Dr. Soram's Integrative Medicine
Practical Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Are These Eight Top Environmental Toxins Making You “Health Poor”?
More than 80,000 industrial chemicals have found their way into the U.S. environment over the last 50 years.
Contrary to popular belief, most of these chemicals have never been safety tested for use with humans, animals or the environment, and many environmental chemicals cannot be seen, smelled or tasted — but that doesn’t mean they are inert.
In keeping with my previous, article I want to share with my patients and readers that the genomic testing that we now have available gives us tremendous power to optimize our health.
The newest technology which I’m excited about is that I now have available to me, and for my readers your doctors will have available to them, new genomic testing that will enable physicians to minimize the side effects and optimize the right choice of drugs for people who are on psychotropics.
Psychotropics are the largest category of drug prescriptions from the pharmacies in America at this time. We all know many people are suffering from anxiety, depression, insomnia and required these types of medications.
We now have the technology and it is at a very affordable price, to test the patient before we start them on such pharmaceuticals to see which ones are likely to be most compatible with their unique genetic code.
The photo below shows an example test from a patient. For each psychotropic drug, it shows 4 columns, the preferred drugs in each category, and drugs in each category that can be used as directed with little problem for the patient. But it also shows drugs that can have significant limitations and another category of drugs that may cause serious adverse events.
This is exciting times! As you see, we can individualize the choice of psychotropics for each person!
We also have available similar tests for cardiac drugs and pain medications. Soon we will have these panels for all drugs! This will allow doctors to minimize, however not completely eliminate, many side effects from the drugs we prescribe.
These are very exciting times, that allow us to give individual personalized medical treatments to all our patients.
Welcome to Personalized Lifestyle Medicine, the medicine of the future!
In my newsletter last week I mentioned that I and just come back from attending a most exciting convention, entitled Personalized Lifestyle Medicine:the Future of Health Care.
The convention was sponsored by Loma Linda University’s Preventive Medicine department.Specifically was from their Lifestyle Medicine department. Loma Linda and Harvard are the only two medical schools in the country with such a department.
The lectures were at very sophisticated level of “medicaleze” and I am going to summarize some of the highlights for you here.
My good friend Jeff Bland, Ph.D. was the lead speaker and he was brilliant as always.
Here is a picture of me (looking relaxed) with Jeff at this convention:
We now know, as I’ve told my patients and readers many times, that our genes are NOT written in stone. We now recognize that a chronic illness comes from the interface of our personal genes with the environment that we surround ourselves with. Genes are turned on and off by our environment.
The newest science of genomics (the study of our genes) has has come to realize the critical importance of what used to be called “Junk DNA”. So-called Junk DNA is DNA that is not organized into chromosomes and just floats around the chromosomes. Scientists did not understand what it was for and so they called it “junk”.
However we now realize that in the “Junk DNA” resides the information that codes for the regulatory regions of our genes. These codes regulate which parts of our DNA is turned on or turned off at a given time. Clearly such regulation is needed! Otherwise if all the genes were on it once, we would have a huge mess of life which each gene trying to express itself at once.
We now know that our Environment communicates with the “Junk DNA”, which then sends its signals to turn on or off i.e. regulate, the genes as they are arranged in our chromosomes.
Specifically, we now realize there is NO ONE GENE that causes a specific disease. Just genes that control the function of our metabolism, and lead to a disease. And this set of genes can be expressed in many different ways, depending on the environment we are in and that we create for ourselves.
What this new science does for us, is to allow us to be in charge of the expression of our genes rather than to be a victim of our genes.
We now have available to all of us the opportunity to find out what our genes are. Many companies are running genetic profiles and individuals can get this done, without even needing doctors’ orders.
Many of my patients are very fearful to let their genetic code be run. They feel that it will give them bad news and tell them how they’re going to die.
Rather, I urge you to realize that understanding your genetic code (called your genome) is not to tell you how you’re going to die, but rather how you need to live in order to optimize and maximize your life so you can easily live healthy to 100 years old.
With this new science, and an appropriate healing practitioner who understands this, you can create the lifestyle you need to live a healthy happy joyous life.
From the Main Journal Article , here is a chart of how we perceive Personalized Lifestyle Medicine and why we need it in our current disease climate :
The trajectory of disease and role for personalized lifestyle medicine.-From article below
The following is a definition of Personalized Lifestyle Medicine from an article entitled Personalized Lifestyle Medicine: Relevance for Nutrition and Lifestyle Recommendations, by my colleagues Jeffrey Bland PhD and Deanna marriage PhD.
“Lifestyle Medicine is a newly developed term that
refers to an approach to medicine in which an individual’s health metrics from point-of-care diagnostics are used to develop lifestyle medicine-oriented therapeutic strategies for improving individual health outcomes in managing chronic disease. Examples of the application of personalized lifestyle medicine to patient care include the identification of genetic variants through laboratory tests and/or functional biomarkers for the purpose of designing patient-specific prescriptions for diet, exercise, stress, and environment.
Personalized Lifestyle Medicine can provide solutions to chronic health problems by harnessing innovative and evolving technologies based on recent discoveries in genomics, epigenetics, systems biology, life and behavioral sciences, and diagnostics and clinical medicine. A comprehensive, personalized approach to medicine is required to promote the safety of therapeutics and reduce the cost of chronic disease. Personalized lifestyle medicine may provide a novel means of addressing a patient’s health by empowering them with information they need to regain control of their health.”
I urge all my patients and readers to join me in using Personalized Lifestyle Medicine to maximize your health and well-being throughout your life.
As I’ve written, in my previous articles, more and more people are suffering for years and years at the end of life with chronic debilitating diseases. As my Alzheimer’s article a few weeks ago showed, billions of dollars are being spent just on the care of these people by their loved ones.
We all need to look at our lifestyles and how they interface with our genome to try to stay healthy until we are ready to die.
The Main Journal Article about Personalized Lifestyle Medicine
The Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute
Pictured below from left to right are my colleagues Alan Greene, M.D., Myself and John La Puma, M.D.
This past Saturday – two days ago-,I was a speaker at the Los Angeles Health Interactive in Santa Monica California. I was on a panel with John La Puma, M.D., which was entitled “Your Health Questions Answered.” Dr. La Puma and I took questions from the audience, answering everything from “what to do for psoriasis”, to “how to get started meditating.”
I got to meet and hang out with Dr. Alan Greene, M.D., who is a very practical and naturally oriented pediatrician who is endeavoring to putting the care back into children’s health. You can’s visit his site here. He spoke on “Useful technology leading to a healthier America”.
Also, my good friend Ashley Koff, R.D.,pictured with me below, spoke on “Qualitarian Eating”.
The event was a lot of fun, and there were many interesting exhibitors with lots of new health products.
The organizers told me that my session will be available by video and I will let you know as soon as is posted.
After speaking at the Health Interactive event, I immediately headed to Orange County to attend a seminar led by my longtime colleague Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D. The title of the seminar was “Personalized Lifestyle Medicine: the Future of Health Care.”
Aside from Dr. Bland speaking, my colleagues Mark Hyman M.D. and Deanna Minich, Ph.D. spoke about the future of healthcare and the need for personalized lifestyle medicine.
I will give you a more detailed update in a future blog post.
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This problem of food fraud is more important now than ever because more and more doctors are discovering that the food we ingest can greatly affect our health and how we feel.
While many medical experts believe that illnesses are best treated with medication, steroids, anti-inflammatories or painkillers, there are a growing number of leading doctors and scientists who believe that many of society’s modern-day ailments can be treated through our diet.
If you formulate a plan to overcome those cravings before they happen you can be prepared to welcome the holidays — and the upcoming season of fruitcakes and sweets — without guilt or added extra pounds.
How are Cravings Triggered? How to Distinguish if it’s Hunger or a Craving
When you’re hungry you’ll eat just about anything to satisfy your hunger pains. But when a food craving strikes, you yearn for something very specific such as chocolate-covered pretzels, cheese and sour cream potato chips or Neapolitan ice-cream sandwiches — and ONLY that “something” will do to satisfy your urge.
This past Saturday was “Vitamin D Day”! This was a day to recognize vitamin D deficiency as a world problem.
Researchers agree that at least one third of the world’s population is deficient in vitamin D, and many researchers found is a much higher percentage including me.
In my office, I still see 90% of my new patients with a vitamin D deficiency. Some of them severe.
We now know for sure that vitamin D deficiency can make some diseases more severe including autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and lupus as well as respiratory diseases and many others.
My colleague Michael Holick, M.D., is quoted as saying ““Vitamin D deficiency is a global pandemic that has serious health consequences for children and adults. Improvement in the world’s vitamin D status could significantly reduce risk of many chronic illnesses including cardiovascular diseases, type II diabetes and many deadly cancers as well as infectious diseases including upper respiratory tract infections, influenza and tuberculosis.”
I urge you to talk to your friends and family about vitamin D especially as winter is approaching, a time when all of us need to take vitamin D.
You can learn much more about Vitamin D Day at this link.
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What Are Cavities?
Cavities, called dental caries by dental health professionals, are areas on the tooth where the enamel has been eaten away by acid. Cavities can occur anywhere on the surface of a tooth, but can continue to deepen beyond the surface and eat into the entire tooth structure. When they are small or surface cavities, treatment is managed with fillings. If cavities reach the root structure of the tooth, a root canal and crown will typically be required. Therefore, cavities are not just bad for your teeth; they can be expensive and cause multiple, inconvenient trips to the dentist to treat them. Further, the bacteria from your mouth can travel into your bloodstream and impact other areas of your body, an occurrence that is linked to heart disease, diabetes and more.
What Causes Cavities?
Though some debate exists as to what makes people more likely to develop cavities, there is no question as to the mechanism that creates cavities.
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How did the researchers come to this realization? By watching birds.
Researchers from the University of Freiburg and the Max Plank Institute for Ornithology in Germany offered blackcaps a choice of two foods; they were identical except one contained more flavonoids. Sure enough, the birds chose to eat the foods that contained the extra antioxidants.
Next, they looked into what impact the flavonoids had on the birds’ health. Compared with birds not fed flavonoids, those that ate modest amounts of the healthy antioxidants for four weeks had stronger immune systems.
Of all the chronic diseases that are in the world today, my patients express the most fear about their developing Alzheimer’s disease, and with good reason.
Yes, of course, my patients also worry about cancer, especially breast cancer, and heart disease, but the good news is that something can be done to treat these diseases and most especially prevent these diseases.
Alzheimer’s disease has come from being a rare condition just several years ago to now the sixth leading cause of death in America. Other surprising statistics about Alzheimer’s disease include:
The video below shows what’s happening in America with Alzheimer’s disease and the tremendous cost to the family of the person with the disease.
Integrative doctors including myself, firmly believe that this rapid increase in Alzheimer’s disease is caused in part,by environmental toxicity. So many of the toxins in our environment that we are exposed to every day, from the Mercury in the fish we eat, to the pesticides in our food, and to the solvents in our environment are all known to be neurotoxins.
Increasingly I talk to my patients about the importance of not only avoiding their exposure to these chemicals but also using principles of Naturopathic Medicine to detoxify them out of the body. And yet so many people are just not interested in doing detoxification or don’t believe that it is relevant.
The same neurotoxins that we are getting exposed to, is also believed to be a large part of the cause of the current epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders in our young children, who are born to innocent mothers who do not realize they carry a toxic load that they give to their fetuses.
We are starting to see conventional journal articles pay attention to this role of environmental toxins for its part in contributing to the epidemic of Alzheimer’s Disease.
A recent article that you can read here, entitled Does inorganic mercury play a role in Alzheimer’s disease?, concludes that “inorganic mercury may promote neurodegenerative disorders” and that “inorganic mercury may play a role as a cofactor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. It may also increase the pathological influence of other metals.”
This is why I pay strict attention to my patients’ elevated mercury levels and encourage them to detoxify it out.
The good news about all this is an enormous amount of energy is now being poured into the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and hopefully some money is going to be poured into prevention as well.
Two new articles are showing things that seem to be protective against Alzheimer’s.
We do know that the ApoE4 protein is a major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. It is estimated that up to 25% of Americans have this genetic pattern.It is also known that about 66% of Alzheimer’s patients are known to have this. Some cardiologists and neurologists are now testing for this gene.
Now, a new article has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers are finding that they’re getting closer to find the link between ApoE4 andSirT1, which is an anti-aging protein.
SirT1 protein drops dramatically in the presence of AppoE4. however, the exciting thing is that the researchers found that a common nutritional supplement, which is found in red wine, as well as supplement capsules targeted the link between ApoE4 and SirT1. This means that this common nutritional supplement ****resveratrol**** might be protective against Alzheimer’s disease.
Another new article has come out this week showing that a lack of sleep may increase Alzheimer’s risk. This article was published in the prestigious JAMA neurology. This article shows that those with Alzheimer’s disease are shown to spend more time awake and to have higher levels of fragmented sleep, compared with those who do not have the disorder.
In this study, they found that shorter overall nights sleep duration and poor sleep quality were linked to increased beta – amyloid buildup in the brain. Beta-amyloid deposition in the brain is believed to be the cause of Alzheimer’s.
The study’s authors are quoted as saying “Because late-life sleep disturbance can be treated, interventions to improve sleep or maintain healthy sleep among older adults may help prevent or slow AD to the extent that poor sleep promotes AD onset and progression.” the researchers recommend intervention trials to determine whether longer sleep duration and better sleep quality might prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
In summary, given the increased focus on research for Alzheimer’s disease, we are finally starting to get some insights into how to prevent and hopefully treat this devastating condition.
I also refer you to my recent article on David Perlmutter, MD’s recommendations to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s Facts and Figures from the US Government
