Tag: Nutrition

How to prevent osteoporosis…Chinese style…

On By austinacupuncturejasonIn Conditions We Treat, Medicine, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I had a long-time patient come in the other day who happens to be in her lower 80’s. She was coming in for her monthly “tune-up” as she calls it, and told me about how she slipped and fell on the ice last week while walking her dog. It happened so fast that she didn’t even know it was happening until she was looking up from the flat of her back.

Since she was alone, she slowly managed to get up and walk back home. She had someone bring her to the Urgent Care Clinic who did x-rays and nothing was broken. A few days later she happened to have her routine yearly check up with her regular doctor. They looked at her previous years bone density test (which was borderline) and the doctor decided that she should get the osteoperosis injection to help prevent osteoporosis.

She wasn’t too excited about it. She knew that there were significant side effects from any of the osteoporosis medications and with the shot, there was no stopping should there be any unwanted side effects (unlike a pill that you can stop taking, the shot is a train that you  don’t get to get off for the next 6 months when it starts to wear off).

Knowing that her last bone density test was borderline and she just gave her body a good test (by falling on the pavement without any fractures), she decided to pass on her doctors recommendation for more pills or shots.

When she came to see me a week later she asked me what I thought about all that. She asked me what I knew about the pro’s & cons of the pharmaceuticals for osteoporosis. I was honest with her and explained why I agreed with her decision. She had heard something about how Fosamax actually causing more fractures and osteo-necrosis (bone death). I told her that there were indeed several studies that link the anti-osteoporosis medications with increased hip fractures and jaw bone death. Scary stuff since they are supposed to do just the opposite.

One way to understand how these medications work is the metaphor that they act as a “spackle” for all of the microscopic fractures that our bones normally experience in day to day life. Just like our skin, the old cells are sloughing off and being replaced by new cells that fill in the gaps. With medications such as these, they fill in the gaps with something else… something harder and less pliable than normal bone tissue… leading to more breakable bones, not less. So the osteoporosis medications will indeed made your bones more dense, but they also make them more breakable.

So what else can someone do? Well, taking more calcium doesn’t work either. It turns out that osteoporosis isn’t due to a lack of calcium or magnesium or vitamin D. Most people already have too much calcium floating around in the blood stream…. which is linked to higher incidence of heart issues. Osteoporosis is more of a hormonal dysfunction rather than a vitamin & mineral deficiency.

As an aside; if you did want more calcium in your diet, milk is one of the least efficient places to get it. The calcium in milk is not a very assimilable (absorb-able and usable) form. Green leafy vegetables is a far more efficient source of calcium. More on that later.

Yes, osteoporosis is a hormonal problem, not a calcium problem. That is why it is almost exclusively a post menopausal woman issue; when the hormones of youth have shifted.

brushing-teeth-2103219_1280On a side note, another thing to avoid is fluoride from your city water. This is a whole other topic for another day, but fluoride found in city water has been linked to disrupting hormones and interrupting proper bone regeneration. Brush your teeth with fluoride toothpaste if you feel that you must, but stop drinking it; that absolutely does not help your teeth; fluoride works is a topical application, not a nutritional supplement that you ingest. Its poisonous and a known neurotoxin. You can buy special fluoride filters to remove the fluoride form your city water. More on that later…

weights-652484_1920So what are some non-pharmaceutical ways to prevent osteoporosis? First, and most importantly, start early. The number one prevention for is weight bearing exercise. Squats, dance, Yoga, Pilates, boot camp, weight lifting…things like that. If you start in your 20’s  and 30’s or 40’s, so much the better. The bones are one of those parts of the body that get stronger the more you try to wear it out. So today go find someone in your community that is an expert on exercise. You might find them at the YMCA or the local gym, or that cool church in town that is into that sort of thing or even the Senior Center. They always have exercise classes there and have the know how to give you a great ‘sane and sensible’ workout specifically for your current state of health. So no matter where you are beginning from, start now.

Acupuncture has also been shown to balance out these hormones and potentially been linked to prevention of osteoporosis brakes. But more importantly is getting great nutrition, plenty of direct sunshine (at least 20 minutes per day on your head and bare shoulders) and a good Chinese herbal formula from your local acupuncturist or herbalist. Talking to your friendly neighborhood acupuncturist/herbalist would be a great place to start… (after talking to your doctor first). J

Diet Soda Exposed!

On By austinacupuncturejasonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

 

People have been led to think that drinking diet soda will help them shed the lbs. Shocking new research is proving otherwise. Doctors from University of Texas found that drinking a single can of diet soda on a daily basis will increase your risk of obesity 41% PER CAN! Drinking 2 cans a day increases your chance of obesity 82%! Drinking regular sugared soft drinks also increases your risk, but not by as much.

Unfortunately, many of the bottled “water” products are actually soft drinks in disguise. Many of the new flavored bottled water options on the store shelves have just as much artificial sweetener (or more) as soda. Don’t be tricked! “Water” is often a soda in disguise.

It may sound counterintuitive, but replacing the sugar in diet sodas and other foods with reduced- and no-calorie sweeteners may make weight control harder.

Rats in the Purdue University study that were fed regular feed and yogurt sweetened with no-calorie saccharin took in more total calories and gained more weight than rats fed regular feed and yogurt sweetened with sugar.

Researchers speculate that over time, reduced-calorie sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose condition the body to no longer associate sweetness with calories, thereby disrupting its ability to accurately assess caloric intake. This disruption may, in turn, lead to overeating, they note.

Another theory is that the sweetness of zero calorie sweeteners tricks the body into thinking that there is plenty of blood sugar floating around and needs to get rid of it (high blood sugar is something that the body does not want). So the pancreas releases insulin into the blood stream. If you remember, insulin is what allows sugar to be allowed into the cells and out of the blood stream. Insulin is sort of like the “key” to the lock that opens the door of the cells and lets sugar (glucose) in. When we have this insulin dump, it reduces the blood glucose levels which tells the body that it has too low blood sugar and needs to replenish the glucose by eating. It’s a vicious nasty cycle that puts our body on a blood sugar roller coaster.

“If this is the case in rats, there is little reason to think that humans don’t have this same response,” researcher Susan Swithers says. “It is possible that consuming these products interferes with one of the mechanisms that helps to regulate weight.”

Drinking diet sodas also increase your chances of developing high blood sugar (a factor in diabetes) 25% and lowers good cholesterol 32%.

“About 30% of obese people are binge eaters, and it may be true that for some eating artificially sweetened foods trigger binges,” researchers says.

To add insult to injury, another 7 year study on aspartame (NutraSweet) where rats were given the equivalent of 4-5 cans of diet pop each day developed leukemia, lymphoma, and other cancers much more than the rats not given aspartame in their diets.

The researchers determined that the carcinogenic effects may begin in humans at the equivalent of about 20mg. per day of aspartame. But according to the FDA, the current recommended safe limit is 50mg per kg. of body weight which is the equivalent of 20 bottles of soda for a 150lb adult.

That is 8 cups of sodas or 2 “Big Gulps” per day. That’s not that much for some people.

Many people are surprised to find out how many ounces of soda they are actually drinking throughout the day. I sometimes have people keep track.  Maybe 16 ounces at lunch with a refill, a couple of cans at work throughout the day, one with dinner and then another bottle at the game… it sneaks up on you and adds up.

Of course, critics have pointed out that these are animal studies and there has not been any conclusive evidence that artificial sweeteners cause cancer in humans. More research is needed.   (Because nobody uses rats in medical studies, right? o_O )

If all that wasn’t enough, the urban legend about melting a nail by submerging it in soda seems to hold a grain of truth. In laboratory studies, researches found that regular cola soda will eat 5.9% of a tooth’s enamel off in 48 hours. They blame it on the phosphoric acid manufacturers use to give cola its zip. They suggest using a straw to help the caustic liquid bypass your teeth.

So what is the moral of the story? I’ll leave that to you to decide…

Flu Fighting Foods

On By austinacupuncturejasonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

With flu season at its peak, many of us are doing everything we can to stay healthy. Things like getting enough sleep and burning off stress with exercise, laughter and comraderie are all important measures that we can take. We can also do things such as gargle salt water, drink an alcoholic beverage daily (which lowers risk of catching a cold by 40% according to Yale University) and eating certain foods.

For example, Japanese researchers found that eating one (cooked or raw) clove of garlic daily reduces our chance of catching the flu by an incredible 43% and speeds up recovery by two full days as well. Eating an apple each day slashes our risk of sinus infection, bronchitis and pneumonia by 53%. And including yogurt in our daily diet also adds to this with its own 50% reduction in risk of contracting a cold virus and a 33% increase in recovery time. Those numbers beat the flus shot and the Tamiflu’s effectiveness rates by a good amount!

So be sure to go get your flu shot, but also remember that there is plenty of choices that YOU can make every day to boost up your immune system and help ensure a healthy year to come.

Because YOU can help control your own future.