LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Healthy Living in a Toxic World

Scary Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Obesity

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pesticides and obesity
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremybrooks/

I have covered the difference in “healthy” versus “unhealthy” fat in a recent article that can be read by clicking here.

While rare in today’s society, it IS possible to have the purely storage form of fat (think hibernating bear) that has not yet turned against you and set you on the path for diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  After all, our body stores fat for a rainy day.  While humans don’t hibernate, throughout the vast majority of our fight for survival, starvation has been the norm.  The ability to capture excess calories when available was a boon to survival.

Enter today’s lifestyle with no “hardship” for most of us in the industrialized world.  The calories are everywhere and the quality is questionable.  Do not EVER confuse the 100 calories in a kids’ size fast food french fry and the 100 calories in 3 servings of vegetables.  Regardless of what you hear from some of the weight loss programs, a calorie is NOT a calorie.

Beyond the concern over the quality of the calories we take in and the exercise we do, what factors play a role in deciding whether our fat is going to be “healthy” or “unhealthy?”  The answer is one of the scarier ones we face.

Toxicity from our environment.

For me, I think this is the scariest because it is subtle.  The clothes you are wearing, the air you’re breathing, the plastic water bottle you drank, the mattress you sleep on, the new car smell in your new car and the non-organic bell peppers you ate with your salad.  The exposures are literally everywhere and are usually silent.  Sure, the “new shower curtain smell” is easily recognizable, but what about the BPA in the plastic water bottle you’re drinking from because you thought it was good for you?  Tasteless and odorless.

Persistent organics pollutants, or “POPs,” are chemical compounds that are almost entirely man-created and are difficult to degrade in either the environment or our bodies.  As a result, they accumulate inside your body and lead to all kinds of nasty things like cancer, obesity and diabetes.

While the list of POPs is extensive, there are some that top the list of the most common and they fall into 3 categories:

  1. Pesticides: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, toxaphene;
  2. Industrial chemicals: hexachlorobenzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); and
  3. By-products: hexachlorobenzene; polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF), and PCBs.

In case you’d really like to stay in tune with the research and worldwide advocacy of POPs, then the Stockholm Convention website is the best place to start.

Overall, though, it is clear that exposure to POPs is a bad thing, and this article is yet another one that clarifies just how extensive the problem is.  In it, researchers looked at the difference in POPs levels between women who were obese but metabolically healthy (based on risk factors for heart disease and prediabetes) and obese and unhealthy.  Here are the details:

  • They looked at 21 different pollutants.
  • Unhealthy obese women had higher levels of 12 POPs which was 40% higher than the healthy obese group.
  • Specifically, there were 470% higher levels of total dioxin- and non-dioxin-like PCBs (used in industrial uses and plastics).
  • Trans-nonachlor levels (an insecticide) were 610% higher.

There are uncountable numbers of POPs that we are exposed to on a daily basis and some are more strongly associated with chronic diseases than others.  But the associations between certain POPs in this study and obesity are scary.

Overall, this means that you need to examine the chemicals you are exposed to every single day and do your best to avoid or reduce your exposure to these chemicals.  As an example, feel free to check out this article on the use of diatomaceous earth for pest control.

Stressed Out? Problems Sleeping? Taking These May Kill You

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sleep hynotics increase risk of death
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/hopkinsii/

The typical answer for sleep problems or anxiety is medication. But in no way do these drugs actually fix anything.

Rather, the underlying brain damage that stress causes is allowed to run amok, unchecked. And make no mistake–stress destroys your brain. Shrinks it. Kills off healthy brain cells. Shortens memory. Accompanying the brain damage is damage to the rest of your body as well. Increased risks of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

In summary, not good.

In my opinion, stress is the leading cause of sleep problems. How is your body supposed to sleep when all the cortisol-based alarms in your head are screaming that there is a saber-toothed pacing in the hallway. Managing stress is key to anxiety and sleep problems. Exercise and eating right for your body. Meditation, self-hypnosis or biofeedback for your brain.

Using medication to cover this up is a recipe for disaster and is associated with over a half MILLION deaths per year. I’ve written about this in a previous blog article that can be found by clicking here. So, with this in mind, is nothing new and just reinforces this dangerous association and puts the damaging effects of stress on your health into perspective.

Here are the details of this study looking at 34,727 patients 16 years of age and older who were prescribed anxiolytic or hypnotic drugs and followed for an average of 7.6 years:

• Most common drugs were benzodiazepines (think diazepam) and the “Z” drugs (zaleplon, zolpidem, and zopiclone – think Ambien).
• Those taking one of these drugs had a 346% higher risk of dying in the study period.
• The higher the dose, the greater the risk.
• To put in more plainly, there were about four excess deaths for every 100 patients using one of drugs.

If this was not the first study to find an association between the use of these 2 types of drugs (for anxiety and sleep problems) we could maybe blow off the results. But we can no longer ignore the fact that taking a drug in this class WILL increase your risk of dying. Period. Maybe it’s the stress or maybe some aspect of the drugs themselves. Either way, it doesn’t change the outcome. Dead is dead regardless of how it happened.

Gluten, GMOs, Probiotics and Monsanto; the Web Tightens

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gluten and GMOs
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/kattebelletje/

I’ve had many people ask me about this “gluten free” thing and whether it’s “real.” Or is it just a fad?

First and foremost, the entity known as celiac disease is nothing new. The traditional acceptance of celiac disease is a condition where the immune system of the gut attacks the gluten containing portion of grains (namely wheat, but also to a certain degree in oats, barley and rye). This attack results in the lining of the gut (the villa) being flattened out. While a normal gut may have the area of a tennis court, in someone with celiac disease that eats gluten, the destruction of the lining of the gut leaves you with a ping pong table.

The shrinkage of the area that is needed to absorb nutrients wreaks havoc long term and leads to most of the issues associated with traditional celiac disease (osteoporosis, neurological disturbances, shortened life span, etc…). This is the far end of the spectrum and is usually diagnosed via biopsy of the lining of the gut. Moving up the spectrum (from worst to less-worser), the blood markers anti-transglutaminase and anti-gliadin antibodies will be elevated and can be checked in a blood test.

This is generally where mainstream medicine stops at the definition of celiac disease. However, as I mentioned, it is a spectrum and not a set point. As you move away from the biopsy proven gluten allergy to the other end of the spectrum, “sensitivity” becomes a much better word to use. At this end, the number of people with sensitivity to gluten is quite high and it is very real.

And the numbers of people with gluten sensitivity keep going up. But why?

A portion of this may due to a cross reaction between a protein found in the yeast Candida albicans and a protein found in gluten. This means that a prescription for antibiotics, which will increase the number of yeast in your gut, can initiate the onset of celiac disease in genetically susceptible patients.

Combine the wanton use of antibiotics with conventionally grown grains given high amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer (more nitrogen leads to more gliadin for the gut to react to) and you’ve got a recipe for more gluten problems.

But it turns out the story may be more complicated. This particular article looks at the role of glyphosphate (the principle component of the herbicide Roundup used heavily in GMO crops) and the realionship to celiac disease. While the article is quite complex, here are the high points:

• Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems that are similar to celiac disease.
• Glyphosphate triggers imbalances in gut bacteria (reduced Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, which break down gluten).
• Disrupts detox P450 enzymes, interrupting the activation of vitamin A and D, the maintenance of bile acid production as well as the breakdown of environmental toxins.
• Glyphosphate chelates and leads to deficiencies in iron, cobalt, molybdenum and copper.
• Glyphosphate leads to deficiencies in the amino acids tryptophan, tyrosine, methionine and selenomethionine.
• In addition, both celiac patients and glyphosphate exposure increase risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
• Both are associated with reproductive issues like infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects.

Making matters worse, glyphosphate residues in wheat and other crops are likely increasing due to the growing practice of crop desiccation just prior to the harvest.

So, is it glyphosphate toxicity or gluten sensitivity? I’m pretty sure that this article didn’t entirely clear things up for many of you. The bottom line is that the answer likely lies somewhere in between. Either way, it would seem smart to take away two needed changes from this article. First, living a naturally gluten-restricted diet is a good idea. This does NOT mean buying the same types of foods you have always eaten but just buying them gluten-free. Not a good idea.

Second, if you do take in any gluten-containing grains, make sure they are organic or at least GMO free to reduce the likelihood that you will be exposed to glyphosphate.

Zetia & Cholesterol: How to Tell if Your Doc Stays Up to Date

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cholesterol lowering drugs
Image credit: jgroup / 123RF Stock Photo

Ezetimibe, aka Zetia, hit the market in 2002 based on its ability to lower LDL cholesterol levels. Scripts skyrocketed 180 TIMES over the next 6 years.

In the US in 2002, 6 out of 100,000 people were given prescriptions for Zetia; by 2008, this number vaulted to 1082 per 100,000 persons. A mind blowing increase for a drug that had not yet been shown to save lives, just shown merely to lower LDL cholesterol. In Canada, over similar time frames, use jumped from 2 per 100,000 to 495, an even more massive increase of 247.5 TIMES as many prescriptions. Again–for a drug that really hadn’t been shown to do anything just yet.

And it is chiropractors who are sometimes accused of being unscientific.

This should have all changed in 2008 with the release of the data from the ENHANCE trial. In the ENHANCE trial, ezetimibe was added to a statin (the combination being called Vytorin) to further force cholesterol levels down, because that is really all that is important. Disappointingly, the trial showed no benefit from ezetimibe.

Just in case this wasn’t enough, in 2009 in the ARBITER 6–HALTS trial, the combination was actually shown to INCREASE plaguing in the carotid arteries of the neck. Not a good thing. Surely, by this point prescriptions for Zetia fell to nonexistent levels, right?

Not quite.

This particular study looked at how much the publication of the ENHANCE trail data affected physicians’ use of ezetimibe in both the US and Canada. In the US, after the publication of these two trials, prescriptions fell from the aforementioned 1082 per 100,000 people down to 572, a drop of 47.1%. In Canada, however, the increase in the number of prescriptions slowly and steadily moved up (from 2 to 495 per 100,000 people) even after the publication of the trials.

This is not the first example of mainstream medicine ignoring the evidence that is supposed to guide the practice of medicine. But this one seems particularly bothersome. This drug launched itself from zero to near superstar status on pretty much nothing but the ability to lower a single lab value 20%. And, I might add, this particular lab value is LDL cholesterol, which has now lost favor as a lab value that has any real ability to predict risk of heart disease.

The bottom line is that you should ONLY see a physician who keeps up with the medical literature. Maybe not to the DSM-V worthy level that some of us do, but at LEAST the basics. If you doctor has written you a prescription for either Zetia or Vytorin, he or she is not in this group.

Antibiotic Side Effects; You Thought Diarrhea was the Worst Concern

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The side effects of diarrhea are pretty well played known. Diarrhea and antibiotic resistance top the chart.

I have not exactly been silent about my position that the above two concerns are minor side effects and that the destruction of the normal, protective bacterial flora in the gut is of one of the most horrendous, underappreciated side effects of wanton antibiotic use. Nothing will destroy the delicate balance of the immune system like throwing the bacterial flora off kilter with antibiotics.

But this is a story for another time. This particular article raises a very, very disturbing concern that I had not been aware of until now.

Azithromycin (think Zithromax and the Z-pak) and levofloxacin (Levaquin) are very commonly used antibiotics for just about everything. While the aforementioned antibiotic-associated diarrhea still remains a concern, researchers in this article found a new side effect that occurred within the first 5 days of using one of these antibiotics.

Arrhythmias and fatal heart attacks. Now, maybe I’m overreacting, but to me, it seems like death as a side effect from taking antibiotics for a viral respiratory infection seems a little unbalanced.

To put this in perspective, one of the researchers noted that 50% of patients continue to receive antibiotics, especially broad-spectrum antibiotics, for illnesses such as “acute cough.” This means that, “if it is assumed that 50% of the 40 million outpatient prescriptions for azithromycin written in 2011 were unnecessary, then based on the data, it may be reasonable to estimate 4560 deaths were caused by antibiotic alone.”

Here are the specifics from the study:

• This study looked at 1.6 million antibiotic prescriptions among Veterans.
• Those who received azithromycin had a 48% higher risk of death.
• They also had a 77% higher risk of cardiac arrhythmias.
• This occurred in the first five days of treatment (but, since azithromycin is a short course, this is somewhat irrelevant).
• Those who received levofloxacin had a 149% higher risk of death and 143% higher risk of cardiac arrhythmia in the first five days.
• The risk were not as bad, but still present on days 6-10, at 95% and 75% higher, respectively.
• The risks were greater for those with existing prolonged QT interval, low blood levels of potassium or magnesium, those with bradycardia or those currently taking antiarrhythmic medications. Further, elderly patients and those already at high risk for heart disease were also at higher risk.

Lest you think that you are entirely safe, other macrolide antibiotics that are like azithromycin such as erythromycin and clarithromycin, have also been shown to up risk of QT-interval prolongation, torsades de points, and polymorphic ventricular tachycardia.

What does this mean? Overall, it really doesn’t change the story. Antibiotics, from my perspective, have always been a dangerous class of drugs to use except when absolutely necessary. However, this concern is largely due to the long term effects of destroying immune balance that will show up years later. This study makes long term side effects irrelevant if you happen to be dead from a heart attack.

Common Wallet Item Ups Diabetes, Obesity Risk

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We live in a toxic sludge and Resistance is futile. There is no good argument against this statement, but you can at least start with awareness.

Knowing where your toxic environmental exposures are can at least minimize the impact. Many would prefer to live blissfully unaware that he or she is surrounded by chemicals well known to create health hazards. The thyroid gland alone is known as the “yellow canary” of the human body, affected by toxins long before other systems of the body. Didn’t you ever wonder why your thyroid gland just “gave out” in your twenties??

In the case of environmental chemicals creating harm, what you don’t know WILL kill you.

Top of the list of these chemicals is Bisphenol A, or just BPA. Notoriously associated with plastic water bottles and the linings of aluminum cans (yes–just in case the mercury, artifical sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup wasn’t enough to destroy your health…) and most soup cans. There are clear associations between BPA exposure and obesity, diabetes and certain cancers (mainly hormonally driven cancers like breast). It’s not good.

So just avoid plastic water bottles and cans and you’ll be OK, right? Turns out it may not be quite that easy. This particular study goes into a very common exposure that, if you’re aware of it, will allow you to make some changes to lower your exposure.

Thermal cash register receipts. Yup. Those near-ubiquitous curly sheets of paper that we all have because we all use plastic to pay for just about everything in life these days. In the study, 24 students handled register receipts for two hours and, one week later, performed the same set of activities with nitrile gloves. Here’s what they found:

  1. Prior to exposure, 83% had BPA in urine samples; this jumped to 100% after handling receipts.
  2. Urine levels jumped from an average of 1.8 micrograms/L to 5.8 after exposure.
  3. One participants, after drinking 4 cans of beverage, was excluded. The urine level was 49.3.
  4. There was no rise in urine BPA levels with the use of gloves.

These are some scary findings. First, the massive increase after drinking canned beverages should put everyone on alert. Second, there is a very real increase in your body’s exposure to BPA after handling register receipts. So what can we all do to lower our risk other than wear blue nitrile gloves around everywhere we go?

Obviously, reducing our exposure to these receipts is first and foremost. For our office, although we are dealing with maybe 10 receipts per day and not hundreds, the concern is there. Handling the receipts with dry hands rather than when wet or greasy can lower your absorption of the BPA. Do not recycle thermal receipts as the BPA may get incorporated into the recycled paper. Wash your hands after handling receipts and never use an alcohol-based hand cleaner, as this will increase BPA absorption through the skin.

And, for god’s sake, never gnaw on your receipts.

Follow these simple guidelines can help cut your risk of exposure. But, as I mentioned, you need to be aware of how you are being exposed before you can begin to protect yourself.

US prescription drug sales boosted by advertising – (10-30-00)

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US prescription drug sales boosted by advertising

Who’s says that research and good medicine are behind the rise in use of prescriptions drugs? It’s got nothing to do with that. Quite the opposite…there’s been much controversy lately with the pharmaceutical industry infiltrating into the FDA and affecting the results of so-called unbiased research.

bmj.com Charatan 321 (7264): 783

Read entire article here

Little Thought of Nutrient Increases Risk of Death Over 200%

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This topic is not, as my colleague Dr. Cipriano would put it, “sexy.” But, after some consideration I decided to comment on it for the full story.

Phosphorus is located on the periodic table of the elements at atomic number 15, sitting nicely between sulfur and silicon, below oxygen and above arsenic. If you want to know more, check out Wikipedia (and make sure you drop them a donation of a few bucks as well—they certainly deserve it).

In our bodies, phosphorus is a critical component of our DNA, RNA, our cell membrane as well as my favorite organelle, the mitochondria. As such, we need it for survival. Phosphorus is pretty common in our foods and so deficiencies are not common. The most well-known concern with phosphorus is in chronic kidney disease, where the kidneys lose the ability to get rid of excess phosphorus in the urine and phosphorus levels in the body rise.

Elevated phosphorus has to go somewhere, and it has a tendency to land in the blood vessels and contribute to plaquing in the arteries. This is the main reason that people with chronic kidney disease are so susceptible to heart disease.

But there is a darker side to phosphorus. Certain foods, like soda and processed foods, are also high in phosphorus. In sodas, phosphoric acid is the culprit, used to give the drink its characteristic tartness. There is concern that high intake of sodas are increasing phosphorus levels high enough to contribute to heart disease in those of us without kidney failure.

Further, another consequence of elevated phosphorus is that it will affect the conversion of vitamin D into its active form. One of the triggers for your body to activate vitamin D into the active form is a phosphorus or calcium deficiency. This turns on vitamin D, allowing the body to absorb more of these two nutrients.

In reverse, with high blood levels of phosphorus (or calcium) vitamin D does not get activated. When vitamin D doesn’t get activated, we don’t get the REAL benefits of vitamin D on cancer prevention, heart disease prevention, immune protection, vascular benefits, respiratory benefits and more.

All of this leads us to this particular study. In it, researchers looked at the risk of death (all-cause mortality, or the risk of dying from anything) in relation to the levels of phosphorus in the diet. Here’s what they found:

    Individuals who consumed more phosphorus-dense diets were older, were less often African American, and led healthier lifestyles (smoking, physical activity, and Healthy Eating Index).
  • In those who consumed >1400 mg/d had a 223% higher risk of dying.
  • At <1400 mg/d, there was no association.
  • When taken in the context of calories, those taking in more than 0.35 mg/kcal also had a 227% higher risk of dying.

A few comments.

First, it is recommended that daily consumption of phosphorus stay around 1,000 mg for most age groups. As mentioned, processed foods and sodas have increased the phosphorus intake of Americans in recent years, and this may largely contribute to the problems seen with elevated phosphorus.
The only thing that throws a wrench in the works of this thought process is the note that those with healthier lifestyles had higher phosphorus intakes. This is obviously a wee bit disturbing, made even more so by the fact that, without looking much deeper into the study, I really don’t have any idea how the link between healthier diets and high phosphorus diets plays out.

It is, however, very common for some people to eat what they consider “healthy” foods that really are not. Some of these foods may be high in phosphorus content like prepared frozen foods, dairy products (like yogurt and milk) and breads (leavening agents). It is entirely possible that, when looking at the “healthy” foods in more detail that we would see that these foods are high in phosphorus.

In the meantime, this study just gives us even more reasons to avoid soda and processed foods in our diets.