About 10 million people in the United States suffer from fibromyalgia, a syndrome characterized by chronic widespread pain, sleep disturbances, fatigue and, often, psychological distress as a result. Of them, about 75-90 percent are women, according to the National Fibromyalgia Association (NFA).
Because people with fibromyalgia often “test” healthy according to typical medical diagnostic procedures, it takes an average of five years for a person to be correctly diagnosed. There are currently no laboratory tests that can detect it, so doctors rely on patient symptoms, medical histories and a “manual tender point” examination.

If a person experiences widespread pain in the body’s four quadrants for three months or more, along with tenderness or pain in 11 of 18 specific “tender” points upon pressure, a diagnosis of fibromyalgia is typically given. There is also a new set of criteria — a “widespread pain index” that also measures symptom severity — that the American College of Rheumatology recently approved as an effective new diagnostic tool.

For many years, people were told by their doctors that fibromyalgia was all in their heads, but with recent advances the medical community is beginning to accept the syndrome as a real medical condition … one that demands safe and effective treatment.

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October is Breast Cancer Awareness.

I am personally saddened to see so many women getting this disease. In my own practice, I see younger and younger women with breast cancer coming for immune support while they bravely undergo chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.

I honor these women’s courage.

In this post and next week’s post, I’m going to discuss topics relevant to breast cancer.

Does Soy cause breast cancer or make it worse?

For years my patients have been worried that eating soy might contribute to breast cancer, or in women who have had breast cancer might stimulate a recurrence. More and more evidence is coming out now to the exact contrary. In fact it appears that soy reduces the incidence of breast cancer or its recurrence.

Let me review some of the latest findings.

Most of the health concerns about Soy come from its concentration of phytoestrogens which are group of natural compounds that resemble estrogen chemically.

It is important to know that phytoestrogens only very weakly mimic estrogen. Most large studies of soy intake have not found that soy causes any harm. This is according to Dr. Anna H. Wu of the University of Southern California School of Medicine. You can see her work here.

In fact, Dr. Wu has found that women who consume an equivalent of about one or two servings of soy daily have a lower risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer or having a recurrence.

Dr.Bette Caan from Kaiser Permanente in California also does research on soy and breast cancer, She is quoted as saying “If people enjoy soy as a regular part of their diet, there’s no reason to stop”. You can read her study here.

Finally the American Cancer Society noted in its recent nutrition guidelines for cancer survivors, that eating traditional soy foods – such as tofu, miso, tempeh, and soy milk – may help LOWER the risk of breast, prostate and other cancers. However they do not recommend soy supplements because they are usually highly processed.

My Colleague Michael Gregor, M.D. reviews all of this information from the medical journal articles in short videos on his Web site. He has given me permission to use his videos from his site on my site for my patients’ and readers’ benefit. I urge you to subscribe to his daily newsletter.

Here is his first video on Soy and Breast Cancer:

His second video below answers the question “Well how much soy is safe then?” Dr. Gregor explains in his video that 3 to 5 servings a day is safe.

Just last week, The New York Times weighed in on the soy issue with the same conclusions.

A year ago the New York Times also had an article giving similar recommendations.

Let me know what you think?

Next week, I will take a look at a big risk factor for breast cancer,that is easy to remove.

Nuts are quite possibly the “perfect” food: full of nutrition, satisfying and portable. Grabbing a small handful of nuts requires little effort on your part, yet their protein will keep you going strong, and their healthy monounsaturated fats are good for your heart.

In fact, in July 2003, the FDA approved the following health claim for nut package labels:

“Scientific evidence suggests, but does not prove, that eating 1.5 ounces per day of some nuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.”

Most of us are familiar with the traditional healthy nuts — almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews — because while there are thousands of nut varieties, only a handful are available commercially. Here are a few of the more unusual nut varieties that you may very much enjoy.

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That craving you have for sugar might be harmless if it happens once in a blue moon. But more and more health experts are examining America’s obsession with sugar, our growing waistlines and our deteriorating health, and are suggesting that we might even be sugar addicts.

Sugar is a naturally occurring substance that provides energy for your body’s cells, but it can be dangerous to your health when consumed in high amounts. Excessive sugar consumption has been linked to a variety of health issues such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol, not to mention tooth decay. Today, debate rages over whether sugar is addictive, with some research showing that sugar produces the same brain chemical reactions and behavioral reactions as illicit drugs like heroin.

Sugar Consumption Explosion of the 20th Century

The concerns start with the fact that today Americans consume over 150 pounds of sugar every year. This is a radical change from the way Americans used to eat. In 1700, people consumed only about four pounds of sugar in a year. By 1800 that was up to 18 pounds per year and by 1900 it was up to about 90 pounds of sugar per person, per year. But the greatest shift occurred in the 1950s with the introduction of high fructose corn syrup.

 

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Over 50 million Americans have a cluster of symptoms known as “metabolic syndrome,” and even more are at risk of this increasingly common disease. You may have metabolic syndrome, which is also known as Syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome, and dysmetabolic syndrome, if you have three or more of the following symptoms:

• High blood pressure
• High blood sugar levels
• High levels of triglycerides, a type of fat, in your blood
• Low levels of HDL (good cholesterol) in your blood
• Too much fat around your waist (specifically a waistline of 40 inches or more for men and 35 inches or more for women (measured across the belly))

What makes metabolic syndrome so dangerous is that this cluster of symptoms significantly increases your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

While several factors appear to cause metabolic syndrome, the dominant underlying risk factors for this syndrome appear to be abdominal obesity and insulin resistance. The food you eat normally gets broken down into sugar (glucose), which enters your cells for fuel. Insulin is made by your pancreas to help the glucose enter cells.

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Constipation is an extremely common problem in my practice and perhaps throughout all of America. There are many over-the-counter solutions. However until recently they weren’t specifically studied.

In a recent study, researchers compared dried plums (prunes) versus psyllium for the treatment of constipation. They found that dried plums are “safe palatable and more effective than psyllium for the treatment of mild to moderate constipation, and should be considered as a first-line therapy.”.

However,a previous study has shown that being vegan is probably the most effective therapy for chronic constipation!

For the details of how they measured the improvement in constipation, please take a look at my colleague Michael Greger, MD’s new video comparing these three approaches to the treatment of this common condition. You might also like to subscribe to his daily article/video as they are excellent.

 

Everyday you breathe in about 15,000 liters of air. If that air is polluted, the toxins are transported to all the organs in your body — not just your lungs. In fact, polluted air gets carried, via your bloodstream, from your lungs to your heart, liver, brain and other organs.

Sadly, air pollution is now a widespread problem in the United States. It comes from multiple sources — factories, power plants, dry cleaners, cars and trucks, wildfires and even from materials in your home.

Two out of every five people, or 42 percent of the U.S. population, actually live in counties that have unhealthful levels of ozone or particle pollution — two types of air pollution — according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air”.

Click here to read more.

More and more research is coming out on the importance of the friendly bacteria in our intestinal tract and how it affects our general health and well-being.

This group of friendly bacteria in our guide is collectively called our Microbiome.

We now know that we have approximately 10 times more bacterial cells in our body than we have human cells. In addition, quite surprisingly there are 4 million or more genes contained in the microbial community of our intestines. We as humans, for comparison, have only 25,000 genes. So there are MANY more genes in our body from bacteria than our own cells!

Research is showing that there is an interaction between the DNA of the bacteria in our gut and our human DNA that contributes to our uniqueness and our health.

Obesity is a common problem in our society and much research is being done to understand it.

Now a new study has shown that germ-free mice that received gut bacteria from obese humans put on more weight and accumulated more fat than mice that were given bacteria from the guts of lean humans.

Furthermore, it was found that the transmission of physical and metabolic traits via the friendly bacteria in their guts, was also dependent on the mices’ diet.

In this study, the authors used identical and fraternal human twins, one of whom was obese and one of whom was lean and took the bacteria from the each of their stools, and put it into the mice.

The conclusion of this study is that the microbial communities in our gut can transmit lean or obese traits. Specifically the researchers found that a bacteria called Bacteroides, played a protective role against increased fat accumulation in the mice who were on a certain diet.

This research was done by Vanessa Ridaura,a Graduate Student at Washington University School of Medicine. Jeffrey Gordon, the director of the Center of Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University School of Medicine was quoted as saying “The recipients of the obese twins microbiota gained more fat than the recipients of the lean twins microbiota. This was not attributable to differences in the amount of food they consumed, so there is something in the microbiota that was able to transmit this trait.”

Specifically we do know that eating a high fiber – low-fat human diet will give us more diversity in our friendly bacteria, which is almost always a good thing.

These findings are suggesting that a much more complex view of the obesity problem is required. Specifically, the interactions between diet, body mass and gut microbiology have realized.

Dr. Gordon said what we all know and that is “In the future, the nutritional value and the effects of food will involve significant consideration of our microbiota – and developing healthy nutritious foods will be done from the inside out not just the outside in.”

I recommend to all my patients and readers that they take a probiotic every day. And of course high-fiber low-fat diet is the thing that we all should be doing.