Month: December 2016

Happy New Year to all! May this be a year of increased health!

I promised a few patients I would put a few words in my health tip this week about my time in Belize.

I was pinching myself one day when we were picked up in a boat by a real life Tarzan. He calls himself Rambo but his name is Percy. He was hilarious and so much fun. He is the real deal. By boat, we went up “his river,” the Monkey River, to “his jungle” where he hollered at the howler monkeys. They were up in the tree and yelled back at him.   When he got out of the boat to enter the jungle, he did so barefoot.  He walked all the way through the jungle with no shoes and not a whimper.  (I could NEVER do that!!)  He told us the names of the trees and how he used them for medicine.  He had an eye for birds, bugs and animals.  He said this is a glue tree and hit it with his machete and white glue seeped out.   We got back in the boat and he took us to a place and said we could swim there.  Just up the river we had seen small crocodiles in the river. He said he always goes swimming there. He always had, forever, his whole life.

So, if you can believe it, I jumped in the river.   Then he took us over to the side and found, with his toes, mud they use for mud packs and I put it on my body.  I even put it on my face. I only had it on for about one minute, at the most, and you won’t believe how soft my skin felt afterwards. After getting the mud off, we returned to the boat, looked for the manatees, and it began to rain. It started raining like crazy and I was thankful he had a roof on the boat, but that didn’t mean we didn’t get wet—a lot. All in all what a fabulous day! You can see him yourself right here.  But it was so NOT like me!

http://barebonestours.com

The health tip is, when you go on vacation, don’t completely lose your mind and jump into a river in the jungle like I did. Enjoy life, but why take that kind of risk? You know there were snakes in that river. What about parasites and bacteria and virus. OMG! What was I thinking?

One of the most popular drugs prescribed is for acid reflux. The nutritional research showed, even when I was in chiropractic school, that as we grow older, we produce less and less stomach acid. Remember when you were a kid and threw up? Remember how that acid burned? If you are over 40 and throw up, I’ll bet you don’t feel nearly as much acid. If not, then you have decreased the amount of acid you produce.  We need our acid to digest our food. Could it be other culprits that are causing the distress we associate with acid reflux?

If you are taking an acid blocker, you are more likely to have a heart event and more likely to die from it. That is what the research shows.  Try other avenues, if at all possible, as this is a wonderful world we live in and we want to enjoy it!

 

Anticipation is in the air at Christmas. It is as crisp as the fresh, cold air. Enjoy the years of magic while your children are excited about Santa’s visit! I’m sure they will enjoy opening presents that you will enjoy purchasing. Give your older child what they really want from you: a conversation that they will remember forever. Not a parent to child conversation, but a person-to-person conversation. I still remember the first time I recognized an adult spoke to me person-to-person. We were equal human beings. She wasn’t mentoring me or directing me. We were discussing how we felt about contact lenses, what we liked about them and what we didn’t like about them! I still remember that conversation and how it made me feel!! Happy Holidays!

I harp on cholesterol because it has been given a bad rap. If you have higher cholesterol after 70 years of age, you have a better chance of avoiding Alzheimer’s. I don’t know about you, but of all the ways to go, I really want to avoid that dreaded disease. On the label of the cholesterol meds, it says it is not good for the brain. If you take statins, you have a 49% greater chance of becoming a type 2 diabetic. And it quadruples your chance of Alzheimer’s. As you have heard many times, we pick our poison. I believe the statistic is that if there is a room of 100 people taking statins, it will help one person. The rest of the people get the side effect. Leave me a message if this changes your understanding of statins!

One reason women live longer is because they have one more route of detoxification each month than men through their menstrual cycle. And now we know that once women go through menopause, within ten years, their heart statistics are identical to males. It is a problem that has a simple solution: give blood. Men should give blood at least quarterly once they are grown and once they become more mature, give monthly. After passing through menopause, women should give blood once a month, just like men. If they ever say you have too much iron, it is a sign you need to give blood.  Let’s donate!

 

Dr. Tom O’Bryan, brought us the “Betrayal” series on auto-immune issues I spoke about last week.  I have a few more facts that you will find interesting.

The World Wildlife Fund reports that there is a 57% reduction of all wildlife on the planet since the 1970 levels.  I really was not aware of this statistic.  It translates to a great amount of change in a short amount of time on our planet.  My concern is if this change gathers steam and continues.

Another fact was a study reported in this series about eating gluten.  They had three groups of people: a group who knew eating gluten bothered them, a  group that reported gluten bothered them a little, and a third group who felt that gluten did not bother them at all.  There was no surprise when when gluten bothered the people who knew gluten bothered them or the group who said it bothered them a little.  The surprise was that everyone in all three groups were tested and found that for three hours after eating gluten, they had increased gut permeability.  We call that leaky gut syndrome.  It happened in everyone, even those who didn’t recognize gluten as a problem for them.  This is a warning:  gluten bothers you whether you realize it or not.  Act accordingly!