Second Opinion

I don’t know what to think of the latest news out on weight loss.  If you take it at face value, there isn’t much other than western drugs to help you lose weight.  The article which appeared in the latest Medscape Week In Review, and  it went through a number of supplements which are touted as weight loss aids.  The authors of the article suggested that eating fewer calories and exercising more was “not only hard work, but also may also be a source of embarrassment.”  I guess this means that the only way to lose weight is to take something!

Perhaps I’m really from another planet.  Perhaps I don’t understand the most fundamental things in life.  But reading that sentence made me want to scream WAIT A MINUTE!!!  STOP RIGHT THERE!!  When did hard work become out of reach for Americans? I know we like our conveniences, but believe me, we DO work hard!  Very, very hard, in fact.  Consider the fact that the whole of France seems to get the month of August off - yes, that’s right - the month of August - I’d say that Americans can be considered hard working.

But there are 2 things we love beyond reason:  gasoline and snacks.  We don’t just eat because we’re hungry, we eat because that chunk of dough has been fried first and then covered with sugar!  Wow!  And who doesn’t love the dilemma of what toppings to put on the hamburger or hot dog?  You can’t tell me that we’re going to stop at one topping.  Or not put that melted cheese on top of those fries.  That would be positively un-American!  And then, to make it all seem simpler, we’ll get into our $25,000 car and drive the 4 blocks to get the $7 fast food meal with diet coke.  Walk?  Are you serious?  It’s FOUR blocks!!

But we become convinced that if we cut out carbs, and take those pills or capsules, we’ll get skinny again.

Believe that one, and I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in buying.  The only things I know of that interfere with the calories in/calories out equation are medications and hormones.  People taking certain meds might have a harder time losing weight.  Women going through menopause might have a harder time losing weight.  Other than that, the equation is really very simple.  How many calories are you taking in?  How many are you burning?  If the first number is bigger than the second, you’re going to gain weight.  If it’s smaller, you’ll lose it.  Period.   End of story.

But then you read articles like the one in Medscape, and it’s easy to become convinced that drugs are the only certainty.  Every single supplement seems to fail.  But do they?  I’m skeptical of the studies that are cited.  The samples are small.  And they cite one study for each of the supplements.  Does one study make for convincing evidence?

You decide.  Here’s the link:  The Skinny on Weight Loss 

Good news for chocolate lovers!  The latest study shows that cocoa and not tea, lowers blood pressure.  We all know we love our chocolate, and there have been all kinds of studies showing this and that health benefit - especially from dark chocolate.  Now it seems that cocoa is a health food drink.  Well, yippppeeeee, is all I can say!  My only question is this:  How about the marshmallow on top?  Are there studies showing the health benefits of marshmallows?

To read the latest report, click on the following link:

Cocoa, But Not Tea, Lowers Blood Pressure 

The news is a bumpy road, isn’t it?  One year, the FDA will approve of something, and several years later it will vote against it.  We are told that something is safe.  Then we are told that well, no, it’s not really safe.  In fact, if you believed us the last time we opined about it, then you might be at risk for an early death.  Makes it kind of difficult to know what to believe.

Now they’ve decided that even after you quit, you still have a higher risk of developing breast cancer if you took both estrogen and progestin as hormone replacement therapy.  For some reason, I’m not surprised.  It’s the same kind of thing that goes on with birth control.  Women have this problem, you see.  We want to control our reproductive choices, and we want to stay young.  In both cases, hormones are involved.  And once we start tweaking our hormones, we start elevating our risk for various cancers.  The problem is both medical and social.  In order to control our reproductive choices, women will often choose some form of a pill.  Some of them allow a woman to have a period every month.  Some will shut down the menstrual cycle for 3 months.  The latter have recently been shown to elevate the risk of stroke.

And then there’s the whole issue of post-menopausal beauty.  What woman wants to look old?  Most of us feel younger than what the mirror tells us.  We are often youthful well past the end of our monthly cycles.  With hormone replacement therapy, we were offered the Cinderella option:  You can dress up!  You can shine!  The Prince will fall in love with you!  Isn’t this the role we women learned to want with all our hearts when we were little girls?  Isn’t this what society holds out for us as the prize?  It certainly wasn’t supposed to include  having problems with sleep or having hot flashes!

But of course, come midnight, that clock will chime.  And that golden coach drawn by beautiful white horses will turn into a pumpkin again.  And those fairy tale dreams of extended youth will come to an end if we wind up with cancer.  We will undergo chemo and radiation.  We will lose our hair and our appetite.  And perhaps our lives.

There’s so much money to be made in pharmaceuticals.  It boggles the mind.  It’s just heartbreaking to realize that the fortunes made often come at the cost of so many lives.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know that the pharmaceutical industry has also saved many lives.  But it has also cost many of them, too.  I wonder if anyone has ever done a cost/benefit analysis of this whole industry to determine if we’re running in the red or the black?

To read the full story of post HRT breast cancer risks, click here.

Well, maybe you don’t want to know. Every day we get news about some kind of crisis in the food chain. It gets scarier and scarier, because, after all, we have to eat. What we choose to eat is up to us, but there’s no doubt that we must eat. So today’s news is another grim reminder for those of you who eat beef, that maybe it’s time to either re-think this one altogether, of maybe it’s time to decide that the only beef you’re willing to eat is that which is produced on smaller, more sustainable farms. Something like Nieman Ranch, for instance.

Personally, I’m not a vegetarian. But also personally, I prefer to eat lower on the food chain more often than not. And beef is something I eat probably no more than about 3 times a year. Maybe. If that much. But when I do buy it, it’s usually organic. Otherwise, I eat chicken, fish and sometimes pork. And more often than not, I try to buy organic meats and wild caught fish. It’s crazy that it costs more, but so be it. I’m just not keen on eating a whole lot of chemicals that have been added to preserve freshness and color. I don’t want to eat the antibiotics that they feed to the animals because they’re kept in such awful conditions that they must be fed antibiotics to live. If I must take an antibiotic, I’d rather have one prescribed to me than get it through my food.

So here’s the link to today’s story: Largest Recall of Ground Beef is Ordered

At last!!!  Someone has done some research, and my suspicions are being confirmed.  Seems that diet sodas can make you GAIN weight.  Yes, that’s right - gain it.  For some reason, if your brain detects the taste of sweet, and there’s no calories attached to that taste, it seems to re-set your metabolism.

Bummer?  Maybe not.  Maybe you don’t really need artificial sweeteners.   Maybe if you’re thirsty, what you need is water.  Maybe if you want something sweet, you need something sweet — like honey or another kind of sugar.  Maybe your body wasn’t designed to figure out what to do with aspertame, sucralose or another kind of artificial sweetener.  I know, I know - sucralose is made from sugar.  But it doesn’t have the calories - right?

So maybe, just maybe, in the land of plenty, we need to learn to do with a little less if we want to be healthy.

Think about it.

A fascinating article appeared in today’s New York Times on the link, or phantom link, between cholesterol and heart disease.  It’s a wonderful example of how something we all agree upon as true can become slippery and vague.

It seems that the latest controlled studies of Vytorin have shown that while it lowers the bad cholesterol (LDLs) significantly, it does not slow the accumulation of fatty plaques in the arteries.  This article is a fascinating read.  Click on the link to go to the original article itself.

What’s Cholesterol Got To Do With It? 

The sugar season is over, the gym season has arrived.  New memberships in gyms are typically up this month, and people enthusiastically hit the treadmill and the weights with all the zeal they had when they hit the hors d’oevres and the drinks and the sweets during the holiday time.  Unfortunately, many of these new enthusiasts will pay the price for that enthusiasm.

Recent studies show that acupuncture effectively treats sports injuries such as strains; sprains; neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee and ankle pain; swollen muscles and shin splints.

Treatment for a sports injury with acupuncture and Oriental medicine has a couple of objectives:

1.  Reduction of pain and inflammation.  Acupuncture increases local circulation.  What this does is bring the body’s natural anti-inflammatory response to the area.  White blood cells arrive quicker, and the overall result is a quicker dispersion of local fluid buildup, faster healing of injured tissue, and as a result, a decrease in inflammation.  All of this also leads to a reduction in pain.

2. Enhancing athletic performance and reducing further injuries.  After injured tissue has healed, the body benefits from regular acupuncture “tune-ups”.  These serve to keep the blood and energy flowing to the joints, muscles and connective tissues.  That’s why you’ll find that major athletes are  all getting regular acupuncture treatments these days.  They just perform better when they’re tuned up!

Of course, the best approach to staying on track with your New Year’s resolution is to not get injured in the first place.  And the best way to do that is to take it slowly at first.  You will actually achieve your results quicker that way, because you won’t suffer the setback of a sports injury.  (And yes, it can even happen to you!!)

If you do suffer from a setback in your fitness routine, give your acupuncturist a call. They will be able to give you more information about treatment options to get you healthy and injury free! 

Seems that we women are sleep walking.  according to the National Sleep Foundation, 67% of women experience sleep problems at least a few nights each week.  We are dragging around trying to do it all.

Many women have problems sleeping because of children or pets, noise or hormones.  The bottom line, however, is that we are not alert during the day.  This same study reported that 80% of women reported daytime sleepiness.  And the Law of Unintended Consequences has us moody and sad as a result of this sleep deprivation.  80% of women reported being stressed out, anxious or worried.

Is this any way to live a life?  Is this what we were raised to do?  How can we parent effectively, or be a good partner to someone if we are staggering around without enough sleep?  The ancient Chinese sages described a healthy lifestyle as one which balanced work and rest, material and spiritual life.  Illness was the result of living a life out of balance.  The Hopi Indians have a word for it:  Koyannaskatsi.  (Perhaps not the right spelling…)  It means “Life out of balance.  The kind of life that calls for a different kind of life.”

So instead of your New Year’s resolutions being about losing weight or getting that new job or redecorating the house, why not throw in a word for a life in balance.  Why not resolve to take a nap at least 3 times a week?  Why not resolve to take a half an hour at least 4 times a week to read a book or a magazine?  How about taking a walk just because it’s good to get out and move?  You might even see something in your neighborhood you didn’t know was there…..

And you just might find yourself sleeping more soundly!

Recent studies have shown that regular fasting can improve one’s risk of cardiovascular disease.  Researchers have studied a population of Mormons for the last 30 years and have seen that there is a statistically significant difference in heart disease between the study group and the population at large.  Part of this difference can be attributed to the fact that Mormons are forbidden to smoke, but the difference was so great that researchers began looking at other possible reasons.

They settled on regular fasting as a probable reason.  Many studies show that restricting one’s caloric intake can increase longevity.  Mormon fast for 24 hours once a month.  This approach differs radically from those who follow a highly restrictive diet in their efforts to prolong life.  24 hours once a month makes the body delve into it’s stores of nutrients rather than relying of food intake.  It also could possibly resensitize the body to glucose and insulin without throwing the body into starvation mode.  It’s an interesting hypothesis which deserves further study, I think.

One thing the researchers didn’t look at was the difference in caffeine intake between Mormons and the general population.  It’s possible that caffeine or other such stimulants, absent from the Mormon diet but present in the population at large could also be playing a role.  Caffeine has been shown to be heart toxic, so the restriction on it’s intake seems to me to be a likely cause for the difference in heart disease rates.

To read the full article, click here:  Regular Fasting May Improve CVD Risk

Well, it seems that once again, the medical community has gone public with the statement that antibiotics are not really justified for upper respiratory tract infections, sore throat or ear infections.  For those of you who have routinely taken your child to the doctor for ear infections and had antibiotics prescribed, you now know that the medical community doesn’t recommend this.

But what do you do?  It’s hard to be a parent whose child is suffering from an ailment.  You want to do something.  You need to do something!  And so a trip to the doctor’s office seems like the best idea.  But wait!  Perhaps there’s a better solution?  What if your local acupuncturist/herbalist could give your child some herbs and make it go away.  Would that feel better to you?

I know it would feel better to me.  Why?  Because bacterial infections are getting more and more dangerous as we use more and more antibiotics.  The strains of bacteria that survive are stronger.  And when we give antibiotics for a virus - for which they do absolutely nothing - we are creating children and adults with weaker immune systems.  This gives a natural advantage to the very organisms we are trying to control!

So next time, try the more conservative route first.  Try giving your child an herbal formula recommended by a qualified herbalist.  You might be amazed at how quickly the problem is resolved.

To read the article on antibiotics and respiratory tract infections, follow this link:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/564538?src=mp