Inflammatory Insights

In the past I’ve vilified inflammation and pointed out that inflammation is at the root of every disease.  However, I’ve also been known to point out that the body is always smart and most everything that occurs inside the body is actually a perfect response to a stimulus or stressor from our environment.  Thus, if the latter is true, there must be a reason for the redness, swelling, and pain associated with inflammation.  In this article I’d like to point out some of the benefits of this natural reaction of the body and provide strategies for dealing with chronic inflammation.

The inflammatory response is a natural defense mechanism that is triggered whenever body tissues are damaged or threatened by trauma, irritating chemical toxins or viral/bacterial infection. Most of the body’s defense tools are located in the blood and inflammation causes swelling and stretching of the blood vessels so that white bloods cells, large proteins focused on tissue repair and different hormones can move into the tissue to initiate the healing process.  The swelling also helps to dilute any harmful chemicals in the area and bring in large amounts of oxygen and nutrients.  Acute inflammation has even been shown to be important for immune function including increasing the body’s ability to mediate T-lymphocytes which are the white bloods cells associated with fighting infection and eliminating cancer cells.

The problem occurs when acute inflammation becomes chronic as this is a sign that the body is not healing appropriately.  This phenomenon is much more common with people that have a lower level of health due to high stress, poor sleep, lack of exercise, poor diet, toxicity, and a generally weakened immune and/or nervous system function.  The typical approach to treat chronic inflammation is to use corticosteroids.  Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book Spontaneous Healing, reports “I consider them (steroids) dangerous drugs, much misunderstood, abused and over prescribed. Steroids are toxic, cause dependence, suppress, rather than cure disease, and reduce the chance of healing by natural treatment. Moreover, they weaken immunity.”

My experience is that you have to start by restoring health to the body in order to heal from chronic inflammation.  First, get rid of the chemical toxins by doing a detox and cleaning up the diet while drinking large amounts of water.  This is imperative!  Next, supplement with an omega 3 such as fish oil, heal the gut with probiotics, and take in adequate minerals or green food supplements to alkalize the body’s pH.  Focus on stress reducing methods such as meditation and yoga and make proper sleep a priority.  Chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, cold laser, and physical therapy can often be of huge benefit.  Finally, once you start feeling better, start off slow, but commit to regular exercise to finish it off.  While there are other factors that can help, this is a basic formula for recovering from any chronic inflammatory condition.

The Master Mineral

I’ve reported the importance of minerals in the past, citing that most vitamins do nothing by themselves unless the appropriate minerals are there to activate and facilitate them.  We should be getting all our vitamins and minerals naturally from foods grown in healthy soil in the form of organic fruits and vegetables.  Unfortunately, I don’t see many who consume enough of these foods.  Furthermore, many chemicals including those found in processed “junk” foods and prescription drugs are known to deplete the body of these vitamins and minerals.  One crucial mineral that an estimated 80% of the population is deficient in is magnesium.

Magnesium is involved in over 300 metabolic processes in the body and is considered to be the “master mineral”.  For one thing magnesium is necessary to move calcium into bone to prevent osteoporosis.  It is also an anti-inflammatory mineral that protects against arthritis, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, heart problems, and diabetes.  Even with its importance, many Americans are not getting enough magnesium.  While blood testing is necessary to know for certain, here are some signs that you might have a magnesium deficiency:  calcium deficiency, muscle cramping, weakness and tremors, nausea, anxiety and confusion, high blood pressure, constipation, respiratory problems, dizziness, fatigue, poor memory, and migraine headaches.  Obviously, these symptoms can be associated with numerous other problems.  However, if you find that you experience several of these, doing a trial run of magnesium supplementation might be a good idea.

When supplementing with the mineral, I recommend a magnesium citrate like Natural Calm. It is in a powder form and can be drank and will absorb more readily. It is almost impossible to get too much magnesium, however, if you do take in too much you will likely experience diarrhea and possibly heart-rate irregularities. In some cases, a magnesium citrate sensitivity may cause bowel cramping and digestive distress.  If this occurs, I recommend using our Magnesium Glycinate supplement instead of Natural Calm. While supplementation is effective, ideally you should be getting magnesium along with all your other vitamins and minerals from real food.  Here are some food sources high in magnesium: pumpkin, sunflower, and sesame seeds, black beans, spinach squash, okra, along with cashews and almonds.  We’ve used magnesium in our office for years mostly as a natural reliever of muscle spasms and cramping.  In doing this, I’ve found many people to get relief of high blood pressure, constipation, and migraine headaches.  Always remember that nature has an innate way of providing us with what we need.  Eat the right foods to get the appropriate vitamins and minerals and most symptoms, ailments and diseases could be prevented.

Hormone Help

Can we talk about hormones?  Your body has two primary ways of maintaining a state of balance and well-being that is known as homeostasis.  First, your brain communicates with the body electrically through the nervous system to control all the other cells, tissues and organs.  This method has a faster response time, but is generally for short-term regulation.  The second method of communication is the endocrine or hormone system.  Hormones are chemical messengers that are released into the blood to travel to receptor sites on other tissues, glands, or organs.  This method takes a little longer for a response, but the results are intended to last longer as well.  In a sentence, hormones alter our physiology by turning things on and turning things off.  There’s a great deal of attention being paid to hormones lately and I believe it’s justified – all our physiology and our ability to maintain health over disease can be tied to the balance of these tiny chemicals.  With this in mind, I found a couple recent articles that report how we could impact our own hormones.

When you study hormones in physiology class, the first thing you learn is that the interaction of these numerous chemicals is rather complex and that they are all ultimately coordinated by a portion of the brain known as the hypothalamus.  Modern science has proven that the hypothalamus is the part of the brain that responds to our environment to help us adapt to our current needs.  Because of this, the hypothalamus is influenced by our diet through what we eat, drink, and breathe, our level of activity and exercise, our sleep, and possibly most importantly our thoughts and stress level.  Thus, our lifestyle has an enormous effect on how hormones are regulated and how our bodies are performing.  For instance, exercise and movement of our joints and muscles literally shuts off the stress response in the brain and changes our hormones.  Stress reduction techniques such as yoga, meditation, and prayer have shown enormous benefits in reducing the stress hormones as does proper sleep.  I recently found some foods that appear to have a direct effect on our hormones as well.  For instance grains and sugars decrease the levels of seven of our most important hormones!  This is huge!  Likewise, alcohol decreases your HGH (human growth hormone).  Just one drink can reduce HGH by 75%.  This is the stuff that helps build muscle at the expense of fat.  On the flip side, foods and supplements with magnesium will increase HGH and other sex hormones such as testosterone.  Even though they were vilified in the past, healthy proteins such as organic beef, chicken, and fish and even healthy fats such as egg yolks, lard, and butter have been shown to improve progesterone and DHEA.  This last hormone is a steroid produced in your adrenal glands that helps reduce premature aging and mental stress.  The importance of these natural fats and proteins is one of the reasons for the popularity of the Paleo diet.  Remember too that all our fat soluble vitamins, especially vitamins D and A help to regulate hormones as well. 

This should serve as more evidence that we have great influence over our entire physiology through the choices we make.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of proper exercise, sleep, and thinking as well as becoming more aware of what you put in your body at mealtime and understanding the ramifications of those choices.

About the Bowel

While it’s probably not the most popular subject of conversation, it is important and I’ve had several questions this week about problems related to lower digestion and bowel function.  The primary function of our intestinal system is to absorb the nutrients that our cells require for energy and cell division and to eliminate waste and toxins that would be harmful to those same cells.  Surprisingly, the lining of the inside or our digestive system is similar to the lining or the outside of our body – the skin.  Just like our skin, problems arise in the bowel when this lining gets toxic, inflamed or damaged as a result of our lifestyle choices.

Rule number one when it comes to maintaining the bowel is water.  The primary function of our colon is the reabsorption of water and when we are not taking in enough pure, clean water we are asking for problems, most specifically constipation.  Rule number two is fiber.  Fiber acts as a scrub-brush for the intestines keeping them cleaned out, but also stimulating the muscular contractions so that bowel material moves along at a healthy pace.  Fiber also serves a lesser-known function and that is as a pre-biotic.  A pre-biotic is the food source for the pro-biotic bacteria that set up residence in our colon.  You can always take a fiber supplement, but the preferred source of fiber is from natural, raw fruits and vegetables – the crunchier the better!  Rule number three are these pro-biotics.  These “good” bugs help break down waste and also serve an immune function by helping to fight off any “bad” bugs we may have ingested.  It is recommended that you supplement these by taking a high quality probiotic like UltraFlora Spectrum from Metagenics, but the preferred source again is from organic fruits/vegetables that were grown in healthy soil without unnatural pesticides.

Chronic stress, alcohol, sugars, antibiotics and other junk foods and medications are toxic to the bowel and can cause undigested food material and “gunk” to clog up the pores of the intestinal lining.  Over time, this process can lead to chronic inflammation and yeast production that can infiltrate the entire body.  Because this is the world we live in, doing an occasional colon cleanse is also a good idea at least once per year.  Most importantly, listen to your body and when the bowel becomes irregular or abnormal in any way, take action and make changes to get it back on track or go get it checked out.

Try This

In the past I’ve mentioned the benefits of meditation to reduce the stress response.  Meditation has been proven to reduce your heart rate, breathing and blood pressure and help maximize oxygen to your cells.  Likewise, this simple habit can lower cortisol levels from the adrenal glands and improve your immune function.  When you reduce the stress response in the body, you effectively reduce your risk of every disease. 

I think there is a lot of mystique and misunderstanding involving this age-old relaxation technique, but meditation involves simply sitting in a relaxed position and clearing your mind. You do this by trying to quiet your thinking and focusing just on your breathing or on nothing at all.  It’s best to have 10 to 20 distraction-free minutes every day for the best results.  If you can do this effectively, you can receive noticeable benefits even in the first session.  It takes practice and some people find it very difficult to get their mind quiet.

I was recently taught a somewhat unusual procedure to help practice meditation and get many of the same benefits.  Try walking as slow as you possibly can for 10 minutes.  Use a cross-crawl pattern meaning as you move your right foot forward, move your left hand forward and vice-versa.  This movement has been proven to integrate the right and left sides of the brain and has been used for people recovering from brain and spinal injuries.  As you do this, try to walk slower and slower and concentrate on nothing other than your walking.  In addition to providing the benefits listed above, this exercise will also help with coordination and balance

I must admit, I was skeptical at first, but I have found this exercise beneficial and very easy to do.  Give it a try and let me know what you experience.

Fighting Flu

I believe that most people think that getting the flu in the winter is just a normal thing.  However, a study performed at the University of Wisconsin a few years back found that people undergoing just 8 weeks of meditation training were 35% less likely to develop cold or flu symptoms than those who did not practice this method of calming the mind.  Based on these findings, Bruce Barrett, M.D. Ph.D. believes that meditation reduces stress to the brain and nervous system which in turn helps to reduce stress to the immune system.  With flu season upon us, I thought I’d share a few natural methods of fighting off the flu.

This isn’t the first occasion that reducing stress to the nervous system proved beneficial to the immune system and decreased the risk of flu.  During the 1918 influenza epidemic, Davenport, Iowa medical doctors treated 4,953 influenza cases resulting in 274 flu deaths. At the same time, 150 chiropractors from Palmer School of Chiropractic treated 1,635 cases during the epidemic with only one death.  Similar reports came from New York City where 950 out of 10,000 patients medically treated died, whereas 25 patients out of 10,000 died under drugless methods.  These are just a couple of the reasons why meditation and chiropractic are integral parts to our wellness program and strategies for better health.

As a kid and teenager I suffered from colds and flu routinely.  I’m proud to say that in the last 18 years I’ve only missed 1 ½ days of work due to illness and have used no medications and never considered a flu shot.  In addition to regular chiropractic adjustments and stress reduction methods including exercise and meditation, I have a few other strategies that have changed my outcomes.  Whenever I feel a sore throat, congestion, or headache, I hit the vitamin C immediately – at least 3000 milligrams per day.  We also use a product called Lauricidin which is a coconut derivative.  Coconut is a natural anti-viral and anti-bacterial.  I still believe in old-fashioned chicken soup – it causes pyrogens to be released resulting in an increased body temperature that kills off bacteria.  I also eliminate all sugar, get ample rest and drink only water until symptoms have passed.  Hopefully these strategies will work for you as well.  Studies show that use of antibiotics ultimately weaken your own immune system resulting in more frequent infections.  To prevent illness and promote better health, you need reduced stress from better lifestyle and sometimes these natural remedies can help.

Fountain of Youth

Since the days of Ponce de Leon, we have had a history of searching for longevity.  Despite the fact that Americans live well into their 70’s, the CIA ranks the United States just 43^rd on their list of international life expectancy.  When we look at the top ten countries on the list, patterns start to reveal themselves.

Monaco tops the list with a life expectancy of 89.40 years.  Much of their success is attributed to the Mediterranean diet that is proven to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, known to kill over a million Americans each year.  Many also believe the relaxed way of life contributes to their older age and better health.  The Japanese have an amazingly low obesity rate of just 3.6% as compared to our 33.9% obesity percentage.  Their success is related to all the fresh vegetable, brown rice, and the omega 3 fatty acid benefits of the fresh fish.  This diet lowers blood pressure and the risk of stroke.  Other places such as Singapore and Andorra relate their clean environment, restricted smoking areas, and habits of outside activity to their better health.  Italians credit the olive oil and red wine for improving their cholesterol levels.  Likewise, they credit the use of spices such as basil, oregano, and garlic over the high salt diet that contributes to high blood pressure and stroke for Americans.  In addition to the healthier diets, all the nations topping the list are considered wealthier and as a rule spend more money to promote their own health.

While we have a history of seeking for longer life, what about quality of life?  Who wants to live longer if those extra years are spent coping with pain, disease and living incapacitated?  The great news is that lifestyle works!  The same healthy lifestyle habits (diet, exercise, and stress reduction) that promote longevity are the same habits that reduce the risk of every disease and improve brain and organ function and insure a higher quality of life.