Lose fat not muscle with a protein-rich diet & exercise

Protein-rich diet boosts benefit of exercise...

06/08/2005-

People following advice to cut calories and increase physical activity to lose weight will see greater benefits if their diet is rich in protein, reveals a new study. The trial on almost 50 overweight women confirms previous studies showing that a high-protein diet can lead to greater fat loss than a low-calorie, high carbohydrate diet.
But the researchers from the University of Illinois have also demonstrated that when both regimes are combined with an exercise programme, the protein-rich diet is still more effective at reducing body fat.
"There's an additive, interactive effect when a protein-rich diet is combined with exercise. The two work together to correct body composition; dieters lose more weight, and they lose fat, not muscle," said author Donald Layman, professor of food science and human nutrition.
Layman’s team recruited 48 women aged around 46 years old with a body mass index of 33 kg/m(2) during weight loss.
Half the women ate a protein-rich diet containing specific levels of leucine, one of the essential amino acids, for four months. The others followed a diet based on the US food guide pyramid, which contained higher amounts of carbohydrates.
Both groups consumed the same number of calories, but the first group substituted protein foods, like meat, dairy products, eggs, and nuts, for foods high in carbohydrates, such as breads, rice, cereal, pasta, and potatoes.
"Both diets work because, when you restrict calories, you lose weight. But the people on the higher-protein diet lost more weight," said Layman.
High-protein diets have been controversial as they counter the accepted weight-loss diet and there is little information on their impact on health over the long-term. But recent studies suggest that they may indeed work better than low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets by increasing satiety and reducing fat mass.
In the current study, published in the August issue of the Journal of Nutrition (vol 135, issue 8, pp1903-10), the subjects were also required to follow one of two different exercise programmes. The first involved walking two to three times a week, while the second group included five 30-minute walking sessions and two 30-minute weightlifting sessions per week.
In both groups of dieters, the exercise helped spare lean muscle tissue and target fat loss. But, the protein-rich, high-exercise group, lost even more weight, and almost 100 per cent of the weight loss was fat, report the researchers.
In the high-carbohydrate, high-exercise group, however, as much as 25 to 30 per cent of the weight lost was muscle.
The protein-rich diet seems to be even more effective for people at higher risk of heart disease.
"The protein-rich diet dramatically lowered triglycerides and had a statistically significant effect on trunk fat, both risk factors associated with heart disease," said Layman.
"Exercise helped dieters lose an even greater percentage of body fat from the abdominal area."
The protein-rich diet is thought to work well because it contains a high level of leucine. The amino acid works with insulin to stimulate protein synthesis in muscle.
"The diet works because the extra protein reduces muscle loss while the low-carbohydrate component gives you low insulin, allowing you to burn fat," explained Layman.

Comment: HealthPointe 2.0 is just the program to follow to get these kind of results. www.cwiechert.com/weightloss.html

cw

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

The Rest of The Story - You will not hear...

Autistic boy dies during controversial treatment

PostGazette.com
Wednesday, August 24, 2005 By Karen Kane and Virginia Linn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A 5-year-old Monroeville boy died this week during a medical treatment that's being touted by some as a cure for autism. The autistic boy died while receiving chelation -- an intravenous injection of a synthetic amino acid known as EDTA, for ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the practice only to treat heavy metal (such as lead) poisoning. The treatment is becoming increasingly popular, though still controversial, for autism. Police are investigating the boy's death, which occurred Tuesday morning in the office of Dr. Roy Kerry in Portersville. Kerry did not return calls today. An autopsy conducted today was inconclusive. Results on the cause and manner of death are pending additional testing that could take up to five months to complete, authorities said.

I received this e-mail from Dr. Garry Gordon, a pioneer in Chelation and a person I respect very much...

Dear Health Care Professionals:

I am involved in gathering all of the details surrounding this unfortunate situation. We know the media is going to put this in the light that money hungry doctors are taking advantage of the gullible public and telling them that heavy metals are contributing to many different health problems. In fact that kind of "attack" against chelation doctors treating for heavy metals has been published very recently. You cannot imagine how much of a feeding frenzy the media will have over this unless you remember the story about Dr Shortt and the Hydrogen Peroxide death a few months ago. There the media, particularly "60 minutes", PRETENDED that they wanted to know the FACTS. Of course that was just so that they could fabricate a story protecting mainstream medicine that was the real culprit while doing everything in their power to put the alternative medicine approach down. I have been told by those who are in touch with the mother for the deceased boy that she is convinced that the entire program her son was on was dramatically changing his life for the better. She hopes the doctors will not stop offering chelation to children who she knows are being benefitted and she bears no regret that she was pursuing these therapies. She does NOT want to see other parents abandon the concepts that were clearly helping her 5+ year old son.

You may soon read and hear the kind of hysteria and negative press that I expected to see, but it will get FAR WORSE before it gets better. As of this moment, I can only assume that there must have been a substantial deviation from the standard procedures that I, and all of you, have established for the safe administration of Calcium EDTA. As incredible as it may seem to those of you belonging to this discussion group, the possibility exists that the child was treated with Disodium EDTA administered by IV Push. I am forced to consider this unfortunate explanation unless there was some major undiagnosed illness in the child that no one suspected, such as a major heart defect or perhaps an aneurism that ruptured at the exact time the patient was receiving the IV Push of Calcium EDTA. However, the autopsy has been completed and the results were inconclusive so that they have ordered additional tests, which may take up to 5 months to complete.

So let's look at the big picture, there are NO DEATHS occurring when EDTA, either calcium or Disodium are PROPERLY administered. Furthermore, on my www.gordonresearch.com website, all of my current PowerPoint presentations have more and more DOCUMENTATION regarding the increasing extent of heavy metal accumulation in the population and profound studies PROVING that these toxic metals are causing serious health problems in every tissue, from the cataracts to the blood vessels and so on. (Cataracts-Harvard study proves bone lead goes to the brain, recent study ties lead to renal failure, hypertension, lowered IQ, increased morbidity and mortality from all causes). Simply put there is NO SAFE LEVEL of Lead. Now the media will try to make chelation out to be fraudulent and the tests that we do to measure lead etc as being meaningless. Amazingly they will bring out Quack buster Barrett who with a little more effort we may be able to one day put behind bars for his lies and incompetence. Thus I have to conclude some error in rate of administration, dosage, method of preparation probably occurred; in fact, I now believe this is most likely rather than administering the correct drug, Calcium EDTA, intravenously, which even in children is safe and effective. Doctors who have been providing this treatment to children can hardly stop talking about the remarkable successes they have been witnessing with children responding far more rapidly than we could ever do with just the oral Calcium EDTA that I have been advocating for so long.We know that worldwide sales of all forms of EDTA have been steadily increasing and that based on logical calculations it appears that well over 10 million patients have been safely treated with either Calcium or Disodium EDTA over the past 32+ years without a single documented fatality, as long as the established protocols were followed. So with all the evidence to date supporting my contention that EDTA is perhaps the safest therapy offered in medicine, outside of placebos, no other medical therapy that I am aware of enjoys a better safety record.To my knowledge, EDTA has been safely administered for nearly 50 years with the only deaths occurring in the beginning, with terminal cancer patients suffering uncontrolled hypercalcemia where inappropriate doses of Disodium EDTA were administered by rapid infusion to patients with known compromised renal status. With the extensive proof now existing that everyone today has nearly 1000 times too much lead in their bones and Harvard publishing that this bone lead will compromise vision there can be no argument that we all have some heavy metal toxicity. Then once we conclude that government cannot stop the mercury, cadmium, lead etc from going in the air, and thus into everyone anywhere on earth, then it becomes a matter of personal choice, live with these heavy metals or remove them. Oral chelation is clearly necessary since bone lead will take 10 years to turn over for the average adult, but some of us want results NOW. Nothing is as effective as the 147 fold increase in lead excretion over base line that IV Calcium EDTA, PROPERLY FORMULATED, was documented to induce by Doctors Data with the help of Dr Whitaker's staff. Thus I must extend my sympathy to the family of the deceased 5-year-old boy from Nigeria whose brave mother came to the Pittsburg area from the United Kingdom to seek treatment for her autistic child. She was seeing clear improvements in her son. This was the third infusion he had received. He apparently had a cardiac arrest and was unable to be resuscitated immediately following this third infusion of what I fear was not Calcium EDTA, which is the ONLY form of EDTA that I have advocated for the exciting rapid infusion technique. I hope those who have experience with it in their practice are NOT GOING TO STOP USING it that you have the "rest of the story", as best as we can establish it at this time. Please understand that the involved doctors cannot be expected to admit anything on advice of their attorneys. I have only checked to see if they have ever purchased Calcium EDTA and found the answer was no leading me to compose this email in an attempt to diminish the harm that the media will do to everyone who otherwise could have been receiving oral and or IV chelation and will now be afraid.This email may be copied and handed to your patients in an effort to meet the need for a fully informed consent so that patients who now will have the media getting them badly frightened- with incompetent physicians, like quack buster Barrett, alleging that the mercury in our body is OF NO CONSEQUENCE and the tests that we all use to determine heavy metal status are all "Bogus". This is my effort to provide some balance. We know we are lead, mercury, cadmium, toxic and we know we have less than optimal health because of these heavy metals. We know that they have a long half-life and without some intervention they will be there to help diminish our immune system function just when we most need it. After an auto accident, when we are flat on our back, the bones start to breakdown due to lack of exercise releasing lead so that the infections we are exposed to in the hospital KILL over 100,000 a year, not all due to virulence of the organism, but partly due to the diminished capacity of a lead poisoned immune system in a lead toxic body. Or, with menopause, the bone loss releases lead bringing about hypertension. So WE ALL NEED detoxification everyday of our life and this unfortunate death will not change those facts.

Sincerely,

Garry F. Gordon MD, DO, MD(H)
President,
Gordon Research Institutewww.gordonresearch.com

cw

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

Just say no to drugs

8 Medical Lies and Why I Abandoned Medicine
By Shane Ellison, M.Sc.
Early to Rise © 2005

By education and by trade, I was a drug chemist. My passion for science motivated a successful career in drug design and synthesis – in both academia and industry. As a scientist, I witnessed first-hand the priorities of international pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma), which ranked wealth first and health a distant second.In the pharmaceutical industry, making money supercedes science. Science no longer prevails in medicine. Instead, modern medicine has been democratized. Drug approval is a simple matter of 51% telling the other 49% that a prescription drug is safe and necessary. The outcome: deadly drugs are approved for use among misinformed medical doctors and patients. Herein lies a story of deceit and a chemist’s abandonment of modern medicine.My suspicion of modern medicine began while I was employed by Eli Lilly to design a new generation of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) drugs. Such drugs include tamoxifen and raloxifene. Initially, these drugs were thought to block estrogen receptors (excess estrogen can initiate cancer growth) and thereby halt cancer. As time progressed, though, it was learned that they were also capable of activating estrogen receptors. The end result was a biochemical environment favorable to cancer growth among users.[1][1] The Journal of the American Medical Association recognized this trend and stated "our data add to the growing body of evidence that recent long-term use of HRT is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and that such use may be related particularly to lobular tumors." The risk of cancer associated with HRT drugs was obscured from doctors by drug companies. This can be seen by the fact that tamoxifen is the gold-standard used by medical doctors to fight cancer among their patients, particularly breast cancer. This explains why medical doctors might not notice its ability to cause cancer – the patient already has it.At any rate, my task was made clear: Design HRT “knock-offs” that are effective without causing cancer.My attempt to design safer alternatives was unsuccessful. And after one year, the project was ended. However, access to HRT drugs like tamoxifen was not. They remained on the market. The fuel driving the continued use of HRT drugs was disinformation via Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) advertising. Since 1962, monitoring DTC advertising has been the sole responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But in a ghastly conflict of interests, the FDA granted the duty of DTC advertising to the pharmaceutical companies in 1997. Officially, this was done as a means of “promoting health awareness to ensure health and safety.” Unofficially, it was done to sell more drugs. DTC advertising dictated that all women over 50 should use HRT to remain healthy. Women scurried to their doctors to ask if “HRT was right for them.” My suspicion grew into conflict. The disinformation campaign behind HRT drugs was not an isolated case. I learned that drug advertising and science are frequently in direct opposition to each other. For example:
DTC advertising dictates that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that an aspirin a day will keep heart attack away. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that depression is a disease that must be treated with prescription drugs. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that ADHD is a disease and that our children must be treated with amphetamines. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that infants must be vaccinated to prevent childhood illness. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that blood pressure must be controlled via a lifetime of servitude to prescription drugs. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that chemotherapy is your first line of defense against deadly cancer. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that Type II diabetes must be treated with daily insulin use. Science proves otherwise.
By spreading the aforementioned health myths, DTC advertising forges a belief among the general public which asserts that drugs – not lifestyle habits and nutrition - confer health and longevity. And although, in reality, medicine is only necessary for sick people in times of emergency, DTC advertising has been wildly successful in convincing people that being healthy requires a lifetime of prescription drug use. While it's true that the advertising usually mentions the potential side effects of drugs, doctors tend to discount them. They simply regurgitate the pharmaceutical-company line that “the benefits of a drug outweigh the risks.” Don’t believe it.
Western Medicine’s plague of deception is deadlier than any virus, illicit drugs, and terrorism combined. Well-documented in scientific journals and reported by media outlets nationwide, FDA approved drugs are killing an estimated 106,000 people every year.[2][2] That equates to one individual dying every five minutes from “approved” drugs - 300 people dying every day. Which is twice as many deaths in a single year from "approved drugs" as the total number of U.S. deaths from the Vietnam War.[3][3] This does not count death by hospital medical error, which adds 98,000 deaths to the atrocity.[4][4] If not killed, an estimated 2 million people are victims of drug-induced illnesses.[5][5] These may include drug-induced obesity, cancer, kidney disease, autism, depression and heart failure.
Hypnotized by DTC advertising, people are oblivious to the ill effects of prescription drug use. This is evidenced by their willingness to swallow whatever “the doctor ordered.” They drug their children, hop the borders to smuggle inexpensive prescription drugs back into the U.S., beg their congressman for discounts and pay a lifetime of insurance fees in order to snatch up these silent killers. The avalanche of DTC advertising has smothered common sense.
For the general public and medical doctors to fully grasp the effect of Modern Medicine’s Deceit, they have to judge the situation by what a drug is actually accomplishing, rather than what the drug company ads and pharmaceutically-compliant politicians insist. The health benefits of prescription drugs are illusory. Step away from the hypnotic drug ads, close the ghost-written medical journals, discard research studies dominated by statistical contortionists and give yourself a prescription-drug reality check: Very few prescription drugs have any value outside of emergency medicine and those that do can usually be replaced with safer and less expensive natural medicine. This was a troublesome lesson for me, as an aspiring drug chemist, to learn. Unfortunately, it was not the only one.Humanitarianism among Big Pharma has been abandoned. The technical skills of chemists are not being used for humanitarian purposes. They are being used in a deadly game of profiteering. Those at risk are not the misinformed, high-paid medical doctors but rather their patients. Becoming aware of this ripple effect of DTC advertising led to my abandonment of modern medicine.
I had to face the cold, hard facts: Western Medicine has become a billion dollar empire not out of keen science, but rather deceit. The end result has been one nation under drugs. This subjugation has set a standard of health in America that, by definition, is sick care disguised as health care.
Forward thinking chemists recognize the deadly trend. But few have the luxury of speaking out or resigning. The majority of chemists in the U.S. are foreigners. Their career secures them the right to live and work in the U.S. This demands allegiance to their employer, regardless of the end result of their labors. Admittedly, that this is an intentional act of Big Pharma is speculative.
Individuals outside of the drug industry often question my conflict with Big Pharma. How can a single person denounce a philosophy adhered to by millions of medical doctors? That is simple: I ignore the majority thinking that is steeped in disinformation. I stand firm in science. Truth in science requires only one scientist to verify reproducible results in the face of pharmaceutical tyranny.
Science proves that habits, not drugs, create and eradicate disease. The current devastation of prescription drugs is a warning that healthy lifestyle and nutrition habits must replace blind worship of prescription drugs in the pursuit of life-extension. As people obtain better health intelligence and heed this warning, drug use will recede. A new model of health care based on common sense, not profiteering, will emerge.
About the Author
Shane Ellison is dedicated to stopping prescription drug hype in its tracks. To this end, he has made it his mission to introduce healthy lifestyle habits as well as safe and effective nutritional supplements to the public. With his keen ability to sift through scientific literature and weed out fact from fiction, Shane has empowered thousands to assert their health freedom by saying "no" to prescription drugs. Learn more at www.healthmyths.net

CW

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

Zinc & Vitamin D in the news...

Weekly Zinc Supplements Can Reduce Deaths In Young Children
2005/08/23 -
The Lancet

From 2000 to 2003, pneumonia caused 2 million of 10·6 million deaths among childrenyounger than 5 years worldwide. Diarrhoea causes a further 1·9 million deaths in this groupannually. Daily regimens of zinc have been reported to prevent acute lower respiratory tractinfection and diarrhoea, and reduce child mortality.
Abdullah Brooks (International Centre for Diarrhoea Disease Research, Dhaka, Bangladesh)and colleagues looked at whether giving children zinc weekly could prevent clinicalpneumonia* and diarrhoea in children younger than two years. Between April 1999 andAugust 2000 the investigators recruited 1621 children aged 2–12 months from Kamalapur,Bangladesh. Half the children were assigned to a weekly 70 mg dose of zinc and half toplacebo. The investigators found mortality was reduced by 85% in the group assigned zinc.Children younger than 12 months in this group also had less pneumonia and diarrhoea thanthose on placebo.
Dr Brooks states: “Zinc substantially reduced the incidence of pneumonia and other upperand lower respiratory tract disease, and modestly reduced that of diarrhoea. However, theeffect of zinc on mortality was strong . . . Zinc might be progressively protective against moreinvasive and severe disease, leading to an 85% reduction in overall mortality, primarily owingto pneumonia.”
Dr W Abdullah Brooks, Programme of Infectious Diseases & Vaccine Sciences, Health Systems InfectiousDiseases Division, ICDDRB Centre for Health & Population Research, GPO Box 128, Mohakhali,Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh. Author in the US until August 27 contact T) +1 518 945 3071;Mobile: 443 722 5511.


Half of women treated with osteoporosis drugs may have insufficient vitamin D levels...

Research conducted by Michael F Holick, MD, PhD, of Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues has found that women being treated for osteoporosis have low levels of vitamin D, a nutrient that is necessary for adequate bone mineralization. The study was published in the June 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (http://jcem.endojournals.org/).
Dr Holick and colleagues recruited 1,536 women from 61 study sites who had been taking osteoporosis medications for a minimum of three months. Participants were allowed to have used vitamin D supplements, but were excluded if they had recently decreased or increased the amount taken. All participants received medical examinations during which they were questioned concerning medication and supplement intake, and blood samples were drawn and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (the active vitamin D metabolite) levels measured.
Fifty-two percent of the women were found to have inadequate levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, defined as less than 30 nanograms per milliliter. Eighteen percent had levels even lower, at 20 nanograms per milliliter or below. Sixty-three percent of women who reported an intake of 400 international units or less of supplemental vitamin D had inadequate vitamin D levels compared to 45 percent of those whose intake was 400 international units or greater. The absence of prior discussion with a physician concerning vitamin D's importance to bone health was also associated with lower levels of the vitamin.
The authors write that although the study was conducted during winter when vitamin D levels are usually lower, even with adequate sun exposure during summer and fall the public is still at risk for low levels of the vitamin because its half life is only two weeks. They recommend greater education concerning improving vitamin D status in women with osteoporosis.

CW

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

Fish oil 'calms kids with ADHD'

AAP16aug05A

DAILY dose of fish oil helps calm children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, an Australian study suggests, PhD psychology student Natalie Sinn, of the University of South Australia and CSIRO Nutrition, studied 145 children aged seven to 12 with ADHD over 15 weeks.

Half were given a commercially available dietary supplement containing a combination of fish oil and evening primrose oil, in a ratio of four to one.
The other group took a placebo – an inactive treatment.
In what's known as a double-blind study, parents, children and researchers did not know whether children were taking the daily fish oil capsules or the placebo.
MS Sinn said when parents were later questioned, children on the active fish oil capsules, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, showed improvements in attention, behaviour and vocabulary.
"They were able to concentrate better, they were calmer, less impulsive, that sort of thing," Ms Sinn said in an interview.
"The same improvements were not reported from children who took the placebo."
When the placebo group switched to the fish oil capsules for a further 15 weeks, they showed similar benefits.
Children recruited into the study were not taking medication for their ADHD.
They were given just under a gram of fish oil a day in the trial.
Ms Sinn said 60 per cent of the brain was composed of fats, the most important being omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in fish oil, and omega-6, like those in evening primrose oil.
She said many people in western societies were deficient in the omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in dark leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds and oily fish.
"There's a growing body of research that's finding evidence of links between omega-3 deficiency and mental health problems like depression and schizophrenia," Ms Sinn said.
"Research is also suggesting that some children with developmental problems, including ADHD and dyslexia, can benefit from taking omega-3 supplements."
Ms Sinn said no adverse effects had been reported to date.
By comparison, Ritalin – a drug commonly used to treat ADHD – has been linked to suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, aggressive and violent behaviour and heart problems.
Ms Sinn said the fish oil in her study had higher concentrations of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) to docosahexaenoic acid (DPA).
"Researchers are starting to think that perhaps EPA is the important one," she explained.
The Adelaide-based researcher urged general practitioners, psychologists and psychiatrists to take the research on board as evidence about the benefits of fish oil accumulates.
Ms Sinn presented her research in Melbourne at the State Library of Victoria.

Comment: A few years ago I wrote this article for the Brentwood Times and I will reprint it below...

ADD/ADHD, Disorder or Deficiency?

Recent research in the area Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, (ADHD), shows that 3% to 5% of our children here in the U.S. suffer from this difficult problem. Symptoms of this disorder include short attention span, inability to complete tasks, hyperactivity, and a tendency to interrupt others. In addition to these behavioral issues, nearly 25% of these children suffer from one or more specific learning disabilities in math, spelling, or reading. Most parents of children with ADD/ADHD report feelings of frustration because they know their kids are quite bright in spite of the evident behavior. So here is the critical question…Are these children deficient in Ridlin, the drug of choice these days, or is something natural missing from their diets?

Since 1995, many reputable studies around the world have suggested that ADD and ADHD are actually caused by a deficiency in certain essential fatty acids and not necessarily disorders requiring drug therapy. A study first reported in 1995, conducted at Purdue University, linked a sub-clinical deficiency in a long chain fatty acid derived from fish, called Docosahexaenoic Acid, or DHA, as responsible for the abnormal behavior of children with ADD/ADHD.

In 1997, Dr. Barbara Levine, Professor of Nutrition in Medicine at Cornell University, sounded the alarm that most Americans were grossly deficient in DHA because of a lack of enough fish in the American diet. DHA is the building block of human brain tissue and is very abundant in the gray matter of the brain and the retina of the eye. Low levels of DHA in adults have also recently been associated with many health issues such as depression, memory loss, dementia and visual problems.

It turns out that the DHA of an infant’s brain triples during the first 3 months of life. Lactating mothers and women who are pregnant should make sure that they are getting optimal levels of DHA during that crucial time period. Unfortunately, according to Dr. Levine, the average DHA content of breast milk in the U.S. is the smallest in the world, most likely due to our low intake of fish, relative to other countries. Making matters worse, she tells us that the U.S. is the only country in the world where infant formulas are not fortified with DHA. This, despite the fact that in 1995, the World Health Organization recommended that all baby formulas should provide at least 40mg of DHA per kilo of infant body weight. Dr. Levine believes that postpartum depression, ADD, ADHD, and low IQ’s are all linked to the dismally low intake of DHA in the U.S.

Have you ever wondered why more male children are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD compared with girls? Researchers at the School of Medicine at the University of Auckland discovered that male animals require 3 times as much essential fatty acids as do females in order to achieve normal neonatal infant development. Their studies also confirm that blood analysis of ADD/ADHD kids showed significantly depressed levels of DHA, and in most cases, low levels of zinc, an important trace mineral known for improving learning.

For many health reasons, Americans should eat cold-water fish like Salmon or Mackerel at least 3 times per week, or consider supplementing with up to 850mg of concentrated fish oil from a reputable source, as many scientists are suggesting. I encourage you to contact us for reprints of the studies I have on file so you can read more about this important research.

Christopher Wiechert, C.N.C.


Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

Folic acid may be the most important nutrient to reduce Alzheimer's risk

From Life Extension Foundation...08-11-05

The results of a long-term study published in the inaugural issue of Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, indicate that consuming adequate levels of the B vitamin folate is associated with the greatest protection against Alzheimer's disease of any nutrient examined. Folate is found in a number of foods, such as leafy green vegetables, but is often destroyed by cooking. Grain products have been fortified with folic acid in the United States since 1998, however, it is believed that many Americans are still deficient in the vitamin. The study is the largest so far to evaluate the association between folate and Alzheimer's risk and to analyze antioxidants and B vitamins at the same time.
Assistant professor of neurology Maria Corrada of the University of California Irvine's Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia and colleagues utilized data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging which was begun in 1958 and includes over 1,400 participants. The current study involved 579 subjects without dementia aged 60 and older who completed seven-day dietary diaries between 1984 and 1991. Fifty-seven of these participants developed Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers found that individuals whose intake of folate, vitamin B6 and vitamin E were higher had a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease than those whose intake was less, however when the vitamins were analyzed together, only folate intake was correlated with a significantly decreased risk of the disease. Dr Corrada noted, "The participants who had intakes at or above the 400 microgram recommended dietary allowance of folates had a 55 percent reduction in risk of developing Alzheimer's. But most people who reached that level did so by taking folic acid supplements, which suggests that many people do not get the recommended amounts of folates in their diets."

cw

Comment: Make sure your multi vitamin has at least 400 mcgs of Folic acid. If it doesn't, change brands or add extra B-Complex. Other studies indicate Vit E and C as well as Omega 3 EFA's are also critical here.


Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

Vitamin D levels low in almost all hip fracture patients

8/3/2005- Nearly all hip fracture patients are deficient, sometimes severely, in vitamin D, researchers in Scotland reported this week.Reviewing the cases of 548 patients over the age of 60 who were admitted at South Glasgow University Hospital during a four-year period, the researchers found that 97.8 per cent had vitamin D levels below normal.
In around a quarter of the group studied, levels were so low that they were "effectively unrecordable", said the authors in the online issue of Current Medical Research and Opinion (DOI: 10.1185/030079905X59148).
Vitamin D currently only makes up 4 per cent of all vitamin sales and lags well behind calcium in terms of bone health supplements. But increasing evidence underlines its importance in protecting against fractures.
In a second prospective study phase, the researchers looked at vitamin D levels among the first 50 patients admitted to the hospital with an osteoporosis fracture after November 2004.
More than 80 per cent had vitamin D levels below 70 nmol/L and 72 per cent had vitamin D levels below 50 nmol/L.
"Although numbers were too small to justify extensive subgroup analyses, the mean vitamin D level in the 13 patients with hip fracture was lower than in the 37 with non-hip fractures," said the researchers.
They conclude: "It may be that vitamin D represents a correctable risk factor for fragility fracture in the elderly, possibly specifically for the hip."

Vitamin D3

cw

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

WE ARE ALL GIRLY MEN UNTIL WERE 6 WEEKS OLD...

Have you ever wondered why your teeth chatter when you're cold, or if you could really catch a disease from sitting on a toilet seat?
New York physician Billy Goldberg, pestered by unusual questions at cocktail parties and other social gatherings over the years, puts the public's mind at ease in his book "Why Do Men Have Nipples?" which hits the book stores on Tuesday.
"It's really remarkable how often you get accosted," said Goldberg, 39. "There are the medical questions from family and friends, and then there are the drunk and outrageous questions where somebody wants to drop their pants and show you a rash or something."
The book, subtitled, "Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini," (Three Rivers Press), is co-authored by humorist Mark Leyner.
"People tend to know so little about their bodies as compared to their cars or their laptops," said Leyner, 49, of Hoboken, New Jersey. "When I worked in a pharmacy in Washington, D.C., people would ask me medical questions all the time. I was just a 22-year-old cashier at Rite Aid."
Chattering teeth is one way the body tries to generate heat.
When the body gets too cold, the area of the brain called the hypothalamus alerts the rest of the body to begin warming up. Shivering, the rapid muscle movement that generates heat, then begins. Teeth chattering represents localized shivering.
During the course of their research, Goldberg and Leyner found reports of gonorrhea, pinworm and roundworm found on toilet seats -- but catching something from it isn't common.
The authors discovered that an office setting might be worse for your health than toilet seats. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, found the typical office desk harbors some 400 times more disease-causing bacteria than the average toilet seat.
Goldberg had compiled a list of nagging questions for several years before embarking on the book after meeting Leyner. The two met while working on a short-lived ABC-TV medical drama, "Wonderland," in which Leyner served as a writer, while Goldberg was its medical advisor.
BURNING QUESTIONS
Some of the burning questions answered in the humorous book include "What causes morning breath?" and "Why do beans give you gas?"
Goldberg says morning breath results from anaerobic bacteria, the xerostomia (dry mouth) or the volatile sulfur compounds (which are waste products from the bacteria). Other contributing factors to foul oral odor includes medication, alcohol, sugar, smoking, caffeine, and eating dairy products.
Beans contain high percentages of sugars that our bodies are unable to digest, Goldberg explains. When the sugars make it to the intestines, bacteria go to work and start producing large amounts of gas.
And if you're ever bitten by a poisonous snake, sucking at the bite to remove the poison, as often shown in the movies and on TV is not only ineffective, but could lead to an infection.
Instead, the bite should be washed with soap and water and immobilized. The bitten area should also be kept lower than the heart. Medical help should be sought immediately.
And why do men have nipples?
While only females have mammary glands, we all start out in a similar way in the embryo, the authors explain. The embryo follows a female template until about six weeks, when the male sex chromosome kicks in.
Men, however, have already developed nipples.

cw

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.

IF YOU EAT FEW CALORIES, BUT ARE STILL GAINING WEIGHT, HERE IS A POSSIBLE CLUE:

Soft drinks sweetened with fructose make you fat...
Asian News InternationalWashington, July 30, 2005

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Cincinnati suggests that drinking large amounts of beverages containing fructose adds body fat, and might explain why sweetening with fructose could be even worse than using other sweeteners.
The team led by Matthias Tschvp allowed mice to freely consume either water, fructose sweetened water or soft drinks. They found increased body fat in the mice that drank the fructose-sweetened water and soft drinks--despite that fact that these animals decreased the amount of calories they consumed from solid food.
It suggests that the total amount of calories consumed when fructose is added to diets may not be the only explanation for weight gain. Instead, consuming fructose appears to affect metabolic rate in a way that favours fat storage.
All the mice began the study at an average weight of 39 grams. Those consuming the fructose-sweetened water showed significant weight gain over the course of the study, with an average final weight of 48 grams--compared with averages below 44 grams for the other groups--and had about 90 percent more body fat than the mice that consumed water only.
Total caloric intake was lower in the mice that consumed the fructose-sweetened water than in the other groups, except for the control animals provided with water only.
"We were surprised to see that mice actually ate less when exposed to fructose-sweetened beverages, and therefore didn't consume more overall calories. Nevertheless, they gained significantly more body fat within a few weeks," Tschvp added.

CW

Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. To be removed from this e-mail program, reply back and say unsubscribe.