Dr. Soram's Integrative Medicine
Practical Complementary and Alternative Medicine
You know how you can put on a couple of pounds by just looking at a cheeseburger and fries? Well, some foods have the opposite effect, helping you burn extra energy — and keep weight off — just by eating them.
Better still, these slimming foods do not all taste like grass or rice cakes; these are REAL, delicious and satisfying foods — foods that you might even be craving right now. So go ahead and indulge. With food options like these it’s easy to eat right … and lose weight while you’re at it.
“The healthy body is equipped to produce all the hormones a woman needs throughout her life,” said Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of The Wisdom of Menopause. But those hormones can easily become pushed off kilter — even with too much stress or an unhealthy diet — leaving room for a wide array of hormonal disorders to surface.
Hormones are proteins or steroids that are secreted directly into your bloodstream. They are responsible for the body’s metabolism of minerals, regulation of fluids, reproduction, sexual function, and responses to stress.
The global IBS seminar last weekend at CedarsSinai hospital was superb. As I mentioned last week I did attend and learned a lot. I thought that I could get a summary for you this week, but time did not allow. I hope to have that article for you in the very near future.
I am happy to announce to all my patients and readers that starting next Monday, August 4, I invite you to attend the free Online International Detox Summit.
As I’ve written about many times in my blog, the toxicity of our environment is affecting our health in so many ways. This is especially relevant during pregnancy and early childhood.
I was especially honored to be asked to be one of the 30 participants in this seminar and my interview is on
Tuesday, August 5, 2014. I will be talking about the toxicity of our environment and how that is interacting with our genes. We call this the epigenetic influence. I will also discuss the importance of preparing for pregnancy.
In addition to me, there are 29 other interviews with prominent physicians, speakers, and authors. All aspects of detoxification including emotional detoxification, will be discussed over the eight days of this summit.
It is free to sign up and attend. Each day, a set of lectures will appear and you will have the whole day to listen to those lectures. If at the end of the week, there were lectures you missed, that you wanted to hear, you will be able to purchase them.
The stated goal of the conference is “To inform people about toxicity and inspire them to healthy solutions.”
Following the Detox Summit, they will help you put this information into action in September through a 21 day Detox Challenge. You will be provided with a day-by-day guidebook, online resources, and community groups. Before, during, and following this experience, you will have the opportunity to discuss your personal health goals and challenges leading into and out of the Detox Challenge.
You can sign up for the Detox Summit here:
When you sign up, you will receive daily emails during the summit that will give you access to over 30 of the world’s experts on what to do about toxins.
I look forward to being in dialogue with you on Facebook and Twitter, about this wonderful event. And of course for my patients I will be delighted to talk to about it in the office.
Body image continues to be a constant struggle for both men and women and countless diet attempts, a lifelong of insecurities, perfectionism, cosmetic surgeries and male body image disorders are emerging as evidence of how serious it’s become.
A body-image survey in Glamour magazine of 16,000 women revealed that over 40 percent of women are dissatisfied with their bodies! Unhappiness with body types hasn’t improved much over the past 25 years when the very first Glamour study was released.
Still, the amount of copper that the body needs is small — less than the amount in a penny — and studies are finding that too much copper can lead to a number of health problems.
In fact, a study sponsored by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested the umbilical cord blood of 10 newborns and found that the samples contained an average of 200 chemicals … chemicals linked to cancer, brain damage, birth defects and more.
“This is conclusive evidence that babies are being exposed to hundreds of industrial chemicals throughout pregnancy,” said Sonya Lunder, an EWG scientist, told the Associated Press. “The placenta isn’t a magic shield.”
The implications of all these chemical exposures are completely unknown, and while it’s likely impossible to eliminate all exposures (most people already have countless environmental chemicals circulating in their bloodstream), it’s a wise idea to minimize your exposure as much as possible during pregnancy and if you’re planning to become pregnant.
Here we’ve compiled a list of some of the worst chemical offenders for developing babies and their moms.
In reviewing the latest information about mercury and cognition, I became aware of an article that appeared in the Integrative Medicine Journal a year ago.
To study looked at 384 men and women who were mostly corporate executives and who attended an all day company annual physical examination.
They measured the blood mercury levels in all the patients and then looked at the relationship between mercury and cognitive performance in the patients.
The finding was that participants with Mercury levels above 15 mcg/L,showed a 4 to 5% lower complex information processing (CIP)capability, which is commonly called executive function, when they did neurocognitive testing.
The interesting thing from the study was that in those patients with moderate fish consumption, 1 to 3 servings of fish per week, there was no measurable effect on their cognition. This was thought to be caused by the fact that the fish contain essential fatty acids which can improve cognitive function. Therefore the deleterious effects of the mercury were compensated for by the fatty acids in the fish.
The authors rightfully point out that “If cognitive neurotoxicity occurs in healthy, highly productive individuals with ample cognitive reserves, the effect is likely to be amplified in more vulnerable populations.”
They point out that cognitive decline and dementia are an increasing problem as our population is aging. Therefore as seafood consumption also rises in individuals who desire to eat a “heart healthy” diet, this relationship with increased mercury could have a large impact on quality of life, and healthcare costs into the distant future.
This is one of the first studies I’ve seen that actually looks at the effect of mercury on cognitive impairment in middle-aged people. The drawbacks of the study are that that they only looked at one blood specimen and compared it with the patient’s stated history of fish consumption. There is no measurement of mercury exposure over time in the patients.
An even bigger question is what were these patients “Total Body Load” of Mercury? This can only be determined by doing a challenged urine test, with a chelating agent.
What the authors do not point out is that after a person eats fish, the mercury is not eliminated from the body but rather goes into the organs, muscles and tissues of the body where it is stored for the rest of the person’s life! This burden of mercury produces a chronic stress on the neurological, immune, and endocrine system.
In my opinion, this total body burden plays a role in a wide range of diseases from multiple sclerosis to cancer.
The other thing the authors do not point out is that the amount of essential fatty acids contained in each fish serving could be replaced by one Eseential Fatty Acid capsule from the health food store.
My general recommendation to my patient population is still to avoid or minimize fish consumption and take one essential fatty acid pill per day.
Certainly women of childbearing age and women who are pregnant should avoid fish altogether in my opinion. Of course they must take one pill a day of DHA, an essential fatty acid, for their fetuses brain function, along with their traditional Prenatal Vitamin.
I predict that as the oceans increasingly concentrate more and more mercury, and the fish get higher and higher levels of mercury in them, that we will see much more about this in the years ahead.
Read the original article here
Read More on This Here:
Long term neurocognitive impact of low dose prenatal methylmercury exposure
Fish consumption, methylmercury and child neurodevelopment
Let me know what you think below!
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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
