Write away the weight – double your weight loss

Those of you who have ever been to one of my talks know how important I think it is to have a daily writing habit. Statistically, those who keep a daily journal have better emotional and mental health and it has become a favourite tool for self-help in hospitals and support groups. Now it seems it can also help you to almost double your weight loss.

A recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported on a 20 week study of 1,700 overweight or obese men and women who went through a comprehensive regime weekly group meetings, recommended daily reduction of 500 calories, 30 or more minutes of daily moderate intensity exercise, following the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), and daily journal entries of how much they ate and how long they exercised. Generally, their average weight loss was just under a stone, but the more that they wrote in their journals, the more weight they lost – about twice as much as those who did not maintain records.

The idea is a simple one: by keeping a simple food diary, you realistically become more aware of how much you are eating and that helps you take control of your diet. It doesn’t matter whether you record in a book, or a computer – just make sure you enter every mouthful from the one chocolate biscuit to the sensible salad you had for lunch. Personally, I also think it helps to write a ‘mood’ section as well to show how your feel after particular foods or whether a specific mood or habit jogs you towards unhealthy eating. Whatever method you choose, just be consistent with it and you will soon see results.

Why low cholesterol is not always a good thing

I know that in the media there is a lot of emphasis placed on the dangers of high cholesterol, however what many people fail to realise is that cholesterol is essential for your health. It’s present in every single cell in your body where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids to help you digest fat.

Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function, and now scientists have discovered that there is one specific area where having low levels of one type of cholesterol has been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists studied more than 3,500 civil servants to investigate how levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol were associated with memory. HDL cholesterol can influence the formation of the beta-amyloid “plaques” that are a distinctive feature in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Higher levels of HDL are also believed to protect against damage to blood supply caused by the narrowing of the arteries.

After the five-year study period, the researchers found that people with low levels of HDL were 53% more likely to suffer memory loss than people with the highest levels of HDL. Those with impaired memory are at an increased risk of developing dementia later in life, and that is not the only area where low cholesterol levels can cause you health problems.

The Risks of Low Cholesterol

Other risks related to neurological function are depression, suicidal tendencies and may lead to violent behaviour and aggression. Cholesterol levels that are too low can also increase your risk of cancer and Parkinson’s disease so trying to reduce your cholesterol to unreasonably low levels is doing your long-term health no favours.

Why do cholesterol levels rise?

High cholesterol has become such a hot topic that many people don’t realise that it is not a disease in itself. It is actually a perfectly normal response when something has gone wrong and your body needs to make new, healthy cells. Because cholesterol is produced whenever your cells become damaged, it will show as high cholesterol levels, but if you have a lot of damaged cells, you’re also going to have a lot of cholesterol in your bloodstream. This is a good thing, because it means your cells are being repaired.

Instead of just trying to reduce the high cholesterol, it makes more sense to search for what’s causing the damage in the first place, rather than moving straight on to cholesterol-lowering drugs.

One of the most common causes of high cholesterol is inflammation, and that can be brought on by a number of factors, including:

** Too many processed foods
** Smoking
** Not enough exercise
** Emotional stress

Healthy cholesterol levels are essential to keep your cells functioning at their best, and all of those risk factors above are within your control so that might be the place to start. If stress is the issue, have a look at the website for my book on How To Cope Successfully With Stress at www.sortingstressout.com

Global warming effect on health

We are used to hearing about the dire effects global warming will have on the environment and the knock on effect on the animal and plant life of our planet. Now it seems that another animal is being affected: the human one. Apparently, as temperatures across the U.S. increase because of global warming, there is a suggestion that the prevalence of kidney stones is expected to grow.

Researchersat the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that if the temperature overall increases by just 2.38°C, then such climate change is expected to create 1.61 to 2.25 million new cases of kidney stones by 2050. This is an increase of 7% from 2000 and would add $947 million to $1.33 billion in annual healthcare costs, according to the researchers’ calculations. This represents a 25% increase over the $5.3 billion spent in 2000.

They predict the increase would either be in a band covering the southern half of the U.S. or the upper Midwest. The maximum climate-related risk increases would be found in cities such as New York, Detroit, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Sacramento although they predict new cases would occur mostly in the Midwest and Northeast.

The south east of the US already has a 50% higher incidence of kidney stones than other parts of the country, due to regional differences in temperature. Rising temperatures are believed to be associated with a greater risk of kidney stones, perhaps because of increased dehydration, the researchers said, although the link hasn’t been proven. It also appears that when people relocate from areas of moderate temperature to areas with warmer climates, a rapid increase in stone risk has been observed and it would be interesting to track whether has also been the case with the substantial number of UK residents who have relocated to Spain and the South of France.

St John’s Wort – Does it work?

Get ready – this is the rant! As someone who has been writing about health for 20 years, I thought I had become anaesthetised to the ‘false information’ syndrome that seems to accompany most natural medicines. Linus Pauling is a fine example. He was one of the first scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry, molecular biology and orthomolecular medicine, was awarded two Nobel Prizes in different fields which you would have thought was enough qualification for anyone. However, his research into the benefits of vitamin C on health were systematically rubbished for years, and now a natural supplement that has been proven to help thousands cope with depression is getting similarly clobbered.

In the best Parliamentary tradition, I have to declare an ‘interest’ in the subject as I have been subject to depression since childhood and have tried virtually every form of treatment, both chemical and natural, over the years. St John’s Wort works for many people – but not for everyone, so I am never surprised to read research that shows it hasn’t been effective within certain parameters.

What I am surprised, and horrified, to discover is that the latest round of ‘St John’ bashing has come from a group of medical men who concluded “that the St.John’s Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children”.

That it is true I don’t doubt, because what they didn’t disclose at the time was that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the herb, where the active ingredients had been oxidized and rendered useless. Even the Journal of American Medicine admitted that:

“The product used in this trial was tested for hypericin and hyperforin content at the end of the trial and contained only 0.13% hypericin and 0.14% hyperforin.”

That constitutes a sub-clinical dose, barely containing any usable St. John’s Wort at all. It is in fact barely one-tenth of one percent of the active chemical constituents in the herb, and any decent supplement typically contain up to five percent hyperforin, or thirty-five times the amount of active ingredient used in this trial. JAMA felt obliged to point out:

“Hyperforin is a very unstable constituent that quickly oxidizes and then becomes inactive, which is likely what happened to the product used in this clinical trial.”

In other words, they admitted that it was an inactive, ineffective, form that had been used.

Even more worrying is the fact that there were only 54 children used in the results of the trial, with 27 receiving a placebo and 27 receiving St. John’s Wort. This is a very small sample size to justify any declaration that it doesn’t work, especially given the fact that it has been safely and effectively used by tens of millions of people around the world in just the last decade or so.

Incredibly, more than 40 percent of the children used in the study had previously also used psychiatric medications, and we already know that such drugs actually cause behavioural disorders, shown by the fact that so many children commit violent acts against themselves and others after taking psychiatric medications.

This trial was set up to fail on so many levels; for example, six children who displayed a large response to the placebo were supposed to have been dropped from the study to isolate the herb’s effects from placebo effects. However, they were ‘accidentally’ randomized and their results put into the final conclusion, which had the effect of distorting the final results in favour of placebo responders, and reducing the numbers who responded positively to the St John’sWort.

Another example of the study’s bias is that young boys are far more susceptible to the kinds of behaviours that are labelled as “ADHD,” compared to young girls, and yet in this study, the placebo group consisted of only about 50% boys while the herb treatment group consisted of nearly 75% boys. In other words, the placebo group was predisposed to a positive outcome simply due to its composition of girls vs. boys, while the herb treatment group was predisposed to a less-than-favourable response.

To say nothing of the sheer cynicism of this research, and trying not to boil over at them using young children to test something for a serious condition that they absolutely had guaranteed in advance would not work, they then sent numerous press releases out that warned parents not to use the herb. Some of the headlines included:

St. John’s Wort Doesn’t Work for ADHD Washington Post

St. John’s wort no better than placebo for ADHD, Bastyr study finds Seattle Times St. John’s wort doesn’t help ADHD, study finds Reuters That would certainly put most parents off, but it is not really so surprising when you know that one of the study’s authors, Dr. Joseph Biederman, secretly took $1.6 million from drug companies while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, and is currently on the payroll of several drug pharmacies selling ADHD medications – a fact he did not disclose when publishing the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. So he was not likely to want to find that St John’s Wort, or any other natural alternatives, had any effect on treating a condition cheaply and without recourse to drugs. The whole point of the study of course was to make natural medicines look bad. I had thought after Linus Pauling’s hard battle to get his views accredited that it might have got a bit easier – but clearly the agenda is still a commercial, rather than a medical one.

In case you were wondering, St. John’s Wort has been clinically proven to be even more effective than antidepressant drugs for treating mild to moderate depression. That is a much better track record than all the SSRI drugs ever invented, whether it works for ADHD I don’t know, but I would want to see much better research before it is so cavalierly dismissed.

Natural insect repellants

If you are trying to live a more natural lifestyle then it makes sense to try and avoid the chemical insect repellents that are on the market. The most common of these are based on DEET (diethyl-meta-toluamide) which is a very effective insect repellent developed in America some years ago but which can cause irritation to eyes, lips and other sensitive areas. Formulas usually have an oily feel and can cause skin reaction with some users and DEET damages certain plastics and fabrics. It is also less effective in low concentrations, but there is an increased reaction risk in high concentrations and it has a strong ‘chemical’ smell.

Natural insect repellents are usually based on the essential oils of Citronella, specific varieties of Eucalyptus, geranium, lemon grass, cedar or soy. One analysis of various plant essential oils found catnip oil to be promising for mosquitoes – or rather for avoiding their bites. Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus is often included in natural formulations and the active compound in the plant, extracted from the leaves and twigs, is thought to be p-menthane-3, 8-diol which can be chemically synthesized. The oil is thought to repel mosquitoes, biting flies and gnats and, according to Consumer Reports in the US, a lemon eucalyptus product called Repel received a higher overall score than the 7% DEET insect repellents tested.

Some natural repellents also make use of pyrethrins, which are naturally-occurring compounds with insecticidal and repellent properties. They are found in pyrethrum extract from certain chrysanthemum flowers and are safer to use on children, pets and plants. Pyrethrins are biodegradable and safe in normal use because of their low toxicity to mammals and the fact they don’t accumulate in the body. Although generally harmless to clothing and plastics, caution must be used if applied before going in the water as they are harmful to fish and amphibians.

Modern formulations have improved the effectiveness and reduced the need for frequent re-application and the use of micro-encapsulation technology has resulted in some almost odourless repellents. Their advantage is that they are not sticky; are environmentally friendly; safer on sensitive skins and most can be used on children. There is much less potential for skin irritation and they are much less harmful to plastics and fabrics.

There are a couple of websites I suggest you go to look for natural insect repellents who are based in the UK. The first is the Deetfree Natural Insect Repellent which is based on natural oils including Rosemary, Sage, Artemesia, Chrysanthemum Parthenium, Tea tree Oil, Lemon Eucalyptus Oil), Calendula, Lavender, Wild Mint and Thyme. www.naturalcollection.com.

Another effective natural alternative is based on an old Indian herbal recipe used for generations to stop insects biting both humans and animals. It is made without using any chemicals (including no DEET, Citronella, or CFC’s) and instead has ingredients that include Neem oil (a vegetable oil pressed from the fruits and seeds of an evergreen tree – Neem Azadirachta indica) plus Bergamot, Rosemary, and Eucalyptus. This one also comes as a handy pocket size spray, details on their website at www.neemco.co.uk

Finally, would you believe an Avon product has many supporters as being a great mosquito repellent? Apparently the Avon Skin So Soft Dry Oil Spray contains citronella so you can ward off the mosquitoes and condition your skin at the same time! It is being used by some customers on their pets, dogs, cats, and horses to keep the flies away – and presumably to keep them smelling sweet.

Yet more benefits of green tea

As I have now trailed so many benefits of this ‘wonder’ tea, I am amazed the supermarket shelves haven’t been stripped bare, and yet here is another one. You know that it is packed with powerful antioxidants with lots of great health bonuses, but recently scientists discovered that green tea increased the effectiveness of certain antibiotics by as much as 99.99%…even when pitted against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

This was a 12-month study at Alexandria University in Egypt and the results show that green tea boosted the performance of several antibiotics used in the treatment of 28 different disease-causing bacteria — including several strains of Staphylococcus. For example, 20 percent of previously drug-resistant bacteria were killed when green tea was combined with cephalosporin. This is good news because Cephalosporin is a widely used antibiotic – however many strains of bacteria have developed immunity against it.

Green tea was also shown to effectively support the antibiotics tetracycline, cefuroxime and it helped prevent the production of beta-lactamases-substances produced by bacteria allowing them to develop resistance to antibiotics.

So if you combine drinking green tea when on antibiotics you will help them be more effective and if you are drinking it regularly anyway then hopefully you won’t need the antibiotics at all, or in such quantity.

Could diabetics and others benefit from grape skins?

A recently published paper in the science journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism has reported on new research carried out by scientists at the Peninsula Medical School in the South West of England, which has found that resveratrol, a compound present naturally in grape skin, can protect against the cellular damage to blood vessels caused by high production of glucose in diabetes.

Patients with diabetes have elevated levels of glucose that circulate in the blood and which cause both micro- and macro- vascular complications by damaging the mitochondria. These are the tiny power plants within cells responsible for generating energy and when they are damaged they can leak electrons and make highly damaging ‘free radicals’. Serious complications can arise when this happens, including kidney disease, heart disease and retinopathy – which if left untreated can lead to blindness.

Resveratrol stops the damage by helping cells make protective enzymes to prevent the leakage of electrons and the production of the toxic ‘free radicals’. By including grapes in your diet, and other sources such as seeds, peanuts and red wine you could be helping prevent vascular damage caused by hyperglycemia in the future.

Other Health Benefits

You know how you take grapes to patients in hospitals? Well if you take them red grapes the resveratrol in the skin has also been shown to help with other health issues. For instance, if you have the flu, then resveratrol has been shown to prevent the continued reproduction of the flu virus if taken within six hours of the first infection. It has been shown to be anticarcinogenic, and there is also growing evidence that it can also protect the heart. It does this in several ways: inhibits platelet aggregation, the proliferation of smooth-muscle cells, and the oxidation of LDL-cholesterol. So don’t ask ‘Beulah, peel me a grape’, as Mae West famously said, but insist she keeps the skins on!

Was this natural sweetener ‘Miracle Berry’ nobbled?

Regular readers of this newsletter will know that I am not a fan of artificial sweeteners. Partly on taste grounds, and mostly on well-established health risks but the belief has always been that there wasn’t anything better. It was Tom Mangold, speaking on Radio 4, who alerted me to the fact that actually there was, so in case you didn’t catch the programme here’s the gist of it.

In the 1970′s, Robert Harvey, an American entrepreneur,c arrying out research in his New England laboratory when he came across a plant called Synsepalum dulcificum. This is a wild, small, red, berry grown in West Africa, which, when chewed lilterally turns sour food and drink sweet. Finally, here was something that had the potential to be a safe, non-fattening sugar substitute and an alternative to what were then the new-to-the-market artificial, chemical, sweeteners. In early trials it received a warm reception among diabetics who were able to enjoy sweet flavours without worrying about their sugar intake and from dieters anxious to avoid high-calorie desserts.

Although the berry itself is not sweet, it contains an active glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue’s taste buds, causing changes to how they taste – in particular bitter and sour foods like lemons and limes will taste sweet after chewing a berry and this effect lasts up to two hours.

Harvey and his colleagues were able to process the berry’s ‘miracle’ ingredient to make it marketable and they devised a test. They coated some sugarless ice lollies with the berry process and mixed them up with ordinary, sugared lollies and gave them out in a Boston playground. The result was that all the kids preferred the Miracle Berry lollies to the sugared ones, showing that the berry is a taste enhancer and, with no sugar present, the lollies didn’t rot the teeth and contained no calories. “It was junk food without the junk,” as Harvey said, and he realised he was sitting on a billion dollar project that could have had profound implications for the epidemic of obesity in the US, and the developed Western world.

He got huge backing including Barclays Bank and the Prudential and soon had hundreds of thousands of miracle berry plants growing in Jamaica. The American Federal Drugs Administration seemed to be ok with the product and then in 1973 his offices were burgled and the data files ransacked. It was clearly a case of professional ‘industrial espionage’ and was followed in 1974, on the eve of the product launch, by another body blow. The FDA, which had previously indicated it would clear the product for use, now reclassified the berry as an additive, and like any artificial ingredient, it would now have to submit to years of testing for safety and efficacy. They immediately ordered all Miracle Berry products to be withdrawn at once.

Conspiracy theorists may conclude that there was a lot at stake for the fledgling artificial sweetener industry and too much money at stake to risk an all-natural product taking over a billion dollar market. We will never know, but if you want to try it for yourself the berries are available to buy on the internet and even on ebay. There is also an informative UK website, www.miraclefruit.co.uk who have been overwhelmed with orders since the programme went out – so finally the berry’s time may have come. It has already done so in Japan where it is being sold in tablet form to aid dieters.

Cancer update on apricots

One of the many natural supplements that keeps resurfacing in connection with cancer treatment, and prevention, is apricot kernels. I recently met a lady who has had cancer who has been taking them for some time and is convinced they have helped her. The evidence on this is not cut and dried, but there is certainly a body of anecdotal evidence and some clinical trials that seems to support this view, but there are also very clear dangers in this somewhat innocuous fruit.

It has been suggested that eating 7-10 Apricot Kernels a day may help to prevent cancer, alongside a healthy lifestyle and a good diet though this is outside the limit recommended as safe by many authorities. Certainly apricots themselves have been held up as the substance that helped the Hunza to achieve their very long life span, and relative freedom from cancer. Apricot Kernels are especially rich in Vitamin B17, which is also known rather confusingly by three different names: Amygdaline, Amygdalin or Laetrile. It is B17 that is the substance that is believed to both help prevent cancer, and have a direct impact upon cancer cells and many of the best sources we simply do not eat. For instance, we core our apples, and peel our parsnips and usually give the compost heap the B17 we need for ourselves. The best source is in apricot kernels and the lady I referred to at the beginning of this piece tells me she buys the ground kernels from Dayspring on 01483 418258. They also have a website at www.anticancerinfo.co.uk/suppliers.htm for more information.

The kernels should be chewed, or ground and sprinkled on food or in fruit juice. An excellent way to take Apricot Kernels is to fill a jar half full, add a 1/4 of a jar of organic or Manuka honey and mixed well with a fork, and keep in a fridge or cool cupboard. The kernels can then be added to fruit and muesli or simply taken straight from the spoon. For anyone who is not ill but wants to guard themselves from cancer they should just take a small amount – say a small half teaspoon of the ground kernels, but for more treatment levels up to three full teaspoons is usual, but I strongly suggest you consult with a qualified natural practitioner before you begin on a regime such as this.

Food Sources:
There are many foods that contain Vitamin B17 in varying amounts and these include: apple seeds, alfalfa sprouts, apricot kernels, bamboo shoots, barley, beet tops, bitter almond, blackberries, boysenberries, brewer’s yeast, brown rice, buckwheat, cashews, cherry kernels, cranberries, currants, fava beans, flax seeds, garbanzo beans, gooseberries, huckleberries, lentils, lima beans, linseed meat, loganberries, macadamia nuts, millet, millet seed, peach kernels, pecans, plum kernels, quince, raspberries, sorghum cane syrup, spinach, sprouts (alfalfa, lentil, mung bean, buckwheat, garbanzo), strawberries, walnuts, watercress, yams.

WARNING!
I would not be responsible if I didn’t repeat that you need to use apricot kernels with caution. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment suggests that you eat no more than one or two apricot kernels a day. This is because they have a high natural level of amygdalin and, during digestion, highly toxic hydrocyanic acid is released from it. This can lead to symptoms of acute poisoning like cramp, vomiting and respiratory distress. At high doses it can even lead to a fatal respiratory paralysis, which can lead to severe, acute poisoning. At very high doses it can even prove fatal.

Mercury fillings – Safe or not?

Mercury is the third most toxic poison in the world, and you may not be aware of it, but it has been used in amalgam dental fillings since the 1830′s and most amalgams composed of at least 50% mercury. The debate over its use has been ongoing for some time; I certainly had all my amalgam fillings removed and replaced some ten years ago when I first started reading, and writing, about the potential health risks. The situation now seems to be polarising, and so I offer you both sides of the argument so you can make up your own mind.

In the red corner are the Scandinavians: on January 1st this year, Norway became the first nation to impose a total ban on the use of amalgam fillings in dental work. Previous laws forbid the use of mercury-containing fillings in more vulnerable segments of the population, such as pregnant women and children, but the new law is the first to forbid the use of the toxic metal without exemption. Mercury has also been banned from all other products produced, imported, exported, sold, and used in the country. Minister of Environment and Development, Erik Solheim, stated that “Mercury is among the most dangerous environmental toxins. Satisfactory alternatives to mercury in products are available, and it is therefore fitting to introduce a ban.” Sweden has now followed suit with a ban on mercury fillings that came into place on April 1st (2008), this year and Denmark and other EU countries are now contemplating similar moves.

In the Blue corner are Britain and the USA who do not accept that there is any problem with the mercury and say that all the negative claims are either unsubstantiated by rigorous scientific data or simply not significant enough to be of concern. They are backed up by a European Union scientific committee study which has claimed that amalgam fillings containing mercury pose no health risk to the human nervous system. The Committee said it had investigated claims of a link between amalgams and a variety of systemic conditions, particularly neurological and psychological or psychiatric effects.

They concluded that no risks of adverse systemic effects exist and the current use of dental amalgam does not pose a risk of systemic disease.

The findings reflect the opinions of some dentists and governments, who have insisted the material is safer and more durable than alternatives, but patients’ organisations have disputed the results, claiming amalgam is dangerous and that anyone carrying an average of 2.5 grams in their mouths is at risk. Another patient organisation in Spain said it rejected the provisional report because it was partial and ignored the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other scientists’ recommendations.

What do I think? Well, many European countries, including Britain, advise against the use of amalgam for children and pregnant women, due to its impact on brain development. In fact, research published in March 2006 shows neurodevelopmental disorders in children have decreased following the removal of thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury, from American childhood vaccines. This led to the World Health Organization urging that Thimerosal be banned in U.S. vaccines.

Amalgam fillings raise the level of mercury circulating in the blood as the mercury leaches from the filling into the body and it is believed to harm children’s normal development. Relatively low doses of mercury have been linked to adverse neuro-development and many people who have displayed sensitivity to the substance have reported improvements in health upon removal of the toxic fillings. It is often recommended that is removed in those with compromised immune systems and sufferering from immune responsive disorders such as ME.

As other types of composite fillings have become strong enough to replace amalgams under practically any circumstance, it would seem time to look realistically at phasing mercury out as a potential health hazard. If the health angle doesn’t convince you, perhaps the environmental one might do so. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, medical waste incinerators emit 70,000 pounds of mercury into the biosphere each year, making medical use of the metal one of the leading contributors to mercury pollution. If you are thinking of having a tooth filling replaced, talk to your dentist and if you are having mercury fillings replaced that needs to be done with great care to avoid dust from the filling being absorbed back into your body. Ask your dentist if they are experienced in this type of removal and if they are not, it would be sensible to seek out someone who does this as a regular part of their practice work.

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