Inflammation Worse for Heart Than Cholesterol

Worse than cholesterol?

That might be difficult to believe, but the top health concern of millions of Americans is about to be trumped by what medical researchers say is an even bigger trigger of heart attacks.

The condition is low-grade inflammation, which may originate in a variety of unlikely places throughout the body, including excess fat. New federal recommendations are being written that will urge doctors to test middle-aged and older Americans for it. The discovery of its surprising ill effects is causing a top-to-bottom re-thinking of the origins and prevention of heart trouble.

Conventional doctors call it a revolutionary departure from viewing the world's top killer as largely a plumbing problem blamed on cholesterol-clogged arteries, which is the standard theoryin modern cardiology.

"The implications of this are enormous," says Dr. Paul Ridker of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It means we have an entire other way of treating, targeting and preventing heart disease that was essentially missed because of our focus solely on cholesterol."

In the past few years the evidence has become overwhelming that inflammation hidden deep in the body is a common trigger of heart attacks, even when plaquing in the arteries is minimal. Inflammation can be measured with a generic $10 test that looks for high levels of a chemical called C-reactive protein (CRP), one of many that increase during inflammation.

While measuring cholesterol is still an important consideration, it is noteworthy that half of all heart attack victims have levels that are normal or even low. Clearly, something big has been missing from the equation, and that something appears to be inflammation.

Ridker estimates that between 25 million and 35 million seemingly healthy middle-aged Americans have normal cholesterol but above-average inflammation, putting them at unusual risk of heart attacks and strokes. A series of landmark studies by his team beginning in 1997 suggest that inflammation is a better predictor of heart attacks than cholesterol. They found those with high levels of CRP have double the risk of people with elevated cholesterol. High amounts of CRP also predict increased risk of heart attacks and strokes years before they occur, even when cholesterol levels are low.

Having both inflammation and high cholesterol together is especially ominous, resulting in a NINE-FOLD increase in risk.

Nearly everyone who reaches middle age has at least some degree of fatty buildup, known as plaque, in the arteries. The new evidence suggests it becomes threatening if weakened by inflammation, which makes it squishy and fragile. Even a small lump of plaque can burst, prompting the formation of a clot that in turn chokes off blood flow and causes a heart attack or stroke.

Many people with no outward signs of anything wrong have high levels of internal inflammation. It is exactly the same sort that causes swelling, heat, and redness during infections or allergic rashes.

Researchers believe the internal inflammation has many possible sources. Often, the plaque itself becomes inflamed as immune cells invade the area in a defense response. But inflammation that arises elsewhere apparently can be just as bad, because it bombards the plaque with damaging chemicals.

For example, fat cells churn out these inflammatory mediators, which is one of many reasons why being overweight is so bad for the heart. Fat cells, or adipocytes, are now being referred to as “endocrine organs” by researchers because of their ability to “talk” to the rest of body through inflammatory mediators, and the language they speak is one of alarm. Being overweight sets off an ongoing state of alarm throughout the body through the production of inflammatory chemicals, and they in turn can cause muscle tissue breakdown and a catabolic snowball process that leads to more inflammation, more production of fat cells, and an accelerated rate of aging and degeneration through increased oxidation.

Other possible triggers of CRP include high blood pressure, smoking and lingering low-level infections such as chronic gum disease.

Although many chemicals increase during inflammation, CRP is particularly easy to measure. Many doctors believe that CRP should measured in everyone over age 40, just like cholesterol, regardless of their other risk factors like cholesterol or high blood pressure.

"It begins to look like a standard risk factor that one would evaluate at least once in middle age in most people," says Dr. Wayne Alexander of Emory University. "This is a very important concept for the general public to be aware of and to think about for their own health."

"We believe the niche for C-reactive protein - and it is a large niche - is the healthy population who want to do what they can to lower their risk of cardiovascular disease," says Dr. Richard Cannon of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Screening is important because inflammation can be readily lowered in several ways. One of the most powerful is losing weight. Exercise also helps, as does moderating alcohol intake, giving up smoking and lowering one’s blood pressure. Thus, doctors are likely to urge these habits for people with high CRP readings who until now would have seemed to be at no special risk of heart problems.

"In the last decade, people talked about their cholesterol levels," Dr. Cannon says. "In the next decade, the cocktail chatter will be, 'What's your C-reactive protein?' Everyone will need to know that."

Robbins, Andy.  "Inflammation Worse for Heart Than Cholesterol."  Web blog post.  Quantum Health.  23 June, 2008

5 Super-Foods that are Probably Already in Your Cupboard

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

5 Super-Foods that are Probably Already in Your Cupboard

When considering the typical American diet full of fried foods, nutritionally-flawed fast food, and the ever-increasing amount of sugar and chemical additives, it leaves one wondering how in the world anyone lives to a ripe old age!

It turns out that hidden in the typical western diet of highly-toxic processed foods are wonders of nature that you'd never suspect are really health foods.
Here, then, is a short list of the five most powerful health-enhancing foods that don't seem like health foods but which are quite possibly already in your cupboard – foods that help to ward off disease even when the rest of the diet is not so healthy.

#1 - Mustard
Mustard, believe it or not, is a medicinal paste made from the seed of the mustard plant. It's a superfood that's been around for at least 5,000 years, and it's one of the few common sources of the anti-carcinogen, selenium, a trace mineral often absent from our produce because of over-farmed soil.
Mustard is known to help in reducing migraines, and it's a natural anti-fungal and antiseptic. Another benefit of mustard is that it's never made with MSG or yeast extract. Mustard products -- even conventional products from non-health-food companies -- are still very healthful to consume.

#2 - Cole Slaw
Cole slaw is made out of one of the most powerful natural medicines in the food kingdom: raw cabbage.

Raw cabbage is a proven cure for stomach ulcers. It's also an amazing anti-cancer food that can help prevent (or even reverse) many types of cancer. Cabbage has been one of the most medicinal foods ever consumed in the history of mankind. It's also good for you even when cooked, such as in the case of cabbage soup, or fermented, such as in sauerkraut.

Cabbage is rich in indole-3-carbinol (I3C), one of its many anti-cancer nutrients.
It's best to make your own cole slaw at home, but if you purchase store-bought cole slaw, be sure to avoid processed ingredients often used in cheaper cole slaw recipes, such as high-fructose corn syrup and canola oil (which is often GMO).

#3 - Cinnamon, cloves, rosemary, paprika and other spices
Nearly all the pungent cooking spices are actually powerful medicines.

Cinnamon, for example, helps regulate blood sugar in diabetics. Cinnamon is also a powerful anti-microbial agent (i.e. it kills bad bacteria).
Cloves are the No. 1 source for the highest density of antioxidants found in the entire food supply. Yes, cloves have a higher ORAC value (an antioxidant score) than any other food or spice.

Rosemary is a great source of antioxidants as well, and is also a powerful digestive tonic, anti-inflammatory, and internal detoxification herb.
Ginger is legendary as an immune-boosting, circulation-enhancing tonic herb that's also fantastic for beating winter colds and flu. Ginger even works to relieve muscle pain!

If you like curry, then you'll be glad to know that turmeric, the main ingredient in curry, is also an amazing source of natural medicines. It's a powerful anti-cancer as well as an anti-inflammatory medicine.
In Southern and Midwestern cuisine, barbeque sauce is a surprisingly good source of bitter alkaloids and health-enhancing spices (often including mustard and paprika), but this is only true with the rich, homemade sauces, not the highly-processed super-market sauces, which are usually loaded with sweeteners.

Nearly all the common spices you find in grocery stores are medicinal foods.

#4 - Raisins
Raisins may not sound unusually healthy, but if you think about what they really are, it becomes obvious how powerful they can be as a health food. Raisins are dried grapes, of course, meaning they contain all the natural phytonutrients of grape skins.

Remember: Most of the phytonutrients in grapes is found in the skin. This is why it's so important to buy only organic raisins, because grapes sprayed with fungicides have low levels of resveratrol – one of the most powerful of all the nutrients found in grapes. Organic grapes have the highest levels of resveratrol.

Raisins are also very high in naturally-occurring antioxidants, making them a fantastic overall source of nutrition.

#5 - Common nuts: Walnuts, pecans, peanuts, etc.
Once again, nuts may not be on your list of the healthiest foods, but they probably should be. Walnuts are an amazing natural medicine that helps reduce the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. They're very high in natural antioxidants and also help reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

Pecans boost brain protection and also help lower cholesterol levels. Almonds are now being widely used to make almond milk (a natural anti-cancer milk beverage) and almond butter, and even the common peanut is now making a comeback as a health food.

Just remember: When you buy nuts, raw is best because heat processing destroys the phytonutrients found in foods. Avoid "salted" nuts because they're almost always salted with toxic sodium chloride (simple table salt). Avoid "flavored" nuts because they almost always are made with MSG flavor enhancers such as yeast extract or autolyzed proteins. Just look for plain, simple, unsalted nuts.

So there you have it: Five simple and common foods that you probably didn’t know were healthy super foods.

Vitamin D: A Deficiency Pandemic

Dr. Michael Holick, MD, of Boston University and author of The Vitamin D Solution, says that vitamin D deficiency is epidemic throughout the USA through all age groups. In fact, 75% of US teens and adults are deficient. Unless you live south of the 30th parallel, which runs along the panhandles of Florida and Texas, it is very difficult to get enough vitamin D from the sun, especially in the winter months, because the sun never gets high enough in the sky for the ultraviolet rays to penetrate the atmosphere. Furthermore, less and less people get out in the sun because of inside activities and entertainment. Kids and teenagers, for example, once active outdoors, find more reasons to stay indoors than to go outside because of digital entertainment. Similarly, the elderly rarely get enough sun exposure because of inactivity. Thus, it has become important to supplement this important nutrient even during summer months, since serum levels of most patients tested will be woefully inadequate all throughout the year, and because nearly every disease has a vitamin D deficiency connection. 

While supplementation seems to be the answer, a Boston study found the 36% of young adults 18-29 years old had vitamin D levels below 20 ng/mL at the end of winter in spite of consuming fortified milk or a multivitamin daily. Furthermore, an article appearing in JAMA (Feb. 11, 2013) indicated that researchers found that OTC vitamin D supplements from a dozen manufacturers tested at a range that was as low as 52% of their advertised vitamin D content. Duffy MacKay, vice president of the scientific and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) in Washington, DC - a trade group representing supplement manufacturers and ingredient suppliers, said that "there is no excuse for supplements to deviate from their labels." Yet, this goes on in the industry routinely because there are no FDA regulatory standards on supplement label claims. That is where GMP certified products that are tested both internally and externally ensures products that do not deviate from label claim.


The Vitamin D Council has recently raised their supplement recommendations from a minimum of 4,000 IUs per day to 5,000. Hence, active people might consider supplementing at least 1,000 IUs per day during the summer months if they get outside regularly, and more if they are less active. During the winter months, it is not unreasonable to supplement as much as 10,000 IUs per day, and more if serum levels are extremely low. 

Robbins, Andy.  "Vitamin D: A Deficiency Pandemic."  Web blog post.  Quantum Health.  28 June, 2013

With Every New Beginning

After quite a bit of deliberation, I want to inform you that I’m going to discontinue the “Let Health Happen” column (at least for now).  For one thing, after nearly 300 columns, quite frankly, I’m running out of things to write about.  More importantly, I’ve decided it’s time to come out of my safe zone and get out doing more talks in the community in person rather than writing it in from a distance.  So for this last column, I’d like to reflect on a few of the concepts I believe are most important.

This column has been called “Let Health Happen” because you were genetically designed for health.  If God made us in his image and that image is perfect, then you were created in perfection.  The trick is to let that perfection express itself and get out of the way.  Getting out of the way is all about lifestyle.  Controlling your relationship in regard to what you eat, how you move or exercise and how you manage stress or think, has absolutely everything to do with your physiology expressing health naturally or expressing a state of dis-ease or illness.  In the end, there are only two real causes of disease – deficiency and toxicity.  Deficiency is when we are not providing our body with the essential components it requires.  This includes vital nutrients from real food, adequate movement and physical exercise, and positive thoughts or emotions.  Toxicity is when we are putting components into our body that simply don’t belong.  Obviously this includes all the junk, fake, processed food, but a sedentary lifestyle is toxic as well.  Most importantly, negative thoughts, feelings, and self-talk are all toxins that lower our vibrational energy and change the expression of our hormones to what I’ve commonly referred to as stress-physiology.  The New England Journal of Medicine states that 75% of all disease and the associated expenses are preventable.  This means the nearly all disease is related to lifestyle and not something that is acquired as the result of bad germs, bad genes or bad luck.  And because your body is innately intelligent, it also means that you can begin to change your outcomes.  In fact, we see amazing outcomes in our office even with bloodwork in just 8 weeks’ time when you begin to address these critical lifestyle factors.  When it comes to your health, you are not a victim, you are in control!

We will be reposting all the old articles on our website blog every week and I will commit to including some new posts at least a couple times per month.  Please go to www.rivertownchiro.com to check our blog and while you’re there, sign up for our free newsletter as well as information on upcoming events.  To receive these articles via email, click on the title (With Every New Beginning), enter your email address and hit submit.  I would like to thank the Madison Courier for working with me on this column for the last 5 ½ years.  But most of all I would like to thank all of the local people who supported this column and let me know that they looked forward to reading it – that the information made a difference!

Posture Problems

In the first chapter of every physiology book you’ll find the phrase, “Anatomy dictates physiology.”  In other words, our structure dictates our function or how well things work.  This is certainly true in your neck.  A normal neck has a 35-45 degree curve as measured on x-ray.  Think of this like the bow in a dam or a bridge.  The curve provides flexibility and strength amongst numerous other functions.  When the curve is lost or especially reversed, problems can arise with our physiology.  These include chronic aches and pains, but also bigger problems with overall health. 

The normal curve (lordosis) of our neck develops as an infant when we begin to hold our head up and crawl.  As mentioned, this curve reduces stress on the soft tissues of the neck and provides flexibility – think of it like a spring or shock absorber for the weight of the head.  This normal curve keeps the vertical pressure and weight of the head on the backs of the vertebrae rather than the fronts where the discs are.  Likewise, the curve allows the numerous little muscles on the back side of the neck to stay relaxed.  Poor posture from driving or sitting at a desk or especially looking down at a phone, tablet, or laptop for hours will change the muscle balance of the neck; stretching the muscles of the back side while shortening those in the front.  Some studies have shown that this phenomenon will happen 80% of the time after a whiplash accident from a car wreck or other injury.  In previous articles, we called this “upper-crossed syndrome.”  This syndrome results in a straightening of the neck or sometimes even a reversal of the curve.  Either way, when the curve is lost, you lose the functional advantages mentioned above and forces are shifted to the front of the vertebrae and onto the discs.  The result will be chronic tightness of the muscles in the back of the neck, chronic neck pain and stiffness, tension headaches, shoulder tension, and loss of normal range of motion in the neck.  Over time this imbalanced pressure creates excessive wear-and-tear that causes degenerative changes such as arthritis of the spine and breakdown of the discs.  Worse than this, as the head starts to drift forward from these changes of the neck, our shoulders won’t move the same.  Also, breathing will become more difficult.  You can try this on your own – just push your head forward and attempt to rotate your shoulders like you were swimming or take deep breaths.  A landmark 2004 study looking at thousands of subjects found that the loss of curve in the neck will increase tension in the spinal cord and stretch the cord up to 5-7 centimeters.  The study found that people that had this loss of curve on average lived two years less than those who retained the normal curve in their neck.

The good news is that all of this can be prevented and many times reversed.  Obviously, focusing on normal posture is critical.  But even when the curve is lost, there are neck and shoulder exercises that work to undo the damage.  Contoured cervical pillows help prevent the problem, but only if you sleep on your back.  When the curve is already lost, in most cases, you will need to practice some form of neck traction/extension regularly over a period of 6-12 months and there are various products that are designed for this retraining of the neck.  

Two Opportunities

I want to make you aware of a couple events we have planned to help promote health and wellness.  My experience is that people are either scared into making changes and moving toward wellness, or they are inspired to do so.  Unfortunately when fear is the factor, it generally means that you’re making decisions from a doctor’s office due to unfavorable tests or worse, from an emergency room.  While it’s never too late to make better choices and change, this is not the best way to do things.  We decided to bring two separate events to the community in hopes of enlightening and inspiring you to make the changes that result in better health and we’ve partnered with North Madison Christian Church to provide us with a big enough room and first-rate facility to accommodate as many people as possible.

The first event is something we’ve done before – we’re re-screening the Fed Up movie.  This film is still in some theaters and it’s the film that USA Today said, “Will change the way you think about eating.”  I’ve watched it twice and it will definitely enlighten you as to why our dietary choices are directly linked to our health (or disease) outcomes.  You truly are what you eat!  This movie was produced by Katie Couric’s team who set out to make it a regular segment for her show and decided what they uncovered was much too big for a segment piece.  The film focuses on the true causes of obesity and metabolic syndrome which is the syndrome that is a pre-cursor to heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.  It’s worth the watch and I would encourage you to bring your kids as childhood obesity is on trial in this movie!  This will be shown in the main room at North Madison Christian (across from the hospital) on Wednesday, January 14^th at 6:30 p.m.

The following week, on Wednesday, January 21^st (at 6:30), we will be bringing in Dr. Denise Chranowski who runs a practice called Wellness Solution Centers in Newtown, Pennsylvania.  She has franchised her own wellness center to over 60 other centers across the U.S. and abroad.  Dr. Denise speaks all over the country on health and wellness and was gracious enough to come to our town!  I’ve asked her to speak on the subject of how to raise healthy families with emphasis on what specific steps we can take to ensure results.  I learned the last time that we screened Fed Up that people were excited and motivated to make change, but they really didn’t know how to get things going.  Dr. Denise is an expert at this!  This is by far the biggest thing we’ve ever done and I want to thank North Madison Christian for having the vision to include health and wellness as part of their mission for this community.  All are welcome to both events and there is no cost or obligation – this is about getting you and your family the health outcomes you really want!  You don’t need to R.S.V.P., but if you’d like more information, I encourage you to go to our webpage at rivertownchiro.com and sign in your name and email on the “newsletter sign-up” box of the home page and you will get updates of these events as well as future speakers we intend to bring to town.  I hope to see you there!

Heartache (Continued)

In this, to-be-continued edition, I wanted to follow-up on the discussion of last week where I explained that conventional thinking on the cause of heart disease is being challenged.  In case you missed, everyone still agrees that ischemia (a lack of blood flow and oxygen to the heart) is the cause of heart attack.  What is being called into question is mechanism that the build-up of cholesterol in the coronary arteries is the major cause of this ischemia.  The new research is showing that this is merely a symptom and the real cause has to do with the nervous system; in particular a lack of nerve flow from the Vagus nerve.

The Vagus nerve is considered the major parasympathetic nerve in the body that regulates the function of most every major organ in the body.  Your nervous system is broken into two parts – the parasympathetic and the sympathetic.  This sympathetic is more commonly considered your fight-flight nervous system that speeds up your heart and lungs as well as other organ function for survival needs.  The parasympathetic does the opposite and serves to slow down the heart and lungs.  It’s easiest to think of the sympathetic as the gas and the parasympathetic as the brakes.  Different lifestyle factors affect the “tone” of the nervous system and shift us into fight-flight mode just like changing the tuning of a guitar.  These factors are the standard poor habits including chronic stress, lack of sleep, sugar, trans-fats, smoking, and processed grains.  When we stay in a revved-up or sympathetic state, adrenaline levels go up and the metabolism of the heart muscle shifts from fat fuel sources to sugar metabolism.  This will result in a dramatic increase in lactic acid production in the muscle cells of the heart.  This creates an acidosis in the muscle that prevents calcium from entering into the cells effectively, thereby making the heart muscle cells less able to contract.  These cells begin to swell and malfunction which is the basic mechanism of ischemia to the heart cells or more commonly, “heart attack."

Your take-home on this should be that there is much more to heart disease than plaque build-up of the coronary arteries.  Cholesterol is an effect, not a cause!  When all we do to prevent heart disease is take drugs to lower cholesterol, the result is death from heart attack with better looking cholesterol numbers.  What we should be doing is engaging in stress-reducing activity such as exercise and meditation, embracing loving relationships, increasing the fruits and vegetables in our diet, drinking water in place of sugar drinks, making adequate sleep a priority, and taking time to be grateful for what we have rather than stressing over what we don’t have.  These are the very activities that move us out of fight-flight and into a more parasympathetic state that has been proven to be healing to the heart (and also cholesterol).   So if you’re still looking for some New Year’s resolutions, there are about seven options for you to choose from.