The simple answer is, quite possibly, yes. Maybe not just this one breakfast, but most of us have a routine, so whatever has been the menu for awhile may be the culprit.

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Coffee and a danish? Perhaps a bagel with cream cheese. Maybe even doughnut or a cereal bar. Unfortunately, these are all part of the Standard American Diet (S.A.D. for short) that generally contains too many simple carbs, trans fats and refined grains that are devoid of any nutrients and all to often lead to many degenerative diseases rampant today- diabetes, heart disease, cancer and yes, back pain.

Consider this. It is estimated that more than 80% of adults will experience at least one episode of dehabilitating back pain in their lifetime.

Most people can’t afford to be laid up for several days after an episode of back pain. There are bills to pay and mouths to feed and the stress of those things certainly doesn’t help.

But there is something you can do to help prevent such an episode from occurring. And its as simple as what you eat everyday.

Eat less sugar and refined grains. Let’s face it- sugar and refined carbs are literally killing us. Sugar and white flour are so refined they have no nutrients left, so when we digest them, it actually takes nutrients, like B vitamins to do so creating a negative balance within the body of these essential vitamins. B vitamins are necessary for your body to make energy. Lack of B vitamins may also play a key role in heart disease. The latest research shows that blood levels of a chemical called homocysteine, are the strongest predictors of heart attack risk, NOT cholesterol or triglycerides as previously thought. B vitamins, specifically, B6, B9 and B12 are needed to break this homocysteine molecule down so it can be eliminated from the body. Without adequate amounts, homocysteine builds up in the blood, damages arteries and leads to artherosclerosis.

As for your back pain, carbohydrates are needed to provoke insulin secretion. Fat and protein do not cause insulin to be secreted. Insulin will cause excess carbs to be stored as fat, particularly abdominal fat (this type of fat is also known as an insulin meter. The more of it you have, the more likely you are to have insulin resistance and hyperglycemia. Remember its called a beer gut, not a Filet Mignon gut.) As the abdominal fat increases, it changes the center of gravity within the body and thus changes body mechanics. The curve of the low back increases as the muscles on either side of the spine become short and tight, trying to counterbalance the increased weight in the front so as to maintain an erect posture. The abdominal muscles are stretched out and weakened, leaving the lumbar spine without support and vulnerable to injuries, especially from twisting. In short, the muscles that use to have the job of stabilizing the low back can no longer do their job effectively, leaving the joints of the spine vulnerable to injury.

Get more essential fats. You know, the ones you hear about all the time in the news. Omega 3 fatty acids like DHA and EPA. The optimal ratio for human nutrition is a ratio of 2:1 Omega 6s to Omega 3s. But in the S.A.D. this ratio is more like 20:1. Even though Omega 6s are essential fats too, they tend to work in pathways that create inflammatory mediators, whereas Omega 3s decrease inflammation. In addition, Omega 3s give flexibility to cell membranes and positively effect low HDL/high LDL and cholesterol and have been shown to protect against heart disease. Most people known that Omega 3s are in food like cold water fish, walnuts, and flax seeds. The problem however is what Omega 6s are in- everything. Corn and soybean oil are the biggest culprits as well as cottenseed oil which are in just about every food that comes in a package. Avoid them.

Fiber is you friend. Think about it, your large intestine lives directly in front of you lumbar spine. When the moves are bound up or moving slowly, extra fluid tends to accumulate around them in an effort to detoxify the toxic excrement. The spongy cartilage discs between the lumbar vertebrae are not well supplied with blood, so they get food and drop off their waste through the opening and closing of the spaces between the vertebrae (think of an accordian). When there is too much fluid in the general vacinity because the bowels are moving too slowly, the discs can take up some of this excess fluid and swell. This can lead to back pain. So, not only does fiber lower your risk of colon cancer, but can also decrease back pain through the same mechanism- helping move waste out of the body faster.

And last but not least….

Drink more water. That coffee you’re addicted too every morning? Well, caffeine is dehydrating. It causes your body to secrete extra water. Over time, this cause your body to have deficient of water. One of the things that makes the discs in between the vertebrae soft and able to absorb shock is water. If your body is dehydrated, the discs will be too. When the discs lose water, we say they are “dessicated” and all kinds of fun things happen then. Without enough water, the discs will loss their height and the vertebrae will begin to get closer to each other. This changes the joint mechanics and in short, leads to arthritis in the spine.

So tomorrow morning instead of that coffee and danish, why don’t you try some free-range eggs and a mug of herbal tea instead? Your back will thank you.

Maybe “health” is the wrong word

health appleThere has been a lot in the news lately about so-called “health”care reform. First of all, I think we should call it what is- SICK CARE. The current system is based on a model of treating people once they get sick instead of helping them to not get sick in the first place. This model can work when you’re treating people for self-limiting illnesses like a cold or a sinus infection. It can also work really well in traumatic cases like getting hurt in a car accident or a broken bone. But it doesn’t work very well when it comes to degenerative disease like arthritis, diabetes, heart disease or cancer because the best way to treat these illnesses is to not develop them in the first place.

The medical establishment would have you believe that these are inevitable signs of aging, but they are not! Good health is your birth right! Think about it- there has been an alarming trend of these diseases showing up in younger and younger individuals over the past 30 years. If such diseases were unavoidable signs of aging then 1.) why are they becoming more prevalent in younger individuals and 2.) how would humans have survived this long if each generation became increasingly susceptible to these diseases at a younger age?

So what’s the answer? The answer is that we need to change the model.

We need to move from a sick-care model to a real healthcare model- one that actually prevents chronic disease!!!!

Unfortunately, It doesn’t look like the politicians have grasped this concept yet. Mandating insurance coverage for the 33 million uninsured Americans is only going to make the problem worse, and with Big Pharma pulling the purse strings, of course Washington isn’t going to have the guts to truly reform the system. So that leaves it up to you and I I’m afraid. What to do? Opt out.

What?!?! Did I really just suggest that you opt out of healthcare insurance? Well, yeah.

They say that money is power, right? So when you pay money to your health insurance company, who are you giving the power to to decide what kind of healthcare your receive? That’s right, your insurance company. They decide what quality of healthcare you receive by what services they will or won’t cover. Ever wonder why you wait 30 minutes to see your doctor for 30 seconds??? It’s economics. The insurance company keeps cutting the services it will pay for (to increase their profits), so your doctor has to squeeze more people into the schedule to make enough money to stay in the business of helping people.

You don’t have to participate in this broken system. There is a way for you to keep the power to decide what quality of care you receive. And it’s as simple as paying cash for it.

When you pay for healthcare services directly, you and your healthcare provider decide what is the best care for you, not some faceless person sitting in a cubicle in a big, windowless office building in some random place like Des Moines, Iowa. The advantage of this is clear- because you have a relationship with the person treating you, they are going to treat you like a human being, not just another policy number. Of course, the caveat to this is that you must find a practitioner who is also brave enough to opt out of the insurance rut. I’ve had many people ask me why we don’t take insurance. The answer is simply that I want to give my patients the best possible care I can give them, not just what their insurance company will pay for.

Yes, this requires a bit of sacrifice on your part, initially, but it pays off in the long run. It pays off when you reach retirement and don’t have to take 5-9 different prescriptions for “maintainence” drugs to manage high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, etc. It pays off when you only have to see you doctor for a yearly check-up because you just don’t get sick anymore. It pays off when you don’t have to take time off of work to go to endless doctor’s appointments, or have numerous tests or procedures done. And most importantly, it pays off when you still have the energy and vitality to enjoy life.

So go ahead and have insurance for the “God-forbid” scenarios. But just remember that as with anything in life, you get what you pay for.

1. In a study by Yudkin, people of Spain & Portugal were found to have the highest dietary fat consumption in the world. People of Argentina and Venezuela were found to have the highest consumption of sugar in the world. Guess who had that highest rate of heart disease? If you guessed Argentina & Venezuela you would be WRONG!

Source: Yudkin J. The Lancet, 11, 155-62, 1957; Yudkin J and others. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 30(4), 261-66, 1986; Yudkin J and others. Sugar: Chemical, Biological and Nutritional Aspects of Sucrose, 1971, Daniel Davey, Hartford, CT; Lopez A. Ammerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition 18:149-53, 1966

2. Those men with early stage prostate cancer with the highest levels of vitamin B6 demonstrated increased survival rates compared to those prostate cancer patients with the lowest levels.

Source: One-carbon metabolism–related nutrients and prostate cancer survival

3. Older adults with insufficient levels of vitamin D die from heart disease and all-cause death at greater rates than those with adequate levels of the vitamin, according to a recent study.

Source: Prospective Study of Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Level, Cardiovascular Disease Mortality, and All-Cause Mortality in Older U.S. Adults

4. Women with thyroid hormone levels in the lowest 10% of “normal” ranges have a 69% increased risk of heart attack.

Source: Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D.

5. Consumption of trans fatty acids causes levels of Lp(a) [a type of cholesterol] to rise while consumption of saturated fats lowers blood levels of Lp(a).

Source: Khosla, P Hayes KC. Journal of the American College of Nutrition 15, 325-339, 1996; Clevidence, BA and others. Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology 17, 1657-1661, 1997

So, take your cod liver oil (Vitamin A, D, saturated fats), eat your whole foods and put down that donut!

Not many people would think that the two are related, but a study in a 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that long-term use of proton-pump-inhibitors (medications like Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid) leads to increased rates of broken bones & hip fractures, especially in those prone to osteoporosis. Even better, the longer one takes these types of drugs, the higher the risk of fracture. This is truly disturbing since many doctors recommend that patients stay on these medications FOR LIFE! Even without such a recommendation from their doctor, many people stay on these drugs because they find that if they try to stop them, their heartburn comes back with a vegenance. Hence, “the little purple pill” has earned the nickname “Purple Crack.”

This, of course, is because the medications DO NOT CURE THE CAUSE of the heartburn but rather only MASK THE SYMPTOMS. If you remember from Chemistry 101, acids are characterized by the presence of the H+ ion, which is a hydrogen ion, also known as a proton. I’ll spare you the biochemistry, but all these heartburn medications do is block the enzyme in the cells of the stomach lining that make this proton, hence they are called proton-pump inhibitors. Think of these enzymes like an assembly line in factory where there is a certain quota of product to make in a specific time frame. If the factory has to stop the assembly line temporarily, once it starts back up again, it will have to run faster for a bit in order to turn out more product and make up for the lost time. This is essentially what happens when a person tries to stop taking these drugs. The body gets the message that there is not enough acid to digest the food, so the cells of the stomach start turning out acid protons double-time to make up for it. When the heartburn pain comes back, the patient goes right back to the meds.

As for how this leads to broken bones & hip fractures, you have to know that calcium needs an acidic environment to be absorbed. Read that again. Yes, this means that if you are taking Tums, an antacid, for calcium you are just wasting your money. It also means that if you take a medication that blocks the manufacture of stomach acid you won’t be able to absorb calcium, hence the inceased risk of broken bones & hip fractures. This is also why the longer you take these meds, the bigger your risk.

The greater irony in all of this however, is what causes heartburn in the first place. Heartburn is not caused by too much acid, but rather too little acid. You need this acid to digest your food. It is completely normal for our levels of acid to decrease as we age. If, as we get older, we reach a critically low level of acid in our stomachs, we do not digest our food fully and it can be left to essentially rot and putreify in our bodies. This process produces a variety of organic acids that may in turn cause the burning and refluxing experienced as ‘heartburn.’

The good news is that this problem can be treated at its root. Taking a supplement of digestive enzymes with a meal, like Zypan from Standard Process, is a great place to start. Also, having your zinc levels checked can be important as your stomach cells need zinc in order to be able to make acid in the first place. In some people, a hiatal hernia, where parts of the stomach begin to come up through the diaphragm, may cause heartburn symptoms. In very bad cases these can be seen on x-rays and need surgery to be repaired, but more times then not, this will not show up on any tests. These less obvious hiatal hernias can be treated through a simple manual manipulation.

With these simple remedies, there is no reason to stay stuck in the wheel when dealing with heartburn. Heartburn doesn’t have to lead to a lifelong script for meds and then another lifelong script for osteoporosis medications. Its cause can be easily and effectively treated.

I had a chance this weekend to read a couple of wonderful articles in Yes! Magazine. Essentially the jist of these articles was that, yes, times are tough and the economic crisis has affected everyone one of us, but we can choose to see this crisis as a gift; a chance to start now to restructure our economy instead of waiting until oil runs out and the Earth is in shambles to begin this inevitable restructuring.

I really would encourage all of you to peruse their website and read the articles for yourself. Contrary to what one might think, they were actually inspiring. That we can, with a little creativity and alot of effort, create intentional, supportive and sustainable local economies that will help insulate us from the ups and downs of far-flung markets, is an idea who’s time has definitely come. As I read through several of these articles, I began thinking about myself and my little slice of this economic pie and how I might begin to create a stronger local economy.

For those people who know me and know my family, we do feel that the most important vote we make is not the one that happens every four years, but the one that we make every day, with every dollar we spend. We do our best to support local farmers, artisans and merchants, knowing that when we spend our money with them, opposed to a large-chain store, our money stays in our local community alot longer. And to a certain extent, we have a better idea where that money goes & what it supports. If I shop with Big Box store, their profits might get invested in companies that willfully poison our environment or support weapson manufacture, etc. I certainly wouldn’t give my money knowingly to such companies, so why would I give it to someone else to give to them?

As I thought about this a little further, I thought more about my chiropractic practice and the choices I have made regarding how I accept payment for services. Currently, my patients pay cash at the time services are rendered. Mnay people don’t understand why I am not in network with the local insurance providers. First and foremost, I firmly believe that I can give my patients better care this way. But another advantage of working this way is that it keeps more money in our community. You support a local business, I support a local business. And by extension more of your money stays here in our community instead in the portfolio of some mega-insurance company based out of who-knows where.

Now, I am not suggesting that everyone should get rid of their health insurance altogether because it might support pollution or violence. Health insurance, like any insurance, can be a life-saver (pardon the pun) should you be in an accident or develop a serious life-threatening disease like cancer. But when is comes down to the care we use to support the everyday maintainence and function of our bodies, I am suggesting that to the extent that we can, we should make other decisions about who or whom is supported by our money.

So the next time you see a sign that says “shop local,” I hope you not only think of buying good & services locally, but also of paying for them locally too.

Today I participated in the Time for Lunch nationwide eat-in. This fall, Congress will be voting on the Child Nutrition Act, the bill that provides for the National School Lunch Program. One of the more sobering things I learned today was that the USDA currently reimburses the School Lunch Program a mere $2.57 for each student receiving a free lunch. Of that pitiful little sum, only about a dollar goes to buying food for our children. One dollar! Crunched for cash, our cafeteria managers have little choice but to buy the cheapest foods they can find. Most of us know however, that while these foods may be cheap in their upfront costs, they are extremely costly when one begins to factor in future health care costs from treating the obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure caused by eating these foods. It saddens me greatly that in a country where we can find the money to bailout irresponsible corporations or help people buy new cars, we can’t seem to find the money to feed our children decent, nutritious food.

During the eat-in today, I helped people write letters to their senators and representatives to ask them to approve the Child Nutrition Act and to appropriate an extra dollar per student per day to spend on real food. By spending a little more now, we can give our children real, nutritious foods that will actually help them learn better and grow stronger. Some schools have even found that behavior problems decrease when children are fed whole foods instead of food-like substances that contain a plethora of preservatives and additives, which have recently been linked to various hyperactivity disorders. By changing how we feed our kids, we can also have a drastic affect on rising health care costs- an urgent issue. Currently, one in four American children are obese. Study after study has shown that children are at an increased risk of just about everything as they get older, but especially chronic, degenerative diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. As these kids get older and start developing these conditions at earlier ages, it can only mean one thing- a COLOSSAL increase in health care spending. In comparison, a dollar per student per day is much less costly.

We also campaigned today to have Congress finally appropriate money for the Farm to School initiative that would help get locally grown, fresh foods in to our schools. This food may come from the farmer down the street, or may even be grown in a garden at the school by the students themselves. What a wonderful, multi-purpose learning lab! A schoolyard garden could do double duty as an interactive biology lab. With a little creativity, students could also use such a garden to learn about art, literature or even math! Most of all, they could learn about how to feed themselves for a lifetime. “But kids hate vegetables!” you say. When the Obamas planted a garden on the White House lawn this year, Michele Obama observed that the fifth graders who helped her tend to it were much more interested in eating vegetables and trying new ones when they had grown them themselves. Maybe we could get really crazy and teach school child how to cook vegetables properly so they are tasty and appelling!

In the event that a schoolyard garden isn’t possible, or cannot supply the needs of the entire school’s lunch program, with the help of local farmers, we could get fresh produce into our student’s lunches. Not only does this support the health of our students, but it supports the health of our local economies by keeping money in our local communities. And of course, we need to support our farmers because No Farms = No Food. It’s a win-win, but these programs needs funding to get started. Once rolling, they could be designed to be largely self-sufficient. Congress has actually approved this initiative, but without appropriating any funding for it, it lanquishes in a Pergatory so to speak.

Even though the eat-in was today, the campaign is far from over. It really takes very little time to go to www.house.gov or www.senate.gov, look up your representatives and give them a call. Or send them an email. If you really want to make it clear to them that you care about this issue, write them an old-fashioned letter. (hint: send it to their local office instead of their Washington D.C. office as there are less restrictions and therefore more chance of your letter getting to the hands of the people who will act on it- quickly.) Please take the time to do this today for the sake of our children and their future.

Is this you? Feeling like your get-up-and-go has got-up-and-left without you?

You’re in good company: the number one reason people visit their doctor is for fatigue.

Sometimes fatigue, especially if it seems to come out of nowhere, can be a sign of scary things like cancer. But more often then not, fatigue is a symptom of our way-too-busy, overly stressful modern lives. However, this is not to say that the way you are feeling is all in your head, or that you have to become a Buddhist monk in order to feel better.

Less than 100 years ago, the concept that emotional-level stress could cause actual, physical-level disease was quite foreign to doctors. Thanks to the work of pioneering researcher Hans Selye, we now know that stress- physical or emotional- causes real, measurable changes in the body. In particular, Dr. Selye found that stress can be particularly detrimental to something called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. These are three major glands of the body that regulate many body functions. The hypothalamus is responsible for things like temperature regulation and sleep. It does so by stimulating the pituitary, which in turn stimulates more specific glands, like the thyroid, ovaries/testes, adrenals, etc.

When you go to your doctor with a complaint like fatigue, he or she will probably order bloodwork. Providing the bloodwork provides no other clues, except for say,low thyroid hormones, a patient will probably be prescribed synthetic thyroid hormone like Synthroid, and that will be that. But what if you still feel terrible? Or maybe you’ve been to a few doctors and were eventually diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia? How do you find hope to ever feel better?

The key to addressing any of these things is, of course, to look at the person as a whole and to look for the cause, not just the symptoms. The thyroid might be underfunctioning, but why??? A person may not have enough energy, but why should that be when every cell of the body is equipped with an immaculate mechanism for energy generation? The answers will very with each individual, but I promise you this, the thing that will always be a common factor is diet.

1. According to the forty-year Framingham study, forced vital capacity (the maximum volume of air that a person can exhale after a maximum inhalation) is the primary predictor for longterm health and vitality. So its good to be full of hot air!

Source: www.nih.gov, www.buffalo.edu/news/4857

2. Your latte has less caffeine then the same size of regular drip coffee. An 8 oz latte has 75 milligrams of caffeine whereas 8 oz of regular coffee has 95 milligrams of caffeine. Part of this has to do with the roasting process- the longer the bean is roasted the less caffeine. The other part of this is that espresso is concentrated and typical is drunk in smaller amounts, so a small latte may only contain a 2 oz shot of espresso, the rest of the liquid is steamed milk.

Source: Starbuck Corp., 2007, USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, 2007., personal communication with Jane at Morning Brew.

3. During the 1918 flu epidemic, physicians using solely homeopathic means had a mortality rate of only 1.05% of 26,000 cases while convential physicians (using primarily aspirin) had a mortality rate of 28.2% of 24,000 cases. A report by Dr. Frank Wieland of Chicago stated that of 8,000 employess in the plant where he worked, they only had one death from the flu. No aspirin or vaccines were used, just the remedy Gelsemium.

Source: Perko, Sandra, The Homeopathic Treatment of Influenza: Surviving Influenza Epidemics and Pandemics Past, Present and Future with Homeopathy, Benchmark Homeopathic Publishing, 2005.

4. Not all milk is created equal. A genetic mutation in cows that arose somewhere between 5,000 and 10, 000 years ago, leads some cows to have A1 beta-casein (a type of protein in the milk that some people cannot tolerate) while other cows have A2 beta-casein. When A1 beta-casein is broken down in the human digestive system, it creates a small peptide known as BCM7, that can cross the blood-brain barrier and bind with opiate receptors in the brain. Solid research also shows that BCM7 is linked with higher rates of Type I diabetes, heart disease, autism and schizophrenia. No detectable BCM7 is released from A2 milk. A2 type cows include Jersey and Guernseys, and other Asian & African cattle breeds. Most cows in the U.S. are Holsteins, an A1 type cow.

Source: Woodford, Keith, The Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009.

5. Between 1959 and 2004, researchers published at least 50 articles seeking to prove a connection between fat intake or serum cholesterol levels and cardiovascular disease. None could find a positive correlation. (See Fun Fact #1, even the repudited Framingham Heart Study found that it was forced vital capacity, not a low-fat diet, that was the best predictor of long-term health & vitality!)

Source: Joel Kaufmann, PhD, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus