"When you focus on doing more, your goal is to seek always to help other people-- not yourself. But one of our power influencers offers a practical suggestion for helping other by helping yourself.
Larry Senn--chairman of Senn Delaney, an international firm focused on shaping organizational culture-- says you can do more for the people in your life by making a stronger commitment to keeping yourself healthy.
This may sound self-serving at first, but it's not. When you're in good shape, you're better able to take care of your family and you're more likely to be around to positively influence their lives in the future. And when you're healthy, you have more energy and mental clarity so you make better decisions both at work and at home.
Larry practices what he preaches. At age 70, he started doing Spring-triathlons. He's now 76 years old, and runs six triathlons per year.
He says, 'It all ties back to purpose. My highest purpose is my family. I have a huge obligation to be able to keep healthy for them, and I need to do an exemplary job of taking care of myself. I need also to do an exemplary job for my clients, and to serve them well I need to be at the top of my game, which requires discipline in terms of fitness and diet and growth and evolution as a person.'
By the way, Larry often wins in his age group when he runs triathlons. This year he won in Long Beach, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, and San Diego. 'I'm not fast, but there aren't many guys left in my bracket!' he jokes. 'In these triathlons they paint your age in giant letters on your calf, and I get lots of comments. It's fun to pass guys in their 20's and 30's on my bike and hear them say, 'Wow! Go for it!'"
From Real Influence by Mark Goulston and John Ullmen
Showing posts with label Vital Signs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vital Signs. Show all posts
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Friday, February 17, 2012
Vaccinating Our Children for Sexually Transmitted Diseases?
November 2011. Last month, an advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta recommended that 9 to 12 year old boys be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus transmitted through sexual contact. The goal of the recommendations was to prevent cancers caused by HPV, such as certain cancers of the digestive tract.
The same committee had already recommended, back in March of 2007, that girls and young women between the ages of 9 and 26 be vaccinated against HPV, to help prevent various cancers of the reproductive tract, such as cervical cancer.
While the motivation to prevent cancer and diseases is clearly good, a universal recommendation of this type raises ethical concerns. Because the recommendations of the committee relate to important aspects of human behavior and sexuality at formative ages for children and adolescents, parents need to look at the psychological and social messages they might be conveying by choosing to vaccinate their children against HPV. Beyond all the medical considerations, parents also have a duty to innoculate their children against harmful and immoral behaviors. Thus, decisions about vaccinations ultimately need to be made on a case-by-case basis within a particular family.
Parents are often rightly concerned that getting their kids vaccinated for a sexually-transmitted virus could be taken to signal tacit approval of pre-marital sex. Young people might surmise that their parents and physicians do not believe they can remain chaste, but instead begrudgingly expect them to become sexually active prior to marriage.
The widespread phenomenon of condom distribution among youth certainly conveys the same message, and young people today are not fools; they perceive how the culture around them has caved in on this question, no longer insisting, or even believing, that they have the wherewithal to refrain from pre-marital sex. Girls and boys are no longer treated as free individuals who can make higher and better choices when encouraged and supported, but instead are treated as mere creatures of sexual necessity.
I recall one time speaking with a middle-aged woman about the CDC vaccination recommendations. “When I was a girl, if my mom had taken me to get vaccinated for a sexually transmitted disease, I would have been horrified,” she said. “I would have wondered to myself, ‘What does she suppose I am, a tramp or something?’”
Parents do need to be careful about conveying a sense of fatalism when it comes to questions of the sexual behavior of their kids. Against the backdrop of a highly permissive culture, parents, who are the first educators of their children in sexual matters, are right to be concerned about sending conflicting messages.
Pursuing universal vaccination for sexually transmitted diseases like HPV could have the unintended effect of setting up a false sense of security, a kind of mental “safety net,” for boys and girls who are potentially sexually active. In the hormonally-charged environment of adolescence, young people might come to believe that the risks of premarital sex would be reduced by the vaccination, to the point that they would be "protected" and could risk promiscuous behaviors, when in fact, they would be increasing their odds of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) of any kind.
To consider an example where using the HPV vaccine might be sensible, we could consider a young woman who had been chaste all her life but who was preparing to marry a man whom she suspected had been sexually active (and might therefore expose her to HPV in their marriage). She could decide, prior to marriage, that receiving the HPV vaccination would be reasonable, and even without any suspicions about her future spouse’s past behavior, she might still prefer to leave nothing to chance.
Evaluating the potential risks and benefits of vaccinating boys or young men would similarly indicate various situations where the HPV vaccination would be reasonable. Also, at younger ages, children may not need to know the exact purposes behind a vaccination. They could simply be told by their parents (if they even asked) that the vaccine would protect them against possible cancers in the future.
Parents themselves, however, might still have doubts about the safety of the HPV vaccine, given that its side effects and complications are still being actively debated and studied. They might still have questions about its long-term benefits since it affords only a 5 year window of protection, and has only been surmised, but never scientifically demonstrated, to prevent cancer at a timepoint far in the future.
In sum, many factors need to be considered. Rather than a universal mandate, a careful, case-by-case risk/benefit analysis ought to be made by each family to determine whether the HPV vaccine is a reasonable choice, not only medically, but also in terms of where a young person may be in his or her life as a “moral agent.”
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Sandwich Generation
This is a touching story that eloquently depicts the beautiful mess of life....when a woman is faced with caring for her elderly father and her own family. It is painfully truthful and touches on the strength of the human spirit. I hope you like it.
The Sandwich Generation: Part I
http://mediastorm.com/publication/the-sandwich-generation
The Sandwich Generation: Part II
http://assets.aarp.org/external_sites/caregiving/multimedia/LifeWithHerbie.html
The Sandwich Generation: Part I
http://mediastorm.com/publication/the-sandwich-generation
The Sandwich Generation: Part II
http://assets.aarp.org/external_sites/caregiving/multimedia/LifeWithHerbie.html
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Pope Paul VI Institute - For the Study of Human Reproduction
I would just like to bring light to the fact that there is such a thing.... It provides all the "ammo" necessary for anyone who wants to fight for the Culture of Life!!!
![[God-Adam_hands.gif]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjalK-LvA96QQkGaUt5SBpQ1FP5DwE-HH9ZyVdWw3rS8Wu6h44sIjgj8IeC-_cs3QYTwDxCUizcJ8Us46EzQKKws84MXEWWXzF0p-oxGfNvOHorxju8oCZQSZwJ8xl651up0_rKpuDe7a4/s1600/God-Adam_hands.gif)
Monday, November 15, 2010
Cholesterol - the Whole Picture
Here is what I find to be the most comprehensive view on cholesterol for the average person. It will probably only be of use to you if you or someone you know is on any type of cholesterol lowering drug (aka "statin") and you're searching for a healther alternative. This article is written by Mark Hyman, M.D. -- a leading physician in the field of Functional Medicine.
"We have all been led to believe that cholesterol is bad and that lowering it is good. Because of extensive pharmaceutical marketing to both doctors and patients we think that using statin drugs is proven to work to lower the risk of heart attacks and death.
But on what scientific evidence is this based, what does that evidence really show?
Roger Williams once said something that is very applicable to how we commonly view the benefits of statins. "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
We see prominent ads on television and in medical journals -- things like 36% reduction in risk of having a heart attack. But we don't look at the fine print. What does that REALLY mean and how does it affect decisions about who should really be using these drugs.
Before I explain that, here are some thought provoking findings to ponder.
• If you lower bad cholesterol (LDL) but have a low HDL (good cholesterol) there is no benefit to statins. (i)
• If you lower bad cholesterol (LDL) but don't reduce inflammation (marked by a test called C-reactive protein), there is no benefit to statins. (ii)
• If you are a healthy woman with high cholesterol, there is no proof that taking statins reduces your risk of heart attack or death. (iii)
• If you are a man or a woman over 69 years old with high cholesterol, there is no proof that taking statins reduces your risk of heart attack or death. (iv)
• Aggressive cholesterol treatment with two medications (Zocor and Zetia) lowered cholesterol much more than one drug alone, but led to more plaque build up in the arties and no fewer heart attacks. (v)
• 75% of people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol
• Older patients with lower cholesterol have higher risks of death than those with higher cholesterol. (vi)
• Countries with higher average cholesterol than Americans such as the Swiss or Spanish have less heart disease.
• Recent evidence shows that it is likely statins' ability to lower inflammation it what accounts for the benefits of statins, not their ability to lower cholesterol.
So for whom do the statin drugs work for anyway? They work for people who have already had heart attacks to prevent more heart attacks or death. And they work slightly for middle-aged men who have many risk factors for heart disease like high blood pressure, obesity, or diabetes.
So why did the 2004 National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines expand the previous guidelines to recommend that more people take statins (from 13 million to 40 million) and that people who don't have heart disease should take them to prevent heart disease. Could it have been that 8 of the 9 experts on the panel who developed these guidelines had financial ties to the drug industry? Thirty-four other non-industry affiliated experts sent a petition to protest the recommendations to the National Institutes of Health saying the evidence was weak. It was like having a fox guard the chicken coop.
It's all in the spin. The spin of the statistics and numbers. And it's easy to get confused. Let me try to clear things up.
When you look under the hood of the research data you find that the touted "36% reduction" means a reduction of the number of people getting heart attacks or death from 3% to 2% (or about 30-40%).
And that data also shows that treatment only really works if you have heart disease already. In those who DON'T have documented heart disease, there is no benefit.
In those at high risk for heart disease about 50 people would need to be treated for 5 years to reduce one cardiovascular event. Just to put that in perspective: If a drug works, it has a very low NTT (number needed to treat). For example, if you have a urine infection and take an antibiotic, you will get near a 100% benefit. The number needed to treat is "1". So if you have an NTT of 50 like statins do for preventing heart disease in 75% of the people who take them, it is basically a crap shoot.
Yet at a cost of over $28 billion a year, 75% of all statin prescriptions are for exactly this type of unproven primary prevention. Simply applying the science over 10 years would save over $200 billion. This is just one example of reimbursed but unproven care. We need not only prevent disease but also prevent the wrong type of care.
If these medications were without side effects, then you may be able to justify the risk - but they cause muscle damage, sexual dysfunction, liver and nerve damag,e and other problems in 10-15% of patients who take them. Certainly not a free ride.
So if lowering cholesterol is not the great panacea that we thought, how do we treat heart disease, and how do we get the right kind of cholesterol - high HDL, low LDL and low triglycerides and have cholesterol particles that are large, light and fluffy rather than small, dense and hard, which is the type that actually causes heart disease and plaque build up.
We know what causes the damaging small cholesterol particles. And it isn't fat in the diet. It is sugar. Sugar in any form or refined carbohydrates (white food) drives the good cholesterol down, cause triglycerides to go up, creates small damaging cholesterol particles, and causes metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes. That is the true cause of most heart attacks, NOT LDL cholesterol.
One of the reasons we don't hear about this is because there is no good drug to raise HDL. Statin drugs lower LDL -- and billions are spent advertising them, even though they are the wrong treatment.
If you're like most of the patients I see in my practice, you're convinced that cholesterol is the evil that causes heart disease. You may hope that if you monitor your cholesterol levels and avoid the foods that are purported to raise cholesterol, you'll be safe from America's number-one killer.
We are all terrified of cholesterol because for years well-meaning doctors, echoed by the media, have emphasized what they long believed is the intimate link between cholesterol and death by heart disease. If only it were so simple!
The truth is much more complex.
Cholesterol is only one factor of many -- and not even the most important -- that contribute to your risk of getting heart disease.
First of all, let's take a look at what cholesterol actually is. It's a fatty substance produced by the liver that is used to help perform thousands of bodily functions. The body uses it to help build your cell membranes, the covering of your nerve sheaths, and much of your brain. It's a key building block for our hormone production, and without it you would not be able to maintain adequate levels of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and cortisol.
So if you think cholesterol is the enemy, think again. Without cholesterol, you would die.
In fact, people with the lowest cholesterol as they age are at highest risk of death. Under certain circumstances, higher cholesterol can actually help to increase life span.
To help clear the confusion, I will review many of the cholesterol myths our culture labors under and explain what the real factors are that lead to cardiovascular disease.
Cholesterol Myths
One of the biggest cholesterol myths out there has to do with dietary fat. Although most of us have been taught that a high-fat diet causes cholesterol problems, this isn't entirely true. Here's why: The type of fat that you eat is more important than the amount of fat. Trans fats or hydrogenated fats and saturated fats promote abnormal cholesterol, whereas omega-3 fats and monounsaturated fats actually improve the type and quantity of the cholesterol your body produces.
In reality, the biggest source of abnormal cholesterol is not fat at all -- it's sugar. The sugar you consume converts to fat in your body. And the worst culprit of all is high fructose corn syrup.
Consumption of high fructose corn syrup, which is present in sodas, many juices, and most processed foods, is the primary nutritional cause of most of the cholesterol issues we doctors see in our patients.
So the real concern isn't the amount of cholesterol you have, but the type of fats and sugar and refined carbohydrates in your diet that lead to abnormal cholesterol production.
Of course, many health-conscious people today know that total cholesterol is not as critical as the following:
• Your levels of HDL "good" cholesterol vs. LDL "bad" cholesterol
• Your triglyceride levels
• Your ratio of triglycerides to HDL
• Your ratio of total cholesterol to HDL
Many are also aware that there are different sizes of cholesterol particles. There are small and large particles of LDL, HDL, and triglycerides. The most dangerous are the small, dense particles that act like BB pellets, easily penetrating your arteries. Large, fluffy cholesterol particles are practically harmless--even if your total cholesterol is high. They function like beach balls and bounce off the arteries, causing no harm.
Another concern is whether or not your cholesterol is rancid. If so, the risk of arterial plaque is real.
Rancid or oxidized cholesterol results from oxidative stress and free radicals, which trigger a vicious cycle of inflammation and fat or plaque deposition under the artery walls. That is the real danger: When small dense LDL particles are oxidized they become dangerous and start the build up of plaque or cholesterol deposits in your arteries.
Now that we've explored when and how cholesterol becomes more problematic, let's take a look at other factors that play a more significant role in cardiovascular disease.
Prime Contributors to Cardiovascular Disease
First of all, cardiovascular illness results when key bodily functions go awry, causing inflammation, (vii) imbalances in blood sugar and insulin and oxidative stress.
To control these key biological functions and keep them in balance, you need to look at your overall health as well as your genetic predispositions, as these underlie the types of diseases you're most likely to develop. It is the interaction of your genes, lifestyle, and environment that ultimately determines your risks -- and the outcome of your life.
This is the science of nutrigenomics, or how food acts as information to stall or totally prevent some predisposed disease risks by turning on the right gene messages with our diet and lifestyle choices. That means some of the factors that unbalance bodily health are under your control, or could be.
These include diet, nutritional status, stress levels, and activity levels. Key tests can reveal problems with a person's blood sugar and insulin, inflammation level, level of folic acid, clotting factors, hormones, and other bodily systems that affect your risk of cardiovascular disease.
Particularly important are the causes if inflammation, which are many, and need to be assessed. Inflammation can arise from poor diet (too much sugar and trans and saturated fats), a sedentary lifestyle, stress, autoimmune disease, food allergies, hidden infections such as gum disease, and even toxins such as mercury. All of these causal factors need to be considered anytime there is inflammation.
Combined together, all of these factors determine your risk of heart disease. And I recommend that people undergo a comprehensive medical evaluation to see what their risk really is.
Zeroing in on Key Factors for Heart Disease
There's no doubt about it, inflammation is key contributor to heart disease. A major study done at Harvard found that people with high levels of a marker called C-reactive protein (CRP) had higher risks of heart disease than people with high cholesterol. Normal cholesterol levels were NOT protective to those with high CRP. The risks were greatest for those with high levels of both CRP and cholesterol.
Another predisposing factor to heart disease is insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome, which leads to an imbalance in the blood sugar and high levels of insulin. This may affect as many as half of Americans over age 65. Many younger people also have this condition, which is sometimes called pre-diabetes.
Although modern medicine sometimes loses sight of the interconnectedness of all our bodily systems, blood sugar imbalances like these impact your cholesterol levels too. If you have any of these conditions, they will cause your good cholesterol to go down, while your triglycerides rise, which further increases inflammation and oxidative stress. All of these fluctuations contribute to blood thickening, clotting, and other malfunctions -- leading to cardiovascular disease.
What's more, elevated levels of a substance called homocysteine (which is related to your body's levels of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12) appears to correlate to cardiovascular illness. Although this is still somewhat controversial, I often see this inter-relationship in my practice. While genes may play a part, tests done as part of a comprehensive evaluation of cardiac risk can easily ascertain this factor. Where problematic levels occur, they can be easily addressed by adequate folic acid intake, along with vitamins B6 and B12."
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, M.D.
"We have all been led to believe that cholesterol is bad and that lowering it is good. Because of extensive pharmaceutical marketing to both doctors and patients we think that using statin drugs is proven to work to lower the risk of heart attacks and death.
But on what scientific evidence is this based, what does that evidence really show?
Roger Williams once said something that is very applicable to how we commonly view the benefits of statins. "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
We see prominent ads on television and in medical journals -- things like 36% reduction in risk of having a heart attack. But we don't look at the fine print. What does that REALLY mean and how does it affect decisions about who should really be using these drugs.
Before I explain that, here are some thought provoking findings to ponder.
• If you lower bad cholesterol (LDL) but have a low HDL (good cholesterol) there is no benefit to statins. (i)
• If you lower bad cholesterol (LDL) but don't reduce inflammation (marked by a test called C-reactive protein), there is no benefit to statins. (ii)
• If you are a healthy woman with high cholesterol, there is no proof that taking statins reduces your risk of heart attack or death. (iii)
• If you are a man or a woman over 69 years old with high cholesterol, there is no proof that taking statins reduces your risk of heart attack or death. (iv)
• Aggressive cholesterol treatment with two medications (Zocor and Zetia) lowered cholesterol much more than one drug alone, but led to more plaque build up in the arties and no fewer heart attacks. (v)
• 75% of people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol
• Older patients with lower cholesterol have higher risks of death than those with higher cholesterol. (vi)
• Countries with higher average cholesterol than Americans such as the Swiss or Spanish have less heart disease.
• Recent evidence shows that it is likely statins' ability to lower inflammation it what accounts for the benefits of statins, not their ability to lower cholesterol.
So for whom do the statin drugs work for anyway? They work for people who have already had heart attacks to prevent more heart attacks or death. And they work slightly for middle-aged men who have many risk factors for heart disease like high blood pressure, obesity, or diabetes.
So why did the 2004 National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines expand the previous guidelines to recommend that more people take statins (from 13 million to 40 million) and that people who don't have heart disease should take them to prevent heart disease. Could it have been that 8 of the 9 experts on the panel who developed these guidelines had financial ties to the drug industry? Thirty-four other non-industry affiliated experts sent a petition to protest the recommendations to the National Institutes of Health saying the evidence was weak. It was like having a fox guard the chicken coop.
It's all in the spin. The spin of the statistics and numbers. And it's easy to get confused. Let me try to clear things up.
When you look under the hood of the research data you find that the touted "36% reduction" means a reduction of the number of people getting heart attacks or death from 3% to 2% (or about 30-40%).
And that data also shows that treatment only really works if you have heart disease already. In those who DON'T have documented heart disease, there is no benefit.
In those at high risk for heart disease about 50 people would need to be treated for 5 years to reduce one cardiovascular event. Just to put that in perspective: If a drug works, it has a very low NTT (number needed to treat). For example, if you have a urine infection and take an antibiotic, you will get near a 100% benefit. The number needed to treat is "1". So if you have an NTT of 50 like statins do for preventing heart disease in 75% of the people who take them, it is basically a crap shoot.
Yet at a cost of over $28 billion a year, 75% of all statin prescriptions are for exactly this type of unproven primary prevention. Simply applying the science over 10 years would save over $200 billion. This is just one example of reimbursed but unproven care. We need not only prevent disease but also prevent the wrong type of care.
If these medications were without side effects, then you may be able to justify the risk - but they cause muscle damage, sexual dysfunction, liver and nerve damag,e and other problems in 10-15% of patients who take them. Certainly not a free ride.
So if lowering cholesterol is not the great panacea that we thought, how do we treat heart disease, and how do we get the right kind of cholesterol - high HDL, low LDL and low triglycerides and have cholesterol particles that are large, light and fluffy rather than small, dense and hard, which is the type that actually causes heart disease and plaque build up.
We know what causes the damaging small cholesterol particles. And it isn't fat in the diet. It is sugar. Sugar in any form or refined carbohydrates (white food) drives the good cholesterol down, cause triglycerides to go up, creates small damaging cholesterol particles, and causes metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes. That is the true cause of most heart attacks, NOT LDL cholesterol.
One of the reasons we don't hear about this is because there is no good drug to raise HDL. Statin drugs lower LDL -- and billions are spent advertising them, even though they are the wrong treatment.
If you're like most of the patients I see in my practice, you're convinced that cholesterol is the evil that causes heart disease. You may hope that if you monitor your cholesterol levels and avoid the foods that are purported to raise cholesterol, you'll be safe from America's number-one killer.
We are all terrified of cholesterol because for years well-meaning doctors, echoed by the media, have emphasized what they long believed is the intimate link between cholesterol and death by heart disease. If only it were so simple!
The truth is much more complex.
Cholesterol is only one factor of many -- and not even the most important -- that contribute to your risk of getting heart disease.
First of all, let's take a look at what cholesterol actually is. It's a fatty substance produced by the liver that is used to help perform thousands of bodily functions. The body uses it to help build your cell membranes, the covering of your nerve sheaths, and much of your brain. It's a key building block for our hormone production, and without it you would not be able to maintain adequate levels of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and cortisol.
So if you think cholesterol is the enemy, think again. Without cholesterol, you would die.
In fact, people with the lowest cholesterol as they age are at highest risk of death. Under certain circumstances, higher cholesterol can actually help to increase life span.
To help clear the confusion, I will review many of the cholesterol myths our culture labors under and explain what the real factors are that lead to cardiovascular disease.
Cholesterol Myths
One of the biggest cholesterol myths out there has to do with dietary fat. Although most of us have been taught that a high-fat diet causes cholesterol problems, this isn't entirely true. Here's why: The type of fat that you eat is more important than the amount of fat. Trans fats or hydrogenated fats and saturated fats promote abnormal cholesterol, whereas omega-3 fats and monounsaturated fats actually improve the type and quantity of the cholesterol your body produces.
In reality, the biggest source of abnormal cholesterol is not fat at all -- it's sugar. The sugar you consume converts to fat in your body. And the worst culprit of all is high fructose corn syrup.
Consumption of high fructose corn syrup, which is present in sodas, many juices, and most processed foods, is the primary nutritional cause of most of the cholesterol issues we doctors see in our patients.
So the real concern isn't the amount of cholesterol you have, but the type of fats and sugar and refined carbohydrates in your diet that lead to abnormal cholesterol production.
Of course, many health-conscious people today know that total cholesterol is not as critical as the following:
• Your levels of HDL "good" cholesterol vs. LDL "bad" cholesterol
• Your triglyceride levels
• Your ratio of triglycerides to HDL
• Your ratio of total cholesterol to HDL
Many are also aware that there are different sizes of cholesterol particles. There are small and large particles of LDL, HDL, and triglycerides. The most dangerous are the small, dense particles that act like BB pellets, easily penetrating your arteries. Large, fluffy cholesterol particles are practically harmless--even if your total cholesterol is high. They function like beach balls and bounce off the arteries, causing no harm.
Another concern is whether or not your cholesterol is rancid. If so, the risk of arterial plaque is real.
Rancid or oxidized cholesterol results from oxidative stress and free radicals, which trigger a vicious cycle of inflammation and fat or plaque deposition under the artery walls. That is the real danger: When small dense LDL particles are oxidized they become dangerous and start the build up of plaque or cholesterol deposits in your arteries.
Now that we've explored when and how cholesterol becomes more problematic, let's take a look at other factors that play a more significant role in cardiovascular disease.
Prime Contributors to Cardiovascular Disease
First of all, cardiovascular illness results when key bodily functions go awry, causing inflammation, (vii) imbalances in blood sugar and insulin and oxidative stress.
To control these key biological functions and keep them in balance, you need to look at your overall health as well as your genetic predispositions, as these underlie the types of diseases you're most likely to develop. It is the interaction of your genes, lifestyle, and environment that ultimately determines your risks -- and the outcome of your life.
This is the science of nutrigenomics, or how food acts as information to stall or totally prevent some predisposed disease risks by turning on the right gene messages with our diet and lifestyle choices. That means some of the factors that unbalance bodily health are under your control, or could be.
These include diet, nutritional status, stress levels, and activity levels. Key tests can reveal problems with a person's blood sugar and insulin, inflammation level, level of folic acid, clotting factors, hormones, and other bodily systems that affect your risk of cardiovascular disease.
Particularly important are the causes if inflammation, which are many, and need to be assessed. Inflammation can arise from poor diet (too much sugar and trans and saturated fats), a sedentary lifestyle, stress, autoimmune disease, food allergies, hidden infections such as gum disease, and even toxins such as mercury. All of these causal factors need to be considered anytime there is inflammation.
Combined together, all of these factors determine your risk of heart disease. And I recommend that people undergo a comprehensive medical evaluation to see what their risk really is.
Zeroing in on Key Factors for Heart Disease
There's no doubt about it, inflammation is key contributor to heart disease. A major study done at Harvard found that people with high levels of a marker called C-reactive protein (CRP) had higher risks of heart disease than people with high cholesterol. Normal cholesterol levels were NOT protective to those with high CRP. The risks were greatest for those with high levels of both CRP and cholesterol.
Another predisposing factor to heart disease is insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome, which leads to an imbalance in the blood sugar and high levels of insulin. This may affect as many as half of Americans over age 65. Many younger people also have this condition, which is sometimes called pre-diabetes.
Although modern medicine sometimes loses sight of the interconnectedness of all our bodily systems, blood sugar imbalances like these impact your cholesterol levels too. If you have any of these conditions, they will cause your good cholesterol to go down, while your triglycerides rise, which further increases inflammation and oxidative stress. All of these fluctuations contribute to blood thickening, clotting, and other malfunctions -- leading to cardiovascular disease.
What's more, elevated levels of a substance called homocysteine (which is related to your body's levels of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12) appears to correlate to cardiovascular illness. Although this is still somewhat controversial, I often see this inter-relationship in my practice. While genes may play a part, tests done as part of a comprehensive evaluation of cardiac risk can easily ascertain this factor. Where problematic levels occur, they can be easily addressed by adequate folic acid intake, along with vitamins B6 and B12."
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, M.D.
Friday, November 12, 2010
There's no crying in baseball. THERE SHOULD BE.
Today in class I learned something very interesting about the human eye:
It produces 3 types of tears: basal tears, reflex tears, and crying tears. Basal tears simply keep the eye moist.
Reflex tears are produced if the eye is irritated (cutting onions or a piece of debris). AND now we get to the kicker....Crying tears are produced due to emotions. Humans are the only animals that produce crying tears. Crying tears are very unique in that they contain natural painkillers and a plethora of nutrients for the cornea.
So, if you're upset....why don't you cry about it? It WILL actually make you feel better and keep your eyes healthy in the process. :-)
Monday, November 8, 2010
Grace enhances nature.
For those of you out there who are expecting a baby, this is something beautifully awesome to consider:
(especially if the idea of being hooked up to lots of machines and needles during childbirth frightens you!)
http://www.bradleybirth.com/
(especially if the idea of being hooked up to lots of machines and needles during childbirth frightens you!)
http://www.bradleybirth.com/
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Possible Health Concerns from Using the Birth Control Pill
The birth control pill has several ways in which we think it works. And that might be an interesting thing to think about...in that we really don't know exactly how it works. We have four specific thoughts and this you will find in any endocrinological or gynecological textbook.
The first method is to inhibit ovulation. And I think the older birth control pills, which were higher in estrogen dose, were probably more effective in inhibiting ovulation, but we paid for that with women's lives. We saw increased strokes, increased tumors, the very very dire consequences of high estrogen content. So, in order to protect the patients we decreased the hormonal content of the pills, especially the estrogen component, and now have a very low-dose pill. The higher dose pills are actually off the market. None exist nowadays, so that gives you an idea of how risky they were. But, at the same time, with the lower dose pills, we have given up the very low incidence of ovulation and we have a higher risk of escape ovulation. And we see that oftentimes at sonogram time. If women are complaining of pain for some reason and we're doing a sonogram, I will see a large cyst on the ovary and I know that the women has taken the pill...has not skipped a day of the pill, and yet she has a mature follicle in the ovary. Whether or not that follicle will go on to rupture may be up to if the woman takes the pill at precisely the right right time. If she forgets, the next day or the following day, that follicle may rupture and then you have escape ovulation. Sometimes medications also counteract the effect of the pill and they increase the chances of ovulation. So, that is the main method we think that the pill works by inhibiting the majority of ovulations.
The second method is by inhibiting or slowing down the action of the cilia in the Fallopian tube. And cilia are little tiny hairs that line the cells which line the entire length of the Fallopian tube and feed towards the uterus. So, those hairs are actually helping the embryo--which develops when the egg and the sperm meet--to find its way into the uterus where it will fall and implant into the endometrium.
The third very important function of the pill has been shown to decrease the cervical mucus-- and cervical mucus is absolutely essential in the survival of the sperm and introducing the sperm up the uterus and into the tube. It will decrease the amount, if not totally eradicate the amount of cervical mucus, and actually make it very inhospitable to sperm.
And then the fourth very important factor, which is so often overlooked in the training of physicians and medical students, and in the informed consent for patients starting on the pill, is its potential abortifacient nature. And I'll explain that by telling you this-- that the hormones of the pill will make the lining of the inner part of the uterus very very thin. And that is one of the reasons why the pill is prescribed for women who have very heavy periods, because after several months, that woman will notice that her flow decreases. This is because the normal hormones of the woman have shut down, and the woman is responding to only the foreign hormone, which is in the pill - and that is a very controlled amount of hormone. So the woman notices the decrease in flow. But what is actually happening in the uterus is that the lining of the uterus becomes very very thin. Quite often I've had women come in and tell me "I've been on the pill for many many years, and now I have no period..what's wrong?" Actually, the pill has had its desired effect. So the lining of the endometrium is very thin. If there is escape ovulation-- if pregnancy has occurred --as the human embryo comes into the uterus and implants or tries to implant, its not going to find the environment that it needs to survive. It may survive for a few days or a few weeks, have difficulty, die, and then be expelled from the body. The woman may never even realize that she was pregnant. She may have a little bit of a delayed period, a little bit heavier than normal period, and not even realize that she's aborted.
Most physicians don't know, have never been taught, have not read the package insert, that explains that yes indeed, the hormonal contraceptives -- ALL OF THEM -- can be potentially abortifacient. And several of them are specifically abortifacient. But that fact is cleverly hidden by the pharmaceutical companies.
There are several health problems associated with being on the pill. First of all, I'd like to say, imagine a young woman can be on a pill for 10-20-30 years. And actually the female reproductive system is the only system that is functioning quite naturally and with the hormonal contraceptive is suppressed in its natural function -- which in medicine we do not see in any other scenario. You do not stifle, you do not suppress a naturally functioning system. And you will pay for that...sooner or later...the woman is going to pay for that. There's an increase risk of blood clots -- which can be fatal -- there is an increase risk of migraine headaches and strokes. There's an increase risk of a liver tumor, a hepatic adenoma, which many times will resolve with discontinuation of the pill -- but not all the time, and that will require major surgery for the woman. There is an increase risk of breast cancer, and I think women are not knowledgeable of that, and I believe that is one of the reasons why we have such a tremendous surge in breast cancer.
The pill does pose a risk in achieving pregnancy. If you read the work of Dr. Eric Ottoblat from Sweden, his research shows that for every year a woman is on the birth control pill, the cervix ages 2 years. I have seen this to be a tremendous problem for young women who are unaware of that and are prescribed contraceptives by their doctors, and when they get married and want to have a baby and achieve a pregnancy, they have almost no mucus. And then we start the therapies to increase the mucus.
It's interesting that we as gynecologists tend to treat fertility as a curse. It makes me very sad to say that because I am a gynecologist. But in that respect, I am one of them and I can point the fingers. We treat fertility as a curse. And as I mentioned earlier, we stifle a naturally beautiful functioning system with these drugs. Fertility is not a curse. Fertility is a tremendous gift. All you need to do is ask an infertile couple and they will very eloquently tell you what a blessing fertility is.
Martha Garza, M.D.
Endocrinologist/Gynecologist in San Antonio, TX
The first method is to inhibit ovulation. And I think the older birth control pills, which were higher in estrogen dose, were probably more effective in inhibiting ovulation, but we paid for that with women's lives. We saw increased strokes, increased tumors, the very very dire consequences of high estrogen content. So, in order to protect the patients we decreased the hormonal content of the pills, especially the estrogen component, and now have a very low-dose pill. The higher dose pills are actually off the market. None exist nowadays, so that gives you an idea of how risky they were. But, at the same time, with the lower dose pills, we have given up the very low incidence of ovulation and we have a higher risk of escape ovulation. And we see that oftentimes at sonogram time. If women are complaining of pain for some reason and we're doing a sonogram, I will see a large cyst on the ovary and I know that the women has taken the pill...has not skipped a day of the pill, and yet she has a mature follicle in the ovary. Whether or not that follicle will go on to rupture may be up to if the woman takes the pill at precisely the right right time. If she forgets, the next day or the following day, that follicle may rupture and then you have escape ovulation. Sometimes medications also counteract the effect of the pill and they increase the chances of ovulation. So, that is the main method we think that the pill works by inhibiting the majority of ovulations.
The second method is by inhibiting or slowing down the action of the cilia in the Fallopian tube. And cilia are little tiny hairs that line the cells which line the entire length of the Fallopian tube and feed towards the uterus. So, those hairs are actually helping the embryo--which develops when the egg and the sperm meet--to find its way into the uterus where it will fall and implant into the endometrium.
The third very important function of the pill has been shown to decrease the cervical mucus-- and cervical mucus is absolutely essential in the survival of the sperm and introducing the sperm up the uterus and into the tube. It will decrease the amount, if not totally eradicate the amount of cervical mucus, and actually make it very inhospitable to sperm.
And then the fourth very important factor, which is so often overlooked in the training of physicians and medical students, and in the informed consent for patients starting on the pill, is its potential abortifacient nature. And I'll explain that by telling you this-- that the hormones of the pill will make the lining of the inner part of the uterus very very thin. And that is one of the reasons why the pill is prescribed for women who have very heavy periods, because after several months, that woman will notice that her flow decreases. This is because the normal hormones of the woman have shut down, and the woman is responding to only the foreign hormone, which is in the pill - and that is a very controlled amount of hormone. So the woman notices the decrease in flow. But what is actually happening in the uterus is that the lining of the uterus becomes very very thin. Quite often I've had women come in and tell me "I've been on the pill for many many years, and now I have no period..what's wrong?" Actually, the pill has had its desired effect. So the lining of the endometrium is very thin. If there is escape ovulation-- if pregnancy has occurred --as the human embryo comes into the uterus and implants or tries to implant, its not going to find the environment that it needs to survive. It may survive for a few days or a few weeks, have difficulty, die, and then be expelled from the body. The woman may never even realize that she was pregnant. She may have a little bit of a delayed period, a little bit heavier than normal period, and not even realize that she's aborted.
Most physicians don't know, have never been taught, have not read the package insert, that explains that yes indeed, the hormonal contraceptives -- ALL OF THEM -- can be potentially abortifacient. And several of them are specifically abortifacient. But that fact is cleverly hidden by the pharmaceutical companies.
There are several health problems associated with being on the pill. First of all, I'd like to say, imagine a young woman can be on a pill for 10-20-30 years. And actually the female reproductive system is the only system that is functioning quite naturally and with the hormonal contraceptive is suppressed in its natural function -- which in medicine we do not see in any other scenario. You do not stifle, you do not suppress a naturally functioning system. And you will pay for that...sooner or later...the woman is going to pay for that. There's an increase risk of blood clots -- which can be fatal -- there is an increase risk of migraine headaches and strokes. There's an increase risk of a liver tumor, a hepatic adenoma, which many times will resolve with discontinuation of the pill -- but not all the time, and that will require major surgery for the woman. There is an increase risk of breast cancer, and I think women are not knowledgeable of that, and I believe that is one of the reasons why we have such a tremendous surge in breast cancer.
The pill does pose a risk in achieving pregnancy. If you read the work of Dr. Eric Ottoblat from Sweden, his research shows that for every year a woman is on the birth control pill, the cervix ages 2 years. I have seen this to be a tremendous problem for young women who are unaware of that and are prescribed contraceptives by their doctors, and when they get married and want to have a baby and achieve a pregnancy, they have almost no mucus. And then we start the therapies to increase the mucus.
It's interesting that we as gynecologists tend to treat fertility as a curse. It makes me very sad to say that because I am a gynecologist. But in that respect, I am one of them and I can point the fingers. We treat fertility as a curse. And as I mentioned earlier, we stifle a naturally beautiful functioning system with these drugs. Fertility is not a curse. Fertility is a tremendous gift. All you need to do is ask an infertile couple and they will very eloquently tell you what a blessing fertility is.
Martha Garza, M.D.
Endocrinologist/Gynecologist in San Antonio, TX
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