Best Health And Wellness Info

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I recently received a comment on one of my YouTube videos about weight loss from an individual who was concerned about the health implications of not eating grains.  This person was worried that my recommendations to eat primarily vegetables and high quality animal proteins and to avoid grain-based foods might lead to unspecified health problems.  In particular, the commenter noted that most food guides (such as the “Food Pyramid”, “4 Basic Food Groups”, etc.) list grains as the foundation of a healthy diet.  Based on these guides, the commented inquired, “Aren’t grains healthy?”.

From a nutrient standpoint, whole grains in limited quantities are certainly fine to eat and can be considered healthy.  The problem is not the grains, per se, but the FORM and QUANTITY in which most people consume grains. 

Let’s begin with form.  If you were to snack on a handful of unrefined bulgar wheat, rolled oats, etc., the nutrients and fiber in those products would be quite healthy.  But is that how most people eat grains?  With the exception of corn that is often consumed in a minimally processed form, most grains are processed in some way before they are consumed.  Most people are aware that highly processed grain products like white bread and pasta are largely devoid of the original nutrient and fiber content of the grains they are made from.  Even nutrient enrichment (such as adding thiamin back into wheat flour) does not restore the original nutrient content, and the key ingredient that minimizes the unhealthy impact of grains, fiber, is usually left out altogether. 

But even “whole grain” products are often problematic.  True whole grain foods largely retain the original vitamins, minerals, and fiber of the original grain, but most contain other ingredients that diminish the “healthiness” of the food.  For example, whole wheat bread is usually loaded with sugar to make it taste better.  The same is true of whole grain cereals and many other whole grain products.  General Mills should be ashamed of themselves for running those television ads promoting all of their cereals as being whole grain and thereby implying that they are healthy (does anyone really believe that Lucky Charms cereal is a health food even if it is “magically delicious”?). 

Regardless of whether the food is made of refined grains or of whole grains with added sugar, most grain-based products have a high glycemic index.  Basically, the glycemic index refers to the tendency of a food to rapidly raise blood sugar and trigger the release of insulin.  When high glycemic index foods are eaten, under normal circumstances, the pancreas releases a large amount of insulin to stimulate the cells of the body to take up the excess blood sugar and store it as glycogen and fat (and the amount of fat storage in the body is MUCH larger than the amount of glycogen storage). 

A large insulin release once in a while is not a big deal, but when somone eats high glycemic index foods on a frequent basis, and the large insulin release happens frequently, some major problems develop. 

For anyone who is overweight, the first problem is that insulin stimulates the body to store fat and blocks the ability of the body to burn fat.  So, eating grains, particularly in a refined form, or when there is added sugar, tends to cause weight gain.

The second problem is even more serious.  Over time, repeated release of large amounts of insulin creates a situation in which the body becomes desensitized to insulin, so blood sugar cannot be properly controlled.  This results in Type II diabetes, and all of its associated health problems. 

This brings me to the topic of the quantity of grain-based foods that people eat.  With refined grains (white flour, white bread, pasta, and cereal) or sugar-added whole grain products, even small quantities can be problematic.  A single slice of white bread can stimulate enough of an insulin release to block the ability of the body to burn fat for 24-48 hours.  Whole grains have a much lower glycemic index, because the fiber slows the absorption of the carohydrates into the bloodstream as blood sugar, but if there is added sugar, the effect of the fiber is largely negated.  So, even whole wheat and other whole grain foods can be problematic in relatively small quantities. 

As a general rule, I recommend people limit their carbohydrate intake as much as possible.  This means minimizing the intake of grains and sugary foods.  If you eat your grains completely unprocessed, such as snacking on handfuls of bulgar wheat, you’re probably OK, but otherwise you are usually best to just avoid the grains as much as possible.

It has been my observation that a majority of Americans consume quantities of refined grain products and other high-glycemic index foods (sugar-containing products like soda, candy, and other sweets) sufficient to not only virtually guarantee that they will be overweight, but also put them at a very high risk of developing diabetes.  So, the statistics regarding the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in this country should come as no surprise at all. 

So what about the food guides?  Are those government-proposed guidelines wrong? In a word, yes.  The various food guidelines such as the food pyramid are based on the outdated concept that fat intake is the primary dietary threat to good health.  Considerable research now clearly shows that while a rather large intake of fat can be problematic, even a relatively small intake of refined grains and sugar is far more detrimental to health. 

Check out my previous posts on weight loss and diabetes for more information.

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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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A common thing I hear from both my patients and from people in general is that they are trying to lose weight to get healthier.  Of course, for many “get healthier” is code for “look better and be more attractive”, but that’s a whole different issue.  Most people are under the impression that being overweight is causing their arthritis, their high blood pressure, their diabetes, and a host of other health problems.  Many doctors reinforce this concept and may say things like, “Mr. Jones, you simly MUST lose weight to get that blood pressure of yours under control”.  But is being overweight the CAUSE of health problems, or is it just another SYMPTOM?

Yes, numerous research studies have shown an association between being overweight/obese and having other health problems.  But an association simply means that they are commonly seen together.  It does not prove that one causes the other.

Think about it for a minute, do ALL overweight people have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.?  I can tell you that from 15 years of experience as a health care provider, the answer is “No”.  Let’s look at the opposite side of the coin.  Do normal weight or skinny people EVER get high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.?  The answer is absolutely “Yes”.  So, obviously, being overweight in and of itself is NOT the cause of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other conditions commonly associated with being overweight. 

In fact, as I mentioned before, being overweight or obese is actually just another symptom of some other underlying problem.  Now, that problem may be physical or emotional, or some combination of he two.  It may even be a conscious choice for some people who, for one reason or another, prefer being overweight.

For the purposes of this article, I won’t be discussing emotional and personal choice reasons for someone being overweight any further, but I wanted to acknowledge those factors.

The physical causes of being overweight usually come down to the interactions and balances of various hormones.  Most people who are overweight due to physical causes will have one or more of four basic underlying problems.  These can be categorized as the thyroid pattern, the adrenal pattern, the liver pattern, and the estrogen pattern.  These basic patterns were first described by Dr. Eric Berg.  Dr. Berg references the last pattern as the “Ovary” pattern, but I have found that it is primarily related to excess estrogen, and it can occur in males (who have no ovaries, but do have some estrogen), so I feel it is more correct to refer to it as the estrogen pattern (with all due respect to Dr. Berg).  More information is available on these patterns on other posts on this blog, and more will be added in the future. For this article though, I simply want to make you aware of these basic patterns.

This brings me back to the concept of losing weight to get healthy.  In actuality, most people would do better to focus on getting healthy to lose weight.  For example, someone with a liver pattern will typically have an extremely difficult time losing weight because their excess weight is largely in the form of water retention. You can’t exercise away water retention and while diet is important to help the liver pattern, the wrong diet can actually make things worse.  Specifically, a high-protein program like the Atkins diet will almost always make someone with the liver pattern GAIN weight.  It will also tend to give them elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels and increase their blood pressure.  This is not to say that the Atkins diet is a bad diet.  It’s just completely wrong for someone with the liver pattern.

Diet isn’t the only factor though that determines whether someone becomes healthy enough to lose weight.  Exercise is another big factor.  For example, the best type of exercise for someone with the thyroid pattern (high intensity, short duration exercise) would be the worst type of exercise for someone with the adrenal pattern.

When you know what to look for, the body will give you signs to tell you what’s wrong and what needs to be done to restore balance and health.  Once balance and health are restored, losing weight becomes a much easier process.

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for more on getting healthy to lose weight.

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People with advanced diabetes often develop neuropathy (nerve damage) in their feet, due to impaired blood supply to the nerves.  The symptoms of diabetic neuropathy can include burning pain, tingling, and numbness.  Neuropathiy in the feet can also interfere with one’s sense of balance, as the nerves in the feet are one of the three major balance control systems (the other two coming from the eyes / sense of vision and from the vestibular system in the inner ears).

Diabetic neuropathy can be dfficult to treat.  Although symptom reduction can sometimes be achieved with drugs like neurontin, this is not always effective and not every patient is able to take such medications for any number of reasons (intolerable side-effects, interactions with other medications, etc.). Because of this, there has been considerable interest in natural treatments to ease the symptoms of diabetic neuropathy.  A couple of the more effective natural treatments appear to not only help symptoms, but may actually improve blood supply to the nerves and help prevent the progression of the neuropathy, and in some cases even partially reverse the damage to the nerves.

The natural treatments for neuropathy fall into two main categories.  The first category is supplements or “neutraceuticals” (nutritional products with specific therapeutic effects).  Of this group, alpha-lipoic acid (sometimes called thioctic acid) has shown the greatest effects. 

The following studies on alpha-lipoic acid attest to its effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and safety:

Journal Of Diabetes Complications, April 2008

Diabetes Care, November 2006

Diabetes Journal, September 1997

The recommended oral dosage of alpha-lipoic acid is 600 to 800 mg per day.

 The second category of natural treatments for diabetic neuropathy is energetic stimulation of the nerves.  This can be accomplished with magnet therapy, laser stimulation, and/or microcurrent (a specific type of electrical stimulation).  Of these, magnet therapy  is the simplest to use for self-treatment, since magnetic shoe inserts are easily accesible from a number of sources without the need for a prescription (as is required for a microcurrent stimulator). 

Although none of the energetic stimulation techniques has been studied in-depth at present, the following study documents the effectiveness of magnet therapy for diabetic neuropathy:

Archives Of Physical Medicine And Rehabilitation, May 2003

The best magnetic insoles I have found are the “Neo-Flex” available through:


Therion professional magnetic therapy product solutions

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for more on natural diabetes treatment.

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Chocolate Does Have Some Health Benefits, But Try To Control Yourself!

Recently dark chocolate has been touted for its health benefits that stem from its high antioxidant content.  Among other things, dark chocolate seems to improve circulation to the heart (reducing the risk of angina and heart attacks), reduce blood pressure, raise HDL (”good” cholesterol), and decrease cardiovascular mortality.

All of these are good things of course, but it should be noted that these effects occur with a relatively small amount of chocolate - about an ounce to an ounce and a half per day.  It should also be pointed out that these health benefits are for dark chocolate, preferably a minimum of 60% cacao (and higher is better), with the least amount of sugar possible.

It has been my observation that some individuals will use the potential health benefits of chocolate as a reason why they are eating it - many times a LOT of it!  There’s certainly nothing wrong with eating chocolate for its health benefits, nor is there anything wrong with eating chocolate from time to time because you enjoy it, but be careful.  One or two ounces per day is fine and the sugar content of that amount is not terribly high.  It’s a different story though when you start to snack on chocolate several times per day, and the daily intake goes way beyond an ounce or two.

Unless you are eating unsweetened chocolate, the sugar content will sneak up on you the more chocolate you consume.  It doesn’t take long before you are getting a hefty dose of sugar.  In most cases, 2 ounces of dark chocolate will have about 25 grams of sugar - which for many people is enough carbohydrate all by itself to stimulate enough insulin release to actually prevent them from burning any fat for 1 to 2 days!  For anyone with weight control issues, that’s a big deal. 

In addition, with a high sugar intake day in and day out, there is a high risk for developing Type II diabetes, which will more than wipe out any health benefit the antioxidants in the chocolate will provide. 

So, sorry to be a killjoy to all of you who were eating those candy bars because you heard chocolate was healthy.  If you enjoy a little dark chocolate for a reasonably healthy dessert - go for it.  Just don’t kid yourself that eating a candy bar every day is good for you.

For more health informationa and weight control tips, stay tuned to my natural remedies blog

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