Category Archives: Supplements

Sunscreen Usage and Vitamin D

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Sun exposure is a hot topic these days. I see patients slathering on high level sun protective factor (SPF) sunscreen they believe will protect them against the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. Others fearfully avoid the sun, covering their entire bodies in protective clothing and adamantly avoiding daytime outdoor activities.

Yet like most things, sun safety involves finding balance. The key is not overexposure or avoiding exposure altogether, but to bask in the sun’s rays for a few minutes at a time.

Too much sunlight can create oxidative stress or oxidation. Think of oxidation as the rusting of a car or a sliced apple turning brown. The same situation creates wrinkles on your face when you have been exposed to too much sunlight over the years. At the same time, we were meant to enjoy sunlight. Staying out of the sun or over-relying on sunblock can make us depressed or anxious and contribute to numerous problems. That’s because when we avoid sun exposure, we often become deficient in the sunshine vitamin – vitamin D – an important key to health and vitality.

Vitamin D is almost totally absent from our food supply. We require up to 25 times more than what the government’s Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs)  recommend for us to be healthy. Vitamin D deficiencies are the hidden cause of so much suffering, and it is so easy to treat. .

Most ask what is the minimum dosage to avoid rickets?  Answer: 400 international units (IU) a day.  But the real questions to ask are: how much were we designed to have and how much do we need to be healthy? Answer: approximately 5,000 to 10,000 IU a day.  That’s quite a range between avoiding disease and maintaining optimal health.While almost never diagnosed, vitamin D deficiency affects over half of the population and has been linked to many cancers, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic muscle pain, bone loss, and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Amazing things start to happen when my patients’ vitamin D statuses reach optimal levels. Having witnessed these changes, there’s no doubt in my mind: vitamin D is an incredible asset to your health.

Vitamin D and Sunlight

Your body makes vitamin D when it’s exposed to sunlight. In fact, 80 to 100 percent of the vitamin D we need is created because of exposure to the sun. The sun exposure that makes our skin a bit red (called 1 minimum erythemal dose) produces the equivalent of 10,000 to 25,000 IU of vitamin D in our bodies.

The problem is that most of us aren’t exposed to enough sunlight.

Overuse of sunscreen is one reason. While these products help protect against skin cancer, they also block a whopping 97 percent of your body’s vitamin D production.

If you live in a northern climate, you’re not getting enough sun (and therefore vitamin D) to begin with, especially during winter. Plus, aging skin produces less vitamin D — the average 70-year-old creates only 25 percent of the vitamin D that a 20-year-old does. Skin color makes a difference, too. People with dark skin produce less vitamin D.

I recommend that you supplement with a high-quality vitamin D3. It can be an expensive supplement but it’s the best way to get optimal levels of this crucial vitamin.

Beyond that, the best way to make vitamin D involves full-body sun exposure for about 15 to 20 minutes between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. daily, without sunscreen (although I would recommend sunscreen on your face).

This works only in the summer, so I recommend you take additional vitamin D to optimize your levels. Most people require an additional 2,000 to 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day.

The exact amount needed to get your blood levels to the optimal range (50 to 80 ng/ml) will vary depending on your age, genetics, how far north of the equator you live, how much time you spend in the sun, and even the time of the year.

I strongly encourage you to test your vitamin D levels regularly to ensure your blood levels fall within the optimal range.

What Kind of Protection Should I Use in the Sun?

It’s hot outside, so you slather on a high-SPF sunscreen all over your body to provide the best protection against the sun’s harmful rays, correct?

Wrong.

The EWG recommends against choosing a high-SPF sunscreen. In fact, they believe that manufacturers should stop selling high SPF products altogether.

“[People] are more likely to use high SPF products improperly and as a result may expose themselves to more harmful ultraviolet radiation than people relying on products with lower SPF,” says their report.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use sunscreen. But you want to take other precautionary measures first and then use a good sunscreen but don’t over-rely on it.

“When people use sunscreen properly to prevent sunburn, they often extend their time in the sun and increase exposure to UVA rays,” the EWG says. (In case you were wondering the difference: UVB rays make up about three to five percent of the ultraviolet spectrum, whereas UVA rays are more prevalent and penetrate deeper into your body.)

Choosing the Right Sunscreen 

Not only are we overusing sunscreen or choosing the wrong SPF; most over-the-counter sunscreens also contain harmful ingredients. “American sunscreens are far from ideal and not as good as their European counterparts,” the EWG says. “Until FDA tightens its rules, people will continue to misuse inferior products.”

In 2015, the EWG found 80 percent of the 1,700 products they examined provided inferior sun protection or contained worrisome ingredients like oxybenzone.

The bottom line for sunscreen: Choose the right one, opt for a lower-SPF type, and don’t over-rely on it for total protection.

7 Strategies for Optimal Sun Safety

You needn’t become fearful of the sun, but over-exposure can do far more than just give you a miserable sunburn. Practicing sun safety and minimizing risks involves these 7 strategies:

  1. Get at least 20 minutes of exposure to sunlight a day. Do this preferably first thing in the morning. Among its benefits, sunlight triggers your brain to release specific chemicals and hormones such as melatonin that are vital to healthy sleep, mood, and aging.
  2. Only use sunscreen if you need it. According to the EWG, sunscreen should be your last resort when going into the sun.
  3. Be proactive about protection. Over-exposure can damage your skin and increase your risk for skin cancer. You can reduce these risks by seeking shade under an umbrella, tree, or other shelter before you need relief from the sun. Protective clothing can also shield your skin from sun overexposure.
  4. Prevent skin cancer with these strategies. The EWG recommends covering up (sunglasses and protective clothing), don’t get burned, choose a sunscreen with optimal UVA protection; avoid tanning beds, and getting optimal vitamin D to minimize your skin cancer risk.
  5. If you use sunscreen, scrutinize ingredients. Stop using creams, sun block, and cosmetics that contain paraben, petrochemicals, lead, or other toxins. Drugs and chemicals are well absorbed through your skin. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin.
  6. Download the EWG’s Sunscreen Guide. You can get the 2015 guide here, as well as a guide to sun safety here.
  7. Stay hydrated. Many of us are chronically dehydrated and consume caffeinated drinks or alcoholic beverage when we’re basking in the sun, which makes us even more dehydrated. That is why it’s so important to drink at least eight glasses of water every day, especially on hot days.

Stay Healthy.

Which vitamins should be taken together, and which not

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Patients often ask which types of vitamins should not be taken together and which should be taken together for maximum effect.

Answer:
How you take a supplement can be just as important as which product you take — both may impact how much of a nutrient your body actually gets.

A few rules of thumb:

    • If you take a large dose of a mineral, it will compete with other minerals to reduce their absorption. The mineral most often taken in large amounts is calcium. So if you take a calcium supplement, take it at a different time of day than other mineral supplements or a multivitamin/multimineral supplement. Doses of magnesium can also be relatively large and should, ideally, be taken apart from other minerals. If you take high doses of zinc long-term, be aware that it can cause copper deficiency, so you may need to supplement with copper as well.

 

    • Some vitamins can actually enhance the absorption of other nutrients. Vitamin C, for example, can enhance iron absorption from supplements and plant foods.

 

    • The fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) are likely to be better absorbed if taken with a meal that contains fats. In fact, one study found that taking vitamin D with dinner rather than breakfast increased blood levels of vitamin D by about 50%.  Taking vitamins D, E, or K several hours before or after other fat-soluble vitamins would seem to maximize their absorption.

 

    • Taking certain supplements with food can reduce gastrointestinal side-effects. For example, taking magnesium with food can reduce the occurrence of diarrhea, and taking iron with food can reduce the chance of stomach upset.

 

  • Be aware that vitamins and minerals can also affect the absorption and effectiveness of medications.

Stay Healthy.

 

5 Supplements For People Struggling With Autoimmune Diseases

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Autoimmune diseases are one of the leading causes of suffering in the world.The good news is that there is a lot you can do today to take action for your health.Research suggests that genetics account for only about one-third of autoimmune disease factors. Environmental triggers, diet and lifestyle might be what’s largely responsible — which means you can help balance your immune system, dampen the inflammatory attacks and attempt to put the autoimmune response into remission.As the father of medicine, Hippocrates, said “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.” The foods we eat instruct and build our biochemistry. And when there is a lack of the nutrients, the genetic switch for autoimmunity is triggered.

With that in mind, I’m sharing the top nutrients and corresponding food medicines that I recommend for people struggling with autoimmune conditions:

1. Vitamin A

Vitamin A is essential for equipping you with a strong immune system. And vitamin A deficiency has also been linked to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes.

Why? Researchers seem to think it has to do with our dendritic cells. These alarms of the immune system can send out a “red alert” to stimulate immunity, or a “calm down” message that tones down excessive immunity that can damage the body. The “calm down” message makes use of vitamin A.

Food Medicine: True vitamin A, what’s called retinol, is only found in animal products like fish, shellfish, fermented cod liver oil, liver and butterfat from grass-fed cows.

Plant carotenes, a precursor to vitamin A, are found in sweet potatoes and carrots but the conversion rate to the usable retinol is very weak. In fact, research suggests that just 3% of beta-carotene gets converted in a healthy adult.

2. Vitamin D

Known as the “sunshine vitamin,” this nutrient is essential for many metabolic and immunological pathways in the body.

For example, Th17 cells are helper T cells that produce a number of inflammatory chemicals, such as interleukin-17. With autoimmune conditions — such as inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis — Th17 cells are out of control.

But Vitamin D, in conjunction with Vitamin A, has been shown to synergistically dampen the Th17 inflammatory response.

Food Medicine: As with vitamin A, vitamin D is most abundant in animal and dairy fats. But soaking up some time in the sun can also help — about 20 to 60 minutes a day, depending on your complexion. And consider getting tests done every few months to ensure your vitamin D levels are healthy.

3. Vitamin K2

One study in the Journal of Neuroimmunology found that vitamin K2 was effective at inhibiting the pro-inflammatory iNOS in the spinal cord and the brain immune system in rats that had multiple sclerosis symptoms.

Unfortunately, K2 is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in the western diet.

Food Medicine: Vitamin K2 is best paired with the other fat-soluble vitamins, A and D, in whole food form like grass-fed butter oil (ghee), or organ meat. Natto, a Japanese superfood made from non-GMO fermented soybeans, also has high levels of K2.

4. Iron

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is linked to many autoimmune diseases. One reason is because a large amount of stored iron, ferritin, is absorbed in the intestines. And in functional medicine, damage of the gut lining and leaky gut syndrome are considered preconditions for autoimmunity.

Food Medicine: It’s critical to first deal with the underlying problem that’s causing the iron deficiency. Healing of the microbiome is essential for healthy nutrient absorption, especially iron.

Once the gut is healed, iron-rich foods like grass-fed beef, liver and spinach can be effective, as well as cooking with cast iron cookware.

5. Micronutrients

Micronutrient deficiencies — such as selenium, magnesium and zinc — are associated with several autoimmune diseases. That’s mainly due to chronic inflammation, which decreases the absorption of these vital nutrients.

These micronutrients are needed for the healthy production and conversion of the thyroid hormone — and thyroid problems such as Hashimoto’s disease are some of the most common autoimmune conditions.

Food Medicine: A variety of nuts and seeds like Brazil nuts, as well as oysters, are good sources of these nutrients.

What Should You Do Now?

If you’re struggling with symptoms of an autoimmune disease, here are some specific steps to consider taking:

1. Get Your Nutrient Levels Checked

A good place to start is having blood labs done to see where your nutrient levels are.

2. Find Out If You Have Nutrient Absorption Issues

You might be eating all the right foods, but just not properly absorbing them. Potential inflammatory microbiome issues, such as leaky gut syndrome, may be preventing optimal nutrient absorption.

3. Avoid Your Trigger Foods

With autoimmune problems, you can have an immune response from virtually any food. For example, nuts may be a great source of micronutrients in theory, but may not agree with your body in particular.

4. Implement Natural Methods

There are many natural tools for you to use to help dampen inflammatory-immune responses, including avoiding gluten and managing stress.

5. Consider an Integrative Medicine Evaluation

Integrative medicine can help suggest sustainable options for those suffering from autoimmune conditions. Take advantage of a free phone  evaluation to have your questions answered and to see if Integrative medicine might be right for you.

Weight Loss – Four Simple Steps

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You Can Lose the Weight – Four Simple Steps

Go to the mall. See a movie. Look around next time you’re in an airport. What you’ll see is the confirmation of all the statistics that we’re hearing so much about these days related to the ever-increasing prevalence of obesity. It’s everywhere and it’s affecting most of us.

Books, online information, infomercials, daytime T.V., and even nightly news programs are constantly hammering us with the scary news that relates increasing abdominal girth to just about every bad medical condition you don’t want to get. At the same time, these same resources offer up some new trendy solution to the obesity epidemic daily, often in the form of some new and exotic dietary supplement.

Truth is, losing weight doesn’t happen when you give in and buy the latest pill. Weight loss happens when the body shifts from storing fat to burning fat. It is that simple, and far and away how we signal our metabolism to make this fundamental shift depends on what we choose to eat.

But it’s understanding how our food choices influence the ratio of fat storage to fat burning that will help give commitment to making the right dietary changes to trim down.

When we humans consume glucose or carbohydrate-rich foods that are then broken down into glucose, it stimulates the pancreas to secrete the hormone insulin. We all learned in high school biology that insulin works in the body by facilitating the reduction of blood sugar by driving it into cells. But while that is true, insulin performs two other functions in your body that you need to be aware of: it stimulates fat production and inhibits fat breakdown. This explains why sugars and carbs make people fat.

In our hunter-gatherer days, the ability of insulin to stimulate fat production might well have paved the way for our ability to survive. Long before wheat fields, apple orchards or convenience stores, late summer and early fall were pretty much the only times of the year when humans would stumble upon sugars, because that’s when fruit ripens. Eating these sugar-rich foods would stimulate insulin production, leading to fat storage that provided us a calorie buffer for the winter, when food was scarce. This is actually an incredible adaptive mechanism. Unfortunately, sugar-rich foods are no longer just something we have for a few weeks a year. Sugar and carbs are available in abundance 365 days a year, all the while telling us to store fat for the winter of food scarcity that never comes.

Dietary fat has pretty much the opposite effect in terms of insulin signaling. It actually sends signals to our physiology that food is abundant, shutting down the need to store fat for the future.

The other player influencing whether we are fat or lean is the microbiome, the collection of more than 100 trillion organisms living within our body. So influential are these organisms in terms of our metabolism that scientists now regard the 3-pound microbiome as actually representing an organ within the body like the liver or the heart. Specifically, the bacteria within the gut play a huge role in regulating how many calories we extract from a given meal, the level of our desire to eat, and even the production of the brain chemicals that influence our eating habits.

So here’s the skinny:

  1. Eat a diet that’s really low in sugar and carbohydrates. I recommend a target of 60-80 grams/carbs/day. Opt for whole fruit, not fruit juice. Avoid dried fruit as it is highly sugar-concentrated.
  1. Eat more fat. Welcome fat back to the table in the form of extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, seeds, free-range eggs, wild fish and grass-fed beef.
  1. Add probiotic-rich fermented foods to your plate. Foods like fermented fish, kimchi, fermented vegetables, kombucha, and cultured yogurt are teeming with healthy probiotic bacteria that can help pave the way for weight loss.
  1. Eat more fiber. Fiber rich foods increase the sense of fullness and that helps reduce overall food consumption. More importantly, foods containing a special type of fiber, prebiotic fiber, cater to the healthy gut bacteria, expanding their numbers and enhancing their positive influence on your health. These include choices like jicama, dandelion greens, Jerusalem artichoke, onion and garlic.

Be Healthy.

Want Glowing Skin? 5 Easy Steps That Start With Your Gut

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by Anna Mitsios

It’s easy to overlook our gut as the source of skin troubles. But if the well-being of our internal organs and energy levels are determined by what we put in our mouths, why shouldn’t the same be true for our skin?Here’s what an unhealthy gut do to your skin:

  • It disrupts the flora in the skin as it creates inflammation, affecting the integrity and protective function of the skin. Research shows that small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), a condition involving inappropriate growth of bacteria in the small intestine, is ten times more prevalent in people with acne rosacea, and that a correction of gut flora led to marked clinical improvement in their skin conditions.
  • Altered gut flora can activate the release of substance P — a neuropeptide produced in the gut, brain and skin that plays a major role in inflammatory skin conditions like eczema.
  • An unhealthy gut can result in maldigestion and the malabsorption of proteins, fats, carbs and vitamins. SIBO can lead to nutritional deficiencies including vitamin B12, as well as vitamins A, D, E and K (fat-soluble vitamins) which are all critical for optimal skin health and overall good health.
  • An imbalance of stomach acid can result in the overgrowth of “bad” bacteria in the color, which can lead to acne. (This was discovered over a century ago!)
  • 14% of patients with ulcerative colitis and 24% of patients with Crohn’s disease (both diseases that affects the lining of the digestive tract) have skin manifestations.

Correcting your gut flora and establishing a healthy glow — inside and out — doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are five easy steps you can take to start the healing process:
1. Stop feeding the bad guys.

The bad flora in your gut has a field day with sugar, dairy and processed grains. Starve the little critters by reducing your intake of these foods — your skin will thank you.

2. Start taking a probiotic.

Oral probiotics have been shown to improve skin conditions by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress, as well as strengthening the intestinal barrier. In one study, 80% of participants who received a probiotic experienced improvement in their acne.

3. Eat prebiotic- and fiber-rich foods.

Prebiotics provide food for probiotics and can be just as important as probiotics in maintaining healthy skin and gut. Asparagus, beetroot, pumpkin, flaxseeds and garlic are wonderfully rich prebiotic foods. Fiber helps the process by sweeping away toxins and excess hormones which can wreak havoc on the skin.

4. Eat fermented foods.

Fermented foods can be a wonderful way of introducing good gut flora in a natural way. They also assist with improving digestion and stopping persistent sugar cravings.

5. Up your digestive ability.

Promoting the body’s hydrochloric acid production is critical to improving its ability to break down and absorb food. Splash apple cider vinegar onto your salads and increasing your consumption of bitter foods such as rocket, dandelion, lemon and radicchio will increase your digestive power.

Remember that what you put on and in your body are both important! Get your gut in order and your skin will follow.

Be Healthy, Simply.