Click here for the original post. Even though I’m a doctor who specializes in nutritional medicine, the article in The Journal of Nutrition was a technically difficult read. It discussed how combining the antioxidant resveratrol (the compound found in grapes, purple grape juice, red wine, peanuts, and certain berries) with genistein (a soy isoflavone) reduced […]
Category: Nutrition, Nutritional Supplements, Vitamins, & Herbal Remedies
Nutritional counseling focuses on helping clients understanding foods and their role in preventive nutrition. Nutrition, supplements, vitamins and herbal remedies help achieve and maintain healthy body composition, (lean muscle-to-fat ratio) in order to improve health, manage disease, feel better, and reduce the risk of serious conditions.
Q&A: Vitamin E and Heart Attacks
Click here for the original post. Q: I just read in Consumer Reports that vitamin E doesn’t help prevent heart attacks. Is this true? If so, is there any reason to take E? A: As early as 2001, clinical studies around the world were beginning to cast some doubt on the effectiveness of vitamin E […]
Fast Food Favorites: Salmon in a Pouch
Click here for the original post. Here’s a fast-food favorite that’s new to us: skinless, boneless Alaskan salmon in a pouch. No liquid to drain and no cans to open, making it an utterly convenient lunch or snack food. It makes an easy dinner too. Several brands offer this presentation. One we see here in […]
Antioxidants and Exercise
Click here for the original post. If you study nutritional medicine long enough, some concepts make good intuitive sense, but then you find nobody has done a study to verify the assumptions. It’s always struck me that if you did aerobic exercise–you know, the huff-puff of jumping jacks or other high-intensity activity–you’d get a greater […]
Glandular Therapies
Click here for the original post. A surprising number of so-called alternative therapies actually have their roots in conventional medicine. For example, reflexology, originally called Zone Therapy, was first discovered by an ear, nose, and throat specialist who used pressure from rubber bands applied to the fingers and toes for surgical anesthesia. “Bach” of Bach […]
A Solid Thumbs-Up on Nutritional Supplements
Click here for the original post. Every morning and evening for more years than I like to ponder, I reach for my two vitamin trays (yes, I need two), mentally check that I’m not taking them on an empty stomach, and dutifully swallow my eighteen pills and capsules, plus an aspirin. That’s 37 a day. […]
Nutritional Research: Busy Month
Click here for the original post. I’ve had the feeling recently that everybody’s getting tired of prescription medications. To begin with, we’re taking far too many unsavory chemicals for problems mostly attributable to our unhealthful lifestyles–controlling adult-onset diabetes, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, cooling heartburn, sedating our stress-laden lives. And did I mention side effects? […]
Vitamin D and Your Heart
I’ve written quite a bit on the beneficial effects of vitamin D, from building bones and helping with fibromyalgia to preventing cancer–click here and scroll down on the Health Tips menu for previous articles.
D-ribose: New Supplement of Note
Any primary care physician will tell you the number one symptom that prompts a visit to the doctor is fatigue, expressed as “I’m tired all the time,” “I crash at three in the afternoon,” or “My get up and go just got up and went.”
Nature’s Apothecary: Valerian for Calm and Better Sleep
Using the herb valerian medicinally goes back to ancient Greece. By the 19th century, valerian was regularly found in pharmacies as a medication for both anxiety and insomnia, essentially the Valium of those days.
Q&A: Complex Carbohydrates
Q: Would you review again why we should eat complex carbohydrates and define what they are? Thank you.
Fast Food Favorites: Chickpeas
Chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans–read more about them here) are a potential meal in a can. Plus, they’re one of the truly good carbohydrates. Because they’re taken up slowly and steadily by your body, they have a stabilizing effect your blood sugar and your mood, keeping you energized and elevating your feel-good serotonin.
Q&A: Nutritional Medicine
Q: In a recent newsletter you discussed new findings in nutritional medicine. I’ve never heard of nutritional medicine. Would you define it?
Nutritional Medicine News
Each week I read well over 100 medical articles, summaries, and abstracts of studies sifted from the thousands that are published. Most have nothing to do with nutritional medicine, but there are always a few. Here are some recent highlights:
Can You Lower Cholesterol with Supplements?
The answer, like many of my courageous medical comments, is a firm “It depends…”
Most of my patients aren’t thrilled when I reach for a prescription pad, especially when it’s for a drug they might have to take for the rest of their lives. Consider also the dollar signs that appear in the eyes of pharmaceutical industry executives if you are, say, 40 years old and your doctor writes you a Lipitor prescription to lower your bad cholesterol. If you live to be 80, over your life span you’ll be spending about $50,000 on this drug.
The Most Important Supplement
It’s magnesium. In fact, if you wake up one morning and say, “I’m not taking another supplement in my life” (not that I’m recommending this), don’t toss your magnesium.
Q&A: Herbs Control PMS Palpitations
Q: In a health tip on hormones, you wrote that virtually any cyclical symptom is probably caused by hormone fluctuations. You described a patient who got such severe heart palpitations that her cardiologist considered heart surgery before one herb managed to get her hormones under control. Could you tell me which herb was used and how it worked?
Benefits of a Whole Food Diet
In my last health tip we discussed the damaging effects of all the sugar we’re eating. I urged you to boost your intake of whole foods–real fruits and vegetables that are so readily available now in the farmers markets of our northern hemisphere.
Sugar
Okay, I am going to start in on sugar. And by sugar, I mean not only granulated cane sugar but also high fructose corn syrup, which seems to be added to just about everything except anchovies these days.
Eat Food as Nouns, Not Adjectives
As we enter the peak growing season in North America, it’s a perfect time to renew your efforts to eat a fresh, plant-based diet of mostly vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and nuts. If you can eat locally grown produce, so much the better.