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

Resveratrol

By now you have heard of or read about resveratrol and how it is the youthful elixir promising eternal life. Oh, you haven't heard about resveratrol?

It seems that the Internet is buzzing with all kinds of info, some good some, well questionable, about resveratrol. As many of may have read resveratrol is usually equated with red wine and grape extracts and that is true. When one looks further into resveratrol we find that a heck of a lot of plants produce this stuff. Actually it seems that the more invasive the plant the more resveratrol it produces.

If you peruse the real research that has been done and that is being done on resveratrol it is a truly amazing compound. Its ability to reduce radical oxygen species, its anti-oxidant capabilities, is one of the best in the world so far. Who knows what might be just around the corner.

Back to resveratrol. Now that science is investigating resveratrol we are finding many of its cousins that were here to fore unknown. Things like pterostilbene, and piceatannol. All these compounds fall into a class that chemists call flavonoids or stilbenes. The amount of anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-cancer information stemming from this research is incredible.

Personally and clinically we have used resveratrol for well over 10 years and some of the results we have seen are unbelievable for sure. We suggest it for so many conditions now that some would see it as a miracle indeed. Although it will not make you loose weight, darn. I am going to be adding more about this wonder herb in the near future. If you have any questions or concerns give us a call at 800-824-0194. If you have had great results we would like to hear about them too.
As always, yours in health!

Cave Man diet

Hi All,
For many years I have suggested that we need to eat like a 'cave man', thus the cave man diet. Now it has a more correct name; The Paleo Diet.

There are many advocates of this eating style and many authors that have capitolized on the marketing with books, etc. My favorite is "The Paleo Diet" by Loren Cordain, PhD. Dr. Cordain has done a very good job of describong the diet and the 'whys' surrounding it. For those of a technical bent, you will be amazed at the varying research on the subject and supporting evidence surrounding the life style.

Our method of emplementing this life style is simply to remove any and all grains form the diet. Yes, this means no cereals for breakfast either. Also, you are going to want to be careful of starchy root vegetables, i.e. potatoes, etc.

Having done this ourselves and with many patients and watching the results, we are convinced, and have much evidence to back this up, that modern man needs to change his or her ways. What with 30% plus of the population classified as diebetic and anothe 20% plus on the way, metabolic symdrome, things have to change, and soon.

Stay tuned as there will be much more on this subject to come.

Yours in health,
Dr. Jim

Big food on the attack, again

Well, as if we didn't have enough to worry about in the organic, and family farm movement, leave it up to our Government to mess things up.

Senate bill S. 510 is seen as a very controversial piece of legislation. There were provisions that would spell doom to the organic farm movement and those that use only heirloom seeds. The bill got side lined and everybody thought we were safe. Not so! Below is a link that will explain a lot more than I go in to here. If you are into organic gardening, etc. it is worth the read. An informed population is a politician's worst nightmare.

http://www.anh-usa.org/who%E2%80%99s-trying-to-scuttle-the-amendment-that-protected-organic-and-family-farms-big-food-on-the-attack/

You may have to copy and paste to get the story.
Stay informed.
Dr. Jim