, soy foods probably form a large part of your diet. But here are a few of the main problems with increasing your consumption of soy:

1. Phytic Acid. This a chemical that can be found in pretty much all grains and legumes. Phytic acid helps prevent these seeds from germinating before they have found a suitable habitat in which to do so. This is accomplished by binding up minerals that enzymes in the seed need to begin the growth process. The problem is that phytic acid does a similar thing in your gut- binding with minerals and preventing their use and absorption by your body. This is the main reason why any and all grain products and legumes should be soaked for a period of time before their use and consumption. Soy, a legume, has one of the highest phytic acid contents of any plant food. We think of soy as being largely consumed by Asian cultures, but it did not become a dietary staple until it was discovered that by fermenting soy, the phytic acid content could be drastically reduced. The forms of soy traditionally consumed in the East are fermented soy products like tofu, natto, miso and traditionally brewed soy sauce or shoyu, NOT things like soy milk or soy-based meat imitations.

2.) Goitrogens. Goitrogens are chemicals that can suppress thyroid function. The thyroid is a gland in the front of your neck that regulates your metabolism. Goitrogens can be found in several families of plants, including brassicas like kale, broccoli, and cabbage, but are also found at very high levels in soy. This has been well documented since at least the 1930s but has been effectively suppressed by the soy industry lobby.

3.) Phytoestrogens, aka isoflavones. These are found at very high levels in soy also. In fact, you have probably been told that these are good for you and that they will lower your cholesterol and ease your hot flashes. But the fact is that they are exotic estrogen compounds- they are close enough to our own forms of estrogen that they can attach themselves at the same places our estrogen does, but they are different enough that the end result can be very different. For women going through menopause, the phytoestrogens can help ease symptoms by acting like the body’s own estrogen, which is declining during this period. In general however, these phytoestrogens may actually wreak havoc in the body by causing hormonal imbalance. For instance, certain types of breast cancer are estrogen sensitive. Excess estrogen can stimulate the growth of the cancer cells. Or consider this: the average age when girls hit puberty is 2 years earlier then it was 20 years ago. This has been blamed on growth hormones in milk, but I personally believe the increased use of soy products in the food supply is a more likely culprit because it means that girls are being exposed to more estrogen. And for my male readers who may be thinking, “I’m a guy, I don’t have estrogen, so this doesn’t effect me,” first of all, know that you do have some estrogen in your body, not as much as females of course. Secondly, Chinese monks use to consume large amounts of soy (tofu) not only because it was a vegetarian protein, but also because it decreased their libido and enabled them to better adhere to their vow of celibacy. So men, unless you are trying to be celibate and/or not have children, dosing yourself with phytoestrogens by eating increased amounts of soy may not be the best idea.

So, the verdict: Soy may be good for a lot of things, but food is not one of them!

Further reading:

http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/avoid_soy.htm

The Whole Soy Story by Kaayla Daniel, Ph.D.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: mineral absorption, phytic acid, phytoestogens, soy, thyroid suppression, tofu

Carbs are the Real Culprit

September 27, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

We have been told over the last 50 years that fat- especially saturated fat- is the culprit behind heart disease. We have dutifully ridded our diets of butter in favor of margarine, eat more chicken and less red meat, get our cholesterol checked regularly and take medications if our cholesterol is too high. And the other reason we do this of course, is because we have been told that fat makes us fat. Yet, in the time that we have been following the low-fat recommendations, the rate of obesity has more then doubled; diabetes has tripled.

Back in March, a meta-analysis study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at the daily food intake of over 350,000 people. These people were followed for a period of 5 to 23 years and their cardiovascular risk assessed. The study’s finding? That there is no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and heart disease risk.

And what about cholesterol? We know that high cholesterol leads to heart disease, and if saturated fats raise cholesterol, saturated fats must lead to heart disease, right?

Wrong.

The belief that saturated fat increases cholesterol is really just that, a belief. It has been based largely on extrapolations, not on any real data.

So if saturated fats and cholesterol aren’t bad, what is causing the alarming increases we are seeing in obesity and diabetes? The research is finally showing what many of us have known all along: refined carbohydrates are what is really responsible.

Consider just these two examples. A 1997 study published in JAMA looked at 65,000 women and found that the 20% who ate the most digestible and readily absorbed carbohydrates (high glycemic index carbohydrates) had a 47% increased risk of developing Type II diabetes over the 20% with the lowest glycemic index scores. And in 2007, a Dutch study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology followed 15,000 women and found that those who were overweight and in the quartile that consumed meals with the highest glycemic load were 79% more likely to develop coronary artery disease when compared to overweight women in the lowest quartile for consumption of high glycemic carbohydrates.

That refined carbohydrates are the real culprit behind heart disease actually fits better with our understanding of how arteries respond to damage and how they get damaged in the first place. Cholesterol, in addition to being a precursor for Vitamin D, estrogen, testosterone and cortisol, among other things, is a repair molecule. It doesn’t build up in the arteries for no reason; on the contrary, it is the foundation of ‘plaques’ the body makes to repair holes in the lining of the arteries, known as the endothelium. We also know that insulin can have a protective effect on the endothelium, but when our diet is too dependent on high glycemic carbohydrates for too long, the insulin mechanism is disrupted leading to the development of diabetes.

So tomorrow morning when you are deciding what to have for breakfast, consider that eggs, fried in a little butter is a better choice then a bagel, muffin or even cereal.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: carbohydrates, cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, saturated fats

Spare tire? Change it now!

September 23, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Spare tire. Pudge. Beer belly. Muffin tops. No matter what you call it, we’re talking about the same thing- abdominal fat.

Perhaps you’ve heard lately that this type of fat is more dangerous then the fat we tend to put on in our hips, butt or thighs. We know that the more abdominal fat a person has, the greater their cardiovascular risk. But that’s not the whole story of belly fat.

We also know that increased belly fat indicates insulin resistance, an indicator of pre-diabetes. Don’t forget that insulin is a hormone and the pancreas, the organ that makes and secretes insulin, is an endocrine gland. The endocrine (hormone) system is complex and we are still learning about the myriad of interactions between hormones and the tissues they affect. One thing is for sure, if one hormone is out of balance, others usually are too.

With this in mind, its no surprise that insulin resistance comes with increased levels of DHEA & testosterone. At first, that might not seem like a big deal, but consider that this trifecta of insulin resistance, high DHEA & high testosterone causes Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in women. The facial hair growth typical of PCOS is caused by the higher-then-normal levels of testosterone.

These hormone imbalances can also lead to adrenal fatigue, as the overworked adrenals struggle to keep up with the increased demand for cortisol, DHEA and sex hormones (estrogen & testosterone). How do you know if you have adrenal fatigue? I tell my patients if you’re sick & tired of being sick & tired, if you need caffeine and sugar to get through your day, or if you are absolutely flat-line after lunch, you have adrenal fatigue.

Insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, PCOS, and adrenal fatigue can all therefore, be traced back to a common source- hormone imbalance.

So, how does one fix this hormone imbalance?

It’s starts with testing. But it has to be the right test. Blood tests for hormone levels are inaccurate because most of the hormones in the blood travel around bound to proteins. Since we can’t measure them accurately when they are bound this way, blood tests are inaccurate. Salivary testing has been shown to be a more accurate test for cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and DHEA levels. And its a simple as spitting in to a test tube.

If you’re ready to get rid of that spare tire, see a health care practitioner who can properly evaluate you for the hormone imbalance that may be causing the abdominal fat in the first place.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abdominal fat, adrenal fatigue, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, PCOS, pre-diabetes

Red Light, Green Light

September 15, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

“Red light!” “Green light!” “Red light!”

We all remember playing that game as children. It was a fun way to pass the time. Personally, I always wanted to know what happened to the yellow light.

Oddly enough, as a doctor, I find myself asking the same question- where’s the yellow light???

The yellow light, of course, is a caution, a warning light- ‘slow down! the light is changing to red soon!’ While listening to a lecture about blood chemistry the other day, it occurred to me- there’s no yellow light in medicine.

When your doctor sends you for blood work and then reviews the results, your lab values are compared to a laboratory reference range. The limits of this range are viewed much like a cliff: you are either safely on top of the cliff or at the bottom. You’re either sick or you’re not. You need a prescription or you’re ‘perfectly healthy.’ Green light or Red light. What happened to the yellow light?

You don’t need to go to medical school to know that things are going wrong in the body before a full-blown disease develops. No one is perfectly healthy one day and suddenly wakes up with diabetes or heart disease the next. These diseases develop over time, after many months or even years of physiologic processes gone amuck. Its one of the reasons why we refer to them as chronic diseases. So again, where’s the yellow light to say ‘caution! if you don’t change some things, you’re going to develop diabetes or heart disease or fill-in-the-blank?’

This is the reason to use functional ranges instead of laboratory ranges. The functional ranges are based more on what the body needs to functional optimally, opposed to ‘not be sick.’

At this point, you may be asking yourself right now, ‘If functional ranges are based on what the body needs to functional optimally, then what the heck are those laboratory ranges based on?’

Good question.

In general, laboratory ranges are based on the average value for all the people who have had a given test done in whatever particular time frame. Lab ranges vary from lab to lab and can even vary by region for the same lab. For instance, one common test is TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. The laboratory range for this test is approximately .45 to 5.0. (To give you an idea, according to the American Endocrine Society, the functional range for TSH is 1.8- 3.0). Why is the lab range so much bigger? Well think about who is having their thyroid function tested- people with thyroid problems! So when your doctor says ‘your tests are normal’ what that really means is ‘your tests aren’t nearly as bad the other people who have had this test.’

Not exactly a good way to go about creating health! This is also why so many people don’t feel well, but aren’t getting answers as to why they feel so bad either.

So back to our yellow light. If we look at the blood tests a different way, with a functional range within a laboratory range, we can see our green, yellow and red lights. The green light is within the functional range; the yellow light is between the functional range and the laboratory range and the red light is of course, outside of the laboratory range.

Now with the yellow light we can begin to see areas of physiology that aren’t working quite right, but aren’t bad enough to be full-blown disease either. Even better then seeing them of course, is that we can begin to do something about them before they become full-blown disease. After all, isn’t that the point of healthcare?

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Is Gluten-free right for me? (Part 1)

May 14, 2012 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Gluten-free diets are becoming quite popular these days, causing a debate to rage on about who should be on one and why. On one end of the spectrum are those  who argue that eating grains is evolutionarily novel in human history and that for the most part our intestines have had insufficient time to adapt to eating them. Therefore, to be healthy, grains and more specifically, gluten, should be removed from the diet. On the other end of the spectrum are those who have suggested that by leading to nutrient deficiencies, they are downright dangerous unless you are a diagnosed with Celiac disease. So in the interest of cutting though conflicting opinions and getting down to answers that can be supported by scientific literature, here as some conditions when a gluten-free diet may be appropriate and why.

  1. Diagnosed cases of Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. These are a somewhat of a no-brainer. If you’ve had testing done that confirms your body makes antibodies to gluten, DO NOT eat gluten. In these cases, your body is reacting to gluten at an immunological level. You may or may not have symptoms right away and depending on what tissues these antibodies react with, your symptoms may or not be tolerable. If you get any negative side-effects from eating gluten, you are in all likelihood destroying tissue through this immunologic reaction. The only way to stop that reaction and preserve the tissue is to not eat gluten, in any amount.
  2. Diagnosed cases of Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroiditis. A little known fact, but in the U.S., nearly 90% of hypothyroidism cases are caused by Hashimoto’s. In this case, the body makes antibodies to its own thyroid gland, causing the destruction of thyroid tissue and decreased function of this important gland. Prescription thyroid hormone replaces what is lost in terms of thyroid hormone itself, which is necessary to stimulate metabolism in cells, but it doesn’t prevent or stop the immunologic attack on the thyroid tissue from the body’s own immune system. Enough evidence links gluten ingestion to these attacks that patients with Hashimoto’s should go gluten-free in addition to continuing their prescription. If you are currently taking replacement thyroid hormone, but don’t know if you have Hashimoto’s or not, talk to your doctor about a simple blood test that can determine if you do.
  3. Diagnosed cases of autoimmune disease. New research coming out of the University of Maryland’s Center for Celiac Disease Research indicates that three things may be necessary for an autoimmune disease to develop- a gene for the disease, a genetic trigger and a leaky gut. The number one cause of a leaky gut is gluten. Gluten up-regulates the production of a protein called zonulin. Zonulin dissolves the tight junctions between the cells of the intestine, allowing intestinal contents to ‘leak’ through the intestine into the body. The problem with this is that many of these things, like toxins made by bacteria in the gut, don’t belong in our systems or they need to be digested first, like chunks of proteins the need broken down into amino acids first. Since they don’t belong, the immune system in our gut attacks them and tries to keep them out. Unfortunately, this chronic, low-grade inflammation leads to a lot of other problems in the body. One thing that can happen is that the immune cells get their wires crossed and start attacking the body’s own tissue instead of the foreign invader. This is the definition of an autoimmune disease. Many people with autoimmune diseases from MS to RA to Type I diabetes, find they have a lot better control over their symptoms when they adopt a gluten and grain free diet.

Proper testing is of course, key. Stay tuned for the next installment, where I’ll discuss proper testing to determine if a gluten-free diet is right for you.

 

 

Filed Under: Gluten-free, Nutrition

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