The UltraWellness Blog by Mark Hyman, M.D.

The Super Fiber that Controls Your Appetite and Blood Sugar

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:57:12 -0400

Imagine eating 12 pounds of food a day -- and still staying thin and healthy. That may sound crazy, but it’s exactly what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate for millennia! And they didn't have any obesity or chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or dementia.

Of course, I wouldn't advise anyone today to eat 12 pounds of food, because the food in our society lacks one major secret ingredient that our ancestors ate in nearly all their food -- fiber!

Fiber has so many health benefits that I want to focus on it in this week's blog. I’ll explain some of its benefits and give you 9 tips you can begin using today to get more fiber in your diet. I’ll also tell you about my favorite “super-fiber” that can help you increase your total fiber intake overnight.

But before I tell you about what fiber can do for you, let's a look a little more at the history of fiber.

Why Bushmen are Healthier than the Average Westerner

Dr. Dennis Burkitt, a famous English physician, studied the differences between indigenous African bushmen and their "civilized" western counterparts. The bushmen seemed to be free of the scourges of modern life -- including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Dr. Burkitt found that the average bushman had a stool weight of 2 pounds and the "civilized" men had a stool weight of only 4 ounces - that's 87.5% smaller! The difference was in the amount of fiber they ate.

Today, the average American eats about 8 grams of fiber a day. But the average hunter and gatherer ate 100 grams from all manner of roots, berries, leaves and plant foods. And the fiber is what helped those ancestors of ours stay healthy. Just take a look at all the good things that fiber can do for your body.

You need fiber to keep you healthy from top to bottom, as well as to provide food for the healthy bacteria that work within you to promote health.

In fact, fiber can actually prevent obesity and all the chronic disease of aging. This is because fiber slows the rate at which food enters your bloodstream and increases the speed at which food exits your body through the digestive tract. That keeps your blood sugar and cholesterol in ideal balance -- and quickly eliminates toxins from your gut and reduces your appetite.

There's good science to back this up. Research shows that fiber can lower blood sugar as much as some diabetes medications, lower cholesterol, and promote weight loss.

It's clear, fiber is a great ally in the battle of the bulge.

But it's also a hero in more serious battles.

For example, one recent study showed how butyrate made by gut bacteria from certain types of fiber acts as a switching molecule that turns on an anticancer gene -- and turns OFF colon cancer. In fact, fiber has been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer by as much as a third and breast cancer by almost 40 percent.

It also lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of heart disease by as much as 40 percent. And if you have diabetes, adding fiber to your diet may even help you use less insulin. Plus, it's a great natural cure for constipation and irregularity.

Now that you know how beneficial it is, let’s look at how you can begin taking advantage of fiber’s health benefits.

Getting Enough Daily Fiber

You should shoot to get 30 to 50 grams of fiber into your diet every day. The type of fiber you choose is important, too.

Most people think that bran is the best type of fiber to eat. But bran (wheat fiber) is mostly insoluble and doesn't get digested. Think of it as more of a scouring pad for your intestines. That's good for getting you regular, but it just can't help your health the way that soluble fiber can.

You'll find soluble fiber in fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds and most whole grains. The bacteria in your gut metabolizes the soluble fiber in these foods, and that's when the benefits start.

Soluble fiber can help lower cholesterol, blood sugar, and insulin, prevent cancer, balance hormone levels, remove excess estrogen and reduce the risk of breast cancer, make vitamins and minerals, provide food for the colon cells, and more. So it’s easy to see just how crucial soluble fiber is to good heath!

In just a minute, I'm going to tell you how to increase your fiber intake. But first, I want to tell you about some recent discoveries regarding an ancient fiber source that can help you lose weight, lower your cholesterol, reduce your appetite and lower your blood sugar more effectively than ANY other fiber. It’s called glucomannan, but I call it super fiber!

Glucomannan: The Benefits of Super Fiber

Glucomannan (GM) is a soluble, fermentable, and highly viscous dietary fiber that comes from the root of the elephant yam, also known as konjac (Amorphophallus konjac or Amorphophallus rivieri), native to Asia. The konjac tuber has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy and to make traditional foods such as konjac jelly, tofu, and noodles. More recently, purified konjac flour, or GM, has been used as a food stabilizer, gelling agent, and supplement.

What makes this fiber so super is the fact that it can absorb up to 50 times its weight in water -- making it one of the most viscous dietary fibers known.

That means that GM can help you shed pounds. In many studies, doses of 2 to 4 grams of GM per day were well-tolerated. This amount also resulted in significant weight loss in overweight and obese individuals.

GM works by promoting a sense of fullness. Plus, it pushes more calories out through your colon, rather than letting them be absorbed. It also lowers the energy density of the food you eat. In other words, it bulks up food in your gut -- creating a lower calorie content per weight of food you eat.

And since fiber has almost no calories but a lot of weight, adding it to your diet lowers the energy-to-weight ratio of the food that you eat. Studies show that the weight of food controls your appetite, so the fiber increases the food's weight WITHOUT increasing calories -- a critical factor in weight control.

This powerful fiber may also control your appetite in other key ways.

For example, it sends signals to your brain that there is a lot of food in your gut and tells it to slow down on stuffing food in there.

GM also leaves your stomach and small bowel slowly because it is so viscous. By slowing the rate of food absorption from the gut to the bloodstream, GM reduces the amount of insulin produced after a meal, which also controls your appetite.

It may also increase the level of hormones in the gut (such as cholecystokinin), which is another way to control your appetite.

And finally, you lose more calories through stool because GM soaks up all those extra calories!

GM can also help your health in other ways. In addition to weight reduction, GM has been studied for its effects on constipation, serum cholesterol, blood glucose, blood pressure, and insulin resistance syndrome.

With all those benefits, there's no doubt you should eat more fiber. No, you probably won't be eating 12 pounds of food like your ancestors did! But you can increase your fiber intake, just by being smart about what you eat. Here are some simple suggestions for increasing fiber in your diet.

9 Tips for Increasing the Fiber in Your Diet.

1. Get the flax.

2. Load up on legumes. Beans beat out everything else for fiber content!

3. Bulk up on vegetables. With low levels of calories and high levels of antioxidants and protective phytochemicals, these excellent fiber sources should be heaped on your plate daily.

4. Go with the grain. Whole grains like brown rice or quinoa are rich in fiber, too.

5. Eat more fruit. Include a few servings of low-sugar fruits to your diet daily (berries are the highest in fiber and other protective phytochemicals).

6. Go nuts. Include a few handfuls of almonds, walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts to your diet every day.

7. Start slowly. Switching abruptly to a high-fiber diet can cause gas and bloating. Increase your fiber intake slowly till you get up to 50 grams a day.

8. Consider a good fiber supplement. If you're have trouble getting your fill of fiber, choose a supplement that contains both soluble and insoluble fiber and no sweeteners or additives.

9. Choose GM. By now, you know that my favorite kind is glucomannan (GM), or konjac. Many companies sell it in capsule form. Although I don't normally recommend specific brands, I like the one produced by Natural Factors called WellBetX. You can take 2 to 4 capsules with a glass of water, 30 to 60 minutes before eating. Don't take any medications within 1 hour before or 2 hours after taking it because the fiber may absorb the medication.

As you can see, fiber has big benefits for your health -- from encouraging weight loss to preventing chronic diseases. I hope you'll start adding more of this important compound into your diet today!

Now I'd like to hear from you ...

Have you noticed any ill-health effects from having a low fiber intake?

How much fiber do you think you currently eat every day?

What high-fiber foods do you enjoy?

What steps are you taking to get more fiber in your diet?

Please let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

Howarth NC, Saltzman E, Roberts SB. Dietary fiber and weight regulation. Nutr Rev. 2001;59:129-139.

Burton-Freeman B. Dietary fiber and energy regulation. J Nutr. 2000; 130(2S Suppl):272S-275S

Vuksan V, Sievenpiper SL, Xu Z, et al. Konjac-Mannan and American Ginseng: Emerging alternative therapies for type 2 diabetes mellitus. J Am Coll Nutr. 2001;20(5Suppl):370S-380S.

Bourden I, Yokoyama W, Davis P, et al. Postprandial lipid, glucose, insulin, and cholecystokinin responses in men fed barley pasta enriched with beta-glucan. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999;69:55-63.

Baer DJ, Rumpler WV, Miles CW, Fahey GCJ. Dietary fiber decreases the metabolizable energy content and nutrient digestibility of mixed diets fed to humans. J Nutr. 1997;127: 579-586.

Chen H-L, Sheu WH, Tai T-S, Liaw Y-P, Chen Y-C. Konjac supplement alleviated hypercholesterolemia and hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetic subjects--a randomized double-blind trial. J Am Coll Nutr. 2003;22(1):36-42.

Vuksan V, Jenkins DJ, Spadafora P, et al. Konjac-mannan (glucomannan) improves glycemia and other associated risk factors for coronary heart disease in type 2 diabetes. A randomized controlled metabolic trial. Diabetes Care. 1999;22(6):913-919.

Walsh DE, Yaghoubian V, Behforooz A. Effect of glucomannan on obese patients: A clinical study. Int J Obes. 1984;8:289-293.

Reffo GC, Ghirardi PE, Forattini C. Glucomannan in hypertensive outpatients: Pilot clinical trial. Curr Ther Res. 1988; 44(1):22-27.

Livieri C, Novazi F, Lorini R. The use of highly purified glucomannan-based fibers in childhood obesity. Pediatr Med Chir. 1992;14(2):195-198.

Vita PM, Restelli A, Caspani P, Klinger R. Chronic use of glucomannan in the dietary treatment of severe obesity. Minerva Med. 1992;83(3):135-139.

Cairella M, Marchini G. Evaluation of the action of glucomannan on metabolic parameters and on the sensation of satiation in overweight and obese patients. ClinTer. 1995;146(4):269-274.

Arvill A, Bodin L. (1995). Effect of short-term ingestion of konjac glucomannan on serum cholesterol in healthy men. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995;61:585-589.

Vuksan V, Sievenpiper JL, Owen R, et al. Beneficial effects of viscous dietary fiber from konjac-mannan in subjects with the insulin resistance syndrome: Results of a controlled metabolic trial. Diabetes Care. 2000;23(1):9-14.

Gallaher DD, Gallaher CM, Mahrt GJ, et al. A glucomannan and chitosan fiber supplement decreases plasma cholesterol and increases cholesterol excretion in overweight normocholesterolemic humans. J Am Coll Nutr. 2002;21(5): 428-433.

Burley VJ, Paul AW, Blundell JE. Influence of a high-fibre food (myco-protein) on appetite: Effects on satiation (within meals) and satiety (following meals). Eur J Clin Nutr. 1993;47:409-418.

Hill AJ, Blundell JE. Macronutrients and satiety: The effects of a high protein or high carbohydrate meal on subjective motivation to eat and food preferences. Nutr Behav. 1986;3:133-144.

Astrup A, Vrist E, Quaade F. (1990). Dietary fibre added to a very low calorie diet reduces hunger and alleviates constipation. Int J Obes. 1990;14:105-112.

Pasman WJ, Saris WH, Wauters MA, Westerterp-Plantenga MS. Effect of one week of fibre supplementation on hunger and satiety ratings and energy intake. Appetite, 1997;29:77-87.

Liu S, Willett WC, Manson JE, Hu FP, Rosner B, Colditz G. Relation between changes in intakes of dietary fiber and grain products and changes in weight and development of obesity among middle-aged women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003;78(5):920-927.

Maximizing Methylation: The Key to Healthy Aging

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:25:41 -0400

Taking just a few vitamins CAN optimize the function of ALL your body's systems. It’s true. But you have to know what to take and you have to know why these supplements work ...

That’s why, in this week’s blog, I am going to discuss one of the most important biochemical processes for long-term health and how you can keep it running at its very best with supplements and other measures.

Unfortunately, many people suffer from one or more of the 8 factors that negatively impact this biochemical process, so problems in this area are widespread though many don’t realize they are suffering.

The good news is that there are MANY things that you can do right now to optimize this critical biochemical process that may have a dramatic impact on your health. In today’s blog I will review the 8 factors that can lead to problems in this area, and outline 12 tips that will help you optimize this essential part of your biology.

But first, I'd like to tell you about two of my patients with seemingly unrelated health problems that were actually caused by a breakdown in this biochemical process. And I want to share a study done on Chinese babies who had a birth defect known as spina bifida.

You'll be amazed at how all three -- my two patients and these Chinese babies -- were affected by the exact same thing ...

What an Elderly Golfer, a College Professor, and Chinese Babies have in Common

One of my patients, Mr. Roberts, was an 88-year-old businessman who didn't let his age slow him down. He still golfed three times a week, worked two days a week, flew around the world in his private jet, and was "romantic" once a week with a wife 30 years his junior. He also loved his 6 ounces of Grey Goose vodka every night.

Of course, he did have some health problems. Mr. Roberts had been treated well for mild heart disease. His doctor even recommended 800 mcg of folic acid and 250 mcg of vitamin B12 -- megadoses by any standard.

Mr. Roberts also had a check-up at the Mayo Clinic and was told that he was healthy, despite having mild anemia and large red blood cells. Yet he still complained of mild fatigue and trouble with his short-term memory. Plus, I noticed a slightly wide gait common in someone with poor balance.

Then there was Mr. McNally, a Boston college professor who was 50 years old, fit, and lean but wore a worried look as he walked into my office.

He recounted the sad tale of his 7 brothers. Four had died of a heart attack and three others had had bypass operations at a young age. Concerned about his own fate, he ate a low-fat diet, exercised regularly, didn't smoke, had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and took antioxidants and a multivitamin. Perhaps his only vice was the multiple Starbuck's grande lattes he downed each day. Living under a constant state of impending doom, Mr. McNally came to me asking for a stress test to see how his heart was doing.

Strange as it may seem, these two men reminded me of my time in China. When I lived in Beijing, a study was done on a group of women in Harbin, the northern most industrial city in the Gobi desert, just north of Beijing. It seemed that there was an unusually high rate of birth defects in the area, specifically spina bifida.

The Chinese have a tradition of holding weddings during the Chinese New Year in February. In Harbin, many of the babies born 9 months later had birth defects. This study sought to determine what the link was and found that the major factor was the lack of fresh greens or vegetables in the Gobi desert in the middle of winter.

Interestingly, these Chinese babies, Mr. Roberts, and Mr. McNally all have something very important in common. They all have inadequate levels of specific vitamins, either acquired or genetic, and their methylation systems are not working properly as a result. I'll explain more about what "methylation" is in a second. First let’s analyze the similarities in these cases.

Take Mr. Roberts. Our romantically active 88-year-old took high doses of B vitamins. But he still had very high levels of homocysteine and methylmalonic acid -- indicators of folic acid and B12 deficiency.

Mr. McNally had similar problems. Our college professor had a genetically sluggish metabolism of homocysteine which caused extremely high levels of this toxic amino acid to build up in his blood. This was the likely cause of all the heart disease in his family.

Again we see a similar set of problems in those Chinese babies. Their mothers were conceiving in the middle of winter -- when their folate intake was low from the absence of fruits and vegetables. This is what triggered such a high rate of birth defects.

The common link in all three of these cases is a problem with methylation. Let me tell you more about that that actually means.

Methylation is a key biochemical process that is essential for the proper function of almost all of your body's systems. It occurs billions of times every second; it helps repair your DNA on a daily basis; it controls homocysteine (an unhealthy compound that can damage blood vessels); it helps recycle molecules needed for detoxification; and it helps maintain mood and keep inflammation in check.

To keep methylation running smoothly you need optimal levels of B vitamins. Without enough B vitamins methylation breaks down, and the results can be catastrophic. In these cases we see more birth defects like spina bifida (as with the Chinese babies), more cases of Down's syndrome, and more miscarriage.

A breakdown in methylation also puts you at higher risk for conditions like osteoporosis, diabetes, cervical dysplasia and cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, depression, pediatric cognitive dysfunction ( mood and other behavioral disorders), dementia, and stroke. And like Mr. Roberts and Mr. McNally, you may be at higher risk for cardiovascular disease.

To avoid all of these problems, the key is to maximize methylation. That means avoiding the things that cause your methylation to break down, testing to find out how well your methylation is working, and including the things that support proper methylation. Let’s look at how to do that.

8 Factors that Affect Your Methylation Process

8 major factors negatively impact methylation. They are:

1. Genetics.

2. Poor diet. The word "folate" comes from "foliage." You need to eat plenty of leafy greens, beans, fruit, and whole grains to get adequate levels of vitamins B6 and B12, betaine, and folate. Egg yolks, meat, liver, and oily fish are the main dietary sources of vitamin B12 -- so long-term vegan diets can be a problem. Plus, certain compounds can raise levels of homocysteine and deplete the B vitamins. These include excess animal protein, sugar, saturated fat, coffee, and alcohol. Irradiation of food depletes nutrients, so foods treated this way may be lower in B vitamins, too.

3. Smoking. The carbon monoxide from cigarette smoke inactivates vitamin B6.

4. Malabsorption. Conditions like digestive diseases, food allergies, and even aging can reduce absorption of nutrients.

5. Decreased stomach acid. Aging and other conditions can reduce stomach acid -- and therefore absorption of vitamin B12.

6. Medications. Drugs like acid blockers, methotrexate (for cancer and arthritis and other autoimmune diseases), oral contraceptives, HCTZ (for high blood pressure), and Dilantin (for seizures) can all affect levels of B vitamins.

7. Other conditions. These include hypothyroidism, kidney failure or having only one kidney, cancer, and pregnancy.

8. Toxic exposures. Some toxins can interfere with vitamin production.

Watch out for these factors and you will go a long way toward protecting your methylation.

Measuring Your Own Methylation Process

To find out if your methylation process is optimal, ask your doctor for the following tests:

1. Complete blood count.

2. Homocysteine. This is one of the most important tests you can ask for. The normal level is less than 13, but the ideal level is likely between 6 and 8.

3. Serum or urinary methylmalonic acid. This is a more specific test for vitamin B12 insufficiency. Your levels may be elevated even if you have a normal serum vitamin B12 or homocysteine level.

4. Specific urinary amino acids. These can be used to look for unusual metabolism disorders involving vitamins B6 or B12 or folate, which may not show up just by checking methylmalonic acid or homocysteine.

12 Tips to Optimize Your Methylation Process

Just as there are many causes of poor methylation, there are lots of things that support its proper functioning. Here's how to maximize methylation -- and prevent conditions like heart disease, cancer, dementia, depression, and more.

1. Eat more dark, leafy greens.

2. Get more Bs in your diet. Good food sources include sunflower seeds and wheat germ (vitamin B6); fish and eggs (vitamin B6 and B12); cheese (B12); beans and walnuts (vitamin B6 and folate); leafy dark green vegetables; asparagus, almonds, and whole grains (folate); and liver (all three).

3. Minimize animal protein, sugar, and saturated fat. Animal protein directly increases homocysteine. Sugar and saturated fat deplete your body's vitamin stores.

4. Avoid processed foods and canned foods. These are depleted in vitamins.

5. Avoid caffeine. Excess amounts can deplete your B vitamin levels.

6. Limit alcohol to 3 drinks a week. More than this can deplete your B vitamin levels.

7. Don't smoke. As noted above, smoking inactivates vitamin B6.

8. Avoid medications that interfere with methylation. See notes on this above.

9. Keep the bacteria in your gut healthy. Take probiotic supplements and use other measures to make sure the bacteria in your gut are healthy so you can properly absorb the vitamins you do get.

10. Improve stomach acid. Use herbal digestives (bitters) or taking supplemental HCl.

11. Take supplements that prevent damage from homocysteine. Antioxidants protect you from homocysteine damage. Also make sure you support methylation with supplements like magnesium and zinc.

12. Supplement to help support proper homocysteine metabolism. Talk to your doctor to determine the best doses and forms for you. Here are a few suggestions:

• Folate (folic acid):

• Vitamin B6: Take 2 to 5 mg a day. Some people may need up to 250 mg or even special "active" B6 (pyridoxyl-5-phosphate) to achieve the greatest effect. Doses higher than 500 mg may cause nerve injury.

• Vitamin B12: Doses of 500 mcg may be needed to protect against heart disease. Oral vitamin B12 isn't well absorbed; you may need up to 1 or 2 mg daily. Ask your doctor about B12 shots.

• Betaine: This amino acid derivative is needed in doses from 500 to 3,000 mg a day, depending on the person.

By working to optimize your methylation you can protect yourself from virtually all the so called "diseases of aging." When you do, you will be well on the road to lifelong vibrant health.

Now I'd like to hear from you ...

Do you have symptoms of poor methylation?

What are you doing to optimize this process?

Do you take B-vitamin supplements? Have you noticed any results?

Please share your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

5 Simple Steps to Burn Fat without Eating Less

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:58:31 -0400

There is now a way you can boost your metabolism without changing how much you eat. It's true. You can rev up your metabolic engine, feel more satisfied when you eat, burn more calories, and lose more body fat -- all without even changing how MUCH you eat.

Recent studies show how three key changes can help you accomplish your weight loss goals without changing the amount you eat. They are:

1. Meal timing and meal frequency --

2. Meal composition -– Specifically the role of protein in controlling appetite centers in your brain, increasing caloric burning, and reducing belly fat and weight.

3. Drinking green tea -- Which turns up your fat burning thermostat.

All three of these things have one very important concept in common: thermogenesis -- the creation of heat in your body. When you increase the thermogenesis in your body you literally turn up your metabolic fire.

Thermogenesis has nothing to do with the amount of calories you consume. It's controlled by a number of different interconnected control systems in the body designed to keep us healthy. By optimizing these systems you can turn up your metabolic fire without turning down the foods you love.

Today I will explain how the three key factors outlined above affect thermogenesis and give you a 5-step plan to increase your metabolic fire. Let's start by taking a look at the first thing that increases thermogenesis -- when and how often you eat.

Meal Timing and Frequency

Whether you eat all your day's food at once or in several meals throughout the day shouldn't affect your weight -- it's all about calories in, calories out, right?

No!

In fact, a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (i) looked at the effects of regular meal frequency on fat burning (your internal thermostat), insulin sensitivity, and cholesterol in healthy obese women. The researchers compared people who ate small, regular, frequent meals (about 6 a day) to people who ate less regular meals a day.

What they found is that those people who had more regular meal patterns showed startling differences. They had increased thermogenesis -- a faster, hotter, metabolism -- from what is called the thermic effect of food (the TEF factor). This TEF factor makes you feel full. It somehow triggers the brain to feel satisfied and reduces your appetite.

When you eat regularly throughout the day, you get a slow, steady burn effect from the food. But when you eat erratically -- by skipping meals, snacking frequently, eating away from home, or eating late -- like so many of us do, your body gets mixed signals.

This irregular eating pattern leads to a lower energy expenditure (EE), or calorie burning, than regular meals. In fact, during the periods that you don't eat, your body's metabolism slows down to conserve energy. And it's not just your weight that can suffer as a result ...

In the same study, the authors found that those who ate irregularly had higher levels of cholesterol and higher levels of insulin, which is the major fat storage hormone. The more insulin that your body makes after meals, the fatter you will be. And, as you know, insulin imbalances can also lead to a host of health problems including insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

Meal timing makes a difference, too.

Studies show that eating breakfast (ii) and not eating late (iii) can both lead to reductions in body weight, independent of calories. (For more on this, see Chapter 5 in UltraMetabolism on the Sumo Wrestler Myth).

What's so amazing about all this is that it has nothing to do with the content or type of food you eat. Simply changing when and how often you eat can have dramatic effects on your weight!

But, of course, what you eat makes a difference too ...

Meal Composition

Now let's look at the effect of changing the composition of the meal. What happens if you change the ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrates, but not the amount of calories you eat?

Recent studies have clearly shown that low-fat diets don't work. End of story. What about low-carb diets?

These do work IF you give up carbs -- the most important source of health-giving compounds in our diet, including fiber, vitamins , minerals, antioxidants, phytonutrients, and more. So weight loss from a low-carb diet comes at high price: poor health!

Low-carb diets also give you constipation, bad breath, hemorrhoids, headaches, and even muscle weakness and pain.

That leaves the question of protein. What happens when you increase the amount of protein in your diet?

Before I go on, let me clarify that when I am talking about increasing protein I mean nuts, seeds, beans, whole grains, omega-3 eggs, wild fish, and lean poultry or other meats. I am by NO means talking about a steak and cheese diet!

That said, protein, it seems, is more thermogenic. It burns hotter than other food sources -- so at the end of the day, you have burned off more calories than you store when you eat more protein. Don't just take my word for it. Science backs this up.

In one study, for example, the participants who got 36 percent of their daily calories from protein burned 71 more calories a day than those who ate low-protein diets (15 percent of calories). (iv) This may not seem like much -- but over a year, it's equivalent to an extra 7.4 pounds of weight loss!

This works because amino acids, the building blocks that form protein, send messages to areas in the brain that signal you are full. This is called the mTOR signaling pathway. (v) But protein has even more benefits ...

Eating good quality protein not only helps you lose weight, but lose it in the right places - your hips and belly. A higher protein diet can help you lower your waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio (one of the most important measurements in your body which predicts heart disease, cancer, and death better than almost anything), and intra-abdominal adipose tissue (otherwise known as belly fat)!

There are just a few caveats ...

People with kidney failure have to be cautious with increasing their protein intake. And those with concerns about osteoporosis should focus on plant sources of protein (like nuts, seeds, beans, and whole grains), because the high acid content of animal protein may cause bone loss.

We’ve now covered meal timing, frequency, and composition. Next let’s look at what you drink.

Green Tea

Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world -- and I'm not talking about Lipton's tea here, which is the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. I am talking about real, brewed green tea which is part of a fantastic class of compounds called polyphenols -- powerful plant chemicals or phytonutrients that interact with human biology to keep us healthy.

The polyphenols green tea contains are called catechins, and this group of chemicals has such wide effects that it would be impossible to discuss them all in one blog. So for now, let's look at just their metabolic effects.

The same issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition I mentioned previously also reported on the effects of green tea on metabolism. (vi) Researchers specifically focused on the effects of catechins on metabolism in this double-blind, controlled study and found they were two-fold.

First catechins increased thermogenesis, or calorie burning. People who drank 690 milligrams of catechins in the form of green tea daily for 12 weeks had lower body weight, body mass index, waist circumference, total body fat, and subcutaneous body fat. That's WITHOUT changing their calorie intake.

The second effect was green tea's antioxidant properties. Not only did the green tea and catechins increase calorie burning, but they prevented the damaging effects of free radicals on metabolism by reducing oxidized or rancid fats. Other studies show how rancid fats and oxidation may interfere with metabolism.

To sum up, this research shows that green tea can affect weight loss in two ways -- by increasing thermogenesis and by reducing the damaging effects of oxidative stress on metabolism.

So what can you do to incorporate these research findings into your life, lose weight, and increase your metabolism without changing the calorie content of your diet? Just follow these simple steps.

5 Steps to Lose Weight Without Changing What You Eat

1. Start the day right.

2. Boost your protein intake. Have some protein with every meal.

3. Stay regular. Eat regular meals every day. That's breakfast, lunch, dinner, and one or two snacks.

4. Don't go to bed too full. Finish eating 2 to 3 hours before bed.

5. Make a cup of tea. Drink 1 to 2 cups of good quality green tea every day. Steep one tea bag for 5 minutes in hot water and enjoy!

Follow these steps and you will not only lose weight without changing what you eat, but you will be well on your way to lifelong vibrant health.

Now I'd like to hear from you ...

What happens to you if you skip meals?

Have you noticed that eating carbs for breakfast increases your appetite throughout the day, or that having that omelet in the morning is more satisfying?

Have you experimented with low carb or low fat diets? Share your experience with us.

Please let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

(i) Farshchi HR, Taylor MA, Macdonald IA. Beneficial metabolic effects of regular meal frequency on dietary thermogenesis, insulin sensitivity, and fasting lipid profiles in healthy obese women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jan;81(1):16-24.

(ii) de Castro JM. The time of day of food intake influences overall intake in humans. J Nutr. 2004 Jan;134(1):104-11.

(iii) Keim NL, Van Loan MD, Horn WF, Barbieri TF, Mayclin PL. Weight loss is greater with consumption of large morning meals and fat-free mass is preserved with large evening meals in women on a controlled weight reduction regimen. J Nutr. 1997 Jan;127(1):75-82.

(iv) Whitehead JM, McNeill G, Smith JS. The effect of protein intake on 24-h energy expenditure during energy restriction. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1996 Aug;20(8):727-32

(v) Cota D, Proulx K, Smith KA, Kozma SC, Thomas G, Woods SC, Seeley RJ. Hypothalamic mTOR signaling regulates food intake. Science. 2006 May 12;312(5775):927-30.

(vi) Nagao T, Komine Y, Soga S, Meguro S, Hase T, Tanaka Y, Tokimitsu I Ingestion of a tea rich in catechins leads to a reduction in body fat and malondialdehyde-modified LDL in men. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jan;81(1):122-9.

Mercury Detox – A 3-step Plan to Recover Your Health

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:02:14 -0400

After my last blog, I'm sure many of you are depressed and discouraged about mercury and its toxic effects. The bad news is today I am going to review more of mercury’s toxic effects and expand on what I learned at the medical conference on mercury I mentioned in my last blog ...

But the good news is I will provide you with a clear, 3-step plan to help your body detoxify from mercury and recover your health. I have used this same plan successfully and safely with hundreds and hundreds of patients over the last 10 years -- and it’s the same process I used myself to overcome mercury toxicity!

But first, let's review the rest of the data presented at "The Impact of Mercury on Human Health and the Environment" conference that I began discussing last week.

Mercury and Autism: Part One

Last week, I talked a little bit about the link between mercury fillings and autism. Now I'd like to discuss mercury's effects on this condition in greater detail.

Boyd Haley, Ph.D., from the University of Kentucky Medical Center, is a vociferous opponent of dental amalgams. The toxicology literature and decades of his own research fuel his fervor.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded his research for 25 years until he began to seriously call into question the safety of dental amalgams, the use of thimerosol (another form of mercury) in vaccines, and their correlation with autism.

His work is now funded by the private Wallace Foundation, run by the son of President Truman's vice-president, Henry Wallace, who died of ALS and who had been frequently exposed to mercury-containing fungicide on grain.

Dr. Haley believes that fish is not as big a contributor to mercury toxicity in humans as amalgams because methylmercury is generally excreted quickly while mercury vapor from amalgams is not.

At the conference he reported on the dramatic rise in autism rates. The numbers were stunning -- over 900 percent in less than a generation in California and 714 percent nationwide. The dramatic increase in autism rates in California was due in part to the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine in 1990 and an increase in the overall vaccination schedule.

In 1999, thimerosol was removed from these vaccines as parents gained increased awareness of the danger it poses. You see, thimerosol is quickly converted to ethyl mercury in the body, where it moves rapidly from your blood to your brain. In the first three quarters of 2004 -- five years after thimerosol was removed from vaccines -- the data showed a decline in the incidence of autism in California for the first time.

Dr. Haley has observed that the lowest level of mercury is found in the birth hair of the most severely affected autistic children (i).

Interestingly, the 4 to 1 ratio of autism in males to females may, in part, be due to the effects of testosterone on mercury excretion. Antibiotics also prevent excretion of mercury, and antibiotic use is higher among autistic children.

Dr. Haley also reported on data showing a synergistic effect of heavy metals. For example, the dose of lead and mercury that would cause death in 1 out of 100 people is magnified when you are exposed to both lead and mercury, leading to a lethal dose 100 percent of the time when combined, even at low levels. You can find more information on this at Dr. Haley's website: www.trustfoundation.org.

As compelling as Dr. Haley’s presentation was, it is only the beginning of the story that connects mercury exposure to autism ...

Mercury and Autism, Part Two

Jane El Dahr, M.D., is the Chief of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology at Tulane University Health Sciences Center. She also discussed the possible link between thimerosol in vaccines and autism. (The data she presented is available at www.safeminds.org).
In California, rigorous standards for reporting autism have been put in place because social benefits are tied to accurate diagnosis -- so the increases there are very likely to be accurately recorded.

During the first 25 years this reporting was put in place, 6,527 cases of autism were reported. But then the rates skyrocketed. It took only 3 years during the 1990s to add another 6,596 cases. From 1987 to 1998 there was a 273 percent increase in autism cases in California!

In response, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Autism released an "Autism Alarm" stating that 1 in 166 children in the US have autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Currently, one-sixth of all children under the age of 18 have a developmental disability. That means nearly 20 percent of the population may suffer from this problem and may not be able to be productive members of society as a result.

Much of this could be due to mercury toxicity.

That's not just a guess -- it's based on the analysis of the actual doses of thimerosol received by children after the change in the vaccination schedule mentioned above. In people with a genetic susceptibility, such as a defect in the enzymes responsible for detoxifying heavy metals, prenatal and early postnatal exposure to mercury leads to neurologic damage resulting in autistic symptoms (ii).

Acrodynia, or "pink baby syndrome," from exposure to calomel or mercury in teething powder has similar symptoms to autism, providing us yet another link between mercury exposure and autism.

Other potential sources of early exposure in fetuses or infants include maternal amalgams, fish consumption, eardrops, and nasal drops. But vaccines may be more problematic than all of these. They present a significant source of mercury exposure in Rho-gam, influenza vaccines during pregnancy, and childhood immunizations.

It has been found that the maximum exposure from these vaccines in the first six months of life is 187.5 micrograms of mercury -- far exceeding limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to the EPA, the "safe" daily level of mercury exposure for a 5 kilogram, 2-month-old infant is 0.5 micrograms or 0.1 micrograms per kg. But these limits are set for methyl mercury primarily from fish, not for ethyl mercury from vaccines. The typical 2-month vaccination schedule for a baby includes DTP, Hib, and HepB. Combined, these vaccines contain 62.5 micrograms of mercury.

That's a whopping 125 times the EPA limits for a single day exposure!

Like lead, there may be NO safe level -- and children are more susceptible to toxic effects than adults.

Dr. El Dahr said that there appears to be correlation between immune system malfunctioning in both autism and mercury toxicity. These specific immune abnormalities have been found in 30 to 70 percent of autistic children.

So what do we do about all of this mercury in our children and the resulting health problems?

Mercury in Children: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Stephanie Cave, M.D., is on the clinical faculty of Louisiana State University Medical School, and since 1996 has treated over 2,300 children with autistic spectrum disorder. Her recent book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children's Vaccinations, outlines the data and debate in this highly charged field.

Dr. Cave reported on the increased incidence of autism in the last 30 years -- up from 1 out of 10,000 children to 1 out of 150 children and 1 of just 30 males in the United States.

The major toxicity from mercury that contributes to this epidemic, she said, is its ability to severely inhibit enzyme function and structural integrity.

At the conference, Dr. Cave critiqued a well-publicized study in the Lancet, which concluded that there was no toxic effect from thimerosol. She pointed out numerous problems with this study, including the fact that it used various amounts of thimerosol exposure and only involved 33 people.

Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association also reported no increased risk of autism with thimerosol (iii). But the problem with this study was that the authors were affiliated with the state-run Statens Serum Institute. Eighty percent of the Institute’s profits are from vaccines! The methodology was also called into question because of inconsistencies in their reporting system (iv).

Yet another study had even more ominous findings. A case control study of 221 children with autism and 18 controls found that after a DMSA challenge test, vaccinated autistic children had THREE times the level of mercury in their urine compared to controls (v).

The question that remains is how these kids with ASD should be treated. Dr. Cave reviewed her approach ...

Besides taking a developmental history, she does a thorough laboratory evaluation, testing for numerous things. Her treatment protocols include casein- (from dairy), gluten-, allergy- and seafood-free diets, removal of amalgam fillings, and detoxification support.

Key to the treatment is careful detoxification of heavy metals after repletion of cellular nutrients, repair of gut dysfunction, and enhancement of liver detoxification chemistry. Supplements and treatments may include multivitamins and minerals, essential fatty acids, magnesium, digestive enzymes, Coenzyme Q10, and antioxidants like selenium, zinc, and vitamins C, E, and A.

She also suggests bowel ecology restoration which may include anti-fungal drugs, antibiotics, herbs, probiotics, and glutamine.

Enhancement of liver detoxification is facilitated by Epsom salt baths, magnesium sulfate creams, and oral, intravenous, or topical glutathione.

Mercury and other heavy metal detoxification is achieved after a DMSA provocation challenge of 20mg/kg with a 10-hour urine collection. DMSA is given at a dose of 10mg/kg every 8 hours for 3 days, with 11 days off. The cycle is repeated 4 times, followed by another provocation challenge test.

The results of this protocol were impressive. Dr. Cave presented a number of cases where these treatments showed significant benefit and reductions in autistic symptoms!

But autism isn’t the only disease related to mercury toxicity. There are many others.

Mercury and Adult Illness: From Alzheimer's to Heart Failure

We’ve now seen the devastating effects that mercury toxicity can have on kids. The effects on adults are no less severe.

Robert Nash, M.D., is a practicing neurologist and the Chairman of the American Board of Metal Toxicology. At the conference, he reviewed mercury-associated diseases, mechanisms, controversies, and therapeutic options.

He suggests the toxic effects of mercury spread across a broad spectrum of diseases including autism, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, neurodevelopmental diseases, nephrotoxicity, and cancer.

The mechanism of mercury toxicity in the adult brain may be related to proteins involved in mercury excretion, including glutathione, glutathione transferase, metallothionine and ApoE. Mercury depletes glutathione and ascorbate (vitamin C), and inhibits thiamine (B1) and pyridoxine (B6).

Mercury can also affect the central nervous system by concentrating in the spinal fluid, and the kidneys by reducing concentrating capacity. And it inhibits nerve growth, and passes easily through the placental barrier. The chemical can also reduce nerve function and communication, which can lead to the development of neurofibrillary tangles -- a common feature of Alzheimer's. In fact, recent findings suggest that the gene Apo E 4 may increase the risk for Alzheimer's because it has an impaired ability to bind with mercury and transport it from the brain.

Dr. Nash suggests that most, if not all, abnormal biochemistry in the Alzheimer's brain can be mimicked by mercury. He further concludes that, biologically, the case of mercury as a cause of Alzheimer's disease is more complete than that for thimerosol-related causation of autism.

According to Dr. Nash mercury toxicity and retention is enhanced by factors found in the diet, antibiotics, other toxicants such as cadmium and lead, and genetic susceptibilities. So no level of mercury exposure from amalgams can be considered without risk!

In addition to the compelling evidence linking Alzheimer’s to mercury toxicity, research shows it may also be linked to cardiovascular disease.

Two studies have reported increased risk of heart attack while another has shown no risk. And the data presented on heart failure from unknown causes is very compelling as well. Biopsy samples found 22,000 times the level of mercury in people with heart failure from unknown causes compared to controls whose heart failure was caused by virus, heart attacks, or high blood pressure (vi).

One of my patients had this exact problem. She had no reason for heart failure -- but at 62, she was facing a heart transplant. When I discovered that she had mercury toxicity and treated her, she began to thrive again. Her cardiac function dramatically improved by 130 percent!

Despite all this bad news about the effects of mercury, Dr. Nash concluded on an optimistic note ...

First, he suggested that there appears to be a subset of the population that cannot effectively excrete mercury and is at greater risk than the general population. This susceptibility is likely due to genetic differences, diet, exposure to other toxicants, antibiotic use, etc.

Given that susceptibility, he argued that mercury is a risk factor in many diseases -- but can be safely measured. And he said that the body can be detoxified of mercury, mitigating some of its toxic effects. Of course, more studies should be done to shed light on this important topic. But we are on our way to finding answers to this important health concern.

I know some of what I have reviewed these last two weeks was pretty science heavy. But I wanted to take the time to share this fascinating research with you because I believe it's so important. I want people to know that just because this topic is mostly ignored by conventional medicine and dentistry, it isn't any less critical or relevant to our health or our children's health.

More importantly: It CAN be treated!

In my practice, I have seen the benefits of detoxifying from mercury. My patients have recovered from dementia, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, heart failure, multiple sclerosis, depression, autoimmune diseases like colitis and rheumatoid arthritis, and many other problems. Of course, that doesn't mean that mercury is THE cause of these conditions, but simply one of the many causes that has to be considered.

So now that you understand the powerful effect mercury can have on your health, let's review how you know if you have mercury toxicity, and then how to treat it.

Diagnosing and Treating Mercury Toxicity

The first thing to understand is that identifying mercury problems and detoxifying from them (or any other kind of heavy metal poisoning) has to be done VERY carefully and under the supervision of a physician trained in the techniques of metal detoxification, but it can be done safely and effectively with an educated doctor’s assistance.

What follows is a 3-step plan to find out if you are suffering from mercury poisoning and detoxifying from it. Understand that this approach has to be done carefully and systematically to make sure you get your body ready for removing the metals.

Step 1: Getting Ready for Detoxification

This process can take a few months, and I can't stress enough how important this preparation step is. It is accomplished by optimizing your nutritional status and detoxifying ability. Once this is done you will begin mobilizing and binding the metals in your body and excreting them through your urine, bile, stool, and sweat.

Here is what I recommend to my patients.

1. Optimize your gut function.

food allergens

dairy

gluten

2. Optimize your nutritional status for detoxification. Use healthy fats ( omega-3 fats, olive oil, and flax oil), amino acids (which boost all your liver's detoxification capacity), and minerals, particularly zinc and selenium (which help your body detoxify metals).

3. Enhance your liver's detoxification pathways. Take folate and vitamins B12 and B6 and eating sulfur-containing foods such as broccoli, collards, kale, daikon radish, garlic, onions, and omega-3 eggs, as well as supplements such as alpha-lipoic acid and n-acetylcysteine.

4. Use herbal support for detoxification. These include chlorella, cilantro, garlic, and milk thistle.

5. Start sauna therapy. Make sure you take adequate electrolyte and mineral replacements to prevent dehydration and mineral loss from the sweat.

6. Optimize elimination routes for metals including your urine, stool, and sweat. Use fluids, fiber, and saunas.

Step 2: Integrate Additional Steps to Support Detoxification

At this stage you can integrate the following to support your detoxification even more:

• Chlorella. Start with 1 pill three times a day and then build up to 3 pills three times a day for 3 months if tolerated -- take 30 minutes before meals and at bedtime.

• Supergarlic 6000 by Metagenics (or an equivalent product). Take 1 twice a day.

• Hepatothera forte (or an equivalent product). Take 1 capsule twice a day by Prothera (Selenium, n-acetylcysteine, lipoic acid, milk thistle).

Step 3: The Metal Detoxification Period

www.iaomt.org

This can be done slowly over time, but must be done VERY carefully and only under a trained biological dentist's supervision to avoid burdening yourself with more mercury during the removal process.

• Get a test to assess your total body load of mercury. This is called a challenge or provocation test. The easiest and safest way to do this is to take 500 mg of DMPS in one dose first thing in the morning after emptying your bladder, followed by a 6-hour urine collection. DMPS is a prescription drug and is not FDA-approved in the US, although it has been approved and used for decades in Europe.

The other option is to use DMSA, which is FDA-approved. It pulls out a lot less mercury and needs to be taken at a dose of 30 mg/kg for the challenge test. I find this is not as effective to get a true reading on what is in the body.

• Use binding agents to pull the mercury out of your body. There is a lot of controversy about the best way to do this. But after helping people detox from heavy metals for 10 years, I've found the safest and most effective treatment is oral DMSA.

It is taken as follows: One 100 to 250 mg capsule of DMSA orally three times a day before meals. Take it for 3 days. Then take 11 days off. Do this for 6 months. Then recheck your level of mercury through the challenge test.

• Do saunas daily -- especially on those days when doing DMSA.

• Consider getting intravenous vitamins and antioxidants for 3 months while undergoing this process this to administer glutathione, phospholipids, vitamin C, and B vitamins to boost detoxification. This is harder to get, but can help the process work better and help you feel better throughout the process.

• Drink enough filtered water and fluids to make urine clear.

• Make sure you have bowel movements twice a day. This is very important or you will reabsorb mercury from the gut. You can add ground flax seeds to shakes or foods, or take one to two 150-mg magnesium citrate capsules twice a day if you are not going regularly. You can also try even stronger laxatives if you have to such as senna or cascara.

• Consider whey protein to boost glutathione if you are not allergic to dairy.

Understand that I am simply sharing my experience and knowledge with you here. I recognize this is a controversial area. Unfortunately, there are no large controlled studies looking at this problem. I am working on getting studies on this and other areas of systems medicine and functional medicine funded so we can have better answers. For now, we have to go with what we know and the experience and knowledge of many physicians over many years of doing this.

Realize that we DO know how to help you detoxify effectively and deal with the effects of low level mercury toxicity! While it may be difficult you MUST find a doctor skilled at dealing with heavy metal toxicity to undergo the protocol above safely.

What I have outlined in this blog are only my guidelines. They may be the same or similar to what you find others are using. What is essential is that you get assistance. I DO NOT recommend you detox from mercury without a doctor’s supervision!

But I DO recommend you find out if mercury toxicity is a problem for you. It is an essential step to achieving lifelong vibrant health.

Now I'd like to hear from you...

Are you surprised by the links between mercury and conditions like Alzheimer's disease?

Do you agree with childhood vaccinations? Why or why not?

Have you tried detoxifying from mercury? What was your experience?

Please let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

(i) Holmes AS, Blaxill MF, Haley BE. Reduced levels of mercury in first baby haircuts of autistic children. Int J Toxicol. 2003 Jul-Aug;22(4):277-85.

(ii) S Bernard. Autism: A novel form of mercury poisoning. Medical Hypothesis. 2001:56 (4): 462-471.

(iii) Hviid A. Association between thimerosal containing vaccine and autism. JAMA. 2003; 290: 1763-1766.

(iv) Rimland B, Bernard S. Letters. JAMA. 2004; 291:180-181.

(v) Bradstreet J. A case-control study of mercury burden in children with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Volume 8 Number 3 Summer 2003.

(vi) Frustaci A, Magnavita N, Chimenti C, Caldarulo M, Sabbioni E, Pietra R, Cellini C, Possati GF, Maseri A. Marked elevation of myocardial trace elements in idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy compared with secondary cardiac dysfunction. J Am Coll Cardiol. 1999 May;33(6):1578-83.

Mercury -- How to Get this Lethal Poison Out of Your Body

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:39:53 -0400

If you are heavy, it could be making you sick and tired and age prematurely. And I don't mean heavy with fat ...

I mean heavy with heavy metals -- like mercury!

Unfortunately, toxic mercury problems are common. Along with polar bears, beluga whales, ducks, otters, panthers, and all river fish as well as most large ocean fish, we humans are poisoning ourselves with mercury at ever increasing rates.

There's no doubt about it, mercury is the most alarming, disease-causing source of environmental toxicity that I see daily in my practice. Many of patients have toxic levels of mercury -- and they're not alone. I personally suffered from mercury toxicity and chronic fatigue syndrome --which I cured myself from, in part by getting rid of the mercury in my body. So I know about this first hand.

I became toxic because I polluted myself by growing up on tuna fish sandwiches, eating sushi, living in Beijing, which heats all its homes with coal -- the major source of environmental mercury load -- and having a mouthful of amalgam -- a.k.a. mercury -- fillings.

All of these exposures, combined with genes that prevent me from effectively detoxifying metals in my body, led to a slow and significant poisoning of my cells and mitochondria. And the effects were obvious ...

I felt weak, tired, and couldn't think, I had muscle pain and twitches, insomnia, digestive problems, food allergies, depression, and anxiety. And it was only by discovering high levels of mercury in my hair and urine -- and slowly detoxifying myself -- that I was able to get better.

I have seen this over and over in my patients, too. From chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, to depression, anxiety, obesity, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, heart failure, and heart disease, the message is clear ...

We are being poisoned!

This is such an important public health and personal issue for so many people that I'm going to use this blog and next week’s blog to fully explain the extent of mercury issues and give you a comprehensive plan for reducing your exposure and healing from mercury toxicity. I'll show you the science behind mercury toxicity, share some stories about my patients who have suffered, and talk about the way we need to deal with this major health problem.

First, I'd like to share with you what I learned at one of the most important international conferences on mercury yet to be held. It was called "The Impact of Mercury on Human Health and the Environment" and was presented at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans.

There, a unique international group of policymakers, environmental scientists, toxicologists, biochemists, journalists, academic physicians, practicing pediatricians, neurologists, and dentists gathered.

We were there to make sense of the environmental impact, toxicology, basic science, public policy and health implications of one the least studied and perhaps greatest potential threats to our long-term health -- mercury. And I want to share some of what I learned at that conference with you.

Mercury Levels Are on the Rise

Barry Kohl, Ph.D. is an adjunct professor in the department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University. At the conference he provided a unique overview of the impact of industrialization on environmental mercury levels through a description of the levels of mercury in the ice core extracted from the pristine Freemont Glacier in Wyoming.

There were small peaks in mercury concentration in the ice core from the 1815 Tambora volcanic eruption in Indonesia, the 1850-84 gold rush in California where mercury was used for smelting, the eruption in 1883 of the Sumatran volcano Krakatau 10,000 miles away, and the more recent Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980.

Overall, the changes in environmental mercury levels have been dramatic. Over the past 100 years, there has been a 30-fold increase in mercury deposition, 70 percent of which is from human sources.

In fact, there was an exponential peak in mercury occurring in the last 40 years due to major industrialization. Much of this mercury comes from coal-fired industrial plants and from chlor-alkali plants that use mercury in the process of making chlorine used in plastics, pesticides, PVC pipes, and more.

One note of hope was the reduction in industrial mercury emissions from 220 million pounds to 120 million pounds a year over the last 10 years. But that's small consolation when we're talking about a substance that is toxic in parts per million, not in millions of pounds.

And the more mercury we are exposed to, the more we are likely we are to be toxic.

Risk Increases with Dose

Harvey Clewell from the ENVIRON Health Sciences Institute, Ruston, Louisiana, reviewed the epidemiologic studies from the Seychelles and Faroe islands. He showed that your risk of toxicity increases with higher doses of mercury.
Now, there are different types of mercury. Nearly all human exposures to one type, methylmercury, come from fish.

In the Seychelle Islands, there seemed be little effect on kids from mercury; however their fish consumption was predominately from low-risk small reef fish that don't contain much mercury.

On the other hand, in the Faroe Islands people eat whale blubber, which contains high levels of mercury -- over 3 parts per million. There, high levels of mercury were found in umbilical cord blood and correlated with reduced performance in neurologic testing in 917 mother-infant pairs.

The health effects from methyl mercury upon infants and children depend on the dose. Severe symptoms start with exposure to doses of 100 mcg/kg/day, mild symptoms with more than 10 mcg/kg/day, and sub-clinical symptoms with less than 1 mcg/kg/day. These symptoms include late development in walking and talking and decreased performance on neurological tests.

Dr. Clewell also reviewed the limitations of various forms of testing for mercury.

Methylmercury (also called organic mercury) is found predominately in red blood cells, which is what doctors check when they do a blood test for mercury. But unless you’ve been eating fish with mercury recently, you won't see your total body level of mercury.

Plus, mercury is lipophilic, meaning that it concentrates in fatty tissues, especially in the brain, which is made mostly of fat. That means that blood levels aren't an accurate measurement of total body burden of mercury.

Inorganic mercury from dental fillings (amalgams) is found in plasma but is rapidly cleared and stored in your tissues. Inorganic mercury is also converted from methylmercury by the body and is the main form of mercury in brain, which can lead to dementia, autism, ADHD and more.

All of these are reasons you need to get comprehensive testing done to assess you total mercury load. I will review the test you need in a moment, but first I want to talk about how mercury gets in your body and what it does to your body and brain.

Health Effects of Mercury

We get mercury in our bodies from many different sources including mercury vapors in ambient air, ingesting it via drinking water, fish, dental amalgams, vaccines, occupational exposures, home exposures including fluorescent light bulbs, thermostats, batteries, red tattoo dye, skin-lightening creams, over-the-counter products such as contact lens fluid and neosynephrine, and more.

You absorb about 80 percent of inhaled mercury vapor and nearly 100 percent of the mercury in fish through your gut.

One this mercury is in your body it is then primarily distributed in the kidneys and brain and can be readily transferred to the fetus via the placenta.

The only way it can get out of your body is via urine, feces, expired air, and breast milk.
The major reason it is toxic to human biology is because mercury has the ability to bind to sulfur-containing molecules in the body (found in nearly every enzyme and in the mitochondria), as well as other chemical binding sites in the cells.

We've learned a lot about how this mercury effects us and our children from reported exposures to mercury over the last 100 years. These include epidemics such as the Minimata Bay exposures in Japan, acrodynia or pink disease in children from calomel (HgCl) used in teething powder, "mad hatter syndrome" or erethism, and methylmercury fungicide grain seed exposures in Iraq and Pakistan.

The symptoms and diseases these exposures have caused are varied and mimic many other conditions. Nervous system toxicity can cause erethism ("mad hatter syndrome" as mentioned above) with symptoms of shyness, laughing, crying, and dramatic mood swings for no apparent reason; nervousness; insomnia; memory problems; and the inability to concentrate.

Other neurologic symptoms may include encephalopathy (non-specific brain malfunction), nerve damage, Parkinsonian symptoms, tremor, ataxia (loss of balance), impaired hearing, tunnel vision, dysarthria (slurred speech), headache, fatigue, impaired sexual function, and depression.

Kidney toxicity leads to proteinura (protein in the urine) and acute renal failure.

Gastrointestinal symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and colitis.

Skin toxicity causes allergic dermatitis, chelitis (cracked corners of the mouth), gingivitis (gum disease), stomatitis (sores in the mucous membranes of the mouth) and excessive salivation.

Clearly, mercury toxicity is VERY serious business!

Dentistry and Mercury

One of the more controversial sources of mercury toxicity is dental fillings. Silver dental fillings, or amalgams, contain inorganic mercury. Mercury exposure from amalgams is estimated to be between 3 to 17 micrograms per day from chewing, brushing, grinding, and even slow corrosion.

Questions have arisen about whether or not this amount is toxic ... I am going to clear up the confusion here.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no significant neurologic or behavioral changes in children who had mercury amalgam (silver) fillings, compared to kids who had composite (white) fillings placed. But there were significant problems with that study ...

First, the duration of the study was short and the effects subtle. Second, they failed to emphasize the significance of the fact that the kids who had the silver fillings had much higher levels of mercury in their urine than the kids with white fillings.

This is one of the most important details of that study, because it proves that mercury fillings in your mouth release mercury vapor and this is absorbed into your body, ending up in your urine -- and getting deposited in your organs, including your brain, where it accumulates over time.

Whether your fillings are new or old, the mercury in them is constantly absorbed into your body. And even if you stop being exposed to that mercury, it sticks around. It takes up to 18 years for the body to clear half of the dose of mercury from the body. Once mercury is in the body it comes out only VERY slowly.

In fact, people with amalgam fillings have significantly elevated blood mercury levels, 3 to 5 times more mercury in the urine, and 2 to 12 times more mercury in their tissues than those without amalgam fillings.

However blood and urine mercury levels don't necessarily relate to the mercury load in your body tissues or severity of clinical symptoms.
Research on sheep and monkeys with dental amalgams has shown that blood mercury levels remained low -- even though their tissue mercury levels were raised.

Urine mercury levels aren't much better as an indicator of your total mercury load. They mainly reflect the cumulative dose of inorganic mercury in the kidneys and there exists only a very weak correlation with levels in other target tissues.

Another speaker at the conference, Mike Robichaux, a practicing dentist, reviewed his experience with removal of amalgams fillings. He showed a remarkable video of mercury vapor being released from a 25-year-old tooth. You can watch it on the website of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology.

But other dentists aren't so concerned. In fact, the American Dental Association still says it is safe to use mercury or silver fillings. That's something I've always wondered about, since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers old mercury fillings that have been removed from the body toxic waste that has to be disposed as such.

Let me put this another way. It's apparently all right to put mercury fillings in your mouth -- but not to throw them out in the garbage!

The danger of amalgam fillings has been confirmed by research from around the world.

At the conference, Anders Lindvall, M.D., from the Foundation for Metal Biology in Sweden, reported his work on the health effects of dental amalgams and presented a review of the controversial literature on dental amalgams and human health.

Many of his patients reported a symptom complex consistent with chronic fatigue syndrome that they believed were related to dental amalgams. So in 1990, Dr. Lindvall began a study at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden to diagnose and treat 796 patients with suspected amalgam-related illness and to develop and evaluate diagnostic tools to assess toxicity from dental amalgams. (i)

Besides conventional measures of quality of life and symptoms, unique laboratory assessments were used to determine the presence and immunological toxicity of metals.

One was PIXE, an accelerator-based test on single blood cells that assesses intracellular levels of trace elements, which showed that, in lymphocytes (white blood cells), mercury is found in the nucleus, particularly in places where zinc is low.

The other was MELISA, a test of lymphocyte reactivity to metal compounds. Information about the MELISA test is available at www.melisa.org. (ii)

Dr. Lindvall's patients were treated with antioxidants (B complex vitamins, vitamins C and E, and selenium); infections and jaw dysfunction were addressed; and selective removal of any incompatible dental material was performed using low-emission amalgam removal techniques and bio-compatible materials to replace the amalgams.

The cost of these procedures was covered by national health insurance.

Laboratory follow up at one year showed over 70 percent of patients reported significant improvement in symptoms after amalgam removal!

Unfortunately, this study had some problems too ...

The clinic was closed after the study was published, so there was no further access allowed to the records, which contained over 1,000 untreated patients who could have served as a control group. And since 1999, amalgam dental restorations in Sweden are no longer covered by insurance.

But Dr. Lindvall's study still suggests that silver amalgams can cause health problems -- and that removing the fillings can help relieve these problems.

And other studies have had similar effects.
Research has found that patients with chronic fatigue and autoimmune thyroiditis show improvement in their health status after their amalgam fillings are replaced with composites. (iii)

In another study, 71 percent of people with autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, improved after amalgam removal. Low-dose exposure to inorganic mercury may be a contributing factor in the development of autoimmune diseases. (iv)

Animal and lab studies suggest that exposure to metallic mercury may cause nerve cell damage and promote the production the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. (v)

Plus, we know that mercury levels in the human placenta correlate with the number of maternal amalgam fillings -- and a substantial amount of mercury from amalgams reaches the fetus.

Worse, mercury from dental amalgams in pregnant women may also contribute to development of autism in their children. In one study, mothers of 94 autistic children had statistically more amalgam fillings during pregnancy than 49 mothers of healthy kids. (vi)

In contrast to their higher mercury exposure during pregnancy, these autistic children had reduced mercury levels in their first haircut (mercury exposure can be measured in human hair). This may reflect a reduced capacity to excrete mercury from their body, which in turn may lead to elevated brain mercury levels.

And approximately 20 percent of the general public may experience sub-clinical central nervous system and/or kidney function impairment due to amalgam fillings.

When taken collectively, the research forces us to question the safety of dental amalgams. In my view, there is no doubt about it … they are a danger.

But before you start yanking out your fillings, there is something else to consider ...

Genetic Variations in the Ability to Detoxify

Some of us are very good at detoxifying mercury and other toxins, while some of us store toxins like a toxic waste dump. Genetic variations (called polymorphisms) make some people more prone to metal toxicity.

One gene in particular is very important because it's related to the body's production of glutathione, our most powerful detoxifier and antioxidant. Your body can only excrete mercury when it's bound with glutathione.

The polymorphism of the gene that controls the enzyme glutathione-S-transferase (GSST) prevents excretion of mercury. That is the gene problem I have that led to my mercury toxicity.

When that happens, the mercury stays in tissues and does damage. Plus, mercury also binds to key enzymes that help us produce glutathione -- in effect helping itself accumulate in our bodies.

Research also shows that people suffering from symptoms like fatigue, irritability, mood disorders, poor concentration, headaches, and insomnia due to their amalgam fillings are more likely than their peers to have the apolipoprotein E 4 (ApoE 4) gene. (vii)

ApoE 4 is known as the " Alzheimer’s gene." It also promotes heart disease. ApoE 4 reduces detoxifying activity. This means that people with this gene can't get rid of mercury from their brains, contributing to its toxic effects on this organ.

I know this all sounds very depressing. And it is. But the good news is that there are things you can do to reduce your exposure -- and identify if you have toxic levels of mercury.

So let me sum up what we learned in this week's blog and offer some suggestions for reducing your exposure.

10 Truths and Tips about Mercury Toxicity

2. The main ways that humans are exposed to mercury are from contaminated fish and dental amalgams or silver fillings.

3. Mercury can affect nearly all your organs, especially the brain, heart, kidneys, and guts.

4. Many chronic diseases may be caused or worsened by mercury, including neurologic disease, ADHD, autism, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and more.

5. Some of us are genetically better adapted to detoxify mercury than others, leading to variable effects within the population.

6. You should reduce your exposure by avoiding large ocean fish (like tuna, swordfish, shark, and tilefish) and river fish. Eat only small wild fish. If it fits in your pan, it is probably okay.

7. Blood tests are relatively worthless for analyzing mercury toxicity, unless you have had a significant recent exposure or eat a lot of sushi or tuna.

8. Hair tests only check for mercury from fish, not from fillings so they only give you a partial picture.

9. The only way to find out your total body load of mercury is to take a medication with sulfur molecules that binds to the mercury like fly paper. This is called DMSA or DMPS.

This test should ONLY be done by a trained physician and involves taking one dose of this medicine, followed by a 6- or 24-hour urine collection to see how much comes out. (In my opinion, the most reliable testing is done by www.doctorsdata.com).

10. If you are toxic and sick, you may consider addressing your dental health by seeing a biological dentist who can safely help you deal with mercury in your mouth.

Going to see a conventional dentist who drills out your fillings without any precautions or protection can lead to serious health consequences. I strongly advise against it. However, amalgam filling removal CAN be done safely and effectively done by a dentist trained in the correct techniques.

That’s all for this week. Next week, I'll give you more advice on how to safely eliminate the mercury in your body if you find you are toxic. Finding out if you are poisoned by mercury, limiting your exposures, and getting the mercury out of your body is absolutely critical if you want to achieve lifelong vibrant health.

Now I'd like to hear from you...

Do you think mercury toxicity is a legitimate health concern or a bogus problem?

Do you have any symptoms of mercury toxicity and what have you done about them?

Have you asked your doctor about mercury toxicity and if so, what was his/her response?

Are you exposed to many sources of mercury? What could you do to reduce your exposure?

Please let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

(i) Lindh U. Removal of dental amalgam and other metal alloys supported by antioxidant therapy alleviates symptoms and improves quality of life in patients with amalgam-associated ill health. Neuroendocrinology Letters. 2002; 23(5/6):459-482.

(ii) Stejskal V. Metal-specific lymphocytes: biomarkers of sensitivity in man. Neuroendocrinology Letters. 1999;20:289-298.

(iii) Sterzl I., et al. Mercury and nickel allergy: Risk factors in fatigue and autoimmunity. Neuroendocrinology Letters. 1999; 20: 221-228.

(iv) Prochazkova, J., et al. The beneficial effect of amalgam replacement on health in patients with autoimmunity. Neuroendocrinology Letters. 2004; 25(3): 211-218.

(v) Stejskal, J. and Stejskal, V. The role of metals in autoimmunity and the link to neuroendocrinology. Neuroendocrinology Letters. 1999; 20: 351-364.

(vi) Holmes, A.S., et al. Reduced levels of mercury in first baby haircuts of autistic children. International Journal of Toxicology. 2003. 22(4): 277-285.

(vii) Wojcik, D.P. et al. Mercury toxicity presenting as chronic fatigue, memory impairment, and depression: Diagnosis, treatment, susceptibility, and outcomes in a New Zealand practice setting (1994-2006). 2006. Neuroendocrinology Letters. 27(4): 415-423.

Vitamin D -- Why You Are Probably NOT Getting Enough

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:50:45 -0400

What vitamin do we need in amounts up to 25 times higher than the government recommends for us to be healthy?

What vitamin deficiency affects over half of the population, is almost never diagnosed, and has been linked to many cancers, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic muscle pain, bone loss, and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis?

What vitamin is almost totally absent from our food supply?

What vitamin is the hidden cause of so much suffering that is so easy to treat?

The answer to all of these questions is vitamin D.

Over the last 10 years of my practice, my focus has been to discover what the body needs to function optimally. And I have become more interested in the role of specific nutrients as the years have passed.

Two recent studies in the journal Pediatrics found that 70 percent of American kids aren't getting enough vitamin D, and this puts them at higher risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and lower levels of good cholesterol. Low vitamin D levels also may increase a child's risk of developing heart disease later in life.

Overall, 7.6 million, or 9 percent, of U.S. children were vitamin-D deficient, and another 50.8 million, or 61 percent, had insufficient levels of this important vitamin in their blood.

Over the last 5 years, I have tested almost every patient in my practice for vitamin D deficiency, and I have been shocked by the results. What’s even more amazing is what happens when my patients' vitamin D status reaches optimal levels. Having witnessed these changes, there's no doubt in my mind: vitamin D is an incredible asset to your health.

That is why in today’s blog I want to explain the importance of this essential vitamin and give you 6 tips on how to get optimize your vitamin D levels.

Let’s start by looking at the massive impact vitamin D has on the health and function of every cell and gene in your body.

How Vitamin D Regulates Your Cells and Genes

Vitamin D has a huge impact on the health and function of your cells. It reduces cellular growth (which promotes cancer) and improves cell differentiation (which puts cells into an anti-cancer state). That makes vitamin D one of the most potent cancer inhibitors -- and explains why vitamin D deficiency has been linked to colon, prostate, breast and ovarian cancer.

But what's even more fascinating is how vitamin D regulates and controls genes.

It acts on a cellular docking station called a receptor that then sends messages to our genes. That's how vitamin D controls so many different functions -- from preventing cancer, reducing inflammation, boosting mood, easing muscle aches and fibromyalgia, and building bones.

These are just a few examples of the power of vitamin D. When we don’t get enough it impacts every area of our biology, because it affects the way our cells and genes function. And many of us are deficient for one simple reason ...

Your body makes vitamin D when it's exposed to sunlight. In fact, 80 to 100 percent of the vitamin D we need comes from the sun. The sun exposure that makes our skin a bit red (called 1 minimum erythemal dose) produces the equivalent of 10,000 to 25,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D in our bodies.

The problem is that most of us aren’t exposed to enough sunlight.

Overuse of sunscreen is one reason. While these product help protect against skin cancer -- they also block a whopping 97 percent of your body's vitamin D production.

If you live in a northern climate, you're not getting enough sun (and therefore vitamin D), especially during winter. And you're probably not eating enough of the few natural dietary sources of vitamin D: fatty wild fish like mackerel, herring, and cod liver oil.

Plus, aging skin produces less vitamin D -- the average 70 year-old person creates only 25 percent of the vitamin D that a 20 year-old does. Skin color makes a difference, too. People with dark skin also produce less vitamin D. And I've seen very severe deficiencies in Orthodox Jews and Muslims who keep themselves covered all the time.

With all these causes of vitamin D deficiency, you can see why supplementing with enough of this vitamin is so important. Unfortunately, you aren’t really being told the right amount of vitamin D to take.

The government recommends 200 to 600 IU of vitamin a day. This is the amount you need to prevent rickets, a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency. But the real question is: How much vitamin D do we need for OPTIMAL health? How much do we need to prevent autoimmune diseases, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, depression, osteoporosis, and even cancer?

The answer is: Much more than you think.

Recent research by vitamin D pioneer Dr. Michael Holick, Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine, recommends intakes of up to 2,000 IU a day -- or enough to keep blood levels of 25 hydroxy vitamin D at between 75 to 125 nmol/L (nanomoles per liter). That may sound high, but it's still safe: Lifeguards have levels of 250 nmol/L without toxicity.

Our government currently recommends 2,000 IU as the upper limit for vitamin D -- but even that may not be high enough for our sun-deprived population! In countries where sun exposure provides the equivalent of 10,000 IU a day and people have vitamin D blood levels of 105 to 163 nmol/L, autoimmune diseases (like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus) are uncommon.

Don't be scared that amounts that high are toxic: One study of healthy young men receiving 10,000 IU of vitamin D for 20 weeks showed no toxicity.

The question that remains is: How can you get the right amounts of vitamin D?

6 Tips for Getting the Right Amount of Vitamin D

Unless you're spending all your time at the beach, eating 30 ounces of wild salmon a day, or downing 10 tablespoons of cod liver oil a day, supplementing with vitamin D is essential. The exact amount needed to get your blood levels to the optimal range (100 to160 nmol/L) will vary depending on your age, how far north you live, how much time you spend in the sun, and even the time of the year. But once you reach optimal levels, you'll be amazed at the results.

For example, one study found that vitamin D supplementation could reduce the risk of getting type 1 diabetes by 80 percent. In the Nurses' Health Study (a study of more than 130,000 nurses over 3 decades), vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of multiple sclerosis by 40 percent.

I've seen many patients with chronic muscle aches and pains and fibromyalgia who are vitamin D deficient -- a phenomenon that's been documented in studies. Their symptoms improve when they are treated with vitamin D.

Finally, vitamin D has been shown to help prevent and treat osteoporosis. In fact, it's even more important than calcium. That's because your body needs vitamin D to be able to properly absorb calcium. Without adequate levels of vitamin D, the intestine absorbs only 10 to 15 percent of dietary calcium. Research shows that the bone-protective benefits of vitamin D keep increasing with the dose.

So here is my advice for getting optimal levels of vitamin D:

2. Take the right type of vitamin D. The only active form of vitamin D is vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Look for this type. Many vitamins and prescriptions of vitamin D have vitamin D2 -- which is not biologically active.

3. Take the right amount of vitamin D. If you have a deficiency, you should correct it with 5,000 to 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day for 3 months -- but only under a doctor's supervision. For maintenance, take 2,000 to 4,000 IU a day of vitamin D3. Some people may need higher doses over the long run to maintain optimal levels because of differences in vitamin D receptors, living in northern latitudes, indoor living, or skin color.

4. Monitor your vitamin D status until you are in the optimal range. If you are taking high doses (10,000 IU a day) your doctor must also check your calcium, phosphorous, and parathyroid hormone levels every 3 months.

5. Remember that it takes up to 6 to 10 months to "fill up the tank" for vitamin D if you're deficient. Once this occurs, you can lower the dose to the maintenance dose of 2,000 to 4,000 Units a day.

6. Try to eat dietary sources of vitamin D. These include:

• Fish liver oils, such as cod liver oil. 1 TBSP (15 ml) = 1,360 IU of vitamin D

• Cooked wild salmon. 3.5 oz = 360 IU of vitamin D

• Cooked mackerel. 3.5 oz = 345 IU of vitamin D

• Sardines, canned in oil, drained. 1.75 oz = 250 IU of vitamin D

• One whole egg = 20 IU of vitamin D

You can see now why I feel so passionately about vitamin D. This vitamin is critical for good health. So start aiming for optimal levels -- and watch how your health improves.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you experienced any symptoms of vitamin D deficiency?

Do you think you are not getting enough sun?

Have you experienced any health benefits from getting more sun or correcting a vitamin D deficiency you may have had?

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

5 Simple Steps to Cure IBS without Drugs

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:00:36 -0400

Imagine having a condition with symptoms so severe that you can't leave the house, yet your doctor calls it a "functional," or "psychosomatic," disease -- meaning that it's all in your head.

Frustrating? Absolutely.

But it's a very real problem for the 60 million people -- that's 20 percent of Americans -- who have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). These people are plagued by uncomfortable and often disabling symptoms like bloating, cramps, diarrhea, constipation, and pain.

I have lots of patients with IBS, some of whom have suffered for decades without relief. Their previous doctors couldn't find the cause of the illness, so they were told to just get more fiber or take Metamucil, or were prescribed sedatives, anti-spasm drugs, or antidepressants.

That is NOT the answer. I've found a better way. And in today’s blog I am going to share 5 steps you can take right now to cure IBS without drugs.

But first I want to tell you about a patient of mine ...

Alexis and Her Lifelong Irritable Bowel

At age 45, Alexis had suffered from IBS for 33 years -- almost all of her life! Her major symptom was sudden, painful, cramping diarrhea. She was doing the best she could to prevent it. She didn't consume dairy, didn't drink or smoke, and took Citracel every day. Yet nothing helped.

She would go to the bathroom 4 to 5 times before she even left the house in the morning. And she couldn't go out of the house at all without knowing where all the closest bathrooms would be in case she had what she called "s--- attacks."

That wasn't Alexis' only problem ... She also felt full and bloated after every meal, which starchy foods made worse.

An upper endoscopy had shown that she had gastritis, or inflammation of the stomach, and she had taken many antibiotics over the years. She also had severe premenstrual syndrome (PMS), with irregular periods, breast tenderness, sugar cravings, headaches, and agitation.

She also had unusual symptoms like rectal itching (often a clue to yeast infections or food allergies). And she was tired all the time.

Alexis tried to eat healthy, but her diet was less than ideal. She had a bran muffin and coffee in the morning and a salad for lunch. But her "drug of choice" was sugar -- in the form of cakes, ice cream, Jell-O, diet sodas, and other junk food. Not surprisingly, she was also about 20 pounds overweight.

To help Alexis, all I really did was identify and treat the UNDERLYING CAUSES of her digestive problems! To understand how I did that, you first have to understand a little bit about how the gut works.

How Gut Imbalances Can Lead to IBS

Imagine a tennis court. That is the surface area of your small intestine, where food is absorbed. Your small intestine is also the site of about 60 percent of your immune system. And this sophisticated system gut-immune system is just one-cell layer away from a toxic sewer -- all of the bacteria in your gut.

If that lining breaks down -- from stress, too many antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs, intestinal infections, a low-fiber, high-sugar diet, alcohol, and more -- look out! Your immune system will suffer and you can develop all sorts of digestive problems -- including IBS.

Let's talk a little more about all that bacteria. You've got about 3 pounds of it -- 500 species -- in your gut. In fact, there is more bacterial DNA in your body than there is human DNA! Among all that gut bacteria, there are good guys, bad guys, and VERY bad guys.

If the bad guys take over -- or if they move into areas that they shouldn't (like the small intestine which is normally sterile) -- they can start fermenting the food you digest, particularly sugar or starchy foods.

This is called small bowel bacterial overgrowth -- and it's a major cause of IBS.

The major symptom it causes is bloating, or a feeling of fullness after meals. What causes this bloating? The overproduction of gas by the bacteria as they have lunch on your lunch!

Small bowel bacterial overgrowth can be diagnosed by a breath test, which measures gas production by the bacteria, or by a urine test that measures the byproducts of the bacteria after they are absorbed into your system.

Bacterial overgrowth is a real syndrome and was recently described in a review paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The condition can be treated. In fact, a major paper was recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that showed using a non-absorbed antibiotic called rifaximin for 10 days resulted in a dramatic improvement in bloating and overall symptoms of IBS by clearing out the overgrowth of bacteria.

That's great news for many IBS patients. But, unfortunately, not all patients with the same diagnosis are created equal. There's more than one factor that leads to IBS. Another major cause of IBS is food sensitivities.

A landmark paper, was recently published in the prestigious British medical journal Gut that found eliminating foods identified through delayed food allergy testing (IgG antibodies) resulted in dramatic improvements in IBS symptoms. Another article, an editorial in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, stated clearly that we must respect and recognize the role of food allergies and inflammation in IBS.

So the research tells us that these are the two main causes of irritable bowel -- food allergies and overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine -- but there may be others, including a lack of digestive enzymes, parasites living in the gut, zinc or magnesium deficiency, and more.

And this is precisely why it is so critically important to personalize treatment based on the unique circumstances that exist for each person who suffers from IBS -- the solution is most certainly not a one-size-fits-all one. But solutions can be found if we look carefully at the underlying causes and treat them.

Which leads me back to Alexis ...

How I Helped Alexis Heal from IBS

I prescribed Alexis a non-absorbed antibiotic, an antifungal drug for her yeast problem, and had her eliminate the foods to which she was allergic. I believe in treatment that addresses the underlying cause of the problem. If there is a bacterial or yeast infection, then medications are often the best treatments. The key is to effectively treat the cause. If medications do that, then I use them.

Then I gave her supplements of healthy bacteria to normalize her gut and zinc to help with her digestive enzymes (chronic diarrhea can result in zinc deficiency).

I also gave her extra fiber to feed the healthy bacteria, fish oil to reduce gut inflammation, a multivitamin, and herbs to balance her hormones (which are greatly affected by abnormal bacteria).

What happened then may shock some, but I wasn’t surprised. It is the same result I have seen in patient after patient when the principles of functional medicine are applied ...

Alexis came back to see me two months later, and she was a different person. Not only did she lose 20 pounds, she had not had a "s---- attack" and was having normal bowel habits for the first time in 33 years! She also had more energy, and her PMS vanished.

She looked and felt 10 years younger and was free of the suffering she had endured for over three decades.

Do you suffer like Alexis did? It doesn't have to be that way. We have the understanding and tools to deal with this chronic problem and the suffering it causes one in five people. There is no need to wait for any more studies. I have been treating IBS in my practice for over 10 years with dramatic success.

In fact, just recently, one of my patients told me that, for the first time in his life, he didn't have any more stomach pains or digestive problems. He had previously been so bad that he had to have a phone installed in his bathroom!

To take advantage of these discoveries today, simply follow these five steps.

5 Steps to Curing IBS

1. Get tested.

Immunolabs

2. Test yourself. If you can't afford the test mentioned above, then just eliminate the most common food allergens for 12 weeks -- that's dairy, gluten, yeast, eggs, corn, soy, and peanuts. And then reintroduce them to see if they cause symptoms. This is an effective way to isolate the foods that may be causing you problems.

3. Get rid of the unwanted visitors in your small bowel. Ask your doctor to prescribe rifaximin (Xifaxin) and take two 200 mg tablets 3 times a day for 7 to 10 days. This is often the best way to deal with the chronic bacterial overgrowth that causes bloating and irritable bowel syndrome.

4. Repopulate your digestive tract with good bacteria. I don't usually recommend brands, but when it comes to probiotics the quality varies so much that I suggest taking two specific brands. Take one packet of VSL3 or other high potency probiotic twice a day for 1 to 2 months. This probiotic has over 450 billion organisms per packet. I also recommend a probiotic called S. boulardii take two capsules twice a day for 2 months. This is a special probiotic that helps to further normalize gut function.

5. Read more about the condition and your options. My favorite book on this subject is Digestive Wellness by Elizabeth Lipski.

By taking these steps and seeking out the underlying causes of IBS, you can dramatically improve your health and overcome your digestive disorder.

Now I'd like to hear from you...

Do you have IBS? How long have you had it and how has it been treated?

Have you noticed whether stress, certain foods, or other factors affect your symptoms and how?

Have you tried any of the recommendations in this blog? How have they helped?
Do you have any other suggestion for successfully treating IBS?

Please let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

Resveratrol—Eat Whatever and Live to 120?

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:40:33 -0400

"Live to 120 years old by eating as much as you want and drinking lots of red wine!"

That's the intriguing finding of a recent study from Harvard researcher David Sinclair and his group.

The only catch is that you'd have to drink about 1,500 bottles of wine a day to get those results. Of course, that would kill you pretty quickly -- before you'd have a chance to reach age 120! Still, those are important findings ...

In fact, Dr. Sinclair thinks they're so important that he started a company to produce a pharmaceutical derivative of the active compound in red wine, resveratrol.

Although his findings have merit, I think he is misguided in his attempt to find a "magic pill" that will allow you to eat whatever you want and live forever. The body is much more complex than that.

This week, I'm going to explain why a magic pill WON'T work -- and provide ten tips that really WILL help you live longer and prevent all the diseases of aging.

Why "Magic Pills" Don’t Work

Don't get me wrong. Dr. Sinclair is on the right track. But I believe he's focused on the wrong thing. In looking for that "magic pill," he's not taking into account the bigger picture.
That approach will always fail.

Sure, there has been a lot of fanfare about this new "drug" resveratrol that can extend your life span and let you eat whatever you want and have the fitness of a trained athlete without any exercise. But that's wrong on a couple of counts ...

First, resveratrol isn't a drug at all. It's a natural plant defense molecule, or " phytonutrient," that's found in grapes (and therefore red wine), as well as in peanuts, berries, and a Chinese herb called hu zhang.

Second, all the excitement reinforces the idea that a single molecule (whether from a drug or a plant) can solve all our health problems. In functional medicine we look at ALL the systems of the body. We need to consider resveratrol as just ONE of many healthful plant compounds.

You see, resveratrol is just one of thousands of polyphenols, which make up just one class of phytonutrients. These phytonutrients act in many ways, the most important of which is as a genetic control system, turning on and off genes that help us stay healthy.

This is the science of nutrigenomics -- which describes how food is information that tells our bodies what to do, not just a source of calories we need for energy.

I believe that all the excitement about resveratrol is misguided. Everyone is looking for a quick fix, and scientists (especially ones who start pharmaceutical companies to market their discoveries) are looking to make a quick buck.

There is nothing wrong with either. But in order to find the real secret to longevity and to healthy aging and fitness, we need to look at how this compound works and learn from that how to keep ourselves healthy.

The secret lies in our mitochondria.

Mitochondria: The Real Secret to Healthy Aging and Lifelong Fitness

Mitochondria are the little organs in every cell that turn oxygen and food into energy.

For now, let's examine two recent studies that shed light on these mighty little organs that hold the key to health, weight loss, and longevity.

In the first study, published in Nature, Dr. Sinclair and his colleagues gave one group of mice a diet high in fat (60 percent of calories). What happened then was interesting ...

In middle age they all became obese, got diabetes and fatty livers, and died early.

Another group of mice were fed the same diet, but also received resveratrol at a dose of 24 mg/kg of body weight. That's the equivalent of the amount of resveratrol found in about 750 to 1,500 bottles of wine a day! What happened to those mice was even more interesting ...

They still got fat -- but lived longer and did not develop diabetes. They were also more agile and had more endurance than the rats that didn't get the resveratrol. Interestingly, their cholesterol profiles didn't improve -- BUT they didn't get heart disease, showing that cholesterol is not the big evil we think it is.

Let's take a closer look at what these findings really mean.

In this study, resveratrol produced changes associated with longer lifespan and produced the following biologic effects:

• It reduced levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-I), a molecule related to the growth hormone that promotes cancer growth.

• It increased AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a signaling system in the body that controls insulin sensitivity and can prevent diabetes.

• It increased peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor coactivator-1 (PGC-1) activity. This is a critical signaling system that turns on genes that improve blood sugar control and improve mitochondrial function.

• It increased the numbers of mitochondria, which boosts the capacity to turn food into energy and burn calories.

• It improved motor function, making the old rats more agile.

• And finally, the resveratrol helped prevent the effects of aging by modifying 144 out of 153 metabolic pathways that are controlled by genes.

This all sounds good. And it is! But the most important thing that these findings tell us is ignored by Sinclair and his colleagues.

They tell us that aging and disease are controlled in large part by SUGAR and insulin function in the body!

In a moment I will explain how you can use this information to reverse disease, lose weight, and live longer and healthier. But first, let me tell you about the second study, which in some ways was even more dramatic.

That study, which was published in Cell by Johan Auwerx from the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cell Biology in Illkirch, France, tested much higher doses of resveratrol in mice. These doses were 18 times higher than those in the first study. That's 400 mg/kg of resveratrol -- equal to about 360 daily capsules of resveratrol for a 130-pound person!

Imagine achieving the fitness of a trained athlete, staying thin, preventing diabetes and heart disease, and living to 120 years old -- all while eating a high-calorie, high-fat diet (and taking 360 pills a day of resveratrol)! That's the equivalent of what happened to the rats.

Specifically, the rats fed the high doses of resveratrol along with their high-calorie, high-fat diet showed the following effects:

• They didn't develop pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome.

• They increased the number of energy-producing mitochondria in their muscle cells.

• Their metabolic thermostat was turned up and they increased fat burning by increasing thermogenesis.

• They increased their endurance and aerobic capacity (without exercise).

• They maintained their cells' sensitivity to insulin, resulting in better blood sugar control.

Plus, they had enhanced muscle strength, reduced muscle fatigue, and improved coordination. And resveratrol increased the activity of PGC-1 alpha, which in turn controls genes that affect blood sugar control -- with no bad effects on their organs.

This seems incredible! But it's all very plausible if you understand the root causes of obesity, aging, and disease. Those causes are blood sugar control and the health, number, and function of your mitochondria.

It's unlikely that taking ONLY resveratrol -- even at high doses -- will allow us to live a life of sloth and gluttony and be disease-free forever. But what these studies do tell us is VERY important.

When we view these findings from a systems perspective -- understanding ALL the influences on blood sugar control, insulin, and our mitochondrial function -- we can create a lifestyle and program that works to keep us healthy, thin, and young.

Recently, I was at a conference on longevity and aging and had a chance to converse with Dr. Leonard Guarente from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995, Dr. Guarente discovered a gene called SIR-2 in yeast that controls longevity. He was a teacher of David Sinclair, who authored one of the recent studies on resveratrol I discussed above.

I asked Dr. Guarente what REALLY was at the root of the effects of this master gene that controls longevity (called SIRT-1 in humans). Resveratrol works through this gene. His answer was quite simple. It was ...

... SUGAR!

This gene has its master effects on aging by improving how the body controls sugar and insulin sensitivity.

This isn't really surprising. All the effects of aging are increased by worsening blood sugar control -- even before you get diabetes. People with diabetes have smaller and more poorly functioning mitochondria and get cancer, heart disease, and dementia at far greater rates than the general population.

So if we could fix our blood sugar control and boost our mitochondria, we could live longer and disease-free.

Considering this, let's look at the big picture again ...

Taking a magic pill just won't do the trick. That's especially true if you factor in all the other real-life insults that affect us, such as poor diet, stress, environmental toxins, and a sedentary lifestyle -- all of which affect blood sugar control and mitochondria.

Instead, you need to know ALL the factors that DAMAGE your blood sugar control and mitochondria. And you need to know ALL the factors that IMPROVE or boost your blood sugar control and mitochondria.

These are just the back-to-the-basics principles of functional medicine that I’ve been talking about for years -- identify the bad stuff and take it away; identify the good stuff and add it.

So what can you do to live longer and stay disease-free -- other than drink 1,500 bottles of wine or take 360 pills of resveratrol a day? Here is just a partial list!

Ten Tips to Help You Live a Longer and Healthier Life

1. Balance your blood sugar.

fiber

2. Eat protein with every meal. This helps balance your blood sugar. Include nuts, beans, fish, lean animal protein, and omega-3 eggs in your diet.

3. Increase your intake of omega-3 fats. These improve blood sugar control by working on the same cell-signaling mechanisms as resveratrol. Eat wild fish (salmon, sardines, black cod, and herring) or take omega-3 fatty acid pills (1,000 to 2,000 mg of EPA and DHA a day).

4. Eliminate or dramatically limit flour products. That means anything with sugar from any source.

5. Find ways to relax every day. This prevents diabetes and controls your blood sugar by reducing levels of cortisol, the stress hormone.

6. To boost your mitochondria, you will need to exercise and build muscle. Try interval training, a technique of exercising fast (like sprinting) for one minute and then more slowly (like fast walking) for three minutes. Repeat this in cycles totaling 30 minutes twice a week.

7. Eat foods with phytonutrients. There are many protective ones other than resveratrol, including those found in green tea, pomegranate, and all dark, colorful fruits and vegetables.

8. Consider supplements that help protect and boost your mitochondria. These include Coenzyme Q10 (100 to 200 mg a day), acetyl-l-carnitine (500 to 1,000 mg twice a day), alpha-lipoic acid (100 to 200 mg twice a day), D-ribose (5 g once or twice a day), magnesium (150 to 300 mg twice a day), B-complex vitamins (daily), and NADH (5 to 10 mg a day).

9. Live clean and green. Limit your exposure to heavy metals, pollution, and other environmental toxins -- all of which poison your mitochondria.

10. Learn how to detoxify. Support your body’s detoxification system and your liver function.

This is just a start of what you can do.

Just remember -- you will need to take a comprehensive approach to health, leveraging the latest research to help you improve your metabolism, stay thin, and live longer. There are no quick fixes. But addressing your whole system will give you a huge advantage!

Now I'd like to hear from you ...

What do you think about the constant drive to find a "magic pill" to cure all our health woes?

Have you experienced any instances of looking at the big picture of your health versus trying to solve all your problems with a "magic pill"? What were the results?

Have you tried taking resveratrol supplements? Did you notice any effects?

What are you doing to improve your mitochondrial function?

Have you experienced any health or weight loss benefits by getting your own blood sugar and insulin under control?

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

3 Simple Steps to Eliminate Heartburn and Acid Reflux

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:04:35 -0400

Are millions of us born with a genetic defect that makes us produce too much stomach acid?

Do we just have a major evolutionary design flaw that requires us to take powerful acid-blocking drugs to prevent heartburn and reflux?

I believe that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding "no."

In this week's blog, I'll explain why, but more importantly, I will outline a simple 3-step approach that will help you prevent acid reflux and heartburn by treating its underlying causes.

The Truth about Acid-Blocking Medications

At least 10 percent of Americans have episodes of heartburn every day, and 44 percent have symptoms at least once a month. Overall, reflux or GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as heartburn) affects a whopping 25 to 35 percent of the US population!

As a result, acid-blocking medications are the third top-selling type of drug in America today. Two other drugs to treat reflux, Nexium and Prevacid, are in the top 10 best-selling drugs and account for $5.7 and $4.0 billion in sales annually!

Things have certainly changed since I was in medical school.

In those days, GERD wasn't even considered a serious disease. Instead, people had heartburn or ulcers, but that was pretty much it.

And when acid-blocking drugs first came on the market, even the pharmaceutical representatives warned us how powerful these drugs were. They told us not to prescribe them any longer than 6 weeks and only for patients with documented ulcers.

What a difference a few decades make!

Now, these drugs are given like candy to anyone who ate too many hot dogs at a ball game -- and one drug, Prilosec, is now available without a prescription.

No wonder these drugs are so popular. Their manufacturers have created the illusion that we can eat whatever we want with no consequences, just by popping a pill.

They even have commercials showing a family rushing to stop their father from eating a big sausage with fried onions and peppers -- and he tells them not to worry because he took his acid-blocking pill!

I know someone who used to work for the makers of Pepcid. He told me that when it first became available over the counter, teams of drug company representatives would stand at the gates of county fairs and southern barbeques and hand out free samples.

Talk about sending a bad message!

In reality, acid-blocking drugs are a double-edged sword.

Let's look at some of the recent research on the dangers of these drugs.

Acid blocking drugs obviously block acid that can cause symptoms of heartburn and reflux. But your body actually needs stomach acid to stay healthy.

We know that stomach acid is necessary to digest protein and food, activate digestive enzymes in your small intestine, keep the bacteria from growing in your small intestine, and help you absorb important nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and vitamin B12.

So what happens when you take acid-blocking drugs?

There's evidence that these medications can prevent you from properly digesting food, cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and lead to problems like irritable bowel syndrome, depression, hip fractures, and more.

Studies show that people who take acid-blocking medications for the long term can become deficient in vitamin B12, which can lead to depression, anemia, fatigue, nerve damage, and even dementia, especially in the elderly.

The research also tells us that taking these drugs can cause dangerous overgrowth of bacteria in the intestine called Clostridia, leading to life-threatening infections.

For many more people, low-grade overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine leads to bloating, gas, abdominal pain, and diarrhea (many of the common "side effects" noted in the warnings for these drugs).

This can cause irritable bowel syndrome.

And a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that chronic use of acid-blocking drugs leads to an increase in the development of osteoporosis and increase in hip fracture because blocking acid prevents the absorption of calcium and other minerals necessary for bone health.

And all this is only part of the problem! There have even been some reports that these drugs may increase the risk of certain cancers.

These are serious problems -- and it's pretty clear that in this case, the "cure" of acid-blocking drugs is worse than the "disease" of GERD. But that's of little comfort when you're suffering from heartburn.

So if drugs are not the answer, what is? We need to find the real causes of reflux and heartburn -- get rid of them! And we need to use the right foods, nutrients, and lifestyle therapies to heal the problem.

What Causes GERD?

Fried food, alcohol, caffeine, and soda can all trigger reflux. Spicy, tomato-based or citrus foods may also cause problems for some people. Smoking also increases the risk of reflux. Being overweight and having your belly fat push up on your stomach can prevent it from emptying, triggering reflux.

Having a hiatal hernia (where your stomach pushes up through your diaphragm) can also cause trouble and can be diagnosed by x-ray. Eating large meals and eating before bed are two other main reasons for reflux.

But there are other causes that are often overlooked. Food is supposed to go down, not up, when you eat.

That's why there are two main valves, or sphincters, that control food going in and out of your stomach -- the one at the top (or the lower esophageal sphincter) and one at the bottom (the pyloric valve).

When you're stressed, the valve on the top relaxes and the valve on the bottom tightens up.

The result? Food goes up, not down. So stress contributes to reflux.

Magnesium deficiency is another cause of reflux because magnesium helps the sphincter at the bottom of the stomach relax, allowing the food to go down.

While controversial, I believe that a common infection can cause not just ulcers but reflux as well. This bug is called H. pylori and can be identified by a simple test. It needs to be treated even if you don't have an ulcer.

Food sensitivities or allergies can also cause reflux. Common culprits include dairy and gluten-containing foods like wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Plus, overgrowth of bacteria in the small bowel or yeast overgrowth in the gut can cause reflux.

These are all treatable conditions that you don't need powerful acid blocking drugs to fix.

To properly diagnose the causes, you may need to do the following.

3 Steps to Permanently Overcoming Heartburn and Acid Reflux

Step 1: Treat the Bugs if You Have Them

yeast overgrowth

irritable bowel syndrome

Step 2: Change Your Diet

eliminate dairy and gluten

www.celiac.com

Step 3: Try Some Natural Remedies to Help Soothe the Gut

magnesium

As you can see, there's no need to suffer from heartburn and reflux -- or to take expensive and dangerous acid-blocking drugs.

I hope the changes I've suggested here will soothe your stomach and have you feeling healthy in no time!

Now I'd like to hear from you...

Do you have heartburn, reflux or GERD? What seems to trigger it?

Have you taken acid-blocking drugs? What was your experience?

What changes have worked for you in preventing and treating these problems?

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

Calm Your Mind, Heal Your Body

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:29:49 -0400

When it comes to your health, there is one factor that is more important than almost any other ...

If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease and increased longevity.

And it is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, or any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life. But it doesn’t come in a pill, and it can’t be found in a hospital or in your doctor’s office.

What is this critical factor that determines so much about how healthy or how sick you are?

Your attitude, your social networks, your community, and your spiritual beliefs.

Put another way, the health of your mind and spirit and your sense of connection to your community has an immense impact on the health of your body. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resiliency -- being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us.

We’ve known about this in medicine for a long time. I was recently browsing through my library and found an old book that I read in college called Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, written by a friend and leader in the field of mind/body medicine, Kenneth Pelletier. He is a clinical professor of medicine at the medical schools of the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Arizona.

His book was published in 1977. I wish I could say that a lot has changed since that book was published. Sure, we have filled in the gaps and learned more about the mechanisms through which the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body, but the basic truths remain the same.

There is a dramatic and powerful connection between your mind and body, and between your body and your mind. In fact, it really should not be called a connection because it is just ONE bidirectional system.

Unfortunately, few doctors accept or understand this fundamental reality about biology. So, in most doctors’ offices, you aren’t going to learn about the connection between your body and brain or how to use that connection to help you heal.

However, in this blog I am going to give you the tools to do that. I am going to explain how the body and mind are intimately connected and give you 10 tips you can use to calm your mind and heal your body.

Calming your mind is the last of the 7 keys to UltraWellness; today you are going to learn how you can relax your way to vibrant health and optimal weight.

An Epidemic of Stress-Related Disorders

According to Hans Selye, M.D., the man who coined the word "stress" and first mapped out its biological effects, "The modern physician should know as much about emotions and thoughts as about disease symptoms and drugs. This approach would appear to hold more promise of cure than anything medicine has given us to date."

Selye’s words are as true today as they were on the day he wrote them.

We are seeing an epidemic of stress-related disorders in our society, including depression, anxiety, autism, attention deficit disorder, memory disorders, and dementia, and these disorders are making the pharmaceutical industry highly profitable.

You see, Americans live on caffeine and Prozac. We use substances to manage our moods. In fact, the four top-selling items in grocery stores are all drugs that we use to manage our mood and energy: caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and nicotine.

But how do we really deal with the root of this problem? You use the MOST powerful pharmacy in the world -- which is right between your ears!

A little later, I will tell you how to use your brain to fix your health problems. First, I want to share a story that illustrates the power the mind has to harm or to heal.

The Power of the Mind-Body Connection

Tom, a long-term patient of mine, came to see me after his wife died. He suddenly developed heart failure. His heart just wouldn’t pump. It was flooded with grief molecules, hormones like adrenalin, noradrenalin, and cortisol.

His case is far from being the only documented case in which grief caused cardiovascular problems. The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study about how grief or emotional trauma can cause heart failure -- literally a broken heart.

Rather than giving Tom drugs for "heart failure" as I was taught in medical school, I suggested he get healing touch, a form of energy and emotional healing. Sounds a bit out there, huh? Well, he followed my advice and dramatically recovered. Touch, not medication, healed his heart.

I think we can all learn a lesson from Tom and other cases like his.

In school, we all learned how to read and write, but we never learned how to use our minds to help us with the most important survival skills of all: staying happy and healthy!

Other cultures differ in their training. Herbert Benson, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, has demonstrated the amazing power that trained Tibetan meditators use to control their physiology by slowing their metabolism, changing their heart rates and brain waves, and raising or lowering their body temperature.

He even documented on film an ancient practice called tumo, the generating of internal heat, performed by initiated Tibetan monks. The monks are wrapped in icy cold sheets and must use their internal heat to dry them, possibly by actively burning something called brown fat. As a result, they can sit naked on a snowy mountaintop all night and not freeze, keeping warm with their internal heat.

That’s something most of us don’t have any consciousness of, or control over. Imagine if you could turn on fat burning and lose weight with your mind!

That is how powerful our mind and our beliefs can be.

But in the West we aren’t even taught how to cope with the day-to-day frustrations of life. We live under constant chronic stress and we are not trained to address this stressful psychic load that is the burden of the 21st century.

This is unfortunate, because stress is killing us.

Just consider these facts:

• Low socioeconomic status is associated with poorer health outcomes and higher risk of death from all causes. This is not because of poor health habits, but because of feelings of powerlessness and loss of control.

• Internalized racism and stress are associated with high amounts of belly fat.

• Stress hormones damage the hippocampus -- the memory center in the brain -- causing memory loss and dementia.

• In a study of people who volunteered to have cold viruses injected into their noses, only people with a high level of perceived stress got colds.

• Women with metastatic breast cancer survived twice as long if they were part of a support group.

• Belonging to a group -- a religious group, a bowling club, a quilting group -- reduces risk of death from all causes and increases longevity, despite health habits.

• In a study of doctors, those who scored high on hostility questionnaires had a higher risk of heart attacks than those who smoked, were overweight, had high blood pressure, or didn’t exercise.

So, if you don’t think the mind has the power to influence your body, think again.

The good news is that you can change your beliefs and attitudes and their effects on your mind and your body. You may need to learn a few new skills, like stress reduction techniques, but it can be done.

However, our beliefs and attitudes aren’t the only things that matter. Our mind and brain function is also influenced by what happens in our bodies. By addressing the 7 Keys to UltraWellness, "mental" problems can often be cured—without changing our beliefs.

The effects of beliefs and attitudes are important. There can be no question of that. But the effects of imbalances in our core body systems on our mental state and brain function are just as important and are mostly IGNORED by traditional medicine.

The systems in your body that affect mood and brain function include hormones, immune system, gut, detox system, energy system, nutritional status, and other environmental inputs.

For example, I saw a man yesterday who was completely stressed out and anxious. He had palpitations and drank four martinis a night just to calm down. He also had severe muscle cramps and eye twitches.

These are obvious signs of magnesium deficiency. But stress, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar all deplete magnesium. He was trapped in a vicious cycle.

What he needed wasn’t Valium or Prozac, but rather to address why he was magnesium-deficient and then fix it through detoxification, treating his yeast overgrowth, cutting out alcohol and caffeine, and supplementing with the relaxation mineral, magnesium, to calm his nervous system.

That, in combination with other tools for calming the mind and the body, will help him reset his nervous system. By using these tools together, he’ll be taking advantage of both the body-mind effect and the mind-body effect, thereby optimizing his treatment.

You can do the same thing. By employing the following techniques, you can leverage the power of your brain and body to calm your mind and bring healing.

10 Tips for Calming Your Mind

Here is what we know about how to influence the mind-body and the body-mind system. Consider these essential survival skills. You cannot thrive without them!

1. Address the Underlying Causes of Stress --

2. Relax -- Learn how to ACTIVELY relax. To engage the powerful forces of the mind on the body, you must DO something -- you can’t just sit there watching television or drinking beer.

3. Learn New Skills -- Try learning new skills such as meditation, deep breathing, yoga, biofeedback, and progressive muscle relaxation or take a hot bath, make love, get a massage, watch a sunset, or walk in the woods or on the beach.

4. Move Your Body -- Exercise is a powerful, well-studied way to burn off stress chemicals and heal the mind, so just do it! It has been proven to be better than or equal to Prozac for treating depression.

5. Optimize Your Nutrition -- Clean up your diet from mind-robbing molecules like caffeine, alcohol, and refined sugars and eat regularly to avoid the short-term stress of starvation on your body.

6. Supplement -- Take a multivitamin and nutrients to help balance the stress response, such as vitamin C; the B-complex vitamins, including B6 and B5 or pantothenic acid; zinc; and most important, magnesium, the relaxation mineral.

7. Try Herbs -- Use adaptogenic herbs (herbs that help you adapt and balance your response to stress) such as ginseng, Rhodiola rosea, Siberian ginseng, cordyceps, and ashwagandha.

8. Use Heat Therapy -- Take a hot bath or a sauna to help your body deeply relax and turn on the relaxation response.

9. Change Your Beliefs -- Examine your beliefs, attitudes, and responses to common situations and consider reframing your point of view to reduce stress.

10. Find a Community -- Consciously build your network of friends, family, and community. They are your most powerful allies in achieving long-term health.

In the last seven blogs, I have introduced you to a set of new ideas and concepts that have the power to transform your health personally and to transform health care as a whole. It is no small job in either case, but it is essential to stem the impending tsunami of ill health and economic burden facing us, our children, and our children’s children.

The solution is a fundamental change in our worldview about health—a view that helps us get to the core of illness, learn self-care, take control, and empower ourselves to transform our own health and turn our "sick care" system into a health care system.

Each of us can contribute and make small changes that will have a big effect as we move toward vibrant health and vitality as individuals, and as a society.

Take control of your health today using the techniques I have outlined in this series of blogs, and you will become part of a growing movement that is working toward fundamentally changing the way we understand the body and practice medicine in this country.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What examples of the mind-body and body-mind effect have you experienced?

What do you do to relax and calm down?

What changes in your health do you notice when you’re relaxed?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

How to Give Yourself a Metabolic Tune-up

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:53:28 -0400

Are you tired and worn out?

Do you have sore muscles, fatigue, and brain fog?

If so, you might have metabolic burnout!

Imagine if you could find a way to tune up your metabolism, increase your energy levels, think clearly, and feel less achy.

Imagine if you could prevent diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia.

Imagine if you could heal fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Imagine if you could get to the roots of aging, slow the whole process, and eliminate most age-related diseases.

These aren’t just fantasies.

All these things are possible—if you give yourself a metabolic tune up.

You might have heard of the rats fed high doses of resveratrol, the plant compound found in red wine. But did you know that those rats lived 30 percent longer than their peers – the equivalent of an additional 120 human years -- even though they ate a bad diet.

In fact, they became fitter and lost weight even while eating a poor-quality, standard American diet.

How could they eat high amounts of bad food and not exercise, yet still become fitter, AND live 30 percent longer than the average rat?

One word: MITOCHONDRIA -- the source of your energy.

The resveratrol protected and improved the function of the mitochondria through its effects on special master-aging genes.

So what are mitochondria and what do they have to do with having more energy, losing weight, and living to be 120 years old without any disease?

Today you will learn the answer to that question. And I will provide you with 8 tips you can start using today to give yourself a metabolic tune-up and boost your energy metabolism.

The key to more energy lies in providing your mitochondria the right environment to thrive. When you do, you can boost your energy metabolism. Doing this is the 6th of the 7 keys to UltraWellness, and it is absolutely essential if you want to obtain optimal health.

So let’s look at what mitochondria are and what they do.

What Are Mitochondria?

Mitochondria are the little factories in our cells that take the foods we eat and the oxygen we breathe and convert them into energy. That energy is called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, and it is used to support every function in our body.

Each cell holds hundreds or thousands of mitochondria; they are found in greater amounts in active organs and tissues such as the muscles, heart, and brain. In fact, we have more than 100,000 trillion mitochondria in our bodies, and each one contains 17,000 little assembly lines for making ATP.

Why are these are these little energy factories so important to your health?

The answer is simple: Mitochondria are the place where metabolism happens.

When your mitochondria aren’t working properly, your metabolism runs less efficiently or can practically shut down.

Problems occur because these powerful energy producers are VERY sensitive to damage.

And when they are damaged, you suffer all the symptoms of low energy—fatigue, memory loss, pain, rapid aging, and more.

Fatigue is the most common symptom of poorly functioning mitochondria, and it is the reason we tend to poop out as we age. We add constant insult and injury to our mitochondria, and this causes them to break down and stop producing energy.

The main way your mitochondria are damaged is by uncontrolled oxidative stress. That may sound complicated, but in reality we are all familiar with “oxidative stress” even if some of us don’t know what the term means.

Oxidation is the rust on our cars, the brown color that appears on an apple when cut and exposed to air, the rancid vegetable oil in our cupboards, even the wrinkles that form on our skin.

What most of us don’t realize is that our own tissues are rusting, our own fats are going rancid, and our brains are melting as we go about our daily life.

What starts this process is some insult—too many calories, smoking, a sunburn, exposure to toxins, anti-nutrients, sugar, and more—that tips the balance, starting a chain reaction of cellular and tissue damage that leads us down the long road to weight gain and chronic illness.

The ultimate outcome of oxidative stress and the resultant loss of energy is death!

But the good news is that we can counteract the damage by giving ourselves a metabolic tune-up.

Let me explain ...

What Is a Metabolic Tune-up?

Dr. Bruce Ames, a renowned scientist from the University of California, Berkeley, has spent the last decade discovering how we can give ourselves a metabolic tune-up.

In one study, he gave two compounds to old rats who were tired, wouldn’t get on their treadmill or swim very far, and couldn’t find the cheese in the maze. These compounds make mitochondria run better, boosting metabolism.

They are alpha-lipoic acid and acetyl-L-carnitine.

Overnight, these old rats became young rats. They got onto the treadmill, swam long distances without fatigue, and could easily find the cheese in the maze, just like their young, healthy counterparts.

How could that happen?

Well, Dr. Ames simply gave the cells the raw materials they need for optimal function. That’s it!

You can do this too, and the process is very simple ...

First, find the things that damage your metabolism and mitochondria, then eliminate them.

Second, give your body the things that help mitochondria function optimally.

Here’s how you do that.

8 Tips for Giving Yourself a Metabolic Tune-up

The first step to giving yourself a metabolic tune-up is locating and eliminating the causes of damage to the mitochondria:

Eat less processed food, junk food

• Detoxify by getting rid of environmental and internal toxins.

• Cool off the inflammation in your body.

• Balance your hormones.

Once you’ve done that, you need to boost your mitochondrial function and provide the mitochondria with the correct environment to thrive:

• Eat whole, real, colorful plant food. That’s eight to 12 servings of fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains every day. These foods are full of antioxidants and phytonutrients.

• Take mitochondria-protective and energy-boosting nutrients such as acetyl-L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10, N-acetyl-cysteine, NADH, D-ribose, resveratrol, and magnesium aspartate.

• Increase your intake of omega-3 fats to help build your mitochondrial membranes.

Taking care of your mitochondria and giving yourself a metabolic tune-up will allow you to increase your energy, lose weight, and age well. It is a cornerstone of creating lifelong vibrant health.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you experienced burnout and fatigue? What was that like?

What do you think about the idea of giving your metabolism a tune-up?

Do you believe that supplements can help you optimize biological function?

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

Is There Toxic Waste in Your Body?

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:17:16 -0400

Your body may be a toxic waste dump.

Worried?

You should be ...

We are exposed to 6 million pounds of mercury and the 2.5 billion pounds other toxic chemicals each year.

80,000 toxic chemicals have been released into our environment since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and very few have been tested for their long-term impact on human health. And let me tell you, the results aren’t pretty for those that have been tested ...

How can we not be affected by this massive amount of poison?

According to the nonprofit organization Environmental Working Group , the average newborn baby has 287 known toxins in his or her umbilical cord blood.

If a newborn is exposed to that many toxins, imagine how many you have been exposed to in your life ...

Do you think this may be why so many of us are sick and fat today?

The simple truth is that we are living in a sea of toxins and it is destroying our bodies and brains.

The two most important things you need to know to cure disease, create health, and lose weight are:

nutrition

Unfortunately, you probably aren’t going to learn much about them from your doctor. Most physicians today are still hopelessly ignorant in these areas. They were simply never taught about nutrition and detoxification in medical school.

However, there are many things you can do to reduce your toxic exposures and enhance your detoxification. Today I want to share some information your doctor probably won’t focus on in your next visit, even though it is at the very root of your health. I am going to outline a simple 10-step plan you can use to enhance your detoxification.

Enhancing detoxification is the 5th key of the 7 keys to UltraWellness. If you want to lose weight and get healthy, you need to clean up the toxic waste in your body. Today you will learn how.

The Role of Toxins in Health and Disease

The role of toxins and detoxification in health has been largely ignored by medicine.

Thankfully, scientists and practitioners are starting to recognize its importance in health.

I recently spoke about detoxification at the 13th International Symposium on Functional Medicine. The presentation was called Managing Biotransformation: The Metabolic, Genomic, and Detoxification Balance Points. Leading experts from all over the globe came together to present the data on the role of toxins in health and offer suggestions for how we can detoxify.

If you want all the scientific background on detoxification, I recommend reading the proceedings from that meeting. You will find extensive data on the impact toxins have on our health and how critical detoxification is for long-term wellness.

The reality is that many of you probably have symptoms of chronic toxicity but don’t realize that you’re toxic.

The following is a list of the common symptoms of chronic toxicity. If you suffer from any of the following, detoxifying might be critical for you to get healthy and feel good again:

Premenstrual syndrome

Difficulty concentrating

Trouble losing weight

But how do you detoxify? And what does that word even mean? Let’s look a little more closely at what detoxification is.

What are Toxicity and Detoxification?

When you hear the word "detox" you might think drug detox or alcohol detox or wheatgrass enemas. That’s not what I am talking about.

I am referring to the science of how our bodies get rid of waste. If waste builds up, we get sick. And the key is to figure out how to enhance your body’s capacity to detoxify and get rid of waste while minimizing your exposure to toxins.

This is so important, because many diseases of our society are actually related to toxicity.

Here are some of the diseases you may suffer from if you are toxic:

Attention deficit disorder

Depression and other mood disorders

Digestive diseases like Crohn’s disease, ulcers, and colitis

Menstrual problems

With so many conditions on that list, it might seem that everyone is toxic.

That may be true to differing degrees ...

Problems with detoxification form one of the roots of illness -- and signify one of the core systems in the body that must be working well for you to be healthy. If you feel lousy, it’s likely you’re toxic.

It is important to understand why we are toxic and how we can detoxify. I will explain how you can detoxify a little later, but first I want to tell you about where toxins come from and how we are overloaded.

To understand toxicity, you must understand the concept of "total load."

Total load is the total amount of stressors on your system at any one time -- it’s like what happens when a glass fills over with water. It takes a certain amount of water to fill the glass and then, after a certain point, you put more in and it overflows.

When our detoxification system is overwhelmed, it gets overloaded. That’s when we start developing symptoms and getting sick, but it may take years of accumulated stress and toxins to get to that point.

Here are some, but not all, of the factors that can contribute to your total toxic load:

• Exposure to heavy metals like mercury and lead, petrochemicals, residues, pesticides, and fertilizers.

• Food allergies, environmental allergies, molds, and toxins from molds.

• Eating a standard American diet.

• Mental, emotional, and spiritual toxins -- isolation, loneliness, anger, jealousy, and hostility, all of which translate into toxins in our system.

• Medications can sometimes be toxins. Often we need medications, but the reality is that most of us are overmedicated and use medications to treat problems for which there are better solutions, such as lifestyle and diet.

• Internal toxins -- things like bacteria, fungus, and yeast inside our gut as well as hormonal and metabolic toxins that we need to eliminate.

That’s a lot of toxins for our bodies to manage.

You may wonder: Why aren’t we all sick, given this incredible load of toxins?

The answer is simple.

It is because each of us is genetically and biochemically unique. Some of us are good at getting rid of toxins and waste, and others are not.

I am not. That is why I developed chronic fatigue syndrome.

I became overloaded with mercury and couldn’t get rid of it because I am missing a gene for GSTM1 -- a critical detoxifying enzyme for mercury. But by learning to support my system and how to detoxify, I was able to cure myself of a seemingly incurable condition.

What I learned is that there are five key steps to optimal detoxification. They are:

1. Identify and Get Rid of Toxins --

2. Fix Your Gut -- Gut imbalances are a key source of toxins for many.

3. Get Moving -- This help your blood and lymphatic circulation do its job.

4. Get Your Liver and Detox System Working -- If your detoxification system isn’t working properly, this is a serious problem and needs to be addressed. A great place to start is the 10-step approach outlined below.

5. Detox Your Mind, Heart, and Spirit -- This is just as important as detoxing your body, and it’s an area few of us ever think about as a source of toxins.

To completely detoxify your body you need to work through each of these steps carefully, and that can take some time. But you can start today by following this simple 10-step plan.

10 Simple Steps to Enhance Detoxification

Proper detoxification is so essential for health that you need to start enhancing your body’s ability to detoxify today. Here is how to do it:

1. Drink Clean --

2. Eliminate Properly -- Keep your bowels moving, at least once or twice a day. And if you can’t get going, then you need some help. This can include taking two tablespoons of ground flax seeds and taking acidophilus and extra magnesium citrate capsules. If you have any chronic diseases or problems, you have to be careful about taking supplements and should work with your doctor.

3. Eat Clean -- You should also eat organic produce and animal products to eliminate the toxins, hormones, and antibiotics in your food.

4. Eat Detoxifying Food -- You should eat 8 to 10 servings of colorful fruits and vegetables a day, particularly family of the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, collards, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi) and the garlic family (garlic and onions), which help increase sulfur in the body and help detoxification.

5. Minimize Drugs -- Avoid stimulants, sedatives, and drugs, such as caffeine and nicotine, and try to reduce alcohol intake.

6. Get Moving -- Exercise five days a week with focus on conditioning your cardiovascular system, strengthening exercises, and stretching exercises.

7. Avoid the White Menace -- This includes white flour and white sugar.

8. Sweat -- Sweat profusely at least three times a week, using a sauna, steam, or a detox bath.

9. Supplement -- Take a high-quality multivitamin and mineral supplement.

10. Relax -- Relax deeply every day to get your nervous system in a state of calm, rest, and relaxation.

Simply following these steps will help to correct problems caused by toxicity, maximize your body’s own detoxification capacity, and help you safely eliminate toxins stores in your body.

Depending on your symptoms, genetic predispositions and environmental exposures, you may need different levels of nutrients and types of treatment, but this is an excellent way to get started on detoxification today.

Remember, getting rid of toxins and learning how to optimize your detoxification system is essential for creating lifelong vibrant health.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Why do you think we live in such a toxic world?

Do you think the government should do more to regulate toxins? If so, what kind of legislation should be put in place to protect us?

Have you suffered from toxic exposures? What were they and how did they make you feel?

Do you have any other suggestions for detoxification?

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

Is Your Inner Tube Making You Sick?

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:22:01 -0400

There might be something wrong with your inner tube, and it could be making you sick and fat.

You may not even realize you have a problem ... but if you have health concerns of any kind or you are overweight, your inner tube could be the root cause.

Of course, I’m not talking about a beach toy. I mean the inner tube of life -- your digestive system!

It is likely that you suffer from (or have suffered from) some type of digestive disorder -- irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, reflux, gas, and other things too gross to mention in print.

And you are not alone. More than 100 million Americans have digestive problems.

Two of the top five selling drugs in America are for digestive problems, and they cost us billions and billions of dollars.

There are more than 200 over-the-counter (OTC) remedies for digestive disorders, many of which can create additional digestive problems.

Visits for intestinal disorders are among the most common reasons for trips to primary care physicians.

And that’s not even the worst news.

Most of us (including most doctors) do not recognize or know that digestive problems wreak havoc in the entire body, leading to allergies, arthritis, autoimmune disease, rashes, acne, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, autism, dementia, cancer, and more.

So having a healthy gut means more than simply being free of annoyances like bloating or heartburn! It is absolutely central to your health. It is connected to EVERYTHING that happens in your body.

That’s why I almost always start helping people treat chronic health problems by fixing their gut, which is what I want to help you do today.

Today , you will learn how you can find out if you have a problem with your gut (though many of you won’t need me to tell you -- your gut will speak for itself!), and I will give you 7 simple steps you can take today to heal your inner tube of life.

Fixing your digestion is the 4th key of the 7 Keys to UltraWellness or functional medicine, and it is absolutely essential that you heal this critical system in your body if you want to achieve optimum health.

Why your gut is so important? Let me explain ...

How Your Gut Keeps You Healthy or Makes You Ill

The health of your gut determines what nutrients are absorbed and what toxins, allergens, and microbes are kept out. It is directly linked to the health of your whole body.

Intestinal health could be defined as the optimal digestion, absorption, and assimilation of food. But that is a big job that depends on many other factors. Let’s look at a few of them …

First, there are bugs in your gut that form a diverse and interdependent ecosystem like a rainforest. In fact, there are 500 species and 3 pounds of bacteria in your gut which form a HUGE chemical factory that helps you digest your food, regulate hormones, excrete toxins, and produce vitamins and other healing compounds that keep your gut and your body healthy.

This ecosystem of friendly bacteria must be in balance for you to be healthy.

Too many of the wrong bacteria, like parasites and yeasts, or not enough of the good ones, like Lactobacillus or Bifidobacteria, can seriously damage your health.

So keeping a healthy balance of bugs in your intestines is one factor to good gut health.

Second, there is your gut-immune system. Your entire immune system -- and the rest of your body -- is protected from the toxic environment in your gut by a lining that is only ONE cell-thick layer. If spread out, this lining would take up a surface area the size of a tennis court, and the entire thing is covered by a sewer!

If that barrier is damaged, you can become allergic to foods you may normally be able to digest perfectly well, you will get sick, your immune system will become overactive, and it will begin producing inflammation throughout your body.

Filtering out the good molecules from the bad molecules and protecting your immune system is yet another important factor in gut health.

Third, there is your second brain -- your gut’s nervous system. Did you know your gut, actually contains MORE neurotransmitters than your brain? In fact, the gut has a brain of its own. It is called the "enteric nervous system" and it is a very sophisticated piece of your biology that is wired to your brain in intricate ways.

Messages constantly travel back and forth between your gut-brain and your head-brain, and when those messages are interfered with in any way your health will suffer.

Fourth, your gut also has to get rid of all the toxins produced as byproducts of your metabolism, which your liver dumps into bile. If things get backed up when you are constipated, you will become toxic and your health will suffer.

And last but not least, your gut must break down all the food you eat into its individual components, separate out the vitamins and minerals, and shuttle everything across the one cell-thick layer mentioned above so it can get into your bloodstream and nourish your body and brain.

Your gut has quite a lot to manage. Even in perfect world it is hard to keep all of this in balance. But in our modern world there are endless insults that can knock our digestive systems off balance; it is that much more difficult to maintain excellent digestive health.

How to Know if Your Gut is Out of Balance

To fix your digestion, you first need to understand what is sending your gut out of balance in the first place. The list is short:

• Overuse of medications that damage the gut or block normal digestive function -- things like acid blockers (Prilosec, Nexium, etc.), anti-inflammatory medication (aspirin, Advil, and Aleve), and overuse of antibiotics, steroids, and hormones

• Undetected gluten intolerance, celiac disease or low grade food allergies to foods such as dairy, eggs, or corn.

• Chronic low-grade infections or gut imbalances with overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine, yeast overgrowth, parasites, or even more serious gut infections

• Toxins like mercury and mold toxins, which damage the gut

• Lack of adequate digestive enzyme function, which can come from acid-blocking medication use, or zinc deficiency

• Stress, which can alter the gut nervous system, cause a leaky gut, and change the normal bacteria in the gut

What happens then is obvious. You get sick.

But what’s important to understand is that many diseases that seem to be totally unrelated to the gut -- such as eczema or psoriasis or arthritis -- are actually CAUSED by gut problems. By focusing on the gut, you can get better. Here is an example …

Can Eczema Start in the Gut?

Allison, one of my patients who suffered from eczema -- a weepy, red, oozing, scaly, itchy rash -- all over her body is perfect example of what can happen when your gut is out of balance and the extraordinary level of healing that can occur when you fix your digestion.

This woman, who saw doctor after doctor, put salves, lotions, and potions on her skin and gave her steroids and antibiotics. But none of them ever addressed the underlying cause of her problem.

Allison was 57 years old and had been suffering from severe, unrelenting eczema for eight years. She ate a high-sugar diet and had a history of frequent vaginal yeast infections.

When I saw her, I checked her gut and found she had a leaky gut -- that one-cell thick lining in her intestines was breached and wasn’t working properly. She had developed 24 IgG food allergies, and her stool had no healthy bacteria and an overgrowth of yeast from years of taking antibiotics. She also had very high blood levels of antibodies against yeast.

So I helped her heal her gut. I asked her to stop eating the foods she reacted to, told her to stop feeding the yeast in her gastrointestinal tract by cutting out sugar and refined carbohydrates (which they thrive on), and killed the yeast in her gut with antifungal medications and herbs. Then I helped her rebuild her ecosystem of healthy bacteria with probiotics and provided here with healing gut nutrients that allowed her intestinal lining to resume its normal function.

The result?

Her eczema disappeared for the first time in eight years -- and it stayed away!

You can experience the same thing Allison did. You may be able to heal from many of your chronic symptoms simply by fixing your digestion. Here is how you do it.

7 Steps to Optimal Digestive Health

To heal your inner tube of life you simply need to:

Eat whole unprocessed foods.

fiber

2. Eliminate food allergies. If you think you have food sensitivities, try an elimination diet. Cut out gluten, dairy, yeast, corn, soy, and eggs for a week or two and see how your gut feels and what happens to your other symptoms.

3. Treat any infections or overgrowth of bugs -- Parasites, small bowel bacteria, and yeasts can all inhibit proper gut function. You must treat these infections if you want to heal.

4. Replenish your digestive enzymes. When you don’t have enough digestive enzymes in your gut, you can’t properly covert the foods you eat into the raw materials necessary to run your body and brain. Take broad-spectrum digestive enzymes with your food to solve the problem.

5. Rebuild your rain forest of friendly bacteria. Take probiotic supplements. They will help you rebuild the healthy bacteria so essential to good gut health.

6. Get good fat. Take extra omega-3 supplements, which help cool inflammation in the gut.

7. Heal your gut lining. Use gut-healing nutrients such as glutamine and zinc to repair the lining in your gut so it can resume its normal function.

Fixing your digestion may take some time, but it can be done. And it is absolutely essential if you want to achieve vibrant health. So work on your inner tube of life using the steps above and watch as your symptoms (and those extra pounds) disappear.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Did you realize how important your gut is to your overall health?

What steps have you taken to fix your digestion? How have they worked?

Why do you think the pharmaceutical industry develops and actively advertises drugs that are known to inhibit proper gut function and thus compromise health?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

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• King DS. Can allergic exposure provoke psychological symptoms? A double-blind test. Biol Psychiatry. 1981 Jan;16(1):3-19.

• Ludvigsson JF, Reutfors J, Osby U, Ekbom A, Montgomery SM. Coeliac disease and risk of mood disorders--a general population-based cohort study. J Affect Disord. 2007 Apr;99(1-3):117-26. Epub 2006 Oct 6.

• Hu WT, Murray JA, Greenaway MC, Parisi JE, Josephs KA. Cognitive impairment and celiac disease. Arch Neurol. 2006 Oct;63(10):1440-6.

• Wilders-Truschnig M, Mangge H, Lieners C, Gruber HJ, Mayer C, März W. IgG Antibodies Against Food Antigens are Correlated with Inflammation and Intima Media Thickness in Obese Juveniles. Exp Clin Endocrinol Diabetes. 2007 Dec 10

• Thomas T. MacDonald and Giovanni Monteleone Immunity, Inflammation, and Allergy in the Gut, Science 25 March 2005 307: 1920-1925

• Atkinson W, Sheldon TA, Shaath N, Whorwell PJ. Food elimination based on IgG antibodies in irritable bowel syndrome: a randomised controlled trial. Gut. 2004 Oct;53(10):1459-64.

• http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/statistics.htm

• Benarroch EE. Enteric nervous system: functional organization and neurologic implications. Neurology. 2007 Nov 13;69(20):1953-7. Review.

• Sandler RH, Bolte ER, Chez MG, Schrift MJ. Relief of psychiatric symptoms in a patient with Crohn's disease after metronidazole therapy. Clin Infect Dis. 2000 Jan;30(1):213-4.

• Lin, H. Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth: A Framework for Understanding Irritable Bowel Syndrome JAMA. 2004 292: 852-858

• Pimentel M, Park S, Mirocha J, Kane SV, Kong Y. The effect of a nonabsorbed oral antibiotic (rifaximin) on the symptoms of the irritable bowel syndrome: a randomized trial. Ann Intern Med. 2006 Oct 17;145(8):557-63.

• Av SP. Hepatic encephalopathy: pathophysiology and advances in therapy. Trop Gastroenterol. 2007 Jan-Mar;28(1):4-10. Review.

• Jansson-Nettelbladt E, Meurling S, Petrini B, Sjölin J. Endogenous ethanol fermentation in a child with short bowel syndrome. Acta Paediatr. 2006 Apr;95(4):502-4

• Sandler RH, Finegold SM, Bolte ER, Buchanan CP, Maxwell AP, Väisänen ML, Nelson MN, Wexler HM. Short-term benefit from oral vancomycin treatment of regressive-onset autism. J Child Neurol. 2000 Jul;15(7):429-35.

• Parracho HM, Bingham MO, Gibson GR, McCartney AL. Differences between the gut microflora of children with autistic spectrum disorders and that of healthy children. J Med Microbiol. 2005 Oct;54(Pt 10):987-91.

• Wakefield AJ, Puleston JM, Montgomery SM, Anthony A, O'Leary JJ, Murch SH. Review article: the concept of entero-colonic encephalopathy, autism and opioid receptor ligands. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2002 Apr;16(4):663-74.

• Aytac U, Dang NH.CD26/dipeptidyl peptidase IV: a regulator of immune function and a potential molecular target for therapy. Curr Drug Targets Immune Endocr Metabol Disord. 2004 Mar;4(1):11-8. Review.

• Mentlein R. Dipeptidyl-peptidase IV (CD26)--role in the inactivation of regulatory peptides. Regul Pept. 1999 Nov 30;85(1):9-24. Review.

• Ek J, Stensrud M, Reichelt KL. Gluten-free diet decreases urinary peptide levels in children with celiac disease. J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr. 1999 Sep;29(3):282-5.

• Liu Y, Heiberg T, Reichelt KL. Towards a possible aetiology for depressions? Behav Brain Funct. 2007 Sep 14;3:47.

• Wakefield AJ, Ashwood P, Limb K, Anthony A. The significance of ileo-colonic lymphoid nodular hyperplasia in children with autistic spectrum disorder. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2005 Aug;17(8):827-36.

• Uhlmann V, Martin CM, Sheils O, Pilkington L, Silva I, Killalea A, Murch SB, Walker-Smith J, Thomson M, Wakefield AJ, O'Leary JJ.Potential viral pathogenic mechanism for new variant inflammatory bowel disease. Mol Pathol. 2002 Apr;55(2):84-90.

• Kawashima H, Mori T, Kashiwagi Y, Takekuma K, Hoshika A, Wakefield A. Detection and sequencing of measles virus from peripheral mononuclear cells from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and autism. Dig Dis Sci. 2000 Apr;45(4):723-9

• Millward C, Ferriter M, Calver S, Connell-Jones G. Gluten- and casein-free diets for autistic spectrum disorder. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004;(2):CD003498. Review.

Is Your Body Burning Up with Hidden Inflammation?

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:00:51 -0400

Could something as simple as a quick and easy blood test save your life?

Absolutely.

It is called a C-reactive protein test, and it measures the degree of HIDDEN inflammation in your body.

Finding out whether or not you are suffering from hidden inflammation is critical, because almost every modern disease is caused or affected by it.

If your immune system and its ability to quell inflammation in your body are impaired, watch out. You are headed toward illness and premature aging.

Fortunately, addressing the causes of inflammation and learning how to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle can dramatically improve your health.

Today, I am going to review what the primary causes of inflammation are and give you a simple, 7-step approach that will help you cool the fires raging out of control in your body.

Cooling off Inflammation is Key #3 to UltraWellness and in this blog -- the third in this 7-part series on the 7 keys to UltraWellness -- I am going to teach you how to do just that.

The first step is to understand what inflammation is and why it can become so dangerous.

Inflammation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Everyone who has had a sore throat, rash, hives, or a sprained ankle knows about inflammation. These are normal and appropriate responses of the immune -- your body’s defense system -- to infection and trauma.

This kind of inflammation is good. We need it to survive -- to help us determine friend from foe.

The trouble occurs when that defense system runs out of control, like a rebel army bent on destroying its own country.

Many of us are familiar with an overactive immune response and too much inflammation. It results in common conditions like allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disease, and asthma. This is bad inflammation, and if it is left unchecked it can become downright ugly.

What few people understand is that hidden inflammation run amok is at the root of all chronic illness we experience -- conditions like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementia, depression, cancer, and even autism.

A study of a generally "healthy" elderly population found that those with the highest levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6 (two markers of systemic inflammation) were 260 percent more likely to die during the next 4 years. The increase in deaths was due to cardiovascular and other causes.

We may feel healthy, but if this inflammation is raging inside of us, then we are in trouble.

The real concern is not our response to immediate injury, infection, or insult. It is the chronic, smoldering inflammation that slowly destroys our organs and our ability to function optimally and leads to rapid aging.

Common treatments such as anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen or aspirin) and steroids like prednisone -- though often useful for acute problems -- interfere with the body’s own immune response and can lead to serious and deadly side effects.

In fact, as many people die from taking anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen every year as die from asthma or leukemia. Stopping these drugs would be equivalent to finding the cure for asthma or leukemia –- that’s a bold statement, but the data is there to back it up.

Meanwhile, the real effects of statin drugs like Lipitor in reducing heart disease may have nothing to do with lowering cholesterol, but with their unintended side effect of reducing inflammation.

But is taking medication the right approach to addressing the problem of inflammation?

No. It is DOWNSTREAM medicine.

Here’s how UPSTREAM medicine thinks about inflammation ...

How to Locate the Causes of Hidden Inflammation

So if inflammation and immune imbalances are at the root of most of modern disease, how do we find the causes and get the body back in balance?

First, we need to identify the triggers and causes of inflammation. Then we need to help reset the body’s natural immune balance by providing the right conditions for it to thrive.

As a doctor, my job is to find those inflammatory factors unique to each person and to see how various lifestyle, environmental, or infectious factors spin the immune system out of control, leading to a host of chronic illnesses.

Thankfully, the list of things that cause inflammation is relatively short:

• Lack of exercise

• Stress

• Hidden or chronic infections with viruses, bacteria, yeasts, or parasites

• Hidden allergens from food or the environment

• Toxins such as mercury and pesticides

• Mold toxins and allergens

By listening carefully to a person’s story and performing a few specific tests , I can discover the causes of inflammation most people.

It’s important to understand that this concept of inflammation is not specific to any one organ or medical specialty. In fact, if you read a medical journal from any field of medicine, you will find endless articles about how inflammation is at the root of problems with the particular organ or area they focus on.

So what’s the problem?

There is almost no communication between specialties. Everyone is treating the downstream effects of inflammation, but addressing the causes of inflammation that are upstream could help people who have multiple problems that are really linked together by this common root cause.

Take, for example, a man who came to see me recently. He wanted to climb a mountain and asked for my help to get healthy. He was 57 years old and took about 15 medications for six different inflammatory conditions: high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, colitis, reflux, asthma, and an autoimmune disease of his hair follicles called alopecia.

Yet when I asked him how he felt, he said "great". I told him I was surprised because he was on so many medications.

Yes, he said, but everything was very well controlled with the latest medications prescribed by the top specialists he saw in every field—the lung doctor for his asthma, the gastroenterologist for his colitis and reflux, the cardiologist for his high blood pressure, the endocrinologist for his pre-diabetes, the dermatologist for his hair loss.

But did any of those specialists ask him why he had six different inflammatory diseases and why his immune system was so pissed off? Was it just bad luck that he "got" all these diseases -- or was there something connecting all these problems?

He looked puzzled and said "no".

I then searched for and uncovered the cause of his problems: gluten. He had celiac disease, an autoimmune disease related to eating gluten, the protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and oats.

Six months later he came back to see me. He had lost 25 pounds, had no more high blood pressure, asthma, reflux, or colitis, and said he had normal bowel movements for the first time in his life. His hair was even growing back. And he was off nearly all his medications.

7 Steps to Living an Anti-inflammatory Life

So once you have figured out the causes of inflammation in your life, gotten rid of them, the next step is to keep living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. But how do you do that?

Here is what I recommend. It’s a disarmingly simple but extraordinarily effective way to achieve UltraWellness:

1. Whole Foods --

high-fiber

trans fats

phytonutrients

2. Healthy Fats -- Give yourself an oil change by eating healthy monounsaturated fats in olive oil, nuts and avocadoes, and getting more omega-3 fats from small fish like sardines, herring, sable, and wild salmon.

3. Regular Exercise –- Mounting evidence tells us that regular exercise reduces inflammation. It also improves immune function, strengthens your cardiovascular systems, corrects and prevents insulin resistance, and is key for improving your mood and erasing the effects of stress. In fact, regular exercise is one among a small handful of lifestyle changes that correlates with improved health in virtually ALL of the scientific literature. So get moving already!

4. Relax -- Learn how to engage your vagus nerve by actively relaxing. This powerful nerve relaxes your whole body and lowers inflammation when you practice yoga or meditation, breathe deeply, or even take a hot bath.

5. Avoid Allergens -- If you have food allergies, find out what you’re allergic to and get stop eating those foods—gluten and dairy are two common culprits.

6. Heal Your Gut -- Take probiotics to help your digestion and improve the balance of healthy bacteria in your gut, which reduces inflammation.

7. Supplement -- Take a multivitamin/multimineral supplement, fish oil, and vitamin D, all of which help reduce inflammation.

Taking this comprehensive approach to inflammation and balancing your immune system addresses one of the most important core systems of the body.

In the future, medicine may no longer have specialties like cardiology or neurology or gastroenterology, but new specialists like "inflammologists".

But by understanding these concepts and core systems that are the basis of healthy living now, you don’t have to wait.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you had your C-reactive protein tested?

Do you think inflammation may be at the core of your health condition?

Why do you think so many doctors practice downstream medicine instead of catching problems early with upstream medicine?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Are Your Hormones Making You Miserable?

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:24:58 -0400

Are your hormones out of balance?

Does your life feel like a song played badly out of tune?

If so, the problem may have to do with imbalances in your hormones, which are wreaking havoc on your body and mind.

There is one hormone in particular I am going to focus on today, and it could be at the root of your problems.

I will share with you 12 tips you can start using immediately to begin rebalancing your hormones and bring your life back into tune.

But first, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you crave sugar or salt?

• Are you overweight and putting on more and more belly fat?

• If you are a woman, do you have premenstrual syndrome, painful or heavy periods, and a low sex drive?

• Are you depressed? Do you sleep poorly?

• Do you feel tired but wired?

• Do you need coffee to wake up in the morning and a few glasses of wine to calm down at night?

If you answered "yes," your hormones may be out of balance, and you are not alone ...

In fact, this is how most Americans feel because we are living out of harmony with our natural biological rhythms. This is because small molecules in our bodies that we depend on to keep us in balance are running haywire.

These messenger molecules are involved in almost every function of the body, and they are critical to our well-being.

They are our hormones -- messenger molecules of our endocrine system -- and neurotransmitters -- messenger molecules of our brain and nervous system.

Understand how and why these systems get out of balance and you will go a long way toward understanding why Americans are so tired, depressed, and overweight!

Our hormone and neurotransmitter system is another one of the core systems of the body that we must address to achieve vibrant health. That is why Balancing Your Hormones is Key #2 to UltraWellness.

In today’s blog -- the second in this 7-part series on the 7 Keys to UltraWellness -- I will explain why your hormones get out of balance, how to get them back in balance, how they work, and why so many of you feel miserable because of them.

The Four Major Hormonal Epidemics in America and Why They Are Making Us Miserable

All of our hormones and neurotransmitters work together as one dynamic system to help us maintain optimal health and keep us happy, focused, and peaceful. They are like a finely orchestrated symphony that must work together to keep everything in balance.

The command and control center for this process is in your brain. It is made up of the hypothalamus and pituitary glands.

This center sends signals to distant parts of the body to control everything from your stress response through the adrenal glands to your blood sugar balance through the pancreas to your thyroid hormone via the thyroid gland, to your sexual behavior and function through the reproductive organs. It also controls growth, sleep, mood, and much more.

In addition to these hormonal messengers you also have important brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, which send messages throughout your body to every cell, organ, and tissue and help you do everything from moving your arm to feeling happy or sad.

When your neurotransmitters or hormones are out of balance, literally everything in your body goes haywire.

There are four big epidemics of hormonal problems in Americans today that are sending millions of people out of balance: too much insulin (from sugar), too much cortisol and adrenaline (from stress), imbalances of sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, and not enough thyroid hormones.

Although all 4 of these hormone epidemics are important, today I want to focus on the most common -- and therefore the most problematic -- of these conditions: too much insulin.

Insulin Resistance: Awash in a Sea of Sugar

Let me tell you the story of a man who came to me. His story may be all too familiar to you ...

James was a 46 year-old Wall Street executive who came to me for a cardiac stress test. He was a hard-driving, don’t-look-up type of guy who was convinced he was dying of heart disease.

Every afternoon, he would experience the sudden onset of sweating, a racing heart, anxiety, and shortness of breath -- in other words, he thought he was going to die!

He was also thick around the middle. After taking one look at him and listening to his story, I said, "You don’t eat breakfast, do you?"

"And you feel tired after eating, so that is why you skip food during the day -- to keep sharp for work," I continued. "And when you feel like that, you go to the vending machine for a soda and get a quick sugar fix, and in a few minutes you feel better."

Shocked, he asked, "How did you know?"

I explained to James that he was fighting with his genes and was insulin resistant, leading to wide swings in blood sugar that were responsible for his symptoms.

He couldn’t regulate his blood sugar because he pumped out too much insulin. And this was leading to every one of his symptoms ...

When you eat too much sugar, flour, and white rice, your insulin levels spike.

When this happens, your cells become resistant to its effects. So you pump out more and more insulin, become even MORE resistant to its effects, and end up in the vicious cycle of insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance can cause energy and mood swings -- AND it can take you down the slippery road toward high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, cancer, brain aging, dementia, and more.

But James is not alone in his problem with blood sugar control ...

Between 80 and 100 million Americans suffer from insulin resistance. It is not exactly the same in everyone, but the ultimate consequences can be similar.

Most people with insulin resistance have extra fat around the middle.

(Quick Tip: Check your waist-to-hip ratio -- the measurement around your belly button divided by the measurement around your hips. If it is greater than 0.8, you likely have insulin resistance.)

You may be tall, thin, short, fat, or any combination of these and still have insulin resistance.

The only way to know for sure is to take an insulin response test, which measures blood sugar AND insulin while you are fasting and 1 and 2 hours after you consume a 75-gram sugar drink.

Just measuring blood sugar alone isn’t enough. You HAVE to measure insulin -- this is something that many doctors miss.

Insulin resistance is not a genetic defect, an error in our evolution, or a mistake by God. It is the result of the simple fact that we have strayed from eating in harmony with our genes. In other words, we do not fit into our genes.

Historically, we ate the equivalent of only 20 teaspoons of sugar a year as hunter–gatherers.

But just 200 years ago, we started consuming about 10 pounds of sugar per person per year -- a 5,000% increase over our evolutionary ancestors!

As if that weren’t bad enough, we now we eat 150 pounds per person per year, or about 1/2 pound each day -- that’s the equivalent of drinking 6 cans of Coke or eating 8 Snickers bars per day.

What’s worst, the average child consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar a day!

That means that we are now eating 75,000% more sugar today than our ancestors did.

This is ridiculous -- no wonder so many of us are sick, fat, tired, and depressed!

We evolved in a world without supermarkets, convenience stores, or fast food restaurants. We had to work for our food and had limited access to refined foods or excess calories.

In fact, our genes are pre-agricultural -- we only started farming 10,000 years ago and only started refining flour about 200 years ago with the advent of the steam engine-powered flourmill.

With the advent of 15,000 low-fat foods (which are also high-sugar, high-calorie foods) on the market over the last 15 to 20 years, we have created an epidemic of increasing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The scientific foundation for the low-fat movement was shaky from the start, and the consequences of that movement were the exact opposite of its intentions -- we are now the most unhealthy generation.

Madison Avenue got ahead of medical science to the detriment of us all.

How Does All This Sugar Harm Our Health?

Well, our bodies normally produce insulin in response to food in our stomachs, particularly sugar. When we eat too much sugar we produce FAR too much insulin, and this leads to a variety of health problems.

We once thought that insulin’s only role was to help the sugar enter cells so it could be metabolized, transforming the stored energy of the sun (in plant foods) with the oxygen we breathe into the energy we use every day to run our bodies.

We were wrong.

Insulin has many other effects on the body. And when there is too much of it, the results can be catastrophic.

Here is what too much insulin really does to your body and health:

• Insulin acts on your brain to increase appetite, specifically an appetite for sugar. Try as you might, as long as your insulin levels are high you will fight a losing battle for weight loss.

• It increases LDL cholesterol, lowers HDL cholesterol, raises triglycerides, and increases your blood pressure. Insulin resistance causes 50% of all reported cases of high blood pressure.

• It makes your blood sticky and more likely to clot, leading to heart attacks and strokes.

• It stimulates the growth of cancer cells.

• It increases inflammation and oxidative stress and ages your brain.

• It even increases homocysteine because sugar consumption decreases vitamin B6 and folic acid.

• Insulin also causes sex hormone problems and can lead to infertility, hair growth where you don’t want to grow it, hair loss where you don’t want to lose it, acne, low testosterone in men, and more. It also leads to mood disturbances.

Fortunately, balancing blood sugar and correcting insulin resistance are well within our reach.

Scientific advances of the last few decades show us how.

While some medications can help with insulin resistance, such as Glucophage, Avandia, and Actos, they have side effects and are only a Band-aid unless they are used along with a comprehensive nutrition, exercise, and stress management plan like the one described below.

Resetting Your Metabolism for Optimal Blood Sugar

My goal is to make your metabolism more efficient, to make your cells more intelligent and cooperative, not resistant. In other words, you will need much less insulin to accomplish the task of balancing your blood sugar.

You can achieve this by resetting your metabolism of sugar and insulin.

To do this you have to eliminate the things that are knocking you out of balance, and provide your body the things it needs to reestablish optimal balance and thrive.

Here is what to do:

high-fructose corn syrup

• Don’t drink liquid calories in juice and soda. Your body doesn’t feel full from them, so you eat more all day.

• Stop consuming all processed, junk, or packaged foods. If it doesn’t look like the food your great grandmother ate, stay away.

• Stop eating trans or hydrogenated fats.

• Slow the rate of sugar uptake from the gut by balancing your meals with healthy protein (nuts, seeds, beans, small wild fish, organic chicken), healthy carbs (vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains), and healthy fats (olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocadoes, fish oil).

• Eat plenty of soluble fiber (30 to 50 grams a day).

• Eat smaller, more frequent meals.

• Make your cells smarter by giving them an oil change with omega-3 fats, which help fix cell membranes so that they can more readily receive the messages from insulin.

• Move your body: Exercise improves your cells’ ability to work better, respond to insulin better, and burn sugar faster.

• Relax! Stress reduction also helps improve blood sugar control.

• Make your cells more efficient by increasing specific nutrients, such as chromium, vanadium, magnesium, vitamin E, biotin, the B vitamins, zinc, bioflavonoids, and some newer compounds including alpha lipoic acid, arginine, and carnitine.

• Herbs may also be of benefit. These include Panax ginseng, ginkgo biloba, green tea, fenugreek, gymnema sylvestre, bitter melon, and garlic.

Just balancing this one hormone -- insulin -- can have wide-ranging effects on all your other hormones and brain chemicals and is a great place to start on your path to vibrant health.

Just try these suggestions for 1 week and see how you feel -- you may be shocked at how quickly your body can recover.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What do you think can be done to cleanse our food supply of so much sugar?

Do you believe the corn industry’s ads on the safety of high-fructose corn syrup?

How can we protect our children from consuming massive amounts of sugar?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

How to Optimize Your Nutrition for Vibrant Health

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:29:55 -0400

Confused about what "good nutrition" is?

You shouldn't be -– we know what works and what doesn't.

In a moment, I will share 5 simple tips to help you optimize your nutrition and achieve vibrant health, but first let me clear up a few misconceptions.

Despite the "conflicting" scientific studies and media reports designed to confound rather than enlighten, there is no confusion about what constitutes good nutrition.

If we were to gather the world's top nutrition scientists and experts —- free from food industry influence -- there would be very little debate about the essential properties of good nutrition.

Unfortunately, most doctors are nutritionally illiterate. Worse, they don’t know how to use the most powerful medicine available to them: food.

Common sense and scientific research both lead us to the conclusion that if we want healthy bodies, we must put the right raw materials into our bodies: real, whole, local, fresh, unadulterated, unprocessed, and chemical-, hormone-, and antibiotic-free food.

There is NO role in our diets for foreign molecules such as trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, which interfere with our biology at every level.

If you want junk out, put junk in. Enough said.

If you want a whole, healthy body, put in whole real food.

Today I will explain how you can do that ...

This is the first in a 7-part series where I will give detailed explanations about each of the 7 Keys to UltraWellness. Key #1 is Optimize Nutrition, and in this blog I will explain what constitutes a healthy diet, give you some tips to help you optimize your nutrition, and clarify whether or not supplements are truly a waste of money.

The Basics of a Healthy Diet

What I am about to share might be shocking ...

Carbohydrates are the single most important food for long-term health and well-being.

This may be surprising given the low-carb movement, and "carbophobia" in our country, but it's true.

Of course, I don't mean the over-processed, refined, sugary, white foods we commonly think of as carbohydrates, such as donuts, bread, bagels, muffins, colas, juices, and most junk food.

And I don't mean the cheap, super-sweet, government-subsidized high-fructose corn syrup that is driving our epidemic of obesity and chronic disease.

The carbohydrates I am talking about are the real, whole, nourishing plant foods that the human species has thrived on since from the dawn of evolution.

Most of the food consumed by humans since the beginning of time has been carbohydrates. In fact, plant foods are comprised mostly of carbohydrates: vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices.

These foods contain slowly released sources of sugar that prevent surges of blood sugar and insulin. Too much insulin causes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, and even dementia.

Carbohydrates contain almost all the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to operate normally and optimally.

They also contain fiber, which helps normalize our digestive function and slows the absorption of sugar and fats into the body, keeping us balanced.

The bonuses in plant foods are phytonutrients -- colorful healing compounds made by plants to protect themselves, but that also protect us against aging, obesity, brain damage, and more.

For example, broccoli and the cruciferous vegetable family contain powerful detoxifying compounds that protect us against environmental toxins.

Green tea contains anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and detoxifying properties.

Resveratrol from red grapes boosts our energy production and protects our cells.

These are just a few examples of the thousands of phytonutrients in the plant foods that should be the foundation of our diet.

Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, summed up all nutritional research in 3 simple principles:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

In fact, you need know nothing else to be vibrantly healthy.

That's it. Eat real whole food as it came from the earth: fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices, eggs, and lean animal protein like fish and chicken.

Imagine what your great-grandmother would recognize as food, or what might have been on her dinner table. Just food. There is really no such thing as junk food –- there is just food, and then there is junk.

Whole foods that contain phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, omega-3 fats, and fiber all directly, immediately, and specifically interact with our genes, controlling moment-to-moment changes in our physiology and biochemistry.

Food literally talks to our genes. Food is not just a source of calories, it is also a source of INFORMATION.

The key is to send the right information to your genes by eating whole, real, food -- mostly plants. Specific nutrients or plant compounds bind to receptors in cells, translating messages from the foods we eat or vitamins we take in into instructions that are carried out by our cells through their effect on our DNA.

That is why food can heal or harm. You make that choice every day by what you put on your fork.

That means if you eat whole, real, fresh food, you don’t need vitamins. Right?

Well, maybe ...

Do We Need Vitamins or Not?

I agree that you don’t need vitamins and that they are a waste of money.

But that is true ONLY if you eat wild, fresh, whole, organic, local, non-genetically modified food grown in virgin mineral and nutrient rich soils, and not transported across vast distances and stored for months before eaten.

It is true ONLY if you work and live outside, breathe only fresh unpolluted air, drink only pure, clean water, sleep nine hours a night, move your body every day, and are free from chronic stressors and exposures to environmental toxins.

Then you don’t need vitamins.

But, of course, this describes absolutely no one on the planet! Therefore, in reality, we ALL need vitamins.

Most people don’t understand the role of vitamins and minerals in our bodies. I certainly didn't when I finished my medical training.

I thought if we just got enough of a nutrient to prevent some horrible deficiency state like scurvy (vitamin C deficiency), then we didn't have to worry about getting more than that.

I also believed that if you ate "enriched food" like white flour with a few vitamins added back in, or milk with vitamin D added in, additional vitamin supplementation was a waste.

What most people don't realize is the same thing that I didn’t realize when I first started practicing medicine: The real reason our food supply must be "enriched" is because it has been so processed that it is "impoverished" to start with.

So why can’t you just eat "nutrient-rich" food, instead of eating "nutrient-poor" food?

Today, even with our "enriched food," more than 92 percent of Americans are deficient in one or more vitamins. That doesn't mean they are receiving less than the amount they need to get for optimal health. That means they receive less than the MINIMUM amount necessary to prevent deficiency diseases.

In a study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, researchers found that 6 percent of those tested had serious vitamin C deficiency and 30 percent were borderline low.

A report in the journal Pediatrics found that obesity and malnutrition can coexist. Obese, overfed, and undernourished children with cognitive disorders were found to have scurvy and severe vitamin D deficiency or rickets. These deficiencies damaged their brains. You never think of an overweight person as malnourished, but they are!

A USDA survey showed that 37 percent of Americans don’t get enough vitamin C, 70 percent not enough vitamin E, almost 75 percent don’t get enough zinc, and 40 percent don’t get enough iron.

I would say that 100 percent of us don't have enough of the basic nutrients to create optimal health or give ourselves a metabolic tune up.

There are many reasons why the foods we eat no longer contain the nutrient levels we require for optimal health. Crops are raised in soil where nutrients have been depleted. Plants are treated with pesticides and other chemicals so they no longer have to fight to live, which further diminishes their nutrient levels and their phytonutrient content—not to mention the toxic exposure we receive from such chemicals.

Animals are cooped up in pens or giant feedlots instead of roaming free and eating the nutrient-rich wild grains and grasses they once consumed. Since cows' stomachs are adapted to grass instead of corn, they must take antibiotics to prevent them from exploding.

To complicate this further, all of us are exposed to hazardous toxins and chemicals that poison our bodies; we live with too much stress; we don't sleep enough; we don't exercise enough; and we are inflamed -- making the nutritional demands on our bodies even greater.

The question is not how much of a certain nutrient or vitamin we need to not get sick, but how much we need to be optimally healthy! In fact, lower amounts recommended by the government may NOT be enough.

Most people can get what they need by taking the following essential supplements every day:

magnesium

Vitamin D

Fish oil

folate and vitamins B6 and B12

I have tested thousands of patients for vitamin and nutrient deficiencies and found that by correcting them, people feel better, their mood, mental sharpness, memory, and ability to focus improve, they have more energy, and they even lose weight. It also helps prevent disease.

In my 20+ years of practicing medicine with thousands of patients, I have seen depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, autism, ADHD, mood swings, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia go away or dramatically improve when people get the right nutrients.

In today's world, everyone needs a basic multivitamin and mineral supplement. The research is overwhelming on this point.

So what are the takeaways here? What do you need to do to optimize your nutrition?

Here are some simple steps you can begin taking immediately:

1. Eat whole, real, fresh, organic, unprocessed food.

2. Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables full of colorful phytonutrients. That means eating five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Choose a wide variety and you will do much to support your health.

3. Eat foods with plenty of fiber. Think whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, and millet and vegetables like celery, asparagus, and leeks. Fiber is essential for balancing blood sugar and maintaining a healthy bowel.

4. Eat foods containing omega-3 fats. I recommend eating protein at every meal, and some of the best sources of protein have an abundance of these healthy fats, which are essential for building every cell membrane in your body. Try cold-water river fish like salmon, sardines, and halibut; eat omega-3 eggs; and eat plenty of nuts like almonds, macadamias, and walnuts.

5. Take the essential supplements outlined above every day. They are the basic workhorse team needed to support every biochemical reaction in your body.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What do you think about the quality of our food supply?

Do you think supplements are effective?

Do you have any tips for others on how to more easily eat real, whole foods?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

The 7 Keys to UltraWellness: Discover Why You are Sick and How You Can Heal

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:14:29 -0400

"I didn’t know how bad I was feeling until I started feeling better."

That is what my patients tell me every day. They go from being ill or just okay to experiencing UltraWellness.

Most people don’t know how poorly they feel until they feel better. In fact, most of us don’t recognize that fatigue, digestive problems, aches and pains, allergies, headaches, and more aren’t just annoying symptoms. They are early clues to impending diseases that can disable and kill us.

Most heart disease starts in the womb. You can detect brain changes in teenagers that can predict the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Blood tests in children can predict who will develop diabetes later in life. Most cancers take more than 30 years to grow to the size where they can be detected.

How can we address problems that we don’t even know we have?

There is an answer. It lies in the revolution that is happening in medicine today. That revolution is called functional medicine. I call it UltraWellness, and that is what you are going to learn about today ...

How I Found the Real Cure for Chronic Illness

One in three Americans has some type of chronic disease -- and most of the rest of us are headed toward one. Most of us don’t feel as well as we should or could if only we understood how to care for and feed our bodies the way they were designed.

Conventional medicine helps at the very end stages of disease. If you are very sick, have an emergency, break a bone or have a raging infection, then, yes, conventional acute care medicine is the right solution. As former emergency room doctor and the husband of an orthopedic surgeon, I am glad we have this care when we need it.

But when I worked in the emergency room, I felt I was saving people just before (or sometimes after) they were washed DOWNSTREAM and over the waterfall to their death.

I began to wonder what led them to this point -- what happened UPSTREAM in the process of disease and illness. What were the real causes of disease? If I could answer that question, then I thought I might be able to help prevent disease in the first place.

The early influences on my thinking—from Asian philosophy, to nutritional biochemistry, to the study of ecology and ecosystems -- all helped me form new and different view of health and disease.

I am one doctor who is part of a movement that is on the cutting edge of an entire shift in our scientific model of disease. It is called systems medicine, or functional medicine.

It provides a way of understanding all the influences on our biology that are at the root of illness and how our lifestyle and environment interact with our genes to create the imbalances or balances that are the real determinants of disease or health.

This medical view does not reduce symptoms and diseases to their component parts and traditional specialties, but studies the entire ecology of the body and its environment.

I have practiced this model for over 15 years and seen miracle after miracle, day after day. People don’t only get relief from symptoms, they get truly well. That is why I have called this approach to health UltraWellness.

It is the answer to the crisis we find ourselves in -- an increasing epidemic of chronic disease and an impending economic collapse as more of our resources are put toward caring for the chronically ill.

Today, medicine is in a serious predicament. The way we understand health and disease no longer reflects biological reality or the biological laws of nature. We need to understand that diseases are not fixed things that you catch or that just show up out of context, but are related to the environment, your diet, genes, and lifestyle.

We need to understand that the body is an ecosystem and is part of a larger ecosystem. Understanding how all the parts relate and what disturbs our ecological balance is more important than naming the disease, blaming the name for the problem, and thinking a drug will fix the disease.

I call this the "naming and blaming" game.

For example, depression doesn’t just show up without cause or reason. It is related to a web of forces that we can influence and affect.

What systems medicine, functional medicine, and UltraWellness are about is "thinking and linking." That means seeing all the patterns and relationships that make sense of your whole story -- your lifestyle, stresses, genes, environment and how they interact with your biology to create imbalances that lead to disease.

Our current way of thinking is outdated, wrong, and will not help us address our declining health as individuals or as a society.

That’s why we are making no progress and even backsliding when it comes to addressing chronic disease.

Let’s look at the data.

Chronic diseases affect 133 million Americans. That means in the average family of three, at least one person has a chronic disease. We are seeing an epidemic of autoimmune (24 million Americans), allergic (50 million Americans), and asthmatic (30 million Americans) diseases in this country. In addition, 20 percent of Americans (about 60 million people) have irritable bowel syndrome.

In fact, the rates of nearly every modern disease -- autoimmune diseases, allergic diseases, digestive problems, heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and dementia—are increasing. One in three children born today will have type 2 diabetes. One in two people over age 85 will develop dementia.

These problems are increasing in the population at a dramatic rate. And they affect everyone, either personally or through the suffering of someone close to them.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We have all the information we need right now to end or greatly reduce the suffering of so many. The answer lies within the 7 keys to UltraWellness.

I know this, because I watch miracles happen every day ...

The Promise of UltraWellness

Every day in my office, I see patients who feel alive again after expecting to suffer their whole lives from chronic problems like bad digestion, headaches, fatigue, arthritis, allergies, hormonal problems, obesity, heart disease, and depression.

But within a few months—even weeks—their lives open up again. This week alone, I spoke to a 27-year-old woman who could not lose weight and was constantly tired. She finally lost 20 pounds effortlessly by getting treating her mercury toxicity.

And there was the 78-year-old woman who felt she was on her way out with symptoms of fatigue, memory loss, joint pains, and bad digestion. She now works out every day and is full of energy, simply by treating her nutritional deficiencies and getting back in balance.

And the 30-year-old woman with PMS, migraines, stomachaches, acne, and polycystic ovarian syndrome who is completely better after getting her system back in balance.

And the 47-year-old woman with chronic sinus infections and fatigue who hasn’t had a problem all winter.

And that was just part of one day!

The reality is that most of us don’t know how bad we feel until we start feeling better. We accept chronic symptoms as a necessary part of life. That is just not necessary. We have solutions today that you are not hearing about.

I have learned so much in the last 20 years of seeing patients, studying the scientific literature, combining my knowledge and observations with other doctors who are also practicing systems and functional medicine, and applying it in my practice. And I am committed to sharing that information with you because it works.

It is not perfect, nor can it address 100 precent of health problems 100 percent of the time, but it is a better mousetrap!

This is the promise of UltraWellness -- the opportunity to cure or dramatically improve chronic problems that are poorly addressed by conventional medicine, and to discover vital, vibrant good health at any age.

There are 7 fundamental new principles or concepts that help me navigate to the underlying causes of disease and that will help you achieve UltraWellness.

These concepts are my new roadmap in the landscape of health and disease and I will share them with you so you can take advantage of them today.

This is the future of medicine now. It will help you transform your health, and will contribute to the transformation of our "sick care" system to a healthcare system!

First, we must understand how everything in our environment interacts with our genes to create health or disease, especially our diet and nutritional status. Air, water, microorganisms, exercise, trauma, psychosocial factors, environmental toxins and radiation also affect our genes and our health.

Second, we must understand how our hormones and brain chemistry influence nearly every aspect of our health, why they get out of balance, and how to get them back in balance.

Third, we must understand how most of us have smoldering hidden inflammation that will kill us until we learn how to control it.

Fourth, we must understand that our digestive system is at the core of our health, why it breaks down, and how to repair it.

Fifth, we must understand how toxins and problems with our detoxification or waste management systems lead to chronic health problems and how to optimize this detoxification system.

Sixth, we must understand the importance of energy -- how we make it, why we lose it, and how to create more of it.

And finally, we must understand how the mind interacts with the body and how the body interacts with the mind to influence and affect each of our other systems.

Understand that these are really not all separate systems. They are part of a web of function and physiology that is at the root of both health and disease.

This revolutionary new way of thinking about health and disease will guide you toward something many people have given up on experiencing -- UltraWellness.

Often when I explain this to people for the first time they remark on how simple and obvious this seems. Why didn’t anyone explain it like that before?

That’s very true.

And it reminds me of T.H. Huxley's reaction to the reading of Darwin’s The Origin of Species: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that."

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Do you have annoying, seemingly harmless symptoms like those mentioned here?

How has conventional medicine treated them?

Which, if any, of the seven keys to UltraWellness have you already tried?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

How To Fix Obama's Health Plan Before It's Too Late

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:49:52 -0400

The Chinese word for crisis is comprised of two separate words, "danger" and "opportunity" -- and this describes the exact situation we face with the healthcare crisis in our country.

As a nation we are at the precipice of change for our healthcare system.

But if we make the wrong choices and simply provide universal coverage to an outdated 19th and 20th century model of medicine, this crisis will lead us into danger.

However, there are different choices we can make now that will lead to profound opportunity -- one that may provide real solutions to our healthcare crisis.

Today, I will outline a 9-point plan for real healthcare reform. This plan takes into account all of the changes we need to make -- including the fundamental shift in the type of medicine we practice -- if we are going to truly resolve the health catastrophe in this country.

Hope for a Brighter Future in Medicine

Despite the looming dangers we face as we work to change medicine, I have hope.

Over the last few months, I have been privileged to participate in events at the nexus of change that have all focused on fundamentally changing our disease-based healthcare system to one focused on creating health and wellness.

These ideas are not yet at the center of the healthcare debate, but they must be -- and they can be.

In February of this year, the Institute of Medicine held a Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public at the National Academy of Sciences. Six hundred key leaders and stakeholders in healthcare including educators, scientists, community leaders, practitioners, lawmakers, policy makers, and insurance leaders attended it.

It was a broad coalition that came together with a common purpose to change not only the way we practice medicine, but also the type of medicine we practice.

I believe the medicine at the core of healthcare reform must be founded on the clinical model and framework for practice developed by the Institute for Functional Medicine, a nonprofit organization of which I am a member. The Institute's mission is to support the widespread adoption of functional medicine.

This new way of thinking about health and disease is the biggest secret in healthcare today, yet it is the most effective model to address the current drivers of cost and chronic disease. To spread the word, the Institute recently published a detailed white paper called "21st Century Medicine: A New Model for Medical Education and Practice."

The same week the white paper was published, I testified on integrative and functional medicine before Senator Edward Kennedy’s Senate working group on healthcare reform, alongside other leaders in healthcare including Drs. Dean Ornish, Mehmet Oz, and Andrew Weil. The full testimony is available for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, "Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation."

I also met with key policy makers in the White House. and was heartened by their openness and willingness to find a way to true healthcare reform.

More recently, at a retreat center on the edge of a Minnesota pond, I was privileged to be part of a think tank sponsored by the National Institutes of Health on "whole systems research."

It was an international gathering of systems biologists, mathematicians, physicists, geneticists, physiologists, psychologists, researchers, and doctors from a dozen countries and diverse backgrounds—Palestinians and Jews, Chinese and Iraqis, French and Germans -- all exploring very important but neglected questions that hold the solution to our epidemic of chronic disease.

In this isolated place, the thinkers with their fingers on the pulse of the future all suddenly came to the same conclusion. The way we do research doesn’t help us understand how things really work as a whole, integrated system.

In other words, the current model of studying one drug, chemical pathway, or gene for one disease doesn’t give us useful answers to how we get sick and how we can get well.

What everyone at the conference understood at that moment is the same truth we need to come to as a nation ...

The old, conventional model of medicine and scientific research is simply outdated. It must give way to a new way of thinking about health and illness and a new method for medical practice.

A 9-Point Plan for Real Healthcare Reform

I believe that real healthcare reform is now possible because of a perfect storm where alignment of economic, scientific, and moral imperatives provides us an opportunity to do well as a nation by doing good, through fundamentally changing the kind of medicine we practice.

But to achieve that goal will require the collective imagination, intention, focus, and action of healthcare providers, consumers, industry, and policy makers.

A coordinated effort across government agencies and industry sectors focusing on health and wellness, incorporating what we already know, is urgently needed. We also need leadership at the highest levels of the White House to successfully create a culture of health and wellness and transform our healthcare system.

The 9-point plan below, while not at the center of the healthcare debate, is essential to create real change and avert disaster.

Just as horse-and-buggy makers gave way to the automobile, and 8-track tape manufacturers gave way to the iPod so must conventional medicine give way to a new way of practice.

Yes, some industries will fade, as funds are allocated toward policies and initiatives that prevent and treat chronic disease through dietary, lifestyle, and community interventions instead of expensive drugs and medical technologies. But other industries that promote health and wellness will flourish in their place.

These policies and initiatives are necessary for healthcare reform that addresses the true causes of our chronic disease epidemic and exploding costs. These are the changes that must be made if we are going to fix our broken healthcare system:

2. Improve research by comparing existing drug- and procedure-based medicine to changes in lifestyle, diet, and other functional and integrative approaches.

3. Transform medical education by including nutrition, lifestyle, and environmental factors as core components of the education of health professionals and physicians.

4. Establish an Institute for Functional Medicine at the federal level that would develop the educational curriculum for medical schools, residencies, postgraduate education, and other health professionals.

5. Improve food policy, agriculture policy, and school and community environments to encourage health by prohibiting food that is known to promote obesity and disease and providing whole, real, fresh foods for our children. Obese teenagers have the same risk of premature death as heavy smokers. We wouldn’t feed our dogs cola, burgers, and fries -- so why do we feed them to our children?

6. Conduct projects in community health centers that demonstrate how offering inexpensive, nutritious meals (including takeout), recreational facilities, lifestyle counseling/education (like cooking classes), and healthcare based on functional medicine at one location can dramatically improve health outcomes.

7. Impose limits on pharmaceutical and unhealthful food advertising. More than $30 billion is spent on marketing junk and fast food to consumers, including $13 billion targeted at children, and more than $30 billion is spent by the pharmaceutical industry on marketing drugs to physicians (about $30,000 annually per physician). Direct-to-consumer drug advertising also drives prescribing practices based on preferences induced by commercials rather than science.

8. Develop a system of electronic medical records that facilitates 21st-century, systems-based, functional medicine. We shouldn’t simply transfer 19th- and 20th-century medical records-keeping systems to an electronic format.

9. Create a White House Office on Wellness, Health Promotion, and Integrative Health as a way to develop an ongoing vehicle for coordination of strategy and policy. It should focus specifically on coordinating and developing policies and programs for lifestyle-based chronic disease prevention and management, integrative health care practices, and health promotion.

These changes won’t take place overnight, and they won’t be easy. But they can happen.

However, the only way they will happen is if the average person—that means you—gets involved and votes for change every day with your fork, with your feet, and with your voice.

We are facing a watershed moment in the history of medicine, one where changing the very way we understand and treat disease is finally possible.

But we all must work together to effect such a tremendous change in our medical system.

As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

We now have all the information we need to cure or dramatically improve chronic problems that are poorly addressed by conventional medicine and to discover vital, vibrant, good health at any age.

And we can finally transform our "sick care" system into a healthcare system that promises vibrant health and vitality to every man, woman, and child in this country.

The answer lies in functional medicine –- the future of medicine, available now.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What do you think of my 9 point plan?

Do you have any other suggestions?

How do you think functional medicine can help improve healthcare?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

Obama's Health Plan: What Matters the Most is Missing

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:34:03 -0400

Want to know the real truth about healthcare in this country?

Even if President Obama and Congress get everything else right in healthcare reform, it won’t matter ... that is, unless we address the underlying causes of illness that drive both skyrocketing healthcare costs and the proliferation of chronic disease.

But we can’t get there with our current model of medicine, and that’s what nobody is currently talking about, not even President Obama.

But there is a solution ...

Thankfully, an innovative approach currently exists that can not only prevent but also more effectively TREAT chronic disease ... more about that in a moment.

To effectively reform healthcare in the U.S., we must change not only the WAY we practice medicine, but also the TYPE of medicine we practice.

We must improve financing and delivery of healthcare, as well as our fundamental scientific approach to chronic disease -- an epidemic that now affects 133 million Americans and accounts for 78 percent of healthcare costs.

Healthcare costs are now approaching 20 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product -- approximately $2.5 trillion, or $8,160 per person annually. This is more than what the federal government spends on national defense, homeland security, education, and welfare combined!

Unless real change is made we are facing an impending collapse of our economy as more of our resources are put toward caring for the chronically ill.

This is a national security issue that threatens our standing in the world. As President Obama has stated, "Healthcare reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative."

Fortunately, there is a new model of medicine that offers the real change we need. This new medicine is personalized, preventive, predictive, participatory, and patient-centered.

It is proactive rather than reactive. And it addresses the causes of disease and optimizes biologic function in the body’s core physiologic systems, rather than just treating symptoms.

This model exists TODAY – it is based on systems biology and is called functional medicine.

Why We Need to Change Healthcare Now

Our current model of medicine is unsustainable because it cannot stem the rising tide of chronic disease.

Relying only on reforms in coverage or access, financing, electronic records, malpractice, medical errors, coordination of care, and research on new drug therapies -- while retaining the conventional acute-care model -- will be untenable in the long run.

To be sure, such reforms are necessary, but not sufficient to avoid the collapse of our healthcare system, which may soon dwarf our current financial crisis if the Medicare trust fund runs out in 2016 as projected. According to the "Status of the Social Security and Medicare Programs" annual trustees report just published, the program is actually bankrupt right now. It's taken in less money than it has paid out two years running.(1)

This is not being alarmist; this is simply facing reality.

Here's the problem: These reforms do not alter the fundamental approach to prevention and treatment.

If we focus on improving the way we practice the medicine of the past, we will still have the medicine of the past. If we improve the wrong type of care, then we will simply be doing the wrong things better.

Conventional acute-care medicine is disease-, drug-, and procedure-based and is designed for acute illness, trauma, and end-stage disease for which it is the best form of treatment in the world.

As a result, our current medical education focuses on sickness rather than health; journals publish about disease management not what causes disease.

However, disease-based, acute-care medicine is the WRONG model to address chronic illness, because it doesn’t address WHY people are sick or the underlying mechanisms and biologic causes of their illness.

This is why we spend more money than any other industrialized nation on healthcare yet are near the bottom of the list for all major health outcomes. This is why we are witnessing a decline in life expectancy for the first time in history.

The Right Solution for the Problem of Chronic Disease

Functional medicine, on the other hand, is a system of personalized care that directly addresses how our environment and lifestyle influence our genes to create imbalances in our core biologic systems that, over time, manifest as disease. It is this kind of medicine that is needed to create real success in 21st century medicine.

Functional medicine is not a new treatment, test, or procedure -- it is a new "operating system" or method for problem solving and processing complex clinical information.

It is a fundamentally different way of thinking about the origins and mechanisms of illness. It encompasses all the TOOLS of healing and medicine, both conventional and integrative. And it provides a common language, a map or GPS system for navigating through the puzzle of chronic illness.

Simply put, functional medicine identifies why our underlying biology is imbalanced and corrects those imbalances. Then our body's natural healing intelligence takes over and automatically fixes what's ailing us.

This is the future of medicine and it's available right now.

A growing coalition of practitioners, educators, and scientists is dedicated to advancing this model. I am part of that coalition.

We at The Institute for Functional Medicine have introduced 20,000 physicians and healthcare providers to functional medicine since 1991, and we wrote the Textbook of Functional Medicine in 2005 to describe both the underlying science and the practical clinical strategies and tools that comprise this new model.

This is not just an elegant theory –- it works in practice ... something that I am very familiar with since I have been practicing functional medicine for over 10 years.

Let me illustrate how this works with real patients I have treated in my practice.

A Woman with Multiple Chronic Diseases

Deborah, a 46-year-old woman, having seen a dozen doctors over a dozen years, came to me with 29 different diagnoses, including depression, hypertension, obesity, polycystic ovarian syndrome, migraines, heavy menstrual bleeding, asthma, sinusitis, irritable bowel syndrome, reflux, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and psoriasis.

Each disease was treated with the best available conventional treatment. But she was still sick, despite 9 medications.

Of course, she didn't have 29 separate diseases. She had imbalances in a few of her core underlying biologic systems -- digestive, immunologic, and hormonal -- that gave rise to all her symptoms.

The underlying cause of all her "diseases" was an autoimmune response to gluten, leading to autoimmune thyroid disease and severe vitamin D deficiency because of low absorption of nutrients from the foods she consumed.

Six weeks after eliminating gluten from her diet (wheat, barley, rye, etc.), improving her diet, and replacing thyroid hormone and vitamin D, her 29 diseases were completely gone -- along with 21 pounds ... not a bad side effect!

A Boy with Attention Deficit Disorder and Asthma and Allergies

Clayton was a 12-year-old boy who had been diagnosed with severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and behavior problems and had poor school performance who was on Ritalin for years. He also had illegible handwriting, or dysgraphia.

He also had apparently "unrelated" problems of asthma, allergies, hives, stomachaches, headaches, insomnia, muscle cramps, and anxiety and a history frequent infections and antibiotic use.

He had seen 5 specialists (lung, gastroenterologist, allergist, psychiatrist, and neurologist) and was on 7 medications for allergies, asthma, pain, and ADHD. No one asked how everything was connected, or how his diet of junk food and sugar made him sick.

His immune system was activated, his digestion not working, and he was nutritionally deficient in zinc, omega-3 fats, magnesium, and vitamin B6.

We simply normalized his biologic function by removing impediments to health (junk food diet, food sensitivities, overgrowth of yeast, and lead) and providing the ingredients necessary for optimal biologic function -- a whole-foods diet, additional nutrients including vitamin B6, magnesium, zinc, omega-3 fats, and probiotics.

In two months he returned without any physical or psychiatric symptoms and was off all his medication. His mother brought a sample of his handwriting, which had gone from illegible to normal, simply by getting his brain working again by getting his body in balance.

A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity for Real Reform ...

This model of care is the basis for the type of medicine that must be at the center of healthcare reform. I live in the trenches as a practicing doctor, treating real people who are suffering from real problems.

These problems have real solutions, which are being overlooked -- solutions that hold the key to saving our healthcare system from self-destruction.

Functional or systems medicine needs to be the "Intel inside" that drives the type of medicine that is practiced as we create a new healthcare system.

Real healthcare reform is now possible in a perfect storm where the alignment of economic, scientific, and moral imperatives provides an opportunity for us as a nation to do well by doing good through fundamentally changing the type of medicine we practice.

It will require the collective imagination, intention, focus, and action by healthcare providers, consumers, industry, and policy makers. But we can do it, and we must do it now.

In the words of the ancient sage, Rabbi Hillel, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?"

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What steps do you think will be necessary for successful healthcare reform?

How do you think healthcare reform will be achieved?

What do you think is the biggest obstacle we will face in reforming healthcare?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

(1) http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html

The UltraMind Solution: The 6-Week Plan to Heal Your Brain

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:27:56 -0500

What you are about to learn is what I call “dessert for your mind.”

This is the final installment in my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution, a sneak preview of which you can download here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

In the last 7 blogs, I outlined how imbalances in the 7 underlying key systems in your body can lead to a broken brain and all of the psychological and neurological symptoms you have been suffering.

You’ve learned that you no longer have to suffer with a brain (and a body) that is anything less than awake, engaged, present, focused, and refreshed.

You can have a brain that allows you to fully experience life, and enjoy your family, friends, work, and, most importantly, your own heart and soul.

But how do you do it?

Well, you follow The UltraMind Solution.

It is a 6-week, 4-step program that is designed to help you:

• Have more stable moods

• Enjoy a better memory

• Have more energy

• Enjoy the kind of restful sleep that will help you wake up more refreshed and able to face your day

• Improve your digestion

• Decrease chronic sinus problems

• Experience pain-free joints

• Eliminate headaches

And there are wonderful side effects. You will lose weight almost automatically and you may even see your sex drive improve.

But I don’t want you to take my word for it.

Prove to yourself how well The UltraMind Solution works. I want you to try it, for just 6 weeks.

You have nothing to lose (except, perhaps, the chance to eat a few additional cheeseburgers and sodas).

And you have everything to gain. You can have the gift of your life back.

You will learn how to reclaim that gift in today’s blog, where I outline the 4 steps of the program and explain how it works so that you can begin taking advantage of The UltraMind Solution today.

4 Steps to an UltraMind

By following 4 simple steps you will learn more about your body and brain than you ever imagined. It may seem too simple and obvious… but it works.

As a doctor, I see the miracles The UltraMind Solution creates every day.

For example, there was the 6-year-old little girl who came to see me and was transformed from a violent, aggressive child to a beautiful, loving daughter and sister by clearing out the bad bugs in her gut.

And the 23-year-old woman with lifelong anxiety and depression that lifted after she quit eating foods to which she was allergic.

And the woman who traveled 5,000 miles to see me.

She had seen a dozen other doctors but still was fatigued, depressed, overweight, mentally slipping, and sluggish, and struggled through brain fog every day. All of her symptoms resolved in 6 weeks after she got off gluten, boosted her vitamin D level, and fixed her low thyroid function.

Her family said they finally had their mother and wife back.

If you want to heal your broken brain like these people did, here is what you need to do:

2. Tune-up your brain chemistry with supplements

3. Live the UltraMind lifestyle: Exercise, relax, sleep, and train your brain

4. Live clean and green

By following these 4 steps for 6 weeks, your life will change—not in months or years, but in weeks, or even days!

This is true for one simple reason: If you work with your body as it was designed, it will work with you.

Once you begin following these steps you will realize just how good you CAN feel—and you’ll never want to go back.

What I hope for all of you is that you can experience the connection between your behaviors, your choices, your habits, things you put in your mouth, and how you feel right now.

How can we know that eating wheat, or not liking fish, or eating too much blue fin sushi, or staying out of the sun and using sun block are making us depressed, anxious, or demented?

The only way to know these things is to change our habits and pay attention to what happens.

That is what the 4 steps above help you do.

Some of the changes you experience will happen almost immediately. If you are gluten sensitive and you stop eating gluten, your life will change within just a week.

If you are B12 deficient and you take B12, you will improve your mood and brain function in a few weeks.

Other changes may take a little longer to achieve. If you are toxic with mercury, then it may take a few years and some hard work to fully recover. But you can regain your health and renew your brain. I did.

To help you achieve those goals, I want to look at each of the steps in a little more detail. But keep in mind that your brain is the most complex thing in the universe, so I can’t quite cover all the details on how to heal it in this short blog. All the details you need are in my book.

Step #1: Eat Right for Your Brain

Your fork is the most powerful tool you have to change your health, change your brain and heal your environment. There is nothing that has a bigger impact on your health, the environment, global warming, and political policy than what you put on your fork.

Here’s how to use it:

2. Boost Phytonutrients -- The Brain Protectors: Eat a lot of fruit and vegetables full of colorful phytonutrients. All the dark, deep reds, yellows, oranges, greens, and blues in food are a sign of powerful anti-inflammatory, detoxifying and antioxidant, energy-boosting, brain-powering molecules. So enjoy those blueberries and dark leafy greens like kale.

3. Brain Food -- The Right Carbs: Eat foods with plenty of fiber, like beans, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. This keeps the toxins moving out of your body and keeps your gut bacteria healthy. And a healthy gut is a healthy brain!

4. Become a Fat Head: Sixty percent of your brain is made of the omega-3 fat DHA, which comes from algae and fish. Eat omega-3-rich foods like sardines, walnuts, wild salmon, and flax seeds.

5. Protein for Brain Power: Eat protein for breakfast every day, such as omega-3 eggs, soy or rice protein shakes, or nut butter.

6. Eat Early and Eat Often: Eat something every 3 to 4 hours and finish your last meal or snack 2 to 3 hours before bed

7. Stop Poisoning Your Brain: Eliminate sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, coffee, alcohol, trans fats, and food additives and preservatives, all of which poison your brain and disrupt your biochemistry.

If you follow these 7 principles (for just 6 weeks), you are doing 90 percent of what you need to do to stay healthy and heal your brain. You will be instantly eliminating all the brain-damaging foods and chemicals from your diet.

The rest of the plan is made of small refinements and details. Just stop poisoning your brain with pounds of sugar, uppers like coffee and downers like alcohol, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, processed, packaged, fast food and junk food.

Remember, there is not really such thing as junk food—there is just junk, and there is food!

Brain Allergies

There is one other step you need to take during the 6-week program to eat right for your brain.

That step is to eliminate the two most common food allergens in our diet: gluten and dairy.

Now, you know what happens if you get stung by a bee, or get poison ivy: You have an allergic reaction.

But did you know your brain can become allergic, too?

And when it does, it causes brain fog, depression, autism, ADHD, dementia, and more.

Gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye, spelt, and kamut) and dairy are the two foods that most commonly set off reactions in people. They have been linked to conditions ranging from brain fog to depression and to even more severe conditions like autism and Alzheimer’s disease.

You may have hidden allergies to these foods and not every realize it.

Despite the fact that the immune system and the brain are intimately linked and food has a MAJOR impact on your brain and body, most of us (including physicians) don’t make the connection between what we eat and how we feel.

You eat a piece of bread on Monday and feel depressed on Tuesday, but you don’t make the connection.

Many people are affected by low-grade, delayed food sensitivities or allergies. What you eat may cause allergic reactions that make you feel bad, but you might not know it.

You can take some simple measures to heal from brain allergies. Here’s what do ...

Simply remove dairy and gluten from your diet for 6 weeks.

That means a 100 percent elimination of these foods, no exceptions—not even a drop of milk in your tea or a crumb of bread for breakfast.

Watch what happens to your body and mind when you do this. The brain fog may lift; the depression may ease up. I have even seen autistic children start talking after they get rid of gluten and dairy.

Trust me, you will be amazed at how many other delicious things there are to eat besides bread and milk. I give you dozens of examples in Chapter 14 of The UltraMind Solution.

Eat this way for 6 weeks. Then continue for your lifetime and you’ll have the raw materials and ingredients you need for a vital and healthy body—AND a healthy brain.

Step #2: Tune Up Your Brain Chemistry with Supplements

Ninety-two percent of Americans are deficient in one or more essential vitamins and minerals, 80 percent are deficient in vitamin D, and more than 99 percent are deficient in the essential omega-3 fatty acids.

That is why we all need supplements. Vitamins and minerals are absolutely essential for brain health.

Therefore, I recommend that ALL people take a basic multivitamin and mineral, as well as calcium and magnesium, extra vitamin D, omega-3 fats, and probiotics as the foundation for good health, as well as a healthy brain.

Because specific B vitamins are so important for the brain and nearly every other function of the body, I also recommend methylation nutrients (vitamins B6 and B12 and folate) in addition to what is in your multivitamin.

Here are the basic raw materials needed for everyone who wants to keep their brain healthy.

2. Calcium (600 to 800 mg daily) and magnesium (400 to 600 mg a day)

3. Vitamin D3 (2,000 to 4,000 units a day)

4. Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA in a ratio of 300/200; 1,000 mg twice a day)

5. Methylation factors: Folate (800 mcg), B6 (50 mg), and B12 (1,000 mcg daily). Often, special activated forms of these nutrients are needed to be most effective for brain health

6. Probiotics or beneficial bacteria to improve your digestion, reduce food allergies, and reduce gut inflammation

If you take these daily for 6 weeks (and ideally for a lifetime), you will be providing all the raw materials and ingredients you need for a vital and healthy brain and body.

Step #3: Live the UltraMind Lifestyle: Exercise, Relax, Sleep and Train Your Brain

The next step is to live the UltraMind Lifestyle. This actually consists of 4 lifestyle changes you make over the course of the program. You need to exercise, relax deeply, sleep enough, and train your brain.

Why?

Exercise is better for your brain than any antidepressant.

Let me say that again.

Exercise is better for your brain than any antidepressant.

Exercise naturally carries out all these missions for your body:

• Balances all your neurotransmitters

• Increases brain-derived neutrophic factor, which is like fertilizer for your brain

• Prevents dementia

• Balances hormones like insulin

Here’s what you need to commit to during the 6-week program.

Walk vigorously for 30 minutes every day. That’s it. That’s your exercise routine.

Of course, more is better.

I personally hate to exercise. But I love to play.

So if you don’t like to go to the gym, don’t. But start moving around some more. Walk with friends or family. Walk your dog. Walk your neighbor’s dog. Garden. Wrestle on the bed with your kids. Park your car farther from the door. Just move your body more!

You may be surprised at how much better your body—and your brain—feels.

However, as with all things, balance is important. You not only need to exercise more, you need to relax more, too.

Deep relaxation gives your brain and body time to rebuild and repair. You even make new brain cells when you relax.

Nobody needs help being stressed. But we do need to learn to relax.

I have two favorite tools. They are quick, simple, and give you a quick boost of energy.

They are the soft belly breath and the UltraBath. I teach you how to use these powerful tools on page 317 of The UltraMind Solution.

Sleep is also extremely important if you want to have an UltraMind.

Europeans are smart. They take a 2-hour siesta in the middle of the day and awaken refreshed and energized.

But you probably can’t do that (unless you are in Europe), so you need to find other ways to get enough sleep.

The key is to get 7 to 9 hours of restful sleep every night.

But that isn’t so easy for everyone. Some people have become so chronically sleep deprived that their bodies have a difficult time finding that restful state.

Here are some tips that can help:

• Avoid stimulants like coffee, sugar, and cold medication, all of which interfere with normal sleep patterns

• Exercise daily for at least 30 minutes

• Avoid eating 2 to 3 hrs before bed

For most of you, taking just these few, simple steps will improve your sleep pattern, allowing you to get restful sleep that boosts your brain power.

Now you can eat right, take supplements, exercise, relax, and get enough sleep, but what’s the point of having a healthy brain if you don’t use it to engage more fully in life?

The joy of life is in all the things we humans get to experience—love, learning, discovery, connection, understanding, wisdom, and curiosity.

To do that, you must keep your brain active. The mental decline we commonly see with aging is very much due to imbalances in nutrition, hormones, and immune and digestive function, damage to our energy metabolism, toxins, and stress.

But some of it is also from lack of use. Just like your muscles, you need to use your brain or you lose it. Brain fitness is a real phenomenon. A study of more than 450 adults over age 75 found that just reading books, doing crossword puzzles, playing cards and board games, playing a musical instrument, or dancing reduced their risk of Alzheimer’s disease. (1)

So create some new brain connections. Work your brain muscles. It isn’t difficult. Simply engage in the things you love—travel, read, write, take a class, just have fun!

Step #4: Live Clean and Green

The small choices we make every day can lead to big changes over time. Our brains, like our planet, are exquisitely sensitive to environmental toxins and stresses. Limiting your exposure to these toxic substances is good for you AND the planet.

Here are my suggestions for how to take care of your own health, and the health of the planet, at the same time:

2. Limit your exposure to chemicals and metals

3. Limit your exposure to household, gardening, and personal care products

4. Keep your bodily fluids moving

5. Reduce electro-pollution and electromagnetic radiation

I give you more details on exactly how to do this in Chapter 17 of The UltraMind Solution.

Creating an UltraMind for Life

My wish for all of you is to live a life that is vibrant, awake, engaged, present, focused, delightful, refreshed, and balanced.

You can have a brain that allows you to fully experience every day, and all the joys and sorrows of being human, to show up and do what it is you want in life without being slowed down or blocked by a brain that keeps you from fully being you with your family, with your friends, with your work, and most importantly your own heart and soul.

This is the state of The UltraMind.

You understand how the 7 keys to UltraWellness can help you balance your brain function and heal from all of the effects of a broken brain.

And you understand the basic underpinnings of how the program works.

The next step is to follow the program and experience an UltraMind yourself.

I give you all the details in The UltraMind Solution. You can get a sneak preview by going to:

www.ultramind.com

Remember, just focus on your cleaning up your diet, taking the right supplements, improving your lifestyle, and living clean and green. If you do, you will soon experience an UltraMind.

Fix your body and you will fix your brain. And when this happens, you’ll say ...

“Wow, I had no idea having an UltraMind could feel this good.”

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you started to follow the UltraMind program yet?

If so, what’s your experience been like so far?

If not, what’s holding you back?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

PS -- The UltraMind Solution public television show is starting on February 27th. Check your local listings for air times. Or, you can get your own copy of The UltraMind Solution DVD by Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D. Also, The UltraMind Solution Club by Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D. has just launched, which is an online club that makes going through the program simple and easy.

(1) Verghese J, Lipton RB, Katz MJ, Hall CB, Derby CA, Kuslansky G, Ambrose AF, Sliwinski M, Buschke H. Leisure activities and the risk of dementia in the elderly. N Engl J Med. 2003 Jun 19;348(25):2508-16.

The UltraMind Solution: Key 7 – Calm Your Mind

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:45:43 -0500

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

Thoughts are things. They can heal or harm. Beliefs mold your brain.

This is not just a figurative metaphor for what happens. Your brain literally stiffens, slows, and loses function in direct relationship to your thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes about you and your place in the world. How each of us responds to our life -- to our perceptions -- has enormous implications for how we feel, how we age, and the health of our brain.

The most powerful pharmacy in the world is right between your ears!

Other than eating breakfast regularly, and eating more fruits and vegetables, the one characteristic that is present in all healthy older people is resiliency.

Resiliency is that hard-to-measure quality of adapting to change, shifting with changing tides rather than drowning, seeing the glass half full, or knowing how to turn lemons into lemonade.

You see, your thoughts have real and measurable effects on your body and brain.

In fact, every cell in your body listens to your thoughts.

Your immune cells know your deepest feelings.

Your stem cells are wired to your brain and help you repair and regenerate. But they ONLY turn on and make new brain cells when you relax! And you don’t need placental injections or embryos to get them to work.

Research has shown over and over again that learning to relax is one of the most important keys to long-term health and vitality. In fact, it is a critical part of The UltraMind Solution . As you will learn in this blog, relaxing helps your brain regenerate and renew itself.

You need to learn how to hit your “pause button” if you want to heal your brain.

But that doesn’t mean sipping a glass of Chardonnay while watching TV or practicing retail therapy. You have to learn how to deeply relax and stimulate your vagus nerve.

In this blog I will teach you how to do that. I will explain how stress kills, relaxation heals, and how you can begin turning on your relaxation response -- today.

The Road to Vagus

Your immune cells, your stem cells, and all of the other organs and tissues in your body are connected to your vagus nerve -- a long nerve that goes from your brain, through your chest and diaphragm, and throughout your body.

Your vagus nerve is a very special part of your nervous system that helps you calm your mind and turn on a cascade of healing that can reverse depression and dementia and help sharpen your mind -- making old brains young again.

It does this by turning off your stress response and activating your relaxation response -- what I call “hitting the pause button” -- which most of us don’t know how to do.

Most of us don’t need any help turning on the alarm system. Your stress response gets turned on automatically day after day.

However, very few of us know how to calm this system down. We don’t know where our pause button is, and we don’t know how to push it.

This is a serious health concern, because stress is very bad for your brain.

Stress Destroys Your Brain

The effects of stress on brain health cannot be overstated. It shrinks the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain; reduces serotonin; lowers BDNF (brain derived neutrophic factor), which acts like Miracle-Gro for your brain cells; increases inflammation; increases belly fat; lowers thyroid function; and much more.

It is one of the chief causes of our broken brains.

Stress destroys our brains.

But what is stress?

Stress is defined as any real or imagined threat to your body or your ego.

What does that mean?

It means the part of your biochemistry that governs the stress response reacts the same when you are in real danger (for example, if you are about to be run down by an oncoming car) as it does when you perceive danger (for example, if your boss tells you he thinks you are doing a poor job at work).

In both cases, a flood of cortisol and other chemicals, like epinephrine and norepinephrine, is released into your bloodstream. These chemicals send messages far and wide, telling your body—and brain—to get ready for the danger at hand.

In the first instance, the stress response is adaptive It prepares you physically and mentally to move out of the way of that oncoming vehicle.

In the second instance, the stress response is worse than useless—your body prepares for real physical danger but there isn’t any. There is only the perceived danger of your boss’s disappointment. The result is that you stew in your stress juices, and they poison your body and brain.

If you hadn’t perceived your boss’s frustration as a threat, this response would not have occurred.

So how we think and what we believe make a huge difference in how healthy we are.

There’s no doubt about it. Optimists live longer and are healthier!

This reminds me of a Tibetan man I met more than 20 years ago in Nepal who showed me the power of thought and belief in shaping our lives.

The Tibetan Healer

I traveled to Nepal as part of an expedition to study the public health problems of a small village near the Tibetan border. Along the way I encountered a remarkable man, who had faced grave threats to his life and his place in the world. He was a Tibetan doctor who was captured in 1959 during the Chinese invasion and sent to a Chinese gulag, or prison camp.

He dispassionately told me of his 22-year imprisonment in the gulag, where he was stripped of his community and his place in the world, prevented from practicing Buddhism, tortured, and abused. I found it difficult to reconcile this serene, calm, happy man with the horrors he experienced.

At one point during our conversation, I asked him to identify the greatest danger he faced during his 22 years of imprisonment. I expected him to say the physical and psychological torture and relentless, sophisticated brainwashing techniques designed to force him to renounce his spiritual beliefs and monkhood and embrace communist ideology.

What he said astounded me.

“The greatest danger I faced during my imprisonment was the few moments I thought I might lose my compassion for my Chinese captors,” he said.

Most of us cannot imagine worrying about having compassion for those who kept us locked away from everything we value and believe for 22 years.

Yet somehow, in small and large ways, our sense of control, meaning, purpose, and connection in life is one of the most powerful factors that determine our health and well-being.

What do you feel connected to? What gives you meaning and purpose in life? Answers to questions like these define who we are, not only mentally, but also physically.

Disease is a disconnection from our sense of place in the world; a loss of control and meaning as we drift from television channel to television channel looking for a program to satisfy us; consume food disconnected from its origins, processed and unidentifiable from its natural state; as our families separate, disconnect, and communicate through text messaging and e-mail.

Poverty alone does not increase disease. A lost sense of culture, control, and meaning is a major factor.

How do you take a pill to fix that?

And what about the stress of the food we eat? We now have identified a phenomena that comes from eating “stressed food”—food grown on agribusiness farms, animals raised in confined animal feeding operations, otherwise known as feedlots.

This is called xenohormesis and means that when you eat stressed food, it produces stress molecules in your body that make you sick! Our bodies see this food as foreign and dangerous—it’s actually stressful to eat it.

We have become so disconnected from feeling relaxed and at peace that many of us don’t even realize we are stressed out anymore. We aren’t awake to the fact that our beliefs have an impact on our health and we don’t realize the foods we eat make us feel even more stress.

How do you know if you are stressed?

Well, you might crave salt, feel dizzy when you stand up, have trouble falling asleep, have sweaty palms or feel wiped out after exercise, or you might feel tired and wired.

If so, you may have burned out your adrenal glands—the glands that kick into gear whenever there is stress.

So what’s the cure for burn out? How do you turn off the stress response and begin to heal from its effects?

Turning Off the Stress Response

The latest research has found two ways to turn old forgetful brains into young brains and to turn depressed people into happy people.

You have two choices.

The first one: Cut out your adrenal glands. They produce all the stress hormones like cortisol, which shrinks your brain, robs you of your memory, lowers your serotonin, makes you depressed, and reduces energy production.

The other option is to have a pacemaker inserted in your neck, which stimulates the vagus nerve and triggers relaxation.

Neither of those sound like much fun!

But you DO have other options to calm your mind.

One of my favorites is: just breathe. It automatically activates the vagus nerve. I learned the soft belly breath, a variation of ancient yogic breathing techniques, from Jim Gordon, the author of the book Unstuck.

I teach you how to do the soft belly breath in The UltraMind Solution.

In the meantime, here are a few more ideas on how to push your pause button—and heal your brain.

• Try yoga or meditation.

• Get enough sleep.

• Eat whole foods that decrease the stress response.

• Avoid stressed foods. The next time you reach for that industrial packaged food product, or fast food lunch just ask yourself if your food is “relaxed.”

• You might even try some herbs that can balance out the stress response, such as ginseng or rhodiola.

I have just opened the door for you to learn how to calm your mind. You can learn much more in Chapter 12 of The UltraMind Solution.

You can get a free sneak preview by going to:

www.ultramind.com

In my next blog, I will teach you about how to follow the 6-week plan for an UltraMind. I’ll share the powerful, yet simple, 4-step program from Part III of my book that will give you the roadmap to achieving your own UltraMind.

Now you have seen how all the 7 keys influence your brain and biology. It is one interconnected web of problems. And because it is all connected, you can make a few simple changes that can have dramatic and life changing effects.

Simple dietary changes, a few nutritional supplements, a little exercise, enough sleep, and a little time each day for activating the relaxation response can transform deep-seated symptoms that show up as altered mood, behavior, attention, and memory.

Your brain can thrive. You just have to provide the right conditions.

In my next blog, I am going to teach you those conditions.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What makes you feel the most stressed?

How does stress seem to affect your brain?

What things work best to push your pause button?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

The UltraMind Solution: Key #6 – Boost Energy Metabolism

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:16:16 -0500

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

Do you want more energy?

Do you feel like your brain (and the rest of you) is losing energy?

If so you aren’t alone.

We all want more energy. We need it. We lose it. And we try to get it back until finally we can’t make energy anymore. That’s called death!

Most of us don’t think much about where our energy comes from, why sometimes we have more or less of it, how it might affect our brain, or even the whole process of aging.

But, in fact, everything we have explored in the other 6 keys influences our health directly through energy.

Enough energy means a happy, healthy, focused, and sharp brain. Lack of energy means slowed mental function, autism, mood disorders like depression, and ultimately Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia.

So in this blog I want to teach you a bit about where your energy comes from, how you can protect the little energy-making factories in your cells, and how you can get a metabolic tune-up.

I also want to take a moment to explain my position on medication and psychotherapy, since they are the standard treatments that so many people receive to heal their broken brains.

But first, let’s talk a little more about energy.

Where Does Energy Come From and How Can We Get More of It?

How do we get energy?

Actually, it is a fairly straightforward biochemical process. We take oxygen from the air we breathe and the food we eat and burn it in the little energy factories in our cells called mitochondria.

Our mitochondria keep us energetic and alive. As we get older, we get fewer of them and they don’t work as well, so we run out of energy.

But now we know how to prevent that energy drain.

First, you have to understand that those little energy factories are very sensitive to insult and injury from any kind of stress—toxins, allergens, infections, or a junk food diet that has no antioxidants to protect those energy factories.

In other words, if you get the other 6 keys to an UltraMind in balance, your mitochondria will be happy.

When our mitochondria are damaged, the resultant loss of energy can often show up as a broken brain—fatigue, brain fog, depression, dementia, autism, and more.

I have seen this over and over. When you don’t have enough energy, your brain breaks.

In fact, research shows that the brains of autistic children are very low on energy because of all sorts of toxins and infections and immune stress. When you remove these stressors, their energy improves and they wake up from their silent worlds.

So the key to getting more energy is to remove the agents that are harming your mitochondria.

Then you can enhance this process even further by giving yourself a “metabolic tune-up.”

Getting a Metabolic Tune-up

Did you know you can give yourself a metabolic tune-up?

To do this, you use special “neuro-nutrients” to help your cells make more energy.

Here’s what you can use to do that:

We need support for our energy system—and we all need a metabolic tune-up because we are all losing it.

But even as we are learning how mitochondrial injury is a final common pathway in so many neurological and psychiatric disorders, we are also learning how to protect and defend ourselves.

Getting a metabolic tune-up is not only possible, but necessary for most of us.

Thankfully, by eating a plant-based diet, reducing toxic exposures, and supplementing with mitochondria-protective and antioxidant compounds we can protect and restore our energy metabolism to optimal function.

This is an essential part of The UltraMind Solution .

Now it’s time for that discussion about the role of therapy and medication I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. After all, if the source of your brain problems is really found in your body, where do therapy and medication fit in to this picture?

Isn’t Therapy Important to Get Your Head Straight?

Isn’t psychotherapy or behavioral therapy helpful for improving your mood and brain function, or finding the meaning and purpose of your heart and soul? What about a spiritual life for becoming whole?

These can be essential parts of gaining an UltraMind.

But trust me, it is a lot harder to work through old mental patterns or connect with your soul if you are poisoned with mercury, or suffering from vitamin D or B12 deficiency, or struggling against a thyroid gland that isn’t working, or if your brain is inflamed with a virus or a reaction to something you are eating.

Heal your broken brain by fixing your body first.

Then you will find it a lot easier to get the help you need with psychotherapy and find it easier to connect with your heart and soul when you are not fighting through brain fog.

When You Need Medication

As a former emergency room physician, I recognize that extreme times call for extreme measures. I use and support the intelligent, appropriate use of medication, including psychotropic medications, like antidepressants, when needed.

They can often be helpful as a bridge to recovery from all the stresses and toxins that affect your brain and mind.

It may take months or years to rebuild damage that has occurred over a lifetime using The UltraMind Solution (although most people see remarkable results in 6 weeks).

In extreme cases, the damage may be so deep that full recovery is not possible. But combining medication with the tools of The UltraMind Solution can give people their lives back.

Working with an experienced psychopharmacologist who welcomes the integration of nutrition, supplements, exercise, and mind-body therapies is sometimes a necessary step to recovering a whole life.

Many times, medications can be reduced or eliminated after applying the principles found in The UltraMind Solution.

I would caution you that psychotropic medications offer only partial solutions, often packaged with side effects.

Tread intelligently, expect bumps on the road, and seek to find the causes of your suffering - which may be found in the stories of your life, on your plate, in your lifestyle, or in your toxic environment. You will rarely find a single solution to your problems in a prescription bottle.

If you need to, however, use medication without guilt just as you would use any other tool to rebuild your life. And do not be afraid to put it down when you have rebuilt your health and your world.

Now I want to remind you that you can get more information about how to boost your energy metabolism and heal the other 6 keys to an UltraMind in my new book The UltraMind Solution.

A free sneak preview is available at:

www.ultramind.com

You have now learned all the ways in which the body affects the mind. In my next blog I will teach you about how your mind influences your body—and how calming your mind calms your body.

Remember, the communication is bidirectional: top down and bottom up. The body affects the mind AND the mind affects the body. Thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and life traumas can all trigger damage to the brain. This brain damage occurs because stress itself causes depletion of nutrients from the body, changes our hormones, creates inflammation, damages the gut, has direct toxic effects, and increases oxidative stress.

Wow, all that just from negative thoughts. You’ll learn more in my next blog.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

What makes you feel most energetic?

Do you plan on getting a metabolic tune-up?

Have you tried medication and therapy for your broken brain?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

The UltraMind Solution: Key #5 – Enhance Detoxification

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:05:55 -0500

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

I have some bad news and some good news for you about your brain.

The bad news is that we live in a poisoned world that damages our brains.

The good news is that we know how to avoid and help our bodies get rid of toxins, which gives our brain a chance to heal and repair itself.

We are exposed to toxins we were never designed to deal with—and nearly all of them cause brain injury.

A recent study of umbilical cord blood found 287 toxic chemicals, 217 of which are toxic to the brain and nervous system. And that is what infants are exposed to even before they take their first breath. (1) These toxins include mercury, lead, PCBs, BPA, phthalates, plasticizers, flame retardants and more.

There are 6 million pounds of mercury emissions from coal burning every year and 2.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals released into the environment every year. Where does it all go?

At least some of it gets into your body—and your brain!

In fact, a recent government survey found an average of 148 chemicals in our bodies. And those were only the ones they tested.

Did you know that 25 percent of New Yorkers have toxic blood levels of mercury from eating too much sushi?

Or that 15 percent of American women of child-bearing age have toxic levels of mercury in their blood? (2) That means that 15 percent of the 4 million children born in the United States each year, or 600,000 children, are exposed to toxic levels of mercury in the womb. (3)

And then there are the 3,500 different chemicals that are added to our food, and the more than 3,000 chemicals found in our homes.

In today’s blog I will discuss some of the effects these toxic chemicals have on our brains. I’ll tell you a story about what happens when you limit your toxic exposure and enhance your body’s detoxification system. And I’ll reveal the master detoxifying molecule made in your body.

The Toxic American

The average American consumes literally pounds of hormones, antibiotics, food chemicals, additives, artificial sweeteners, and MSG each year. Each one of these toxic chemicals has been shown to harm the brain.

On average we consume a gallon of neurotoxic pesticides and herbicides each year by eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. (4) (And that’s with people eating much less than the 8 to 10 servings they should be eating!) Remember, pesticides work BECAUSE they are neurotoxic to pests—they attack their nervous system.

Imagine what they do to your nervous system.

A recent study in The Lancet (5) clearly showed that food additives make children hyperactive. Researchers took about 300 normal children and split them into two groups. Each group was given an identical-looking colored drink. One was naturally colored; the other contained sodium benzoate and many other colors and additives.

The children who drank the tainted beverage were all much more hyperactive.

These compounds (and the total load of all the other toxins we are exposed to) create changes in mood, aggressive behavior, depression, problems with attention and focus, sleep problems, reduced intellectual performance, and memory loss.

It isn’t just occasionally consuming one red candy, blue cupcake, or the few drops of pesticide sprayed on our strawberries. It is the consistent, repetitive, cumulative presence of these chemicals in our lives that leads to our broken brains and the epidemics of autism, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and dementia we see in today’s world.

Let me tell you a story of a patient who had a miraculous recovery from what most medical experts say is an irreversible condition—dementia. The truth is that the brain is very resilient and can heal from toxins, if you get rid of all the insults to it and provide all the necessary ingredients for optimal functioning.

That is what we did for George—and the results were nothing short of miraculous.

Waking up from Dementia

George had a diagnosis of dementia and came with his wife to see me. He could no longer manage his business affairs, he couldn’t remember what he read any more, he had become increasingly unable to function at home, and he had to withdraw from family and social relationships.

There is no known effective treatment for dementia. But we do know a lot about what affects brain function and brain aging: our nutrition; vitamin deficiencies; omega-3 fat deficiencies; inflammation from food; infections; environmental toxins; stress; lack of exercise; hormonal imbalances; and trouble producing energy in our cells.

I addressed all these things with George. But the biggest problem he had was a big load of mercury from living near a cement plant his whole life and having a mouth full of silver fillings. He also had a few genes that were preventing him from effectively getting rid of or detoxifying the mercury from his body.

As a result he had one of the highest levels of mercury I had ever seen. The effects of this poisoning can be severe.

In one study of 465 patients with chronic mercury toxicity, 32 percent had severe fatigue, 88 percent had memory loss, and almost 30 percent had depression.

The good news that came out of this study is that removal of amalgam dental fillings combined with a mercury detoxification program resulted in significant symptom reduction. (6)

But just doing one thing wouldn’t help George. So we worked hard to get everything in balance— all his 7 basic biologic systems, the 7 keys to an UltraMind. The most important thing we did was to have his dental fillings removed safely and to slowly help him get rid of the mercury.

We helped him detoxify from mercury poisoning with foods such as kale, watercress, and cilantro; herbs such as milk thistle; nutrients such as selenium and zinc; and special medications that help the body remove toxic metals.

We treated his vitamin deficiencies with high doses of vitamins B6 and B12 and folate.

After a year of aggressive therapy that was matched to his genes and his own quirky biochemical train wrecks—not his diagnosis—he had a remarkable and dramatic recovery.

Before I saw George, he could not manage his business, nor did his grandchildren want to be around him. After matching his treatment to his genes, he was again able to function, and his grandchildren loved being with him again. His memory improved, he could read and remember what he read, and run his business affairs. He no longer isolated himself at home, but became an engaged member of his family and community. He could even remember and sing all the songs he used to sing in the shower.

The same miraculous recovery can happen for you—if you follow The UltraMind Solution and support your detoxification system.

Enhancing Your Detoxification System: Get More Glutathione

You see, we actually have a great system for getting rid of toxins—it is based on sulfur chemistry, that sticky, smelly substance. It is what our body uses like fly paper to stick to all the toxic molecules and carry them out of the body.

The molecule it uses is called glutathione and it is the most important detoxifier, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory in the body.

Sick people and people with broken brains have less of it.

But it is easy to make more of it, so you can get all the toxins out of your body.

Be kind to your brain! Learn how to get your detox system working:

• Eat organic when you can and avoid mercury-containing big fish like tuna and swordfish.

• Eat detoxifying foods like kale, watercress, artichokes, pomegranates, and cilantro.

• Use detoxifying herbs such as milk thistle and nutrients such as selenium and zinc, all of which boost detoxification and glutathione.

• Take special detox supplements like NAC, which is a form of sulfur your body uses to make glutathione.

• Learn how to get rid of heavy metals from your body.

You can learn more about how to support your detoxification system and how to reduce your toxic exposure and “live clean and green” in my new book, The UltraMind Solution. You can also read about one of my patients, Joanne, who woke up from lifelong depression by detoxifying her body.

Remember, a free sneak preview of The UltraMind Solution available at:

www.ultramind.com

In my next blog I will teach you about how to boost your energy. You will learn why conserving and making energy is so important to your brain and how toxins, bugs, poor nutrition, hormonal imbalance, and inflammation ultimately lead to cell destruction and death by a common mechanism ... one that literally depletes us of our life energy.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you noticed a link between the toxins you’re exposed to and your brain health?

Which toxins are you most exposed to?

What steps do you plan to take to detoxify your body?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

(1) http://archive.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php

(2) Schober SE, Sinks TH, Jones RL, Bolger PM, McDowell M, Osterloh J, Garrett ES, Canady RA, Dillon CF, Sun Y, Joseph CB, Mahaffey KR. Blood mercury levels in US children and women of childbearing age, 1999-2000.JAMA. 2003 Apr 2;289(13):1667-74

(3) http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~acrobat/hgstak56.pdf

(4) Alavanja MC, Hoppin JA, Kamel F. Health effects of chronic pesticide exposure: cancer and neurotoxicity. Annu Rev Public Health. 2004;25:155-97. Review.

(5) McCann D, Barrett A, Cooper A, Crumpler D, Dalen L, Grimshaw K, Kitchin E, Lok K, Porteous L, Prince E, Sonuga-Barke E, Warner JO, Stevenson J. Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.

(6) Wojcik DP, Godfrey ME, Christie D, Haley BE. Mercury toxicity presenting as chronic fatigue, memory impairment and depression: diagnosis, treatment, susceptibility, and outcomes in a New Zealand general practice setting (1994-2006). Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2006 Aug;27(4):415-23

The UltraMind Solution: Key #4 -- Fix Your Digestion

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:47:08 -0500

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

Did you know that you have two brains?

You have a brain and a GUT-brain.

And if you want a happy brain, you have to have a happy gut!

The gut-brain has its own independent nervous system. And it has more neurotransmitters and serotonin than the brain in your head.

You all know that you can get butterflies in your stomach, or lose your lunch (or worse) in very stressful situations. But did you know that what happens in your gut feeds right back to your brain?

Did you know that studies show that an irritable bowel (which affects nearly 60 million Americans) can cause an irritable brain? It isn’t being anxious and irritable that messes up your stomach, it is your stomach that makes you anxious and irritable.

Did you know that a bloated belly can cause a bloated and inflamed brain?

In this blog I will teach you how your gut and your brain are connected—and why you need to heal your gut if you want to heal your brain.

Your Second Brain

Dr. Michael Gershon of Columbia University has called the gut the “second brain.” In fact, your gut has a mind of its own—literally. While it is connected to the brain through an extensive network of wiring and communication systems, it is also the only “organ” besides the brain that has its own nervous system.

We call it the ENS, or enteric (or gut) nervous system, as opposed to the CNS, or central nervous system. This gut-brain actually comes from the same embryonic tissue as the brain-brain. And it is still connected via the autonomic nervous system—the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves.

Acting completely independently, the ENS has a number of important jobs. It keeps everything moving in the right direction, from the top down, by coordinating the contraction of muscle cells. It triggers the gut hormones and enzymes to be released from cells to promote digestion. It helps keep the blood flowing so when you absorb your food it can get to where it needs to go. And it controls the immune and inflammatory cells in the gut. (1)

All that happens in the background and is communicated back up to your brain via the autonomic nervous system. Think of it as two independent but inter-dependent businesses. They must coordinate and communicate but can also act independently.

Literally everything that happens in your gut is communicated to your brain via the ENS. If your gut is stressed out, if it is inflamed, if it has too few probiotics, or if the protective barrier that lets food in and keeps toxins out has been breached, your gut tells your brain about it.

That makes your brain unhappy.

So to have a happy brain, you have to have a happy gut.

And one of the best ways to do that is to heal your gut-immune system.

The Gut-Immune System

Some 60 percent of your immune system lies right under the one-cell-layer-thick lining of your gut.

Its job is to let in ONLY the good stuff—food in the form of amino acids, sugars, fats, minerals and vitamins—and KEEP OUT all the bad stuff, like toxic bacteria and undigested food particles.

In fact, if you laid your gut flat, it would be the size of a tennis court. And there are 3 pounds of bacteria comprising 500 species covering that surface.

If this surface breaks down—look out.

Your brain won’t be happy.

Your immune system will get activated, and start reacting to foods and toxins and bugs in your gut. This makes your brain and your mood inflamed!

You can also absorb toxic molecules into your bloodstream, which get to the brain and make you crazy. Take, for example, the patients with liver failure who go crazy because they can’t detoxify the poisons from their gut bacteria.

And what’s our treatment? We sterilize their intestines with antibiotics.

The problem is that the way we live, and all the drugs we take, damage our whole gut ecosystem. This includes our sugar- and junk food-rich, low-fiber diet, our overuse of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and acid-blocking medications, and our chronic stress.

So what happens when things go awry and our guts break down from the total load of stressors and toxins on our bodies?

We can develop everything from depression to ADD, from autism to Alzheimer’s, from OCD to anxiety—and just plain bad moods and brain fog.

Let me tell you a remarkable story of a gut gone bad and how fixing the gut fixes the brain.

A Self-Intoxicating Little Girl

One spring afternoon a beautiful little six-year-old girl walked into my office with her mother and sister. On the surface she seemed quite normal, but then the story of her tragic life unfolded.

This first grade student was extraordinarily aggressive with her sister and her peers—kicking, pinching, and hitting them. She threatened to kill herself regularly.

She cut her mother and sister out of family pictures. She was anxious, negative, and hopeless. Temper tantrums, mood swings, and attention seeking were regular patterns of behavior.

She was also diagnosed with OCD and “perfectionism.”

She didn’t make friends at school, and her mother was called daily about her disruptive behavior in class.

She had been a very colicky baby, had frequent diaper and vaginal yeast infections as a child, with vaginal and rectal itching (which gives you a pretty strong idea that yeast is hanging around), and had very sensitive skin.

And she loved sugar and refined pastries and carbs.

Now, she had no digestive complaints, but I have learned that even if a child or adult doesn’t complain about their gut, mischief can still be brewing. The bacteria and yeast literally ferment the sugary, starchy foods in the diet, producing “auto-intoxication” with alcohol—a byproduct of this process. (2) The violent, aggressive behavior so commonly seen in drunks can occur from alcohol produced by yeasts in the gut. I wondered if this little girl had a little auto-brewery in her belly.

On my detective hunt I found she was low in magnesium, which can make you pretty irritable, and was deficient in zinc, which is so important to help your digestive enzymes break down your food.

She also had delayed food allergies (IgG) to wheat, rye, oats, and barley (all gluten-containing grains).

And of course she had low levels of DHA—the brain-balancing omega-3 fat.

She also had the typical problems with her methylation—evidence of severe vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and folate deficiency.

And she had a lot of trouble making enough energy in her cells, which you will learn about later in this series.

These problems occur in patterns, because they are all connected. It is not usually one thing. It is almost always everything. But the gut is often at the center of the problem—even if there are no digestive symptoms.

The most incredible finding in this young girl’s case was the sky-high indicators of overgrowth of bacteria and yeast in her gut. I had never seen levels this high in anyone.

Just getting her on a gluten- and dairy-free, whole-foods, organic diet; some cod liver oil; magnesium; methylation helpers like B6, B12, and folate; a multivitamin; and some probiotics improved her condition. (3)

But when I gave her an antibiotic to clear out the bad bugs in her gut, (4) followed by an antifungal drug, she transformed into a well-behaved little girl.

Her aggressiveness, negativity, and hopelessness were gone. Her mother said she used to be punished ten times a day and got into trouble at school every day. All that stopped when we cleared up the bad bugs in her gut and helped her get her flora and gut ecosystem back in balance.

She was suffering from “auto-intoxication,” which led to crazy behavior. This process of a bug producing toxins that modify actual brain chemistry is just one way the gut can affect the brain. There are many more.

Many studies have shown abnormal, toxin-producing flora in children with developmental problems like these. Normal kids have normal flora.

Happy people have healthy flora!

Dr. David Relman from Stanford is studying the DNA of the ecosystem of bugs in the gut. He has found the bugs who live with you in your gut may be more important in determining your health than your own DNA fingerprint. A healthy gut is a healthy brain!

So what do you do about it?

Be kind to your gut:

2. If you can, get off of antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatories, and acid-blocking medication.

3. Try digestive enzymes.

4. Try probiotics, which are the beneficial bacteria that normally live in your gut.

5. Eat a whole-foods diet with plenty of fiber like beans, nuts, veggies, fruits, seeds, and whole grains.

And remember, if you want a happy brain you have to have a happy gut.

I give you more details on how to make your gut and your brain happy in my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview by going here:

www.ultramind.com

In my next blog we will turn our attention to toxins, how they affect our brain, and how they lead to systemic breakdown that contributes to almost every brain- and mood-related problem we face.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you noticed how your digestive problems affect your mood?

What foods seem to worsen—and improve—your mood?

What steps have you taken to help ease digestive problems?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

PS – Remember, you can download a free sneak preview of UltraMind right now by going to www.ultramind.com .

PPS -- The UltraMind Solution public television show is starting on February 27th. Check your local listings for air times. Or, you can get your own copy of The UltraMind Solution DVD by Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D. Also, The UltraMind Solution Club by Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D. has just launched, which is an online club that makes going through the program simple and easy.

1) Benarroch EE. Enteric nervous system: functional organization and neurologic implications. Neurology. 2007 Nov 13;69(20):1953-7. Review.

(2) Jansson-Nettelbladt E, Meurling S, Petrini B, Sjölin J. Endogenous ethanol fermentation in a child with short bowel syndrome. Acta Paediatr. 2006 Apr;95(4):502-4

(3) Kidd PM. Autism, an extreme challenge to integrative medicine. Part 2: medical management. Altern Med Rev. 2002 Dec;7(6):472-99. Review.

(4) Sandler RH, Finegold SM, Bolte ER, Buchanan CP, Maxwell AP, Väisänen ML, Nelson MN, Wexler HM. Short-term benefit from oral vancomycin treatment of regressive-onset autism. J Child Neurol. 2000 Jul;15(7):429-35.

The UltraMind Solution: Key #3 - Cool off Inflammation

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:45:01 -0500

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

Can your brain become inflamed? Can you have a sore or swollen brain—like a sore throat—that causes everything from brain fog to dementia to depression to autism?

You brain can become inflamed just as your body does. And in the 21st century, our bodies and brains are on fire.

Today, the fires of inflammation are raging all over the body. That’s why we are seeing an epidemic of diseases including autoimmunity (24 million people), allergy (50 million), and asthma (30 million), as well as cardiovascular disease (60 million), cancer (10 million), and diabetes (14 million). These, it has been recently discovered, are primarily inflammatory conditions.

Now, new research proves that almost all brain problems are connected to or caused by inflammation as well.

In this blog I will review just a few examples of the research that points to the link between inflammation and our epidemic of broken brains and tell you what you can do to reduce the sources of inflammation in your life.

Is Depression Caused by a Virus?

Well, it may be.

Researchers recently discovered a new virus called Bornavirus, which is found in the limbic system (or emotional center) of the brain in 30 percent of the population. One in 6 of the people who carry this virus have depression.
This virus inflames the brain. It is this inflammation that leads to depression in some cases.

Interestingly, the problem can be cured by treatment with short-term antiviral medication.

Think about what that means.

A virus can cause inflammation, which leads to depression. Treating the virus can CURE, not just reduce, the symptoms of depression.

Even the best antidepressant drugs don’t cure depression.

And NO amount of psychotherapy will ever cure depression caused by a virus.

This is like the discovery that ulcers are caused by bacteria and not stress. It completely upsets our thinking about mental illness and neurological disease.

And it should!

The cure for your broken brain may not lie in searching through the intricacies of your past, but in healing your body. One of the key ways you do that is by reducing inflammation.

That even holds true for “neurological diseases” as radical as autism—which very well may be an inflammatory condition.

Autism and Inflammation

Dr. Martha Herbert, a Harvard neurologist, has found that the brains of kids with autism appear swollen on MRI scans. Dr. Vargas from Johns Hopkins found inflammation in the spinal fluid and in autopsy studies of kids with autism. Researchers from UC Davis found that more than 70 percent of kids on the autistic spectrum have altered immune function.

And 95 percent of these kids have swollen bellies and gut problems. That’s not a coincidence, since 60 percent of the immune system is in the gut. I’ll tell you more about this later in my blog series.

This suggests that autism may primarily be an inflammatory condition. Reduce the inflammation and you reduce the sources of autism.

I have seen this happen over and over again in my practice. When you treat inflammation and the other keys to an UltraMind, autistic children can literally wake up from their silent worlds.

I’ll say it again: Treat the inflammation in your body and you can heal your brain!

But how do you do that?

You do it by finding and eliminating the sources of inflammation.

The Sources of Inflammation

Everything in the body is connected, but there are only a few things that cause inflammation.

The list is short:

2. Food allergens—mostly delayed reactions to food or hidden allergens that lead to “brain allergies” (allergic reactions in the body that cause inflammation in the brain—more about these in a moment)

3. Imbalances in digestive function and the gut immune system that produce widespread systemic effects

4. Toxins such as mercury and pesticides (and the 85,000 mostly untested toxins in our environment), which have been linked to immune dysfunction and autoimmune diseases

5. Low-grade, hidden, or chronic infections such as HIV-associated dementia, syphilis, and Lyme disease, which can cause many neurologic and psychiatric “diseases”

6. Stress—emotional or physical, such as trauma

7. Sedentary lifestyle

8. Inadequate sleep—less than 7 hours a night

9. Nutritional deficiencies such as vitamin C, B vitamins, vitamin D, zinc, and omega-3 fats

Are you starting to see how all these keys are connected?

If you go to the doctor and you are depressed, but you also have irritable bowel, or eczema, or headaches, or sinus congestion, or joint pain, it doesn’t mean you need to see five different specialists. It means that there are a few underlying systems that are out of balance and cause ALL your problems—and you don’t need to treat each one separately with medication!

Let me share the story of one of my patients who went through the mill of drugs and therapy and was given all sorts of labels. But she only had a few things out of balance that were easy to fix—so she simply followed the UltraMind Solution.

Elizabeth’s Story – A Brain Inflamed

Elizabeth was a 21-year-old woman who came to see me, as many of my patients do, with a whole list of problems—which is why I call myself a “whole-listic” doctor.

At the top of the list were mood problems that had plagued her since childhood. She had been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and even borderline personality disorder because of her wild mood swings.

At work, people avoided her, never knowing what to expect, and she was always fighting with her parents.

She was high-strung, irritable, and also had trouble concentrating. Sugar cravings drove her to the fridge every day after work—pudding, pizza, and junk food were staples—and her late-night snacking was hard to control.

She had been on antidepressants since she was 13. Her weight ballooned up to 170 pounds. Not only was she tired (though she was sleeping 10 hours a night) but also had allergies, post-nasal drip, sinus congestion, and fluid in her ears, and snored.

She had delayed allergies to eggs, wheat, rye, dairy, and yeast, which made her brain inflamed. She also had low levels of omega-3 fats.

I put Elizabeth on an elimination diet, giving her a break from foods that triggered her immune system. I added a few vitamins, including vitamin D and B6 and omega-3 fats.

Two months later she came back. She had lost 23 pounds and her cravings were gone. But it was the mood change she experienced that was truly astounding. Her mood improved for first time in her life. She no longer had wild mood swings or irritability.

Her energy level improved dramatically as well. She only needed 7 hours of sleep to feel fully and vitally awake.

After 5 months she had lost 33 pounds without trying, felt deeply happy for the first time in her life, and was thriving at work and in her family. All her other symptoms—sinus problems, post-nasal drip, and premenstrual syndrome—were gone as well.

Elizabeth’s main problem was an inflamed brain. She had “brain allergies,” which are one of the main sources of brain inflammation.

These brain allergies manifest themselves as brain fog, trouble focusing, irritability, depression, or mood swings after eating.

Most of these brain allergies are due to mild, hidden, delayed food allergies: you eat a piece of bread on Monday and feel depressed on Tuesday, but you never make the connection. As a result, your brain becomes inflamed.

Hidden food allergies are a major unrecognized epidemic in the 21st century. Despite the fact that the immune system and the brain are intimately linked and food has a MAJOR impact on the brain and body, most of us (including physicians) don’t make the connection between what we eat and how we feel. In fact, most physicians practicing today don’t acknowledge the critically important role food allergies play in health.

The result is that we have an undiagnosed epidemic of people whose lives are affected by low-grade, delayed food sensitivities or allergies. What they eat causes allergic reactions that make them feel bad—and no one is making the connections.

You can take some simple measures on your own to heal from brain allergies. You just have to take away the substances that most often cause allergic reactions for a few weeks and let your immune system cool down. Then try them again and see how you feel.

It is a simple, very effective solution for identifying the foods that cause your brain allergies, and it is one of the core components of The UltraMind Solution. You’ll find more in Part III (on page 287) of my book.

Without addressing the core underlying causes of all your body AND mind symptoms, you will never have optimal brain function or mood.

You can never achieve an UltraMind with the current medical roadmap. The UltraMind Solution is a new roadmap that will take you to a place where you feel happy, at peace, alert, and connected to everything important in your life—rather than living in a chronic state of brain fog!

Remember, you can get a free sneak preview of that new roadmap by going here:

www.ultramind.com

In my next blog you will learn how your gut and brain are connected in surprising ways, and that often the first thing to do to fix your brain is to fix your gut!

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Have you noticed the connections between inflammation and your broken brain?

Which of these sources of inflammation have you identified in your own body?

What steps do you plan to take to ease inflammation?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

PS – Remember, you can download a free sneak preview of UltraMind right now by going to www.ultramind.com .

And since I know many of you have friends, family members, or coworkers who may also suffer from a broken brain, please pass this message along to them. It may provide them the hope that they’ve been looking for.

The UltraMind Solution: Key #2 –- Balance Your Hormones

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:02:56 -0500

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

Most of us are living life completely out of balance. But so many symptoms we come to accept as “normal” are just signs of imbalance – and the type of imbalance that affects almost everyone in our society is hormonal imbalance.

Let me ask you:

• Do you crave sugar or salt?

• Are you overweight and putting on more and more belly fat?

• If you are a woman, do you have premenstrual syndrome or painful or heavy periods?

• Are you depressed?

• Do you sleep poorly?

• Are you less interested in sex?

• Do you have thinning hair, dry skin, and feel sluggish in the mornings?

• Do you feel tired but wired?

• Do you have to drink coffee every morning just to wake up and a few glasses of wine every night just to calm down?

If so, you are not alone. In fact, this is how most Americans feel, because we are living out of harmony with our natural biological rhythms – and our hormones are all over the place.

The hormones that cause the most mental misery are your stress hormones, your thyroid hormone, your sex hormones, and your major blood-sugar control hormone, insulin.

In this blog, I want to teach you about three very common major hormonal imbalances and how you can rebalance these areas of your biochemistry so you can achieve an UltraMind: insulin, thyroid, and sex hormone imbalances. We will discuss stress hormones in Part 8 of this series.

Hormonal Imbalance #1: Insulin Imbalance

If you crave sugar or bread, feel weak and irritable at 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, skip breakfast or eat a big muffin or bagel for breakfast, or have extra belly fat, you likely have serious blood sugar and insulin problems, which can cause depression, dementia, and panic disorder.

Just look down at your belly – if it’s sticking out or jiggles when you jump up and down, you have a problem.

We have seen an extraordinary increase in sugar consumption, from 10 pounds per person per year at the beginning of the 19th century to 158 pounds per person per year at the beginning of the 21st century.

In fact, more money is spent at gas stations on junk food than on gas!

We spend more money on processed and junk food than on new cars, new computers and higher education – combined!

That’s why 100 million Americans suffer from insulin resistance, or “pre-diabetes.” This condition is a problem by itself and causes “pre-dementia,” also known as mild cognitive impairment.

In fact, some scientists are now calling Alzheimer’s disease “type-3 diabetes”!

We are now seeing type-2 diabetes in children. Could this mean they will get Alzheimer’s as early as their 30s and 40s?

And what about sugar and depression? Researchers found that people with symptoms of depression were 42 percent more likely to develop diabetes than those without depressive symptoms. They also found that the more serious the symptoms, the higher the risk of diabetes.

So what’s the cure?

• Eat whole foods and make sure you have some protein like eggs, nuts, or a protein shake for breakfast.

• Don’t forget to get moving. Exercise is the magic potion for your brain and your belly fat.

Hormonal Imbalance #2: Thyroid Imbalance

Insulin isn’t the only hormone that can get out of balance. There’s another hormone imbalance that affects one in five women and one in 10 men – most of whom don’t even know they have it.

I’m talking about an imbalance of thyroid hormones.

Are you cold all the time? Do you have dry skin, thinning hair, weak fingernails, a puffy face, swelling of your hands and feet, constipation, or trouble getting out of bed in the morning? Do you seem to forget things easily?

If so, you might have a low-functioning thyroid.

A 73-year-old woman once came to see me because she had fatigue, sluggishness, poor memory, slight depression, dry skin, constipation, and a little fluid retention. When she visited her previous doctor, he said, “Well, what do you expect? You’re 73 – and this is what 73 is supposed to feel like.”

I don’t believe that is true. I believe that most of the symptoms of aging we see are really symptoms of abnormal aging or dysfunction that are related to imbalances in our core body systems.

This patient had a sluggish thyroid.

By simply replacing her missing thyroid hormone, supporting her nutrition, and implementing some simple lifestyle changes, she went from feeling old to feeling alert, energetic, and youthful. Plus, all of her other symptoms cleared up.

And research supports this. Studies have shown that older people with “sub-clinical” hypothyroidism have four times the risk of developing depression.(1) Yet many doctors prescribe antidepressants before they take a good hard look at the thyroid.

Your thyroid hormone is critical for making new brain cells (neurogenesis), particularly in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for mood and memory.(2)

You might need the help of your doctor and prescription thyroid medication if your thyroid is not optimally balanced. Here are some tips to help you along the way:

www.ultramind.com

• Get enough thyroid-supportive nutrients, including iodine, selenium, zinc, vitamin D, and omega-3 fats.

• Take thyroid hormone replacement if your tests show you are not optimally balanced. Remember, most of the common medications out there don’t take care of this problem. People often need a little bit of T3 – the active thyroid hormone – added to their treatment (even if they are already on other thyroid hormones.

Hormonal Imbalance #3: Sex Hormone Imbalances

Here’s some headline news. Did you know:

“Seventy-five percent of women were found to have a mutant gene that threatens their relationships, work, and well-being.”

“More than half of aging men will lose their sexual function, their testosterone levels will drop, and their estrogen levels will rise, making men more like women.”

These are the beliefs that we all unconsciously accept.

Women are defective, flawed, and broken – and destined to suffer throughout their reproductive lives from mood and behavior swings that are the result of the three Ps: Puberty, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and perimenopause. This is the “genetic flaw” that supposedly threatens them.

As they age, men – if you believe all the television commercials – supposedly need the “little blue pill” just to be men again.

Is this a “normal” part of being a woman or a man? Is it the product of some defective, mutant gene?

Why do sex hormone levels drop up to 90 percent during the aging process?

Are we destined to suffer from impaired mood, muscle loss, poor sleep, memory difficulties, and sexual problems?

Of course not!

This suffering related to your reproductive life cycle is unnecessary. It is not bad luck, but bad habits, such as drinking and smoking, eating a high-sugar and refined-carbohydrate diet, being exposed to environmental toxins, and being chronically stressed.

To think that 75 percent of women have a design flaw that gives them PMS and requires medical treatment is just absurd. To think that we all have to dwindle, shrivel, and lose our emotional, physical, and sexual vitality is a burdensome, self-fulfilling prophecy.

We now have endless examples of balance and thriving at any age. One of my 81-year-old female patients recently told me, with a twinkle in her eye, about her new boyfriend and their wonderful love life.

PMS, menopausal symptoms, and andropause are all signs of imbalances in your sex hormones. They are not the result of mutant genes that destroy our sexual vitality as we age. Instead, they are treatable symptoms of underlying imbalance in one of the core systems in your body. Get your sex hormones back in balance, and these problems usually disappear.

Male Hormonal Problems

If you are a man older than age 50, you might be getting flabby and feeling less interested in sex. Do you see the hair on your legs and chest disappearing? Are you getting “man boobs”?

If so, you might be low in testosterone, which makes you depressed, unmotivated, and mentally dull.

The solutions are simple:

• Build muscle

• Consider using topical testosterone cream or gel

Female Hormonal Problems

If you have headaches, breast tenderness, fluid retention, mood swings, and irritability in the days or weeks before your menstrual period, you might have too much estrogen and not enough progesterone. This can make you feel crazy.

Let me tell you the story of a patient of mine with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD. She was barely able to function. She suffered three weeks out of every month with severe physical symptoms and debilitating depression. Was she deficient in Prozac (or Prozac renamed Sarafem to treat PMS)? I don’t think so.

She was 37 years old. She had severe depression, fatigue, anxiety, and food and sugar cravings that led to overeating and 20 pounds of weight gain.

She also had joint pains, breast tenderness, heavy bleeding, hot flashes, dry skin, acne, hair loss, trouble with memory, poor sleep, and no sex drive.

She didn’t drink alcohol, but was a big coffee drinker. She started the day with a bagel and cheese, had a cafeteria lunch, chocolates in the afternoon, and a healthy dinner, followed by ice cream, chips, and Cheerios.

She also complained of gas and bloating.

And she ate a lot of dairy products.

We know that sugar, caffeine, alcohol, stress, and lack of exercise all contribute to worsened PMS(3) and all hormonal imbalances including menopause and andropause.(4)

It is also true that dairy consumption can worsen hormonal imbalances because of all the hormones in milk.(5)(6) Even organic milk can come from pregnant cows, jacking up hormones levels.(7)

So I helped her change her diet, cut out the sugar and caffeine, eliminate food allergens, take a few supplements and herbs, and do a little exercise. Within just one menstrual cycle her life changed.

All her symptoms resolved, she lost weight, and she increased her energy dramatically. Her mood stabilized (meaning her depression evaporated), and her acne and dry skin went away – all without medication.

Here’s what to do:

• Load up on broccoli, collard greens, and kale, which help balance hormones.

• Supplement with vitamin B6, magnesium, evening primrose oil, and fish oil.

• Get regular exercise.

Balancing your hormones is a process – and sometimes it has little twists and turns. But by sticking with it, you can become vital, happy, alert, brilliant, and thriving.

And if you need more help it’s in my book: The UltraMind Solution.

Remember, you can get a free sneak preview by going here:

www.ultramind.com

But beware: there may be some serious side effects from balancing your hormones ...

... Some people notice a significant spike in their sex drive and pleasure!

In my next blog you will learn how brain inflammation has been linked to everything from autism to Alzheimer’s, from depression to ADHD. Our brains are on fire. Find out why and what to do about it.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

Do you suffer from any of the symptoms listed above?

Have you been told you have an imbalance of hormones?

What have you tried to balance your hormones?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

PS – Remember, you can download a free sneak preview of UltraMind right now by going to www.ultramind.com .

(1) Chueire VB, Romaldini JH, Ward LS. Subclinical hypothyroidism increases the risk for depression in the elderly. Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2007 Jan-Feb;44(1):21-8. Epub 2006 May 5.

(2) Montero-Pedrazuela A, Venero C, Lavado-Autric R, Fernández-Lamo I, García-Verdugo JM, Bernal J, Guadaño-Ferraz A. Modulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis by thyroid hormones: implications in depressive-like behavior. Mol Psychiatry. 2006 Apr;11(4):361-71.

(3) Rasheed P, Al-Sowielem LS. Prevalence and predictors of premenstrual syndrome among college-aged women in Saudi Arabia. Ann Saudi Med. 2003 Nov-Dec;23(6):381-7.

(4) Tan RS, Pu SJ. The andropause and memory loss: is there a link between androgen decline and dementia in the aging male? Asian J Androl. 2001 Sep;3(3):169-74. Review.

(5) Rich Edwards JW, Ganmaa D, Pollak MN, Nakamoto EK, Kleinman K, Tserendolgor U, Willett WC, Frazier AL.Milk consumption and the prepubertal somatotropic axis.Nutr J. 2007 Sep 27;6:28.

(6) [No authors listed]Milk, hormones and human health, 10/23-25/2006, Boston. J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia. 2007 Dec;12(4):315

(7) Pape-Zambito DA, Magliaro AL, Kensinger RS. Concentrations of 17beta-estradiol in Holstein whole milk. J Dairy Sci. 2007 Jul;90(7):3308-13.

The UltraMind Solution: Key #1 - Optimize Nutrition

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:33:36 -0500

This is my second blog in a series on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book at:

www.ultramind.com

Now, on to the good stuff!

The most powerful tool you have to fix your broken brain is not a drug or psychotherapy -- it’s something you use every day.

This tool is your FORK. And what you put on it can help -- or harm -- your brain.

Food is not just calories. Food is information.

And you have to put the right information on your fork for your brain to work properly.

Your brain needs all the raw materials of life to function properly. This material is food -- real, whole foods, not the processed junk foods that line most of our supermarket shelves.

If I could choose any medicine to prescribe, I would choose food.

That’s because food is the most powerful medicine!

It can heal or harm you. It all depends on what you choose to eat.

Despite all of our modern medical bells and whistles, conventional medicine is still notoriously poor at treating mental illness, neurological disorders, and chronic disease.

What most doctors don’t know is that we CAN prevent, treat, reverse -- and often even CURE -- chronic illness and our broken brains with food.

We are an overfed but undernourished nation. We are suffering from some serious nutritional deficiencies that can damage our brains, cloud our thoughts, and leave us depressed and hopeless.

No wonder so many of us are suffering with broken brains.

But you don’t have to. All you have to do to heal your brain is to eat the right foods.

Today, I’m going to review some of the most critical nutrients for brain function, tell you where you can get them, and explain why taking supplements is absolutely essential if you want to optimize your brain.

These are four of the most important tips you need to know to develop an UltraMind.

Nutrition Tip #1: Become a Fat Head

One of my patients, a 20-year-old woman who hated seafood and avoided it her whole life, suffered from depression, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder (ADD), obesity, muscle pain, and chronic fatigue. Her blood tests showed a severe deficiency of omega-3 fats and an overload of inflammatory omega-6 fats.

So we gave her an oil change, with high doses of fish oil (EPA and DHA). Soon, she recovered from her depression, brain fog, and ADD, her pain disappeared, and she lost 60 pounds!

Why was she so deficient? Well, for 5 million years we evolved in a seafood-rich environment or ate wild animals and plants full of omega-3 fats.

But these days, few of us gather wild plants to eat or hunt for our meat. That’s why 99 percent of people today are deficient in the most important ingredient our bodies need for normal cell and brain function -- omega-3 fatty acids.

Why are omega-3s so important?

To answer that question, think about your brain for a minute. It weighs only 3 pounds, or 2 percent of your body weight. But it uses 20 percent of the oxygen you breathe and consumes 20 percent of the calories you consume. And it contains 100 billion cells, each of which has 40,000 connections!

The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe.

And every one of its cells and cellular connections are—or SHOULD be—made of omega-3 fats.

Your cells are built of the fats you consume. If you eat omega-3 fats, cellular communication will flow smoothly.

But if you eat soy oil, trans fats, or beef fat, your brain cells become stiff and hard like Crisco, cellular communication breaks down, and your brain stops working properly.

You’re probably all too familiar with what happens next.

You become depressed, demented, anxious, and exhausted or suffer from a host of other brain disorders.

One of the reasons we are seeing an epidemic of broken brains in today’s world is that there has been a thousand-fold increase in the consumption of processed soy oil in the last century.

The people who eat these soy oils are more depressed, demented, distracted—and violent. Murders are actually more common in countries whose inhabitants consume more soy oil and less seafood.

One study has even found a 35 percent reduction in felony-level violent offenses among prisoners who supplemented with omega-3 fats.

Our brains just don’t work without omega-3 fats. Period.

That’s why low levels of omega-3 fats have been linked to everything from depression and anxiety, to bipolar disease and criminal behavior, to schizophrenia, to ADD and autism and learning disabilities, to dementia and many other neurological diseases.

So how do you know if you are deficient?

If you have dry, scaly patches on your skin or have excess hard earwax or soft, cracked, or brittle nails or chicken skin—tiny bumps on the back of your arms -- then you are almost certainly deficient in omega-3 fats.

Here’s the solution:

• Cut out trans fats and processed food, minimize animal fats.

• Eat omega-3 fatty acids from wild, coldwater fish like salmon, walnuts, and flaxseeds.

• Take a supplement of 1,000 mg of purified, toxin- and mercury-free omega-3s (EPA/DHA) twice a day.

And remember, if someone calls you a fat head, take it as a compliment … as long as you eat the right kind of fats.

Nutrition Tip #2: Balance Your Serotonin

Today, about 121 million people are suffering from serotonin deficiency and are depressed and anxious as a result.

Serotonin is the feel-good molecule. It is one of a class of important chemicals in your brain and body called neurotransmitters. This particular neurotransmitter is responsible for sending messages of relaxation and happiness.

If you have enough serotonin, your mood will be balanced and joyful. If you don’t, you spiral down into darkness and depression.

The typical treatment given for serotonin deficiency is Prozac.

But depression is NOT a Prozac deficiency.

In fact, the “serotonin deficiency” that Prozac is designed to treat is really just a symptom of deeper problems—imbalances in the body like toxicity, chronic stress, a poor diet, vitamin deficiencies, and inflammation.

And it can be fixed by balancing the 7 keys to an UltraMind!

If antidepressants worked perfectly, then I would prescribe them. But pills don’t work to treat the causes of illness.

Nonetheless, one in ten Americans are taking antidepressants.

Most patients taking antidepressants either don’t respond or have only a partial response.

In fact, success is considered a 50 percent improvement in just half the symptoms of depression. And this minimal result is achieved in less than half the patients taking these medications!

But the drug companies work hard to make sure you don’t know this.

A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that drug companies selectively published studies on antidepressants. They published nearly all the studies that showed benefit and almost none of the studies that showed they don’t work.

This kind of underreporting warps our view, leading us to think that antidepressants (and other psychiatric medications) do work when they don’t. This makes more doctors prescribe them and more people take them.

I’ll admit, the approach is half right. Chemical imbalances lead to problems. But the real question is never asked.

WHY are those chemicals out of balance in the first place -- and how do we get them back to their natural state of balance?

These drugs don’t cure the problem. They cover over the symptoms.

To cure the epidemic of broken brains, we have to ask a new set of questions:

How do we find the cause of this epidemic? Are we defectively designed?

Or are our toxic environment, nutrient-depleted diet, and unremitting stress affecting our sensitive brains?

Are more drugs really the answer? Or is there a better way to address the underlying causes of this epidemic so we can regain our mental—and physical—health and live whole, functional, fulfilling lives?

There IS an answer to brain problems, but it isn’t more drugs or psychotherapy. Although these tools can be a helpful bridge during your recovery from a broken brain, they won’t provide long-term solutions.

The secret that promises to help us fix our broken brains lies in an unlikely place, a place modern medicine has mostly ignored.

The answer lies in our bodies.

You don’t have to take drugs to get your serotonin levels up. You can do it naturally by following the 7 keys to an UltraMind:

2. Relax and calm your mind—stress depletes serotonin.

3. Cool off inflammation by getting rid of hidden food allergens, toxins, and infections.

4. Balance your blood sugar by eating whole real foods with plenty of fiber and protein with each meal.

5. Get enough vitamin B6 so your body can transform tryptophan to serotonin.

6. Take magnesium to boost serotonin levels.

7. Get rid of toxins like mercury.

The Importance of Vitamins and Minerals

Unless you eat a wholesome diet and follow a perfectly healthy lifestyle, you need to supplement with vitamins and minerals every day.

More than 90 percent of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency diseases like scurvy. Many of us don’t get enough vitamin C, E, D, iron, or zinc.

That’s a problem, because nutrients help run all the chemical reactions in your body, including all the ones that make you happy, remember things, focus, and be mentally sharp and alert.

Let’s look at the effects of a few nutrients of the most important nutrients for brain function.

Nutrition Tip #3: Get Enough Methylation Vitamins

A few special mood, memory, and attention vitamins are so critical that EVERYONE should make sure they have enough of them.

These are folic acid, and vitamins B6 and B12. These are called the methylation vitamins and are at the hub of your entire brain chemistry.

In one study of older adults, the group with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 lost twice as much brain volume as those with the highest levels.

Another remarkable study in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that 27 percent of severely depressed women over age 65 were B12 deficient.(1)

Doctors are now using a prescription version of folate called Deplin to treat depression and to improve the effectiveness of antidepressants. (2) In fact, if you have folate deficiency, it is unlikely that antidepressants will even work.

What’s remarkable is how backward the thinking about depression is. Doctors tend to only use vitamins if antidepressants don’t work.(3) They should be prescribing the vitamins in the first place and then supplementing with antidepressants only if vitamins and lifestyle changes don’t work.

People with a low folate level have only a 7 percent response to treatment with antidepressants. Those with high levels folate have a response rate of 44 percent. That’s more than six times better. In medicine if we get a 15 to 30 percent improvement we are happy. But a 600 percent improvement—that should be headline news.

That is why I recommend supplementing with these methylation vitamins every day. I tell you exactly what you should take in The UltraMind Solution.

Nutrition Tip #4: Take Your Magnesium -- The Relaxation Mineral

If you are tense or tight, anxious or irritable, then you might be magnesium deficient.

You also might be magnesium deficient if you have:

Anxiety, autism, ADD, headaches, migraines, chronic fatigue, irritability, muscle cramps or twitches, insomnia, sensitivity to loud noises, palpitations, angina, constipation, anal spasms, fibromyalgia, asthma, kidney stones, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, PMS, menstrual cramps, irritable bladder, irritable bowel syndrome, reflux, trouble swallowing, and more.

We eat a diet that has practically no magnesium -- a highly processed, refined diet that is based mostly on white flour, meat, and dairy, none of which contain magnesium.

This is compounded by the fact that magnesium levels are decreased by excess alcohol, salt, coffee, sugar, phosphoric acid in colas, profuse sweating, prolonged or intense stress, chronic diarrhea, excessive menstruation, and by diuretics (water pills), antibiotics and other drugs and some intestinal parasites.

We live lifestyles that cause us to lose whatever magnesium we have from our bodies, and we never replace it.

When was the last time you had a good dose of sea vegetables (seaweed), nuts, greens, and beans?

If you are like most Americans, your nut consumption mostly comes from peanut butter, and mostly in chocolate peanut butter cups. As for seaweed, greens, and beans—well, most Americans don’t eat many of these at all.

You can also supplement with magnesium, which can have magnificent effects. But you need to know how much to take and what form to take. I give you all the details in my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can get a free sneak preview of it by going to:

www.ultramind.com

In my next blog I will teach you how to balance your hormones—and why hidden hormonal imbalances are often at the root of problems with mood, thoughts, memory and behavior.

Now I’d like to hear from you ...

How does food seem to affect your emotions and mental health?

Do you feel better after eating some foods and worse after eating others?

What supplements do you currently take to address mental problems?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

PS -- Remember, you can download a free sneak preview of UltraMind right now by going to www.ultramind.com .

And since I know many of you have friends, family or co-workers who may suffer from a broken brain, please pass this message along to them as it may provide them the hope that they’ve been looking for.

(1) Penninx BW, Guralnik JM, Ferrucci L, Fried LP, Allen RH, Stabler SP. Vitamin B(12) deficiency and depression in physically disabled older women: epidemiologic evidence from the Women's Health and Aging Study. Am J Psychiatry. 2000 May;157(5):715-21.

(2) Papakostas GI, Petersen T, Mischoulon D, Ryan JL, Nierenberg AA, Bottiglieri T, Rosenbaum JF, Alpert JE, Fava M. Serum folate, vitamin B12, and homocysteine in major depressive disorder, Part 1: predictors of clinical response in fluoxetine-resistant depression. J Clin Psychiatry. 2004 Aug;65(8):1090-5.

(3) Alpert JE, Mischoulon D, Rubenstein GE, Bottonari K, Nierenberg AA, Fava M. Folinic acid (Leucovorin) as an adjunctive treatment for SSRI-refractory depression. Ann Clin Psychiatry. 2002 Mar;14(1):33-8.

The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety and Sharpen Your Mind

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:24:47 -0500

Are you one of the 100 million, or one-in-three, Americans struggling through life with a “broken brain?”

It doesn’t have to be that way. Today, I’m going to share with you the key to good mental and emotional health -- to an “UltraMind” … one that’s calm, confident, and happy.

But first, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you feel depressed, hopeless, disconnected, and disengaged from your life?

• Do you see your relationships breaking down because you are mentally and emotionally absent or numb?

• Do you forget to meet friends or go to appointments, and then can’t figure out how in the world you forgot?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, you are not alone.

Right now in America, there is a rising tide of “broken brains.” And conventional medicine cannot cure it.

This epidemic includes conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychosis, attention deficit disorder (ADD), autism, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease, as well as more subtle symptoms like mood swings, sleep problems, poor concentration, and brain fog.

Consider this ...

One in ten Americans today uses antidepressants, while more than eight million children are taking stimulants like Ritalin.

Is something wrong with this picture? Is this part of the normal human condition? Are we defectively designed so that we cannot be happy, or concentrate, or remember things without pills? Is depression a Prozac deficiency? Is ADHD a Ritalin deficiency? Is Alzheimer’s an Aricept deficiency?

I think not.

But here’s the really big news:

These “diseases” do not exist.

At least not in the way we think they do.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you have chronic feelings of sadness and despair. Conventional doctors might say you have a disease called “depression.”

But depression is not the cause of your sadness and despair. It’s just a name we use to group people together for the purpose of giving them all the same drug therapy. You feel sad and despairing? You have “depression” and need an “antidepressant!”

But do we know the reason for these symptoms? Do we know the causes? Are they even the same from one person to another?

Think about it.

You and the person sitting next to you could both have chronic symptoms we call a “headache,” but maybe your pain is caused by drinking too much wine every night, while his pain is the result of being hit on the head with the empty bottle every night.

As you can imagine, these two chronic headaches can’t be cured in the same way, because their root causes are different. But that approach is exactly the one the current medical community is taking!

They give the same treatment for diseases with the same name, even though the cause of that disease may be radically different from person to person.

Drugs like antidepressants don’t cure the disease, they just mask the symptoms.

We don’t need to continue using these same drug treatments that don’t work, make things worse with side effects, or at best give partial relief. There is a proven, medical alternative and it is called The UltraMind Solution.

It is based on Functional Medicine -- the greatest revolution medicine has seen in the last hundred years. It is the medical equivalent of Columbus saying the world is round not flat, or Galileo proving that the earth is NOT the center of the universe.

And it offers the promise to heal all of our broken brains and all chronic illness.

When it comes to broken brains, the key to this new paradigm is simply this:

Your mood problems, your memory problems, your trouble focusing, your ADD and depression are ...

NOT ALL IN YOUR HEAD!

THEY ARE IN YOUR BODY.

By FIXING YOUR BODY, YOU WILL automatically FIX YOUR BROKEN BRAIN -- and experience an ULTRAMIND.

Your energy, memory, focus, and your joy will all increase.

Your depression, anxiety, dementia, and ADD will fade away like a bad dream.

I know -- because I was cured myself using this simple but powerful method.

You see, my own brain broke one day in 1996. In fact, I felt like I had developed ADD, depression, and dementia all at once! The worse my body felt, the worse my brain functioned. My eyes would get red and swollen, I couldn’t focus, I had rashes and diarrhea, I couldn’t remember what I had just said, I couldn’t feel joy, and I was constantly exhausted, yet had trouble sleeping.

I saw doctors. I saw psychiatrists. No one could find the cause for my symptoms or agree on a diagnosis. Some said I had depression, others suggested chronic fatigue.

So I decided to find the answers for myself.

By scouring the literature, consulting with other doctors and scientists, and experimenting with my own body and mind, I finally came to understand that it wasn’t just one thing that had caused my brain to break, but the accumulation of many things.

And the cure wasn’t found in one magic pill, but by balancing the 7 core systems in my body, or what I came to call The 7 Keys to UltraWellness. They are:

2. Balance your hormones

3. Cool off inflammation

4. Fix your digestion

5. Enhance detoxification

6. Boost energy metabolism

7. Calm your mind

Imbalances in these keys are the underlying causes of all illness.

You see, not only are your joint pains, skin rashes, gastrointestinal distress, and depression all connected, but the only way to find your way out of this mess of chronic disease (including the epidemic of broken brains) is by using a new map -- one that allows us to see how everything is connected.

This new map is the basis of Functional Medicine. It is a rich new method, a fundamental change in our thinking, a whole different paradigm. It changes our approach to the very way we think about illness and the human body and brain.

The truth is that you can’t treat mental illness effectively by using ONLY drugs or psychotherapy. You need to treat the body, because the body and brain are one interconnected system.

What you do to your body, you do to your brain. Treat your body and you treat your brain. ONLY when you fix your body will you fix your broken brain.

That is the method I use in my medical practice. Every day, I witness miracles.

• How would you like to reverse ADD or ADHD or even autism in your child?

• If you’re an adult suffering from mood swings or depression, would you like to know the 7 drug-free ways you can reduce your symptoms -- naturally?

• How would you like to learn how to avoid becoming another Alzheimer’s statistic -- and even reverse early dementia?

• Or would you like to learn to recapture the mental energy, memory, focus, and clarity of your youth?

These are all possibilities right now. But the methods to achieve it are the best-kept secret in medicine today.

Unlike our current medical system, you don’t need expensive therapies or medications in order to join this revolution.

You just need a fork, a pair of sneakers, and an understanding of your body’s 7 key systems!

This is the goal of my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

And I’ve convinced my publisher to make a free sneak preview available to you.

To download it right now, go to

http://www.ultramind.com

In The UltraMind Solution I teach you how to achieve optimum mental health and brain health without drugs or psychotherapy. I explain more about how balancing the 7 key systems of your body leads to an UltraMind. And I give you step-by-step instruction for achieving that goal.

I believe everyone deserves to live a life full of energy, vitality, pleasure, and happiness. The UltraMind Solution will show you how to relieve your suffering so that you can live your life as you were meant to live it.

But I don’t want you to take my word for it. I want you to discover it for yourself.

That is why, in the next 8 blogs, I am going to outline this new program for healing your broken brain.

In the next blog I will teach you about the first key to an UltraMind: Optimize Nutrition. And I will show you how eating a few brain boosting foods and taking the right supplements can make your mind into an UltraMind and boost your focus, attention, mood memory and confidence.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Do you suffer from symptoms of a broken brain?

How has conventional medicine tried to treat this problem?

What remedies have you tried that have helped you heal?

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

PS -- Remember, you can download a free sneak preview of UltraMind right now by going to http://www.ultramind.com

Reducing Your Risk of Breast Cancer

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:59:32 -0500

Today, I would like to introduce you to my colleague at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox Massachusetts, Dr. Elizabeth Boham. She is a physician who practices Functional Medicine and is a Registered Dietitian.

Among other things, Dr. Boham works every day with women who come to see her to help them decrease their risk of breast cancer. She wrote the following blog to give you some simple steps you can take to substantially decrease your chances of getting breast cancer.

—Dr Mark Hyman

Do you worry about getting breast cancer? Have you already suffered from the disease and are now afraid of a recurrence? I understand why. The incidence of breast cancer is skyrocketing ...

Last year over 200,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 60,000 cases of non-invasive breast cancer were diagnosed. A woman’s risk of getting breast cancer has jumped from 1 in 20 in the 1960s to 1 in 8 today. Tragically, more than 40,000 women died from breast cancer alone last year.

Why has there been such a huge escalation in the rates of this frightening disease? What’s the cause of this epidemic and what can we do about it?

Getting to the bottom of these questions is of personal interest to me. When I was 30 years old, I was diagnosed with an aggressive type of invasive breast cancer. At the time I thought I was healthy ...

Before I went to med school my background was in nutrition and exercise physiology. I was an athlete, an avid exerciser, and was careful with my diet. I was young, had no family history of breast cancer, nor any signs of chronic illness.

So when I was told I should have a mass in my breast removed, the last thing I thought it would be was cancer.

How does an otherwise healthy woman get cancer? What did I do wrong? What can I do to reduce my risk of recurrence?

Looking for answers to these questions sent me on a journey through my medical training and eventually to an education in Functional Medicine.

What I discovered on that journey is what I want to share with you in today’s blog.

In traditional medical training you don’t learn about the impact that things like diet, toxins, and digestion have on your overall health. Certainly the connections between how your gut functions, your toxic exposure, and your risk of breast cancer is not something most doctors are taught.

To find real answers to my questions about breast cancer I knew I would have to dig deeper. When I finally found Functional Medicine and the answers it offers it was like a revelation to me.

Functional Medicine teaches us that imbalances in the 7 key systems in the body can lead to a host of diseases, including breast cancer. By analyzing which of theses systems are out of balance and learning how to optimize them, you can decrease your risk of getting breast cancer or suffering a recurrence.

How do you do this?

There are many pieces to the puzzle, but when it comes to breast cancer one of the keys is balancing your estrogen levels. High levels of estrogen consistently correlate with breast cancer in most scientific studies.

How do you create and maintain estrogen balance?

The first step is to overcome insulin resistance.

Insulin is the hormone released from your pancreas after a meal. It sends signals to your cells telling them to absorb sugar from your blood—which is a critically important job.

However, this finely orchestrated system is sent spiraling out of control by our modern diet. Sugar is the main culprit. When you eat too much of it, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, highly-refined and processed carbohydrates, or the multitude of other forms it comes in, your body sends out more insulin than it can properly use and you develop insulin resistance.

What most people DON’T realize is that as your insulin levels increase your estrogen levels increase as well. That means your risk of breast cancer goes up every time you eat too much sugar!

However, the havoc that insulin wreaks doesn’t stop there.

Insulin resistance also increases the amount of body fat you have. As your body fat increases, so does an enzyme in your fat called aromatase. Aromatase turns hormones made in other organs in your bodies (such as your adrenal glands) into estrogen.

That means your estrogen levels are raised even more, making your risk of breast cancer that much greater.

This point is especially important for postmenopausal women. Percentage of body fat is the number one risk factor for breast cancer in this population.

Excess insulin causes other problems that contribute to you risk as well: it may stimulate the growth of tumors in your body and increase systemic inflammation which is a leading factor in cancer of any kind.

There are medications available that can help counteract these conditions. You can take aromatase inhibitors which are designed to prevent the aromatase in your body fat from converting your hormones into estrogen or you can take medications to balance your insulin and blood sugar.

However, you can achieve the same effect naturally by choosing real, whole, organic foods, exercising daily, and maintaining a healthy body weight.

As important as it is, insulin imbalance isn’t the only culprit that can lead to breast cancer. Environmental toxins have a major impact as well.

What are the most damaging environmental toxins when it comes to breast cancer?

The answer is simple: estrogen and the substances that mimic it.

From birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy to eating meat and drinking milk from cows given growth hormones, we are all exposed to excess estrogen.

The problem is compounded by the fact that other environmental toxins like some pesticides and compounds found in plastics mimic estrogen and stimulate the estrogen receptor in an unhealthy way.

Obviously, estrogen isn’t a “toxin” in the sense that DDT is. But too much of it can be nearly as deadly and we are exposed to extraordinary amounts nearly every day. At the end of this blog I will explain how you can eliminate this toxic burden.

Another critical part of your body you need to focus on if you want to limit your risk of breast cancer is your digestive system.

What is the connection between your gut health the health of your breasts?

Your flora—or the good bacteria that live in your gut.

These little symbiotic helpers not only strengthen your immune system and help you digest the foods you eat, they also help detoxify the estrogen made in your body after it’s been used.

If your flora aren’t in balance, the estrogen your body needs to eliminate gets reabsorbed. This increases your estrogen level and exposes your body to unhealthy estrogen breakdown products.

It’s interesting to note that many studies link increased use of antibiotics to an increased risk of breast cancer. This may be because excess antibiotic use kills off the good bacteria in your gut.

So let’s review what you can do to balance your estrogen levels, heal from insulin resistance, limit your toxic exposure, and support the flora in your gut.

Doing the following will help you limit your risk of breast cancer:

2. Get 3-5 hours of exercise per week. This also helps increase your insulin sensitivity and allows you to more easily control your percentage of body fat.

3. Increase your fiber intake. Your goal is 35 gm per day. High-fiber foods include vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and whole grains such as brown rice and ground flax seed.

4. Have protein at every meal or snack of the day. Good protein sources include; fish, lean poultry, beans, nuts, eggs, and soy. Make sure you include a few vegetarian options in your daily protein intake.

5. Maintain a healthy weight. This is the best studied, most agreed upon step a woman can take to decrease her risk of breast cancer.

6. Get a good night sleep. Sleeping well helps with weight control, insulin sensitivity, and supports your immune system. All of this is important for preventing cancer.

7. Choose organic and hormone-free meat, milk, and produce. This reduces your exposure to unwanted pesticides and hormones.

8. Avoid excess toxic exposure. Choose organic products for your lawn and garden, avoid dry cleaning, don’t use plastic bottles, and limit your intake of medications (like Tylenol) that get processed in your liver.

9. Take probiotics. Take 10 to 20 billion organisms on an empty stomach twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

10. Limit your alcohol intake to no more than 1 drink per day and 5 per week—less is better. Remember 1 drink is 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of hard alcohol, or 12 ounces of beer.

These are just a few simple things you can do everyday to reduce your risk of getting breast cancer. There are many others techniques you can use and I may explore some of them in future blogs. But by taking just these few steps you not only enhance the health of your breasts, but you start down the path of UltraWellness—a path that promises nothing less than a lifetime of vital health, optimal weight, and mental acuity.

Now I’d like to hear from you.

Have you struggled with breast cancer and if so, what has worked and what hasn’t?

Do you have any additional recommendations that might benefit others who are struggling with breast cancer?

To your good health,

Elizabeth Boham MD, RD

How to Get "Unstuck" from Depression

blog-editor@marmaladesoul.com (Blog Editor) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:40:04 -0400

How many of you are stuck?

Do you feel stuck in depression, sadness, or anxiety? Or are you just a little confused, overburdened, or unhappy?

Maybe you are one of the 25 percent of Americans who experience a major depression in their lifetime.

Or maybe you are taking one of the 189 million prescriptions written for depression, at a cost of $12 billion a year, and wondering if there is another way.

Perhaps, like most people who take antidepressants, you find that they don’t work, lose their effectiveness over time, or give you only slight relief from symptoms.

Or maybe you quit your antidepressant regimen after a few months, like 60 percent of people who take them do, because of side effects such as weight gain, loss of sex drive, or worse.

Are looking for a way to reconnect to your life’s meaning and purpose and emerge from a life that feels half lived? Are you looking for a way to overcome the depression that’s been haunting you?

If you are, I guarantee you are not suffering from a Prozac deficiency. In fact, I want to challenge you to consider that depression, as we understand it, does not really exist.

“Depression is not a disease…” That is how the remarkable new book, by James Gordon, MD, begins. It is called “Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression.”

James Gordon, MD, was recently given an award by the Bravewell Collaborative for being one of the most pioneering medical thinkers of our time.

Ideas that can change a culture come only a few times in a generation. “Unstuck” is such an idea. It provides an answer to the leading cause of disability -- depression -- that until now has had very poor solutions.

So why does Dr. Gordon say that depression is not a disease?

Because it is actually a sign of underlying imbalances that need to be addressed if we are to be “whole and happy.”

Dr. Gordon has been working in the field of mind-body medicine for nearly 40 years. I have come to know him well, after first meeting him when I testified before the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He was appointed the head of the commission. His vision for a new medicine is strong and clear.

He has treated patients, taught healthcare professionals about mind-body medicine and nutrition, and helped so many people “heal the wounds of war” and trauma by working in conflict-ridden places like Gaza, Bosnia, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. His work, through his Center for Mind Body Medicine, has given him remarkable insight into the causes and nature of our suffering.

“Unstuck” is a guide for healing your body, mind, and soul. In this book, Dr. Gordon helps us understand why we may be out of balance and guides us to the origins of depression.

But he also helps us discover how trauma, chronic stress, lack of meaning, and the stories we tell ourselves about life can all make us depressed. And he helps us uncover the hormonal imbalances, food allergies, heavy metals, yeast infections, and nutritional deficiencies that can also lead to depression.

These problems are the real causes of depression. This is why Dr. Gordon says that depression is not a disease. Even though the symptoms of depression may be the same or similar in people diagnosed with the “disease”, the causes that lead each person to become depressed may be very different.

This concept is also the core principle of Functional Medicine and UltraWellness.

Dr. Gordon not only explains this concept, but provides practical tools to help us address each of these issues that effect the health of your body, mind and soul. He gives you:

* Clinically tested practices that use words, images, drawing, movement, yoga, and dance to help you move through depression.

* Detailed, practical plans for using food and supplements as well as the ancient and powerful methods of Chinese medicine to balance your physical and mental functioning.

* Ways to make the world’s spiritual wisdom and spiritual practices an ongoing part of your healing journey.

* And, most importantly, ways to tailor each of these approaches to help restore balance to your unique, individual life.

Dr. Gordon has many stories in his book of the journey people take to get unstuck and become whole and happy again. They reminded me of a recent patient I had who had been given the diagnosis of “depression” -- but the last thing he needed was antidepressants. In this particular case he didn’t have trauma or stress; it was his biology that made him depressed.

J.P. was an 18-year-old young man who showed up in my office with fatigue, depression, anxiety, 27 pounds of weight gain, and acne, which had worsened over the 4 years before he saw me.

He also couldn’t tolerate the cold and was tired in the morning. He had canker sores, cracking at the corners of his mouth, acne on his face, chest, back and shoulders, and seasonal allergies. He also had trouble falling asleep. His anxiety was increasing, and his depression got worse every winter.

He had been treated with an antidepressant called Paxil for 4 years. It made him crave sweets and starchy food and caused his weight gain. He had also been taking antibiotics every day for 2 years for his acne, which led to a low-grade yeast infection. Of course, he ate the typical junk and processed food teenage diet, topped off with lots of sodas.

When we examined what was really causing his depression, we found many nutritional deficiencies that have been proven to cause depression.

These included severe vitamin D deficiency. He also had severe omega-3 fat deficiencies, vitamin B6 deficiency (which is needed to make serotonin), and vitamin B12 deficiency.

He also had hormonal imbalances, with a low-level autoimmune thyroid problem as well as very high levels of insulin from all the sugar he consumed. Both of these have been linked to depression.

He also had many food allergies, including gluten and dairy. Again, these are linked to depression in many cases.

So I did what I always do, which is the basis of treatment of all “diseases” -- take away the bad stuff and add the good stuff.

We got rid of gluten and dairy from his diet. We got him to stop taking the antibiotics that caused yeast overgrowth in his gut.

We got him off his junk food and sugar diet and encouraged him to eat whole foods.

I also helped balance his thyroid with a low dose of thyroid hormone, which helped his mood, fatigue, and cold intolerance. And I gave him nutritional supplements of vitamin D, B6, and B12, as well as a multivitamin and fish oil.

After two months, his energy, depression, and cold intolerance all got better. His acne, cankers sores, and cracks at the corner of his mouth went away. He lost 15 pounds and his carbohydrate cravings were gone.

So just as Dr. Gordon shows in his book “Unstuck,” this young man clearly didn’t have the disease “depression” but simply a number of imbalances that, once corrected, took care of all his physical and emotional symptoms.

If you are suffering from depression or just feel stuck, unhappy, or that you are not living a whole life, give yourself the gift of Dr. Gordon’s book, “Unstuck.”

You can get a copy by going to the website below:

==> http://www.ultrawellness.com/unstuck

And if you feel wonderful, which I hope you do, give it to someone you know who will thank you for this gift of life.

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Do you suffer from “depression” or other emotional symptoms?

What steps have you taken to address this imbalance?

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, M.D.

P.S. For more information on this and other blogs, please go to http://www.ultrawellness.com/blog.