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This is the follow-up to a post from a few days ago on bioidentical hormones.   As I stated in the conclusion to that post, in the long run, I believe that it is better (whenever possible) to bring the hormone that is too high down to a normal range rather than to artificially increase a hormone that is at a normal level into an abnormal range to compensate for the hormone that is too high.  Now I’m going to explain how that can be achieved

There are actually a variety of steps we can take to get the body to balance its own hormones to levels that are normal and natural for the individual’s “physical age” (I use the term “physical age” to refer to one’s general youthfulness and vitality, which has little to do with his or her chronological age). The basic first step is to eat a reasonably good diet, high in fresh vegetables and fruits, and with moderate amounts of healthy fats and lean protein. It is a good idea to stick to natural (hormone-free) meats and organic produce as much as possible, in order to avoid “exogenous estrogens” which are chemicals that mimic the effects of estrogen in the body and come from pesticides, chemical fertilizers, growth hormones given to livestock, etc..

In addition, getting regular exercise, including at least some relatively high intensity interval training is a big help in stimulating your body to produce the hormones you need to maintain your youthfulness and avoid many of the symptoms of menopause and andropause (the male equivalent of menopause that results from declining levels of testosterone and growth hormone). Likewise, getting adequate good quality sleep enhances the body’s ability to produce youth-maintaining hormones, especially growth hormone.

Beyond these basic steps, I have found that there are natural remedies for hormone imbalance that are not themselves hormones.  There are supplements that contain hormone precursors (substances that the body converts into hormones as it needs them), herbs that either mimic the action of certain hormones or stimulate the production of certain hormones, and there are homeopathic remedies that energetically stimulate the body to re-balance its hormone production.

One of the more popular of the hormone precursors for female hormones is a substance called pregnenolone.  Pregnenolone is converted by the body into both estrogen and progesterone, but because it is preferentially converted to progesterone, supplementing with pregnenolone by itself is sometimes enough to correct mild cases of estrogen dominance (excess estrogen relative to progesterone) without driving the levels of either hormone into an abnormally high range. 

There are several popular herbal remedies that are popular in the treatment of hormone-related symptoms.  For example, dong quai and black cohosh are often used by menopausal women to control hot flashes and other symptoms.  Yohimbe is sometimes used to increase sex drive and potency in men because of it’s androgen-like effects (androgens are hormones that accentuate masculine characteristics and are found in men and in smaller amounts in women).  While herbal remedies can be quite effective, they may produce undesirable effects when used improperly.  Herbal treatments should be used with caution, partiularly in women who are estrogen dominant, because many of the popular herbs have estrogenic activity.  In my opinion, herbal products should generally be avoided in pregnancy, unless prescribed and monitored by a licensed healthcare provider who is experienced with their use.

Finally, homeopathic remedies can be remarkably effective in correcting hormone balance and can often alleviate symptoms of hormone imbalance very quickly (within a few days to a few weeks).   Homeopathic remedies (of any kind, not just those used for hormone balancing) are extremely dilute substances that are specially prepared to carry the “energetic signature” of a substance.  The underlying principles of homeopathy are very different from those of conventional medicine and they can be difficult for people to understand at first.  In fact, many dismiss homeopathy because the remedies are so dilute that it is difficult for many people to understand how they could be effective at all, and the notion that one can imprint an “energetic signature or pattern” on some inert liquid or solid seems pretty far-fetched.  Yet we all deal with energetic patterns imprinted on inert materials all the time in the form of computer discs, DVDs, etc..  Homeopathic remedies are simply the same concept applied in a different manner.  In a similar manner to how a computer disc can transmit information to a computer, a homeopathic remedy can transmit information to the body.  In my experience, homeopathics can be used to tell (perhaps “ask” is a better term) the body to change its hormone balance.  Because they work so well in most cases, and because they are non-toxic and relatively inexpensive, such as Total Fem-Bal (for women - usually) or Total Andro-Bal ( for men -usually) by NutriWest, I prefer starting with homeopathics to try to correct hormone imbalances.  In those cases where homeopathics are ineffective, then stronger interventions can be considered. 

If you would like suggestions for balancing your hormones and/or need information on how to find out if you have hormone imbalance(s), feel free to contact me.

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Exercise For Arthritis Sufferers

The video above provides some good basic exercises to help with arthritis in the knees, ankles, hands and shoulders.  There are many other exercises that can help with arthritis depending on which joints are involved, but these are a good start for general mobility. 

Stay tuned to my blog for more on arthritis.

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There is considerable controversy regarding the use of hormone supplementation as a means of anti-aging and for reducing the symptoms of hormone deficiency or imbalance.  Certainly, the use of synthetic female hormones in the form of birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women has had less than ideal effects.  There is also no disputing the damaging effects of using testosterone and growth hormone for the purpose of enhancing muscle growth and athletic performance.  But what about the “new age” use of hormones, including bioidentical hormones for treating PMS, the symptoms of menopause, and for countering the effects of decreasing hormone levels that occur with aging in both women and men?

First, what are “bioidentical” hormones?  These are hormones that supposedly are identical to the hormones your body produces naturally, as opposed to synthetic hormones that are similar to, but somewhat different chemically from your natural hormones.  I say supposedly, because bioidentical hormones may be much more like your body’s natural hormones than synthetic hormones made in a laboratory, but because they are usually derived from plant sources, I have my doubts that they are exactly the same (there may be subtle differences that we are not able to detect with our current methods of chemical analysis). 

Bioidentical hormones are also supposedly much safer than their synthetic hormone counterparts.  Here I say supposedly because this has yet to really be proven conclusively.  I would say that because they are much more chemically similar to the body’s natural hormones, bioidentical hormones are probably much safer than synthetics and probably much less likely to cause problems such as cancer and cardiovascular disease - at least when they are used properly.  Even so, there really has not been much study on the safety of using bioidentical hormones, especially long-term.

But beyond the question of the relative safety of bioidentical hormones as compared to synthetics, I take issue with how hormones of all kinds are often used.  Commonly, what I see happening is hormones are being prescribed in such a way as to create unnatural hormone levels in the person taking them.  It seems that many practitioners who prescribe hormones think it’s a good idea to produce hormone levels in their patients that would be normal for people in their 20’s or 30’s.  This is of course fine if the patient happens to be in their 20’s or 30’s, but what if the patient is in their 50’s, 60’s, or older?  Is this really healthy? 

The body is designed to go through certain changes as we age.  In childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, the body is rapidly growing and developing, and hormones are an important part of these processes.  During one’s 20’s and 30’s the stage is set in the body for reproduction, which requires a slightly different hormone balance.  As we get older, many of the body processes that required high levels of certain hormones are no longer of major importance, and so the hormones that supported those processes begin to decrease.  How much they decrease depends on several factors, including genetics, but in large part depends on the individual’s diet, sleep, and activity and exercise levels.  To put it simply, the “younger” your lifestyle, the younger you tend to stay in terms of hormones. 

But now along comes hormone supplementation and we can artificially (whether we are using “natural” or synthetic hormones) alter our hormone levels.  We now can effectively cheat the system.  We don’t have to watch our diets, get regular exercise, and get plenty of good quality sleep to keep our youth-promoting hormone levels up.  To many, hormone replacement, especially with the assumed to be safe bioidenticals, is the fountain of youth.  To me, the question remains as to whether this fountain of youth may be poisoned in some way, and that question probably will not be answered for at least several years.

Now, I can certainly appreciate that many people use hormone supplementation to control certain unpleasant symptoms.  If they are getting good symptom relief from taking hormones, whether they be bioidentical or synthetic, it is unlikely that the person will change what he or she is doing unless some specific serious risk to them is identified.  So, while I think there is still much we need to investigate regarding the long-term safety of using hormone supplementation, this may be the best option currently available for improving symptoms and quality of life for some people. 

What I am proposing though is to give consideration to another approach first, before resorting to taking hormones for the rest of your life.  What I have found is that in many cases, unpleasant symptoms arise because of an imbalance in hormones, as opposed to an actual deficiency of one or more hormones.  For example, a common scenario in women who experience a lot of PMS symptoms and/or menopausal symptoms (some women transition from PMS to menopausal symptoms as they age), is the pattern of estrogen dominance.  Estrogen dominance means that they have more estrogen relative to progesterone than they should have.  Typically this is treated through some sort of progesterone supplementation, and this may in fact be necessary in some cases.  But in many cases of estrogen dominance, the progesterone level is not low, per se, just low relative to estrogen. 

My premise is that it is preferable to balance the two by helping the body modify its relative production of estrogen and progesterone.  In other words, instead of simply giving the patient progesterone to compensate for the excess estrogen, I prefer to try to get the body to stop producing the excess estrogen. 

In the long run, I believe that it is better (whenever possible) to bring the hormone that is too high down to a normal range rather than to artificially increase a hormone that is at a normal level into an abnormal range to compensate for the hormone that is too high.  So how do we do that?  You’ll have to wait until my next post to find out! 

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for more on hormones and anti-aging.

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It’s brutal treatment, really.  For most who have gone through it, they’d do anything to avoid repeating the experience.  You are stabbed repeatedly, fed horrible food (if you’re lucky enough to get fed at all), you may be denied anything to drink, you are awakened repeatedly everytime you are fortunate enough to drift off to sleep in the noisy, uncomfortable surroundings, you are forced to ingest various chemicals, some of which make it impossible for you to even function, and you are constantly exposed to infection and disease-ridden surroundings.  Where is this hell on earth?  Is it in a prison in some third world nation?  No.  It’s your local hospital.

Now some of you reading this may think I’m being unfair.  After all, the hospital is a place of healing, right?  Well, there may be some hospitals out there that are better than others, but unfortunately, most hospitals are far from being places of healing.  Places of medical treatment, yes, but healing, no.  Hospitals are of course necessary and can be life-saving, but this is not exactly the same as being health-promoting.

As an example, my father is currently in the hospital in Florida. I’m in Texas and kind of going nuts that for various reasons I have not been able to go watch out for him.  Fortunately, my sister has been there to be his advocate, because, as you’ll learn from the story, he definitely needed one. 

To try to keep a long story relatively short, dad was having a lot of hip pain and he limped around on it for a couple of weeks before finally mom insisted that he go to the hospital, where they determined that he had a broken hip and that he would need surgery.  So far so good.  Unfortunately, the surgeon wasn’t going to be available right away, so they put dad on pain medication and admitted him.  Apparently, he had a clot break loose from the fracture and this caused a heart attack (which fortunately does not appear to have caused any lasting damage). He was put on blood thinners to dissolve the clot and since the heart seemed to be stable, he was scheduled for surgery and they performed a partial hip replacement a few days ago.  Now, all of the forgoing falls into the necessary and potentially life-saving role of a hospital that I alluded to before.  It is what has happened since then that makes me wonder how anyone manages to survive going to the hospital, particularly if they don’t have someone else to look out for their interests like my sister has been doing for my dad.. 

So now we’re at the point where dad’s supposed to be recovering from his surgery.  Due to the fact that he was initially pretty out of it from the pain medication, he was not allowed to have anything to eat or drink as a precaution against aspiration (breathing in food or liquid and choking).  That’s perfectly rational, but they didn’t give him any kind of IV nutrition either.  We’re talking about no food or liquid of any kind for two days for a man in his late 70s who is pretty thin to begin with and has a pretty high natural metabolism, and who has just had surgery (which typically causes increased nutritional needs).  Dad started coming out of the medication haze and he was hungry, his mouth was dry to the point of cracking and bleeding inside, and he was pretty darned cranky - but the nursing staff still would not allow any food or drink.  My sister finally managed to get the surgeon to put in the orders to allow food and drink - which lasted for one meal until the other nursing staff rotation came back in and re-instituted the no food or drink order (despite the doctor’s orders).  So now we’re at a point where dad ate a total of  a few hundred calories over a three day period. 

Enter the physical therapy staff, who thankfully, opted to start pretty gently on the first day and just begin with dad sitting in a chair for 45 minutes with instructions to the nurses to let him get back to bed after that.  Well, dad was to be transferred out of ICU to  a regular room that day, and instead of letting him go back to bed, they kept him in the chair for nearly 2 hours.  Now that might not have been such a big deal if not for the fact that he had to be extremely hypoglycemic by this point (and apparently anemic too as we found out after the fact).  But with the lack of blood sugar and the pain, dad was pretty wiped out by the extra time being upright.   By the time he got to the regular room, he was shaking, hallucinating, and pretty much incoherent.  There was some talk that perhaps he had suffered a stroke.  Thankfully, now that he was out of ICU, my sister was able to finally get him some food, which he managed to painfully eat, since his mouth was so dry and full of sores (not having been allowed to drink anything for days).  Remarkably, his “stroke” symptoms began to quickly improve and he started to show signs of recovery. 

Now, I know I’m just a natural healing “quack”, but it seems to me that  food is a pretty basic physical need that was being knowingly neglected by the hospital staff.  If not for my sister, dad still might not have been given anything to eat. 

And dad was not the only patient being neglected.  After being moved out of ICU, dad had a roomate.  The roomate had been there for ten days and was to be discharged the next day.  That evening, a respiratory therapist came in to see the roomate, but the gentleman had been given a sedative 30 minutes prior and was sound asleep.  The respiratory therapist made some comment about the fact that the patient was supposed to be on a CPAP machine (a machine to force air into the lungs for patients who have sleep apnea).  As it turns out, he was supposed to be on a CPAP the whole time he was there, but in the whole 10 days of the gentleman’s hospital stay, nobody had bothered to fill the order.

I might be able to consider this an isolated case of a bad hospital, but over the years, I’ve heard from many people, including doctors and nurses that work at hospitals about the care, or lack thereof that has become typical in hospitals.  Patients get neglected when they need attention, they get awakened for tests multiple times when they need rest, and antibiotic-resistant infections run rampant.  One patient who is a nurse came to me for allergy symptoms that she only experienced while at work in the hospital and I mentioned that it might be a reaction to one of the cleaning products they use.  She responded, “No, I don’t think it’s that, because they really don’t clean there that much!”  (Note to self - don’t have surgery in THAT hospital!).  The same nurse tells me that she is horrified by the neglect of patients that she sees when she comes back on the clock after her days off - patients not being fed, patients lying in their own feces, patients developing bedsores from not being turned in bed, etc..  Some of these problems are due to budget cutbacks and the resulting understaffing, but some of it is plain old poor management.  As this nurse tells me, yes they are overworked and understaffed, but if the necessary things get done when it’s her shift, there’s no legitimate reason why they aren’t getting done when she’s off.  The personnel simply aren’t being managed properly.

Despite all of this, sometimes there’s no avoiding a hospital stay.  If you have to go in the hospital though, I strongly recommend that you arrange to have someone to be there as much as possible to advocate for you.  You need someone who will complain and work their way up the chain of command on your behalf until you get the care that you need.  In an emergency situation, you will not have the luxury of choosing which hospital to go to, but in situations where you can choose a hospital, take a little time and check with the Department of Health in your state regarding complaints against the hospitals in your area and try to choose those with the best record. 

Ultimately, the best way to avoid a hospital nightmare is to take good care of yourself and your health so hopefully you’ll never have a health problem serious enough to require a hospital stay.  It is my goal to provide you with the information you need through this blog to help you live a healthy lifestyle and maintain your good health for a lifetime.

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Monty Python - Hospital Sketch

This video is a little dated (as evidenced by the closing comment about Betamax), but it still is a pretty accurate depiction of childbirth in the hospital setting (British or American). 

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arthritis

The claims made in the above video may seem a little hard to believe, but my 17 years of practice experience treating musculoskeletal pain and arthritis puts me in complete agreement with the doctor in the video.  I often tell patients that there is a huge difference between having arthritis and having arthritis pain.  In the vast majority of cases, as is indicated in the video, the pain of arthritis is not due to the joint degeneration itself, but the muscle and soft tissue reaction around the area of degeneration.  While in some cases, the problem is so advanced that it is not possible to get the soft tissue reactions to subside, in the majority of arthritis cases, even very severe cases, pain can be alleviated by soft tissue release methods. 

Unfortunately, few practitioners who treat arthritis actually address these soft tissue problems, so it can be difficult to find someone who can help.  As a starting point, I suggest looking for a chiropractor or osteopath who either does deep massage in addition to joint manipulation/mobilization and/or who works closely with an experienced massage therapist.  By increasing joint mobility and decreasing reactive tightness in the muscles and soft tissues, miraculous changes can happen very quickly.  Even patients who have been in severe pain for many years and who have had many other types of treatment can sometimes get dramatic relief in the very first treatment session. 

It is important to mention though that in some cases, symptoms may actually increase in the first few treatment sessions before things begin to improve.  It may be frustrating when this occurs, but if you stick with it, things will usually get better after a week or two of treatment.  Remember, arthritic conditions may take 10 to 20 years or more to develop before they start to create significant symptoms, so it may take some time to get the problem resolved.

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Dr Whiting on Diabetes and Hypoglycemia

The above is an excellent video by Dr.Whiting that explains how obesity, hypoglycemia, and type II diabetes are connected and how excess insulin (resulting from consuming too many carbohydrates) produces numerous health problems.  The video does a great job of explaining why the conventional “diabetes diet” that is commonly recommended is not an effective nor healthy approach to managing diabetes. 

Unfortunately, the conventional dietary recommendations for type II diabetes are focused on the fact that diabetics tend to develop problems with elevated blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides), but they fail to look at where these high lipid levels come from.  Because the focus is on blood lipids, the diet recommendations are to limit cholesterol and triglygeride (fat) intake.  But in most cases, very low fat diets tend to be very high carbohydrate diets.  As Dr. Whiting explains in the video, excess carbohydrate gets converted to fat, and for most people, a high carbohydrate intake will produce a far greater elevation of blood lipids than even a relatively high fat diet.  Thus, the often-recommended “diabetic diet” will typically cause diabetics to gain weight, develop even worse diabetic conditions, and have even more problems with elevated blood lipids and the problems they cause (cardiovascular disease and plaqueing in small blood vessels that lead to diabetic neuropathy, vision loss, etc.). 

Now, many doctors will dismiss these concepts, and many patients will continue down the path of destruction by following the conventional low-fat diet approach.  To the skeptics who believe that the conventional approach must be correct (otherwise why else would their doctor, the American Diabetes Association, etc. continue to recommend it), I offer the following challenge:  Test it yourself.  Try switching to the type of diet Dr. Whiting mentions (you can get more information from his website at http://www.healthyinformation.com/ or contact me for diet recommendations).  You don’t have to do it for very long - one or two weeks is usually sufficient to see a difference.  Try it for a couple of weeks and see what happens.  I can tell you if you follow the recommendations consistently for that length of time, you’ll likely see a drastic improvement in your blood sugar (be sure to monitor it closely, especially if you are taking insulin, because you’ll need to adjust your medication dosage accordingly).  And if not, you can always go back to the conventional diabetes diet. 

Now, a lot of people have trouble initially when they switch to a lower carbohydrate diet (this is not an extreme low-carb diet like Atkins, but it is much lower in carbohydrates than you are probably used to), not because it causes any problems (other than maybe some blood sugar swings the first day or two until the body adjusts), but because they are addicted to the carbohydrates and don’t like not eating them.  If you stick to it though, you’ll get used to it and most people actually don’t miss the pasta, the bread, the sweets, etc., once they’ve been off them for a couple of weeks.  So if your real reason for not wanting to try this other approach is that you are addicted to carbs, you need to make a decision as to what’s most important to you:  go on eating carbs and sufer the inevitable decline in your health, or tough it out for a couple of weeks until you get past your addiction and reap the long-term rewards of feeling better (usually surprisingly better), and being much healthier.  I hope that you will give this other approach to diabetes a try, and I wish you good luck!

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Dr. Cheryl: Work Stress Management

Dr. Cheryl Fraser provides some simple but very effective tips for getting stress under control when you feel overwhelmed at work.  The video discusses the basic strategies of deep breathing (take 3 deep breaths - in through the nose and out through the mouth), the “escape” to the restroom (when things are about to boil over, excuse yourself to go to the restroom and silently scream to yourself, splash some water on your face, dry off, and head back more composed), and, when necessary, working a little overtime to catch up if you are falling behind. 

Stay tuned for more stress management tips here on my natural remedies blog.

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Olympic fireworks

OK, so it’s not really health-related, but I thought I’d post this as something to simply enjoy.

What a show!

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Anti-aging is a hot topic these days as more and more of the baby boom generation approaches their retirement years.  While the desire to avoid or delay the effects of aging has probably always been common, the baby boomers are probably the first generation in which a large percentage of people have actively sought out ways to reduce the effects of aging.

This quest for effective anti-aging methods has resulted in both healthy and unhealthy trends.  While dramatic increases in the numbers of people exercising, improving their nutrition, staying socially and physically active, and finding ways to better manage stress no doubt lead to a healthier population, there have been some dangerous (and largely ineffective) attempts to try to artificially defeat the effects of aging through certain cosmetic procedures and even hormone manipulation. 

The following are my recommendations for healthy anti-aging measures to take, as well as popular anti-aging treatments that it would be best to avoid:

Anti-aging Tip #1:  Eat less and eat better.  Recent studies have shown that people who eat fewer calories overall tend to live longer and healthier.  If you’ve tended to eat until you are stuffed, or if you or other people consider you a “big eater”, it may take a little time to get used to eating less.  Decrease your food consumption a little at a time so you don’t have problems with feeling hungry.  In addition, it helps to shift to having the majority of what you eat be in the form of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds (raw or dry-roasted), lean sources of protein (especially fish, poultry, eggs, and lean meats), and small to moderate amounts of whole grains.  Avoid fast food, fried foods, processed foods, and refined grains most of the time and reserve sweets and other less-than-healthy foods for the rare special occasion meal.  The better you eat, the less you’ll need nutritional supplements, but if your diet is not quite perfect (it’s the rare person whose diet is perfect these days), I recommend supplementing with at least a high-quality multivitamin and mineral and omega-3 fatty acids.  Depending on your diet and what health challenges you might be facing, additional supplements may be worth considering, but those two are a good starting point. 

Anti-aging Tip #2:  Stay hydrated.  While there is considerable debate over how much water one should drink each day, there  is not much question that hydration is important.  In fact, there is evidence that inadequate hydration is probably at least partially involved in several common conditions typically associated with aging, such as arthritis, skin wrinkling, declining vision, and muscular aches and pains.  How much water do you need to drink?  It varies considerably from one person to the next, which is probably why there’s so much controversy about this issue.  Some say you should drink eight 8 ounce glasses of water per day, some say that’s way too much, some say that’s way too little.  In actuality, your need for water will vary from one day to the next, depending on numerous factors such as your activities, the weather, what you eat, what else you drink, etc..  To get adequate hydration, I recommend you “listen” to your body.  If you aren’t needing to urinate at least once every 2 to 3 hours - you need more water.  If you can’t generate enough saliva to moisten the glue strip on an envelope enough to seal it in one try - you need more water.  If your muscles feel tight and sore all over - you need more water.  If your eyes are drying out because you aren’t producing enough tears - you need more water.  If you tend to be constipated on a regular basis - you need more water.  There are other signs of needing water too, but these basics are simple things you can look for and when you notice one or more of them - drink more water, preferably small amounts frequently, maybe 4 to 6 ounces at a time every hour or so. 

Anti-aging Tip #3:  Get some exercise at least 3 days per week.  Exercise benefits the body and mind in numerous ways - it improves circulation, it improves muscle strength and endurance, it increases nutrition to and waste removal from the tissues, it improves mood, and list goes on.  Exercise even helps the body compensate for other unhealthy behaviors, so if you’re not ready to give up eating fast food hamburgers, a good exercise program will at least reduce the harm.  There’s a lot of different ways to exercise, so just because you may not like going to a gym or going jogging, don’t give up on exercise!  Find something you like and do it on a regular basis. 

Anti-aging Tip #4:  Find a way to manage stress.  Stressful situations usually can’t be avoided altogether, but most people can manage stress through exercise, meditation, yoga, self-hypnosis, deep-breathing or any number of other techniques.  Good nutrition is also helpful.  For example, omega-3 fatty acids help elevate mood and prevent depression, and there are various products to provide nutrition to the adrenal glands, the body’s primary stress hormone producers. 

Anti-aging Tip #5:  Stay socially active.  You don’t necessarily need to always be around a lot of people or belong to a club or social organization, but human beings are social creatures, and positive interaction with at least one other person on a daily basis is very important.  Studies have shown that married people tend to live longer than single people overall.  We are programmed psychologically at a very deep level to need human interaction, so if you’ve been keeping to yourself, find at least one other person you like to “hang out” with and do things.  It will make a tremendous difference in your life.

Anti-aging Tip #6:  Get some sleep!  In a recent blog post, I discussed the health benefits of getting adequate sleep.  One of the main reasons that getting good sleep is an important ant-aging factor is that the body will usually not produce significant amounts of growth hormone without at least 7 hours of sleep.  Growth hormone is involved in the renewal of tissue, fat burning, and muscle growth, and so it is a big factor in retaining a youthful appearance and staying fit. 

Anti-aging Tip #7:  Avoid unnatural approaches to anti-aging!  Cosmetic “procedures” are the first of the unnatural approaches that I recommend you avoid.  While face lifts, Botox, etc. seem like an easy way to roll back the hands of time, the results rarely fool anyone.  How often have you heard people gossiping about how someone has had “work done”?   How often do you hear someone making fun of the expressionless face of someone who’s just had Botox injections? And have you seen Kenny Rogers lately?  Is this what you really want?  Now if the less-than-ideal effects aren’t bad enough to make you think twice, there are risks to these procedures - serious ones (although, I suppose that DEATH is the ultimate in anti-aging!).  The specifics of these risks go beyond the focus of this article, but before you go forward with any cosmetic procedure, do your homework and check out the risks thoroughly. 

The other popular unnatural approach to anti-aging is through hormone manipulation, particularly injecting growth hormone (hgh for short).  But wait a minute!  Didn’t I say in Tip #6 that growth hormone was good?  Yes, NORMAL production of growth hormone by the body is good.  Injecting large amounts of growth hormone is not.  The body is designed to have different levels of hormones at different stages of life.  Through childhood, your teen years, and early adulthood, you need relatively high levels of growth hormone to help your body develop.  Growth hormone production is supposed to decrease as you age.  It’s not normal nor healthy to have the growth hormone level of a 20 year old when you’re 60 and the health consequences of injecting growth hormone to create this situation can be severe (at least I consider things like cancer severe, how about you?).  Now there are things you can do to maximize your body’s production of growth hormone, such as getting enough sleep (as was discussed earlier), getting some relatively intense exercise on a regular basis, and supplementing with nutrients your body needs for normal hormone production.  These steps will allow you to produce good levels of growth hormone appropriate to your age and will help you resist aging.  But I strongly recommend you stay away from injectable growth hormone unless due to some medical condition you happen to be far below normal for your age.  One last note on this topic - there are a variety of supplements on the market being sold as a means of increasing growth hormone levels.  Some of the promotion of these products is a bit misleading and imply that they are growth hormone (or hgh) - they are not, they are simply nutrients that the body can use to make growth hormone.  These products are usually safe and do not have the problems that injectable growth hormone does, although they can be quite expensive and for best results it is still important to get adequate sleep and exercise.

 So there you have my top tips for anti-aging.  Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for more information.  Go forth and be youthful!

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