Articles
Read ArticlesMercola Natural Health Articles
‘Ozempic Breast’ — The Latest Side Effect of a Popular Weight Loss Drug
-
Rapid weight loss drugs continue to surge in popularity, making them the major contributor to the 13.5% increase in spending on prescription medications in the U.S. in 2023, according to a report1 from the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy.
Leading this trend is semaglutide, better known by its brand names Ozempic, a diabetes medication, and Wegovy, a higher-dose variant specifically for weight loss. Both drugs come from the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, whose market capitalization has soared to $609 billion, surpassing Tesla’s valuation by $40 billion.2
However, with the increasing demand for these drugs comes more reports of users experiencing a range of unexpected and concerning changes to their bodies, from loose skin to sunken cheeks colloquially termed "Ozempic face." The latest reported side effect to join the growing list is saggy breast, aka "Ozempic breast."
Ozempic Use Now Linked to ‘Deflated’ Breasts
Taking semaglutide doesn't just target the areas where you aim to shed pounds — it can also lead to fat loss in places where you'd want to maintain it. While earlier reports underscore the drug’s effects on facial fat, an article3 in the International Open Access Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons highlights that similar changes in breast and body morphology can also occur.
Jennifer Brown, a 47-year-old hairstylist from Kentucky, is among the Ozempic users who have experienced these side effects. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times,4 Brown shared that she lost 40 pounds within a year of taking semaglutide, even without changing her diet and exercise routine.
However, the speedy results also created problems for her. "My breasts definitely got saggier," she told the LA Times, recounting how her breast implants started to shift after losing breast fat.
Since breast tissue is typically around 70% fat,5 significant weight loss can indeed result in decreased breast volume.6 Dr. Ronald F. Rosso, medical director at Peninsula Plastic Surgery in Torrance, California,7 further explains how Ozempic makes breasts saggy. As reported by the New York Post:8
"In the breast area, rapid fat loss can leave the skin envelope empty, causing the breasts to look deflated and the nipples facing downward. This appearance is very similar to what happens after patients have had more traditional weight loss procedures such as gastric bypass."
Additionally, the drug has been associated with sagging buttocks, often referred to on social media as "Ozempic butt." Some women have also reported tenderness around their breast tissue, which experts suggest could be linked to the hormonal fluctuations caused by semaglutide.9
How Does Ozempic and Wegovy Work?
Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, is a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RAs). It works by mimicking GLP-1, a hormone in your body that’s responsible for managing blood sugar levels and appetite.10
When you eat, GLP-1 is released in your intestines, prompting the pancreas to release insulin while suppressing the secretion of glucagon, another hormone crucial for blood sugar regulation.11 These processes help in regulating blood sugar levels, which is why Ozempic was originally developed for Type 2 diabetes.
Semaglutide also slows down the emptying of the stomach by inhibiting gastric motility,12 which means that food remains in the stomach for a longer period of time, causing feelings of fullness and satiety. The longer food sat in the stomach, the greater the weight loss effects became.13
Weight Loss Drugs Lead to More Expenses on Plastic Surgeries
In addition to the physical side effects, semaglutide can have a significant impact on your pocketbook. Its prescription alone costs $1,300 to $1,500, depending on where you purchase it.14 Fixing its unwanted effects on your body through cosmetic procedures costs even more. According to an article by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons:15
"A new trend is taking shape in the offices of many plastic surgeons. Amidst the familiar requests for nips and tucks, there's been an uptick in something quite substantial – patients seeking skin-tightening procedures after experiencing massive weight loss.
This isn't the result of traditional diets or even bariatric surgery but a wave brought on by the successes of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications like Ozempic, which are increasingly seen in the media and touted by celebrities and everyday individuals alike."
Indeed, in both the LA Times and New York Post articles, cosmetic surgeons recommend plastic surgery to "tighten up" saggy skin. Other techniques surgeons may use include dermal fillers, fat autografting, collagen stimulators, radiofrequency, microneedling and laser skin tightening.16
"It is a dream weight until you spend $25,000 on plastic surgery, and you go every three months to your injector because you’ve got to just continuously pump Sculptra and fillers trying to keep that skin on your skull," Brown said.17 She underwent a series of treatments, including dermal fillers, an arm lift and a breast lift, to counteract the morphological effects of Ozempic.
The LA Times article featured another case involving a woman who lost 115 pounds after using Mounjaro, another GLP-1RA drug made by the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. The woman reportedly spent $30,000 on a lower-face lift and neck lift, noting that her friends have done similar procedures after losing weight on these medications.18
Although she asserts the outcome was "worth it," this trend raises important questions about the necessity of losing weight sustainably to prevent adverse effects in the first place, which can sometimes extend beyond mere bodily changes.
Other Debilitating Side Effects of Ozempic
The use of GLP-1RAs has been linked to serious health problems. A 2021 study19 published in the Journal of Investigative Medicine found that it increases the risk of gastroparesis (stomach paralysis), a disorder that slows or stops the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine.20
The researchers examined two cases of women who developed medicine-induced gastroparesis after taking GLP-1RA, manifesting hallmark symptoms like abdominal pain, bloating and nausea, which gradually resolved when they stopped taking the drug.
Another study21 published in JAMA noted that aside from gastroparesis, GLP-1RA also increases the risk of biliary disease, pancreatitis and bowel obstruction. Metabolic, nutritional, urinary, cardiac and eye disorders have also been linked to the use of semaglutide, according to data from EudraVigilance, Europe's system for monitoring and analyzing adverse reactions to medications.22
GLP-1RAs have been implicated in the development of pancreatic carcinoma23 and acute kidney injuries24 as well. While the long-term risks of semaglutide are still unknown, Wegovy carries a black box warning, as rodent studies have shown it causes thyroid C-cell tumors at doses similar to those used in humans.25 Its prescribing information also lists warnings and precautions for the following conditions:26
Acute pancreatitis |
Acute gallbladder disease |
Hypoglycemia |
Acute kidney injury |
Hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylactic reactions and angioedema |
Diabetic retinopathy complications |
Heart rate increase |
Suicidal behavior and ideation |
Boost Your GLP-1 Naturally With Akkermansia
Instead of relying on GLP-1RAs, a far safer way to increase your GLP-1 levels is by colonizing your gut with Akkermansia muciniphila, a type of bacteria that naturally secretes a GLP-1-inducing protein. Researchers noted in a study published in the journal Nature Microbiology:27
"A. muciniphila increases thermogenesis and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) secretion in high-fat-diet (HFD)-induced C57BL/6J mice by induction of uncoupling protein 1 in brown adipose tissue and systemic GLP-1 secretion."
Ideally comprising about 10% of your gut microbiome, Akkermansia is beneficial in your large intestine and plays an important role in supporting gut health. However, many people lack this vital microbe, possibly due to having impaired mitochondrial function and subsequent oxygen leakage in the gut.
One of the most important functions of Akkermansia is its ability to produce mucin, a thick, gel-like substance that forms a protective barrier on the gut lining. Mucin shields the epithelial cells of the intestinal wall from mechanical damage, harmful pathogens and chemical irritation caused by stomach acids and enzymes.
It also nourishes beneficial gut bacteria, which in turn helps support healthy digestion, promotes the production of essential nutrients and maintains an overall balance of gut flora.
Mucin can support the immune system as well, as it contains antibodies and antimicrobial peptides that can help combat infections. It also traps potential pathogens and other foreign particles to be expelled from the body through the digestive process.
How to Increase Your Akkermansia Levels
I recommend eating foods that help support Akkermansia, such as polyphenol-rich fruits like berries. Dietary fiber is also important to nourish your gut, but it needs to be the right kind. The ideal food for your microbiome is soluble fiber, particularly inulin, which is found in most vegetables.
Examples of high-inulin veggies include Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, leeks, asparagus and bananas. However, if your microbiome is significantly dysregulated, introducing high amounts of fiber too quickly can worsen gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, so gradually increasing fiber intake is key.
Berberine — A Natural Alternative to Ozempic
Berberine, a naturally occurring compound in plants like goldenseal, barberry, Oregon grape and tree turmeric, has been dubbed as "nature’s Ozempic"28 because of its weight loss potential. Traditionally used in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, berberine has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic and immune-supporting properties.29
One systematic review showed that berberine may help regulate blood sugar levels and improve insulin sensitivity.30 This is crucial because insulin resistance is closely linked to weight gain and obesity.31
Another study32 published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology found that berberine may help "alleviate the pathological conditions of metabolic disorders, and the mechanism is related to the regulation of gut microbiota."
Berberine also helps activate the adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) pathway, which plays a role in controlling how energy is produced and used by the cells. By activating AMPK, berberine helps normalize lipid, glucose and energy imbalances.33
It’s Wiser to Get to the Root Cause of Weight Gain
I strongly believe that the elusive "miracle cure" for weight loss will not exist in our lifetime. Relying on drugs to lose weight puts you at risk of permanent and debilitating health issues, and the weight is likely to return once you discontinue their use.
In fact, participants in one study34 regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss one year after stopping semaglutide — a phenomenon dubbed as "Ozempic rebound." Most of the changes in their cardiometabolic variables also reverted to pretreatment levels.
For longer-lasting results, I urge you to address the primary factor driving the overweight and obesity epidemics, which is the excess consumption of linoleic acid (LA). LA is a type of omega-6 fat found in seed oils like soybean, cottonseed, sunflower, rapeseed (canola), corn and safflower.35
Consider reducing your LA consumption to below 5 grams per day, which is close to what our ancestors used to consume before chronic health conditions, including obesity, became widespread.
Avoid processed foods, fast foods and restaurant foods, as virtually all of them contain LA; preparing your food at home is your best option. To learn more about linoleic acid, read my article "Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet."
Comments (15)
Mitochondrial Health Is a Key Countermeasure Against the Global Indoctrination Program
-
The video above features an interview with Dr. Michael Nehls,1,2 author of “The Indoctrinated Brain: How to Successfully Fend Off the Global Attack on Your Mental Freedom,” which describes, from a neuroscientific point of view, how certain brain changes make us more susceptible to indoctrination, and how many of the factors that cause those changes in the first place have been implemented worldwide over the past four years.
Media and global leaders have created a perfect vicious cycle, beginning with fearmongering, goal post switching and bad health advice that create chronic stress and key nutritional deficiencies, which drives chronically elevated levels of stress hormones, which causes chronically inhibited hippocampal neurogenesis, which results in chronically reduced mental resilience, which feeds chronic stress.
The result of this loop is a steady deterioration of autobiographical memory, which facilitates indoctrination.
As the title of his book makes clear, the whole world has been placed under a sort of indoctrination protocol — and a very successful one at that — which has led to many being seemingly unable to think for themselves anymore or to logically assess information.
Rates of depression and Alzheimer’s are also spiking around the world, and the age of onset for both are rapidly falling. Yet the causes behind the rises in mental and neurological problems are not being eliminated. On the contrary, the causes are being promoted further. “Can this just be coincidence?” Nehls asks in his book.
The Two Thinking Systems
As explained by Nehls, we have two types of thinking systems. System 1 is nonthinking and System 2 is thinking. To consciously change your behavior, you must first recognize that a change is necessary or at least would be beneficial, and this requires the willingness to invest mental energy into thinking.
Our brains by default operate in System 1 most of the time. System 2 is only activated through conscious choice when you recognize that “Hey, I better stop and think this through.” However, if you don’t have the mental energy, activation of System 2 is unlikely, even if your very life might depend on it. As Nehls points out in his book, when you’re mentally exhausted, “it is almost impossible to find the best solution to a problem.”
If you don’t have the energy to think, then you remain stuck in System 1, which is a habitual state of not thinking and simply acting on autopilot. System 1 also makes us follow mass thought or mass movements, because there’s a perceived safety in the majority. Standing alone is risky and is basically inconceivable if you don’t have a logical basis or rationale for doing so in the first place.
So, the bad news is that your neurology is being assailed in a variety of ways that can impair your cognition. The good news is, once you understand how this is done, you can take proactive steps to protect your neurological health and in so doing “inoculate” yourself against indoctrination at the same time.
How Your Autobiographical Memory Works
Your autobiographical memory is what allows you to form a unique individuality. The four keys to autobiographical memory are: where something happened, when it happened, what happened, and how it felt. In the video clip above, Nehls reviews how the autobiographical memory works.
Of these four memory factors, the emotional association (how you felt) is paramount. If something is exciting or frightening, the memory of where, when and what are cemented into memory, and can easily be dredged back up simply by being reminded of the same feeling.
Short-term memory is stored in the frontal lobe of your brain. Nothing is recorded here, so no long-term memories are created. Autobiographical memories are stored in your hippocampi, located in the temporal lobes of your brain. While there are two, one on each side, most simply refer to these as a singular hippocampus.
Without your hippocampus, you’d be incapable of remembering anything for more than a few seconds. But even with fully functional hippocampus, you cannot store the memory of every moment of your life. Your hippocampus is constantly making choices about what to remember and what to forget, and the primary selection is based on the amount of emotional charge involved.
Fear is a proven means of making sure someone will remember something. The hippocampus stores the emotional responses to the time and place (when and where) that the emotionally charged event took place in the dentate gyrus, an area inside the hippocampi, while the details of the event and how you felt (what and how) are stored in the cornu ammonis, another area inside the hippocampi.
Your Mitochondrial Function Will Have Direct Impact on Your Ability to Activate System 2 Thinking
The reason you feel mentally exhausted at the end of a busy day is because your hippocampus has reached max capacity and doesn’t have the energy to handle any more information.
This is just one reason why it’s so crucial to optimize your mitochondrial health. Well-functioning mitochondria produce energy more efficiently, which directly translates into an increased ability to use your System 2 critical thinking skills. In a later section, I’ll review the most important factor for optimizing your mitochondrial energy production.
To be receptive for more information, your hippocampus must transfer the day’s impressions into permanent storage in the neocortex, and that occurs during deep sleep. Interestingly, the only pieces of your memory that get transferred into the neocortical “hard drive” for long-term storage is the emotionally charged “what” and “how” portions of the memory.
The “where” and “when” remains in the gyrus dentatus for life. If something happens to these index neurons (so called because they act like a register of memory fragments), then the matching “what” and “how” in the neocortex cannot be found. Now, here’s the important part.
Your gyrus dentatus can produce thousands of new neurons every day, for as long as you live. This ensures that you can build your autobiographical memory stores until the day you die.
If your ability to create new index neurons is impaired or inhibited, old index neurons must be used, and in doing so, old time and place fragments are overwritten. So, over time, you effectively end up with memory loss. As noted by Nehls, chronic long-term inhibition of hippocampal neurogenesis results in Alzheimer’s.
Curiosity as a Gauge of Neurological and Mitochondrial Health
Additionally, since new index neurons are “hungry” for information, when you have fewer of them being generated, your sense of curiosity is also diminished. In essence, your curiosity can act as a gauge for your neurological health. I would argue that since mental energy is required to act on curiosity, it can also act as a gauge of your mitochondrial energy production.
In short, if you’re a critical thinker with a great sense of childlike curiosity, your mitochondrial energy production is likely high. If you’re too exhausted to think critically or creatively, your metabolism is likely low.
It’s important to understand that curiosity is essential for your ability to make choices in life. The more choices you make, the higher the likelihood that you will increase your experience of Joy. When you don't have enough cellular energy, your curiosity decreases along with your ability to make choices. The strong recommendation to you is to do everything you can to increase your curiosity so you can experience the maximum amount of Joy in your life.
Real-World Example
Ashley Armstrong, cofounder of Angel Acres Egg Co. and the Nourish Cooperative, is a perfect example of this. In the video above, she discusses her journey in regaining the ability to create cellular energy and how it changed her life, as she did not have enough energy to properly think.
Your brain makes up approximately 2% of your bodyweight yet consumes 20% of the energy your body produces. This is why a surplus of cellular energy creation is necessary to have the ability to allow your brain to work optimally.
Ashley simply would not have had enough cellular energy to make the decisions she did unless she improved her health. Factors like excess linoleic acid, estrogen and endotoxins were depleting her cellular energy, which is crucial for making energy-intensive decisions.
Her transformation underscores the power of nurturing your health to gain the energy necessary for making significant life changes. Avoiding dietary pitfalls like seed oils played a key role in this journey, enabling her to tap into a newfound capacity for brave decisions — a testament to the profound impact of regaining cellular energy on her ability to navigate life's choices.
It is my sincere desire and hope that you consider her journey to inspire and empower you to make similar choices in your own life and reclaim the Joy that you deserve. Imagine experiencing the nearly limitless Joy that Ashley has with her 1,000 chickens and four livestock guard dogs below.
What Supports and Destroys Autobiographical Index Neurons?
To ensure lifelong production of healthy new index neurons, the following factors need to be addressed. Conversely, a lack of any of these factors will undermine your production of hippocampal neurons.
Having a purpose in life — According to Nehls, the risk of developing hippocampal dementia, i.e., Alzheimer’s, exponentially increases if you do not have a sense of purpose. |
Nutrition — For optimal hippocampal growth, none of the essential micronutrients can be deficient. That said, among the most important are iodine and vitamin D. According to Nehls, a vitamin D level of 40 to 60 ng/mL (100 to 150 nmol/L) is required for immunological and neurological health. |
Social life — Loving, intimate relationships encourage the release of oxytocin, which is one of the most potent hippocampal growth factors currently known. Conversely, isolation and loneliness have a marked detrimental effect on hippocampal performance. Another reason why companionship is so important is because it provides emotional experiences and conversations required for the survival of hippocampal neurons. Whatever neurons are produced will die off if there are no new experiences to record, and production will decline when lack of experiences is chronic. |
Exercise — Exercise has been shown to be highly effective in stimulating hippocampal growth (neurogenesis). In his book, Nehls cites research showing that seniors who take a one-hour brisk walk every day can grow their hippocampus by 2% in a single year. For comparison, Alzheimer’s patients lose about 5% of their hippocampal volume per year once the disease process is underway.3 |
Sleep — Your hippocampus can only make new neurons during sleep, when it’s not busy collecting new experiences. Melatonin is also known to stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis, and this is likely why. According to Nehls, it takes about two weeks to restart neurogenesis after chronic sleep deprivation. |
Time — Wanting or needing to do more than is feasible creates stress, and stress hormones not only inhibit neurogenesis but also drive neurodegeneration. That said, boredom (having too much time on your hands) is not good either, as the growth impulses for new neurons are missing. The ideal state, Nehls says in his book, is eustress — “positive stress caused by challenging yet doable tasks.” |
The Global Assault on the Human Soul
In his book, Nehls wonders whether the indoctrination efforts of the past four years might be part of an even greater agenda. Quoting from his book, “The Indoctrinated Brain”:4
“In order for society to adopt the operating system of the technocrats, contradictions to its own history must no longer be perceptible. There must be no dissonance between one’s own experiences from earlier times and the new expectations, promises and demands of the technocrats or the everyday reality of a future AI-controlled existence …
To function properly, the [social operating system] SOS must be not only a part of the autobiographical memory but also the unrivaled foundation upon which all other autobiographical memory content is based …
Only by overwriting the old index neurons will discrepancies be prevented and will the reprogrammed people not be unsettled by more attractive alternative life plans …
The former self, consisting of all autobiographical memories and the associated feelings, hopes, and values, would then be erased and deliberately replaced by a technocratically constructed foundation of identity …”
How to Successfully Destroy Hippocampal Neurogenesis
Undermining hippocampal neurogenesis is the perfect strategy if you want to reprogram a population to accept the unacceptable and usher in an otherwise unwelcome world, Nehls notes. To do so with any degree of success requires a two-pronged attack:
- New production of index neurons must be radically suppressed, while existing neurons must simultaneously be decimated through neurodegenerative measures.
- Remaining index neurons used to access autobiographical memories must be successively overwritten with the technocratic narrative.
How the World Was Successfully Indoctrinated
As noted by Nehls, both attack strategies were implemented worldwide at the start of the COVID pandemic.
New index neurons are decimated by oxygen deprivation (think masks), vitamin D deficiency (recall the relentless “debunking” of vitamin D claims?), alcohol toxicity (just why were liquor stores kept open while everything else had to close?), and other toxins, including the COVID-19 spike protein, whether from the virus or the mRNA shots.
Meanwhile, existing neurons are decimated by the chronic release of stress hormones, such as what happens when you fear you might catch a virus and die every time you go to the grocery store or pass an unmasked person on the street.
The second part — overwriting autobiographical memories with a technocratic narrative — becomes easy when people are in a state of mental and emotional exhaustion. Why? Because when you force yourself to think when you’re mentally exhausted, you’re overwriting old neurons — the old memories that make up your identity.
Add anxiety and fear into the mix, and you have a perfect recipe for indoctrination as the old memories are not only being overwritten, but the anxiety-filled new narrative is also being efficiently stored in your long-term memory. As noted in Nehls’ book:5
“Fomenting anxiety, especially on the nightly news … is a highly effective means of forcing the hippocampus to activate System 2, even in a state of ego-depletion. Propagated content of the technocratic narrative is implanted in memory and, in the absence of new unused index neurons, access to earlier memories is simultaneously erased.”
Lockdowns, social distancing, masking, the closing of gyms, playgrounds, beaches and outdoor parks, the COVID shots, the ever-changing goal posts, the successive contradictory narratives, the fearmongering, and health-harming advice such as avoiding vitamin D all work toward the same outcomes.
First, they facilitate indoctrination by destroying and causing neurons involved in autobiographical memory to be overwritten. The result is people who, quite literally, cannot fully remember their own autobiographical past. It’s been overwritten with technocratic consensus statements, and when asked to engage in logical reasoning, they can’t.
They simply parrot the propaganda narratives because the very center of their individuality (their autobiographical memory) has been replaced by these narratives. What’s more, whey you question the narrative, they perceive it as a direct attack on them personally, as the narrative is who they now are. It’s become part of their personality.
The COVID measures also speed neurodegeneration and cognitive loss, resulting in dementia. And indeed, recent research shows memory and executive function in older adults dropped by 50% during the first year of the pandemic.6
How to Successfully Fend Off the Attack on Your Mental Freedom
The good news is, you can reverse the effects of these attacks on your neurology and regain your mental freedom. To reiterate, to protect your mental immune system and inoculate yourself against indoctrination, you need to:
Find a purpose and go after it |
Make sure you’re getting all the essential micronutrients, especially iodine and vitamin D |
Pursue an active social life |
Get plenty of exercise |
Optimize your sleep |
Ditch unrealistic expectations and embrace challenging but doable tasks |
Optimize Your Energy Production to Facilitate System 2 Thinking
To Nehls’ list, I would add the following advice:
• Limit your linoleic acid (LA) intake — LA decimates your mitochondrial function resulting in decreased ability to create cellular energy, and without energy, your brain simply won’t have the energy to switch into System 2 thinking. Optimizing your mitochondrial energy production is the crux not only to a healthy body and mind but also your intuition.
The energy produced by your mitochondria is virtually identical to the energy that created the universe and undergirds physical reality. So, once you optimize your mitochondrial energy production, you also swing the door wide open to your higher spiritual faculties where intuition, inner guidance and pure knowing resides.
I dare say, once you’re connected to your inner knowing, no indoctrination attempt can succeed because you can “see” clearly, even when truth is being hidden.
• Eat healthy carbs, in optimal amounts, and limit fats — This will optimize your mitochondrial glucose metabolism resulting in higher energy production. Fat metabolism (which you enter when your fat content is too high, likely above 35% of daily calories) reduces mitochondrial efficiency by 25% to 50%. Healthy carbs include ripe fruits, raw honey, and starches like white rice.
Glucose metabolism also increases structured water (mitochondria-produced water), also known as deuterium-depleted water, and reduces reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in the mitochondria.
• Keep your serotonin level low — Serotonin, often misconstrued as the "happy hormone," acts as an antimetabolite, hindering energy production in your mitochondria, resulting in fatigue and slowed metabolism. Recent research has also linked high serotonin levels to dementia.
One way to lower your serotonin is to increase GABA, which is available as a supplement, as GABA increases the degradation rate of serotonin. People who have high GABA levels usually have low serotonin, and vice-versa.
People with high GABA/low serotonin are typically calm and gregarious, whereas GABA deficiency and elevated serotonin is associated with anxiety, fear, depression, short temper, phobias, impulsiveness and disorganization.
Another important strategy is to address your gut health. When complex carbs that aren’t digested in your stomach travel down to your intestine, they end up feeding gram-negative bacteria that produce endotoxin, also known as LPS (lipopolysaccharide).
Endotoxin catalyzes a series of metabolic reactions that converts tryptophan in your gut to serotonin. So, to inhibit serotonin production in your gut (which is where most of the serotonin in your body is produced), you want to prevent endotoxin production, which means you need to balance your gut microbiome.
• Keep your estrogen level low — Like serotonin, estrogen is also antimetabolic and will inhibit energy production. Tips on how to lower your estrogen load can be found here.
Comments (64)
Is Magnesium the Missing Link in Your Heart Healthy Routine?
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published January 16, 2017.
Magnesium is a mineral important to the health of every cell and organ in your body, especially your heart, kidneys and muscles. Symptoms of a deficiency can include unexplained fatigue or muscle weakness, abnormal heart rhythms, eye twitches and muscle spasms.
Unfortunately, determining a deficiency of magnesium from a simple blood sample isn't possible, as only 1% of the magnesium in your body is found in your blood stream. Instead, most of your magnesium will be found stored in your bones and organs.
It is quite possible to be unaware of a deficiency, which is why it has been dubbed the "invisible deficiency." Researchers estimate that up to 75% of Americans do not get enough magnesium from their diet to replace the magnesium lost.1
Studies have also demonstrated that only 25% of U.S. adults are getting the recommended daily amount of 310 to 320 milligrams (mg) for women and 400 to 420 mg for men.2 Even more concerning to your overall health, these amounts are just enough to stop your body from experiencing the overt symptoms of a deficiency, but not enough to support optimal health.
Adequate Levels of Magnesium Linked to Improved Heart Health
In one study, researchers conducted a dose-response meta-analysis of over 40 studies with over 1 million participants, published between 1999 and 2016,3 looking for a correlation between magnesium intake and diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality.
They found no significant association between increasing the intake of magnesium above 100 mg per day and the risk of CVD or congestive heart disease (CHD).4
However, the same increase in magnesium intake per day was linked with a 22% reduction in the potential risk of heart failure and a 7% decrease in the risk of stroke. The increase in magnesium was also linked to a 10% drop in the risk of death from all causes and a 19% drop in the potential risk of diabetes.5
While the analysis was based on observational studies and did not prove a direct link, researchers wrote that the results of their meta-analysis supported the theory that increasing your daily dietary intake of magnesium may provide you with overall health benefits.6 A deficiency of magnesium at the cellular level can lead to a deterioration of metabolic and mitochondrial function at the cell level, and lead to more serious health problems.
Cardiovascular Health Has a Significant Public Health Impact
Cardiovascular diseases claim more lives than all forms of cancer combined.7 In the U.S., someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds and someone dies every 33 seconds from a cardiovascular disease.8 The impact of CVD is not limited to your health and finances, but creates a large cost to the community and your employer.
Immediate costs include hospitalization, ambulance, diagnostic tests and immediate treatments, including surgery. Long-term costs include drugs, time off work and cardiac rehabilitation. The combined direct and indirect costs were estimated to be $444 billion in 2010, or $1 of every $6 spent on health care.9
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, killing 398,086 in 2013.10 Although it is sometimes thought of as a man's problem, approximately the same number of men and women die from CVD each year. Unfortunately, symptoms in women are less obvious than they are in men, with 64% of women who die from CVD having no previous symptoms.11
Magnesium May Be Key to Controlling Your Blood Pressure
One in every 3 adults in America suffers from hypertension, or high blood pressure.12 Having high blood pressure increases your risk of having heart disease and stroke, and only 1 in 4 people with hypertension have their condition under control.13
Magnesium has a direct effect on the relaxation of vascular smooth muscle and the regulation of ions important to blood pressure control. Hypertension is labeled the "silent killer" as there are usually no symptoms of the condition or warning signs.
A meta-analysis funded by the Indiana University School of Medicine Strategic Research Initiative made a direct link between those who were deficient in magnesium and hypertension.14 Lead author, Dr. Yiqing Song, professor of epidemiology at Indiana University, noted:15
"With its relative safety and low cost, magnesium supplements could be considered an option for lower high blood pressure in high-risk persons or hypertension patients.
Consistent with previous studies, our evidence suggests that the anti-hypertensive effect of magnesium might be only effective among people with magnesium deficiency or insufficiency.
Such suggestive evidence indicates that maintenance of optimal magnesium status in the human body may help prevent or treat hypertension."
Since approximately 80% of Americans are deficient in magnesium and 33% suffer from hypertension, balancing your magnesium levels may be the strategy you need to prevent the development of hypertension. As blood pressure is related to the relative stiffness of your arteries, it is important to note blood levels of magnesium are also associated with coronary artery calcification (CAC).16
Past studies demonstrated this association in patients suffering from chronic kidney disease, but this study found the same correlation in an otherwise healthy population. Participants in this study were without signs of CVD. Those with the highest serum level of magnesium enjoyed a 48% lower risk of hypertension, 69% lower risk of Type 2 diabetes and a 42% lower risk of an elevated CAC score.
Magnesium Is Essential to Overall Health
In this short video you'll discover some of the more common symptoms of magnesium deficiency. However, don't rely on experiencing these symptoms before evaluating lifestyle choices that deplete your magnesium stores and dietary choices that may not provide you with enough daily magnesium.
Magnesium is involved in over 600 different reactions in your body, and so is important to your overall health.17 Other cardiovascular benefits of magnesium include reducing your potential risk for atherosclerosis, or thickening and stiffening of the arterial walls.18
Low levels of magnesium have been associated with the risk of developing fatal cardiac arrhythmias. There are several different types of arrhythmias, but each have an abnormal electrical conduction that governs your heart rate and heartbeat.19
Optimal levels of magnesium may also reduce your potential risk for developing painful and debilitating migraine headaches.20 In fact, some studies suggest magnesium can help prevent and treat migraine headaches.21,22
Magnesium plays an essential role in brain function and mood stabilization. Low levels of magnesium are connected with depression as well.23 Magnesium is important to your metabolism and has a significant impact on Type 2 diabetes. Some experts believe that up to 48% of people suffering from diabetes are magnesium-deficient.24
Low magnesium levels also affect insulin resistance, important in metabolic syndrome and a precursor to Type 2 diabetes.25 High levels of insulin in the blood, common with insulin resistance, lead to further loss of magnesium.26
Lifestyle Choices That Deplete Magnesium
In this short video, Dr. Carolyn Dean discusses magnesium deficiency and the effect it has on your health. One of the primary reasons for a magnesium deficiency is a diet rich in processed foods. Heat and processing depletes magnesium from real foods. Experts believe low levels of magnesium may be the result of low levels found in food.27
Magnesium is also lost through sweating during heavy exertion, as a result of lack of sleep and alcohol consumption. Certain drugs tend to reduce the amount of magnesium in your body, such as antibiotics, proton pump inhibitors and corticosteroids.28
Unfortunately, there is no easy blood test to determine your magnesium levels. Some specialty labs do provide an RBC magnesium test that can give you a reasonable estimate, but the test is costly and not all labs can do the testing. Serum levels of magnesium are not a good indication of whether your muscles and bones have enough magnesium for optimal health. Perhaps the best way to determine your status is to carefully evaluate and track your symptoms.
Symptoms of low levels of magnesium are related to the functions the mineral plays in your body. Muscle spasms, heart arrhythmias, anxiety, nausea and high blood pressure are some of the signs and symptoms of magnesium insufficiency.29 Muscle spasms present as a "Charlie horse," or spasm in your calf muscle, that happens when you stretch your leg.
An increased number of migraines or headaches, loss of appetite and fatigue are other early signs of magnesium deficiency. More chronic and serious symptoms include abnormal heart rhythms, coronary spasms and seizures, as well as changes in personality and behavior.
Magnesium Threonate Best Magnesium Supplement?
Magnesium threonate is often considered the best form of magnesium for enhancing cognitive functions because it is uniquely effective at increasing magnesium levels in the brain. Unlike other forms of magnesium, magnesium threonate has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, a critical factor in its efficacy.
This capability allows it to directly influence brain health by supporting synaptic density and plasticity, which are essential for learning and memory. Studies suggest that increasing brain magnesium levels can lead to improved memory, enhanced learning abilities, and overall better cognitive function.
Additionally, magnesium threonate has been shown to potentially alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression, making it a multifaceted supplement for mental health and cognitive performance. Its targeted action on the brain sets it apart from other magnesium supplements, which may be more beneficial for bone health, muscle function, and general metabolism but less impactful on neurological health.
Balance a Magnesium Supplement With Calcium, Vitamin D3 and Vitamin K2
Since magnesium is inexpensive, safe and readily available, you may want to consider supplementation. There are also instances when supplementation is particularly advisable:30
- You have suffered or are at risk of a heart attack
- You have experienced ventricular arrhythmia
- You have had or are planning heart transplant or open heart surgery
- You are taking diuretics
- You have hypertension or congestive heart failure
There are several considerations if you choose to take a supplement as it is easy to end up with lopsided nutrient ratios. In general, most real foods have most of the cofactors and other nutrients in the correct ratios. It is important to maintain the proper balance between vitamin K2, vitamin D, magnesium and calcium. Considerations include:
- The ideal ratio between magnesium and calcium is currently thought to be 1-to-1. Keep in mind that since you're likely getting far more calcium from your diet than you are magnesium, your need for supplemental magnesium may be two to three times greater than calcium.
- Vitamin K2 (MK7 form) has two crucial functions, one is in cardiovascular health and the other is in bone restoration. By removing calcium from the lining of the blood vessels and shuttling it into your bone matrix, vitamin K2 helps prevent occlusions from atherosclerosis. Meanwhile, vitamin D helps optimize calcium absorption.
- Vitamins D and K2 also work together to produce and activate Matrix GLA Protein (MGP), which congregates around the elastic fibers of your arterial lining, thereby guarding your arteries against calcium crystal formation. Magnesium and vitamin K2 also complement each other, as magnesium helps lower blood pressure, which is an important component of heart disease.
- While the ideal or optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be determined, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue (whom I've interviewed on this topic) suggests taking 100 micrograms (mcg) of K2 for every 1,000 to 2,000 international units (IUs) of vitamin D you take.
I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D level tested twice a year (summer and winter) to help determine your personal recommended dosage. Sensible sun exposure is the ideal way to optimize your levels, but if you opt for a supplement, your "ideal dosage" is one that will put you into the therapeutic range of 60 to 80 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml).
Comments (9)
How to Prevent and Treat Bunions
-
Bunions, medically known as hallux valgus, are bony bumps that form on the joint at the base of your big toe. They occur when some of the bones in the front part of your foot move out of place, causing the tip of your big toe to get pulled toward the smaller toes and forcing the joint at the base of your big toe to stick out.
This joint, known as the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint, then becomes swollen and painful. Globally, about 19% of adults suffer from bunions, with women and people over 60 years more commonly affected.1 While it’s not always known what causes bunions, your choice of footwear can significantly contribute to the development — and worsening of — bunions. What’s more, good shoes can help to prevent and treat them.
Aleena Kanner, one of the leading postural experts in the U.S. and a certified Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) practitioner, created “The Shoe Ebook” to help you make informed footwear choices for pain-free — and bunion-free — feet.
How Improper Footwear May Contribute to Bunions
Wearing shoes that don’t fit properly, or those that aren’t designed with foot health in mind, can take a toll on your feet. Kanner notes:2
“Our feet boast a remarkable design, consisting of 28 bones that enable movement in various directions. In addition to facilitating movement, our feet play a crucial role in communicating with the ground, transmitting vital sensory information to the brain. It's fascinating how they interact with the ground, communicating vital feedback with each step we take.
From the moment we awaken, our feet are the first point of contact with the ground. Thus, the footwear we choose significantly impacts our overall bodily health and alignment.”
Shoes that are too tight or narrow, for instance, can squeeze your toes together, forcing your big toe into an unnatural position.3 This pressure causes the bones in your foot to misalign, potentially leading to the formation of a bunion at the base of your big toe. The same is true for shoes with pointed toes, which force your toes into an unnatural position and increase pressure and friction on the MTP joint.
High-heeled shoes are also problematic,4 as they shift your body weight forward, placing excessive pressure on the front part of your foot, including your toes. Not only does this force your toes into a cramped space but it increases stress on the MTP joint.
Wearing shoes that do not fit properly, whether they are too small, too large or lack adequate support, can also contribute to bunions. Small shoes squeeze your toes while large shoes can cause your foot to slide forward, putting excess pressure on the MTP joint.
Most Bunions Are Caused by ‘Years of Abnormal Motion’
Bunions are often said to have a genetic connection, as more than 70% of those with bunions have a parent who also had them.5 However, most bunions aren’t caused by genetics alone but rather involve abnormal or faulty movement patterns. Kanner explains:6
“Bunions are often attributed solely to genetics, but faulty movement patterns play a significant role as well. Now, I'm not suggesting that your mother and grandmother are exempt from the bunion club ... But we shouldn't place all the blame on them! Observing the movement patterns of our elders can influence our own, potentially leading to similar patterns.
When our feet lack the support and alignment they need, it can lead to abnormal pressure and stress on the joint at the base of the big toe, eventually resulting in bunion formation. While this may contribute to bunion development, labeling them as solely genetic might stem from a limited understanding rather than conclusive evidence.
Bunions develop due to Wolff's Law, which suggests that bones adapt to mechanical loading. This makes it more plausible that movement patterns contribute to their development rather than genetics alone.”
The American Podiatric Medical Association also states that bunions are often the result of years of abnormal motion:7
“Bunions form when the normal balance of forces that is exerted on the joints and tendons of the foot becomes disrupted. This disruption can lead to instability in the joint and cause the deformity. Bunions are brought about by years of abnormal motion and pressure over the MTP joint. They are, therefore, a symptom of faulty foot development and are usually caused by the way we walk and our inherited foot type or our shoes.
Although bunions tend to run in families, it is the foot type that is passed down — not the bunion. Parents who suffer from poor foot mechanics can pass their problematic foot type on to their children, who in turn are prone to developing bunions. The abnormal functioning caused by this faulty foot development can lead to pressure being exerted on and within the foot, often resulting in bone and joint deformities such as bunions and hammertoes.”
Lack of Arch Support May Contribute to Bunion Development
Proper arch support is important for proper foot mechanics and a key element that PRI evaluates, in partnership with the Hruska Clinic, for its recommended shoe list, which is updated at least twice a year. Arch support provides help with proper pronation — the natural movement of your foot as it rolls inward to distribute the force of impact during walking or running.
In normal pronation, your foot rolls inward about 15%, allowing your arch to absorb shock and support body weight.8 This movement helps the foot adapt to different surfaces and provides a stable base for the body. However, Kanner notes, “Lacking proper arch support and sufficient foot pronation can contribute to the development of bunions.”9 She explains:10
“Adequate arch support is crucial for promoting proper foot pronation and supporting neurological functionality. Foot pronation, which is the foot's ability to flatten down into the ground and aid in propelling the body forward, is essential for healthy movement. When there's a lack of pronation, it can manifest in various ways during a gait assessment.
We might observe individuals turning their feet outward as they try to find a way to push off their standing leg. Additionally, we might notice the development of bunions, both of which are related to the inability to pronate effectively. Without proper arch support, our foot's natural movement patterns may be hindered, potentially leading to discomfort and alignment issues over time.”
A Barefoot Lifestyle Likely Caused My Bunion
While ill-fitting shoes or shoes that lack support may contribute to bunions, so, too, may wearing no shoes at all, particularly if done for long periods of time. I visited Kanner to address a bunion I’d been trying to treat for a year. After consulting with her, I believe adopting a barefoot lifestyle for more than a decade was a primary cause.
Going barefoot is great if you're walking on the beach or grass — and is an important component of beneficial grounding — but I have tile floors in my home, and walking barefoot on hard, flat surfaces can lead to problems much like unsupportive shoes can, as there is no supportive structure for the foot. Kanner explains:11
"It’s been a huge [trend] lately, in the last, I'd say 10 years, to be wearing barefoot minimalist shoes, or no shoes. No shoes are fine if you are out in nature. I love grounding. We all know that there's an exchange of frequency from the earth into our bodies, and that's great if you are outside ... in sand, in grass.
However, our society is not built like that. We are not walking outside in grass and sand all the time. We are walking on flat surfaces, and the problem with that is our feet have arches, and we need to be able to give [them] the proper contact with the ground.
It ends up actually just slapping the ground and not creating that proper movement, range of motion in the foot, where we should have pronation, supination, pronation, supination. When we're missing that range and that flow, it can lock up your neck. It can lock up your rib cage.
Wearing a specific shoe can open up that ability to have better range of motion at the feet, which can transfer up the chain. It's a really hard topic for people because the minimalist shoes have a great marketing scheme. They're saying our ancestors were barefoot. But you have to think about the context of that. They were not walking on pavement all day long in cities.
They were outside in nature, where the foot's ability to pronate and supinate was still there because nature is uneven surfaces. So, I want to get across, it is OK to be outside barefoot if you're walking on an uneven surface on the beach.
But if you are in society and you're walking in barefoot minimalist shoes or no shoes at all, and you're having pain or symptoms ... hormone issues, et cetera, a shoe with proper ability to ground, the sensory ability to ground, is going to most likely, almost always, make a positive change for that person's well-being.”
Proper Footwear Can Help Prevent and Treat Bunions
Surgery, pain relievers and cortisone injections are common conventional treatments for bunions. But there are safer, less invasive options for relief, including choosing the proper footwear. “When I change the shoes on people, they can't believe it because it's such a simple thing you wouldn't think about,” Kanner says. She notes:12
“When I see a bunion, in general, I know that person is most likely lacking an arch of their foot. A bunion is when the toe is coming inwards towards the other toes. That person's ability to feel the ground with their arch is going to be limited most likely, especially if it's on the right foot.
When I give that person an arch where it should be, and if they're not normally sensing that, we don’t necessarily see a huge decrease in the bunion. Maybe with time. It's not an immediate change because it took time for that person to get a bunion in the first place. But we see major changes in that person's brain's ability to feel their feet on the ground.
Somebody with a bunion has really lost that ability to pronate, which is to flatten the arch into the ground and then use their right glute to push off and get the body weight to the left. When I see bunions, I know that there have been bony changes to adapt to somebody's gait pattern or postural breathing pattern. Gait, posture and breathing are all tied together."
According to Kanner, essential components of proper footwear include:13
- A heel counter for calcaneal guidance, supporting the way the heel bone moves and aligns during walking
- Arch support for a better ability to pronate
- A flexible midfoot for fluid movement
- Proper heel lift
- A wide toe box for optimal alignment and comfort
You can consult PRI’s recommended shoe list for examples of shoes that fit these requirements. However, a personalized approach is best, as the right shoes for you will likely be different from your neighbor’s.
Ideally, have a professional test you to make sure you’re wearing footwear that has the desired effects to support proper foot biomechanics and address your individual needs. For more details, be sure to read Kanner’s “The Shoe Ebook” to help you make informed footwear choices.
Comments (33)
Higher Taurine Intake Correlates With Some Measures of Strength in Middle Age
-
Taurine is a type of amino acid, which are the building blocks of proteins. Unlike many other amino acids, taurine is not used to build proteins but rather plays several other critical roles in the body, such as supporting nerve growth, producing bile salts and helping with digestion and maintaining proper hydration.1
Taurine is considered a "conditionally essential," or semi-essential, amino acid because, while your body can naturally produce it, supplementation might be necessary under certain conditions, such as in infants or in people with specific medical conditions.
Taurine levels, however, decline with age2 and are thought to play a key role in aging and longevity. In fact, research involving Japanese adults suggests higher taurine intake may protect muscle strength in middle age and beyond.3
Higher Taurine Intake May Support Muscle Strength in Middle Age
The study was conducted as part of the National Institute for Longevity Sciences-Longitudinal Study of Aging (NILS-LSA) in Japan. Participants, all aged 40 years or older, provided dietary data at the beginning of the study and underwent physical fitness assessments at the start and eight years later.
The researchers specifically investigated how taurine intake affected changes in four measures of physical fitness: knee extension muscle strength, flexibility (sit-and-reach test), balance (one-leg standing with eyes closed) and walking speed. Adjustments were made in the analysis for factors such as sex, age, body measurements, educational level, health status, smoking, depressive symptoms and medical history to isolate the effects of taurine.
The average daily taurine intake among the study participants was 207.5 milligrams (mg). However, higher taurine intake was linked to a significant increase in knee extension muscle strength over eight years. According to the study:4
"Knee extension muscle strength is an indicator of lower limb muscle strength, which is directly related to the ability to perform activities of daily living, such as walking and standing. Muscle strength is influenced by the muscle cross-sectional area and fast/slow muscle fiber ratio. Aging leads to a decrease in muscle cross-sectional area and fast-muscle fiber size, leading to muscle weakness."
This positive association was particularly notable in participants aged 65 years and older, where higher taurine intake correlated with a slower decline in muscle strength — although taurine intake did not show a significant relationship with the other assessed fitness parameters of flexibility, balance and walking speed.
The research suggests that taurine intake from the diet could play a crucial role in preserving muscle strength among older adults, marking the first research to link dietary taurine with muscle strength maintenance over time. It's also possible, however, that taurine may serve as a marker for intake of other beneficial compounds in the diet. As noted by Fight Aging!:5
"In the context of recent studies on taurine supplementation, [this] … open access paper seemed interesting. The authors report on correlations between taurine intake in the normal diet with a few measures of fitness and muscle strength in middle-aged individuals. Human studies of taurine supplementation require a dose in the range of 1.5-6.0 grams per day to remove the 50% loss in circulating taurine.
This supplement dose is the human equivalent extrapolated from the effective doses in mice and non-human primates. Here, dietary intake of taurine in the study participants was estimated to be ~200 milligrams per day, which is actually higher than previously reported averages, particularly for vegetarians.
Given that, one might argue that taurine levels in the diet are a proxy for the influence of some other better-studied aspect of dietary choices on long-term health, such as overall protein intake."
Taurine Helps Keep Aging Muscles Strong
Taurine has been found to play a significant role in countering the effects of aging on muscle regeneration, the researchers explained.6 This suggests that taurine not only supports normal muscle function but may also be crucial in maintaining muscle strength as people age.7
Long-term consumption of taurine could enhance its levels in muscle tissues, helping regulate the crucial flow of calcium ions that are essential for muscle contractions. This process could be key to maintaining muscle strength and overall physical health in middle-aged and older adults.8 Further, animal studies have revealed that taurine plays a role in how muscles function, affecting:9
- Muscle performance — Taurine helps muscles contract more effectively by managing the flow of calcium ions within muscle cells. This is important because calcium ions are key to muscle contractions.
- Muscle relaxation — When there's not enough taurine, muscles may not relax as smoothly after contracting.
- Aging and muscle health — In older rats, adding taurine to their diet increased its presence in their muscles, which improved muscle function. Conversely, animals that couldn't transport taurine properly showed signs of faster aging and had shorter lifespans. Their muscles also aged quicker both in appearance and function.10
- Heart health — Low taurine levels can make the heart prone to fibrosis, a condition where the heart becomes stiffer as you age.
Taurine also acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent that may be useful in warding off sarcopenia, an age-related condition characterized by the loss of muscle mass and function. In a study involving older mice, taurine supplementation counteracted the effects of aging in skeletal muscle.11
Specifically, taurine helped improve muscle regeneration after injury by reducing inflammation and preserving muscle fiber integrity. It also reduced oxidative stress in aged muscles by maintaining cellular redox balance.
Is Taurine Deficiency a Driver of Aging?
Of the amino acids, taurine is the most abundant source of sulfur and is required for a wide range of physiological processes, including the healthy function of your immune system, nervous system,12 metabolism and digestion — but that's not all.
According to research published in the June 2023 issue of the journal Science, taurine also appears to play an important role in longevity and healthy aging.13 According to the editor's summary of the study:14
"Supplementation with taurine slowed key markers of aging such as increased DNA damage, telomerase deficiency, impaired mitochondrial function, and cellular senescence. Loss of taurine in humans was associated with aging-related diseases, and concentrations of taurine and its metabolites increased in response to exercise. Taurine supplementation improved life span in mice and health span in monkeys."
For the study, researchers gave taurine supplements to middle-aged mice daily. Remarkably, both male and female mice that received taurine lived longer than those that didn't, with their life spans increasing by about 10% to 12% and their life expectancy at 28 months rising by 18% to 25%.15
But extending life isn't enough; the quality of that extended life is also crucial. The study found that taurine not only helped the mice live longer but also kept them healthier for longer. The supplemented mice showed improved functions in critical areas such as bones, muscles, pancreas, brain, fat, gut and the immune system, effectively increasing their health span, or their period of healthy living.
Similar results were observed in monkeys and even extended to other species, like worms. Further investigation revealed that taurine supplementation reduced common signs of aging. It helped decrease cell aging, protected against damage to the ends of chromosomes, improved mitochondrial function, reduced DNA damage and lowered inflammation.16
Moreover, in humans, lower levels of taurine and related compounds were linked with several health issues, including obesity, high blood pressure, inflammation and diabetes. Interestingly, exercise was found to increase taurine levels in the blood, which may help explain some of the antiaging benefits of physical activity.
Overall, taurine supplementation could be a promising way to not only extend life span but also improve quality of life as we age, by mitigating various biological signs of aging. "This identifies taurine deficiency as a driver of aging," the researchers concluded.17
Taurine Deficiency Linked to Chronic Diseases
In addition to playing a key role in longevity, a deficiency of taurine may contribute to chronic disease. Research suggests people with lower blood levels of taurine have increased risk of several chronic and/or degenerative diseases, including:18,19,20
Obesity |
Diabetes |
Insulin resistance |
Liver disease |
High blood pressure |
Systemic inflammation |
Retinal degeneration |
Heart disease |
Immune dysfunction |
Muscle wasting |
Patients suffering from heart failure also tend to be deficient in taurine, which is thought to be related to its ability to improve mitochondrial function and energy metabolism. Restoring taurine levels in these patients has been shown to improve the contractile function of their hearts.21 Stroke victims may also benefit from taurine, which is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and is beneficial for the central nervous system.22
Taurine deficiency is also associated with endoplasmic reticulum stress,23 a major contributor to prion diseases. Taurine is also thought to be important for proper protein folding. As such, taurine may also be an important aid in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Signs of taurine deficiency are varied due to taurine's many biological effects. Common symptoms include:24,25,26
- Fatigue and low energy, as taurine is involved in energy production
- Muscle cramps, muscle weakness, muscle wasting/atrophy and poor exercise performance, as taurine is essential for muscle health and function
- Increased oxidative stress and systemic inflammation, which contributes to and is a hallmark of most chronic diseases
- Impaired immune function, as taurine is involved in immune cell function and the regulation of inflammation
- Vision problems associated with retinal degeneration, as taurine is essential for development and maintenance of the cells in your retina
Food Sources of Taurine
Taurine is found in animal foods such as seafood, red meat, poultry and dairy products, and it's always best to get your nutrients from your diet.
If you're a vegan, however, you may want to consider a high-quality taurine supplement, as you're not getting any from the foods you eat. While your body can synthesize some taurine, it's not going to be sufficient in the long run, especially as you get older and your body's ability to synthesize it diminishes.
Comments (8)
Get the Most From Your Green Tea
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published February 13, 2017.
If you've ever found it curious how devoted the English, Chinese and East Indians seem to be about keeping their tea times (not tee times), you might be interested to know that it often goes far beyond simple enjoyment and R & R. It's often just as much about the health benefits, which can relate to better health and longer life.
One of the most interesting paradoxes regarding tea, especially matcha green tea, is that it can soothe, calm and relax you while simultaneously intensifying your alertness.
One reason green tea is so good for you is because of its incredibly potent antioxidants. Like many fruits and berries, green tea contains high amounts of polyphenols, particularly a catechin known as epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). This most predominant antioxidant offers 25 to 100 times more antioxidant activity than even vitamins C and E.1
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA),2 Alzheimer's disease3 and cancer, particularly prostate cancer,4 for instance, are all diseases that researchers have noted are suppressed or killed (aka apoptosis-induced) by introducing EGCG nanoparticles.5 One study notes:
"Green tea's active ingredient, epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG), has gained significant attention among scientists and has been one of the leading plant-derived molecules studied for its potential health benefits.
… [A]nother study found that catechins from green tea inhibited the degradation of human cartilage."6
There are just as many studies that show dramatic effects of green tea consumption on improved brain function, as well as staving off cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's and dementia.
How to Get the Most Flavonoids From Your Green Tea
While there are many antioxidants in green tea, remember that polyphenols are antioxidants, and catechins, as discussed, are one of the most powerful. Many clinical studies use therapeutic dosages to test them out, but when you ingest the actual food or drink — in this case, green tea — you also get benefits.
Regarding EGCG content in different teas per cup, Acne Einstein noted that many studies used therapeutic dosages of 300 milligrams (mg) to 1,000 mg per day.
In comparison, analyzing the list of teas on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website7 in relation to the highest flavonoid content, brewed green tea outstrips any other type easily with 180 mg of EGCG content per cup. The decaffeinated version offers just 60 mg, while bottled green tea has just 10 mg.8
One study showed that one-half cup of green tea presents the same antioxidant potential as 1 kilogram — nearly 2.5 pounds — of fresh fruit.9
Studies on Green Tea and Remarkable Benefits
Epidemiological studies indicate that people who drink six or more cups of green tea a day have lower levels of damage from inflammation, even DNA damage. In fact, the Mount Sinai Health System lists numerous health benefits from green tea consumption:
"Preliminary studies suggest that drinking green tea can help prevent dental cavities … Green tea may also be useful in inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis. Research suggests that green tea may help arthritis by reducing inflammation and slowing the breakdown of cartilage.
Chemicals in green tea may help treat genital warts, treat dermatologic conditions, and prevent symptoms of colds and flu. Green tea may play a role in preventing Parkinson’s disease, cognitive decline and osteoporosis. Studies also show that drinking green tea is associated with reduced risk of dying from any cause."10
In China and India, people drink green tea to get rid of excess bodily fluid, control bleeding, heal wounds and improve their heart health. Green tea is also used to regulate blood sugar levels, improve mental clarity and promote digestion. Studies reported a number of other benefits, including cancer inhibition:
Atherosclerosis, as studies show green tea consumption reduces heart disease risk by lowering triglyceride levels11 |
Weight loss, by boosting metabolism and burning fat12 |
Skin cancer, as EGCG polyphenols have anticancer and anti-inflammatory properties that may help prevent the development of skin tumors13 |
Stomach cancer, as researchers found green tea drinkers were about half as likely to develop stomach cancer and inflammation14 |
Bladder cancer, as women who drank green tea were less likely to develop bladder cancer and kidney cancer15 |
Ovarian cancer, as patients experienced decreased occurrence rates16 |
Breast cancer, as researchers found that women who drank the most green tea had a 22% lower risk17 |
Esophageal cancer, as animal studies have found that green tea polyphenols inhibit esophageal cancer cell growth18 |
Colorectal cancer, as studies show regular green tea consumption may reduce colorectal cancer risk in women by 57%19 |
Pancreatic cancer, as a large clinical study found that those drinking the most green tea were less likely to develop pancreatic cancer20 |
Prostate cancer, as men who drink green tea have a 48% lower risk21 |
Lung cancer, as green tea polyphenols have been shown to inhibit the growth of human lung cancer cells in test tubes |
Inflammatory bowel disease, as green tea may reduce inflammation associated with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis22 |
Liver disease, as catechins may help treat viral hepatitis, a type of liver inflammation23 |
Diabetes, helping to prevent Type 1 from developing and slowing progression24 |
Did You Know? Green Tea Fights Acne
People who struggle with acne have more systematic inflammation than is common,25 but once again, drinking green tea has been found to be very beneficial. Anecdotal evidence — in short, people who noticed improvement and reported it — has been very encouraging.
Studies have shown that people with severe acne had more problems with inflammation and fewer antioxidants than those with mild acne. One study comments that "the notion that lipid peroxidation is a 'starter gun' in acne is not a new one."26
Inflammation of this order can come from a number of sources, but several to pay close attention to include gut health (or lack thereof), getting inadequate sleep and high levels of stress. Without a doubt, people with acne should consider what they eat in relation to their skin problems, as more than one study has explored acne being due to consuming unhealthy foods.27
There must be something to be said about the fact that in many indigenous societies, acne is virtually unheard of, while in so-called "enlightened" populations, it's a big problem. The above study noted:
"How could we ever rule out the possibility that diet has no effect on acne? Especially when diet influences the absorption of a nutrient or a drug that affects the mitigation of that disease? Maybe we cannot treat acne with nutrition but we can certainly influence it."28
Time, Type and Temperature Makes a Difference in Tea-Brewing
Between the three main varieties of tea — green, black and oolong — how the tea leaves are processed makes all the difference. Then there's white tea, which researchers believe may have similar health characteristics compared to green tea.29
Matcha tea, which means "powdered tea," is authentically green, but possesses several other differences that set it apart. While regular green tea involves soaking the leaves, either loose or in a bag and pitching them, matcha green tea is the actual leaves, ground micron fine. Acne Einstein cites the findings in a U.K. study30 and explains:
"… [W]hen you make tea using tea bags you'll get significantly less EGCG than from loose leaf and powdered teas. The authors speculated that this could be because the tea bag itself prevents some EGCG from being absorbed. Or, more likely, that tea bag contains lower quality leaves."31
Say you decided to prepare a cup of green tea and heated the water to less than boiling, then steeped your grocery store teabag for less than a minute. A study revealed that in comparison, using high-quality, loose-leaf tea and brewing it in boiling water increases the antioxidant potential.32
According to one study, the hotter the water you brew your loose-leaf tea in, the more antioxidants you can expect to benefit your body. Further, the EGCG extraction is particularly sensitive to water temperature; brewing water in 80 degrees Celsius, or 176 degrees Fahrenheit, imparts only about 60% of the ECGC from the tea leaf.33
The best amounts to use when measuring loose-leaf tea is a ratio of 4 teaspoons of tea for every 4 cups of water. Drink it while it's hot; freshly brewed tea is also superior to tea that's been sitting for a few hours. Further, as an FYI, adding milk can diminish the potency of some of the antioxidants, while adding a spritz of lemon can boost the green tea benefits and increases the catechins for better absorption by five times, one study shows.34
Comments (13)
Seaweed Is the Next Trendy Superfood
-
In Asian households, seaweed is an integral part of daily meals. It’s added to soups, used as a salad ingredient, served as a side dish, and even dried and eaten as a crunchy snack. In Japan, around 21 types of seaweed are used in cooking, six of which have been used as far back as the 8th century.1
Seaweed isn’t just versatile and delicious, but healthy as well. And the good news is Westerners are catching up and taking notice of this marine delicacy, hailing it as the next superfood.
Seaweed Is Gaining Traction as the Next Superfood
Data from the market research firm Mintel said that kelp seaweed could be the next rising superfood. According to a Food Navigator article,2 the firm’s data, which was acquired through their Ingredientscape AI tool, found that the prevalence of kelp seaweed in new products across Europe increased from 2005 to 2023, and they "expect the number of product launches containing kelp seaweed to grow further in the coming year."
Emma Schofield, associate director of Global Food Science at Mintel, says that the health and sustainability benefits that kelp seaweed offers are the primary reasons why there’s a growing interest in algae today. In the Food Navigator article, she comments:
"Seaweed has already gained popularity in western cuisine as chefs and food manufacturers explore its unique flavors and nutritional value. Food and drink brands have the potential to explore greater options with kelp.
For example, in the snack category, creating seaweed-infused crispy seaweed chips or mixing seaweed into already popular items such as crackers or popcorn. Manufacturers can make seaweed more approachable for consumers and enhance its adoption by presenting it in familiar formats."
Schofield also mentions that the growing interest in kelp may prompt European food manufacturers to change how they source their products. Instead of relying on seaweed imports from countries like China and Korea, Europeans may consider developing the market for locally produced seaweed.3
Kelp and Other Seaweeds Are Abundant in Nutrients
Kelp is a variety of seaweed that grows in vast seabeds in coastal regions all over the world. It’s also called brown algae (phaeophyta4), and thrives mostly in cold, nutrient-rich waters.5 According to the World Resources Institute:6
"Commonly described as a foundation species, kelp creates forest-like habitats fostering huge and diverse amounts of life, including sea snails, brittle stars, lobsters, various species of fish, seals, sea otters and more.
Kelp forests are found along 25% to 30% of the world’s coastlines, making them the most extensive marine-vegetated ecosystems in the world. They are predominantly cool water species and can be found in temperate, Arctic and sub-Antarctic areas. Some of the largest forests are located along the California and Pacific Northwest coastlines, up to and including Canada and Alaska."
Kelp has been dubbed a marine superfood, and Food Navigator reports that its potential health benefits will potentially "attract the interest of wellness-minded consumers," prompting the food industry to incorporate it into their products.7
Indeed, kelp and other types of seaweed — nori, kombu and wakame, to name a few — are nutritionally diverse, offering a wide array of nutrients that can provide whole-body benefits. According to a report in the journal Marine Drugs, seaweeds offer:8
Vitamins A, C, D, E and K |
Essential minerals like calcium, iron, iodine, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese and selenium |
B vitamins (B1, B2, B9 and B12) |
Protein and essential amino acids |
Anti-inflammatory polyphenols |
Dietary fiber |
Seaweed is also rich in arginine, glycine, alanine and glutamic acid, and contains all the essential amino acids. It has dietary fiber, which is essential for digestive health.9 The iron in seaweed helps with healthy blood formation and may prevent anemia, while the polyphenols help fight free radicals. These functions help ensure the growth of strong bones and optimal muscle function.
"Consumption of kelp seaweed has been linked to the improvement of sensory receptors, promoting healthy blood vessels, aiding in digestion and weight management and even reducing hair loss," Food Navigator10 reports. Just be mindful of your portions if you already have high iron levels.
Seaweed Plays a Role in the Lives of Japanese Centenarians
Japan has one of the highest centenarian populations, with 92,139 people recorded as of September 2023.11 Most of them live in Okinawa, an island that’s been dubbed as a "Blue Zone" of longevity.12
While many factors contribute to their long lives, such as being stress-free and appreciating day-to-day pleasures, one specific aspect that’s been considered is their nourishing diet composed of farm-to-table ingredients, with seaweed as one of the foundational components.13
In particular, fucoidans, a powerful polysaccharide found in some types of seaweed including kelp, has been identified to provide anti-aging and immune-boosting effects.14 Fucoidans make up 25% to 30% of seaweed’s dry weight, depending on the type and the season. According to a study in Marine Drugs, they present biological activities such as:15
Antibacterial |
Antiviral |
Anti-inflammatory |
Anticoagulant |
Antithrombotic |
Antidiabetic |
Procoagulant |
Anticancer |
An article published in FoodTrients16 further expounds on the longevity-promoting benefits of fucoidans, stating that:
"It has been shown that fucoidan-rich Undaria, once ingested, can bind to toxins such as dioxin within the mammalian body and facilitate its excretion.17 The effect is noteworthy enough that some clinicians believe it could hold promise as a therapeutic intervention in humans exposed to dioxin.
Laboratory and animal studies further reveal that fucoidans prevent certain infectious diseases, and block cancer cells from spreading and trigger their early death.18"
Seaweeds May Have Potent Antiviral Capabilities
The potent antiviral properties of seaweeds have also been demonstrated in several studies. One study that used extracts from six brown seaweed species from Hong Kong found that they inhibited herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2, with very low toxicity to other cells.19 Another study found that polysaccharides from red and brown seaweeds prevented the viral replication of the hepatitis C virus.20
More recently, in 2020, a study21 found that seaweed extracts exhibited promising results against SARS-CoV-2. Researchers from the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said that the extracts used a decoy technique, which has been found effective against other viruses like Zika, dengue and influenza A. In a news release published in Science Daily, they explained:22
"The spike protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 latches onto the ACE-2 receptor, a molecule on the surface of human cells. Once secured, the virus inserts its own genetic material into the cell, hijacking the cellular machinery to produce replica viruses.
But the virus could just as easily be persuaded to lock onto a decoy molecule that offers a similar fit. The neutralized virus would be trapped and eventually degrade naturally."
What Else Can Seaweeds Do for You?
Seaweed’s superfood status is further supported by its many potential advantages for human health, as well as its sustainability. It’s regenerative — it does not require herbicides, pesticides, feed, irrigation and land to grow, making it one of the best zero-input crops today.23
You can consume kelp and most varieties of seaweed raw, cooked and added into foods or served as a side dish or salad, or chopped in bits and added as a topping to your meals. Kelp supplements are also available today. Whatever form you choose, here are more potential benefits you can reap from this marine vegetable:
• May help lower your risk of cardiovascular events — A study found an inverse association between seaweed consumption and total stroke risk among Japanese men.24 Another study noted that the polyphenol content of seaweed may be the reason for its cardioprotective benefits.25
• Promotes thyroid health — Iodine deficiency is a growing concern today, which can pose a problem, as this nutrient is essential for proper thyroid hormone production.26
You cannot make iodine in your body; you need to get it from the foods you eat. Kelp is one of the top sources of iodine, and just a small amount can help you meet the recommended daily amounts.
However, remember that you only need small doses of iodine. You need to balance your levels, as too much or too little can lead to either hypo or hyperthyroidism.
• May help manage diabetes — The alginic acid in seaweed is known for its positive effects on diabetes and blood coagulation. A 2011 study27 found that kombu specifically has antihyperglycemic effects that may help reduce the risk of obesity and diabetes.
• May help promote brain health — Glutamic acid in dulse, which becomes glutamate in your body, is essential to your nervous system and may positively influence your memory, learning, cognition and normal brain function.28
Astaxanthin — Another Marine Superfood
Macroalgae like seaweeds can offer impressive benefits, however, don’t miss out on the benefits of microalgae as well. In particular, the green microalgae Haematococcus pluvialis29 contains the potent carotenoid astaxanthin, which can have tremendous advantages for your health.
Astaxanthin provides protection against reactive oxygen species and oxidation, which play a role in aging, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Science Direct30 refers to it as the "king of antioxidants," as it may be more potent compared to other antioxidants like vitamin A, vitamin E and lycopene. Although it’s related to beta-carotene, lutein and canthaxanthin, it has a unique molecular structure that sets it apart from other carotenoids.
Astaxanthin is available in supplement form. If you decide to give it a try, I recommend starting with 4 mg per day, and working your way up to about 8 mg per day — or more if you're an athlete or suffering from chronic inflammation. Taking this supplement with a small amount of healthy fat, such as butter or organic pastured eggs, will optimize its absorption.
The whole-body benefits of astaxanthin are so impressive, which is why this is one of the top antioxidants that I recommend you get more of. To learn more about the advantages of astaxanthin, you can read my article "Research on Astaxanthin Demonstrates Significant Whole Body Benefits."
Some Reminders Before You Load up on Kelp and Other Seaweeds
Going back to kelp and other seaweeds — while the benefits are promising, remember that you must be aware that they contain certain ingredients that, if consumed in excessive quantities, can have repercussions for your health.
For example, most seaweeds contain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), including linoleic acid,31 which can be harmful to your health in excessive amounts. I believe it’s best to limit your LA consumption to 5 grams, or even better, 2 grams a day to protect your health.
Seaweed also contains some amounts of fluoride, which is a known neurotoxin that can lead to developmental problems in infants and young children, including mental difficulties and IQ reduction.32
If you only consume small amounts of seaweed, however, the quantities will be too tiny to produce any drastic, long-lasting effect. To track your intake, I recommend using a tool like Cronometer, so you can keep an eye on how much LA you’re getting from your foods. Cronometer also provides information on other ingredients, like fluoride, in your foods. I recommend using the desktop site, though, as the mobile app does not show the complete list of nutrients.
Furthermore, I recommend being wise with your seaweed choices. You may be tempted to munch on products like dried laver seaweed sheets, for example, but these can be seasoned with artificial flavorings and vegetable oils like sesame oil,33 which can add to your LA burden. As much as possible, opt for plain, unseasoned kelp and seaweed products.
Red seaweed varieties (Eucheuma, Chondrus, Hypnea and Gigartina) also contain carrageenan.34 In its natural form, carrageenan has nutritional value and has even been noted to have anticancer potential.35 However, this hydrocolloid, when used in food processing, undergoes an extensive treatment and extraction process that changes its chemistry, turning it into an ultraprocessed, synthetic ingredient.36
As a result, carrageenan in food products has been linked to certain adverse effects, such as gastrointestinal disorders37 and tumor formation in animal studies38 due to its potential to trigger inflammatory pathways. The natural carrageenan in fresh seaweed likely wouldn’t cause any harm, but keep an eye out for the synthetic version — it’s mostly found in processed foods like pasteurized dairy, deli meats and canned soups.39
Comments (15)
Proteins, Fats and Carbs: Basics of Nutritional Biochemistry 101
-
Macronutrients are the primary components of your diet that give you energy. They consist of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, each of which serves unique functions in your body. While you need each of these macronutrients in relatively large quantities — compared to micronutrients like vitamins and minerals — to function at your best and avoid disease, the exact breakdown for optimal health continues to be debated.
While I’ve long recommended high-fat and low-carb consumption, I’ve recently learned that most people would benefit from far higher amounts of carbohydrates in their diet. Further, it’s likely that polymorphisms that affect your metabolic pathways alter your individual nutrient requirements, such that there’s no one-size-fits-all diet program that’s best for everyone.
There are certainly some nutritional tenets we can all adhere to, like getting your macronutrients from whole foods, not ultraprocessed ones. However, it’s counterproductive to vilify fats, carbohydrates or any macronutrient your body needs. A better approach is to seek to understand each component on its own merits, and why it’s essential for your overall health.
What Are Proteins?
Proteins are essential for building and repairing tissues, including muscles and organs. They also play crucial roles in the functioning of enzymes, hormones and immune system components. Proteins are made up of amino acids, some of which are essential because your body cannot produce them and must obtain them from food. Sources of protein include meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, nuts and seeds. As explained in the Osmosis video above:1
“Protein is an essential part of the human diet … Regardless of the source, the protein that we eat gets broken down and reformed into new proteins in our bodies. These proteins do everything from fighting infections to helping cells divide. You name it, they're doing it. At its simplest, a protein is a chain of amino acids bound to one another by peptide bonds like a string of beads.
These strings get twisted and folded into a final protein shape. When we eat protein, it gets broken down into its individual amino acids. Most amino acids have a central carbon atom bonded to one amino or nitrogen-containing group and one carboxylic acid group.
That's why it's called an amino acid. The carbon also has one hydrogen atom and a sidechain, which is unique to each amino acid. The exception to this is prolene, which is a tiny little ring structure instead. Although there are hundreds of amino acids in nature, humans only use about 20 of them to make basically every type of protein.”
Those 20 proteins include:
Alanine |
Arginine |
Asparagine |
Aspartic acid |
Cysteine |
Glutamic acid |
Glutamine |
Glycine |
Histidine |
Isoleucine |
Leucine |
Lysine |
Methionine |
Phenylalanine |
Prolene |
Serine |
Threonine |
Tryptophan |
Tyrosine |
Valine |
Five of these — alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid and serine — are considered non-essential amino acids because your body can make them, although you can also get them from foods. Another six of these proteins — arginine, cysteine, glutamine, glycine, proline and tyrosine — are described as conditionally essential.
This is because, while your body can make them if you’re healthy, during times of illness, stress or intense physical activity, your body's ability to produce these amino acids may not be sufficient to meet your needs, making it necessary to consume them through the diet.
There are also nine essential amino acids, which are those that we can only get from food. These include histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine.
How Your Body Breaks Down Proteins
When you eat proteins, a process known as proteolysis occurs to break them down. Osmosis explains:2
“Dietary protein provides the essential amino acids that are needed to make our own proteins, hormones and other important molecules — a circle of life of sorts — but to do so we need to break the dietary protein down first through a process called proteolysis. When we first eat a protein-containing food, proteolysis begins when the food reaches the stomach.
First, hydrochloric acid denatures the protein, unfolding it and making the amino acid chain more accessible to enzymatic action. Then, pepsin, which is itself made by gastric chief cells, enters the picture.
Pepsin cleaves any available protein into smaller oligopeptide chains, which move into the duodenum where a second set of digestive enzymes made by the pancreas further chopped the oligopeptides into tripeptides, dipeptides and individual amino acids.
These can all be taken up to the intestinal cells where di- and tripeptides are then converted into amino acids. Some amino acids remain in these cells and are used to synthesize intestinal enzymes and new cells. But most enter the bloodstream and are transported to other parts of the body in general.”
What Are Fats?
Fats are a dense source of energy and are important for absorbing vitamins, supporting cell growth and protecting organs. They also play a role in hormone production and the regulation of body temperature, while acting as a key component of cells and tissues.
Fats can also be converted into prostaglandins, which help cells communicate. The Osmosis video above further breaks down the makeup of the saturated and unsaturated fats in your diet:3
“Fats have a three-carbon backbone called glycerol, as well as fatty acid chains. The fatty acid chain is basically a string of carbon and hydrogen atoms. When an ‘OH’ from the glycerol molecule binds to an ‘H’ from the fatty acid, an ‘H20’ — a water molecule — gets released, and the two molecules link up.
If this happens once, the result is a monoglyceride. If it happens twice, it’s a diglyceride and three times makes a triglyceride. Now, there are various types of fatty acid chains, and one way to categorize them is by their length, in other words, how many carbons they have.
Short-chain fatty acids have 2 to 5 carbons, medium chain fatty acids have 6 to 12 carbons and long chain fatty acids have 13 or more carbons. Fatty acid chains are also categorized by the bonds connecting the carbons in the chain. A single bond is just one bond between the carbon atoms, and when a fatty acid chain has only single bonds, it’s called a saturated fatty acid — because it has as many hydrogen atoms as possible — it’s saturated with them.
Triglycerides with saturated fatty acids are nice and straight so they pack together really well, and as a result they’re usually solid at room temperature. And the longer the saturated fatty acid chain, the more likely it will be solid at room temperature.
Carbons can also have double bonds between them, and when a fatty acid has one or more double bonds, it’s called an unsaturated fatty acid because it’s not saturated with hydrogen atoms — for every double bond there are two fewer hydrogen atoms.
Also, a double bond causes a kink in the molecule so the triglycerides don’t pack together as nicely as saturated fats. As a result, unsaturated fats are usually liquid at room temperature. Unsaturated fatty acids can be further classified according to the number of their double bonds. Monounsaturated fatty acids are fatty acids with only a single double bond. Polyunsaturated fatty acids have two or more double bonds.”
While I’ve long recommended a high-fat diet, I’m now convinced that having more healthy carbs than fat is a great choice to improve your metabolic health. To break down why very simply, when more than 30% to 35% of your calories are coming from fat, you are forcing your cells to burn fat and put glucose on the back burner, instead of being metabolized like it should be. I delve deeper into this topic in, “Understanding the Randle Cycle.”
Further, as detailed in several previous articles, the evidence strongly suggests excessive amounts of the omega-6 fat linoleic acid is driving most modern diseases, including heart disease and cancer. Consuming over 5 grams of LA a day is likely to cause problems. I keep my intake below 2 grams a day.
What Are Carbohydrates?
Carbohydrates, which include simple sugars and complex carbohydrates, are one of the primary sources of energy for your body. But in terms of your health, not all carbohydrates are created equal. Osmosis describes some of the key differences among the most common dietary carbs:4
“Sugar actually refers to a family of molecules called saccharides — monosaccharides where ‘mono’ means one, so one sugar molecule, disaccharides where ‘di’ means two, so two sugar molecules linked together, oligosaccharides where ‘oligo’ means a few, so it’s three to nine sugar molecules linked together, and polysaccharides where ‘poly’ means many, so it’s 10 or more sugar molecules linked together.
Glucose is the most important member of the sugar family and it’s a monosaccharide. It’s one of the main sources of calories for the body, and is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and nourish the brain. Another monosaccharide is fructose, which is commonly found in honey, fruits and root vegetables. Finally, there’s the monosaccharide galactose, known as milk sugar.
It’s known as milk sugar because it’s only found in nature when it links with glucose to form lactose, a disaccharide found in the milk of mammals, which includes cow and human breast milk. Sucrose, or table sugar, is another disaccharide and it’s formed when fructose links up with glucose.
Sucrose is found in various fruits and vegetables, with sugarcane and sugar beets having the highest quantities. Maltose is another disaccharide — and this one is two glucose molecules linked together, and it’s found in molasses, which can be used as a substrate to ferment beer.”
Complex carbohydrates, meanwhile, can be oligosaccharides or polysaccharides, which are the most abundant type of carbohydrates found in food. Among complex carbs, there are also starches and fibers:5
“Starches are polysaccharides with molecular bonds between sugar molecules that human intestinal enzymes can break down. Starches are an important source of calories, and can be found in foods like rice, potatoes, wheat and maize. Starches don’t taste sweet like simple sugars because they don’t activate taste buds in the same way.
And there also dietary fibers, which are carbohydrates that intestinal enzymes can’t break down, and so the body cannot digest them. Now there are many different types of dietary fibers, and they’re not all the same when it comes to their structure or impact on health.
Fibers have molecular bonds that are resistant to human intestinal enzymes, so they pass through the small intestine undigested, get broken down a bit by bacteria in the large intestine, and ultimately end up as bulk matter in the stool.
Fiber is critical because it can slow down the rate of absorption of simple sugars like glucose in the small intestine, which can help maintain healthy blood glucose levels. They also increase stool weight, which helps prevent constipation, and fibers like beta-glucan are also good for heart health.”
Refined Sugars vs. Healthy Carbs
Refined carbohydrates or sugars, which are also sometimes referred to as free sugars, include those that are added to ultraprocessed foods and drinks. High-fructose corn syrup is an example of a refined sugar. These sugars are linked to health problems such as dental decay and heart disease, as well as cancer.6
Intrinsic sugars, also known as naturally occurring sugars, are those found within the cellular structure of foods, including whole fruits and vegetables. These sugars are part of the food's natural composition, not added during processing, and come with the beneficial nutrients and fiber found in whole foods, which can slow down sugar absorption and mitigate its impact on blood sugar levels.
One of the primary differences between these two types of sugars is that refined sugars, as well as many starches, are a common cause of endotoxin production in your gut, which destroys mitochondrial function and results in cancer metabolism.
The fructose present in whole foods does not typically result in the production of endotoxin. This is one of the primary differences between refined sugar and fructose from ripe fruit and helps explain why refined sugars fuel cancer. However, adding healthy carbs to your diet can be beneficial.
In the past, I followed a ketogenic diet that was below 50 grams of carbs a day up to about 100 grams a day. However, I’ve recently increased that to 500 grams of carbs per day, mostly in the form of rice and ripe fruit.
The key to remember is that optimal health is an ongoing journey and you must listen to your body to determine the best macronutrient ratio for you. You’ll also get a dramatically different outcome if your macronutrients come from highly processed fake foods — like processed foods high in LA — compared to those from healthy whole foods.
The easiest way to keep track of your nutrient intake is to use an online nutritional calculator such as Cronometer. To get the most accurate data, carefully weigh your food with a digital kitchen scale so you can enter the weight of your food to the nearest gram.
Comments (54)
One-Third of Your Pillow Weight May Be Dust Mites and Bug Droppings
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published April 12, 2017.
Dust mites are curious tiny creatures that feed off your dead skin cells and thrive in warm, humid environments. They don't bite, and they don't spread disease, but they are responsible for allergic symptoms and have been linked to the development of asthma in children.1
An estimated 10% of the population is allergic to the dust mite's fecal pellets and body parts. Your pillow is one of the more common places to find large numbers of mites, as the environment is exactly what they need to grow and multiply.
In fact, pillows and down comforters can become a dust mite reservoir. And, though you may think you've finally found the perfect pillow for a great night of sleep, it may be time to pitch the one you have and get a new one.
Ideally, your pillow should fill the gap between your head and shoulders when you lie down. Your pillow will serve two functions — support for your neck and upper back and provide a level of comfort you wouldn't experience without a pillow.
Support is the more important function as your spine is naturally curved at the neck and a well-placed pillow will maintain proper alignment. Although comfort is slightly more subjective, support plays a role in the comfort factor as a lack of support reduces comfort.
For those with a spinal disorder, proper support is essential to sleep quality and musculoskeletal comfort.2 One study found orthopedic pillows kept spinal alignment best, while feather pillows were the worst; individual support is the deciding factor in your pillow choice.
Your Allergies May Stem From Your Pillow
Dust mites are a fact of life. Even though you may not see them, you are their main source of food, so they are anywhere you live. In fact, brand new bedding may be completely colonized within six weeks!3
The video demonstrates how pervasive the mite population in your home may be, and why your allergy symptoms may be worse in the morning. There are 13 species of dust mites, all of which have adapted to living inside the average home.4
They thrive when temperatures are between 68 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity levels are between 70% and 80%. There are more dust mites in your bedroom and your bedding than anywhere else in your home.
So, if you have a dust mite allergy and can control the population of dust mites in your bedroom, you may also reduce your allergy symptoms. After two years without cleaning, one-third of the weight of your pillow could be from a thriving dust mite population and its droppings.5
Pillows May Increase Your Exposure to Flame-Retardant Chemicals
However, by changing one pillow for another, you may be changing one health challenge for another. Bedding is a common household material where fire-retardant chemicals are used with the idea that by slowing a burning fire, you have a better chance of escaping the flames.
Research shows that fire-retardant chemicals expose you to greater health risks, both before and during a fire. Mattresses, pillows, couch cushions and even electronics may be doused in fire-retardant chemicals, many of which have been linked to serious health risks,6 including cancer, infertility,7 birth defects and reduced IQ.
Although some of these chemicals are slowly being phased out, they are being replaced with others. The materials infused with older retardants are filling landfills, and chemicals are leaching into the groundwater, slowly making their way back into the food supply.
In 2006, the U.S. government moved to phase out polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), as multiple studies showed it interfered with the endocrine system and led to neurodevelopmental problems.8
A 2017 study suggests the levels of PBDEs in humans have stopped declining, plateaued and may even be higher in certain populations.9 The study's lead author, a research associate with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, points out that once these chemicals have reached the environment, they are virtually impossible to destroy.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports replacement chemicals are quietly taking the place of those being phased out and have not yet undergone scrutiny.10 The extent of the trend was not clear until scientists found a major increase in exposure to chlorinated tris in the past decade.11
Tris has been added to many types of foam furniture, including pillows — this is despite the fact that tris is a known carcinogen that may cause neurological damage. California has now classified it as a chemical known to cause cancer.
What You Might Not Know About Fire-Retardant Chemicals
Among the strongest opponents of fire-retardant chemicals are the firefighters who are forced to breathe the chemicals when they respond to a fire. Not only are the fumes toxic, but the chemicals are also ineffective.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health released the results of more than five years of data demonstrating firefighters face difficult health challenges.12
Their study evaluated over 30,000 firefighters across the U.S. and found this population suffers a greater number of cancer diagnoses and deaths than the general population. Types of cancers included digestive, oral, respiratory, urinary and blood cancers.
Occupational exposure to toxic gases during a fire was the likely culprit. Following past studies, fire-retardant chemicals have been removed from children's pajamas in response to concerns about cancer, but continued to be used in furniture and foam cushions.
These chemicals were originally developed in the 1970s when cigarettes were a major source of house fires. Under pressure to make fire-safe cigarettes, the tobacco industry pushed for federal standards for fire-retardant furniture instead.
As of July 1, 2007, all U.S. mattresses are required to be highly flame-retardant, to the extent that they won't catch on fire if exposed to a blowtorch.13
This means manufacturers are dousing them with highly toxic flame-retardant chemicals, which do NOT have to be disclosed in any way. This is probably the most important piece of furniture you want to get right, as you are spending about one-third of your life on it.
Unless you've recently remodeled using only natural materials, it's likely you have flame-retardant lurking in your home right now. You can help to reduce your exposure using these tips:
Know the date of manufacture — Be especially careful with polyurethane foam products manufactured prior to 2005, such as upholstered furniture, mattresses and pillows, as these are most likely to contain PBDE flame retardants. If you have any of these in your home currently, consider replacing them. At the very least, inspect them carefully and replace ripped covers and/or any foam that appears to be breaking down. Also, avoid reupholstering furniture by yourself, as the reupholstering process increases your risk of exposure. |
Use caution during carpet removal — Older carpet padding is another major source of PBDEs, so take precautions when removing old carpet. You'll want to isolate your work area from the rest of your house to avoid the chemical from spreading, and use a HEPA filter vacuum to clean up. |
Take care with electronics — You may also have older sources of PBDEs known as Deca in your home. These chemicals are so toxic they are banned in several states. Deca PBDEs can be found in electronics like TVs, cell phones, kitchen appliances, fans, toner cartridges and more. Wash your hands after handling electronics, especially before eating, and at the very least, be sure you don't let infants mouth any of these items (like your TV remote control or cellphone). |
Consider naturally safe replacements — As you replace PBDE-containing items around your home, select those that contain naturally less flammable materials, such as leather, wool and cotton. |
Consider organic or "green" materials — Look for organic and "green" building materials, carpeting, baby items, mattresses and upholstery, which will be free from these toxic chemicals and help reduce your overall exposure. Furniture products filled with cotton, wool or polyester tend to be safer than chemical-treated foam; some products also state that they are "flame-retardant free." |
Clean dust carefully — PBDEs are often found in household dust, so clean up with a HEPA-filter vacuum and/or a wet mop often. |
How to Get a Restful Night of Sleep
Getting a restful night of sleep is important to your overall health and wellness, and sleeping position is just one of the factors that makes a difference in how rested you may feel in the morning. More than 90% of Americans claim a comfortable pillow is important to how well they feel in the morning.14 You may have a preference for the type of pillow you like prior to sleep, but if you're waking with back and neck pain, it may be time to make an adjustment.
On your back is the best sleep position as it maintains your head and spine in a neutral position, reduces symptoms of acid reflux and may even prevent wrinkles.15 When on your back, the best pillow is no pillow at all, but rather a flat rolled towel or ultra-thin pillow that will not push your head and neck forward, impacting your breathing.
While the position you use at night affects how well-rested you feel in the morning, I provide additional tips to improve the quality of your sleep, from timing and lighting to temperature, in my article "Top 33 Tips to Optimize Your Sleep Routine."
Risks Associated With Poor Sleep
A lack of quality sleep may lead to sleep deprivation, which has been linked to a number of different health conditions. Just some of the problems associated with sleep deprivation are listed here. As you can see, they may affect your productivity at work, your relationships, your finances and your health.
Poor emotional balance |
Reduced immune function |
Worsened constipation |
Increased risk of car accidents |
Increased accidents at work |
Reduced ability to perform tasks |
Reduced creativity at work or in other activities |
Increased risk of depression |
Slowed reaction time |
Increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease |
Altered gene expression. Research has shown that when people cut sleep from 7.5 to 6.5 hours a night, there were increases in the expression of genes associated with inflammation, immune excitability, diabetes, cancer risk and stress16 |
Contribute to premature aging by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep |
Reduced brain plasticity and ability to learn new concepts |
Reduced motor (physical/athletic) performance |
Worsened behavioral difficulties in children |
Exacerbated or increased risk of stomach ulcers |
Intensified chronic pain. In one study, poor or insufficient sleep was found to be the strongest predictor for pain in adults over 5017 |
Increased risk of depression. In one trial, 87% of depressed patients who resolved their insomnia had major improvements to their depression, with symptoms disappearing after eight weeks |
Exacerbated or increased risk of chronic diseases such as, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis (MS), gastrointestinal tract disorders, kidney disease and cancer |
Harm your brain by halting new cell production. Sleep deprivation can increase levels of corticosterone (a stress hormone), resulting in fewer new brain cells being created in your hippocampus |
Are You Ready to Replace Your Pillow?
Failure to change your pillow every six months to a year may also increase your risk of acne breakouts.18 Pressing your face into old dirt, oil and dead skin cells may increase your risk of clogging pores and developing whiteheads. Down pillows and comforters attract the most debris and cannot be cleaned conventionally to rid the product of dust mites.
Wash your pillows regularly by putting two pillows in the washing machine at a time to balance the load. Add as little detergent as possible. Run them through the rinse cycle twice and then tumble dry. During the summer months consider hanging the pillows out on sunny days to reduce humidity in the pillow.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends replacing pillows every one to two years,19 and extending the life of your pillow by washing it every six months. You'll know it's definitely time to replace your pillow when it becomes lumpy, the shape and comfort no longer resemble a new pillow, or you fold it in half and it doesn't quickly bounce back.
The Wonders of Wool
The alternative bedding you may have been searching for is made from a sustainable product, naturally repels dust mites, doesn't contain fire-retardant chemicals and supports your body temperature changes throughout the night. That product is wool.
It may sound like your pillows and comforters would smother you in heat, as woolen jackets have long been what you sought after in the deeply cold winter months. But, for the same reason wool jackets work so well in the winter to protect your body heat, they also work in your bedding to provide you with exactly what your body needs for a restful sleep. Wool fibers trap your body heat, helping you to maintain a steady temperature.
Other types of bedding trap warm air, creating a humid environment, ripe for dust mites. However, wool releases the humidity and helps maintain a steady temperature unique to your body's needs. Wool also naturally passes federal fire testing, requiring no additional chemicals.20 Wool is machine washable, hypoallergenic and supports farmers who provide a sustainable product. It can be harvested from sheep, alpaca, angora rabbits and camels.21
Creating a restful and safe environment in your bedroom is important to your health and wellness. By reducing your exposure to dust mites and fire-retardant chemicals, and by making small changes to your nightly routine, you may experience greater productivity during the day and improved health overall.
Comments (10)
Five Ways to Complete the Stress Cycle and Avoid Burnout
-
Modern life, with its fast-paced demands and constant connectivity can lock you in a perpetual fight-or-flight stress cycle. This constant stress response can take a serious toll on your health as it does not allow for the necessary periods of rest and recovery.
Continuous exposure to stress and the release of stress hormones can weaken your immune system, and increase the risk of numerous health issues such as heart disease, depression, and obesity.1 You can improve your mental and physical health by breaking free from this cycle.
Three Phases of the Stress Cycle
There are three phases to the stress cycle. The alarm phase acts as your body's immediate reaction to a perceived threat. The second phase is known as the resistance phase, as your body attempts to return to a state of balance by resisting or adapting to the stressors.
The final phase is the exhaustion phase. Decreased immunity, fatigue, and a higher susceptibility to illness are associated with this phase, as the wave of stress hormones and cortisol take their toll. Without proper intervention, this stage can result in significant and chronic health issues.
Triggering the Stress Cycle: Alarm Phase
The stress cycle commences with the alarm phase, where your eyes, ears or both send information to the amygdala, an area of your brain that contributes to emotional processing.2
This hormonal surge results in increased heart rate, blood pressure, and energy supplies, gearing your body up to either confront or flee from the threat.3 This phase is characterized not only by a heightened state of awareness but also by a significant boost in physical capabilities.
Your liver releases additional glucose into the bloodstream to provide extra energy, while certain bodily functions that are non-essential in immediate danger, such as digestion and immune system activities, are temporarily suppressed. Your body is now focusing all of its resources on addressing the immediate threat.4
The heavy lifting here is being done by the HPA-Axis, which consists of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and the adrenal glands. As your brain perceives dangers, it releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) prompts your body to release cortisol. These levels fall when the perceived threat has abated, activating the parasympathetic nervous system and beginning the resistance phase.5
Your body's stress response is meant to be short-lived, and when prolonged, it can contribute to a range of chronic health issues linked to inflammation and stress. These include cardiovascular dysfunctions, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune syndromes, anxiety disorders and mental illness.6
The transition from the alarm to the resistance phase in the fight or flight response is your body's attempt to adapt to stress and restore equilibrium. Unfortunately, the stress cycle can be triggered by events that are not life threatening.7
The Hazard of Getting Stuck in a Prolonged Resistance Phase
During the resistance phase, your body lowers stress hormone levels slightly, though they remain high enough to keep the body on alert. This shift allows you to deal with stress more effectively, maintaining a state of readiness without the intense energy expenditure of the alarm phase.8
This adaptation process is critical for prolonged periods of stress, ensuring that your body can continue functioning under pressure. Having recovered from the initial shock, with lowered cortisol levels, your blood pressure and heart rate begin to normalize.
However, staying in the resistance phase for too long without adequate rest can lead to exhaustion. Even during the resistance phase, your body is ramping down its response but still remains on alert. The resistance phase may not have the acute intensity of the alarm stage but your body is still dealing with a cascade of heightened hormonal and physiological responses.
Escaping the Stress Cycle
Constant stress and an inability to exit the heightened resistance phase can lead to depression, anxiety, cognitive impairment, and heart disease. Stress is a known risk factor for drug addiction, relapse, and other maladaptive stress responses.9
But a certain level of stress is unavoidable in life. If you find yourself struggling with acute or prolonged stress, there are a number of healthy and proactive behaviors that can help you escape the stress cycle.
Clean Carbs and the Cortisol Glucose Link
One of the primary “stress” hormones is, of course, cortisol, and diet has a lot to do with chronically elevated cortisol levels. If you don’t have enough glucose in your bloodstream, your body makes glucose by secreting cortisol, which breaks down your lean muscles, bones and brain to make amino acids that then convert to glucose in your liver.
What this means is that if you’re not getting enough healthy carbs in your diet, your body will produce cortisol to make the glucose it needs for optimal function. This is one of the reasons why I do not recommend chronic fasting or time-restricted eating. While it can be very beneficial in the short-term to aid in weight loss, over time, it can result in chronically elevated cortisol, which will age you prematurely.
As noted in a study in the journal Nutrients,10 “A diet high in carbohydrate was shown to reduce cortisol and negative mood after stress and carbohydrate loading was shown to increase performance and inhibit the typical cortisol increase in response to prolonged exercise.”
Exercise to Increase Endorphins and Reduce Stress Related Cortisol
Engaging in regular physical activity is another potent strategy for reducing stress. Exercise prompts your body to release endorphins, often referred to as the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators.11
Exercise can improve overall mood and counters the detrimental effects of stress by lowering cortisol levels, your body’s primary stress hormone. Exercise also promotes proper sleep. So, overall, physical activity can significantly contribute to your emotional and physical equilibrium.12
Exercise is also key to a longer life, in part because it lowers the impact of stress on your body. Decreasing cortisol levels with regular physical activity will help you reduce your risk of stress-related health complications.13
The Power of Positivity and Cognitive Activity Can Protect Against Stress Cycle
You can also avoid some of the most the damaging effects of the stress cycle on both physical and mental health with a bit of positive thinking and maintaining a hopeful and optimistic outlook. This shift in perspective encourages your brain to produce chemicals that can break you out of the stress cycle.14
There are activities that can guide you towards a more positive mindset. These include mindfulness, gratitude journaling15 and spending time in nature. Taking a proactive approach can reduce current stress levels and reduce your susceptibility to falling into the stress cycle when life gets more hectic.
Creative Solution to the Stress Cycle
Creative thinking and hobbies can provide therapeutic escape from the stress cycle, offering mental diversions that rejuvenates both your mind and body. Activities like painting, writing, or playing a musical instrument stimulate your brain's creativity centers, reducing the production of stress hormones and increasing feelings of happiness and satisfaction.
Creative thinking can also go beyond hobbies, and be directly applied to avoiding future stressful situations. This approach not only aids in developing innovative solutions to stress-inducing problems but also enriches the mind and can offer a sense of purpose and control over your environment.16
Is Laughter the Best Medicine?
The old adage that laughter is the best medicine exists for a reason. Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, your body's natural stress-relievers, making it a potent antidote to stress. Compare this with cynical distrust, which is associated with increased risk for dementia.17
Laughing sparks a brief period of action in the cardiovascular system followed by muscle relaxation. This physical change in the body mirrors the beneficial effects of physical exercise when it comes to reducing stress.
Incorporating humor into daily life can transform a dour and stressful atmosphere of stress into one of lightheartedness. By seeking out comedy in life or in the content you consume, individuals can create opportunities for laughter, offering a simple yet effective escape from the cycle of stress.18
Manage the Stress Cycle by Taking Care of Yourself
Self-soothing techniques are essential tools for managing stress and navigating through difficult emotions. Many benefit from meditation and mindful observation, which can reduce the intensity of stress responses.
Controlled nasal breathing activates your body's relaxation response, helping to slow your heart rate and lower blood pressure. Progressive muscle relaxation and autogenics can also help you cope with stress and facilitate a pathway out of stress.19
Autogenics, developed by German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz in the early 20th century, it is based on the principle that physical relaxation can lead to mental calmness. The technique involves a series of exercises in which you focus on sensations of warmth and heaviness in different parts of your body to induce a sense of deep relaxation.
Practitioners often use phrases like "my arms are very heavy" or "my heartbeat is calm and regular" to help deepen the relaxation experience.
Even crying can serve as a natural and therapeutic release valve for pent-up emotions and stress. While often viewed as a sign of weakness, crying is, in fact, a sign of emotional intelligence and resilience, offering a means to self-regulate and cope with stress.20
Proper Breathing Is Crucial for Optimal Health
Dysfunctional breathing habits are typically developed in response to some type of emotional trauma. The trauma gets embedded in your brain circuits, and when you encounter triggers, they activate specific breathing habits, some of which may significantly lower your carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration level.
Unfortunately, many popular deep breathing methods exacerbate the situation, as they promote overbreathing and can trigger a wide range of physiological changes. CO2 serves as a vasodilator that is critical for oxygen transport and gut health but is overlooked in many deep breathing methods.
That so much of what you have learned about breathing and popular breathing methods are offbase may seem like yet another stressor but and my interview with Dr. Peter Litchfield will help you build better breathing habits and also explain the importance of CO2.
Other Stress Busting Tools
Optimizing your sleep is another essential tool in your toolbox. Quality sleep does much more than simply alleviate tiredness, it helps to repair and rejuvenate your brain and body, enhances cognitive function, improves mood, and promotes greater stress resilience.
During sleep, your body undergoes various recovery processes, including the consolidation of memories and the regulation of hormones that influence stress and emotions, such as cortisol and adrenaline.
Lack of adequate sleep can exacerbate stress levels, making it harder to handle daily pressures and disrupting the body's natural ability to recover from stress. Establishing a regular sleep schedule, and creating a conducive sleep environment are essential strategies in breaking the stress cycle and enhancing overall health.21
The Healing Power of Hugs
Last but not least, remember the importance of physical contact. Hugs offer more than immediate comfort in a stressful situation; they can release oxytocin, a hormone that plays a crucial role in reducing stress and increasing emotional bonding.
The interpersonal touch, especially through hugs, fosters a sense of belonging and support, key components in managing stress and overcoming emotional turmoil. Studies indicate that individuals who receive hugs more frequently are less likely to experience severe stress and depression symptoms.
So, incorporating regular, consensual hugs into your daily interactions can serve as an effective strategy in stress management. On a larger scale, doing our part to encourage a culture that values kindness and compassion could pave the way for healthier, more emotionally connected communities, which would lower stress for everyone.22
Comments (8)
Common Signs of Vitamin B1 Deficiency
-
Thiamine (vitamin B1) is used by nearly all your cells and is essential for several functions in the body. Thiamine is considered an “essential” vitamin because your body can’t produce it on its own; it must be obtained from outside sources; be it diet or supplementation.
Health Benefits of Thiamine
Thiamine’s key health benefits and mechanisms of action include:
Energy production — Thiamine plays a central role in metabolizing glucose to produce energy for the body. It is essential for the proper functioning of the Krebs cycle, a critical energy-producing pathway that converts proteins, fats, and carbohydrates into energy. |
Nerve function — Thiamine is sometimes referred to as an “antistress” vitamin for its positive influence on your central nervous system. It aids in the maintenance of healthy nerve cells and supports the proper functioning of your nervous system. Thiamine deficiency has been implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), with ALS patients having about 60% lower thiamine levels in their brains and peripheral nervous systems, resulting in severely impaired glucose metabolism.1 There’s also limited evidence suggesting high doses of thiamine and biotin can help reverse the pathology seen in Huntington’s disease, again by restoring glucose metabolism.2 |
Heart health — Thiamine contributes to the correct functioning of the heart. It is involved in the production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is used to relay messages between the nerves and muscles and is essential for normal heart function. |
Cognitive function — Adequate levels of thiamine are associated with improved cognitive function. It helps in maintaining a healthy brain, particularly in older adults, and can help prevent disorders related to cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s.3,4 As explained by the Alzheimer’s Association,5 “Thiamine helps brain cells produce energy from sugar. When levels fall too low, brain cells cannot generate enough energy to function properly.” Indeed, impaired glucose metabolism is a known hallmark of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and researchers have postulated that this reduction in glucose metabolism is caused by a “decline in thiamine-dependent processes.”6 |
Digestive health — Thiamine assists in the production of hydrochloric acid, which is essential for proper digestion. Adequate thiamine levels ensure efficient digestion of food and absorption of nutrients. |
Prevention of diabetes complications — Research suggests thiamine can help prevent complications in people with diabetes by protecting against oxidative stress and possibly improving glucose tolerance. |
Immune function — Thiamine is also important for healthy immune function. In addition to nutrients such as zinc and vitamins C and D, it helps protect against infectious respiratory illnesses. Thiamine deficiency syndrome (beriberi) has also been implicated in other types of severe infections and bears many similarities to sepsis. This is one of the reasons why thiamine is such an important part of Dr. Paul Marik’s sepsis treatment.7 Sepsis, in turn, is a major contributor in influenza deaths in general, and a primary cause for COVID-19 deaths specifically. |
Thiamine in Alcohol Addiction and Autoimmune Conditions
Thiamine is frequently recommended and given to people struggling with alcohol addiction, as alcohol consumption reduces absorption of the vitamin in your gastrointestinal tract. An estimated 80% of alcoholics are deficient in thiamine and therefore more prone to the side effects and conditions listed above.8
Thiamine is also very important for those with autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Hashimoto’s (a thyroid autoimmune disorder).9 In case studies,10,11 thiamine supplementation has been shown to improve fatigue in autoimmune patients in just a few days.
Interestingly, in one of these studies,12 which looked at patients with IBD, patients responded favorably to supplementation even though they all had “normal” baseline levels.
The authors speculate that thiamine deficiency symptoms in such cases may be related to enzymatic defects or dysfunction of the thiamine transport mechanism (opposed to being an absorption problem), which can be overcome by giving large quantities of thiamine.
Thiamine Deficiency May Be Underestimated
While thiamine deficiency is often the result of alcohol misuse, chronic infections, poor nutrition and/or malabsorption, research suggests vitamin B1 availability has dramatically declined throughout the food chain in recent years,13 and that naturally affects your ability to get sufficient thiamine from your diet.
Adult men and women need 1.2 and 1.1 mg respectively each day.14 If you have symptoms of thiamine deficiency, you may need higher doses.
Considering both plants and wildlife are becoming increasingly thiamine-deficient,15 it’s logical to suspect that this deficiency is becoming more common in the human population as well. Unfortunately, statistics on thiamine deficiency in the U.S. population are not readily available in a direct, comprehensive format, so it’s hard to assess how widespread it might be.
Considering how crucial thiamine is for health and optimal biological functioning — and the rapid increase in conditions associated with thiamine deficiency — it’s important to evaluate your intake on an individual level. One way to do that would be to use an online nutritional calculator such as Cronometer. Another way to assess your status is by looking for signs and symptoms of deficiency.
Signs and Symptoms of Thiamine Deficiency
Early symptoms of thiamine deficiency include:16,17
Fatigue/getting easily exhausted, due to its role in glucose metabolism and energy production |
Muscle weakness, as thiamine is required for proper contraction and relaxation of muscles |
Poor appetite and/or digestive problems, due to its impact on your digestive function |
Brain fog, confusion and/or memory problems, as thiamine is essential for healthy brain function and cognition |
Mood swings and irritability |
Eye-related issues such as sensitivity to light, eye fatigue and involuntary eye movements |
Nutrient malabsorption, as thiamine is involved in the absorption of other nutrients |
As your deficiency grows more severe, it can progress into one of four types of beriberi:18
- Paralytic or nervous beriberi (aka “dry beriberi”) — Damage or dysfunction of one or more nerves in your nervous system, resulting in numbness, tingling and/or exaggerated reflexes
- Cardiac (“wet”) beriberi — Neurological and cardiovascular issues, including racing heart rate, enlarged heart, edema, breathing problems and heart failure
- Gastrointestinal beriberi — Nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and lactic acidosis
- Cerebral beriberi — Wernicke's encephalopathy, cerebellar dysfunction causing abnormal eye movements, ataxia (lack of muscle coordination) and cognitive impairments. If left untreated, it can progress to Korsakoff’s psychosis, a chronic brain disorder that presents as amnesia, confusion, short-term memory loss, confabulation (fabricated or misinterpreted memories) and in severe cases, seizures
Are You Getting Enough B Vitamins?
If you have any of the signs listed above or discovered that your daily intake is insufficient using Cronometer, the solution is to eat more foods high in thiamine, such as wheatgerm and acorn squash, and/or take a supplement.
Evidence suggests thiamine insufficiency or deficiency can develop in as little as two weeks, as its half-life in your body is only nine to 18 days.19 Ideally, select a high-quality food-based supplement that contains a broad spectrum of B vitamins to avoid creating an imbalance. The following guidelines can also help protect or improve your thiamine status:
- Eat fermented foods — The entire B group vitamin series is produced within your gut provided you have a healthy gut microbiome. Eating real food, ideally organic, along with fermented foods will provide your microbiome with important fiber and beneficial bacteria to help optimize your internal vitamin B production as well.
- Avoid excessive alcohol consumption, as alcohol inhibits thiamine absorption, and frequent use of diuretics, as they will cause thiamine-loss.
- Avoid sulfite-rich foods and beverages such as nonorganic processed meats, wine and lager, as sulfites have antithiamine effects.
- Correct any suspected magnesium insufficiency or deficiency, as magnesium is required as a cofactor in the conversion of thiamine.
Daily Intake Recommendations
While individual requirements can vary widely, the typical daily intake recommendations for B vitamins are as follows:
Nutrient | Supplement Recommendations |
---|---|
Thiamine (B1) | Adult men and women need 1.2 and 1.1 mg respectively each day.20 If you have symptoms of thiamine deficiency, you may need higher doses. Thiamine is water-soluble and nontoxic, even at very high doses, so you’re unlikely to do harm. Doses between 3 grams and 8 grams per day have been used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s without ill effect. |
Riboflavin (B2) | Suggested daily intake is about 1.1 mg for women and 1.3 mg for men.21 |
Niacin (B3) | The dietary reference intake established by the Food and Nutrition Board ranges from 14 to 18 mg per day for adults. Higher amounts are recommended depending on your condition. For a list of recommended dosages, see the Mayo Clinic’s website.22 I recommend taking 50 mg of niacinamide, a form of B3 that plays a crucial role in energy metabolism, three times a day. Niacinamide is also a precursor to NAD+, which is essential in the conversion of food to energy, maintaining DNA integrity and ensuring proper cell function. |
Vitamin B6 | Nutritional yeast (not to be confused with Brewer’s yeast or other active yeasts) is an excellent source of B vitamins, especially B6.23 One serving (2 tablespoons) contains nearly 10 mg of vitamin B6, and the daily recommended intake is only 1.3 mg.24 |
Inositol/Biotin (B8) | B8 is not recognized as an essential nutrient and no recommended daily intake has been set. That said, it’s believed you need about 30 mcg per day.25 Vitamin B8 is sometimes listed as biotin on supplements. Brewer’s yeast is a natural supplemental source.26 |
Folate (B9) | Folic acid is a synthetic type of B vitamin used in supplements; folate is the natural form found in foods. (Think: Folate comes from foliage, edible leafy plants.) For folic acid to be of use, it must first be activated into its biologically active form (L-5-MTHF). This is the form able to cross the blood-brain barrier to give you the brain benefits noted. Nearly half the population has difficulty converting folic acid into the bioactive form due to a genetic reduction in enzyme activity. For this reason, if you take a B-vitamin supplement, make sure it contains natural folate rather than synthetic folic acid. Nutritional yeast is an excellent source.27 Adults need about 400 mcg of folate per day.28 |
Vitamin B12 | Nutritional yeast seasoning is also high in B12 and is highly recommended for vegetarians and vegans. One serving (2 tablespoons) provides about 67 mcg of natural vitamin B12.29 Sublingual (under-the-tongue) fine mist spray or vitamin B12 injections are also effective, as they allow the large B12 molecule to be absorbed directly into your bloodstream. |
Comments (62)
How BPA and BPS Are Making People Sick
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published February 22, 2017.
Just when you thought you knew how dangerous bisphenol-A (BPA) was to your health, research demonstrates both BPA and substitute chemicals are able to cross the placental barrier, increasing the toxic load on a growing infant.1 When tested, over 200 chemicals were found in umbilical cord blood of newborns.2
First created in 1891 by a Russian chemist, BPA didn't make an appearance in the manufacture of products until the 1950s, when it was used to produce resilient, and often transparent plastics. Despite strong scientific evidence that BPA has a negative effect on health, the industry was valued at over $18.1 billion in 2018, and is expected to reach $30 billion by 2030.3
BPA is found in countless personal care and plastic products, from the lining of canned goods to plastic wraps, water bottles and cashier receipts. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims BPA is safe for human consumption, it has been banned from sippy cups and other baby products.
Unfortunately, substitute chemicals being used to increase the strength and resiliency of plastics are probably no safer than the BPA they replaced, as they are near-identical chemical compounds.
BPA and BPS Cross the Placental Barrier Increasing Risk to Children
In 2010, researchers discovered BPA does cross the placental barrier.4 But, more importantly, the researchers found while the active form of BPA stays active in the developing infant, the inactive form can be converted to an active form, indicating pre-birth exposure to BPA was greater than originally anticipated.
In the movement toward the removal of BPA from products, manufacturers have been using bisphenol-S (BPS) and bisphenol-F (BPF) instead. These substitute chemicals are as hormonally active as BPA and are both strong endocrine disruptors.5 Both demonstrate adverse effects on the physiological functioning of humans and rats.6
Canadian and Chinese scientists have demonstrated what environmentalists have long believed — BPS and BPA can both cross into the placenta, affecting the pre-birth growth of infants.7 BPS had already been found in urine samples of over 80% of infants from China, U.S. and six other Asian countries.8
Previous studies had reported behavioral differences in rodent mothers exposed to BPS during pregnancy and in their female offspring. A 2011 study measured levels of BPS and BPA in 61 pairs of maternal and cord blood samples, proving "the first evidence that BPS crosses the human placenta."9 BPA metabolites in cord blood were also higher than found in maternal blood.
Current biomonitoring usually relies on the detection of total BPA in the urine and not the metabolites, BPA-sulfate and BPA-glucuronide. Monitoring metabolites of BPA is limited and even less is known about the metabolites of substitutes BPS and BPF. Lead author Dr. Jonathan Martin from the University of Alberta explained:10
"The [fetus] has more difficulty excreting BPA than the mother. The mother can easily pass metabolites through urine, whereas the [fetus] excretes to the amniotic fluid and, to some extent, back to the mother's circulation. The human [fetus] is known to have a different metabolic capacity.
It's known to have a very immature glucuronidation pathway, whereas sulfation begins earlier. So it's not uncommon for the human [fetus] to produce more of the sulfate than the respective glucuronide."
How Endocrine Disruption Works
BPA metabolites may not have the strong estrogenic chemical activity of total BPA, but they are also not biologically inactive. Several studies have identified different types of biological activity between cultured cells and one BPA metabolite, and total BPA is a known endocrine disruptor.
Through widespread exposure and multiple effects on human cells, BPA represents a complex risk to human health.11 Exposure to rodents in the perinatal period, during the weeks just prior to and after birth, BPA had a significant effect on the neuroendocrine stress response.12
Researchers theorized this exposure may be associated with the development of stress-related disorders later in life. Endocrine disruptors work by mimicking, or partially mimicking, hormones that occur naturally in the human body. This may produce overstimulation.
Some interfere or block the way receptors or hormones are made or controlled. This interruption in the endocrine system may produce negative results in infant development or in the reproductive, neurological and immune systems of children and adults.
There is a wide range of chemicals and substances that may cause endocrine disruption, of which bisphenol chemicals are only one. Pesticides, pharmaceutical interventions, dioxin-like compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls are just a few of these endocrine disruptors that are found in products, water supply and food supply affecting your health.
According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), research demonstrates these endocrine disruptors carry the greatest risk when humans are exposed during prenatal and early childhood development.13 This is the point during which organ and neurological system formation is being completed.
Increases Long-Term Risk of Illness and Adds Billions to Health Care Cost
While exposure during prenatal and infancy periods may hold the greatest risk, adolescents and adults are also at risk from endocrine disruptors and the subsequent health conditions that may develop.
A 2015 study of the health care cost impact in Europe demonstrated endocrine-disrupting chemicals contributed to the development of disease and illness.14 The study found the subsequent health care cost from only the chemicals with the highest probability of causation resulted in a cost of at least $175 billion each year. The researchers estimated a broader analysis would have resulted in a greater burden of disease and health care cost.
The research detailed costs related to obesity, neurological disorders and male reproductive disorders. The study evaluated the effect of only 5% of the known endocrine disruptors, making this only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., former microbiologist and director of the NIEHS, commented:15
"The point is that there is a wide variety of effects being seen in the general population related to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. We have increasing amount of data raising concerns about their use. We are seeing effects from [chemical] levels that are present in the general population."
As your endocrine system is instrumental in regulating mood, growth and development, tissue function, metabolism, as well as sexual function and reproductive processes, it is not surprising BPA and substitute chemicals are associated with a number of different health conditions, including:
Structural damage to your brain; hyperactivity, increased aggressiveness and impaired learning |
Early puberty, stimulation of mammary gland development, disrupted reproductive cycles, ovarian toxicity and infertility16 |
Breast cancer17 |
High blood pressure and heart disease18,19,20 |
Increased fat formation and risk of obesity |
Increased prostate size, decreased sperm production, hypospadias (penis deformation),21 erectile dysfunction22 and stimulation of prostate cancer cells |
Altered immune function |
Preterm birth23 |
Diabetes |
Reduced efficacy of chemotherapy treatment24 |
BPA and Substitutes Increase Your Risk of Obesity and Diabetes
As obesity is a primary factor in the development of many of the health conditions listed above, it is important to note that nearly 67% of women and 75% of men are either overweight or obese today.25 These numbers represent a rising trend and significant public health risk.
While it is tempting to blame an increasing waistline on one or two factors, metabolism and weight control are complex and are dependent on different influences. In a 2016 study, researchers discovered that in order to maintain the same weight in 2006 as in 1988 you would have to eat less and exercise more.26
The logical conclusion is that an environmental factor more prevalent after 1988 is influencing your metabolism. Research from Health Canada demonstrated the human body doesn't safely metabolize and excrete BPA, but instead transforms it into something that grows fat cells.27 This confirmed the results of multiple past studies linking BPA to increasing obesity.28,29,30,31
One study was also able to demonstrate BPA not only increased the number of fat cells that differentiate from pre-adiposity cells, but also increased the amount of fat inside the cells.32
Research demonstrates the nearly identical BPS has some of the same characteristics. Interestingly, in this study, all cells exposed to BPS created fat, but those exposed to the least and greatest amount grew greater amounts of fat than those exposed to moderate amounts.33 Senior author of a 2016 study on BPS, Ella Atlas, Ph.D., of Health Canada, commented on the results, saying:34
"Our research indicates BPS and BPA have comparable effects on fat cells and their metabolism. The study is the first to show that BPS exposure can induce the formation of human fat cells.
Since BPS is one of the replacement chemicals used in consumer products that are marketed as BPA-free, it is important to examine whether BPS acts as an endocrine-disrupting chemical. This study shows that BPS and BPA have similar effects on fat cell formation, lipid accumulation and expression of genes important for lipid metabolism."
Is 'BPA-Free' Meaningless?
Concerns about the health effects of BPA have caused many consumers to seek out products that are BPA-free. However, research indicates the substitute compounds used to increase the strength of plastics also interfere with hormones and pose a public health risk. In a study evaluating the risks of both BPS and a secondary substitute chemical, BPF, researchers concluded they are both as hormonally active as BPA.35
The structure between these three chemicals is remarkably similar, they provide the same stability to plastics and create similar health risks to humans.36 Study author Johanna Rochester, Ph.D., researcher at the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, commented:37
"According to pretty much all the literature there is on these two substitutes, they are hormonally active in ways similar to BPA — similar mechanisms, similar potencies."
Products labeled "BPA-free" have also been found to leach chemicals with estrogenic activity after undergoing real-world testing. Plastics labeled "BPA-free" were microwaved and exposed to ultraviolet lights and other common stressors.38 Almost all the commercially available products tested released chemicals with estrogenic activity, including those labeled "BPA-free."
The researchers pointed out that manufacturers now have the ability to produce plastics without estrogenically active compounds in a cost-effective manner that would significantly reduce public health risks.39 So why don't they?
Take These Steps to Reduce Your Risk
BPA is used in an amazing number of products in your home. In this short video, results from a study on canned foods are described. As it turns out, the researchers found more than just BPA. Until manufacturers place a higher value on human health than on profit, consider taking these steps to reduce your exposure to BPA and all the substitute compounds that also contain endocrine-disrupting features:40,41,42
Eat mostly fresh whole foods — Processed and packaged foods are a common source of BPA and phthalates — particularly canned, but also foods packaged in plastic wrap. Real food is always your best option. |
Consider taking progesterone — BPA and its substitutes are known as xenoestrogens, meaning they mimic the hormone estrogen in your body, potentially disrupting hormonal balance. To counteract their effects, you can use progesterone, which acts as an antagonist to estrogen by binding to estrogen receptors, thereby reducing the estrogenic effects. I generally recommend a daily dose of 30 to 50 milligrams of bioidentical progesterone, ideally taken in the evening before bed, as it can also promote sleep. Combine it with natural vitamin E (look for supplements labeled "d alpha tocopherol") to increase its bioavailability. You can also dissolve about 1/32 teaspoon of pure USP progesterone powder into one capsule of high-quality vitamin E, and then rub the mixture on your gums. |
Buy and use glass — Buy products that come in glass bottles rather than plastic or cans. Store your food and beverages in glass and use glass containers if heating food in your microwave, as heat tends to increase the release of chemicals from plastic. Be aware that even BPA-free plastics typically leach other endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are just as bad as BPA. Use glass baby bottles for your infants. Never drink coffee or tea from plastic cups and replace all your plastic cups with glass. Avoid plastic utensils and don't use drinking water packaged in plastic. Filter your own water and store it in glass containers. Don't use plastic grocery bags from the store. Bring your own reusable canvas or cloth variety. |
Avoid plastic wrap — If you are using it to cover a glass container, don't allow it to touch the food and don't use it in the microwave. |
Be careful with cash register receipts — If you go to the store regularly, encourage the management to switch to BPA-free receipts. I shop at Publix for my food and when I called them about the receipts it turns out they had already switched. Nevertheless, it is wise to limit your contact with all these receipts. |
Use sustainable, certified organic, GMO-free products — Look for products that are earth-friendly, animal-friendly, sustainable, certified organic and GMO-free. This applies to everything from food and personal care products to building materials, carpeting, paint, baby items, furniture, mattresses and more. When redoing your home, look for "green," toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings, the latter of which is another source of phthalates. Replace your vinyl shower curtain with a fabric one. Don't use nonstick cookware. |
Choose children's toys carefully — Choose toys made from natural materials to avoid plastic chemicals like phthalates and BPA or BPS, particularly for items your child may be prone to suck or chew on. |
Breastfeed for at least a year — Breastfeed your baby exclusively, if possible, for at least the first year (as you will avoid phthalates exposure from infant formula packaging and plastic bottles or nipples). Breastfeeding has additional advantages for your child as well. |
Avoid commercial cleaning products — Use natural cleaning products or make your own. You can clean most of your home with white vinegar and baking soda. There are options for dryer sheets and fabric softeners. |
Switch to organic toiletries — Switch over to organic toiletries, including shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics. EWG's Skin Deep database can help you find personal care products that are free of phthalates and other potentially dangerous chemicals.43 |
Switch feminine hygiene and urinary incontinence products — Replace feminine hygiene products (tampons and sanitary pads) and urinary incontinence products with safer alternatives. While most ingredients in feminine hygiene products are undisclosed, tests suggest they may contain dioxins and petrochemical additives. |
Opt for fragrance-free — Look for fragrance-free products; phthalates are often used to help the product hold its fragrance longer. Artificial fragrances can also contain dozens of potentially toxic chemicals. Avoid fabric softeners, dryer sheets, air fresheners and scented candles for the same reason. |
Test tap water — Check your home's tap water for contaminants and filter the water if necessary. You may also want to use an alternative to PVC pipes for your water supply. |
Don't drink from the hose — Teach your children not to drink water from the garden hose, as many are made with phthalate-containing plastics. |
Check with the dentist — Verify any dental sealant used is BPA-, BPS- and BPF-free. |
Comments (6)
Junk Food Diet in Teens Can Lead to Poor Memory
-
Many parents are aware of the negative effects of alcohol and drugs on their children’s brains and take the necessary steps to protect them from these dangerous substances. However, there’s another stealth element that could be putting them at high risk of future memory issues — and it’s likely in your kitchen pantry right now.
A study1 conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California found that consuming a junk food diet during adolescence can lead to long-term memory impairment in adulthood. Even more alarming is that the effects could be irreversible.
Animal Study Shows Junk Food Can Lead to Poor Memory
The featured animal study,2 published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, sought to determine the effects of feeding a junk food diet on adolescents’ brains. While conducting the study, the researchers considered previous findings that a poor diet can lead to Alzheimer's disease.3
They found that the neurotransmitter acetylcholine plays a role, as it is crucial to memory, as well as other brain functions like attention and learning. People who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have lower levels of this neurotransmitter in their brain.4
The researchers then wondered if adolescents who consumed the same type of processed food diet — loaded with unhealthy fats and refined sugar — could also experience similar effects, especially as their brains are still going through significant development.
To test their hypothesis, they fed one group of rats a "junk food cafeteria-style diet" consisting of potato chips, chocolate-covered peanut butter cups, and soda, and gave a control group a standard diet.5 They then observed the animals’ acetylcholine levels and analyzed their brain responses by having them undergo tasks to test their memory.
One test involved allowing the subjects to explore new objects in different scenarios. After a few minutes, they repeated the test but added a new object to the scene. The researchers observed that the rats who ate the junk food diet were unable to recall which objects they had seen before, as well as their location. The control group, however, was more familiar with their surroundings.
In a StudyFinds article, Anna Hayes, a postdoctoral research fellow who is a member of the research team, explained:6
"Acetylcholine signaling is a mechanism to help them encode and remember those events, analogous to ‘episodic memory’ in humans that allows us to remember events from our past. That signal appears to not be happening in the animals that grew up eating the fatty, sugary diet."
A Junk Food Diet ‘Rewires’ Your Brain and Makes You ‘Stupid’
This isn’t the first study that showed the negative effects of a junk food diet on your brain. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Psychology7 found that just six weeks of bingeing on sweets and sweetened beverages could slow brain function, memory and learning — to put it simply, it makes you "stupid."8
In a UCLA article,9 Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine and one of the study authors, said, "Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think. Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information."
A 2023 study published in Cell Metabolism also revealed that junk foods like chips can cause the brain to "rewire" itself, and subconsciously learn to opt for foods that are loaded with fat and sugar.10
Considering that adolescence is a very sensitive time for a child’s developing brain, these findings should be a cause for concern. Scott Kanoski, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California (USC) Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and co-author of the feature study, comments:11
"What we see not just in this paper, but in some of our other recent work, is that if these rats grew up on this junk food diet, then they have these memory impairments that don’t go away.
I don’t know how to say this without sounding like Cassandra and doom and gloom, but unfortunately, some things that may be more easily reversible during adulthood are less reversible when they are occurring during childhood."
Teens Who Frequently Eat Junk Food Are at a High Risk of Depression
In the U.S., an estimated 5 million teens aged 12 to 17 — or 20% of the overall age group — have experienced at least one episode of depression,12 with symptoms of a loss of interest in daily activities and struggling with sleep, energy and appetite. Depression among teens has increased by 30% in the last 10 years, and while many aspects are being considered, one potential factor could be eating a junk food or fast food diet.13
According to a study14 from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, two dietary elements could be contributing to depression in adolescents: having high levels of sodium and low levels of potassium.
High sodium levels are associated with salty snacks and fast food items like fries and burgers, while having low potassium levels means there aren’t enough potassium-rich foods in the diet, including fruits and vegetables. These can influence neurotransmitters and neural function.
"Given the substantial brain development that occurs during adolescence, individuals in this developmental period may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of diet on the neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation and depression," the researchers said.15
Junk Food Manufacturers Use Persuasive Marketing Tactics to Hook Your Kids
Healthy eating habits begin at home, and as adults, we must set an example for children and encourage them to shift to healthier food choices. However, this can be difficult, since junk food has been designed to be addictive.
Manufacturers use carefully orchestrated flavors, textures and aromas to make them as appealing as possible — a stark contrast to whole foods whose taste and consistency are made by nature and designed to satiate hunger and address your nutritional cravings.
What’s more, junk food is aggressively marketed to children, with manufacturers using various persuasive techniques to pique your child’s interest. When researchers conducted a systematic review of eight online databases, they found the most reported marketing techniques used to promote these foods to children on television. These included:16
- Premium offers
- Promotional characters
- Nutrition and health-related claims
- The theme of taste
- The emotional appeal of fun
A review of studies17 published by the Australian website Obesity Evidence Hub further illustrates the pervasive nature of junk food marketing. According to the studies they referenced:
- Young children watch at least 11 junk food ads for every 2.5 hours of TV per day18
- Adolescents encounter 99.5 junk food promotions from online platforms weekly19
- Majority of food and drink ads found near schools and school routes are of unhealthy products20
- There’s a higher proportion of junk food ads in lower socioeconomic areas21
Unfortunately, these manipulative marketing tactics are effective. A 2016 study published in the Obesity Reviews journal found that intake of junk foods increases after exposure to junk food ads. According to the researchers:22
"The evidence indicates that unhealthy food and beverage marketing increases dietary intake (moderate quality evidence) and preference (moderate to low quality evidence) for energy-dense, low-nutrition food and beverage. Unhealthy food and beverage marketing increased dietary intake and influenced dietary preference in children during or shortly after exposure to advertisements."
More Health Risks Associated With a Junk Food Diet
At any age, consuming a junk food diet can put your health at risk, but as the studies mentioned above demonstrate, children are particularly vulnerable due to their developing brain and body.
Childhood obesity is one of the most common effects of a junk food diet. From 2017 to 2020, 19.7% of children and teens 2- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. were considered obese — that’s approximately 14.7 million U.S. adolescents and children.23 This is alarming, as childhood obesity can increase the risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.24
Another study also found that eating fast food three or more times per week can increase your child’s risk of inflammatory conditions like eczema, rhinitis and severe asthma.25 Consuming junk food has also been associated with poor performance at school — children who eat more fast food progress slower academically, with lower test score gains in children who ate the most fast food compared to those who ate none.26
Ultraprocessed ‘Lunchables’ Are Now Being Served in School Cafeterias
Speaking of schools — did you know that U.S. school canteens are now serving Kraft’s Lunchables? Two versions of these ultraprocessed "meals" — Turkey and Cheddar and Extra Cheesy Pizza — were introduced to schools at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year.27 Students can either purchase them or get them via the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).28
With nearly 30 million children in public and private schools and childcare institutions getting their lunch from NSLP29 daily, this rollout can spell disaster for children’s health. Ultraprocessed foods are among the worst things you can eat, and children in particular may have their future health sabotaged by consuming them. According to a Washington Post article:30
"Kraft Heinz said the company spent nearly two years reformulating its store-bought Turkey and Cheddar Cracker Stacker Lunchables to meet USDA Food and Nutrition Service standards — lowering the amount of saturated fat, increasing the protein, and adding whole grains to its crackers.
But the school version contains roughly 25 percent more sodium than the store version, according to Kraft Heinz’s nutritional data.
‘It is too easy for food manufacturers to reformulate sugar, salt and fat to meet standards for those nutrients and still produce a junk food,’ said Marion Nestle, a retired professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University."
In April 2024, the advocacy group Consumer Reports rolled out a petition urging the USDA to remove Lunchables from the NSLP. According to an NPR article,31 this action came after they conducted an independent analysis of ultraprocessed meal kits and found high amounts of sodium and elevated levels of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and phthalates.
"Even in small amounts, lead and cadmium can cause developmental problems in children, with risks increasing from regular exposure over time. And eating too much sodium can lead to high blood pressure: about 14 percent of children and teens have prehypertension or hypertension.
Please take the necessary steps to ensure these processed food kits aren’t eligible for the lunch program, and offer our children healthier choices," their petition reads.32
Talk to Your Teens About the Dangers of Junk Food
As I mentioned, good eating habits start at home. Encouraging an open discussion about healthy food choices is a key factor in preventing your children from being manipulated by sly food manufacturers whose primary goal is to make money — they couldn’t care less about the health of your family.
If you have younger children, try to get them involved in meal planning, shopping for healthy foods and cooking. You can even plant a vegetable garden together. Ultimately, when kids are young, you're the best role model for a healthy diet, so choose to eat real foods, and your kids will follow suit.
Older children and teenagers may be more of a challenge. However, telling them that they are being manipulated is often effective. No one likes to be deceived, even in adolescence. Enlightening them about the profit-driven motives behind junk food ads may be enough to help trigger a newfound desire for healthier eating.
Research conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business found that when eighth graders were given materials that explained the manipulative practices and deceptive product labels used by food manufacturing companies, they ended up eating less junk food and choosing water instead of soda. They also ended up choosing healthier foods for the remainder of that school year.
"These findings suggest that reframing unhealthy dietary choices as incompatible with important values could be a low-cost, scalable solution to producing lasting, internalized change in adolescents' dietary attitudes and choices," the researchers explained.33
Comments (5)
How to Protect Yourself From Tick-Borne Diseases
-
According to research published in the February 15, 2024, issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR),1,2 prevalence of Lyme Disease were 1.7 times (70%) higher in 2022 than the annual U.S. average reported from 2017 through 2019.
This dramatic increase is not thought to be reflective of an actual increase in prevalence but rather to changes in how cases are reported.
As of January 1, 2022, high-incidence jurisdictions — defined as having at least 10 cases per 100,000 population for three consecutive years — can report cases based on lab results alone, whereas low-incidence areas must include clinical data from patients with suspected infection. As reported by the CDC:3
“Lyme disease, a tickborne zoonosis caused by certain species of Borrelia spirochetes, is the most common vectorborne disease in the United States. Approximately 90% of all cases are reported from 15 high-incidence jurisdictions in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper-Midwest regions.
After the implementation of a revised surveillance case definition in 2022, high-incidence jurisdictions report cases based on laboratory evidence alone, without need for additional clinical information.
In 2022, 62,551 Lyme disease cases were reported to CDC, 1.7 times the annual average of 37,118 cases reported during 2017–2019. Annual incidence increased most in older age groups, with incidence among adults aged ≥65 years approximately double that during 2017–2019.
The sharp increase in reported Lyme disease cases in 2022 likely reflects changes in surveillance methods rather than change in disease risk. Although these changes improve standardization of surveillance across jurisdictions, they preclude detailed comparison with historical data.”
Revised Case Definitions in High-Incidence Areas May Muddle Statistics
The decision to allow high-incidence areas to forgo clinical confirmation data in their reporting was made to reduce the workload associated with reporting. According to the CDC, "As the number of Lyme disease infections has increased, the workload associated with collecting clinical information has proven prohibitive in several high-incidence jurisdictions.”
Unfortunately, these divergent reporting parameters also prevent accurate comparison of trends across jurisdictions. It could also result in falsely elevated prevalence rates over time.
That said, increases in Lyme disease cases has been documented through several lines of evidence, indicating that this tick-borne illness is becoming more prevalent, particularly in the northern hemisphere. For example, private insurance claims data show the prevalence of Lyme disease in rural areas increased by 357% between 2007 and 2021.4
The geographic distribution of Lyme disease has also expanded. Initially concentrated in the Northeastern U.S. and the upper Midwest, the range of black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis), which transmit Lyme disease, has been expanding gradually into the southern and western parts of the U.S. and into Canada.
How Lyme Disease Is Contracted
Lyme disease is contracted through the bite of an infected black-legged tick, commonly known as a deer tick. These ticks are primarily found in wooded and grassy areas. The tick becomes infected after feeding on infected deer, mice, or other small animals.
Transmission typically requires the tick to be attached for 36 to 48 hours or more, during which the bacteria in the tick's gut moves to its salivary glands and into the host's bloodstream.
Common Signs and Symptoms of Lyme Disease
The signs and symptoms of Lyme disease can vary and usually appear in stages:
1. Early localized stage — This occurs within days or weeks after the tick bite. The most recognizable feature is the appearance of erythema migrans, commonly known as a "bulls eye" rash, which occurs in approximately 70% to 80% of infected persons.
This rash expands gradually over several days and can reach up to 12 inches across. Other symptoms may include fatigue, chills, fever, headache, muscle and joint aches, and swollen lymph nodes.
2. Early disseminated stage — Weeks to months after the bite, the bacterium begins to spread throughout the body. This stage might include additional “bulls eye” rashes on other areas of the body, Bell's palsy (loss of muscle tone on one or both sides of the face), severe headaches and neck stiffness due to meningitis, pain and swelling in the large joints (like knees), heart palpitations, and dizziness.
3. Late disseminated stage — This can occur months to years after the bite. Symptoms might include arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling, particularly in the knees and other large joints. Neurological complaints like shooting pains, numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, and problems with short-term memory can also occur.
Recommended Lab Testing
While diagnosis of Lyme disease is generally based on symptoms, physical findings (like the rash), and the possibility of exposure to infected ticks, laboratory testing can be helpful in the later stages of the disease when the possibility of false negatives is lessened. The two most used tests are:5
- Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) — This test detects antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi. If ELISA is positive, it is usually followed by a Western blot test to confirm the diagnosis.
- Western blot — This test identifies antibodies to several proteins of Borrelia burgdorferi and is used to confirm ELISA results.
According to Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, an expert on Lyme disease and its treatment, the IGeneX Lab in Palo Alto is the gold standard for Lyme testing, as they use two different antigens in their testing.
There's also a useful indirect test called the CD57 test. "CD-57" is a specific group of natural killer cells that are particularly damaged by the Lyme spirochetes. Therefore, if your numbers drop to a certain level, it is an indirect indicator that you may have Lyme disease, because the only known infection to suppress CD57 is that of B. burgdorferi.
Co-Infections Are Common and Need To Be Considered
Lyme disease is primarily caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, but co-infections by other pathogens carried by the same ticks is common. Testing has shown that nearly 1 in 4 black-legged ticks carry multiple infectious pathogens.6
These co-infections can significantly complicate the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease, as they cause overlapping and additional symptoms. Awareness of these co-infections is therefore critical for effective management and treatment of patients presenting with tick-borne disease symptoms. Some of the most common co-infections include:7
Babesiosis — Caused by Babesia microti and other Babesia species. This infection is similar to malaria and is caused by protozoans that infect your red blood cells. An estimated 40% of Lyme disease patients have concurrent Babesia infection.8 |
Anaplasmosis — Caused by Anaplasma phagocytophilum. Formerly known as human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE), this bacterial infection affects white blood cells. An investigation by researchers from Columbia University, Tufts Medical Center and Yale School of Medicine, revealed that 2 in 3 patients with Babesiosis also have concurrent Lyme disease.9 |
Ehrlichiosis — Caused by Ehrlichia chaffensis and Ehrlichia ewingii. These bacteria also target white blood cells and are similar to the pathogens causing anaplasmosis but are generally associated with different species of ticks. |
Bartonellosis — Caused by Bartonella henselae, Bartonella quintana and other Bartonella species. Known for causing cat scratch disease, these bacteria can cause a range of symptoms, from mild to severe. |
Powassan virus disease — Caused by Powassan virus. This is a rare viral disease that can cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and meningitis (inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord). |
Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) — Caused by Rickettsia rickettsii. Though less commonly transmitted by the same ticks that spread Lyme disease, RMSF can be transmitted by ticks and is a severe bacterial infection. |
Tick-borne relapsing fever — Caused by Borrelia hermsii, Borrelia miyamotoi and other Borrelia species. These bacteria cause recurrent episodes of fever, headache, muscle and joint aches, and nausea. |
Commonly Overlooked Factors in Diagnosis and Treatment
The complexity of co-infections and the difficulty that each infection poses when it comes to treatment makes Lyme disease a tough nut to crack. Patients are often misdiagnosed and/or mistreated.
For these reasons, if you suspect you have Lyme, it’s important to identify a Lyme specialist who has a holistic view of the problem and has more tools in his or her toolbox than never-ending rounds of antibiotics.
Factors that are commonly overlooked by conventional doctors include things like multi-drug resistant infections, the presence of biofilms, treatments that don’t cross the blood-brain-barrier, the necessity for detoxification, and the importance of general immune support.
Preventative Measures
Preventing tick bites is crucial in reducing the risk of Lyme disease. To reduce your risk of infection, be sure to:10
Avoid tick habitats — Ticks are commonly found in wooded, bushy, or grassy areas. When in these environments, stick to the center of trails to avoid brushing against vegetation where ticks may be waiting. |
Wear protective clothing — Wear long sleeves, long pants, and long socks. Tuck your pants into your socks and your shirt into your pants to help keep ticks on the outside of your clothes. Wearing light-colored clothing can help you spot ticks more easily. |
Check for ticks — After spending time in tick-infested areas, thoroughly check your body for ticks. Use a hand-held or full-length mirror to view all parts of your body and remove any tick you find. Also inspect your clothing, gear, and pets, as ticks can ride into the home on these and then attach to a person later. |
Shower soon after being outdoors — Showering within two hours of coming indoors has been shown to reduce your risk of getting Lyme disease and may be effective in washing off unattached ticks. |
Maintain your yard — Keep your yard neat by clearing tall grasses and brush around homes and at the edge of lawns, and by placing a 3-foot-wide barrier of wood chips or gravel between lawns and wooded areas to restrict tick migration into recreational areas. Mow your lawn frequently and keep leaves raked. |
Protect your pets — Dogs are very susceptible to tick bites and can also bring ticks into your home. Talk to your holistic veterinarian about the best tick prevention products for your pet. |
Use Safe Insect Repellents
While the CDC recommends using DEET on exposed skin, this strategy only replaces one potential health hazard with another. Remember, anything you put on your skin will enter your bloodstream, and while the CDC insists that DEET is safe when used as directed, there’s evidence to the contrary.
High concentrations of DEET or extensive application (especially in children) have been linked to neurological effects such as seizures, tremors, and in rare cases, encephalopathy. Allergic reactions are also common. DEET is also acutely toxic to dogs and cats, so never use this insect repellent on or around your pets.11 In my view, there are far safer options, including:
- Oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) — Derived from the leaves of the eucalyptus citriodora tree, OLE contains the active ingredient PMD (p-menthane-3,8-diol), which has been shown to offer protection against ticks. The CDC also recognizes OLE as an effective tick repellent.
- Cedar oil — Extracted from various types of conifers, cedar oil has a history of use as an insect repellent for landscapes and backyards. It acts as a natural pesticide and is effective against ticks, though its duration of effectiveness may be less than chemical alternatives.
- Nootkatone — This is a naturally occurring substance found in grapefruit12 and certain cedar trees. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved nootkatone for use in insect repellents and insecticides for human and animal use in August 2020.13 Nootkatone has shown efficacy in repelling and killing ticks and is a promising natural alternative.
- Neem oil — Derived from the seeds of the neem tree, neem oil has insecticidal properties and can repel a variety of pests, including ticks. It’s often used in natural pest control products and is safe for use around pets and wildlife. While considered safe to apply directly to bare skin, it’s very potent and can cause irritation if you’re sensitive.14 So, perform a small patch test before applying more liberally. If it’s too strong, you can mix it with another carrier oil of choice.
- Picaridin — While synthetic, picaridin is considered a safer alternative to DEET and is as effective. It's derived from the compound found in the plants used to produce black pepper and does not carry the same neurotoxicity concerns as DEET.15
These alternatives offer varying degrees of protection and may need more frequent reapplication. The effectiveness of these products may also vary based on their concentration and the specific type of tick.
Treatment Recommendations by Holistic Specialists
Conventional Lyme treatment primarily depends on long-term use of antibiotics, but as detailed in a 2014 paper,16 B. burgdorferi has several defense mechanisms that make it hard to beat with antibiotics alone.
Holistic specialists therefore recommend a combination of antibiotic therapy, supportive holistic therapies, dietary and lifestyle adjustments, and detoxification to treat Lyme disease.
It's crucial to work closely with a healthcare provider who understands Lyme disease thoroughly, as treatments need to be tailored to your specific symptoms and stage of disease. For reasons mentioned above, diagnosing Lyme is tricky business. Patience and persistence are required.
Negative test results are common when you have Lyme, as the spirochete has the ability to infect your white blood cells. Lab tests rely on the normal function of these cells, but when the white blood cells are infected with Lyme, they lose the ability to produce antibodies. Hence, nothing shows up on the test.
This is known as the "Lyme paradox," and necessitates putting treatment before diagnosis. The idea is that by treating the infection, your white blood cells will regain their ability to mount a normal immune response, which can then be picked up by blood tests.
EMF Mitigation Is an Important Aspect of Treatment
In the video above, I interview Klinghardt about Lyme disease, testing, and treatment options. A list of his biological Lyme protocol can be found on KlinghardtInstitute.com.17 In 2017, he also published a paper18 in the American Journal of Immunology detailing his protocol for both the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme. It’s available as a free PDF download.
Klinghardt is adamant about patients addressing exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) during treatment. In fact, he will not treat you unless you take steps to minimize your EMF exposure, as it can have a truly profound impact on the disease.
He's convinced the increased virulence we're now seeing is related to the dramatic increase in EMFs and microwave radiation from cellphones, cell towers, and all manner of wireless technologies.
According to Klinghardt, mitigating EMFs "has been a more successful strategy to treating Lyme disease and to get people neurologically well than any of the antibiotics or any of the antimicrobial compounds.” He also believes heavy metal toxicity exacerbates the problem.
Lumbrokinase Helps Break Down Biofilms
Another treatment component worth mentioning is lumbrokinase, a group of proteolytic (protein digesting) enzymes that act as fibrinolytic agents. B. burgdorferi can live and thrive in biofilms inside your body, and lumbrokinase has been shown to help break down these infected biofilms.19
When pathogenic bacteria hide within biofilms, they can feed and replicate out of the reach of your immune system. As such, they remain strong and unaffected by any antimicrobial medications such as antibiotics and herbs that you may be taking.
The fact that lumbrokinase breaks down fibrinogen is an important aspect of Lyme treatment because the pathogenic bacteria use fibrinogen, which they convert to fibrin, to strengthen their network.
Lyme expert Dr. Marty Ross, an integrative medicine specialist and founder of The Healing Arts Partnership in Seattle, uses lumbrokinase, both alongside antibiotics, and for patients in whom antibiotics fail.20
If you and your doctor determine lumbrokinase is right for you, be sure to buy a high-quality, reputable brand. Certain brands are available in capsule form at a dose of 600,000 IU (international unit), or 40 mg, which are recommended for Lyme sufferers in the form of a daily dose of 1 to 2 capsules taken in the morning, afternoon and at bedtime.
Generally, lumbrokinase should be taken only under the advisement of your doctor and can be dangerous if taken with blood-thinning medication. In addition, it's contraindicated in all medical conditions associated with an increased risk of bleeding.
Comments (87)
Why Chili Peppers and Spicy Foods Trigger Hiccups
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published July 22, 2017.
I love spicy foods and enjoy the benefits of the spicy chemical in peppers — capsaicin — that may improve health. Chili peppers, one of the main sources of capsaicin, are a staple in diets of Central America, Asia and India. Even in the U.S. there are many who believe "the spicier the better."
One food industry report found the number of people who enjoy spicy foods is growing, up to 54% from 46% in 2009.1,2 The same report found those between 18 and 34 were the most likely to order spicy food from a restaurant menu. Interestingly, the heat you experience from the chili pepper is a protection for the plant, designed to make you not want to eat them.
As far as scientists know, humans are the only animal who willingly chooses to eat chili peppers.3 On some level you may have learned to tolerate the heat, and may even crave the peppers. This ability to desensitize to the heat in peppers is well-documented, but other studies also demonstrate it may not play as large a role in your desire for spicy peppers as once thought.4
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University dug further and discovered people who enjoyed hot peppers also enjoyed sensation-seeking, including activities like riding roller coasters or exploring. Interestingly, individuals who enjoyed the peppers didn't feel any less heat from the capsaicin than those who didn't enjoy hot foods. In other words, this study group didn't demonstrate desensitization to the peppers.
Your preference for spicy foods may be determined by not only your personality type, but also your genetics.5 Using identical and non-identical twins from Finland, researchers evaluated their responses to capsaicin-laced jelly. Genetic factors accounted for a wide range in variation between people who perceived the spicy jelly as pleasant or unpleasant. Those who did find the experience pleasant shared a genetic variance.
Spicy Food May Trigger Hiccups
If you love a bit of heat with your meal, you're in luck, as spicy foods are some of the best for your health. The capsaicinoid found in the in the food has been linked to the prevention of chronic diseases. Coupled with their high concentration of vitamins and antioxidants, those spicy peppers are a unique superfood, if you can tolerate the heat. However, while tasty and healthy, these little spice bombs may also trigger the hiccups.
Hiccups may be triggered from stomach distension or irritating the nerve to your diaphragm when you drink too quickly. Spicy peppers don't trigger hiccups in this way though. Although the exact way in which the pepper triggers hiccups has not been definitively established, scientists do know that not everyone gets hiccups from chili peppers.
Although some people get hiccups just anticipating eating hot peppers, others never get them. The chemical in peppers, capsaicin, that generates the heat, is believed to irritate the nerve that triggers hiccups.6 Others believe the chemical is released in the mouth in a fine spray that enters the lungs and disrupts the normal rhythm of the diaphragm.7 As your diaphragm begins to contract and relax to expel the substance from your lungs, it triggers a hiccup.
What's Happening When You Have Hiccups?
Hiccups are an involuntary spasm in your diaphragm, the muscle separating your chest from your abdomen, which plays a significant role in breathing.
In this short video, you'll see how hiccups may start after an irritation to nerves that service your chest and lungs. When your diaphragm contracts the space between your vocal cords closes and creates the characteristic "hic" sound. In order to draw breath, your diaphragm pulls down toward your abdomen, creating negative pressure in your lungs causing air to enter.
During the hiccups your diaphragm spasms, causing you to draw in an involuntary breath. In the simplest cases your stomach may get overdistended or you may have drunk fluid too quickly, irritating the nerve that innervates the diaphragm. Although the true reason for hiccups has not been determined, some believe an irritant triggers the diaphragm to contract helping to rid your gut of air that is trapped, or to draw food down your esophagus to your stomach.
Hiccups are usually self-limited and are nothing more than an uncomfortable nuisance. However, sometimes they can last for a long period of time, or be a signal that something else is wrong. A disturbance in the nerve pathway between the brain and the muscles involved can also trigger hiccups, which explains why you may get hiccups with an emotional situation and why they may be stopped when you are shocked.8
Hiccups are an involuntary movement triggered in part by your autonomic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that controls your breathing, heartbeat and other involuntary functions. Even unborn babies hiccup, which may perhaps prepare them for breathing. But, while virtually everyone gets hiccups, the reason you do has not been established and there is no hard and fast cure you may use each time you get them.
Hiccups That Last Longer Than 48 Hours May Need Attention
Most cases of hiccups are self-limiting, lasting no more than several minutes to a day. However, in some cases hiccups may last for days — or even years. A persistent case of hiccups lasting more than 48 hours may signal a cause for concern. Hiccups that last more than one month are called intractable hiccups. In some cases, hiccups also persist during sleep.
Since the condition is uncomfortable, some who suffer with persistent or intractable hiccups seek medical care in the hospital. In one study of a community hospital between 1995 and 2000, 54 of more than 100,000 visits were related to hiccups. Most of these patients were over 50 and had other health conditions.9 According to the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine:10
"Chronic persistent hiccups can be debilitating and have been associated with weight loss, insomnia and fatigue. They can be caused by a wide variety of medical conditions, including central nervous system abnormalities, metabolic imbalances, and chest and abdomen pathology. Among the medications known to cause hiccups, the most common include corticosteroids, antidepressants, dopaminergics, and opioids."
Irritation to the nerves that serve your diaphragm is often the cause for long-term hiccups and may be triggered by gastroesophageal reflux, laryngitis, a tumor, cyst or goiter in your neck or even a hair touching your eardrum.11 Other causes may be related to infection, damage or trauma to your central nervous system, including stroke, head injury, tumor or multiple sclerosis. Long-term hiccups may also be triggered by:
Alcoholism |
Anesthesia |
Barbiturates |
|
Electrolyte imbalance |
Kidney failure |
Steroids |
Tranquilizers |
How Capsaicin Interacts With Your Body
Your body has transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) pain receptors which are activated by capsaicin, opening the floodgates to pain. This is one of the reasons your mouth likely feels as if it's on fire when you eat something spicy.12 However, while the chemical does trigger pain, it also has a unique side effect. After exposure, your TRPV1 receptors go through a period of rest.
During this time, the receptors cease transmitting pain signals to your brain, and while your body may continue to experience the pain, your mind won't recognize it. This is one of the ways capsaicin pain creams help treat peripheral pain. Scientists call this process "defunctionalization."13 These creams are produced from highly purified capsaicin and also deplete the neurotransmitter, substance P, which sends pain messages to your brain.14
Although you may experience an increase in the intensity of pain when you first use capsaicin cream, it usually decreases with the second use.15 In some cases, it may take a week or more to help treat pain originating in your joints, as your levels of substance P must be depleted and the cream must be continued to keep the substance from building up again.16 The cream has been used to relieve pain from neurological pain, cluster headaches, surgical pain and arthritic disorders.
Capsaicin has also been used as a dietary supplement as there is evidence it may improve digestion, help reduce diarrhea triggered by bad bacteria in your intestines and fight bacterial infections in your body.17 As a supplement, it may help thin the mucus in your lungs and is an antioxidant that may help fight free radicals.
The Benefits of Spicy Foods
Capsaicin's interactions in your body explain many of the benefits you may experience when you eat spicy foods. Eating spicy foods helps increase your satiety, or feelings of fullness after a meal. You often feel full faster eating less food, and the peppers may rev your metabolism a bit, helping you to burn more calories at rest. Researchers have discovered including spicy foods may help shrink fat cells and lower blood fat levels.18
Past research has suggested that thermogenic ingredients, or those compounds that increase your body's heat production, may increase your metabolism by up to 5% and the ability of your body to burn fat by up to 16%.19 Capsaicin is a thermogenic substance that may temporarily increase the ability of your body to burn fat to produce heat.
In fact, when eating spicy foods, you may feel your internal heat rising, even though the temperature in the room has remained the same. The heat you're feeling is the result of the activation of the TRPV1 receptors.
Although the activation of TRPV1 helps to reduce pain, it may also be responsible for many of the other health benefits you experience. In a journal article in Open Heart, scientists explored a mechanism that may explain the favorable results researchers have found in animal studies using capsaicin-rich diets, including a positive effect on health conditions such as metabolic syndrome, obesity, hypertension, atherosclerosis and stroke.20
As capsaicin thins mucus, it may help to clear your lungs during an illness, strengthen your lung capacity and may help prevent or treat emphysema.21 Various studies also demonstrate that capsaicin may effectively help your body fight prostate cancer.22
Animal studies have found oral supplementation is effective against H. pylori, the bacteria that triggers gastritis and ulcerations of the stomach wall. Capsaicin has also demonstrated some effectiveness against breast cancer, lymphoma and some lung tumors.
The continued application of capsaicin cream may help reduce the proliferation of skin cells common to psoriasis.23 Participants in this study did report the initial week of application caused skin irritation. Men and women with diabetes experienced some improvement in their blood glucose levels, and women who suffered from gestational diabetes (altered blood glucose/insulin resistance during pregnancy) also experienced improvements.
Different Peppers Produce Different Levels of Heat
The intensity of the heat you experience is measured in Scoville units, first developed by William Scoville in 1912.24 Human tasters used to identify the different levels of heat in peppers that originates from the amount of capsaicin in the pepper. Today, machines do that job.
To put the heat in your peppers into perspective, pure capsaicin would have a Scoville unit rating of 16 million.25 Police pepper spray has a unit rating of 2 million and the hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper, has a unit rating of 2.2 million.26 As of August 2013, the Guinness World Record book states this is the hottest pepper known to man. Well down the list is the Chocolate Habanero, ranking between 300,000 and 577,000 Scoville units.
Scotch Bonnet chili peppers, often used in spicy Caribbean foods, measure between 100,000 and 350,000 Scoville units. Jalapeno peppers, common in the U.S., measure 2,500 to 8,000, while Cubanelle peppers are a mild 100 to 1,000 Scoville units.27
Control Your Hiccups
There are a number of different methods you may have read or heard about to get rid of hiccups. Dr. Tyler Cymet, head of medical education at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, conducted a five-year study on 54 patients hospitalized for hiccups to evaluate treatment methods.28 What he found was that despite using a variety of treatments, from breath holding to strong medications, none of his patients successfully got rid of their hiccups.
He has continued to use a variety of treatments for patients who suffered from hiccups long enough to seek medical attention and found his patients may experience a 20% to 25% success rate.29
Those treatments include cognitive behavioral therapy, breathing exercise, yoga and Pilates. Each of these treatment options help reduce anxiety and control breathing, which seems to be the modalities that worked best for persistent hiccups. Other alternative remedies that appear to have success with people who don't suffer from persistent or intractable hiccups include:
- Having someone squeeze your pinky fingernail for 10 seconds30
- Gargling with ice water or sipping cold water
- Hypnosis
- Acupuncture
Additionally, there are a surprising number of hiccup remedies that have been studied, albeit using small participant numbers. For instance:31
- Eating a spoonful of sugar eliminated hiccups in 19 of 20 patients, possibly by stimulating the vagus nerve32
- Eating a lemon wedge soaked in bitters worked to eliminate hiccups in 14 out of 16 individuals33
- Triggering your gag reflex by blowing up a balloon may also work, possibly by causing a temporary break in respiration34
- Rectal massage using a finger cured intractable hiccups in 7 out of 7 patients, possibly by stimulating the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves35
Comments (2)
How Harnessing Your Dreams Can Lead to Better Sleep, Creativity and Memory
-
The Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), held its annual meeting in mid-April 2024, in Toronto, Canada. One of the key discussions during the meeting was understanding dreams and the role they play in our waking experiences.1
This is a fascinating subject as dreams can have a positive impact on your cognitive function in different ways. Dreams have an impact on creativity, memory, and perception of sleep quality. There are several strategies you can use to improve sleep and access and maximize your dream state.
The Impact of Dreams on Creativity
During the 2024 CNS’s "Into the Night: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Dreaming" symposia, Kathleen Esfahany, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University, presented her paper entitled, "Targeted Dream Incubation Increases Subsequent Content-Related Creativity," which explored the link between dreams and creativity.2
Investigating the hypothesis that sleep onset (designated N1 in the study) produces the best creative ideas, the researchers used a dream incubation process, during which listened to cues as they were falling asleep that introduced specific themes. Afterward, they were asked to complete three theme-related creativity tasks, which were subsequently evaluated by human raters and computational methods. According to the researchers:3
"Our findings show enhanced creative performance and greater semantic distance in task responses following a period of N1 sleep as compared to wake, corroborating recent work identifying N1 as a creative sweet spot and offering novel evidence for N1 enabling a cognitive state with greater associative divergence.
We further demonstrate that successful N1 dream incubation enhances creative performance more than N1 sleep alone. To our knowledge, this is the first controlled experiment investigating a direct role of incubating dream content in the enhancement of creative performance."
So, how does dreaming enhance creativity? According to Matthew Walker, Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California Berkeley, any new information learned while you’re awake is integrated with your past experiences during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which creates novel connections between the old and new. In a guest appearance for Business Insider, he elucidates this further, stating:4
"The brain starts to collide all of the information that you've recently learned together with all of this back catalog of autobiographical information that you've got stored up in the brain. And it starts to build novel connections, it's almost like group therapy for memories. And through this pattern of informational alchemy at night, we create a revised mind wide web of associations.
And you can start to divine new novel insights into previously unsolved problems, so that you wake up the next morning with new solutions, and it's probably the reason that no one has ever told you that you should stay awake on a problem.
Instead, people tell you to sleep on a problem. And we now have good evidence that it's dream sleep that gifts you that type of informational wisdom rather than simply knowledge."
Dreaming May Help You Recall Past Information
In another presentation at the symposia, Erin Wamsley, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Furman University, theorizes that recent actions can cause old memories to eventually appear in your dreams. Furthermore, these memories can mix with new information.
Wamsley and her team asked participants to write an emotional memory from their distant past prior to sleeping. After testing, they noted that these specific memories frequently appeared in their dreams, often combined with other recently learned information. Wamsley believes that her observations "could be relevant to the integration of new experience into existing cortical networks during sleep."5
Dreams Can Influence Perception of Sleep Quality
In a presentation by Claudia Picard-Deland titled "Sleep Depth, Dream Immersion and the Neural Architecture of Sleep," she shared how her team sought to explore the impact of dreams on the perception of sleep quality.
Participants were asked to sleep in a laboratory, where they were awaked one dozen times during all stages of sleep (early, middle and late periods). Afterward, they were asked to describe "(a) how deeply they felt, and, if dreaming, (b) how immersed and physically present they felt in their dream."6
Based on the participants’ reports, Picard-Deland and her team noted that those who were able to clearly recall their dreams had deeper sleep.7
"In all stages of sleep, subjective sleep depth was strongly correlated with how immersive the dream experience was.
The findings replicate and extend previous studies showing that sleep is perceived as deeper in the presence of rich and immersive dreams, which are more common in REM sleep or late-night sleep, contrasting the conception of N3 sleep as the ‘deepest’ stage of sleep.
Further clarifying the phenomenology of sleep depth across the night could inform underlying mechanisms and treatments for sleep disorders leading to restless sleep," they reported.
Is There a Way to Hack Into the Architecture of Sleep?
If Picard-Deland’s research suggests that dreams can lead to deeper, better sleep, what if there was a way to control them, and could it have other benefits? According to Remington Mallett, Chair of CNS 2024, having the ability to manipulate dreams could help people with nightmares and sleeping disorders. In a Medical Xpress article, he states:8
"You need to manipulate dreams for good experimentation, and you need to manipulate dreams to reduce nightmares. Nightmares are incredibly frustrating for a variety of clinical populations, and there is great need for approaches to reducing them. Understanding how dreams are formed, and how to change them, is already laying paths forward for efficient nightmare reduction protocols."
But how do nightmares form in the first place? According to an article published by Harvard Medical School, factors such as "stress, anxiety, irregular sleep, medications, mental health disorders" can contribute to their likelihood of forming.9 But why?
No one knows the answer, but sleep psychologist Joshua Tal, Ph.D., believes that they are your mind’s attempts at making sense of what happened to you during the day.10 If that’s the case, there may be a way to control dreams by yourself without the need for scientific manipulation — lucid dreaming.
Lucid Dreaming: A Potential Way to Controlling Dreams?
Lucid dreaming is a dream state where you’re aware that you’re in a dream, but your body is still asleep.11 A notable aspect about this state is that you’re able to shape the dream. By doing so, your actions in the dream may translate to better performance when you’re awake.
To achieve lucid dreaming, your mind needs to enter the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, which is where normal, non-lucid dreams also manifest.12 During REM sleep, your body displays brainwaves similar to wakefulness, but your body is in deep slumber.13 It normally takes 90 minutes of sleep to achieve this state.14
In an interview with Harvard Business Review, Daniel Erlacher from the University of Bern, Switzerland, discussed how he tested lucid dreaming as a tool to help athletes’ fitness training regimen.15,16 He observed that athletes who mentally rehearse their sport can improve performance, and hypothesizes that the same results could be achieved through lucid dreaming:17
"In one experiment we asked participants to dream about doing deep knee bends. Even though their bodies weren’t moving, their heart and respiration rates increased slightly as if they were exercising.
So your brain is responding to the dream movements in similar ways, and that allows you to use dreams as a simulation. You can learn from that," Erlacher said.
There is some research to support this claim. In a 2023 study18 published in Medical Hypotheses, researchers found that lucid dreaming can lead to "promising performance improvements" in athletes. In addition, those who entered a lucid dreaming state displayed sleep biomarkers comparable to when they’re practicing awake, similar to what Erlacher observed.
But how do you enter a lucid state while sleeping? Here are three techniques, according to researchers from the University of Adelaide, published in ScienceDaily:19
1. Reality testing — This involves performing reality checks while you’re awake. Every two hours, you’ll ask yourself, "Am I dreaming right now?" The idea here is that this habit will enter your dreams, allowing you to become aware you’re currently dreaming.
2. Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) — After sleeping for five hours, repeat the phrase, "The next time I’m dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming" before going back to sleep. Similar to reality testing, MILD will eventually accustom your mind to becoming aware while dreaming.
3. Walking back to bed (WBTB) — Upon reaching five hours of sleep, you stay awake for 15 to 20 minutes, then go back to sleep. The idea is you will go back to REM sleep, allowing you to stay more easily lucid.
Sleep disruption is the obvious drawback to MILD and WBTB, so I don’t recommend trying these methods. Chronic sleep deprivation can have disastrous consequences for your health.
In an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast,20 Walker cited research showing that just four hours of sleep can lower the amount of natural killer cells by 70%. In other words, your immune function becomes severely compromised, making it easier for pathogens to cause disease. So, how can you reach REM sleep consistently to be able to dream? Your next best strategy is to boost your sleep quality.
Optimize Your Sleep Quality to Access the Dream State
To be able to access your dream state and gain its benefits, getting REM sleep is paramount. However, this can be challenging because we’re bombarded with technology that can disrupt our sleep.
Walker believes that sleep is the pillar that diet and exercise are built on.21 This statement makes so much sense, as it catalyzes other healthy lifestyle choices you make.
For example, if you’re exercising, you need enough sleep to let your body rebuild itself and become stronger. According to a study published in Physiological Reports, "chronic sleep loss is a potent catabolic stressor, increasing the risk of metabolic dysfunction and loss of muscle mass and function."22
For a comprehensive list of strategies that can help boost sleep quality, see "Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It." It also goes over the consequences of sleep deprivation in greater detail. That said, some strategies you can use to improve your sleep quality include:
Going to bed early — As a general rule, try to get somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep. |
Exposing your skin to bright sunlight during solar noon — This will help "set" your master clock. In turn, avoid blue light exposure after sunset for the same reason.23 If you must be exposed to blue light during the evening, I recommend wearing special glasses to counteract its effects, as it is normally emitted by artificial lighting and electronic screens. |
Sleeping in complete darkness — Research reveals that even dim light exposure during sleep can affect your cognition the next day.24 Black out shades or an eye mask can help in this situation. |
Finding your ideal temperature for sleeping — Michelle Drerup, PsyD., a sleep psychology at the Cleveland Clinic, noted the ideal temperature is around 60 to 57 degrees Fahrenheit (15 to 19 degrees Celsius).25 |
Getting regular exercise — Being physically active not only helps you stay strong and fit, but also helps improve sleep quality, insomnia severity and daytime sleepiness, according to a 2021 study.26 |
Eating a healthy diet — Adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet may have a positive effect on sleep quality.27 |
Additional natural sleep remedies that may help include:
• Melatonin — This a hormone produced in your pineal gland that has sleep-promoting properties28 and is a powerful antioxidant. You can also take it in supplement form. Start with as little as 0.25 milligrams (mg) and work your way up in quarter-gram increments.
• Valerian root — Research suggests this herbal remedy may help improve the speed at which you fall asleep.29 Start with a minimal dose and use the lowest dose needed to achieve the desired effect, as higher doses can actually have an energizing effect on some people. Typical dosages used in studies range between 450 mg30 and 900 mg.31
• Chamomile — This herb is typically used in the form of infusions, teas, liquid extracts or essential oils made from the plant’s fresh or dried flower seeds. It has sedative effects that may help with sleep, which is why chamomile tea is often sipped before bed.
Comments (9)
Researchers Call for Urgent Action to Address Mass Contamination of Blood Supply
-
In a recent meta-analysis1,2 posted on preprints.org, Japanese researchers warn of potentially deadly risks to patients who receive blood from people who have taken mRNA COVID jabs and call for urgent action to ensure the safety of the global blood supply. According to the authors:3
“… many countries around the world have reported that so-called genetic vaccines, such as those using modified mRNA encoding the spike protein and lipid nanoparticles as the drug delivery system, have resulted in post-vaccination thrombosis and subsequent cardiovascular damage, as well as a wide variety of diseases involving all organs and systems, including the nervous system ...
[B]ased on these circumstances and the volume of evidence that has recently come to light, we call the attention of medical professionals to the various risks associated with blood transfusions using blood products derived from people who have suffered from long COVID and from genetic vaccine recipients, including those who have received mRNA vaccines, and we make proposals regarding specific tests, testing methods, and regulations to deal with these risks.”
Blood From Jabbed Donors May Pose Risk to Neurological Health
One particular risk addressed in this paper is the implications of blood tainted with prion-like structures found within the spike protein. Prions are misfolded proteins that can cause neurodegenerative diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans, by inducing the misfolding of normal proteins in the brain.
Prion diseases are characterized by a long incubation period, followed by rapid progression and high mortality. The suggestion that the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, especially from certain variants, might contain prion-like domains raises concerns for several reasons:
- Transmission risk — If spike proteins with prion-like structures can be transmitted through blood transfusions, there might be a risk of inducing prion diseases in recipients. Prion diseases are notoriously difficult to diagnose early, have no cure, and are fatal, making any potential transmission through blood products a significant safety concern.
- Detection and removal challenges — Current blood screening processes do not specifically test for prions, partly because prion diseases are rare and partly due to the technical challenges in detecting prions at low concentrations. If spike proteins with prion-like properties are present in the blood of COVID jabbed individuals, existing blood safety protocols may not be adequate to prevent transmission.
- Long-term safety concerns — Prion diseases have long latency periods, meaning that symptoms can appear years or even decades after exposure. This delay complicates efforts to trace the source of an infection back to a blood transfusion and assess the safety of blood supplies over time.
- Impacts on blood supply management — Concerns about the potential risks associated with prion-like structures in spike proteins might lead to changes in donor eligibility criteria or the implementation of additional screening measures. These changes could impact the availability of blood products, which are critical for routine medical procedures.
- Public confidence — Public awareness of these potential risks, even if they are theoretical or have a very low likelihood of occurring, could affect individuals' willingness to donate or receive blood transfusions, thereby lowering blood donation rates and the overall trust in the safety of blood transfusions.
The authors stress the need for comprehensive studies to better understand the implications of these prion-like structures in the spike protein, not only for mRNA jab safety but also for the broader implications for public health measures like blood transfusion practices.
Other Potential Health Hazards of Contaminated Blood
Contaminated blood may also pose other serious health risks, including:
• Reduced immune function among blood recipients — It’s been shown that the more doses of the COVID shot you’ve received, the more likely you are to suffer future infections, either by SARS-CoV-2 or other viruses, due antibody-dependent enhancement.
Blood donations from people who have received several doses of mRNA injections may not provide adequate immunity against common infections, resulting in subclinical infections and diseases in recipients.
• Formation of blood clots and amyloid aggregates — If the immune system of a blood recipient isn’t strong enough to neutralize spike protein, blood clots and amyloid aggregates may also form.
• Chronic inflammation — Prolonged exposure to the antigens from the COVID-19 shots can trigger the generation of IgG4 antibodies, resulting in chronic inflammation and immune dysfunction.
IgG4 antibodies are often associated with chronic exposure to antigens, such as those seen in persistent infections, certain cancers, and prolonged exposure to allergens. IgG4 antibodies are also associated with a unique condition known as IgG4-Related Disease (IgG4-RD), a fibro-inflammatory condition characterized by swellings or masses in affected organs.4
Blood Transfusions and the Risk of Autoimmune Diseases
The authors also raise concerns about the potential of contaminated blood to cause autoimmune diseases in recipients. Recent research found that the RNA pseudouridylation, a process in which uracil is swapped out for synthetic methylpseudouridine, can cause frameshifting, basically a glitch in the decoding, which can trigger the production of off-target aberrant proteins.
The antibodies that develop as a result may, in turn, trigger off-target immune reactions. In addition to that, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), a key component of the COVID shots, have been identified as highly inflammatory and possessing more potent adjuvant activity compared to traditional vaccine adjuvants, which further increases the risk of an autoimmune response. As reported in the featured paper:5
“Recent studies have shown that RNA pseudouridylation can result in frameshifting. It is not yet clear whether a portion of the pseudouridinated mRNA for the spike protein is translated into another protein of unknown function in vaccine recipients. If these proteins are also pathogenic, additional testing for such frameshift proteins may be needed in the future.
Even if a frameshift protein is not toxic, it must be foreign to the body and could cause autoimmune disease. In addition, LNPs themselves are highly inflammatory substances … LNPs have been found to have stronger adjuvant activity than the adjuvants used in conventional vaccines, and there is also concern about autoimmune diseases resulting from this aspect.
Thus, although it is not clear what the causative agent of autoimmune disease is, the large number of reported cases of autoimmune disease following genetic vaccination is extremely concerning.
The very mechanism of gene vaccines that causes one’s own cells to produce the antigens of pathogens carries the risk of inducing autoimmune diseases, which cannot be completely avoided even if mRNA pseudouridylation technology is used.
In this context, individuals with a positive blood test for spike protein may need to have interviews and additional tests for autoimmune disease indicators, such as antinuclear antibodies.
Alternatively, if the amino acid sequence of the protein resulting from the frameshift is predictable, these candidate proteins could be included in the initial mass spectrometry assay. In any case, it is particularly important to develop tests and establish medical care settings in anticipation of these situations.”
Proposals for Managing Blood Collection
The authors outline several specific proposals for managing blood collection and blood products from individuals who have received genetic “vaccines.” Given the variety of blood-related abnormalities observed post-jab, the researchers argue that rigorous and precautionary measures in blood handling and transfusion practices have now become a necessity.
A key part of the proposal involves conducting thorough interviews with potential blood donors. These interviews should cover their vaccination status, number of doses received, their COVID-19 infection history, and any symptoms they might be experiencing that could indicate conditions like post-vaccination syndrome (PVS), long-COVID or other complications.
The researchers also recommend deferral periods for blood collected from COVID jab recipients — 48 hours for mRNA shots and six weeks for AstraZeneca DNA jab recipients. A series of tests are also proposed to ensure the safety of collected blood, including:
Mass spectrometry to measure spike protein content |
PCR for detecting the presence of spike protein mRNA and DNA |
Testing for markers associated with autoimmune disorders |
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) |
Immunophenotyping |
Liquid biopsies combined with proteomics to detect and quantify spike protein and its mRNA |
The authors also note that policies and procedures must be constantly revised as new risks and problems with blood products derived from mRNA and DNA jab recipients are identified.
Ensuring Safety of Current Blood Products
The paper also reviews strategies to ensure the safety of blood products already collected, highlighting the complex challenges that medical institutions, regulatory bodies, and the broader healthcare ecosystem must navigate in the wake of widespread use of mRNA injections.
The primary concern is the risk posed to patients by the use of blood products from donors who have received gene-based injections without confirming the presence or absence of spike proteins or modified mRNA. To ensure their safety, methods to quantify potential contaminants must be developed and implemented as soon as possible.
Another critical issue that must be addressed is the current lack of reliable methods to remove spike proteins or modified mRNA from blood products. The authors warn that, given the potential persistence, low solubility, heat resistance, and radiation resistance of these components, current methodologies are inadequate for the job. The only solution, they say, is to discard all blood products found to contain these contaminants until effective removal techniques are established.
Researchers Call for Widespread Blood Testing
Additionally, the researchers call for widespread testing of both jabbed and unjabbed to assess the potential transmission of spike proteins through exosomes (so-called shedding).
As noted by the authors:
“… when exosomes collected from vaccine recipients were administered to mice that had not been vaccinated with the genetic vaccine, the spike protein was transmitted.
Therefore, it cannot be denied that the spike protein and its modified genes can be transmitted through exosomes. For this reason, we suggest that full testing be done initially, regardless of genetic vaccination status, and that a cohort study be conducted to quickly capture the full picture …
In addition … it cannot be ruled out that even those who have not been vaccinated with the genetic vaccine, but have had long COVID, may have residual spike proteins or fibrin- derived microthrombi in their bodies, so it would be advisable to conduct the same testing and follow-up as for genetic vaccine recipients.
The presence or absence and amount of anti-nucleocapsid antibodies as well as antibody isotypes may be an indicator(s) in distinguishing whether genetic vaccination or long COVID is the cause. In any case, these cohort studies are expected to help establish cutoff values for blood levels of spike protein and other substances to determine the safety of blood products.
Faksova et al. conducted a large cohort study of 99 million people using a multinational Global Vaccine Data NetworkTM (GVDN®) and found a significantly increased risk of myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis in genetic vaccine recipients.”
Ensuring the traceability of blood products and establishing a rigorous legal and regulatory framework to manage the myriad issues arising from the use of blood products derived from COVID jabbed individuals are also paramount. This includes creating systems for the registration of all potential donors, ensuring the traceability of blood products, and conducting recipient outcome studies.
Call to Pause: Evaluating the Risks and Benefits of Genetic Vaccines for a Safer Future
In conclusion, the authors point out that if we continue using mRNA-LPN-based platforms to replace conventional vaccines or create new ones, then the risks to our blood and bone marrow supply will be augmented further.
“The impact of these genetic vaccines on blood products and the actual damage caused by them are unknown at present,” they write.6
“Therefore, in order to avoid these risks and prevent further expansion of blood contamination and complication of the situation, we strongly request that the vaccination campaign using genetic vaccines be suspended and that a harm-benefit assessment be carried out as early as possible, as called for by Fraiman et al.7 and Polykretis et al.8
[T]he health injuries caused by genetic vaccination are already extremely serious, and it is high time that countries and relevant organizations take concrete steps together to identify the risks and to control and resolve them.”
Comments (137)
Common Cleaning Products May Increase Your Risk of Lung Disease
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published September 27, 2017.
Skillful advertising and colorful containers tempt consumers to purchase cleaning supplies that are filled with toxic chemicals and hazardous materials. Research from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) into more than 2,000 cleaning products1 reveals the complete lack of oversight by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) exposing you and your family to hazardous chemicals.
Manufacturers in the U.S. may use almost any ingredient they want in their products until enough consumer complaints and subsequent research links the product to dangerous health effects. Only then might the FDA add one more chemical to a short list of banned chemicals. However, manufacturers have over 100,000 chemicals from which to choose for their products. Less than 10% have been tested for human safety.
By comparison, the European Commission operates on a precautionary principle aimed at prevention, approving chemicals for consumer products only after they have been proven to be safe.2
Household cleaning supplies are one of several products that may increase your exposure to toxins. In the pursuit of cleanliness and sparkling chrome, you may inadvertently increase exposure to indoor air pollution, inhalation risks and contact absorption. In 2000, cleaning products were at the root of nearly 10% of toxic exposures reported to the U.S. American Association of Poison Control Centers.3
Cleaning products are not required to publish a list of ingredients on the bottle, even if they trigger skin rashes, asthma or are linked to cancer.4 Even on company websites, the information about a product line may be vague and incomplete. However, while many ingredients are not disclosed, it is difficult to mask the scent of chlorine bleach, now linked through scientific evidence to an increased risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).5
Chronic Lung Diseases Have a Significant Impact on Your Quality of Life
COPD is a medical term covering progressive lung conditions such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, nonreversible asthma and some forms of bronchiectasis.6 Each of these diseases is characterized by an increasing difficulty with breathing, or "catching your breath." Breathlessness and coughing are not normal symptoms of aging, but are rather symptoms of a progressive disease that may ultimately claim your life.
Individuals who suffer from diseases that fall under the umbrella term of COPD may experience frequent wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and increasing breathlessness. Diseases that fall under the umbrella term of COPD touch the lives of nearly 30 million people in the U.S., many of whom are unaware they are affected. According to the COPD Foundation, these conditions may be triggered by smoking, secondhand smoke, fumes and chemicals.7
COPD affects nearly 1.2 million people in the U.K., 25,000 of whom die each year.8 It affects nearly 1 in 7 Australians over 40 years old and is the fifth most common cause of death in Australia.9 The two main diagnoses that fall under COPD are chronic bronchitis and emphysema.10
Jan Karlbon from Mesa, Arizona, shared with COPD News Today how she lives each day, explaining that simple acts of getting dressed (putting on a T-shirt and jeans) in the morning may take her 30 minutes and leave her physically exhausted.11 She describes it "like somebody put duct tape over your mouth and your nose, and just cut a little hole and you're breathing through a straw."
The study evaluated risks associated with working with cleaning products. Although previous studies have linked exposure to these products with respiratory conditions, Orianne Dumas, Ph.D., from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and lead author of the new study, believes:12
"The potential adverse effects of exposure to disinfectants on COPD have received much less attention, although two recent studies in European populations showed that working as a cleaner was associated with a higher risk of COPD. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to report a link between disinfectants and COPD among health care workers, and to investigate specific chemicals that may underlie this association."
Research Links Bleach and Quats With Lung Damage
In this study, researchers followed over 55,000 nurses who initially did not have a diagnosis of COPD, over a period of eight years.13 During that time nearly 665 nurses were subsequently diagnosed with COPD. An analysis of the participants led the researchers to conclude the nurses who used disinfectants at least once a week had a 24% to 32% higher risk of developing COPD than those who used disinfectants less frequently.
Even after the researchers controlled for age, weight, smoking and physical activity the link between the frequent use of cleaning products and COPD in nurses remained. Dumas commented on the necessity for further evaluation and careful consideration for the occupational hazards experienced by health care workers, saying:14
"Our findings provide further evidence of the effects of exposure to disinfectants on respiratory problems, and highlight the urgency of integrating occupational health considerations into guidelines for cleaning and disinfection in health care settings such as hospitals."
Further analysis of the particular products being used, through questionnaire and a matrix that assigned categories based on the type of task the nurse reported, found an association between specific chemicals and an increase in COPD. These chemicals were:
- Bleach
- Hydrogen peroxide
- Alcohol
- Quaternary ammonium compounds, also known as "quats" used for low-level disinfection of floors and furniture
However, while concerning for the many nurses who work in hospitals around the world, these chemicals are also frequently found in products used to clean your house. Dumas commented:15
"Some of these disinfectants, such as bleach and quats, are frequently used in ordinary households, and the potential impact of domestic use of disinfectants on COPD development is unknown. Earlier studies have found a link between asthma and exposure to cleaning products and disinfectants at home, such as bleach and sprays, so it is important to investigate this further."
Exposure to Vapors Not Limited to Your Choice
Exposure to cleaning chemicals you purchase and unwittingly use at home is concerning enough. However, vapors may also be seeping into your home without your knowledge. This means, despite your best efforts to remove toxins from your home, a toxic cloud may be coming in through the soil beneath your home.16 The cloud of vapors is called vapor intrusion, as the chemicals are unwanted and uninvited. These problems are being reported across the U.S. in rising numbers.17,18,19
Gas may be trapped in the soil or groundwater around your home, in sewer lines or even just below your foundation.20 This gas is formed after toxic chemicals are dumped into the sewer system, escape from storage facilities, accidental spills or as the result of the release of solvents into the environment from nearly 27,000 dry cleaners across the country.21
Gas moves in much the same way your vacuum cleaner sucks up dirt particles from your carpet. Suction is created as air moves from areas of high pressure to low pressure, driving gas into your home.
The first type of gas to be detected in homes was radon gas in early 1984.22 While it leaks into your home in much the same way, this gas is natural and not man-made. As with radon, the average person will not detect the odor of toxic gases. Professionals use sophisticated instruments to measure levels and determine safety for families and communities for both man-made and natural gas seepage into your home.
The most notorious of these toxins are benzene, trichloroethylene (TCE)23 and tetrachloroethylene, also known as perc. Benzene has the benefit of being readily biodegradable by soil bacteria, but perc and TCE degrade to vinyl chloride, a potent carcinogenic chemical that is persistent and mobile in the environment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not able to estimate the amount of vapor intrusion affecting homes, schools and workplaces, but they believe it is extensive.
There are currently 91 Superfund24 sites where the EPA has determined there are unacceptable health risks associated with vapor intrusion. However, these do not include 4,000 other sites regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act or the estimated 450,000 contaminated properties25 in the U.S.26
The U.S. General Account Office suggests there are over 200,000 underground storage tanks that are not being appropriately managed. The movement of these toxic vapors has flown under the radar of public attention but now is receiving scrutiny from environmental protection experts and advocates. Unfortunately, while the EPA agrees there is a problem, there is no consensus on how to address the issue.
Testing for gas in soil and water is also challenging. The gases can drift in the soil and migrate even further through sewer lines. Concentration depths change across seasons or even over the course of the several days, necessitating multiple levels of testing to determine if there is an issue in a particular location.27
Mixing Chemicals Creates a Dangerous Effect
Mixing cleaning products in your home may also create a dangerous chemical soup more hazardous than the original cleaner. Some of these chemicals you may have in your home, and they should never be mixed.
For instance, mixing bleach with an ammonia-based product produces a toxic chloramine gas, exposure to which may trigger chest pain, wheezing, shortness of breath and pneumonia.28 Ammonia is commonly found in glass and window cleaners or interior and exterior paints, making bleach a poor choice for cleanup after painting.29
Combining bleach with an acid-based cleaner produces chlorine gas, which when combined with water will make hydrochloric and hypochlorous acids.30 Even low levels for a short time will result in irritation to your eyes, nose and throat. Higher-level exposure will result in chest pain, vomiting, breathing difficulty and chemical-induced pneumonia.
Vinegar is a mild acid, and mixing bleach with this common household liquid can result in chemical burns of your eyes and lungs.31 Other acid-based products include drain cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner and automatic dishwasher detergents.32
Bleach will also react with oven cleaners, hydrogen peroxide and some insecticides to produce toxic gas. Mixing bleach with products that contain isopropyl alcohol, such as rubbing alcohol, can produces gasses that have the potential to damage your nervous system, eyes, lungs, kidneys and liver.33
Ultimately, mixing any two cleaners or drain cleaners together is dangerous as the chemicals combine in a way not intended by the manufacture. The dangers inherent in the use of over-the-counter cleaners is high enough without the additional risks associated with mixing unknown chemicals.
Bleach Is Not Effective on Mold
Bleach has been a common cleaner in many homes as it's cheap and appears to do the job rather well. However, the price you ultimately pay with your health is not worth the few minutes you may save using more natural products.
For instance, although areas touched by bleach appear to come out white (especially when the bleach spills on your clothing!) what is underneath doesn't always change. Bleach is effective only on a nonporous surface, which means it doesn't soak in to areas where mold commonly grows.34
This means that when you use bleach on mold growth over caulk around your tub or on wood, you'll notice the mold appears to "disappear" for a short time but then reappears in the exact same spot. Mold spread roots deep into porous surfaces to ensure survival, but the properties of bleach prevent it from soaking in and killing the mold. Thus, only the surface gets white, but the internal mold remains to grow another day.
Keeping Your Home and Yourself Clean, Naturally
Avoiding toxic chemicals is challenging in a world that has developed hundreds of thousands of chemicals used in cleaning products, industrial manufacturing processes and personal care products to name just a few. The strategies outlined in my previous article, "Keep a Clean House With Nontoxic Cleaners" can help reduce your toxic load. Consider trying some of these suggestions to clean your home using simple products you may already have in your cabinets.
- Borax — This form of baking soda acts as a whitener and will boost your detergent power. Add between one-fourth cup and 1 cup to your laundry, depending on the size of your load.
- Vinegar — A weak acid, this common liquid is a natural cleaning substance that also deodorizes. Consider adding between one-fourth cup and one-half cup to your laundry with your detergent and wash as usual. Don't mix the borax with vinegar in the same load as they neutralize each other. Vinegar is also a good general all-purpose cleaner for your kitchen and bathroom.
- Scouring powder — Make your own safe scouring powder for soap scum in the bath by combining 2 parts baking soda, and 1 part each of borax and salt.
Always read labels on the products you purchase. Even on products labeled "green" you may encounter toxic chemicals you don't want in your home. Avoid anything marked "danger" or "poison" and choose products that have specific ecological claims,35 such as "biodegradable in three to five days," as opposed to just labeled "biodegradable." Consider this recipe for bleach alternative courtesy of Beyond Toxics:36
Bleach Alternative Formula
This recipe makes enough for one load of laundry. Keep lemon juice separate until ready to use. Combine all ingredients into a plastic container, and shake once or twice before adding to the wash.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup Basic Liquid Formula (see below)
- 1/4 cup borax
- 1/4 cup lemon juice, plus 6 drops lemon essential oils
Basic Liquid Formula
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups liquid castile soap
- 1 tablespoon glycerin
- 3/4 cup water
- 10 to 15 drops essential oil of your choice
Comments (9)
Transforming Health — How to Navigate Reductive Stress and the Metabolic Impact of Dietary Fats
-
In this interview, repeat guest Brad Marshall, a molecular biologist, explains how different dietary fats influence your metabolism and overall health. You may want to listen to this interview a couple of times. If you still find it hard to understand, copy and paste the corresponding sections of the transcript into ChatGPT and ask it to explain it to you in even simpler terms.
In our previous interview, Marshall explained reductive stress and how it causes damage that leads to virtually every degenerative disease and the most common causes of death. Molecular biology can be hard to understand which is why I created the best 2-D illustration of how your body creates cellular energy. It will be helpful for you to review this illustration during our discussion.
The other strategy that will help you learn this important information is to have a dialog with ChatGPT 4 or your favorite large language model and ask it to help explain any concepts you don't understand. If the answer is something you still don't understand ask Chat to simplify its answer. Continue asking questions so you understand everything.
In summary, reductive stress results from an excess of electrons that slow down your metabolism and energy production. It's like your body's systems are overwhelmed with energy they can't properly use, which leads to decreased efficiency and damage over time.
Why is it so important to understand these concepts? Because they’re the central keys to your health. If you understand these foundational concepts, you can make choices that will move you out of disease and towards health — because your body wants to be healthy. It's designed to be healthy and will achieve that automatically once you give it what it needs.
I've admired Brad's work so much that I've hired him to be my research director and we’re developing a test to measure the redox potential of your body. At present, such tests are not commercially available, and those that do exist provide results that are questionable at best.
How Dietary Fats Affect Metabolism
As explained by Marshall, reductive stress and metabolic syndrome might be better understood through the lens of evolution and animal behaviors like torpor — a state of decreased metabolic activity.
Animals adapt by changing the types of fat in their bodies seasonally to prepare for periods of dormancy like hibernation. The thing that triggers this fat composition change is the composition of fats in the animal's diet.
For instance, the consumption of insects with high saturated fat content indicates to mammals the need for a more active metabolism suitable for warmer climates. Conversely, diets high in monounsaturated fats signal the approach of winter, prompting animals to lower their metabolic rate in preparation for hibernation.
Key components of this process are desaturase enzymes, which are responsible for adjusting the types of fats within your cells. These enzymes — Delta-6-desaturase, Delta-5-desaturase, and Delta-9-desaturase — signal your body to slow down its metabolic rate in anticipation of periods when less energy will be required or available by converting saturated fats into unsaturated fats, including monounsaturated fats.
As animals approach colder months, they naturally increase the production of these desaturase enzymes. This increase leads to a higher concentration of monounsaturated fats in the body, which is more efficiently stored as fat. This accumulation is part of the body's preparation to conserve energy and maintain survival during periods of scarcity.
Thus, you could say that desaturase enzymes act as a metabolic switch that turns on your body's torpor mode. By modifying the fat composition within your body, they effectively lower your metabolic rate, thereby allowing your body to conserve energy.
And again, this switch is influenced by the type of fat you consume. Saturated fats are associated with a higher metabolic rate and less reductive stress, while monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) lower your metabolic rate and increase reductive stress.
In short, if you consume high amounts of PUFAs, you’re tricking your body into thinking you need to conserve energy for hard times, like a famine or long winter with scarce food supplies. This process of conservation, in turn, downregulates or shuts down various biological processes because your body doesn’t have enough energy for all of them.
Why LA Is So Destructive
While we typically don’t think of torpor applying to humans, most Americans are in this state. The increase in unsaturated fats in the human diet over the last century — particularly PUFAs — mimic the natural signal for animals to enter a torpid state, but since humans do not hibernate, this reduced metabolism is neither necessary nor healthy. The process is further exacerbated when these fats become oxidized, as this increases reductive stress.
“In the last 100 years, we've eaten more and more and more of these unsaturated fats,” Marshall says. “And, of course, the polyunsaturated fats contribute to this process as well because the Delta-6-desaturates is the limiting step in the oxidation of the polyunsaturated fats.
You've talked a lot about concerns with polyunsaturated fats, and what I see when I look at it is, linoleic acid (LA) … is okay if it stays as linoleic acid, but once it starts getting converted to oxidized fats, that's when it becomes a real problem.”
Through a series of enzymatic steps, LA is transformed into arachidonic acid. Arachidonic acid, when oxidized, can form various types of hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acids (HETEs), which are signaling molecules involved in numerous physiological processes, including inflammation and the immune response.
Marshall believes that two HETEs in particular, 5-HETE and 12-HETE, control the shifting of metabolism towards torpor metabolism. These HETEs, in turn, appear to be controlled by highly destructive oxidative linoleic acid metabolites (OXLAMs) that are produced when LA is oxidized.
The Link Between High-PUFA Diets, Metabolic Syndrome and Related Issues
When you oxidize a lot of PUFAs you also activate a nuclear receptor called the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), which controls your circadian rhythm. Marshall comments:
“If you give a mouse a drug that strongly activates the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, it shuts down the circadian rhythm of the mouse. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor controls your circadian rhythm. And people who have metabolic syndrome have issues with sleep.
If you trigger the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, you also get a dysregulated gut microbiome. If you are oxidizing a lot of polyunsaturated fat, you activate the aryl hydrocarbon receptor and all of a sudden you have overgrowth of bad gut bugs and you'll have a decrease in the good gut bugs.”
The reason why AHR activation catalyzes a transition from beneficial to pathogenic gut bacteria is because the AHR is highly involved in controlling the immune system. If you activate the AHR, you see an increase in myeloid derived suppressor cells — immune cells that suppress your immune response.
Are Starches Good or Bad? It Depends
At this point in the conversation, Marshall brings up a crucial point. Many in the Ray Peat community believe that starches, especially resistant starches, will promote the growth of pathogenic bacteria that produce endotoxin, also known as lipopolysaccharide or LPS. LPS can get into your bloodstream and cause all kinds of problems, so you don’t want a high LPS response.
However, after looking at this issue for the last 18 months, I’ve started to understand the flaws in Peat’s work. One of the primary functions of the gut is to maintain an anaerobic environment (an environment without oxygen). The problem is, you need energy to keep oxygen out of there, and if that energy is not available, oxygen is going to seep in.
Most beneficial bacteria are gram-negative, and they're called obligate anaerobes. They do not have LPS in their cell wall and hence will not produce endotoxin when they die off. However, when you don’t create enough cellular energy you are unable to create a low oxygen environment in your large intestine.
This kills the beneficial bacteria as oxygen seeps in and they are unable to survive. When they leave, they create a hole that allows endotoxin-producing bacteria — facultative anaerobes — to take over through competitive inhibition. Facultative anaerobes can tolerate oxygen and survive.
The primary obligate anaerobic bacterium in your gut is a species called Akkermansia, which makes mucin, the protective layer in your gut. When your Akkermansia die off due to lack of cellular energy to maintain the proper oxygen gradient in the large intestine, then your mucin barrier starts to break down and you end up with leaky gut.
Now, the reason starch CAN be problematic is because, if you are metabolically inflexible (and most are), then you’re not making enough mitochondrial energy to maintain a healthy gut. So, the idea that starch is problematic is likely true for most people, because most people have a disrupted microbiome. Starch is indiscriminate and will feed any bacteria. So, since most people have a preponderance of pathogenic gut bacteria, starch causes problems.
The flip side of this is that if you have a healthy microbiome, starch can be quite beneficial. So, the primary goal is to get your cellular energy up and improve your microbiome first. Then you can eat starch.
I now eat about 1.5 pounds of white rice a day and have cut down on my fruit consumption. In total, I consume over 500 grams of carbs a day, but I now get less fructose (as starch doesn’t contain fructose like fruit does). Ultimately, I suspect starch may be the ideal fuel once your microbiome is optimized. But again, it’s all dependent on your gut health.
I also added over 50 grams of collagen from homemade bone broth per day and added raw milk cheese with animal rennet. This experiment has resulted in gaining 4 pounds but my percent body fat dropped from 8.5% to 6.5%. So, I gained over 4 pounds of muscle and no fat. That’s a good trade from my perspective.
Other Feedback Loops That Push Us Toward Metabolic Syndrome
While Marshall agrees with my theory of why starches can cause problems, he points out that there are other feedback loops at work as well:
“This is all part of one sort of big complicated positive feedback loop. I 100% agree with you about the gut barrier function. But I also think that there's a whole bunch of aligned systems that are pushing us towards this outcome [metabolic syndrome].
When you look at the hibernating animals, when they go towards winter and you see all those desaturase enzymes are increased, their gut permeability increases. One of the tricks that the animal does as the hibernating season is approaching is they increase gut permeability, and they let more LPS in.
That may also let more oxygen through. I'm not sure. One of the patterns that you see in obesity and metabolic syndrome is that branched-chain amino acids in your bloodstream increase and glycine goes down. In mice, if you supplement with glycine, it increases gut barrier function.
So, you have this pattern going into winter where AHR is activated, desaturases are activated, gut barrier function is decreasing and LPS is coming in that causes release of CD38, [which] breaks down NAD+. And so, anytime LPS is coming through, it's decreasing NAD+ availability.
The thing about that is, all three desaturases run off NADH and not NAD+. So, the gut inflammation leads to increased activity of these desaturases, which leads to increased monounsaturated fat production, which continues to push you further in that direction of reductive stress, which lowers glycine, which makes the gut leakier. To me, it looks like it's all wrapped into the same process.
These processes all work together, and they all work in these feedback loops because if you are an animal in the right situation, you want to have a low metabolic rate, you want to have slow metabolism, and you want to be storing extra fuel.
It's a very complicated process with a lot of different parts, and they're all working together to achieve the outcome, which we call metabolic syndrome. Because in our situation, we don't have to store extra fat for winter and we're not going to hibernate.”
Tracing the Inflammatory Cascade to Its Root
Marshall also points out research showing mice that lack SCD1, and therefore cannot make monounsaturated fat, have very low inflammatory markers.
In autumn, hibernating animals increase SCD1, which increases production of monounsaturated fats, which in turn increases the inflammatory immune cells like TLR4 and NF kappa beta. At the same time, stearoylethanolamide (SEA) production is reduced. SEA is a bioactive lipid made from stearic acid that is noted for its effects on reducing appetite and inflammation.
However, if you decrease Delta-9 desaturase activity, you eliminate that whole inflammatory cascade. So, Marshall suspects that it’s the inflammatory cascade resulting in elevated C-reactive protein can be traced back to the activation of Delta-9 desaturase. Hence, the remedy needs to include the deactivation of Delta-9 desaturase.
SEA, which is available as a supplement, has the remarkable effect of drastically raising your metabolic rate if the negative feedback loops just described are in play. In animal studies, SEA has been shown to reduce inflammation, suppress production of TNF alpha, SCD1 and Delta-9 desaturase.
“So, it's doing all of the things that you would predict would help your metabolic rate,” Marshall says. In the interview, he describes the effects his SEA supplement had on his morning body temperature readings, which is a simple way to gauge your metabolic rate, and how he was able to use that to fine-tune his dosage.
What Do Countries With Low Diabetes Rates Eat?
As noted by Marshall, West Africa has one of the world's lowest diabetes rates, partially attributed to its diet, which is rich in starchy tubers like plantains, cassava, and African yams, as well as collagenous meats like beef skin. These foods are often used in stews, extracting collagen and gelatin.
This dietary pattern, emphasizing starchy tubers and collagen-rich meats, contrasts with diets higher in processed foods and may contribute to the region's lower diabetes prevalence, which is below 3%.
My idea of a healthy meal would be white rice cooked in bone broth, topped off with a couple of egg yolks and a small amount of beef liver. This meal would be high in starch and collagen, and low in fructose and muscle meat, which has a very different amino acid composition than collagen. For a refresher on the difference between muscle meat and collagen, see “Why Collagen Is a Proven Necessity.” Marshall comments:
“One of the things about starch is, if you eat a bunch of starch, your NAD+ availability increases postprandially. After the meal, you have more NAD+ availability if you're burning a lot of starch. And so, it all comes down to reductive stress.”
Why Olive Oil Isn’t as Healthy as It’s Made Out To Be
Marshall also recounts research showing the differences between saturated and unsaturated fats in terms of how they affect your metabolism.
“This experiment has been done in humans about four or five times. They feed people bread and butter or bread and olive oil, and measure how much oxygen they're consuming and how much carbon dioxide they're breathing out. That's called respiratory exchange ratio.
If you look at those two numbers, you can determine how much carbohydrate and fat people are burning. And so, if people eat bread with butter, they'll have a relatively high respiratory exchange ratio, and that means that they're burning a lot of the carbohydrate in the meal. So, you eat bread and butter, you can burn that carbohydrate cleanly, which is the right way to do it.
If you eat bread and butter, you want to burn those carbs first. Then, as your blood glucose levels drop, then you'll start to burn more of the fat from the meal. That's the correct sequence. If you eat olive oil and bread, you burn less of the glucose right away.
I would argue that the olive oil makes you essentially acutely insulin resistant. Because the insulin, you eat that bread, the insulin is signaling, it's trying to clear the other things out to allow that glucose to burn. But if you eat bread and olive oil, your respiratory exchange ratio will be lower, and that means you're burning more fat.
And of course, if you read those articles, they say, ‘Oh, eureka. If you eat olive oil, you'll burn more fat than if you eat butter.’ When I look at that, I say, ‘This is bad. This is not what you want.’”
Olive oil, if pure (and most aren’t) is mostly oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, but PUFAs have the same effect. Both will inhibit glucose metabolism. What’s more, when you consume oleic acid, it creates oleoylethanolamide (OEA), which has the opposite effect of SEA.
OEA activates a nuclear receptor called PPAR-alpha, which directly turns off glucose metabolism. So, every time you eat monounsaturated fat, PPAR-alpha is activated and turns off your ability to break down glucose.
High Metabolism Is the Goal
Marshall continues:
“If you compare bread and butter to bread and olive oil, the bread and butter looks like that's what you want … as you want to burn those carbs. Because if you burn those carbs, your NAD+ availability will go up. And I said this in the last show, but there's this old saying that ‘fat burns in the flame of carbohydrate.’
You get that NAD+ availability up and you get that flywheel spinning, and now you can efficiently burn the fat in the meal and also your stored body fat, because the carbs are really driving that process.”
One way to accomplish that is by taking a SEA supplement, as that will increase your metabolic rate. Remember, the key goal is to increase your body's ability to create cellular energy, which means improving your mitochondrial function and increasing your metabolic rate. If you can do that, it doesn't matter what disease you have; most will begin to improve.
Again, to summarize, SEA helps counteract the effects of oleic acid by influencing your body's metabolism and its response to fats. It does this, in part, by suppressing the enzyme delta-9 desaturase in the liver, which plays a role in converting saturated fats into monounsaturated fats like oleic acid.
By doing so, SEA helps reduce your body's tendency to store fat, mimicking a condition where energy storage for winter is unnecessary. This, in turn, helps to improve your metabolic rate and reduce inflammation by affecting NF kappa beta, a protein complex involved in inflammatory responses.
Lab Test for Redox Status Is in the Works
As mentioned earlier, Marshall and I are developing a lab test to assess redox status by analyzing three pairs of compounds: lactate and pyruvate, acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate, and oxidized and reduced glutathione.
We believe this approach will offer more precise insight into cellular health than directly measuring NAD+. We want this test to be affordable and able to provide detailed information about your mitochondrial function to help you monitor your progress as you make various lifestyle changes.
In the interview we discuss, in detail, how and why evaluating these three redox pairs are crucial for understanding how your body processes fuel and manages oxidative stress. We also explain how the balance of these pairs in the mitochondria and cytoplasm can indicate overall metabolic health and the effectiveness of your body's antioxidant defenses, such as glutathione.
In short, the test aims to provide insight into your mitochondrial function and how it can be overwhelmed by excessive or improper fuel intake, which has significant implications for your health.
Marshall also explains how antioxidants, like vitamin C, interact with free radicals, substances with unpaired electrons that can damage cells. When antioxidants donate an electron to free radicals, like superoxide or lipid peroxides, they neutralize them, preventing damage.
However, this process can be complex, as illustrated by glutathione, a crucial antioxidant that, when in its reduced form, helps eliminate harmful substances but can also indicate reductive stress in cancer cells. Thus, maintaining a balanced level of reduced glutathione is essential for health.
More Information
To learn more, please listen to the interview in its entirety. You may need to listen to it several times, even, to really understand it. Once you do, however, the answers to many of your health problems will become that much clearer. And, if you want to dive deeper into molecular biology, be sure to check out Marshall’s YouTube channel, Fire in a Bottle. Marshall also sells a SEA supplement that is available at his website.
The Best Nutrition Course Is NOW Available for You!
In closing, I have other good news. Shortly, I will be sending out invites to train individuals interested in becoming one of my health coaches. My health coaches will be some of the best trained coaches on the planet because they will understand how biology works and how to correct it to optimize health.
Many will apply but only a few will be accepted. Once they are accepted, they will be allowed to enroll in my nutritional biochemistry course at no charge. This course is based on the concepts of the late Dr. Ray Peat who popularized bioenergetic medicine. That's a fancy word for optimizing diet choices to maximize cellular energy production.
Poorly functioning mitochondria is pervasive and probably exists in 98% of the population. Diligent application of the principles outlined by Peat will help your mitochondria recover so they can produce the amount of energy they were designed to. This is important because your body needs energy to activate its intrinsic healing capacity.
The foundation for the nutritional biochemistry course that will be taught to our health coaches is from a course that Ashley and Sarah Armstrong put together. In my view, it is the best health course I've ever seen.
I only wish I had had this course when I first started practicing medicine. It would have been a game changer. It's hard to imagine how many additional hundreds of millions of people I could have helped with this knowledge. Not to worry though, as the knowledge is now available for you.
If you are seriously interested in understanding how your body works, and more importantly, what specific actions you can take to guide it to working the way it was designed to, then this is the course you need to take.
You can enroll for the course on their website. I take no commissions from recommending this course. All the funds go directly to the Armstrong sisters. They’re probably the most knowledgeable farmers on the planet when it comes to health. This is why they can produce some of the healthiest food possible. But you may realize that farmers don't earn very much, so you can support their mission to provide the world with healthy food by purchasing their course.
I would encourage you to seriously consider taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge that has taken them many years to compile and make available to you in an easy to learn format.
Comments (25)
The Four Hormones Most Adults Need More Of
-
Editor's Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published December 3, 2023.
In this interview, repeat guest Georgi Dinkov and I discuss the four hormones most adults need more of if they want to optimize their health. In my introduction I mention that we will review the benefits and mechanisms of action of carbon dioxide (CO2), but we've covered that in Part 2 of this interview, which you can watch here.
As for hormones, if you're optimally healthy, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is unnecessary, as your body will make whatever hormones you need. The problem is that very few people, including me, enjoy truly optimal health.
We live in a very polluted world, so "optimal health" is a high bar for all of us. I take four hormones that I believe most adults can benefit from — progesterone, thyroid hormone T3, DHEA and pregnenolone.
Three of these, progesterone, DHEA and pregnenolone are available over-the-counter. Thyroid hormones, however, require a doctor's prescription. You also need to get routine blood tests done (typically two to four times a year) to make sure your thyroid hormones are maintained at optimal levels. Overtreatment can result in hyperthyroid symptoms, which you clearly want to avoid.
How Hormones Impact Health Span and Life Span
As noted by Dinkov, around the ages of 11 and 12, right before puberty, the hormonal profiles of boys and girls are relatively similar, and they produce about the same amounts of pregnenolone and progesterone.
This is also the time when thyroid hormone levels are the highest they'll ever be, and it's the time in a person's life cycle when their mortality is the lowest. Once puberty strikes, adrenal activity increases. In fact, the old name for puberty was adrenarche, which tells you that adrenal activity is driving the process.
At this time, boys start producing more testosterone and girls progesterone (depending on where they are in the menstrual cycle). Interestingly, many studies have shown that the later puberty starts, the longer the lifespan and health span of both sexes. Conversely, the earlier the onset of puberty, the shorter the lifespan and the more prone to diseases the individual will be.
"After puberty starts and until the late 20s, people are remarkably resilient to stress," Dinkov notes. "In fact, stress often seems stimulating for them. This seems to change drastically after they hit 30, and especially after 35. It's basically a very steep decline.
And if you look at the way the hormonal profile changes, you'll see that whenever young, healthy people are exposed to stress, there's a spike in cortisol release, followed closely by a spike of pregnenolone and DHEA release for males, and pregnenolone, progesterone and DHEA release for females.
That delayed release of these secondary hormones drop off a cliff after the age of about 35. The ranges for pregnenolone, progesterone and DHEA, and even testosterone, change depending on what age group you fall into, but the range for cortisol doesn't change.
So, throughout your lifetime, unless you're critically ill, in which case cortisol drops, or you have Addison disease, which is full on adrenal failure, your cortisol levels do not decline, and that's what keeps you alive because, if you have adrenal failure, unless you take cortisol shots you will die from hypoglycemia or Addison's disease. So, it's lethal.
Cortisol is really a life-saving hormone. It's proinflammatory, but its primary purpose is to keep blood sugar from dropping too low, because your brain runs predominantly on glucose. So, basically, after the age of 35, cortisol stays the same.
It's a catabolic hormone. It can shred your muscles, soft tissue, bone, you name it. There's no organ that is immune to the effects of cortisol. There is only one that is somewhat resilient, and it's the heart. And the reason the heart is so resilient in both genders is because in males, the heart contains a very large amount of testosterone, and in females it contains very large amounts of progesterone.
Both of these happen to be glucocorticoid antagonists. So they're protecting this vital muscle ... but all the other tissues can be shredded and they're considered basically nonessential. So, after the age of 35, you have a stable supply of a catabolic hormone and then a rapidly declining supply of pregnenolone, progesterone and DHEA, all three of which have antiglucocorticoid effects."
All of that said, if you're taking progesterone, you don't need to worry about the DHEA converting to estrogenic substances because progesterone will block that conversion. Even if there is conversion, progesterone is an antagonist at the estrogen receptors so it will directly block the estrogen as well. Pregnenolone has similar effects. It's a milder aromatase inhibitor than progesterone, but it's still quite good at preventing the uptake of estrogen into the cell.
Cortisol-to-DHEA Ratio Is a Good Predictor of Life Span
One of the take-homes from the above is that when you're young, before puberty sets in, you have high production of T3 thyroid hormone, cortisol and anti-cortisol steroids. After age 35, there's a gradual decline of thyroid function and a rapid decline in the synthesis and release of the anti-cortisol hormones, some of which also happen to be anti-estrogenic.
As a result, you enter a state of relative glucocorticoid and estrogen excess, both of which have detrimental effects on health. Dinkov explains:
"The state of glucocorticoid excess is not very well known. It's easily measurable though by the ratio of cortisol to DHEA, or cortisol to progesterone, or cortisol to pregnenolone. Studies demonstrate that the cortisol to DHEA ratio is the best predictor we have for how long you're going to live and for any diseases that you're going to develop throughout your lifetime."
DHEA Influences Your Immune Function
One of the reasons for this is because DHEA is an immune booster, and your immune system is your first line of defense against both acute and chronic diseases, including cancer. And the amount of DHEA produced is about the same in both sexes, regardless of age. Dinkov suspects an ideal ratio of cortisol to DHEA is 0-to-3 or lower.
As for DHEA by itself, he recommends aiming for a level in the upper 50th percentile for the upper range of a 20-year-old, which is around 600 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL). So, ideally, if you're older than 35, you'd want your DHEA to be somewhere between 300 and 600 ng/dL.
As for the daily dosage, the normal daily output of DHEA by the adrenal gland is about 10 milligrams (mg), so for most people, the max DHEA dose would be 5 to 10 mg and mixed with a long-chain fat. According to Dinkov, human studies have shown that once you take more than 10 mg of DHEA per day, you begin to increase estrogen biomarkers, which is something you don't want.
"Anything less than [10 mg], which happens to be a physiological dose, doesn't really cause that much of a problem, but I would still take it with progesterone because blood levels are not always indicative of tissue levels," Dinkov says.
"In fact, [DHEA] is not always reflected on the blood test ... If you look at the studies, they show you that cells have a very high uptake of pregnenolone and DHEA. They accumulate them at levels 100 times higher than what they are in the bloodstream. So if you're very DHEA deficient, it will take a while to fill up your reserves and then for the extra to spill over. About six months.
There's a study with Italian women. They took 10 mg for a full year. Eventually that restored their levels back to normal, but not until the six-month mark did they see significant change. So it really depends on how deficient you are, for how long you've been deficient, and the state of your adrenal gland.
Another study demonstrated that the DHEA starts working immediately. You don't see it in the blood test, but they started measuring downstream metabolites of DHEA and found that taking just 10 mg of DHEA drastically increased the metabolites of the dihydrotestosterone such as 3-alpha androstane diol and metabolites of testosterone, such as testosterone glucoronate and sulfate.
So, DHEA starts working immediately and converting to downstream hormones, but it's going to take a while to see that in the biomarkers that are usually measured, which is DHEA and DHEA sulfate. What they really should be doing is measure all of the other things that DHA can convert into.
And some of those things are estrogens. Chances are, at least based on studies, that either prolactin or estrone will rise if you're taking too high of a dose long before there will be changes in the blood levels of DHEA or DHEA sulfate."
Caveats and Warnings
There are a few important caveats here. Taking too high a dose of DHEA can cause unwanted hair growth in women, and breast growth in men,1 so be sure to monitor your symptoms. DHEA is also banned in sports. It's classified as a doping agent by the World Anti-Doping Agency, so athletes must take their competitive status into account before taking supplemental DHEA.
Also, never take DHEA without progesterone. They need to be taken together. Another point to optimize the therapy and not derail it is that if you take T3, DHEA and/or pregnenolone orally, you need to dissolve them in a long-chain fat (14 carbons or more) first.
If you don't do that, they'll be metabolized by your liver, which significantly lowers their effectiveness. According to Dinkov, the bioavailability of oral hormones can be as low as 10%. Dissolving the supplements in a little ghee or butter will bypass liver metabolism and allow you to get the most out of your supplements.
Olive oil is also a long-chain fat, but I don't recommend it, as it can have 20% linoleic acid (LA) and a flavor that many don't like. According to Dinkov, at least one study has demonstrated that LA binds directly to estrogen receptors and acts like estrogen.
So, LA not merely promotes the effects of estrogen but also acts as an estrogen directly. Since estrogen is a potent carcinogen, you want to avoid things with estrogenic activity. In addition, olive oil contains oleic acid, which is just as damaging as LA.
Progesterone Works Best With Vitamin E
Progesterone, meanwhile, needs to be mixed into vitamin E for optimal bioavailability. Health Natura sells a progesterone in vitamin E product. Alternatively, you can make your own by dissolving pure USP 1/64 (25 mg) or 1/32 (50 mg) tsp of progesterone powder in one capsule of a high-quality vitamin E and applying to your gums 30 minutes prior to bedtime.
You will need to purchase a set of special teaspoons to measure this. The difference in bioavailability between taking progesterone orally without vitamin E and taking it with vitamin E is quite dramatic.
Many are concerned that the label on their product says it is for skin use only. This is because there is an FDA rule that transmucosal application turns the supplement into a drug and they are prohibited from putting that on their label. This is not for your protection it is to protect the drug company's cash flow. Applying the progesterone to your gums is the ideal route of administration and is a perfectly legal off label use of progesterone.
Another good reason for taking progesterone with vitamin E is because it binds to red blood cells, which allows the progesterone to be carried throughout your body and be distributed to where it's needed the most. What's more, Dinkov cites research showing that when you dissolve a substance in vitamin E, it specifically targets sites with the highest inflammation.
Other Important Benefits of Vitamin E
Another important benefit of vitamin E is that it prevents LA stored in your tissues from being oxidized into toxic byproducts. Since most people are walking around with LA stores that are 10 times higher than normal, and since excess LA is likely one of the primary contributors to chronic disease, it can be a good idea to take vitamin E regularly until you get your LA down to healthy levels, which may take up to six years for most people.
Vitamin E can almost miraculously prevent most of the damage done by LA. It can also reverse or prevent many of the issues associated with excess estrogen. This is important because LA has remarkable parallels to excess estrogen in terms of its metabolic and anti-health effects.
When you eat excess PUFA or LA, you increase your body's production of estrogen. So, when you increase LA, estrogen levels go up — and that's not a good thing. Both LA and estrogen interestingly increase the flow of calcium from outside the cell to inside because the concentration of calcium outside as well is 50 times higher than inside. So, the excess as LA will cause the influx of calcium inside the cell, which causes nitric oxide and superoxide to increase inside the cell.
Nitric oxide and superoxide combine almost instantaneously to form a very pernicious reactive nitrogen species called peroxynitrite, which causes pervasive damage to tissues in your body.
Both LA and estrogen also increase a potentially dangerous process in your body called lipolysis, which is simply the liberation of fatty acids from your fat cells into your bloodstream where they are mobilized. This then increases the oxidation of LA, which is precisely what you want to avoid as ideally you want to keep LA in your fat cells until they metabolize it with peroxisomes.
Fortunately, vitamin E can also help neutralize this damaging effect of LA. Vitamin E also directly inhibits the activity of an enzyme called aromatase. This is an enzyme that converts the male hormones like testosterone and DHEA into estrogens.
Even better, it serves as an estrogen antagonist, meaning it binds to the estrogen receptor to block it from binding to estrogen. This dramatically lowers the damage from excess estrogen.
Vitamin E works very similarly to the drug tamoxifen, which is used to treat estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers. For these reasons, I firmly believe nearly everyone needs to be getting vitamin E in their diet. However, due to the high LA burden, very few people can get enough vitamin E from their diet to suppress this oxidative destruction unless they're supplementing with vitamin E.
The good news is that since the supplementation is short term, you're not going to need it the rest of your life. If you can keep your LA intake to below 5 grams a day for three years, it's likely you may not even need it at all, or at most, only a few times a month.
However, if for whatever reason, during this time, or when the LA in your tissues are low or normal, and you go out and binge on a meal that's very high in LA, I would strongly recommend taking a vitamin E capsule to protect yourself from this exposure.
Vitamin E also protects against free radical damage and the normal effects of aging. It's particularly important for brain health, and studies have found it can help delay the loss of cognitive function in people with Alzheimer's disease by preventing cell membrane damage and neuronal death.2
How to Pick a Good Vitamin E Supplement
Most vitamin E supplements are synthetic, and you want to steer clear of those. Studies have demonstrated that synthetic vitamin E has the opposite effect of natural vitamin E, such as increasing the risk of certain cancers rather than lowering it, for example. So, it's important to make sure you're getting a natural version.
Synthetic vitamin E is called alpha tocopherol acetate. The acetate indicates that it's synthetic. Next, you need to pay attention to the orientation of the optical isomer. Most vitamin supplements are racemic, or they have left- and right-hand isomers. This is a problem as most biological molecules have optical isomers that are right-handed.
They're usually called D and L isomers, which stands for right and left. When you have both left and right isomers present, it's called racemic. Biologically, there's usually only one optical isomer that works well, and with vitamin E it is the D isomer that works in your body, while the L isomer is useless. Yet in synthetic supplements, 50% of the vitamin E in the supplement is the useless L isomer.
To make matters even worse, many synthetic versions use an ester of vitamin E, which only has about 50% of the activity of the natural product. So, the total activity of many vitamin E supplements is reduced by 75%.
So, the first step in identifying healthy good vitamin E supplements is to make sure you're getting real vitamin E and not synthetic. What you're looking for is "d alpha tocopherol." This is the pure D isomer, which is what your body can use.
Many vitamin E brands will use vitamin E from sunflower oil, which has a very high percentage of LA. However, the LA in the capsule is an insignificant amount, probably less than 50 or 100 mg, so in this case it's not a problem. Your goal is to keep LA intake under 5,000 mg, and even better under 2,500 mg, so it really won't negatively impact your LA intake at all.
As for dose, you don't need more than 100 mg a day. There are also other vitamin E isomers, and you want the complete spectrum of tocotrienols, specifically the beta, gamma, and delta types of vitamin E, in the effective D isomer. It's important to get this right, which is why I'm going into this much detail.
Most People Can Benefit From Bioidentical Progesterone
So, to tie up the discussion about progesterone, bioidentical progesterone (not synthetic progestin) is probably the most important hormone that most adults need. Conversely, I believe estrogen — including bioidentical estrogen — should never be used, as estrogen is carcinogenic.
As noted by Dinkov, virtually all cancers respond to hormones and estrogen is a primary growth factor in all of them. So, there's really no such thing as a nonendocrine cancer. To learn more about this, see our previous interview, where we dove deeper into the hazards of estrogen.
Unfortunately, most people who use progesterone use it transdermally, which could be problematic. As explained by Dinkov, your skin expresses high levels of 5-alpha reductase enzyme, which causes a significant portion of the progesterone you're taking to be irreversibly converted primarily into allopregnanolone and cannot be converted back into progesterone.
If you're taking it orally with vitamin E as the solvent, a significant portion will be non-metabolized, that non-metabolized progesterone has potent pro-thyroid effects. It's also a thermogenic steroid. It induces uncoupling, so you'll be producing more heat, which is one of the effects of taking T3. While not as potent as taking T3, it can raise your metabolic rate by about 10%.
Progesterone also blocks cortisol and helps protect against excess cortisol production, but not to the point of causing cortisol deficiency (Addison disease), and it helps deactivate adrenaline.
"There are human studies demonstrating that you administer progesterone, even in its nonoptimal form — such as just the powder without the long-chain fatty acids and definitely without the tocopherols — even in that form, 100 to 200 milligrams orally.
A single dose is sufficient to drop cortisol and adrenaline by about 60%. As a side effect of that, the blood pressure also dropped in both sexes," Dinkov says. "So, we know that progesterone has a very potent antistress effect by acting specifically on the two sides of the stress system, cortisol and adrenaline.
One of the explanations is that progesterone has shown some ability to directly activate the alpha receptors, which are negative feedback. In other words, if you activate the alpha adrenal receptor, you basically send in the signal that there's too much adrenaline, so the body will produce less adrenaline ..."
The dose of bioidentical progesterone I recommend is 30 to 50 mg a day (again, mixed with a long-chain fat), taken in the evening before bed, as it can promote sleepiness. The same dose (30 to 50 mg a day) is recommended for pregnenolone. This is the physiological dose, meaning it's what you need for full replenishment, assuming you're producing nothing.
Important Caveat for Menstruating Women
Women who still menstruate need to be careful with the timing of their progesterone supplementation. Progesterone is crucial for successful pregnancy, and you can severely inhibit your ability to get pregnant if you take it at the wrong time. (During pregnancy, progesterone actually skyrockets. In the third trimester, women produce about 600 mg a day.)
If your menses are regular, start taking the progesterone on the 14th day after your menstrual flow begins, and take it for 14 days straight (until cycle day 27). If your cycles are short, start on day 12 and continue for 14 days. Always take the progesterone for the full 14 days even if your menses begin before the 14 days are over. Start the next progesterone 14 days after the flow began.3
There's no toxicity to progesterone, unlike estrogen and testosterone, neither of which I recommend. Progesterone, T3, DHEA and pregnenolone are the only hormones you really need. Supplementing progesterone also will not lower your natural production, so you don't need to be concerned about that. In fact, it enhances your natural production.
Thyroid Hormone Supplementation
When it comes to your thyroid, most people only need T3. That said, desiccated thyroid contains both T3 and T4 and can be a good option for some. Here, unless you're treating a specific thyroid problem, the generally recommended dose is 10 micrograms two to three times a day. Dinkov comments:
"The thyroid gland produces about 100 micrograms in a healthy person — 100 micrograms of T3 over 24-hour period. If you take more than 25 micrograms, even that is a very high dose because it has such a potent thermogenic effect, and in higher doses can be catabolic.
The body has deiodinase enzymes, and they very quickly convert the excess T3 into something called T2 and even T1 ... So, in other words, you're going to be wasting most of it. Interestingly, the same type of enzymes, T3 deactivating, are highly overexpressed in cancer cells, and cancer cells just happen to be very hypometabolic, as we've discussed previously.
So the thyroid gland produces T3 and T4 in a ratio of about 1 to 4 in favor of T4. T4 is actually a prohormone, it by itself does not have a very high activity directly at the thyroid receptors T3. So, it circulates and about 80% of it in the liver, in a healthy person, should get converted to T3. The other 20% can get converted to T3 peripherally, or if the dosage of T4 is too high, the excess very quickly gets converted to something called reverse T3.
This is a very dangerous state because reverse T3 acts as a thyroid hormone antagonist ... Most doctors don't take these things into account, so if they prescribe you, let's say, 100 or 200 micrograms T4 daily. You better be praying that this will get properly converted because if it doesn't, and gets converted to reverse T3, you'll end up in a more hypothyroid state than if you did not take the T4 at all ...
T4 is almost never a good option by itself unless the person is very young. But even then, if a person is hypothyroid, that by definition already means that the liver will be burdened, because one of the primary functions of the liver is the detox mechanisms and one of the primary things that liver detoxifies are polyunsaturated fats and estrogens.
But the detoxification mechanisms themselves depend on thyroid function. So hypothyroid means sluggish liver by definition. So, if you give a hypothyroid person T4 only, especially if the dose is higher, you're asking for trouble. Some of that will get converted to reverse T3."
Comments (33)
18.216.142.120 | United States | 341 |