Category Archives: Healthy Eating

Warning Signs of Alzheimer’s

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Adapted from Keith Scott-Mumby

I was shocked, when I discovered a study I shared a while back from the Annals of Internal Medicine from September 2011, nearly 4000 older adults were followed and the degree of cognitive impairment was linked to an increased risk of death.1

And that’s not all…Around the globe, 44 million people are afflicted with Alzheimer’s or a similar dementia. This insidious disease steals away your memories, your quality of life, and your ability to be independent.

The effects and signs of Alzheimer’s disease are just as devastating to relatives forced to watch the rapid decline of their loved one as to the person with the illness– perhaps even more so.

Yet doctors continue to assert there is nothing that can be done to stop the relentless progress of AD. They prescribe phony drugs, propped up by fake science, but their view is wholly pessimistic.

On the other hand, there are countless studies proving that holistic, complimentary, and alternative care can and does stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

My brain is my primary asset. As a doctor and a writer, I must retain my mental fitness at all costs. I refuse to simply accept that this disease cannot be prevented or stopped.

You shouldn’t accept that either!

If traditional medicine doesn’t get its’ head out of its’ collective behind, experts believe that cases of Alzheimer’s disease will triple worldwide by 2050.

It is physically, emotionally, and financially devastating to the patient, their families, and the planet at large. Globally, this insidious disease comes with a $605 billion price tag every year.

Life Expectancy After Alzheimer’s Diagnosis:
4 To 8 Years

Diseases of the brain are the number one cause of other disabilities in later life. Most cases are detected after age 65 and two-thirds of the patients are women.

If you recognize that you or someone you know is exhibiting the early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, there is no time to waste. You must launch a proactive attack to slow or stop the disease as quickly as possible.

The Alzheimer’s Association put together ten warning signs used by doctors around the world to evaluate, diagnose, and treat their patients.

10 Early Signs of Alzheimer’s You Must Not Ignore

  1. Changes to memory that begin to disrupt daily life
  2. Gradual inability to plan or solve even simple problems
  3. Difficulty doing tasks that were once familiar
  4. General confusion about time or location
  5. Growing inability to understand visual or spatial concepts
  6. Struggling with words in speech or writing
  7. Forgetting where something is and being unable to retrace steps
  8. Impaired judgment that seems to worsen
  9. Slowly pulling away from work or social events
  10. Alteration to overall mood and personality

Dr. Keith Black with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, explained…

“If we could identify patients who are developing the disease early, it would give us a much better opportunity to intervene with treatments, and it’s much more likely for those treatments to be effective.”

If you are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or any other neurodegenerative disease, I suggest getting a second opinion (or even a third) to confirm. Many patients are misdiagnosed! Not every form of dementia is as severe as Alzheimer’s and respond better and faster to treatments.

Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease

A staggering 5% of patients are between 35-55 years old when they are diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Many of these patients have a strong familial history of the disease. Genetic counseling may be able to pinpoint the expression of particular genes – APP, PSEN 1, or PSEN 2 – that could increase your personal risk.

No matter what, know that diet is critical to your brain health. It is your body’s first line of defense against all illness and disease.

Diabetes of the Brain

Another startling point that I want to share with you, if you’ve been a reader of mine you heard me say it before, that evidence strongly suggest Alzheimer’s disease is actually a third type of diabetes!

So if you want to age well, keep your insulin levels DOWN. Eat less sugar and starch.

Finally, if you haven’t joined the dots yet, Alzheimer’s is not a genetic condition, whatever is claimed. It’s environmental and triggered by lousy diets, especially sugar, starch and junk.

Here are ten of my favorites to protect my brain.

Foods to Fight Brain Deterioration

  1. Extra Virgin Coconut and olive oil
  2. Eggs
  3. Avocado
  4. Nuts and seeds
  5. Seafood and sea vegetables
  6. Berries
  7. Turmeric, cinnamon, and cumin
  8. Leafy greens (kale, spinach, broccoli)
  9. Green tea or coffee
  10. Pumpkin, squash, tomatoes, and beets

If you suspect that you or a loved one might be showing early signs of Alzheimer’s, don’t delay talking to your doctor. The sooner you know one way or another, the better your chances of fighting it and receiving the support you’ll need to manage the disease.

It is not hopeless. The moment you believe it is, the disease begins to win.

Stay Healthy.

Green Tea can help achieve Weight Loss

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Adapted from Karen Lee Richards

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that two out of every three U.S. adults are overweight or obese. If you’re one of the millions of people struggling to lose weight, it may be time to add a little green tea to your diet.

There is a strong body of scientific evidence supporting the beneficial effects green tea can have on body weight, waist circumference and abdominal fat.

The History and Mythology of Green Tea

Archeologists have found that people in China and India ate tea leaves steeped in boiling water as far back as 5,000 years ago. Green tea has been used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine for centuries as a stimulant, diuretic, and astringent (to control bleeding and help wounds heal), and to support heart health. Additional uses of green tea have historically included treating flatulence, regulating body temperature, regulating blood sugar, promoting digestion, and improving mental processes.

There is a popular legend in India concerning the origins of the tea plant. It is said that when Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was traveling through China, he became frustrated at his inability to stay awake during meditation so he tore off his eyelids. They say that a tea plant sprouted from the spot where his eyelids fell, and the plant gave him the ability to stay awake, meditate and reach enlightenment.

What Makes Green Tea Different?

There are three main varieties of tea – green, black and Oolong – that all come from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. When tea leaves are ready to harvest, they contain very high concentrations of an important class of polyphenols called catechins. However, as tea leaves are allowed to ferment, the catechin levels decline. Partially fermented leaves turn into Oolong tea and fully fermented leaves become black tea.

By contrast, green tea is produced by heat-treating the leaves soon after harvest to prevent fermentation and preserve the natural catechins.

This process also preserves the green color of the leaves. Although there are six primary catechin compounds in green tea, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is by far the most active, most abundant and most studied.

It is also EGCG that appears to be responsible for many of the weight loss benefits attributed to green tea.

Green Tea and Weight Loss – The Research

Multiple studies have been published showing that regular consumption of green tea – or of supplements containing the catechins extracted from green tea – may influence energy metabolism, body weight and body fat content.

Research into how the catechins, particularly EGCG, found in green tea benefit weight loss and fat distribution has been conducted in vitro (test tubes), using mice, and finally in clinical trials with humans.

All three research techniques have produced results indicating that high doses of catechins can be effective for:

  • Promoting weight loss
  • Reducing waist circumference
  • Improving energy metabolism
  • Decreasing intra-abdominal fat
  • Supporting maintenance of lost weight.

A randomized placebo-controlled trial in China studied the effects of catechins on weight and body composition. A total of 182 moderately overweight men and women were divided into four groups and given two beverage servings a day for 90 days. The beverage given to the control group contained almost no catechins while the other groups received catechin doses ranging from 458 mg/day to 886 mg twice a day. In their conclusions, the researchers said, “This investigation shows that regular consumption of a very-high catechin green tea [500-900 mg] over 90 days leads to significant reductions in measures such as body weight, waist circumference and intra-abdominal fat…“(2)

To Drink or To Supplement…

Is it better to drink your green tea or to take a green tea extract supplement? While drinking green tea is certainly good for you, there are a couple of reasons why supplementing with an EGCG-rich green tea extract is better:

  • Convenience. In order to get the amount of EGCG and other catechins used in research and found to be effective for weight loss, you would have to drink about 10 cups of green tea a day, depending on the strength of the brew. Or you could take a single capsule of Green Tea extract.
  • 99.6% caffeine free. Even if you could manage to drink the needed 10 cups a day or more of green tea, you would be getting a great deal of caffeine with it. Green Tea EGCG  supplement contains only a trace amount of caffeine.

In Summary

Green tea has been studied extensively in humans, animals and laboratory tests. In addition to its many other known health benefits, green tea contains powerful catechins that have been shown to promote weight loss and reduce body fat, particularly in the abdominal area.

Excess abdominal fat is linked to the development of inflammation, diabetes and heart disease. Any help available to reduce abdominal fat should be eagerly sought.

Stay Healthy.

An easy home made nutritional supplement with 5 seeds

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5-Seed Blend

This nutritional powerhouse sits on my counter, ready to dress my morning oatmeal or my rice at night.

It’s simply a jar of chia seeds, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds.

Hello, magnesium, calcium, protein, omega-3 fats, and antioxidants all in one.

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Here’s the recipe:
  • 2 cups ground flaxseeds. If you don’t have the time or inclination to grind them yourself, you can buy them already ground.
  • 1/3 cup – ground sesame seeds
  • 1/3-cup ground sunflower seeds
  • 1/3 cup ground pumpkin seeds
  • 1/3 cup chia seeds.

Use within a week.

Image Courtesy Google.

Safety – or otherwise – of Statins

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What Will Big Pharma Try to Sell Us Next—the Brooklyn Bridge?

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The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs that will cost more than $14,000 a year.

Why did a new class of super-expensive statins need to be developed? Partly because the older statins are coming off patent and cannot be sold at high prices anymore. Also because of the wide range of dangerous side effects associated with “regular” statins, of course!

Statins aren’t just incredibly dangerous—they’re ineffective. That is quite a combination! Dr. David Brownstein recently pointed out there is little evidence that statins work. They do not, in fact, reduce the incidence of mortality of strokes and heart attacks.

Why aren’t these facts better known? Part of the answer lies in the $29 billion of statin sales each year. One in four Americans over the age of 45 takes statins.

We also pointed out in our earlier coverage that cholesterol is not the problem and is in fact vital to human health. A real danger as we age is that our cholesterol levels can get too low—which is only exacerbated by taking statins!

There are safe and simple ways to stay healthy. Pharmaceutical drugs should be the last resort, not the first.

Stay Healthy.

Are Supplements safe to use?

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supplements in spoon
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HHS Says Supplements Send 23,000 People to the Hospital ER! Each Year! Balderdash. The agency’s own CDC data shows that supplements are overwhelmingly safe.

The mainstream media is using a new study funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), released last week, to renew the false charges that supplements are unregulated, unsafe, and require more federal oversight.

Even a cursory examination of the data provided in the study, however, demonstrates once again that the alarmist headlines and the calls for tighter regulations are completely unsupported by the evidence.

First, over 20% of the cases analyzed were the result of unsupervised children swallowing pills. 40% of cases among those 65 and older were caused by choking. Many other cases were heart palpitations from ingesting too many diet pills, sexual enhancement pills, and energy drinks. Undoubtedly some percentage of these so-called dietary supplements were simply illegal substances, but we aren’t told what the percentage is.

One of HHS’s agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reports that there were actually only 3,249 supplement-related adverse event reports submitted, either from doctors or hospitals, to the FDA in 2012—a far cry from the 23,000 being claimed in the study.

Part of the gross discrepancy in the numbers is likely due to the fact that eye drops, ear drops, and other over-the-counter products that are not dietary supplements were apparently included by the researchers. Why they chose to do this, they will have to explain.

The study also omits important details on the adverse events counted. For instance, it does not report which products caused the adverse events. This is important because many adverse reactions could be the result of a handful of “adulterated” (illegal) products. The FDA already has the authority to remove adulterated products from the market. Supplements are further regulated by the FTC and must also follow stringent good manufacturing practices to ensure that products are safe.

In fact, the study actually demonstrates something we have been saying for a long time: supplements have an exemplary track record of safety. Considering that about half of all Americans—about 150 million people—use dietary supplements, even the inflated 23,000 number represents only about 0.015% of dietary supplement users.

Pharmaceutical drugs, on the other hand, even when properly prescribed, cause an estimated 1.9 million hospitalizations and 128,000 hospital deaths each year. Deaths outside of hospitals would add considerably to this total if recorded. If public health were truly HHS’s concern, shouldn’t they be focusing on prescription drugs?

What explains the misleading focus on supplements? Not surprisingly, some of the authors of the study are FDA officials. For years the agency has been trying to increase its authority over supplements, attempting to institute a drug-like approval system for them. Because Big Pharma pays the FDA’s bills and provides cushy post-government jobs, we suspect that a lot of this is attempting to curry favor with drug companies.

A drug approval system for supplements, remember, would lead to the destruction of the industry. Unable to pay the exorbitant cost of the FDA approval process (because they sell unpatentable natural substances and could never charge enough to recoup their investment for even one of their products, never mind their entire product line), supplement producers would have to shutter their doors, eliminating thousands of products from the market. This removes competition for Big Pharma and allows them either to monopolize the supplement market or more often try to turn supplements into hugely expensive prescription drugs.

Don’t be fooled by the headlines. The overall strategy at play here has little to do with consumer safety and much, much more to do with bolstering the bottom line of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies.

Staying Healthy is simple.