It’s fair to say that the average American, at one point and time in their life, has wished that they could change something about themselves. Whether it’s a smaller nose, better logic, or more mathematical skills, many of us wish for better genetic traits because we know that we can’t control our inheritances – or, in simpler terms, we can’t change what our parents gave us.
Or Can We?

For years studies have found evidence proving that our genes can actually change through experiences and lifestyle choices.

Philip Hunter, a science writer specializing in biology, explains this phenomenon, known as epigenetics, in his paper “What Genes Remember”:

“It has long been known that an organism’s fate is not determined by genes alone. This much we can tell by observing identical twins, who over time tend to diverge both physiologically (developing differences in, say, height and posture) and psychologically (exhibiting different personality traits and even, sometimes, sexual orientations). Despite most identical twins having similar diets and lifestyles, subtle cultural and environmental distinctions appear to alter their phenotype—the sum of their nature and nurture.”

Click here to read more.

Dreams unlock a world of imagery revealing your deepest fears, hidden secrets and outrageous fantasies, transferring them from the conscious to the unconscious world. 

These subjective images usually occur during the REM stage of your sleep cycle, the time of sleep where the most intense dreaming takes place.

A new study released now shows that REM sleep has a powerful connection to your ability to process emotions in people’s faces. The results of the study confirm that when you’ve gotten plenty of rest you’re apt to be more in tune to positive emotions, which could add to your longevity.

Click here to read more.

 

For many years I have been concerned that the mercury that children receive in the womb from the mother’s fish consumption, is a contributory factor to the autism epidemic and the Attention Deficit epidemic that we have now in the US. It is estimated that one in six children now have a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Many naysayers say this is NO autism epidemic! But it is now recognized by the CDC, as recently as 3 weeks ago that 1 in 68 children have autism spectrum disorder which is a 30% increase from the 1 in 88 of two years ago. And now the CDC estimates that 1 in 42 boys have autism, which is 4.5 times as many as girls (1 in 189). What will the rate be in 2016?

Further more for the naysayers, we need to recognize that “The number of children ages 6 to 21 in the United States receiving special education services under the autism disability category increased 91% between 2005 and 2010.”

So it behooves us to pay a lot of attention to new information that can help us explain this.

Now I have found a review article, which I only learned about recently, that presents an epigenetic approach to identifying risk factors responsible for the autism epidemic in the United States. Remember, epigenetics is the study of the factors in our environment that impact directly on our genes.

Mercury plays a significant role in this concept of the factors that cause autism. Here is a diagram from Dr Dufault’s article showing all the connections.

Many of you know that recent information has shown that not only do mothers and children get mercury from fish, but they also get it from the High –
Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) that is contained in many soda beverages. This was shown in an article by a former FDA Toxicologist Renee Dufault..

Also,here is the list of products with Mercury in the HFCS. Almost half the HFCS samples tested contained mercury. It is estimated that the average daily consumption of HFCS is about 50 g per person in the United States.

Dr Dufault is also the author of this newer study. In it, she explains how a deficiency in zinc which is triggered by the consumption of fish an HFCS , as well as other processed foods, interferes with the body’s ability to eliminate toxins such as Mercury and pesticides.

Clinically in my practice, we now have the technology to measure both mercury loads in the prospective mother as well as organophosphate pesticides. For those women wanting to do this, we are able to guide them to clean out both of these toxic chemicals which have high association with the current epidemic of autism spectrum disorder.

I urge you to talk with your doctors about this. As you know from a recent article I wrote in my blog, the American college of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is strongly urging their physician members to discuss toxic exposures to women contemplating pregnancy.

There is nothing sadder than to talk with a parent of a child with autism and realize what they must go through to take care of their child.

We must put an end to this nonstop increase in the epidemic of neurodevelopmental problems in our children in the United States. Please do your part to help!

To end on a happy note, here is a video of an amazing autistic child named Temple Grandin, who went on to become a professor! She talks about what it feels like to be autistic. (forgive the 30 second commercial by CNN)

References

Study links Autism to High Fructose Corn Syrup

Mercury exposure, nutritional deficiencies and metabolic disruptions may affect learning in children.

Washington Post on HFCS and Mercury

The CDC on Mercury

 Metals and other elements in your child’s food could be contributing to aggressive or anti-social behavior in children, according to Neil Ward, professor of chemistry at the University of Surrey in the UK, and a lead researcher in the field.
While excessive amounts of metal in food can clearly be dangerous, strong evidence now shows that some trace elements may be toxic as well. And while some metals, such as copper, manganese and zinc, actually act as nutrients that can be beneficial for health, others have no known benefits. These potentially harmful metals include:

• Arsenic
• Cadmium
• Lead
• Mercury
• Aluminum

These elements can actually act as “anti-nutrients,” which means they hinder the absorption of essential nutrients, a condition that can be particularly dangerous to children, according to Ward.

Click here to read more.

Certain things automatically come to mind when you think of toxins in your food … bacteria like e.coli, additives, pesticides, and other contaminants like heavy metals would all certainly apply. But even if your food is completely natural, with no man-made components whatsoever, it may still contain toxins, naturally occurring ones, that is.

The following foods, though generally fine and even healthy when eaten, can cause your harm under certain, surprising, circumstances.

1. Peanuts and peanut butter

Peanuts, you may or may not know, are actually legumes, not nuts, which are grown underground as part of a root system.

It is primarily due to the peanuts’ direct contact with the soil that they have become harmful, and even dangerous, to your health.

Click here to find out more.

A patient says to his doctor, “Doc, when I twist my head hard to the right, I get a sharp pain in the neck.” To which the doctor replies, “Then don’t twist your head hard to the right!”
You’ve likely heard this joke, or a variation, before, but it bears repeating because it is SO true! When you learn to pay attention to your body’s signals, you will find it lets you know when you are making positive or negative choices for your health and well-being.

Ultimately, by listening to your body and leading a healthy lifestyle, you can avoid much of the “sick care” system that will try to solve your solution with medications and surgeries. Often, these sick-care “solutions” will lead to side effects that require even more treatments because they are not addressing the underlying causes of your problems.

For instance, studies have shown that over one-third of cancer cases in the United States could be prevented by better eating, more exercise and maintaining a healthy weight.

Unfortunately, as it becomes increasingly clear that a healthy lifestyle can help you prevent disease, fewer Americans are taking the advice.

Click here to read more.

For many pet owners across the nation, their nighttime routine would not be complete without their fuzzy four-legged companion hopping into bed to snuggle up for the night. In fact, most pet owners (56 percent) said their pet sleeps right next to them at night, according to a survey from Veterinary Pet Insurance.p>
“Our pets have made a definitive move from the barnyard, to the backyard, to the bedroom,” said Dr. Carol McConnell, director of veterinary services for VPI, in a press release. “With the human-animal bond stronger than ever, more pet owners are taking care of their pets like they would a family member. Our pets are spending more time indoors with the entire family, and now they share the comforts of a soft mattress with the family, too.”

This is not actually a new occurrence, as dogs have been sharing sleeping quarters with humans for ages. You’ve heard of the rock bank “Three Dog Night”? This name is a play on an Australian aboriginal custom of sleeping with a dog for warmth on cold nights. A “three dog night” would require sleeping with three dogs in order to stay warm.

In modern times, most of us sleep with our pets not for warmth but for companionship and cuddles … so is there any reason to stop?

Click here to find out.

What can happiness do for you?

The Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania has uncovered some intriguing facts about happiness. For instance, people who are happy:

• Do better at work, school and sports
• Are less depressed
• Have fewer physical health problems
• Have better relationships

Optimism has even been verified as a successful strategy to prevent mental and physical illness. Scientists believe a large reason why being happy is so healthy has to do with stress.

“Of course, optimists get stressed,” says David Snowdon, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky in a Prevention article. “But they automatically turn the response off much more quickly and return to a positive mental and physical state.”

So beneficial is this ability that those who are optimistic in middle age can expect to add at least 7.5 years to their life — even after adjusting for age, gender, physical health and socioeconomic status — according to a survey by Yale University.

Click here to read more.

Asking most people whether they eat a lot of cooked food may sound like a silly question. After all, we’re conditioned to cook all of our meat thoroughly to avoid bacteria and parasites, and even our dairy products and juices are pasteurized.

When food is cooked valuable enzymes are destroyed.

For many, raw food in their diet consists of an occasional salad or piece of fruit, as even most veggies on Americans’ dinner plates are of the cooked variety.

So what’s the problem, you may now be wondering?

Raw plant and animal foods (such as raw milk) are loaded with beneficial enzymes for your body. (Enzymes are actually special proteins that act as catalysts for the chemical reactions that occur to keep your body functioning.) However, enzymes begin to be destroyed at temperatures above 110-115 degrees. So if your food is cooked, pasteurized or processed, it will contain no enzymes whatsoever.

Click here to read more.

My patients and my readers know how passionate I am about normalizing everybody’s vitamin D levels. That is why I wrote my book some years ago. It is also one of the reasons I went on to the Dr. Oz show to spread the word about the importance of everybody taking a sufficient dose of vitamin D.

Even after doing many years of “preaching” about vitamin D to my colleagues I still have obstetricians unnecessarily scaring my patients when I give them the recommended daily dose of vitamin D for pregnancy which is 4000 units per day. Please do note that for all my pregnant patients I do draw the vitamin D blood test in each trimester to check their levels.

Now in research published online in Epidemiology, researchers found that pregnant women with vitamin D levels higher than 50 nmol per liter (20 ng/mL) had a 40% reduction in relative risk for severe preeclampsia compared to those was women whose levels were under 50.

I strive to keep my pregnant patients vitamin D levels above 40 ng/mL. This is not only for the mother’s health but also the health of her fetus.

In addition to this article another article has recently been published that shows very impressive evidence that vitamin D protects against major diseases.

Specifically in adults with lower levels of vitamin D in their body, there was a 35% increased risk of death from heart disease and a 14% greater likelihood of death from cancer. In addition there was an overall greater mortality risk in those with low D compared with those with higher levels.

It is springtime now across our country and I encourage all of my readers and patients to get a vitamin D level measured with your physician, now that winter is over. ‘Normal” levels are from 34 ng/mL to 100 ng/mL I recommend for my patients to keep their levels between 40 and 70 ng/mL.

In yet a third article on vitamin D the researchers reviewed many articles and performed what is called a “meta–analysis”. A meta-analysis is not original research but rather a research project that reviews many other articles that have been written. The authors concluded that there was “suggestive evidence” that high vitamin D levels protected against diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and a host of other illnesses. Duffy MacKay, a spokesman for the Council For Responsible Nutrition stated that “there is enough positive research currently to indicate that people should be supplementing with vitamin D for a variety of positive health outcomes.”

You can also see recent articles on Vitamin D from the New York Times about this research. HERE and HERE

How much Vitamin D are you taking everyday? How much Vitamin D is your doctor recommending to you? What is your recent Vitamin D blood level?