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

The key to overall health… is your liver? Absolutely. This amazing 4-pound organ — located beneath your lower ribs and on the right side of your stomach — performs more than 500 bodily functions and chemical reactions each day to keep you in tip top shape. In fact, your liver:

• Eliminates toxins… Your liver filters harmful toxins from foods… alcohol… and medicines from nearly 100 gallons of blood every day. Then it allows healthy nutrients to pass to your cells.
• Breaks down fat… Your liver’s ability to manufacture a full quart of bile daily allows fat breakdown. Bile is that yellowish-green fluid that breaks down fat. Think of it as the soap detergent you use to get rid of grease from your dirty dishes.
• Regulates blood sugar levels… You liver helps prevent unhealthy spikes and dips that can throw your body out of whack — and trigger scores of health problems.
• Keeps your hormones in balance… Your liver produces more than 13,000 hormones and essential chemicals —including testosterone, estrogen and cholesterol — for optimum body function! Plus, it oversees the function of an additional 50,000 enzymes you need every day.

Despite the fact that the liver is an all-essential, and often overused organ, most people today do virtually nothing to protect it. Did you know that you could be open to possible liver and kidney damage if you are over 40… regularly take over-the-counter medicines… use prescription drugs… drink two or more glasses of beer, wine or hard liquor each week… or drink less than six to eight glasses of distilled or purified water each day?

Just look at the tremendous number of harmful chemicals we absorb that accumulate in our tissues when the liver, digestive system and skin cannot eliminate them:

• Poisonous pesticides and herbicides from food crops.
• 5,500 chemically produced food additives.
• Foods which are genetically altered, refined, frozen, fried, irradiated, hormone-filled, etc.
• Auto exhaust, lawn sprays, household cleaning products, cosmetics, etc.

The main two organs of detoxification for these many chemicals are the intestinal tract and the liver. The intestinal tract is the first line of defense against harmful chemicals. When its lining becomes easily permeable (leaky gut syndrome), then harmful chemicals are allowed into the body.

Did you know that you can help reduce stress on your body just by making sure that most of the carbohydrates (carbs) you eat are they type that keep your blood sugar from rising too fast?

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

If you are having difficulty losing weight even after dieting and exercising more, you are not alone. Over the years, I have helped probably thousands of people with the same problem, but I am finding this scenario to be much more common now than in the past. What I want you to know is that when you’ve tried everything and weight loss or lowering of blood sugar or lipids seems impossible, it could be that environmental toxins are disrupting your body.

Some pesticides, for instance, have been linked with suboptimal thyroid function and others to insulin resistance (IR). Certain pesticides that haven’t even been used for years, like DDT, are still a problem because they are so persistent in the environment, and from there can get into our bodies.

Researchers call these substances persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The insecticide, dieldrin, is an example. This organochlorine pesticide was used on cotton and corn from the 1950s until 1970. And although its use was banned on crops in 1974, it was still used for termite control until it was finally banned by the EPA completely in 1987. Because it is tightly bound to soil and it evaporates very slowly, dieldrin persists in the environment even though it’s no longer used.¹

So how does dieldrin affect us today? Plants absorb it from the soil, and water runoff carries the soil with the chemical into water supplies. When we eat plants grown in soil still contaminated with dieldrin, it enters our bodies. We can also get it from the flesh of animals eating contaminated plants or fish living in contaminated waters.¹

After being consumed, dieldrin is then stored in our body fat. And here’s the problem: dieldrin may be linked to disruption in the thyroid hormones, T4 and TSH. One study found that women with significantly high dieldrin in their blood had decreased T4 levels and increased TSH.

If you’re one of more than 20 million Americans struggling to control your blood sugar you may already know about the distressing health problems it can cause.

The pharmaceutical companies have plenty of drugs to help you deal with blood sugar imbalances. The trouble is… the side effects of some of these drugs can be WORSE than the disease they’re supposed to treat!

For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently mandated the use of a “black box” warning on the diabetes drug Avandia®. This strong warning label emphasizes that the drug, “may cause or worsen heart failure in certain patients.”

What if I told you there was a supplement available that could help control blood sugar, protect the liver and the brain, and just might turn out to be one of your most powerful weapons in the fight against unhealthy aging?

Meet alpha-lipoic acid.

First discovered about 50 years ago, alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) is one of the most potent antioxidants in the human body, where it’s normally synthesized in small amounts. In fact, Lester Packer, PhD, a senior researcher at the University of California for over 40 years has called it, “probably the most potent naturally occurring antioxidant known to man”.

When it comes to blood sugar, the closer you can keep it to the normal range of 80 to 89 mg/dL the better. For years I have been warning that blood sugars even in the 90 to 100 range show that you are becoming insulin resistant and on your way to diabetes. A recent study done on 47,000 Kaiser Permanente patients validated this observation.

The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine found that blood sugar, blood glucose (BG) levels in the 95-99 range more than doubled a person’s risk of becoming diabetic. In fact, for every point over 85 mg/dL the risk of becoming diabetic increased 6%, even when they controlled for other factors.¹

Great news for cinnamon lovers! New research presented at the Experimental Biology meeting in San Francisco found that cinnamon and cloves - spices high in nutrients called polyphenols - boost insulin function while lowering cholesterol.

It is hardly news that the world is more obese now than at any time in recent history. Nighttime binging, whether it is large meals or sugary treats, is one of the primary reasons for our obesity pandemic.