'Anti-Conventional-Wisdom' Doctor's post

I first read Dr. Malcolm Kendrick's book, "The Great Cholesterol Con" several years ago and was impressed.  He was one of (if not) the first debunking the whole cholesterol theory (follow the money).  I now get his posts weekly and am impressed anew.  He is a Scottish doctor and so focuses mostly on the British health care system.  Ours may be even worse in terms of the things he talks about, so his posts are very timely.

Have you heard of the term, polypharmacy?  Well that is his subject today and it bears a lot more scrutiny.  May I recommend you take a look. 

http://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2014/02/22/a-ghost-in-the-machine/

Some of the ideas in this blog post by Dr. Kendrick, are the same ones that I discuss in excruciatingly bright light  in my short e-book, "How to Be a Smarter Health Care Consumer" found on my website here: http://mindingthemiddleagedmiddle.com/e-books.shtml 
An important fact to remember is that all pharmaceuticals are toxic.  Some side effects of the toxic substances are theoretically positive for something, but they are ALL toxic systematically.

Should you want or know someone who wants/needs this information, you can buy it by emailing me, and it can be paid for with paypal.  No cart set up on that page for now.

Exercise Improves the Aging Process...

...No surprise.  Muscle only does two things; build up or tear down.  It does not stay static.  So if you are not doing anything that puts stress on a muscle to make it grow, it will be getting flabby.  Flabby muscles are not attractive and they are not functional.  And that does not even account for the metabolic benefits of exercise.

If you are like me, there is no gym anywhere near where I live (out in the country 12 miles from a small town).  And while I work hard at tending animals, a garden and a household, it's not always muscle building sorts of work.  Below is a link to a great chart with body weight exercises for each group of muscles that need attention for overall fitness.  Click on any little picture for a short youtube of how to do it correctly!  They are in groupings of easy to hard to accommodate any fitness level  and take no equipment!  Enjoy!

http://strength.stack52.com/periodic-table-of-bodyweight-exercises/

Touching base again with a perspective you might find interesting

As I've been putting together my little farm/homestead, my time for writing has been limited.  Although I keep up on the research and opinion of the nutritional-aging-wellness world, there is not often time to report it as I would wish.  I'll try to do better over the winter!

I ran across this article today from Kirk Douglas on his 97th birthday.  It is one man's wishes for his almost a century birthday and may spark a chord in you as it did in me.

MY BIRTHDAY WISHES by Kirk Douglas

Today is my 97th birthday. I am a lucky man. I've been married to my wife, Anne, for 60 years and she continues to captivate me.

When you get to be 97, you can reflect on the lessons you've learned in almost a century of life. Mark Twain said, "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

I won't pretend that getting older is easy. But I find that it's given me a perspective that I lacked when I was younger. I was always running everywhere -- from meetings to movie sets, from shooting films all around the world to serving as a goodwill ambassador for the State Department in over forty countries. Staying still was something I did not do well.

 Now, I treasure the quiet times: reading books that make me think about new ideas; watching my roses bloom; gazing at the palm trees shimmering against the afternoon sky; seeing the simple path of a cloud across the sky; and especially sitting with Anne in front of the fire at sunset -- the Golden Hour.

So I asked myself, what do I want for my birthday? There's nothing I need, other than good health for my wife and my family.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I knew exactly what I wanted -- a better world for my grandchildren.
But have you ever tried to put 97 candles on a cake? You can't. So I put 10 candles to represent the 10 decades of my life. Here are my birthday wishes:

• A world where weapons, big and small, are symbols of weakness, not strength
• A world where religion informs values, not governments
• A world where the air is breathable, the water drinkable and the food is healthy and plentiful
• A world where poor people are the smallest percentage of the population
• A world where education and health care are available to everyone
• A world where prejudice based on race, religion and nationality is non-existent
• A world where smoking tobacco is considered a ridiculous practice from a bygone era
• A world where all diseases are curable and physical pain is no longer a part of life
• A world where we control technology, not the other way around
• A world where greed is never considered good

Excuse me -- I have a lot of candles to blow out.

Two Audio Presentation I highly Recommend

That I'd highly recommend you listen to.  Each is 50-60 minutes and worth your time and attention.

 

 

If you have any symptoms off less-than-vibrant good health, if you have any diagnosis, if you have any pain--that is your body telling you it's inflamed.  The medical industrial complex can help mask symptoms (medications for pain or to lower blood pressure, or to ease your breathing or depression or brittle bones or insulin problems).  But alleviating symptoms doesn't address the underlying cause that starts the disease processes.  The symptoms are a message.  We ignore it or suppress it at our peril.  It's like turning off the smoke detector because the noise is annoying.  

 

 

 While still not quite totally mainstream, I am delighted to see more experts emphasizing the importance of chronic, low level, silent inflammation in all disease development.  These two presentations are well done, I thought they were pretty interesting (see what you think) and explain much!  The first is by Dr. Tom O'Bryan on Oct 6 , and the second is by Dr.  Lori Shemek on Oct 7 at this link:

 

 

http://transformyourhealthsummit.com/experts/ 

I believe these will only be available for a few more days at this sight. 

 

She says, "No One Really Understands Blood Sugar and Insulin"

She is Dr. Marlene Merritt and she has several YouTube videos that are definitely worth a look.  I'll give you some links below.

How it all works is actually very understandable they way she explains and in short videos too, not the long ones.  But for me, it was nice to hear someone else talk about the role of blood sugar and insulin in chronic inflammation.  Diabetics die of heart disease far more than of anything else, and far more often than non diabetics.    Heart Disease in an inflammatory disease.  But then so are most (or all) of the diseases of civilization.  Want to have an active functional life after 50 or 60 or 70?  Keep blood sugar low.  Repair insulin resistance.  Get your chronic inflammation gone.  Want to know more about how?  Watch these three videos, it's a good start.  Read my booklet, "Inflammation Run Amok" at http://mindingthemiddleagedmiddle.com/ but start now to repair the damage you've already done and insure good years ahead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RE4cXeX7Po&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcvg4DnLvn8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCkQdPZjF-Y

Post Menopausal Weight Loss

This is a subject I'm critically interested in, more so recently.  For several reasons.

1.  Aging and weight are correlated--not cause and effect--but mixed in together
2.  Disease states of civilization (and age) are tied in with metabolic syndrome usually characterized by the middle aged middle
3.  Since moving to my homestead almost a year ago, I've been losing weight but not necessarily by the theoretical means that is biologically relevant (sugar/insulin/fat storage).
4.  It's become obvious I need to revise some of my booklet on weight loss and I've been working on that document.
5.  Some aspects of this subject left me baffled and looking for better or more complete answers.
6.  I want to be thin again, and being down half-way there is better, but not good enough.

This morning I read a (long) article in Mother Jones, about some of this/these subjects.  I will give you a link shortly, but first let me tell you why this is important.

This article is one of the best I've ever seen in regular media (well, Mother Jones may not be totally regular) that talks about chronic inflammation and how it's tied into obesity and disease.  It's explained well and doesn't pussy foot around much about diseases that "might have an inflammatory component."  It flat out tells the truth that inflammation that never shuts down CAUSES disease.

And not that it's new information to me, but it pretty much also says that inflammation causes obesity, too.  Sometimes I have to hear things a lot of times for it to sink in.  Like a few years ago when I must have read dozens of times how a lot of people are sensitive to wheat.  Then one time I read that and said, "Ok. ok, I'll just try the wheat elimination diet to prove it doesn't apply to me!"  I was wrong.  It applies to me big time.  Getting off wheat was the biggest player in putting my severe arthritis into remission.

But this article covers another factor in all this aging/wellness/obesity stuff which is the health of the gut--most specifically the gut bacteria that actually control much more of aging/wellness/obesity stuff.

That said, this article is still stuck on "whole grains are good" mantra without recognizing they are mostly empty calories with very low nutrient and high toxicity.  Also where there is talk about fat, no one is distinguishing what kind of fat.  So keep those two things in mind as caveats. 

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/gut-microbiome-bacteria-weight-loss

I now have a glimmering of why I'm losing weight--finally--having been low carb for a lot longer than losing the extra weight.  In fact it may have much to do with all the probiotics I eat, drink and take as supplements, getting my gut flora into better shape after all the damage done to it by antibiotics.

I commend the article for some excellent information and not pulling punches.

How to Skip Getting Heart Disease

In light of what the last year has taught me about weight loss after menopause, I have been making a few additions and editorial adjustments to my e-book, “Minding the Middle Aged Middle.”  Much of that booklet describes the hormonal realities of fat and sugar metabolism and storage/retrieval systems.  That is totally valid info still, though I am adding to other parts.  

So the upshot of that is a big part of getting fat (the middle, especially) has to do with the things we eat that digest to sugar—carbohydrates.  Eating fat doesn’t make you fat.  Eating bread, does.  So my recommendation to any who want to lose weight is, of course, to limit the high density carbohydrates (grains, legumes, potatoes, alcohol, sweets of all kinds and most certainly sodas.)  Want the e-book?  See http://mindingthemiddleagedmiddle.com/ 

The crucial tool for assessing the carbohydrate's ability to raise blood sugar (and trigger fat storage) is the glycemic load.  It is a number telling how fast a carbohydrate food turns to glucose and how much glucose there is.  It is additive--the glycemic loads of things you eat are added together.  Low is less than 10.  Medium is up to 20, and over 20 is high.  Keeping it low will certainly help with losing the middle aged middle.

BUT:

A paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

 (Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Jun;71(6):1455-61. A prospective study of dietary glycemic load, carbohydrate intake, and risk of coronary heart disease in US women.  Liu S, Willett WC, Stampfer MJ, Hu FB, Franz M, Sampson L, Hennekens CH, Manson JE.) 

Tells us this surprising VERY important finding! 

Your risk of heart attack and stroke doubles (DOUBLES, like twice as risky) if your average daily glycemic load is 206 compared to those with an average of 117.

Diabetics, with their blood sugar problems, are prone to heart disease, in fact this is from the American Diabetes website:

People with diabetes have a higher-than-average risk of having a heart attack or Stroke. These strike people with diabetes more than twice as often as people without diabetes. There’s a big link between diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. In fact, two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke… 

Blood sugar (as measured by the glycemic load) is deadly.  I can’t for the life of me figure how there could possibly be any controversy about these findings.  If you want a smaller middle, avoid high glycemic foods (listed above).  Look them up at http://nutritiondata.self.com/ or http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php.  Not only will it help in minding the middle aged middle but it will save you from heart disease.  Make your carbs be vegetables and fruit with their relatively low glycemic index and high levels of nutrients, rather than those with low nutrients and high glycemic load. 

For another blog post I will report on what they find regarding cancer risk and blood sugar levels.  No surprise.  Higher blood sugar equals higher rates of cancer.