Are there "brands" of Natural Medicine?

"Brands" seems like a weird question, doesn't it? Well, I get asked that question, or a reasonable facsimile, almost on a daily basis. So, is there different "brands" of natural medicine?

When people ask me about what I do, I explain that there are simply different methods of reaching the same results. I don't call it "brands", just different methods.

It seems od at first, but when Dr. Janine and I first contemplated starting Doctor's Nutrition 16 years ago, we did not want to have another cookie cutter clinic and "do" natural medicine. We wanted to have something that was less stress on us as well as less restrictive on access to us. So, we came up with a different model for our business. No appointments! Due to the nature of anything medical in America appointments are usually required. Also, bring your insurance information, etc. Way too much hassle for someone trying to determine why they are sick. So a new "brand" of natural medicine was started.

When we opened the doors of Doctor's Nutrition there was no appointment needed. If we are in the office, we are available, and there is no charge for that consultation. Simple, huh? We also thought that most in the natural medicine arena were making the cost of getting information too expensive. Recently I had a lady in that had been to another office that does an alternative approach and she told me of the costs. The initial consultation was $500 and the doc in question ordered over $1500 of lab work. Of course the insurance did not pay for any of it, all denied. We don't even bother with insurance, we know they will not pay for anything alternative. Sadly, 6 months later this lady was still having problems. Just not a good outcome.

From the above senerio you can see there needs to be an alternative to the standard medical model. It prevents a lot of folks from ever getting heathcare of any kind. And for those wanting to seek alternatives, it gets very expensive because you are going to pay out of pocket.

Therefore a new "brand" of narutal medicine or alternative was born. We strive to keep it simple and less affordable. We often spend a lot of time explaning diet changes, and we don't make money on grocery sales, but it helps a lot of people make better choices. We feel better too. We like helping others. 

So, there you have it. Doctor's Nutrition provides an alternative to teh alternative approach to medicine delivery in America. We strive to make healthcare affordable, our basic blood work is $69, which includes CBC, CMP, Thyroid and lipids. No consultation cost and no office visit fees. We are basically your guides or advocates. It is your health and you need to be incharge. We can help.
Dr. Jim

Multivitamins? Good or bad?

By now everyone has seen or heard the negatives being attributed to taking a multivitamin, it has been all over the news media recently. With this subject you, the consumer, need to do a little investigative work for yourself.

With just a little digging you will see that this coincides with the FDA wanting to make more regulatory changes regarding supplements. As I always suggest; follow the money.

It is always amazing that the media, which is supposed to be investigative reporting at its best (;), can blindly follow what is junk science at best. If you dig into some of the so called research that is being used to portray your multivitamin in a bad light you find that it is indeed lacking. One of the research articles that is used as evidence relates how they, the authors set it up and they used divide subjects, all of which were young college students. Nothing wrong with that you say. Well, as 'they' say, the devil is in the details. Seems that 'they' gave both groups of subjects a placebo. And, this is probably the most curious of all, the researchers concluded that the multivitamin didn't preclude these folks form risky behavior. Really!

All we ask is do a little digging and reading on your own. An informed person is not as easy to dupe. Stay informed.

Omega 3, is yours safe????

By now everyone has heard the benefits of taking omega 3 fish oils for health, and that is definitely a good thing. However, with everything there can be a down side, even something as good as omega 3 fish oils.

A recent research article published in Food Chem Toxicol. 2010 Nov;48(11):3093-7. Epub 2010 Aug 6 provided data that indicates that we need to be aware of something called 'POPs'. That would be Persistent Organic Pollutants, or POPs.

What are these POPs? Things like PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), nasty little compounds, and aryl hydrocarbon receptor agonist compounds. None of which is beneficial to us humans.

One of the most pointed pieces of info in the article was the defining amounts of these compounds in various sources of the omega 3s. Doctor's Nutrition has always been aware of these compounds and have done everything in our power to make sure they are not in our products. The research provided info that one of the highest concentrations of these unwanted compounds was in salmon and tuna oil. Obviously these big fish are higher up the food chain and have more time for concentration of the unwanted pollutants. PCBs ranged from <0.8 to 793 ng g(-1) oil, with salmon- and seal-derived products yielding the highest values.

So where do we get our fish oil? From anchovies, one of the smallest species of fatty fish. Even starting there we make sure it has undergone molecular distillation and is tested to be the lowest possible in all contaminants. We have always discouraged the use of salmon and 'bigger' fish oils. Now you know why!

Calcium and heart risk?????

For years women have been told to 'take your calcium', it's good for your bones. Now, maybe not so good for the heart? What gives?

Over the years, we in medicine, have told women that taking extra calcium is beneficial for bone health. Those of us that adhere to the natural or holistic approach have advocated more than just calcium. We have always suggested doing more than just taking calcium for bone health. There are many other minerals (magnesium, etc.) sequestered in the bones that are needed for proper bone health and need to be available on a daily basis.

The potential problem that was pointed out in an article in the British Medical Journal in April of 2011 was that taking calcium may increase the risk of heart disease. The authors of the article suggested that we should get calcium from the diet. I agree. The problem is that the diet may not contain adequate calcium. We also have to look at the fact that a lot ( I'm being generous) of the population do not eat enough of the calcium rich foods even if the foods did contain adequate calcium. The authors pointed out that food bound calcium was not implicated in heart problems.

These same authors, in another study, found that there was a 27 to 31 % increase risk of heart attacks in women taking calcium without vitamin D. You would always want to take calcium with vitamin D as it helps absorption of calcium among other things. Vitamin D also helps with the transport of calcium into the bone. At this point I would go further and suggest that women that are concerned about bone health should have their vitamin D status determined through blood test. Once this is done you can supplement vitamin D to maintain proper levels, above 40 ng/dl.

Something else that was not mentioned in the study was vitamin K. Very important this vitamin K and green veggies have lots of K as well as bound calcium. Vitamin K helps metabolise or transport the calcium, and other minerals, into the bone. Certain forms of vitamin K, specifically MK7, a type of K2, in other studies has shown to be able to help remove calcium form plaques in the cardiovascular system.

As you can see there are more things involved to this claim that calcium increase cardiac risk than just taking calcium. At Doctor's Nutrition we are approached daily on this issue of calcium and bone health. We always suggest increasing calcium intake as well as adding both vitamin D and K2 to the daily regimen. Now, let's add some weight bearing exercise and we have the recipe for healthy bones. And never take calcium without vitamin D.

Phthlates anyone?

If you already know about phthalates you may want to go on to something else. For the rest of you I have some very discouraging information.

Phthalates or plasticizers as they are sometimes called are on rise and are being linked to almost every malady known to mankind. They, phthalates, are the most populous pollutant in our bodies, being greater than 10,000 times higher than any of the other many pollutants we have n our body. The sad part of this is that children six years old now have levels that used to take adults until age 40 or more to accumulate. And we wonder why we have so much ADD and its related problems in kids?

These phthalates are everywhere you see plastics and I'm sure you deal with plastics in your daily life. Things that we take for granted, i.e. bottled water, soda drinks, infant formula bottles, cosmetics and even things like carpets,clothing, medications, construction materials and sooo much more. As you can see, they are everywhere, even the mattresses we sleep on. Scary!

All these phthalates accumulate in our tissues and overwhelm our system and prevent the detoxification and getting them out of our body. So, what is a person supposed to do? We have to do the things necessary to detoxify and get rid of these compounds. Nutrients that can help are alpha lipoic acid, N acetyl Cysteine (NAC), B vitamins, phosphatidyl choline, etc. We have a very good detox formula, Liver Support and Detox, which has all the ingredients that you need for proper detoxification.

Another sad thing is that even our government knows that this stuff is bad and yet the medical establishment continues to push drugs that contain phthalates in them for conditions that are caused by phthalates. Makes your head rush, huh?

If you want to dig into more on this I suggest PubMed. Just Google PubMed, which is the National Institute of Health, your tax dollars doing something useful, where all peer reviewed journals are cataloged. When you get to PubMed type in 'phthalate toxicity' and set back and read all 1447 results that come up. In the mean time start taking something to detoxify because if you are alive, you are toxic with this stuff.

B12 and Alzheimer disease!

The journal Neurology published an interesting article in October of 2010 regarding a study of the relationship of high homocysteine, low vitamin B12 and Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer disease (AD) has to be one of the most dreaded disease of all time. Of course we have all the Boomers coming of the age that makes and then it gets personal.

In the study mentioned here the authors started with 271 folks that were tested and found to be clear of AD. All were between the ages of 65 to 79 and also tested to be free of dementia as well.

The researchers measured homocysteine levels and vitamin B12 levels, as B 12 is one factor that helps lower homocysteine, the others are B6 and Flic acid, and followed the group for a period of seven (7) years. In that time frame 17 of the subjects developed Alzheimer's.

The researchers were monitoring B12 and homocysteine of these patients and the data correlated in the study indicated that for each micro molar ( very small )increase in homocysteine increased the risk of developing AD by 16%. Wow! And they found that for each pico molar (even smaller than the micro molar) increase in vitamin B12 the risk of AD decreased by 2%. They are on to something here!

Of course the researchers went on to say that homocysteine and vitamin B12 may have something to do with Alzheimer's. I don't know about you, but I can read and extrapolate data myself and I think there is a definite correlation. And of course, the researchers went on to say more research was needed. Fair enough.

If you go by the guide lines for laboratory testing for homocysteine most labs state the range as 5 to 15. We have always suggested keeping it below 8 and now we more reason to do just that. On the B12 most labs use the range of ~250 to 950. Here we suggest that you want to be at least 800 or higher. Just because you fall in range, above 250 or so, does not mean that you are safe, especially when it comes to AD.

Make sure your doctor is checking these levels in your yearly check up. If he or she wont do that for you give us a call and we can arrange that for you.

Stay healthy!
Dr. Jim

A good Trans Fat????????????

Stop the presses! Hold the phone! You know the drill. All of a sudden here comes information that just might shake your world! Trans Fats could be beneficial?

I was just perusing some of the latest research that was published in the later days of 2010 and came across an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine that was published in December of 2010. As stated in the article we have known for some time that the cis-palmitoleate, a form of palmetic acid found in whole milk, was beneficial to health. In this research the authors explored one of the other fatty acids found in whole milk, a trans-palmitoleate, and you know what 'they' say about trans-fats, might be beneficial also.

This may come as a surprise, with all the bad press the trans-fats have gotten lately, but the research indicates that there "may be beneficial health effects in humans". You have to remember where this is coming from, The Annals of Internal Medicine, and that it flies in the face of all the public propaganda being put forth by all the "expert" in health.

We at Doctor's Nutrition have always advocated using whole milk and preferably organic. We emphasize organic due to all the hormones used in modern dairy production. We don't need the extra hormones.

The study found that those who consumed the whole milk did indeed get more of this trans-fat, and that was associated with lower adiposity (less body fat)as well as higher HDL or good cholesterol levels. Not bad for something that tastes good too!

We will keep you posted as to other findings we come across.
Later,
Dr. Jim