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.

We didn’t think so either…

healthy food”Medicine is far from having decreased human sufferings as much as it endeavors to make us believe. Indeed, the number of deaths from infectious diseases has greatly diminished. But we still must die in a much larger proportion from degenerative diseases.”

That was written by Dr. Alexis Carrel more than 70 years ago- even before antibiotics were discovered. Interesting that it is as true today as it was then. We know more today about the intricacies of heart disease, diabetes and cancer then at any other time in history and yet the most important thing, which medicine doesn’t seem to know about these diseases, is how to prevent them. You can be sure that this has more to do with profit margin then sheer ignorance. This is because heart disease is not caused by a statin deficiency, its not even caused by too much cholesterol. Its 100% caused by a diet that is too high in trans fats, rancid vegetable oils and refined sugars and is sorely deficient in adequate amounts of essential vitamins and minerals.

That cholesterol is the cause of heart disease is a myth. Age, weight, smoking and family history are all stronger predictors of heart disease than cholesterol. The truth is that cholesterol is a repair molecule, acting like putty to fill in holes in the arteries. So what actually does cause damage to the lining of the arteries? Trans fats, homocysteine and elevated blood sugar. To say that cholesterol causes heart disease is like saying that a paramedic caused the accident, simply because they were one of the first people on the scene.

Trans fats are in most processed foods. When the label lists “partially hydrogenated” or “hydrogenated” anything, you can be sure that it contains trans fats. The problem is that natural occurring fats are in the “cis” form. Therefore, the enzymes that breakdown fats can’t really handle the man made trans form. Without a way to break them down and process them, these fats can accumulate and wreak all kinds of havoc in the body, damaging arteries, stressing the liver and increasing rates of cancer. The food that has traditionally contained the most trans fats is margarine. How ironic that we have been told to eat margarine instead of butter for the sake of our hearts, and here we’ve been doing even more damage!

Homocysteine has been proven to be the number one predictor of heart disease. What is homocysteine? Well the long and short of it is that it is an intermediary molecule. A once useful molecule that needs to be turned into something else to be excreted by the kidneys, this process requires adequate levels of several key B vitamins including B6, B9 and B12. Meat and dairy are rich sources of these vitamins. In the case of B12, the active, usable form is only found in animal foods. Lack of quality meat and diary foods in the diet along with too much refined sugar, which takes B vitamins to be processed, leaves very little, if any, of these crucial vitamins available to process the breakdown of homocysteine. It accumulates in the blood and damages the endothelial lining of the arteries. The body tries to repair the damage and uses, among other things, cholesterol as a sort of spackle to repair the damage, hence cholesterol took the rap for causing atherosclerosis.

Another interesting note about cholesterol, is that in addition to being the precursor to Vitamin D, all the sex hormones and immune-modulating corticosteroids, it protects cognitive function as we age. Yes, your total cholesterol level is supposed to creep up as you age. Elevated cholesterol levels can also help prevent certain types of stroke. This is probably why a study looking at cholesterol, statin use and cognitive function in older adults actually found that subjects who had taken statin drugs for several months and then discontinued use, had the highest levels of cognitive function compared to controls who never took statins and a group who took statins without discontinuing use. Both of these groups had lower total cholesterol levels, hence less protection of brain function.

Nobody ever died of a statin deficiency. In fact, the irony is that statins inhibit the function of enzyme CoQ10. This enzyme is found in all tissues of the body, especially heart muscle tissue, because its job is to convert the products of glucose metabolism into ATP- the body’s energy currency. Without ATP, muscles can neither contract or relax. This is why muscle weakness and/or spasm is one of the most common side effects of statins. So in taking a medication to prevent heart disease, all one really succeeds in doing is starving the heart muscle of energy to function.

If you want to have a healthy heart and prevent other degenerative disease, real, nutrient-dense foods are your answer. Start with real butter from grass-fed cows. Eat beef from grass-fed cows. Toss any vegetable oils except for maybe high quality, first cold-pressed olive oil. Avoid processed foods that contain partially hydrogenated fats and refined sugars like the plaque they are.

OK, so maybe “invades” is an over-dramatization, but last week the first verified case of swine flu in Ulster County was announced. Just as I thought the swine flu’s 15 minutes of fame were just about up.

It’s here, so what can you do about it? How can you protect yourself from it?

First of all, STAY CALM! It might help to remember that the plain-ol’, regular flu kills more people every season than this thing has to date, by a magnitude of a 1000. Despite the horrific headlines, this thing is not particularly deadly. Just like the regular flu, infants, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are the most at risk.

Which brings us to the second word of advice- SUPPORT YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM. Yes, you could wear a mask to work. Yes, you could live in a bubble until the swine flu scare passes. Or, you could remember that Mother Nature has bestowed upon us this wonderful thing called an immune system. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to learn in depth the inner workings of this system, you would know that it is trully a marvel. For one, it has a general division who’s job it is to respond to any given threat with overwhelming force- be it a bacteria, a virus, a grain of pollen or even a certain food protein. But it also has a smart division- a division that has a memory. It learns to recognize foreign invaders and prepares the body to launch a more lethal attack should these specific wee beasties get any ideas about trying to invade your body again.

Many things can compromise the ability of your immune system to do an effective job of protecting you from getting sick. Most people know of the ability of certain disease states like cancer or HIV infection, or of certain medications to be a drain on one’s immune system. Too few of us however, remember that the immune system is also adversely affected by lack of sleep, poor diet, too much stress, lack of exercise and nutrient depletion. Fortunately, these are all factors over which you have direct control!

Lack of sleep and lack of exercise have fairly obvious solutions, so I won’t sport with your intelligence on those subjects. What I would like to remind you of however, is the effect of diet on overall immunity. Many people already know about the role of Vitamin C and zinc in supporting the immune system. Some of the less glitsy, but still vital nutrients include Vitamin A and saturated fats like conjugated linoleic acid and lauric acid.

Before antibiotics, most kids were forced to take a daily dose of cod liver oil. Why? Because this superfood is a potent source of Vitamins A & D as well as essential omega 3 fats like DHA and EPA. Vitamin A has been shown to help prevent upper respitatory infections.

Saturated fats are also important immune boosters. One particularly potent one is lauric acid, found abundantly in coconut oil. Use 2-3 tablespoons a day of high-quality, unrefined coconut oil a day to keep the swine flu at bay.

As always remember to eat a balanced of diet of nutrient-dense, high quality whole foods. Taking supplements is also essential since the food we eat today generally has 30-50% less vitamins and minerals in it than it did just 100 years ago. Immunplex and Congaplex from Standard Process are two products that I have had wonderful experiences with in terms of supporting the immune system.

One final word- find ways to keep stress to a minimum. Stress, no matter where it comes from is extremely harmful to your adrenal glands, whose job it is to secrete powerful hormones to stimulate the immune system. Chronic stress inhibits their ability to do this, with the end result being physical and mental exhaustion as well as increased susceptibility to infection. Look for a future blog post to help you recognize the signs and symptoms of adrenal exhaustion as well as how to use nutrition to correct and repair adrenal damage.

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.

Review by Katherine Czapp of Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs by Melody Peterson.

“One way to assess the current state of health care in United States is to look back just a couple of decades to world longevity statistics. A sixty-five-year-old American woman in 1980 could expect to enjoy a longer life span than could her contemporary in most others places in the world. By 2002, however, a sixty-five-year-old woman, with access to the nearly unlimited supply of the newest and most expensive drugs the American pharmaceutical industry has to offer, had slipped from her comfortable spot in expected life expectancy. Among longevity spans determined for thirty countries in that year, the American woman would come in seventeenth. American men have fared even worse, and a sixty-five-year-old American man today can expect a shorter life than a man his age in Mexico.”

“No one can seem to account for the dismal showing of Americans in international longevity comparisons…even though the United States spends more per person on medical care than any other nation on earth. How much more? More than do all the people of Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina combined. In 2005, that was an average of $6.700 for each person per year; $26,800 for a household of four. More money than was spent on housing, food, transportation, or anything else.”

“In 1980, Americans spent $12 billion on prescription drugs. By 2003, that figure had risen to $197 billion. In the same time period, Americans had doubled what they paid for cars, and tripled what they paid for clothing, but their spending on pharmaceuticals had increased seventeen times.”

“Then there is another personal cost paid every day by Americans who are the customers of the pharmaceutical industry. In 2006…the average American collected twelve prescriptions; the average senior citizen took home more than thirty. And today nearly 65 percent of the entire American population daily takes at least one prescription medication.”

“‘There is a problem, however,…one that the drug companies and doctors prescribing the medicines do not like to talk about. Experts estimate that more than one hundred thousand Americans die each year not from illness but from their prescription drugs. Those deaths, occurring quietly, almost without notice in hospitals, emergency rooms, and homes, make medicines one of the leading causes of death in the United States…Prescription medicines, taken according to doctors’ instructions, kill more Americans than either diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease.'” On a daily basis that is two-hundred-seventy people-one every five minutes-killed by prescription drugs.”

“Hand in hand with these dismal facts of death and destruction wreaked by prescription drugs comes what is really a macabre American success story. All that aggressive marketing works…’America…has become the world’s greatest medicine show.’ And the drug merchants have become American’s most powerful industry.”

“Drug marketers pitch their wares to the public via every means available and in every niche into which they can insinuate themselves, such as state fairs, shopping malls, churches, NASCAR races, on television, billboards, scoreboards, and through nonprofit foundations whose ‘outreach’ activities are funded by drug companies.”

“It might comes as a surprise that even though drug advertising is everywhere and directed at everyone from young children to their grandparents, the vast majority of the industry’s marketing dollars is actually reserved for physicians. Cynically viewed as the trusted ‘gateway’ to new customers, physicians are aggressively and lavishly courted by drug company sales reps. ‘In 2004 the industry employed an army of 101,000 sales representatives to call on those doctors-two and a half times the size of its sales force in 1995. There is now one drug salesperson for every six physicians, each with an expense account that let him or her shower doctors with gifts and cash. Surveys show that virtually every American physician now takes these handouts.’ In return, of course, the doctors are expected to provide ‘scripts’ (that is, more customers) and most do.”

“Since only about ten percent of the sticker price of most brand name prescriptions is needed to cover the cost of raw materials and manufacturing costs, the industry is rolling in dough while taxpayers are emptying their pockets. ‘With their hoards of cash…the companies have readily handed money to patient groups, hospitals, universities, medical schools, physician societies, government agencies, and just about any organization they want on their side. Harvard, for one, has a lecture hall named for Pfizer in building names for Mallinckrodt, another company.’ Industry money influences academia, and what new ‘blockbuster’ drugs will receive money from research. Whether this new drug will help or harm people is not important as long as it will increase profits for company shareholders.”

“Are there no checks and balances? What about the Food and Drug Administration or Congress? ‘The drug companies’ chain of influence is so complete that there are few people left to look objectively at the effects of their products on the nation’s health or the consequences of their power for society…Washington is the axis of the industry’s power. The pharmaceutical companies spent more on lobbying between 1998 and 2004 than any other industry. By 2004 the companies employed a legion of lobbyists so large that there were more than two for each member of Congress. By using their wealth to buy influence, the drug companies have repeatedly squelched attempts to regulate their prices and promotional practices.'”

“The pharmaceutical industry has won other laws that allow the companies to profit from research and medical discoveries made by taxpayers-funded scientists; to prolong their patent protection periods by years; and to win lucrative tax credits which allowed them to pay far lower taxes than other industry groups.”

‘There is a kind of madness in it. The drug companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars in government fines for promoting their products illegally and hundreds of millions of dollars more to the families of the victims who suffered or dies, then raise their prices and promote their products even harder.'”

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.