Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

Have you heard all the fuss over the way Oprah presented hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on her show? You may have even read about it in Newsweek.

Oprah’s guest on the show, Suzanne Somers, touted the benefits of using bioidentical hormones for HRT over synthetic drugs. She said bioidenticals changed her life. They gave her a greater sex drive, a better mood, better sleep, and all the things that menopause hinders.

But Suzanne’s advocacy of bioidenticals, along with Oprah’s nod of approval, sparked a wave of criticism throughout the mainstream medical community.

Critics argue that Suzanne, known for her role as blonde airhead Chrissy Snow on the sitcom “Three’s Company,” is not a medical expert and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But I beg to differ…

It’s true that Suzanne is not a medical expert, but she’s no airhead.

In the United States there is a fairly common belief based on dubious research and media hype that vegetarian diets are healthier and protective against cancer. I would like to set that myth to rest, because to date, the studies have not been clear on this.

Let’s start with a close look at the popular 2005 book The China Study.

If you have read this book, you know that on the surface it appears to make quite a case against consuming animal protein. It asserts that higher animal protein intakes were clearly associated with increased risk of cancer.

First, it cites animal studies of the book’s author, US researcher Dr. T. Colin Campbell, which found that feeding casein (a protein from milk) to rodents gave them cancer. The author then reasoned that human research was needed, so he looked to China where he hypothesized that China’s lower rates of cancer could be due to their lower intake of animal protein.

Most of us are aware of all the health problems that can result from insulin resistance like heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, But lost in the shuffle is another silent killer that is on the rise — chronic kidney disease. At LMI we’ve noticed a growing number of patients with kidney problems.

Our experience reflects both a national and international trend. Kidney disease is increasing in young and old alike in the U.S. and around the world.^1,2 And that’s why I feel compelled to warn you about it — and tell you how to keep your kidneys healthy.

Here’s some background. You have two kidneys, whose job is to remove wastes from the blood and to excrete them via urine; they then return cleaned blood to the body. The kidneys keep water and minerals at healthy levels and produce important hormones.

If you ask your primary care doctor to check your C-reactive protein (CRP), there is a high likelihood you will be told it is not necessary. Even though we know that CRP is a risk factor for heart disease¹ and more and more doctors are testing CRP levels in patients who they consider to be at high risk, testing CRP is not yet recommended for routine lab testing.

If you ask me, it’s time that changed. At LMI, we do screen routinely for CRP. Let me tell you why.

First of all, we know heart disease doesn’t occur just due to high cholesterol. We now know that the biggest contributor to heart disease is inflammation. In fact, some people have heart attacks that didn’t even have high cholesterol.

The body produces higher CRP in response to inflammation, so it is called a biomarker of inflammation. For example, when atherosclerosis (plaque build-up inside the walls of arteries) starts to damage blood vessels around the heart, they become inflamed. This triggers CRP production.

Since increased inflammation plays a role in a number of other diseases, CRP is being studied to see if it is tied to any other disease risks, and indeed it is. Research has now tied CRP to:

• Cancer. A recent Danish study found that people with levels of CRP higher than 3 mg/L were about 30% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than those whose levels were less than 1 mg/L.³
• Macular degeneration. High blood levels of CRP have also been linked to an increased risk for age-related macular degeneration according to a report in the Archives of Ophthalmology.⁴
• Cognitive decline and dementia. Data from the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study (HAAS), a longitudinal community-based study of Japanese American men, found that those with the highest quartile of high-sensitivity CRP had significantly more cognitive decline than those in the lowest quartile.⁵

To me, the evidence is not only clear, it grows stronger every year. That’s why, even though we are sometimes criticized for routinely checking CRP levels, all these studies seem to show that it does correlate with many diseases. And that’s why, in my opinion, it should probably be routinely checked.

As a result of an increased awareness of the damaging effects of free radicals, everywhere you turn someone has a high antioxidant supplement they want you to buy. They range from supplements containing vitamins C and E and the trace mineral selenium (give or take a few nutrients) to supercharged juices made from exotic berries, like acai berries. The prices are anywhere from about $10.00 all the way up to $70.00 for a bottle of juice; or $2.00 for one small square of acai-added chocolate.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t see Valerie Bertinelli or Sally Fields on TV advertising Boniva® or some other treatment for osteoporosis. This condition is a major health problem in older people, especially women, who often sustain fractures as a result of falls. There are over 1.5 million fractures a year attributed to osteoporosis in the US each year.¹

Normally, the bony skeleton is maintained by continual renewal called remodeling, removing old bone and replacing it with new bone.¹ The entire skeleton is replaced every seven years. To do this, our cells require calcium, and to absorb calcium from our diet, we also require vitamin D, which our bodies can manufacture in the skin, with exposure to sunlight.

In osteoporosis which means “porous bone,” bones are peppered with millions of microscopic holes, or pores, the result of continual bone resorption over time. (Resorption is the process in which bone is broken down and calcium is released into the blood.) The normal balance between bone resorption and new bone creation is lost, with bone loss overwhelming the formation of new bone.¹ This results in a net loss of bone volume and strength and bones that are brittle.

The bone that remains is normal bone; there’s just less of it. Think of Swiss cheese: the cheese itself is normal, but it’s shot throughout with lots of holes. Really advanced osteoporosis would be analogous to lacy Swiss cheese.

Sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing stops for more than 10 seconds during sleep, can cause more damage to your health than just lost and restless sleep. Constant gaps in breathing, sometimes as many as 30 per hour, can create elevated blood pressure levels and increase your resting heart rate.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

Early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease differ by individual, as well as day-to-day. Some signs may be so subtle that they may go unnoticed by family or friends, while other symptoms will become increasingly obvious over time.

The following checklist was written by the Alzheimer’s Association¹ to assist individuals determine if they or a loved one have the early warning signs of the disease. We thank them for making this valuable information available to the public.

1. Memory loss. One of the most common early signs of dementia is forgetting recently learned information. While it’s normal to forget appointments, names or telephone numbers, those with Alzheimer’s disease will forget such things more often and not remember them later.

2. Difficulty performing familiar tasks. People with Alzheimer’s disease often find it hard to complete familiar, everyday tasks which they previously did without thinking. A person with Alzheimer’s may forget how to cook, make repairs or how to play cards.