Tea it Up

I hear many people complain that they feel like they can’t do or eat anything as it seems that everything in this world is bad for their health.  In writing these articles it’s easy to fall into that same trap and report on all the things that detract from health.  So when I come across something that actually promotes health and longevity, I try to take notice and bring it to your attention.  One of those things is Green Tea!

I hope that by now, you’ve heard that green tea can be effective at reducing the risk of numerous forms of cancer.  Studies vary, but on average drinking five cups daily of the antioxidant extract can reduce general cancer risk by around 50%.  You may have even heard that drinking green tea can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.  And with diabetes being the fastest growing form of chronic disease, you may want to take note that green tea helps with insulin resistance which is the very mechanism of type II diabetes.  For me, that alone is enough to seek out the stuff and drink it down.  However, recent research has discovered that green tea also has the potential to prevent and possibly even reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.  Alzheimer’s occurs as the result of your brain cells being impaired and killed from something called amyloid plaques.  Like every other degenerative process in the body, these plaques are the result of oxidative stress and free radical damage that are directly related to inflammatory diet, stress, and lack of exercise.  Before this study, the only proven method of preventing Alzheimer’s was physical exercise and consuming excessive fruits and vegetables for their antioxidant benefits.  There are only five drugs that treat the disease, but they only partially treat some of the symptoms temporarily for about half the patients who take them.  Scientist have found that green tea not only prevents the formation of amyloid plaques but can actually break down existing plaques in early development and can even promote the production of new nerve cells in the brain (which was thought to be impossible not too long ago).  These new cells were noticed in the part of the brain known as the hippocampus which is known to convert short-term information into long-term memory.  Through the use of functional MRI, the scientists of a European study were able to see changes in the brain cells with just a single dose of green tea or with just one week of green tea supplements!

I would like to clarify that the green tea we’re talking about here is not the stuff you buy at the gas station that is loaded with high fructose corn syrup.  You need to get the real thing.  In researching this, the types that consistently came up with the highest level of anti-oxidants were brands of Lonjing or Dragon Well teas.  However, I did find results from a UCLA study that claimed even the Celestial Seasonings and Lipton green teas were considered high in these same anti-oxidant levels.  In my search, I was unable to determine which brand is the best for sure, but one thing I know is that I’m going to start drinking some form of Dragon Well tea right away!

Fight the Fire

If there were one thing that every person could do to promote health and prevent all forms of disease it would be to “deflame”.  Nearly all experts agree that the common denominator of every disease is inflammation in the body.  Chronic inflammation will cause everything from pain and arthritis to cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.  Knowing strategies to decrease general inflammation can make all the difference

While there are several strategies to get the job done, reducing inflammation should start with diet.  Stated simply, we need to increase the foods that decrease inflammation and decrease the foods that promote inflammation.  One surprising food that promotes inflammation is grains.  Grains contain two ingredients that are the source of the problem.  Gluten is a protein found in most grains that will often cause a type of allergic reaction in the body that begins in the bowel.  Grains also contain a substance called phytic acid that will reduce the absorption of calcium, magnesium and zinc.  This phytic acid will cause the pH of our body to become more acidic which is known to cause inflammation.  Sugar has a similar effect in the body.  Excessive amounts of protein can also increase inflammation because in digestion, protein gets broken down to amino acids that must be neutralized.

Strategies for reducing inflammation through diet are much simpler.  We must ingest the minerals that neutralize our internal pH and bring us back to a slightly alkaline state.  Minerals come from the earth and are found in foods that grow in the ground.  This means virtually every fruit and vegetable will normalize pH and act as nature’s anti-inflammatory.  Commit to fruits and vegetables every day or ideally every meal.

Increasing exercise and minimizing the stress response are also critical for fighting inflammation, but if the diet is still out of skew, these strategies won’t get you as far.

Hard Habits

I once attended a wellness seminar where the presenter made an argument that we are all dopamine addicts.  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that gives us a feeling of pleasure.  The problem is that dopamine doesn’t accumulate and it doesn’t last very long.  For this reason we are always seeking out our next dose of dopamine from anything that can provide to us that feeling of pleasure.

One of the ways we gain pleasure is through food.  This is what makes changing eating habits a tremendous challenge to many people.  From an early age we are conditioned to associate unhealthy food with reward.  This could be in the form of a birthday cake, a piece of candy for a good deed, or going out for pizza for good grades.  Unfortunately, this behavior often carries on into adulthood and many of our bad eating habits are based on so-called “comfort” foods for a quick dopamine fix.  Once this connection is made in the brain, it’s very difficult to disconnect the association which is precisely what makes old habits hard to break.

While it may be true that disconnecting a feeling of pleasure can be difficult, you can always make a new association.  The same speaker who taught about dopamine shared with me a strategy that he uses with clients to make this new association.  You merely need to take your favorite self-sabotaging “comfort” food and eat it in front of a mirror while watching yourself.  Oh . . . and you will want to do this naked!  That’s right, totally nude.  How many servings of Rocky Road in the buff do you believe it would take to make you lose some pleasure in the tasty treat?  This may sound like a bizarre tactic, but it is based in science and basic brain chemistry.  Give it a try and I would love to know your results (rivertownchriowellness@gmail.com).

Social Significance

I’ve attempted in this column to cover numerous aspects of physical, chemical, and emotional well-being and how they relate to better health and wellness.  However, a journal article published in Nature Neuroscience reminded me that I’ve neglected the social aspect of health and its role in longevity.

The topic of social health became more significant in 1947 when the World Health Organization included it in its formal definition of health.  Increasing evidence has shown that those who are well integrated into their communities tend to live longer and heal better from disease while those who do not feel as connected are more prone to illness.  Numerous times, it has been proven that married people tend to live longer than individuals who do not marry.  In his book, Healthy at 100, John Robbins, M.D. documents the critical significance of a strong community network in all four of the cultures he studied where people often lived over 100 years with extraordinary health.  This recent research study set out to determine the neurological mechanism that makes these outcomes possible.  The conclusion of the study ties into a subject I’ve discussed numerous times in the past – stress physiology.  The researchers believe that a lack of community or even threats to social connection may tap into the same neural and physiological alarm system that responds to critical survival threats.  Having a strong social network appears to tap into basic reward related mechanisms in the brain.  What they are saying is that a good social support network shuts off the stress response and a poor social structure actually feeds the stress response.  Any perceived stress leads to what I have often called “stress physiology” which should be viewed as the predictable cascade of increased hormones that affect nearly all aspects of our physiology and over time can be linked to virtually every disease known to man.

The lesson to take home from this material is to work on your relationships.  Resist the temptation to go home and tune out.  Instead, spend time building meaningful bonds with your family and friends.  Join a club or group, or get involved in your church.  The more strong and meaningful relationships you maintain will not only make you feel better, but they will actually help you to live longer with less risk of disease and illness.

More Than a Luxury

When our patients begin their chiropractic treatment, I often recommend massage as part of a treatment plan. This seems to trouble some patients and they are reluctant to schedule massages. My only explanation for this is that people fail to see the health and wellness connection of massage therapy as they think of it merely as a spa experience or what I like to refer to as a Jacuzzi effect.  This is something that provides some benefit while you’re doing it, but by the next day, life remains relatively unchanged.  What I’ve come to see is that the people who undergo regular massage even for just once per week for a couple months learn the truth and experience the real benefits.

I did a quick review of the research on massage therapy and while there is too much to report, I made a laundry list of the broader benefits of this age-old procedure.  By increasing blood flow and circulation, research shows that massage often can reduce heart rate and blood pressure.  Similarly, by increasing the flow of lymphatic fluid, massage reduces swelling and strengthens the immune system.  By reducing muscle spasm, tension patterns, and adhesions, massage improves range of motion and flexibility while enhancing athletic performance and helping to prevent sports injuries.  Massage also releases the body’s natural painkillers endorphins, thereby reducing acute or even chronic pain.  It is well documented that massage will increase serotonin levels to help reduce stress and prevent depression.  There are research studies to show that massage can help with more specific conditions such as fibromyalgia, plantar fascitis, carpal tunnel, migraines, arthritis and even asthma and bronchitis.  A study that I kept coming across was one that showed premature infants who received massage gained weight much faster than those who did not.

The point is that massage is much more than a luxury.  Even amateur massage feels good and relaxing while it’s being done, and I’m not certain I’ve heard anyone complain about a “bad massage.”  However, in my experience, the good ones are ones where even after the first couple sessions, you know that something has changed and the results begin to become long-lasting.  There are numerous licensed massage therapists in the area.  If you haven’t tried massage in the past, call for a couple appointments to experience the health benefits of this safe and painless therapeutic approach.

Heart Health

I was attracted to an article titled “The Real Cause of Heart Disease” written by a heart surgeon of 25 years experience.  His article was more of a retraction letter apologizing for the bad advice he had promoted over the years.  He stated that the standard advice of cholesterol lowering medications and a low-fat diet are no longer scientifically or morally defensible.  25% of the population is taking cholesterol drugs, yet more Americans are dying of heart disease every year and 75 million Americans are currently suffering with some level of heart disease.

This surgeon sited recent research proving that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart and all cardiovascular disease.  Without this inflammation, cholesterol wouldn’t accumulate in the vessel lining to begin with.  It’s the inflammation that traps cholesterol in the internal lining of the arteries.  From this point-of-view, cholesterol in the arteries is not the cause of heart disease, but merely another symptom.  Inflammation from diet and stress is the real cause and also the solution.  What causes this inflammation?  It’s the processed carbohydrates such as sugar and flour products as well as the omega-6 corn, vegetable, soybean and sunflower oils.

To solve the heart disease epidemic we must begin to choose more natural and complex carbohydrates such as fruits and vegetables over the processed grains and sugars.  Likewise, we don’t need to avoid fat because that strategy has not worked either.  Rather we need omega-3 fats found in fish oils, organically raised.

Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy. Eating a balance of healthy fats improves overall health leading to less heart disease. 

Belly Fat

O.K.  I don’t believe there’s anyone out there that is particularly fond of belly fat or as it is often referred to -- the “muffin top.”  In the past, I’ve discussed that the excess around the girth starts producing its own hormones including estrogen.  In that article, I shared how this abdominal fat is a primary predictor of not only cardiovascular disease, but also of diabetes and cancer.  These are 3 of the 4 top killers in our society.  So obviously eliminating the belly fat is a big deal, but for anyone who has tried, it can be a challenge.  One of the reasons losing belly fat is so difficult is that it’s not there only as a result of poor diet and lack of exercise.  Chronic stress will also contribute to the spare tire.

When you have any perceived stress, your body releases certain "fight-flight" hormones including cortisol, norepinephrine and epinephrine.  This is a normal healthy response to any threat or perceived stress. Typically, these hormones will go up and down throughout the day with stress. The problem is that when you are chronically stressed your cortisol levels go up and stay up. These elevated cortisol levels cause the body to resist weight loss because your body thinks times are hard and you might starve.  So it hoards the fat you eat and takes fat from healthier areas and moves it to your abdomen causing increased inflammation and insulin resistance in the body. This belly fat then leads to more cortisol because it has higher concentrations of an enzyme that converts inactive cortisone to active cortisol.  This increased cortisol retains more abdominal fat and the cycle continues.

So what can be done?  To lose the weight in this area you must reverse the cortisol and fight-flight reaction.  Fortunately, as long as you can find a form of exercise that you don’t resent and get more stressed over; all exercises will at least temporarily inhibit the stress and cortisol response.  Secondly, stress is most often a perception – we are not truly in a life-threatening situation.  Thus, you need to practice shifting your mind and your thoughts from what is wrong in life (stress) to what is right (gratitude).  Meditation to quiet your mind is also critical.  This change in the brain will change the hormones released.  Finally, your fuel sources need to be appropriate.  Caffeine, nicotine, sugar, flour and processed grains all act as stimulants that stimulate stress.  Lean protein, healthy fats (omega 3’s) and the minerals found in raw fruits and vegetables help to shut off the stress response.  In essence, if you eat, think, and exercise appropriately, you can reverse this deadly epidemic to our health and society.

We also have an exciting new laser in our office that will help with belly fat and overall fat loss. The Zerona Z6 Fat Loss Laser flushes toxins from the fat cells, resulting in lost inches, weight and fat. If you are interested in learning more, join us for our open house on July 21st. Register on Eventbrite or by calling the office at 812-273-4325 to save a seat.