LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Healthy Living in a Toxic World

Missing Link for Obesity: Beyond Diet and Exercise

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Everyone is aware that obesity is related to diet and exercise. It’s as simple as calories in = calories out, right? It’s amazing how many weight gurus have promoted this over the years. Too bad it’s not that simple.

The 1st Law of Thermodynamics as it applies to weight management assumes that calories in equals calories out.  Basically, to lose weight, you need to take in less calories than you burn through daily living and exercise.  Pretty simple. Get a chart and a calculator and weight loss is guaranteed. Yeah right. How many of you have been there and done that?

The are many reasons why this just doesn’t work with body weight. First is the role of hormones. Hormones, such as insulin, leptin, resisten, thyroid and adiponectin play a massive role in weight regulation. These hormones are under complex regulation from signals in our environment.

Taking in too little low quality calories? The thyroid goes into hibernation mode. Think Slimfast or just cutting calories from a processed diet.

Is your gut stressed out from poor quality diet, drugs that block acid or emotional stress? This sends signals to the bone which in turn regulates body fat.

Sound complicated? It is. And yet another reason why a weight loss program needs to identify all facets of lifestyle and not merely calories in vs calories out. It is also why merely joining a gym (and actually going..) does not always lead to weight loss.

We have known for some time that chemicals in our environment contribute to altered body composition. Just some examples:

  1. Bisphenol A (BPA) is well documented to contribute to diabetes and weight gain
  2. Flame retardants play a role in obesity
  3. Flame retardants negatively affect thyroid function

This particular article through yet another wrench in the works of ideal weight. It is a wonderful review of what we are terming “obesogens” — chemical messengers in our environment that disturb our maintenance of a healthy weight and adds to the list of chemicals given above. Given what we now know of these chemicals’ influence, identification, avoidance and detoxification are  requirement for a program designed to achieve an ideal body composition. Anything less is not enough.

And given that the New Year with the New Year’s resolutions are upon us (of course–that’s only if you have given up on them yet), the beginning of the year is a great time to do a detox program. Regardless of how healthy we live, we are still exposed to a very large number of toxins that can contribute to ill health and weight gain. A simple, annual detox program seems to me to be a smart approach to combating this problem. Call the office for details if you’re interested.

THE ADVANTAGE SEEDING TRIAL – (5-11-09)

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The ADVANTAGE Seeding Trial: A Review of Internal Documents

A seeding trial is a trial done under the guise of research, but is actually created and administered by the marketing department. This particular study was run and published purely to get doctors used to writing prescriptions for Vioxx when it was first released.

Really. I’ve said it before that if the public truly knew how they were manipulated by drug companies with drugs with marginal effectiveness and frequent side effects for conditions THEY DON’T EVEN FIX–Chiros would be on the top of the health care pile. This also makes you wonder, if the physicians in these studies are so easily manipulated, are they truly acting as “physicians” or more like technicians being trained to give drug A for condition A?

Read entire article here

BENEFIT OF ADHERENCE DEPENDS ON AGE AND FRACTURE TYPE – (5-11-09)

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Benefit of Adherence With Bisphosphonates Depends on Age and Fracture Type

I’ve always felt that anti-resorptive therapy is the complete wrong way to approach improving bone health. A few things with this study. First, take 10 minutes or so to read through the rather extensive list of conflict of interests!! Next, look at how low the adherence is. Lastly, even with high adherence to medication use, the number of patients that need to be treated to prevent 1 hip fracture is 107.

This number would need to be much, much higher at lower rates of adherence found across the board in the people taking this drug. This is a very high number, suggesting that this class of drugs should not even be used, which is of course contrary to the huge number of scripts written for this class. I’ve always said that if the general public truly understood how useless and dangerous many of these drugs were there would be a paltry market for them.

Read entire article here

INCREASE IN DOMESTIC FATAL MEDICATION ERRORS – (5-11-09)

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A Steep Increase in Domestic Fatal Medication Errors With Use of Alcohol and/or Street Drugs

Talk about the war on drugs!! Look at the staggering percentage increases. These are DEATHS, not adverse reactions. DEATHS. We have created a culture where prescription drugs are used for everything and we have not properly educated the public on just how dangerous these drugs are. In a time when the government is looking to how to pay for everyone’s, medications, we need to stand up and point to the elephant in the room.

Read entire article here

EFFECT OF HYPERGLYCEMIA ON MITOCHONDRIAL RESPIRATION

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A few things to think about here.  We could argue that healthy mitochondrial function is the Holy Grail of good health and longevity.  Anything that improves mitochondrial function is a good thing.  So, what does this mean if we focus so heavily in mainstream medicine on achieving good blood sugar control, but that this control does not change mitochondrial function?

Could it mean we’re barking up the wrong physiological pathway?  I could rant and rave about surrogate end markers, but I’m sure you’ve read it from me before… It boils down to the cold, hard, undeniable fact that the ONLY way to properly manage chronic conditions like diabetes is through lifestyle changes.  There is massive evidence that changing a particular number artificially through the use of drugs is not only not helpful, but dangerous.

Read entire article here

HOW TO PREVENT DEATHS FROM CVD?

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Cardiovascular Risk Estimation and Eligibility for Statins in Primary Prevention Comparing Different Strategies

It’s always funny when we put things into perspective.  Statins are given out seemingly like candy and viewed as the best thing for prevention of CVD in this country.  Here is yet another study putting things into perspective.

For those at the very highest risk of CVD, assuming perfect compliance with medication dosage (which is NOT common), we have to treat 285 people to prevent a single death from CVD.  Keep in mind that numbers for most drugs are preferred to be on the range of UNDER 10 to 1….This really shows just how incredibly ineffective this class of drugs is at preventing CVD.

Compare this to exercise, healthy diet, stress reduction, fish oil supplementation or Vit D (let alone all combined!).  A NNT of 285 compared to these is laughable.  THEN, factor in the cost difference and we stop laughing and begin to cry…

Read entire article here

JUST HOW MUCH CAN WE BELIEVE IN THE MEDICAL RESEARCH??

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JUST HOW MUCH CAN WE BELIEVE IN THE MEDICAL RESEARCH??  There has been much concern over the past few years about how much influence the drugs companies have over the publication and dissemination of medical research.  The ways they do this are many.  Some as egregious as cancelling trials that weren’t going as planned, actually making up studies that get published, getting well known researchers to sign on to studies they did not participate in… The list is quite long.

In this particular study, the authors looked at how many studies reported positve outcomes in the title or abstract, but, in the actual study the findings were insignificant (i.e. the drug didn’t make a difference on outcomes).  In one single month, out of 72 studies reviewed, almost 60% had some type of “spin” designed to detract from the actual findings.

The bottom line is that, there is a very, very real possibilty that our entire drug-based “health” care system is built on a house of cards based only on shakey medical research.  More importantly, what is YOUR doctor reading to stay current???

WHAT’S THE BEST REASON TO STAY HEALTHY?

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WHAT’S THE BEST REASON TO STAY HEALTHY?  Sure, no one wants cancer, diabetes, strokes or heart attacks.  But that never seems to be enough to  get people to make the changes they need.  How about THIS for  incentive?  Take better care of yourself and have a better sex life and  more of it.  Almost 5 TIMES as much more!!  So the next time you’re  thinking about pulling through the fast food drive thru, give some REAL thought  to what you’ll be missing…Instead, opt for something along the  paleo-Mediterranean lines.  More olive oil, fresh fruits and veggies,  no dairy, lot so spices, exercise.

_Sex,  health, and years of sexually active life gained due to good health: evidence  from two US population based cross sectiona_
(http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/340/mar09_2/c810) Sex, health, and years of sexually active life gained due to good health: evidence from two US population based cross sectional surveys of ageing.

Stacy Tessler Lindau, associate  professor

1,2, Natalia  Gavrilova, senior research associate1
1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Chicago,  5841 S
Maryland Avenue, MC2050, Chicago, IL 60637, USA, and Chicago Core on Biomeasures in Population-Based Aging Research, University of Chicago Centre on Demography and Economics of Aging, 2 Department of Medicine, Section  of Geriatrics, University of Chicago.

Correspondence to: S Tessler Lindau _slindau@uchicago.edu_ (mailto:slindau@uchicago.edu) Objectives To examine the relation between health  and several dimensions of sexuality and to estimate years of sexually  active life across sex and health groups in middle aged and older  adults. Design Cross sectional study. Setting Two samples representative of the US population: MIDUS (the national survey of midlife development in the United States, 1995-6) and NSHAP (the national social life, health and ageing project, 2005-6). Participants 3032 adults aged 25 to 74 (1561 women, 1471 men) from the midlife cohort (MIDUS) and 3005 adults aged 57 to 85 (1550 women, 1455 men) from the later life cohort (NSHAP). Main outcome measures Sexual activity, quality of sexual life, interest in sex, and average remaining years of sexually active life, referred to as sexually active life expectancy. Results Overall, men were more likely than women to be sexually active, report a good quality sex life, and be interested in sex. These gender differences increased with age and were greatest among the 75 to 85 year old group: 38.9% of men compared with 16.8% of women were sexually active, 70.8% versus 50.9% of those who were sexually active had a good quality sex life, and
41.2% versus 11.4% were interested in sex. Men and women reporting very good or excellent health were more likely to be sexually active compared with their peers in poor or fair health: age adjusted odds ratio 2.2 (P<0.01) for men and 1.6 (P<0.05) for women in the midlife study and 4.6 (P<0.001) for men and  2.8 (P<0.001) for women in the later life study. Among sexually  active people, good health was also significantly associated with  frequent sex (once or more weekly) in men (adjusted odds ratio 1.6 to  2.1), with a good quality sex life among men and women in the midlife  cohort (adjusted odds ratio 1.7), and with interest in sex. People in  very good or excellent health were 1.5 to 1.8 times more likely to  report an interest in sex than those in poorer health. At age 30,  sexually active life expectancy was 34.7 years for men and 30.7 years  for women compared with 14.9 to 15.3 years for men and 10.6 years for  women at age 55. This gender disparity attenuated for
people with a  spouse or other intimate partner. At age 55, men in very good or excellent health on average gained 5-7 years of sexually active life compared with their peers in poor or fair health. Women in very  good or excellent health gained 3-6 years compared with women in poor or fair health.

Conclusion Sexual activity, good quality sexual life, and  interest in sex were higher for men than for women and this gender  gap widened with age. Sexual activity, quality of sexual life,  and interest in sex were positively associated with health in  middle age and later life. Sexually active life expectancy was  longer for men, but men lost more years of sexually active life  as a result of poor health than women.