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

You don’t have to go through life constantly drained and fatigued — or rely on artificial stimulants to get you through the day. Very often simple lifestyle changes can break long-standing negative habits that will recharge your batteries. Here are some tips from my fatigue-busting program, Triple Your Endurance, to help you get started.

A good friend of mine loves spicy food. A few years ago, though, he noticed that whenever he ate anything too spicy, he spent the rest of the evening with miserable indigestion. He asked me if there was any way he could enjoy the foods he loved without the unpleasant after-effects. Fortunately, I was able to give him several recommendations that helped prevent his indigestion.

As you get older, indigestion becomes a more common problem. Six million Americans suffer with frequent indigestion. Whether you suffer from gas, frequent heartburn, or bloating, these are all signs that something is not working quite right in your digestive system. The gas, bloating, and pain are early signs of what can turn into a bigger problem.

It’s your gut’s job to process the food you eat. It pulls the nutrients out of the food you eat to be absorbed and used by your body, and then it moves what can’t be used right on through. You can imagine what might happen when things aren’t working the way they should… it can lead to all sorts of problems.

Fortunately, there are natural, safe, healthy solutions to solve your digestion woes. But first, let’s take a look at the most common causes of indigestion.

Common Causes of Indigestion
Indigestion can be caused by a number of different factors. Some are serious, some are less so. All will cause you pain and discomfort.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome: This is one of the most common digestive disorders that people suffer from. It leads to pain, cramping, bloating, constipation, and diarrhea. The symptoms vary from person to person, and the cause isn’t well understood, although food sensitivities and stress both tend to aggravate symptoms.

I work in a small rural ER. I should have been a dentist! Many of our patient visits are for facial soft tissue infections related to dental caries (cavities) that are sometimes very severe. We also see a fair amount of dental abscesses, gum disease and related conditions. Unfortunately, there is not much for us to do.

Most of these people don’t realize that aside from their pain and discomfort, dental caries and periodontal disease (chronic gum infection and swelling leading to tooth loss) can cause coronary artery disease, heart attack, serious infection of the heart valves, pneumonia, stroke, low birth weight in newborns and diabetes.

An interesting fact is that dental caries are the most common chronic disease in the world. While there have been amazing advances in dentistry, many people do not receive prophylactic (preventative) cleanings and exams. Their visit to the dentist comes when a cavity is causing facial pain and swelling, a sign of serious infection spread from the involved tooth to the surrounding soft tissues. Most likely, that tooth needs to be removed to drain the infection or needs a root canal.

Extractions, root canals and even routine fillings are painful, expensive and time consuming. But preventive care for your teeth will help you avoid these “dental disasters.”

Even if your teeth need some “work” or are in perfect shape, it’s never too late to start preventive dental care. You can prevent progression of existing problems and also help prevent the serious diseases listed above.

If you are over the age of 50, you may have seriously clogged arteries as a result of poor diet, genetics or a lack of adequate vitamin and mineral supplementation. That means all 75,000 miles of your arteries, veins and capillaries may be full of plaque that can cause a blockage.

But new research indicates that two key nutrients can help you combat the causes of heart problems, toxic build-up and decreasing energy levels.

As a medical professional, I agree with modern science that consuming a high-fat diet can lead to heart disease, but new evidence has surfaced to explain the process.

Research from the University of Cincinnati¹ examined high-fat diets and the effect they can have on the adipose — or fatty — tissue surrounding the coronary arteries. Neil Weintraub, M.D. and colleagues found that the fat cells were highly inflamed, which suggests that the blood vessels could become inflamed. This is one of the first indicators of clogged arteries, or atherosclerosis.

Another startling discovery showed that rats on a high-fat diet for only two weeks already showed the effects of inflammation in the tissue around the arteries! “These new findings suggest a direct link between poor dietary habits and inflammation of blood vessels, mediated by the fat cells surrounding the blood vessel wall,” said lead author Weintraub.

Although it is an issue that no one enjoys talking about, over 13 million Americans are suffering from urinary loss or incontinence. Many patients are reluctant to bring up embarrassing matters, such as the urgent need to go, frantically searching for a restroom or resorting to products like adult diapers. While bladder weakness often comes with aging, it can also be related to separate conditions.

For men it could be related to your enlarged prostate. And for women who are twice as likely as men to have this condition, the complications can be caused by female-related infections, irritations, and surgery of reproductive organs.

The good news is, with breakthrough research, it is now possible to naturally treat many underlying problems and restore a healthy bladder.

Internal inflammation is now known to be an underlying factor in almost all chronic disease, for example heart disease. Control it and you should be able to drastically reduce your risk for not just one but several diseases.

Oxidative stress (OS) is a term used to describe internal inflammation and the free radicals produced as a result. Free radicals are neutralized by antioxidants. Thousands of articles over the last few years have carried the message loud and clear to consumers, “Make sure you are taking in enough antioxidants to help counteract internal inflammation.”

Yet some recent studies that have looked at the disease preventive effects of taking antioxidants have had dismal outcomes. So people are getting mixed messages and are wondering, “Does taking in additional antioxidants do any good?”

There are two issues playing out here. One is that in these recent studies, the types of antioxidants used were very dated, and the dosages were low. A study just reported in the November 2008 JAMA gave some participants 400 IU of synthetic alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) and 500 mg of a synthetic ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to see if it lowered cancer or heart disease risk compared to those who didn’t take the supplements. It didn’t lower any risks.

Many aspects of our health depend upon balance. For energy, we must balance rest with exercise. For fuel, we must balance protein with carbohydrates. Finally, for healthy cells, we must balance estrogen and testosterone. These two key hormones, along with progesterone, are vital for good health. When they fall out of balance, however, various problems can occur. In men, the condition known as estrogen dominance may lead to infertility, breast development, even cancer. Fortunately, it is possible to fight estrogen dominance and prevent these alarming outcomes.

What is Estrogen Dominance?

All men need both estrogen and testosterone in the correct balance. When the balance is sent askew and estrogen reaches a level that leads to health problems, a man may be diagnosed with estrogen dominance. Testosterone levels are high in young men, but they decrease as we age. This is normal. Outside factors, however, often cause estrogen levels to rise at the same time testosterone is decreasing. In this case, it is not our bodies that are to blame, but environmental factors.¹…

If you were to ask most people,”What is the primary cause of skin cancer?” the answer would have something to do with the sun. That answer would be wrong. The sun is only a co-factor, and in most cases, it is only a minor co-factor.

Keeping your blood sugar under control is beneficial for far more than just waistlines and diabetes prevention, it is also important to help preserve your memory as you age. Yep, that’s right — spiked blood sugar levels actually cause your brain to age prematurely, resulting in more “senior moments” than you’d care to have.

There have been other studies indicating this in the past, but a new study led by Scott A. Small, M.D., associate professor of neurology from the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain was remarkable because it showed that the activity of an important part of the memory center of the brain (called the dentate gyrus) decreases with elevated blood glucose levels.

Dr. Small’s research looked at people with type 2 diabetes and found that they had this damage to their dentate gyrus. He then looked at factors such as a high body mass index, insulin resistance, high cholesterol, and elevated blood sugar that are seen in type 2 diabetes, and replicated them in animals to determine which ones were correlated with the brain damage. He found that rapid blood sugar increases ONLY, damaged the memory center.¹

I love late night TV. Give me Lettermen, Leno, Conan, Stewart or whoever has the best lineup, and I’m a happy man. Like many of my patients, I’ve used late night TV as a way to relax, have a laugh and unwind after a long day.

Then I noticed something that wasn’t so funny. By staying up later each night I was doing myself more harm than good! I could easily tell because every afternoon around 3 P.M., I felt exhausted. I know that caffeine or a sugary snack would help me snap out of it, but I also know it’s not a healthy solution. Figuring out how to get more sleep was all it took to fix the problem, and it can do the same for you.

Is Insomnia Making You Sleepwalk Through Your Days?

The first thing I ask my patients when they complain about being tired most of the day is what their sleeping habits are. For most adults, it is essential to sleep for seven to eight hours every night. Some people need even more. There are a variety of reasons why adequate sleep is so important: