No More Excuses

Use It, Or Lose It. Although you may not be terribly happy with your body, it’s the only one you’ve got. Failing to take action could mean widening the gap in ways that are not reversible.

Making the Right Decisions Today Is Better Than Paying For the Wrong Ones Tomorrow: We don’t have to tell you twice that obesity and an unwholesome diet have some pretty dire consequences. Saying “No” to your favorite food or working up a sweat may be uncomfortable, but we can garuntee it’s a lot less uncomfortable than chronic illness, organ failure, or death. If nothing else, your self esteem will will feel better.

No One Else Can Do It For You. Simply put, no one is going to wave a magic wand and make all of the right choices for you. You must have the courage and the resolve to decide you’re not happy with the way you have been living, and you want help to become the best you can be. Even with guidance from others, it’s up to you to see it through.

You’re Worth It. If you honestly don’t believe you’re worth the hard work and thoughtfulness it takes to be healthy, you’re never going to treat your body right. When it comes to being healthy, everyone is worth it.

What excuses have held you back in the past?

Hopefully, my answers here can help you refute any misinformed friends or family members who know about your interest in natural health.

So let’s get started!

1. I can get all of my daily nutrients from food

Not so fast. Even if you do eat the recommended 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, only dine on healthy, grass-fed meats, free-range chickens and cold water fish, limit your refined carbs, and don’t overdo it on sugars, alcohol and the rest; you’re still not getting all the nutrients your body requires.

A good diet is definitely a good start. But here’s the problem. Many of the foods today that should have a modicum of mineral content, including magnesium, silicon, manganese and such, really don’t. The soil that we grow fruits and vegetables in has been terribly depleted, and many of the newer hybrid forms of apples, tomatoes, carrots, and the like sacrifice nutrients for the sake of easier shipping.

Aside from this is the fact that even the best intentioned of us can’t always maintain vigilant control of our diets, especially if we’re traveling or under a hectic schedule.

So you need to get more nutrients, in meaningful amounts, from a reliable source. At the very least, this means finding a full spectrum multivitamin and mineral formula that provides nutrients at optimal dosage levels throughout the day. This last point leads us to myth #2.

2. A once-daily multivitamin supplies all the vitamins & minerals I need

Once-daily multiples provide some nutrients, but only in one shot, and only in suboptimal amounts that can’t supply the body and mind with the levels of nutrients you really need. Humans are designed to acquire nutrients several times a day, which is why our bodies tell us to eat 2-3 meals daily. Water soluble vitamins like vitamin C and the B family are quickly flushed from the body. So in order to get the most out of these vitamins, they have to be continuously resupplied.

While vitamins are small, minerals are huge by comparison. You cannot obtain meaningful amounts of minerals in a once per day formula. And without proper amounts of minerals, even the vitamins you do take in can’t do their job very well. For real levels of nutrients that will make a difference to your health, look for a multiple that is designed to be taken 2-3 times daily.

3. The RDA for vitamins and minerals is all I need.

Not necessarily. The Recommended Daily Allowance is simply a minimum requirement. It is the minimal amount you need to prevent deficiency, like scurvy and rickets – not the amount you need for optimal health.

Take vitamin C, for example. To prevent scurvy, a disease caused by lack of vitamin C that causes swollen gums, tooth loss, joint pain, and other problems, you only need 30 to 60 mg of vitamin C per day. But, we also know that taken at dosages of 500 – 1000 mg, vitamin C also helps promote wound healing, boosts the immune system, and fights oxidative stress. For those reasons, you’ll want to have more than the bare minimum.

Vitamin D is another example. For many years, the RDA for adults was 200 IU daily. That slowly increased to 400 IU daily, but even that may not prevent the damage from vitamin D deficiency, as current clinical surveys have shown. I think it’s safe to say that we’ll see a time when the minimum requirement for vitamin D is much higher – closer to what is considered the therapeutic dosage right now – 1,000 to 2,000 IU daily.

So remember, the RDA isn’t there to promote optimal, vibrant health. It is simply a set of recommendations to help prevent disease states, and nothing more.

The best and most responsible formulations are made with therapeutic levels that have shown the most benefit. So while some ingredients will be higher than what you’d see in a standard multiple’s RDAs, for example, they are intended to be effective, not excessive.

4. Vitamins can kill you

The media love to sensationalize any story that has to do with supplements and are always quick to cast natural products in a negative light. The truth, however, is that dietary supplements are extremely safe. It is very difficult to find anyone that has been seriously harmed solely through the use of a dietary supplement. Let me just repeat my friend Chris Kilham’s wise words about supplements and safety: “Approximately 300,000 Americans die every year from the proper use of over-the-counter and prescription drugs: most years, not one single American dies from using herbs.”

5. Capsules are better than tablets (or is it the other way around)?

Some people believe that capsules are always better than tablets. However, tablets are an excellent delivery system for many nutraceuticals, too. Unfortunately, there have been irresponsible manufacturers that have sometimes created poorly formulated tablets that did not properly break apart. This has led to people believing that the tablet delivery form is inferior to capsules and liquids.

The truth is that capsules can also have these problems if they are not formulated correctly, as the interior can bind together and not release its nutrients once the hard shell capsule dissolves. Liquids often have significant stability issues, both on the shelf, and with repeated exposure to oxygen. Therefore, there is no one single correct or incorrect method for delivering nutrients – different nutrients, depending on their individual properties, call for different delivery systems. Regardless of the delivery system used, what’s important is the quality and expertise used in creating the product.

Tablets are well-suited to delivering larger amounts of nutrients in a smaller, easier-to-swallow size. There are also certain nutrients that maintain better stability and retain their nutrient value better in the tablet form.

Responsible supplement manufacturers test their products for dissolution and disintegration in simulated gastric conditions, as specified by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). These laboratory tests verify that the products release their ingredients at the proper time for optimal absorption in the body. These tests include placing the product in a fluid that simulates stomach fluid, heating it to the level of internal body heat, and creating the motion (motility) of the stomach. This testing has been verified to yield accurate results for both tablets and capsules.

6. Poor-quality supplements have fillers and binders

Some companies market their products to be superior because they do not contain “fillers and binders.” These substances are more correctly called “excipients.” Excipients are those ingredients in a product that do not play an active role. Excipients are used for many reasons. Some are opacifiers, which means they protect key nutrients from light exposure and degradation, or antioxidants that help to resist oxidative reactions. Others help the product resist moisture, or other stressors might reduce the product’s efficacy. Some are included to make the products easier to swallow, so they do not stick in the throat. Still others assure that the tablet or capsule disintegrates after ingestion in an optimal time span. Therefore, excipients are tools to be used judiciously to create effective products.

That said, there are problematic excipients. There are excipients that are synthetic chemicals, derived from petrochemicals, etc. that responsible companies do not include in any of their products because they have concerns regarding these materials’ impact on health. The best products are created not only to contain a specific amount of nutrients, but to ensure that these nutrients are delivered in full potency to the person ingesting them.

7. Nobody really needs supplemental iodine – it’s already in table salt

Iodine is present in table salt because it is purposely added to it. And that was only done to prevent goiter (enlarged thyroid), not to support the thyroid’s ability to synthesize much-needed hormones, or your metabolism, or to help prevent cancer. In fact, the absence of iodine in much of our lives (especially when many people are lowering their salt intake), is alarming.

In the United States, we typically consume 240 mcg per day. That’s just enough to prevent goiter, but not enough for truly beneficial health effects.

Other minerals – chlorine, fluoride, and bromide – which lower iodine levels in the body by blocking iodine receptors – are increasingly consumed in foods or through environmental exposure. Chlorine is now used to purify water instead of iodine. Fluoride is almost universally found in toothpaste and drinking water. Bromines began to replace iodine in commercial baked goods in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, these minerals aren’t just toxic for your thyroid – they’re dangerous for your health overall. Fluoride is a problem because it blocks the ability of the thyroid gland to concentrate iodine, while bromide can cause depression, headaches, and even hallucinations.

In Japan, where seafood, kelp, and other iodine-rich foods are a regular part of the diet, the regular intake of iodine per day is about 12 mg (12,000 mcg) – about 50 times more than the average American.

So what difference does that make? Studies have noted a strong connection between thyroid abnormalities and breast cancer, and iodine intake may be a factor. Today, one in seven American women will develop breast cancer during her lifetime.

Compare that to thirty years ago, when iodine consumption was much higher, and one in 20 women developed breast cancer. Women in Japan who consume high amounts of dietary iodine have much lower rates of breast cancer and thyroid problems. However, when women emigrate from Japan to the United States and begin eating a Western diet, with its fractional amount of iodine, their breast cancer and thyroid diseases increase dramatically.

As it happens, life expectancy in Japan is just over 82 years old, while in the United States it is about 78 years. The infant mortality in Japan is half of that found in the United States. And, America faces three times the number of deaths from breast cancer than Japan.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, before the advent of the synthetic drugs that are used today, iodine was one of the most beneficial and universal medicines used by physicians around the world. It was effective for everything; healing wounds and disease, destroying bacteria, viruses and pathogens, and possibly even preventing cancer. But iodine was soon forgotten in favor of new pharmaceutical drugs. Now we’re seeing the result – skyrocketing cancer rates, an epidemic of thyroid dysfunction, and problems detoxifying our bodies.

So iodine is more relevant than ever. And supplemental iodine is definitely necessary. By adding even as little as 6.25 mg of iodine per day to your diet, you could see a dramatic improvement in your metabolism, ability to focus, and overall well-being. For more information about this, read my article, “Iodine – The Forgotten Medicine”, at http://www.terrytalksnutrition.com/weekly-articles/2010/03-12/iodine-the-forgotten-medicine-2/

8. The supplement industry is completely unregulated

This is a common myth. Both the pharmaceutical industry and the supplement industry are regulated by the same agency, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). They are simply regulated differently. The supplement industry is regulated as a “food”, because it is a “supplement” to the diet, and legally considered a product that helps maintain health, not cure diseases. That is why you’ll see explanations on supplements that read, “Helps maintain blood pressure already within normal levels”, and not “lowers blood pressure.”

But here’s the thing: The FDA can – and does – inspect supplement manufacturers and marketers all the time. They can arrive when they want, and without warning, to verify that Good Manufacturing Processes are being followed. Reputable companies need to have very well defined standard operating procedures and high quality standards for quality, purity, and safety if they are going to stay in business. Are there poor players in the system? Sure. But they don’t stay around long, and they typically don’t include clinically-studied ingredients and don’t cite these studies in their literature or information.

The best way to know if you’re dealing with a quality manufacturer is to ask questions. Talk to the experts at your health food store, and contact the company in question.

9. Dietary supplements can never be as effective as prescription drugs

Not true. In fact, there are many herbal ingredients that are as effective as prescription drugs – without the same concerns regarding adverse effects. Consider curcumin. It’s become much more popular as people look for a way to reduce pain without using common over-the-counter or prescription medicines that can harm the liver, damage the stomach lining, and put them at risk of heart attacks.

In fact, a high-absorption curcumin extract was recently judged just as effective – and without the health concerns – as the prescription rheumatoid arthritis drug, diclofenac sodium.

The 8-week study, “A Randomized, Pilot Study to Assess the Efficacy and Safety of Curcumin in Patients with Active Rheumatoid Arthritis,” followed 45 subjects, randomized to three groups. All study participants had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, functional class I or II.

Group one received diclofenac sodium, 50 mg, twice daily; group two received 500 mg of high-absorption curcumin twice daily; and group three received both diclofenac sodium and high-absorption curcumin. In each curcumin group, there were no drop outs due to adverse effects, but in the diclofenac sodium group, 14% withdrew due to adverse effects.

Laboratory studies on kidney and liver function, blood sugar, and a complete blood count were performed before and after participation. There were no significant changes in these measurements in general in all the groups. One laboratory analysis adverse event was reported in the drug (diclofenac sodium) group.

In the Disease Activity Score (known as “DAS”) 28 assessment, the curcumin group noted the highest impact for reducing disease symptoms, followed by those taking the combination therapy of curcumin with diclofenac sodium. Interestingly, the diclofenac sodium-alone group scored in last place.

The curcumin group also showed improvement over others in reducing C-reactive protein (CRP), a measure of chronic inflammation, and anti-streptococcal antibodies (ASO) titers, which are associated with severity of rheumatoid arthritis activity.

And that is just one of many examples.

10. All supplements are the same

Because there are so many generic over-the-counter medicines available, it can be tempting for people to think that all supplemental ingredients are exactly alike. Be careful here. Quality matters, and finding the right ingredients you need means reading labels carefully.

Take a look at St. John’s wort, for example. Although the herb had been studied for quite some time, it exploded in popularity in the 1990s, so much so, that it looked like the marketplace might actually run out of St. John’s wort.

Bear in mind that only extracts from the aerial parts of the plant are effective. However, this didn’t stop some manufacturers from making powder from the roots or stems, filling capsules, and selling it as “St. John’s wort.”

Factually, they were being honest. It was St. John’s wort. It just wasn’t the part of the botanical that had any studied effect.

Now imagine being the person who starts using a generic supplement that doesn’t really work very well. You’re probably not likely to give supplements another chance, which could mean missing out on something truly life-improving.

Always seek the truth

Chances are you’ll see a lot of recurring stories out there about supplements. My advice is to seek out a variety of trustworthy sources of nutrition and health news and stay current on any of the latest developments and research studies. By being informed and making reasonable decisions, you can do a lot more for your health than chasing after the latest fads or falling for questionable advice.

A new study published in the Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy has found that food sensitivity is a key culprit in obesity, and has also detailed ways to measure it.

Lead author John E. Lewis from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and co-author Judi M Woolger found that a person’s food intolerances can be identified by a simple blood test. Using the test, they further revealed weight loss could be achieved using a food elimination diet.

The Hemocodetm Food Intolerance System has been revealed as a comprehensive naturopathic nutrition program in Canada, which helps to identify and manage food sensitivities. The process uses a finger stick test to scan the blood for immuno-based reactions to common foods and additives.

According to the study, subjects lost approximately one pound per week after eliminating foods that they reacted to. The technology could also lead to beneficial health factors, such as minimizing migraines or digestive discomfort.
Dr Mubina Jiwa, Assistant Professor at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, said: “These findings are consistent with what I’ve seen in my practice, and thousands of people who use food intolerance analysis as a way to manage overall wellness.

“Often, people can re-introduce the foods that they are intolerant to after the body has a chance to recover. I’m pleased that there are more studies being done to promote this important wellness tool.”

For HealthCoach clients I use the ALCAT test for my clients who want to test for food intolerances.

What I feel compelled to take issue with, and the reason I am writing this treatise, is that the actual paradigm of medical care has not changed much in spite of all of our technological advances. Physicians have been extensively trained and have held steadfast in the belief that presenting symptoms are entities unto themselves. These symptom complexes have been treated as if they have a life of their own, separate and apart from the innocent bystander host, the person with the medical problem. We have divided the human body into a jigsaw puzzle of component parts. We’ve taken the jigsaw puzzle apart and assigned a specialist to address each one of these pieces of the whole, losing sight of the fact that everything is part of the whole, and everything we do as physicians to each little part affects the whole person. This has fostered the current allopathic paradigm of “symptom care” in lieu of the more important issue of “health care.”

In order to establish a system that is truly focused on health care, we need to expose some “myths” that will allow us to unlock the door to creating a more efficient and successful healthcare delivery system.

Myth #1- Technology has improved healthcare

Ask any physician if he believes that technology has improved health care and you will get a resounding “Yes!” Advances in medical technology now enable us to look inside the human body with relative ease and with great detail. Our surgical tools allow us to operate on all parts of the body with a minimum of trauma and blood loss. Technology has helped us improve the quality of life for millions of patients every year. It has enabled us to save countless lives as well. Therefore, it is certainly a foregone conclusion that technology has, in fact, improved our health. Or has it?

Statistically, since the age of technology, there has been an onslaught of increasing pathology. The amount of illness and morbidity in our society is dramatically rising. There are now more cases of cancer, heart disease, arthritis, auto-immune illnesses, endocrine disorders, developmental disorders, allergies, respiratory problems, infectious diseases, neurological problems, musculo-skeletal pathology, gastro-intestinal disorders, psychological illness, etc., than ever before.

While it is true that our technology has enabled us to better handle the enormity of disorders now facing mankind, it has done literally nothing for “health care.” If it had, we would have seen a decrease in the amount of illness and pathology in society. We would have experienced a drop in the amount of people requiring intervention from the medical community. Pharmaceutical companies would not be as rich and powerful as they are if people would be less dependent on medication to “feel well”. If anything, advances in technology have fostered a narrow field of vision, focused more on early detection and intervention than on prevention. If, by definition, health care means “the maintenance of good health,” then technology has failed miserably to produce any measurable improvement in the overall state of health of mankind.

Myth #2 – Inflammation is bad

Ask any doctor what to do about inflammation and the answer will be a uniform, “Take an anti-inflammatory.” While it is true that taking medication to suppress inflammation can certainly lead to increased comfort, should we be doing that in the first place? Is inflammation bad? Is it something that occurs by freak accident, some physiologic aberration, that occurs and causes great distress and suffering amongst mankind? We have been conditioned to think of inflammation as something bad because it causes pain and makes us miserable, therefore it should be medicated and suppressed. Right? Wrong.

Inflammation is a directed response by the immune system designed to detoxify, repair and protect tissues under any form of functional or metabolic stress. It is important to understand the purpose of inflammation in order to see why we should not work to suppress it, but rather to support it.

Whenever there are tissues in our body under any form of functional or metabolic stress, the problem will be immediately identified by the immune system. It first recruits a pathway called primary inflammation. This pathway is employed by the body in order to detoxify the tissues under stress (as tissues under stress increase their metabolic rate and produce more toxic by-products) as well as facilitate the repair of any injured cells. A primary inflammatory response will produce no symptoms in low-level stress situations, as long as it is efficient in managing the problem. You would not even know that this process is going on because there are no identifiable symptoms such as pain, swelling, redness and heat. Cardinal signs of inflammation will occur only when there is rapid, high level stress in an area such as in acute trauma, repetitive stress episodes, allergic/toxic reactions and metabolic disease.

In situations where the stress on the tissues is beyond the capability of the primary pathway, or in situations where there is an inefficient inflammatory response (we will discuss this later in the treatise), the immune system will then incorporate the secondary, or chronic, inflammatory pathway. This pathway is a protective pathway. It prevents rapid tissue destruction by allowing for cellular adaptation to the stress as well as the release of pain-causing chemicals to prevent continued “overuse and abuse” of the involved part. Therefore, the patient becomes aware that there is a problem because they are in pain.

Now that you understand this simplified explanation of inflammation, you can see that inflammation is actually a good thing. It is the body’s way of trying to help itself deal with these kinds of issues. It should be obvious then, that anti-inflammatory medications actually impair the body’s ability to detoxify, repair and protect itself. Additionally, these medications add toxic load to the body and are responsible for many varied side effects.

What makes more sense, empirically, is to treat these problems mechanistically and supportively. In other words, we want to work to help make the pathway of primary inflammation more efficient, with supportive, rather than suppressive, protocols. There are many natural medicines that can help accomplish the task of supporting our bodies, be they homeopathic, nutritional or herbal. Additionally, we want to be able to identify the reason(s) that this pathway is not functioning efficiently.

It is imperative that we look more comprehensively into our patient’s physiology in order to detect reasons why the immune system is not up to the task it is being called upon to perform. To do this, we need to understand our patient’s lifestyle, diet, adrenal health, the presence of food sensitivities, free-radical levels (free-radicals being compounds that essentially are responsible for cellular damage and degeneration over time), metabolic function analysis and perhaps other tests. In other words, we must work to comprehensively understand our patient’s total health picture and not just concentrate on the body part involved in the pathology.

Myth #3 – Genetically coded diseases are unavoidable

How many times have you heard someone say, “My mother had arthritis, that’s why I have it”? We now believe, through scientific technology, that many diseases are inherited. Genes for specific diseases have been recognized via gene mapping. Many of you may know or have heard of women who have had total bilateral mastectomies, completely prophylactically, because their mothers died of breast cancer, firmly believing that they could not avoid the same fate.

Let’s take a closer look at this issue. If having a gene for any illness condemns you to having that disease, then why are you not born with the disease you are coded to have? Why isn’t every person who carries a gene for disease suffering at all times from that disease? The answer is that all genes do not express themselves at all times and many never do. There must be a reason why the body would call upon a gene to express itself. Otherwise, none of us would be able to survive the onslaught of genetic expression. So what is it that causes a gene to express itself? If you consider for a moment that diseases are just a complex of symptoms being incorporated by the body in an attempt to protect itself from tissue destruction and/or imminent death, you may begin to get a clearer understanding of what I am trying to say. Once we begin to pay attention to the reasons that a gene might express itself, we may be able to prevent that gene from releasing its code for illness.

To do this, one must look again at the lifestyle of the patient. As stated earlier, degenerative illness is a function of free radical damage to our cells over time. If someone carries the gene for arthritis, for example, one would expect genetic coding to foster storage of free radicals in their joint tissues. The prolonged exposure to these free radicals over time will cause progressive vicariations, which lead to cellular damage and eventual joint destruction.

But what if we intervene on behalf of gene expression by controlling the formation and liberation of free radicals in the body? Would there then be a need for the gene to express itself? I contend that there would be no need for this gene to express because, as I stated earlier, disease is the body’s way of protecting itself from rapid destruction of tissues and/or imminent death. If it doesn’t have to go to extraordinary lengths to protect itself, the gene remains dormant and no disease ensues.

So, again, we must look at the lifestyle and diet of the patient to discover why their body is failing to control the formation, liberation and damage caused by free radicals. You have all heard the term “antioxidants” and for good reason. Antioxidants are the nutrients we require in order to neutralize free radicals so they can then be eliminated from the body in a harmless form. Many people in our society live on nutrient deficient diets from highly processed and refined foods that do not supply essential nutrient protection.

You should be beginning to see the pattern here. Are we treating cancer by cutting it out? Are we treating arthritis by suppressing the protective inflammation brought about by years of free radical damage? Does coronary artery bypass grafting cure cardiovascular disease? Of course not. Our goal should be in maximizing understanding of cause and effect and employing life affirming, nutrient-rich diets with a healthy, wholesome, natural lifestyle. This is the way to “prevent” genetically coded diseases.

Myth #4 – Medications improve health

We are, in this country, the most heavily medicated society on the planet. People are taking medications to control the symptoms of countless diseases. These medications are either prescribed by their physicians or purchased over the counter by the patient. I have seen, in my practice, thousands of elderly patients taking upward of 10 prescription medications as well as a few over-the-counter ones. If you ask the average senior how they are feeling, most will say that they feel awful in spite of their medications. How could this be? If the medications are supposedly “keeping them healthy,” how come they feel so bad? There are a number of reasons for this.

First of all, every medication swallowed is perceived by the immune system as a “poison,” because there is nothing in nature that would ever present to the G.I. tract in that form of chemicals. This added “toxic load” places additional stress on the body. These chemicals must be detoxified and eliminated by the body. This need to detoxify causes stress in the liver and kidneys and can damage these vital organs.

Additionally, all medications, because they are designed to interfere with natural body physiology, will produce inevitable side effects. Why? In every situation where a drug is used to block symptoms (the roadblock), the body will undergo physiologic compensations in an effort to get around the roadblock. So, the body will recruit different physiologic pathways in an attempt to bypass the roadblock. Hence, the patient will experience new symptoms as these other pathways elicit undesired effects. Some of the side effects can be potentially more disabling than the symptoms they are being used to treat.

Many side effects are treated with additional drugs, further increasing the toxic load. The other issue most important to understand is that the symptoms are a directed response by the body to solve whatever issue needs to be dealt with. If you inhibit these symptoms with medications, symptoms will return when the drug is withdrawn if the body has not successfully solved the problem.

So, what am I saying here? Quite simply, if a patient has high blood pressure and is taking medication to control it, and then they cease taking it, they will see their blood pressure rise again. If they are suffering with an inflammatory problem and are taking anti-inflammatories to control their discomfort, and cease taking their meds, they will again be in pain. If they are suffering with sinus congestion and take a decongestant, they will feel congested again if the drug is withdrawn. Empirically then, we see that the medication has not at all improved their health, just their symptoms.

Myth #5 – Childhood immunizations protect us from serious disease

It’s a foregone conclusion that upon the birth of your new baby, immunizations will start as soon as possible to protect your child from many serious childhood illnesses that can devastate his/her health. Pediatricians set up important immunization schedules to be adhered to so that the baby is not left unprotected. In years gone by, many children were afflicted with polio, measles, mumps, Rubella, influenza, small pox, diphtheria, whooping cough and others. Of course, the majority of these children recovered without incident (other than polio, which caused permanent nerve damage most of the time), but there were some children who had serious sequelae and even some who died from these diseases. Modern science discovered a way to confer immunity on these children so that they would never become afflicted with these diseases, and for the most part, it has been successful. The question is, at what price?

If we think for a moment that we are taking infants with immature thymus glands (the main gland responsible for proper immune system function does not mature until around five years of age) and exposing them to numerous live and attenuated viruses, much more frequently than the child could possibly be exposed to any of these diseases, we may begin to understand some of the very discomfiting statistics that have evolved since the age of immunization. Rather than decreasing childhood morbidity and improving the health of all subsequent generations being immunized against these diseases that have affected mankind for thousands of years, we have instead seen a dramatic rise in childhood illness in the form of ADD, ADHD, autism, allergies, learning disabilities, infectious diseases, auto-immune illnesses and, most importantly, cancer. Cancer has been on a frighteningly dramatic rise in small children over the past decades and shows no signs of letting up. Mortality rates for childhood cancers are unacceptably high although technology has slowed the course of death.

Is there anyone out there, like myself, who is not convinced these childhood morbidity statistics have nothing to do with immunizations? Have we traded off less serious illness for more devastating disease? How did mankind survive and thrive through thousands and thousands of years without being immunized? Are we interfering in a way that has created a weakening, rather than a strengthening, of the human immune system? Is it possible that we are interfering with the natural course of genetic mutation that would have rendered authentic immunity to these diseases? There are too many unanswered questions here for my comfort level.

It is my opinion that it is incumbent upon epidemiologists to delve deeply into this possibility and definitively rule out a link between immunization and childhood morbidity from the aforementioned conditions.

Myth # 6 – The double blind – placebo controlled study guarantees safety and efficacy in drug therapy

At this point in the history of mankind, we have been conditioned to abhor symptoms of any kind. Headaches, sneezing, coughing, colds, allergies, pain, infections, hypertension, etc., are no longer tolerated as a part of the process of living. Rather than look into the mechanisms that may be causing these symptoms, we are reaching for the medicine that will suppress them. In so doing, we may feel better, but we now have no motive to look at causes and correct for the issues that may be impairing our health, thus increasing our “need” for more medications over time.

Well, what about these drugs? How do they make it to the market for public consumption? The answer is the “gold standard” double blind, placebo controlled study. Without this approach, there can be no FDA approval and hence, no way to market a drug. So let’s look at this approval process more closely.

It is imperative that a drug be tested for two main issues in clinical trials, the first being safety and the second, efficacy. Of course we want to know that if a drug proves to control the symptoms it is being designed to control, it can it do it safely, (e.g., with a minimum of “tolerable” side effects).

We then want to be able to establish that it is the drug that is working and not the “mind over matter” phenomenon. To ensure this, the drug is given to half of the test subjects and a placebo is given to the other half, who believe that they are actually being given the medication. Both groups are also instructed to refrain from taking other medications so that a “synergy” effect does not confuse the results. It would be harder to know if side effects and/or efficacy are being affected by these other meds so they are eliminated from the trials. The expectation is that there should be a great discrepancy between the medicated group and the control group (placebo) in the relief of symptoms being reported. This establishes the drug’s efficacy.

All through the clinical trials, all side effects are being reported and catalogued. The side effects are rated as to severity and frequency. The FDA will then look at this “safety” profile and decide whether or not the drug is safe enough to be approved for marketing.

So let’s assume that a drug has passed the stringent testing requirements and is now FDA approved. Soon, the drug will begin to be prescribed by an ever-increasing number of doctors who believe that new is better. Now, this is where the bigger, broader issues become revealed. Firstly, we mentioned that the medicated group in the study takes the test drug in isolation of other drugs. That is not what happens in real life. As soon as the drug hits the market, it is going to be mixed with lots of other prescription and over the counter medicines, as well as herbal and homeopathic medicines. We now begin to see drug interactions that will cause previously unreported side effects, some of them severe and some of them causing deaths. It is actually after the marketing of the drug that the public becomes the “test subjects” for drug interactions. The Department of Health will quickly respond by informing doctors of these “new” side effects, but it is too late for some people.

In addition, as the public use of the drug increases, there is now a much larger population of people using the drug and the statistics begin to change. What may have been reported to occur in 2 percent of the original test group may now be seen to be occurring in 6 percent of a broader population. Additionally, new side effects, not previously reported in clinical trials, become apparent. This is because there are so many variables in human physiology that results are often skewed by small populations of people who live in and around the same geographic location.

Lastly, clinical trials do not reveal the effects of long-term use. This, again, is something that turns the public into human guinea pigs. The recent Vioxx debacle bears this out.

So, in fact, this double blind placebo controlled study does not guarantee safety or efficacy because the test leaves far too many questions unanswered.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The focus on optimization of health not only depends on a working knowledge of genetics, but a deeper understanding of cause and effect through a working knowledge of epigenetics. Integrative medicine (the practice of conventional and holistic medicine) seeks to relate cause and effect in the treatment and prevention of illness by addressing the causative factors in the patient’s diet, lifestyle and environment. When the medical profession embraces the duality of symptom care and the optimization of health by addressing epigenetic influences on gene expression, we will begin to see a decrease in morbidity and an overall improvement in quality of life.

Our goal is to educate the public on how to stay as healthy as possible. Correcting mechanisms of pathology requires a receptive public, one that is willing to alter diet and lifestyle for their own benefit. One can easily extrapolate that in order to have a clean, natural, chemical free diet, issues of environmental toxicity can no longer be tolerated. We would now have a society of proactive people whose goal is to protect their health, the health of their children and grandchildren as well as preserve nature so we can be a part of it rather than a detriment to it.

The future of our health depends on knowledge and action. The future of our survival depends on knowledge and action. We can no longer afford to be innocent bystanders of our own health. The system is bursting at the seams. It is costing us far too much money to administer medical/surgical care. True, we have technology that can facilitate early detection, but this technology by no means confers prevention of disease on any of us. As such, we have become masters of symptom control and disease management but unfortunately, we are losing the battle to increasing morbidity and suffering.
Article by Dr. Robert Kornfeld for The Huffington Post

Balance the flora in your gut….Take Probiotics for gut health.

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Washington, Dec 22 (ANI): A new study has suggested that bacteria living in people’s large intestine may play a role in obesity.

Scientists behind the study revealed that these bacteria might slow down the activity of the “good” kind of fat tissue, a special fat that quickly burns calories and may help prevent obesity.

The discovery could shed light on ways to prevent obesity and promote weight loss, including possible microbial and pharmaceutical approaches, they said.

Sandrine P. Claus, Jeremy K. Nicholson and colleagues explained that trillions of bacteria live in the large intestine of healthy people, where they help digest food and make certain vitamins.

In recent years, however, scientists have realized that these bacteria do more – they interact with the rest of the body in ways that affect the use of energy and its storage as fat and finely tune the immune system.

Claus and Nicholson decided to see how intestinal bacteria might affect the activity of brown fat. The “good” fat that burns calories quickly before they can be stored as fat, brown fat exists in small deposits in the neck area and elsewhere – not like “white fat” in flab around the waist and buttocks.

No one had checked to see if those bacteria could have an effect on brown fat, the researchers noted.

In experiments that compared “germ-free” (GF) mice, which don’t have large-intestine bacteria, and regular mice, the scientists uncovered evidence suggesting that the bacteria do influence the activity of brown fat.

Brown fat in the GF mice seemed to be more active, burning calories faster than in regular mice.

Large-intestine bacteria also seemed to be linked with gender differences in weight. Normal male mice were heavier and fatter than females, but those differences vanished in the GF mice.

The research also uncovered major differences in the interactions between males and females and their intestinal bacteria that might help explain why the obesity epidemic is more serious and rapidly developing in women.

Those and other findings may point the way toward approaches that kick-up the activity of brown fat in humans to prevent or treat obesity.

Long term, it increases the risk of developing a long list of health conditions including breast cancer, oral cancers, heart disease, strokes and cirrhosis of the liver.

Research shows that a high alcohol intake can also damage our mental health, impair memory skills and reduce fertility.

The direct link between alcohol and the liver is well understood – but what about the impact of alcohol on other organs?

Numerous heart studies suggest that moderate alcohol consumption helps protect against heart disease by raising good cholesterol and stopping the formation of blood clots in the arteries.

However, drinking more than three drinks a day has been found to have a direct and damaging effect on the heart. Heavy drinking, particularly over time, can lead to high blood pressure, alcoholic cardiomyopathy, congestive heart failure and stroke. Heavy drinking also puts more fat into the circulation of the body.

The link between alcohol and cancer is well established, says Cancer Research UK. A study published in the BMJ this year estimated that alcohol consumption causes at least 13,000 cancer cases in the UK each year – about 9,000 cases in men and 4,000 in women.

Cancer experts say that for every additional 10g per day of alcohol drunk, the risk of breast cancer increases by approximately 7-12%.

High alcohol intake – the surprises

Digestive problems
Spotty, bloated face
Cellulite
Disrupted sleep
Depression
Short-term memory failure
Reduced fertility

For bowel cancer, previous studies show that increasing alcohol intake by 100g per week increases the cancer risk by 19%.

A recent report in BioMed Central’s Immunology journal found that alcohol impairs the body’s ability to fight off viral infections.
And studies on fertility suggest that even light drinking can make women less likely to conceive while heavy drinking in men can lower sperm quality and quantity.

Why alcohol has this negative effect on all elements of our health could be down to acetaldehyde – the product alcohol is broken down into in the body.

Acetaldehyde is toxic and has been shown to damage DNA.

Dr KJ Patel, from the Medical Research Council’s laboratory of molecular biology in Cambridge, recently completed a study into the toxic effects of alcohol on mice.

His research implies that a single binge-drinking dose of alcohol during pregnancy may be sufficient to cause permanent damage to a baby’s genome.

Fetal alcohol syndrome, he says, “can give rise to children who are seriously damaged, born with head and facial abnormalities and mental disabilities”.

Alcohol is a well-established cancer causing agent, he says.

“You cannot get a cancer cell occurring unless DNA is altered. When you drink, the acetaldehyde is corrupting the DNA of life and puts you on the road to cancer.

“One of most common genetic defects in man is our inability to counteract the toxicity of alcohol.”

Dr Nick Sheron, who runs the liver unit at Southampton General Hospital, says the mechanisms by which alcohol does damage are not quite so clear cut.

Alcohol intake – the major health risks
Drinking about three drinks per day:

Cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx, oesophagus, larynx, breast, liver, colon, rectum
Liver cirrhosis
Essential hypertension
Chronic pancreatitis

“The toxicity of alcohol is complex, but we do know there is a clear dose relationship.”

With alcoholic liver disease, the greater the alcohol intake per week the greater the liver damage and that increases exponentially for someone drinking six to eight bottles or more of wine in that period, for example.

Over the past 20 to 30 years, Dr Sheron says, deaths from liver disease have increased by 500%, with 85% of those due to alcohol. Only in the last few years has that rise slowed down.

“Alcohol has a bigger impact than smoking on our health because alcohol kills at a younger age. The average age of death for someone with alcoholic liver disease is their 40s.”
‘More harmful than heroin or crack’

Alcohol is undoubtedly a public health issue too.

Earlier this year, NHS figures showed that alcohol-related hospital admissions has reached record levels in 2010. Over a million people were admitted in 2009-10, compared with 945,500 in 2008-09 and 510,800 in 2002-03. Nearly two in three of those cases were men.

At the same time the charity Alcohol Concern predicted the number of admissions would reach 1.5m a year by 2015 and cost the NHS £3.7bn a year.

Last year, a study in The Lancet concluded that alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered.

The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs also ranked alcohol as three times more harmful than cocaine or tobacco because it is so widely used.

So how much alcohol is too much? What can we safely drink?
Glasses of wine Did you know? There are 16g of alcohol in a 175ml glass of red or white wine.

The government guidelines on drinking are being reviewed at present. They currently say that a women should not drink more than two to three units of alcohol per day and a man three to four units a day.

But Paul Wallace, a GP and chief medical adviser of Drinkaware, says people are just not aware of the alcohol content of a large glass of wine.

“Most of us don’t realise what we’re drinking and you can very easily slip beyond acceptable limits.”

Katherine Brown, head of research at the Institute of Alcohol Studies, says the current guidelines and how they are communicated may be giving the public misleading information.

“We need to be very careful when suggesting there is a ‘safe’ level of drinking for the population. Rather, we need to explain that there are risks associated with alcohol consumption, and that the less you drink the lower your risk is of developing health problems.

“We hope the government use this as an opportunity to help change perceptions about regular drinking being a normal, risk-free practice.”

Dr Wallace wants the government to do a better job on the message it sends out by explaining the alcohol guidelines in units per week, rather than per day – no more than 21 units for men, 14 units for women per week.

Dr Sheron agrees: “There is no such thing as a safe level, but the government has got to draw a line somewhere. It’s a balance.

“People like having a drink, but they have to accept there’s a risk-benefit ratio.”

Inflammation is a process by which the body’s white blood cells are called upon to fight off infection, trauma, bacteria and viruses. Heat, pain, swelling and redness are indicators that your immune system is being called into action.
Over the past few decades, scientists have realized that inflammation is virtually the same in different diseases. Inflammation has different names for different parts of the body.

Arthritis- Inflammation of the joints
Sinusitis- Inflammation of the sinuses
Colitis- Inflammation of the GI tract
Dermatitis- Inflammation of the skin
Myocarditis-Inflammation of the heart

It is possible to reduce inflammation and improve these conditions without going on medication. Diet can have a significant impact on inflammation. Some foods can produce a pro-inflammatory effect in the body while other foods have an anti-inflammatory effect.

Some foods to avoid that can cause inflammation are sugar, refined grains found in white bread and processed carbohydrates, foods high in omega 6 like polyunsaturated vegetable oils, trans fats like those in margarine and artificial food additives such as MSG.

The anti-inflammatory foods you want to want to add as staples to your diet are fatty fish like salmon and mackerel for their high Omega 3 fatty acid content. Olive oil, flax seeds and walnuts are also high in Omega 3’s. Fruits such as cherries, raspberries and blueberries contain anthocyanins which neutralize free radicals that cause inflammation. Spices and herbs like ginger, garlic, turmeric and cayenne pepper are among those that have been shown to help reduce inflammation. Vitamins and herbal supplements, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, CoQ10, Omega 3 fish oils, and quercetin have been shown to aid in the reduction of inflammation.

As the saying goes, “You are what you eat!”

Inflammation is the cause of many chronic diseases and conditions. These include: Migraines, inflammatory bowel syndrome, eczema, acne, arthritis, obesity, runny nose, asthma, autism, fibromyalgia and many more. Most people will go to see their physicians for medications to relieve the symptoms, but the medications do not get to the root cause of the condition.

Is your food making you sick?
Even if a food is “healthy” it may not be healthy for you. You may be sensitive to you favorite foods causing constant inflammatory reactions. Food sensitivities can take 4 to 96 hours to manifest after ingestion making it difficult to determine the source. The ALCAT test measures personalized nutrition at a cellular level. Blood is drawn to test to measure the body’s cellular response to various foods, food additives, medicinal herbs, functional foods, food colorings, molds and chemicals. To find out more about taking the ALCAT Test email lisa@healthcoachllc.com. www.alcat.com

The genes that regulate your biological age are highly sensitive to your diet, as they’re triggered or inhibited by what you eat, how much you eat, and how often. The point is: You need to know how your diet affects your biological age. You need to know what food keeps you young and what food is making you old.

How Your Diet Affects Your Biological Age

It has been largely agreed that one of the most detrimental causes of aging is excessive calorie intake. Scientists speculate that humans have an overly strong drive to eat when food is readily available. And since people are surrounded today with calorie dense food, they tend to consume excess calories, which then cause them to gain weight, lose health, and age prematurely.

Given this, many believe that calorie restriction is the most effective strategy to get in shape and counteract aging. But the calorie restriction theory is only partly true. It can’t always predict whether you’ll gain weight or lose weight, neither can it predict whether you’ll get in shape or get out of shape. You can be on a low calorie diet and fail to lose weight, and you can be on a high calorie diet and yet manage to slim down.

Emerging evidence indicates that there is another powerful factor behind the scene – one that overrules and dictates your energy expenditure, metabolic rate, body fat percentage, physical shape and eventually your biological age. That factor is the system that controls your hunger and satiety signals. And as you’ll soon see, it has nothing to do with your calorie intake, but rather with what you eat and how often.

How Your Hunger-Satiety System Affects Your Physical Shape

Your hunger-satiety system consists of multiple neuro-peptides that act to initiate or terminate your feeding. These are your hunger-satiety hormones. Their signals are integrated by centers in your brain to modulate how you consume, spend or store energy. The balance between these signals dictates whether your body is in a fat-burning or a fat-storing mode.

In order to maintain a healthy body weight, your hunger and satiety signals must continually adjust your food intake to your energy expenditure. Any imbalance between these two will affect your fat stores and physical shape. Obesity, for instance, is a result of a disrupted energy balance in which a surplus of accumulated food energy is stored as body fat.

Again, your physical shape seems to depend on the ratio between your hunger and satiety hormones and so is your biological age. Both hormones regulate your eating behavior and metabolic rate, albeit with opposite effects on your body.

Hunger Hormones vs. Satiety Hormones

Your hunger and satiety hormones are constantly clashing with each other like two armies at war. And the consequences of that hormonal clash are manifested in your body. Hunger hormones tend to slow your metabolism and increase your body fat whereas satiety hormones tend to boost your metabolism and decrease your body fat.

Simply put, if your hunger hormones get out of control, you’ll be prone to suffer from a sluggish metabolism and excess body fat. And if your satiety hormones take over, they will counteract the effects of your hunger hormones to allow you greater energy and a leaner healthier body.

But note that your hunger hormones are not inherently bad; when balanced, they play important roles in your metabolic system. Under healthy conditions they may even help you burn fat. The hunger peptide ghrelin, for instance, is a most potent trigger of your growth hormone – it binds to growth hormone secreagogue receptors (GHS-Rs) and increases its release by six fold. Indeed, fasting and hunger boost your growth hormones and potentiate its actions to burn fat and repair tissues more efficiently than drugs – naturally and safely without side effects.

Your hunger hormones are part of your survival apparatus. They relate to your satiety hormones like yin to yang. They keep you alert and give you the drive to search for food along with the desire to achieve. And they balance the actions of your satiety hormones which tend to calm you down.

But if you let your hunger hormones get out of control, you’ll experience chronic hunger, diminished energy, metabolic decline, decreased libido and increased tendency to gain weight.

You need to know how to manipulate both types of hormones to work for you. And you certainly need to keep your hunger hormones under control. But how can you do that if you don’t even know what causes your hunger hormones to get out of control?

What Causes Your Hunger Hormones Get Out of Control?

Normally your hunger hormones are highly responsive to feeding – their levels increase during fasting and reduce upon food ingestion. Your most notable hunger hormones are ghrelin, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti-related protein (AgRP).

During fasting, your hunger hormone ghrelin peaks, boosting your growth hormone to initiate fat burning. Meanwhile, your remaining hunger hormones are continually balanced by your satiety hormones (adiponectin and glucagon-like peptide). This keeps your hunger under control and potentiates your sensitivity to satiety signals.

Then, when you resume eating, your hunger hormones decline – allowing your satiety hormones to kick in and act to boost your metabolism.

That’s how your hunger-satiety system works under healthy conditions. It allows you to burn fat when you don’t eat and it acts to boost your metabolism when you eat. Hence, a win-win situation.

But your hunger-satiety system can only function well as long as your diet is adequate. If your diet is high glycemic and your feeding episodes are too frequent, your hunger-satiety system will be utterly disrupted.

Frequent consumption of high glycemic meals impairs your key satiety hormones insulin and leptin, leaving your hunger hormones unopposed and dominant. When insulin is impaired (such as in cases of insulin resistance), ghrelin levels remain elevated even after meal consumption – a condition that leads to chronic hunger (mostly for carbs), excess food intake and undesirable weight gain.

This issue has been widely overlooked, perhaps because people normally like to consume baked goods and candies on a daily basis and even more so during celebrations. But the evidence leaves no doubt: frequent consumption of high glycemic foods jeopardize your satiety apparatus and put your body under the tyranny of your hunger hormones.

To prevent that you need to avoid high glycemic foods and resist cravings for sweets. You need to know how to boost your satiety hormones and let them take control over your metabolism.

How to Boost Your Satiety Hormones

Your satiety hormones include insulin, leptin, adiponectin, cholesystokinin (CCK), glucagon-like peptide (GLP), PPY and melanocortin. When potentiated to counteract your hunger hormones, they help increase your energy expenditure, stimulate your thyroid, enhance your sex hormones, lower your stress hormones and increase your capacity to burn fat.

The three main factors that boost your satiety hormones are:

– Food restriction

– Exercise

– Weight loss

Food restriction, exercise and weight loss increase the sensitivity and effectiveness of your insulin and leptin while potentiating the actions of your other satiety hormones. This means that with proper diet, exercise and restoration of a healthy body weight, you can increase the efficiency of your satiety hormones to allow you be at your peak physical potential. But how do you put this in practice? How do you put your satiety hormones in charge?

There are three ways to achieve that:

Eat satiety foods
Avoid hunger foods
Train your body to endure hunger

Eat Satiating Foods

The food that promotes satiety most is protein. It yields satiety more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Out of all proteins, the one with the fastest satiety impact is whey protein – that’s if the whey is whole and non-denatured.

Studies reveal that consumption of whey protein before meals can swiftly boost the satiety peptides CCK and GLP-1, which have been shown to decrease food intake and increase weight loss. Whey protein is also beneficial when consumed before exercise. Having a small serving of whey protein (with no sugar added) about 30 minutes before exercise seems to help sustain intense muscle performance and increase the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. A pre-exercise whey meal has also shown to boost the body’s metabolic rate for 24 hours thereafter.

Other satiety-promoting foods are low glycemic plant foods including raw nuts, seeds, legumes, roots, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes, eggplants, grasses and green leafy vegetables.

Being low glycemic and fibrous, these plant foods are a great fit for your insulin and leptin as well as your whole satiety system. Nuts and seeds trigger PPY – a satiety peptide which is highly sensitive to dietary fat. PPY shifts your cravings from carbohydrates to fats and increases your metabolic capacity to convert fat to energy.

That action counteracts your hunger hormones, which typically shift your cravings towards carbohydrates. Note that it’s the shift towards refined carbohydrates that has been linked to chronic cravings and excessive food intake. This is the reason why once you open a bag of potato chips and start crunching, you may find it difficult to stop.

And note that your muscle isn’t programmed to do well on hunger foods; it rejects fructose and has a limited capacity to utilize high glycemic foods. But your muscle literally thrives on satiety foods. Combinations of whey protein and berries, eggs and beans or meat and nuts have unmatched muscle nourishing properties. Furthermore, being satiety oriented, these food combinations promote the right hormonal environment for muscle rejuvenation and buildup.

All that said, you can’t fully benefit from your satiety food if you don’t know what food to avoid.

Avoid Hunger Foods

Stay away from high glycemic foods including all refined carbohydrates, sugars, fructose products, baked goods, candies and sugary beverages. Fructose in particular has shown to cause leptin resistance, lipid disorders, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Studies reveal that the muscle rejects fructose as an energy substrate and the liver has a limited capacity to utilize it; excess fructose is converted into triglycerides and body fat.

But nothing is more damaging to your satiety than the combination of high sugar and high fat. This dietary combo packs on empty calories, causes insulin and leptin resistance and shatters your satiety along with your whole metabolic system. In fact, it has been found that the high sugar-high fat combo causes insulin and leptin resistance even prior to any change in body composition.

This means that all food products made with a high content of sugar and fat are poisonous to your satiety system. These include cookies, cakes, ice creams and chocolates, all of which set you up for serious metabolic setbacks associated with insulin and leptin resistance which may include excess estrogen, excess cortisol, low testosterone, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia and increased belly fat.

The good news is that both insulin and leptin resistance can be reversed by food restriction and weight loss. Hence, your insulin and leptin are restored by austerity and shattered by indulgence.

It has been suggested that insulin and leptin play important roles in times of scarcity but have a lesser role in times of plenty. To keep your insulin and leptin intact you must not indulge yourself with high glycemic treats, not even in moderation. Otherwise, your body will get the wrong signal and you’ll pay the consequences with your weight, energy and state of health.

Now that you know how to choose your satiety foods, let’s take a look at the other methods that boost your satiety hormones.

Train Your Body to Endure Hunger

Hunger should be treated like physical exercise. Both are perceived by your body as survival signals to adapt and improve. When your body is repeatedly challenged with acute (temporary) hunger, such as due to periodic fasting, it adjusts itself by decreasing the number of hunger receptors in your brain and thus making you increasingly resilient to hunger. This in turn increases the efficiency of your satiety hormones, and potentiates them to take control of your metabolism.

But only real hunger can benefit you that way. Real hunger is what you experience while fasting or undereating, not the kind of craving you feel on a fully belly after finishing a meal.

There are different ways to train your body to endure hunger. You can try to gradually increase the gap between your meals or alternatively put your body in an undereating state for most of the day. And you can also try exercising while fasting. Let’s see how all this translates into practice.

Undereating

You can put your body in an undereating state by minimizing your food intake during the day to small, low glycemic, fast assimilating protein meals such as quality whey (every 3-5 hours), which could be served with (or substituted with) small servings of fruits and vegetables. Have your main meal at night.

Undereating has some notable advantages over complete fasting. It challenges your body similar to fasting – yielding a negative energy balance which increases your adaptability to hunger while promoting fat burning and tissue recycling. However unlike fasting, it allows you to nourish your body with protein and antioxidants, and you won’t feel the desire to eat as intensely as when you completely avoid food.

But whether you fast or undereat, do not chronically restrict your calories. Your hunger must be acute, not chronic. Treat yourself with sufficient food in your main evening meal to compensate for the energy and nutrients you spend during the day.

Exercising While Fasting

Probably the most intense way to improve your hunger durability is by exercising while fasting. This presents a double challenge to your body and it yields a stronger signal to adapt than fasting or exercise alone. Though exercise while fasting may initially affect your maximum performance, it will nevertheless come with an additional bonus.

A study published in the Journal of Physchology/November 2010 indicated that exercising while fasting increases the body’s metabolic adaptation efficiency to utilize energy, burn fat and deposit protein in the muscle – substantially more than when exercising after a meal. The researchers reported that the increased capacity to deposit protein in the muscle as observed in people who were exercising while fasting and then eating a post-exercise meal, is a result of increased insulin sensitivity and activation of the muscle mTOR (the mechanism that increases muscle protein synthesis).

Your body is inherently programmed to benefit from acute hunger (via periodic fasting or undereating) and even more so when exercising while fasting. This probably has to do with an early adaptation mechanism to hunger and hardship which evolved to support human survival during primordial times of food scarcity and intense hardship. Apparently, this primal evolutionary trait is still pertinent today and it potentially affects your physical shape.

Projections

Ori Hofmekler-Author
Understanding the biological system that regulates hunger and satiety along with energy balance is essential for preventing excessive weight gain, metabolic decline and premature aging. More studies are needed to elucidate the relationship between human nutrition and aging. As the mechanisms of feeding and energy homeostasis are studied and clarified, treatments based on natural manipulations of hunger and satiety could be just as effective as hormonal therapy in adjusting hormonal disorders and deficiencies.

Manipulations of hunger and satiety through special nutritional strategies may be useful in restoring thyroid hormone activity, balancing estrogen, and attenuating or preventing growth hormone and testosterone decline. These strategies may help affect the enormous morbidity associated with obesity, diabetes and related diseases.

In today’s world, you need to know what are your best options for keeping your body biologically young. In this case, nature doesn’t leave you with many choices – controlling your hunger is not an option, it’s a necessity.