Chronic Inflammation Has a High Price: Don't pay it!When you get an acute infection or injury, your body gets inflamed for a while, sending in repair teams of white blood cells, extra blood, fibroblasts and other anabolic factors to produce the heat, swelling, redness, pain and sometimes discharge that will eventually cure the problem, and return you to normal. But sometimes inflammation does not go away. When it stays with you chronically, it can cause a number of diseases, including cancer and heart disease. Chronic inflammation starts with a stressor. This can include a long-term infection with insufficient immune response to get rid of it, excess free radicals causing oxidative damage, high blood insulin levels, an excess of arachidonic acid or other imbalance in proportion of fatty acids, and even lack of sleep. As a result, you get a buildup of the wrong prostaglandins (PG2) and the wrong cytokines (interleukin 6 or IL 6). Avoidance is the best strategy for such a subtle and subclinical process as chronic inflammation. That includes sufficient sleep, eating low insulinemic foods such as lots of vegetables and moderate quantities of other whole foods, with avoidance of refined carbohydrates. This strategy will in turn stimulate your immune system to discourage long term infections from hanging around. Also, supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids, such as fish oil or flax oil will divert the inflammatory pathway away from the most damaging results. Avoidance of free radicals can be a little more tricky, because there are various forms of radiation all around us. In addition to avoiding extreme or excessive exposure, think of Vitamins C and E as powerful anti-oxidant shields which protect you from free radicals. Just remember when supplementing that Vitamin C is water soluble and goes through your body quickly, while Vitamin E is fat soluble, which makes it take a while longer. Exercise delays AlzheimersUniversity of California, Irvine researchers genetically engineered mice to develop Alzheimers at the age of three months, then separated them into two groups. The control group remained sedentary, while the experimental mice were put into cages with running wheels. Writing in the journal Neuroscience, Paul Adlard and his colleagues at UC Irvine reported that the mice that were allowed to exercise learning to navigate a maze faster than the sedentary mice. On autopsy they found fewer of the characteristic Alzheimers plaques and beta-amyloid proteins in the brains of the active mice. Stephen Snyder, an Alzheimers scientist at the National Institute on Aging commented that the active mice in the study may have metabolized the amyloid precursor protein differently, thus protecting themselves from Alzheimers degeneration. And now, we humans know what we must do to keep our brains healthy. Exercise, of course, as well as fish oil and the various brain protective botanicals that your naturopathic physician determines to be appropriate for your particular health condition. For a licensed naturopathic physician near you, see the database at www.naturopathic.org. More evidence that vaccines cause autismReporter Dan Olmsted wrote in the Washington Times, last month about his time spent with the Pennsylvania Amish and his search for victims of autism. Since autism is now approaching epidemic numbers in the rest of the U.S., he should have found nearly 200 people with this disorder. Instead, there were only three, two of them known to be vaccinated, which is something the Amish tend not to do, despite door-to-door harassment to vaccinate from public health officials. One of the three autistic children was adopted from China, where children are routinely vaccinated. Another had definitely been vaccinated. And the status of the third could not be reliably determined. "Since they have been cut off for hundreds of years from American culture and scientific progress, the Amish may have had less exposure to some new factor triggering autism in the rest of the population. The likely culprit: vaccines." A study last year concluded that children who receive thimerosal-containing vaccinations are 27 times more likely than other children to develop autism, based on data from the Vaccine Data link at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that is mostly mercury, is still used in most vaccines, but has been removed from the package ingredient labels because of public outcry against thimerosal. Do we really need any more reason to refuse these toxic shots for ourselves and our families? Vaccines have never been proven safe, least of all for infants and toddlers, who are now subject to dozens of them while their nervous systems are just developing. |
Aspartame: Who can you believe?Both the FDA and the American Medical Association have pronounced aspartame to be safe. Sweetening sodas, candies, gum and other processed foods for a quarter century, it has been consumed by many people who show no obvious symptoms. Then, on the other hand, are the people who have consumed enough aspartame over time that they have ended up with symptoms of multiple sclerosis. A number of other diseases, otherwise unexplained, have followed aspartame use. These include: grand mal seizures [1], migraines and exacerbation of pre-existing migraines [2], urticaria [3], and granulomatosis [4]. Dr. Alan Gaby warns that subtle reactions to aspartame may also be common, and that it should be suspect in patients with various vague or unexplained symptoms. Our taste buds have been conditioned to the far extreme of the sweet end of the spectrum of tastes. This has cost us heavily in terms of either sugar use and its many undesirable consequences, or the perhaps even worse damage caused by artificial sweeteners. Dr. Gaby challenges his patients to avoid both and allow their taste buds "to be reawakened to the natural sweet taste of whole foods." [5]
Did you know that we have in the U.S. ... primary care physicians who not only have the training of conventional doctors (diagnostic testing, physical examination, prescription of pharmaceuticals, minor surgery etc.) but have also been medically trained in botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, detoxification of heavy metals and other chemicals, homeopathy and other natural healing modalities??? Look no further: American Association of Naturopathic Physicians Clinton tackles childhood obesityFormer President Bill Clinton and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee have both been hospitalized for diseases related to predilection for junk food. However, they also have in common that they are teaming up to fight childhood obesity. 16 percent of American children are obese, and the number of overwieght and obese children has more than doubled since 1980. "Children born today could become part of the first generation in American history to live shorter lives than their parents because so many are eating too much of the wrong things and not exercising enough," Clinton said. The two men felt particularly interested in addressing the problem because of their own experiences. Clinton's heart bypass surgery last year motivated him to address his own health issues. As for Gov. Huckabee, when he learned that he had Type 2 Diabetes, he lost 110 pounds, and has written a book on his eating and dieting experiences: Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork. So far both men have vaguely alluded to the dangers of junk food, but have not answered the hard questions of how to raise a child or to be a child in a landscape dotted with fast food outlets and other purveyors of junk food. Equally pernicious is the association of "sweet treats" with children and reward for good behavior. Our holidays especially are sullied with junk food, and there seems to be no gathering of children without cookies or ice cream present. Even if you do manage to find yourself among children eating only healthy food, just wait a few minutes, because now that the weather is warming up, the relentless ice cream trucks will announce their presence soon enough. Here are some ways to avoid these problems with your own children: First and foremost don't refer to sweets as treats or rewards for good behavior. Children are very sensitive to language and make associations early on. Also, don't refer to healthy whole foods as the gross stuff they must endure in order to achieve the reward of a sweet. Because then you are creating an association of "good food" and "bad food" exactly the opposite of what is in the best interest of the child's health. Also, create holidays that are fun without junk food. Please see my articles on this topic below: |