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Natural Choices Newsletter
Natural Choices Newsletters – July, August, September 2005
Brought to you by: Jane Oelke, N.D., Ph.D.
DoctorOelke@aol.com
Vitamins in the News
Recently two vitamins are showing up in news articles as being very important to maintain health. These two vitamins are Vitamin D and Vitamin K. Hopefully you are getting your vitamin D during these summer months by spending at least a few minutes everyday outside in the sun. One of the best ways to absorb vitamin D is with sunlight, so I will leave the topic of supplemental Vitamin D for the fall season and talk about vitamin K in this newsletter.
Vitamin K, is a fat-soluble antioxidant vitamin known as phylloquinone, and is found naturally in dark green vegetables. We need Vitamin K for its blood clotting effects. It helps to coagulate the blood as seen when you get a scab over a cut. Without vitamin K you would continue to bleed with any injury.
Vitamin K is also needed to help absorb calcium, and so is especially necessary for all of us who are trying to prevent osteoporosis. If you are taking a calcium supplement it is essential that you supplement it with vitamin K found in green leafy vegetables. Calcium is best absorbed when combined with a number of vitamins and minerals. The basic list of nutrients that calcium needs are vitamin D, vitamin K, magnesium, zinc, manganese, silica and boron. All of these nutrients are found in green leafy vegetables, but are not found in many calcium supplements. This is why many people who take mega-doses of calcium (as often recommended by their doctor) still get osteoporosis.
I know many of you are taking Juice Plus+ on a regular basis. You can know that by taking the Juice Plus+ vegetables daily you are getting your recommended vitamin K. You do not need to supplement with additional vitamin K. Just make sure the vegetables are taken with foods containing protein and good fats, this will help all of the fat-soluble vitamins get absorbed better. Also the protein in your meal will help the calcium in the whole-food vegetable supplement get absorbed into the bones more quickly. Go here for more information on Juice Plus+
Very few multi-vitamins have vitamin K added. So, if you are trying to survive on fragmented supplements then you will have to add 100 mcg vitamin K to your regime. But remember that the more supplements you take, the more your liver has to work to metabolize those separate nutrients into an effective solution.
Of course, if you are taking coumadin, avoiding vitamin K is recommended because they work against each other. Coumadin is a blood thinner, and vitamin K is a blood clotting agent. So the most common recommendation for people taking coumadin is to avoid green leafy vegetables due to the vitamin K. So if you are on coumadin talk to your doctor.
What is your beverage of choice?
In the summer we should be drinking more fluids to prevent dehydration. But what fluids are you putting into your system? My February and April Fibromyalgia newsletters discussed the effects of Nutrasweet and Splenda on your nervous system. To read them go to the newsletter section of Natural Choices for Fibromyalgia
It is a regular question I ask my clients. What do you drink regularly? If you are drinking diet soft drinks, or those new flavored waters sweetened with Splenda, and you have headaches or re-occurring pain in your body, please stop for at least 2 weeks to see if it makes a difference. Many clients come back and tell me that they do feel much better after stopping the diet soft drinks or flavored waters and will be avoiding them from now on.
A recent study at the University of Texas in San Antonio found out that adults who regularly drink soft drinks increase their risk of gaining weight, as reported in the Houston Chronicle on June 11, 2005. They found that people drinking diet sodas had a higher tendency to gain weight than regular soda drinkers. 65% of people who drank only one diet soft drink per day were more likely to be overweight than those who drank none. Also the more diet soft drinks consumed daily, the higher the likelihood of obesity. They deduced that the absence of carbohydrates needed for energy, causes cravings for additional carbohydrates. Since our brain and cells need glucose for energy this makes sense.
So What Am I Supposed To Drink?
Of course, I recommend water as a substitute to any highly sweetened or artificially sweetened soft drink or flavored water. If you need to “flavor” your water, add a tablespoon of lemon (without sugar) to your water. This is especially helpful if you tend to have water retention or fatigue during hot summer days. A daily dose of lemon water is recommended to activate the liver in the morning and is helpful before meals to help improve digestion.
If you feel like you drink a lot water and it is not absorbed (it goes in one end and out the other quickly) then add an ounce (2 Tablespoons) of apple juice to your water. This will help provide a little sugar, and a little flavor, to your water and it will be more satisfying.
You can also make iced green tea instead of caffeinated beverages for more energy. Green tea contains many antioxidants that help improve our immune system and reduce free radicals. It also keeps our pH readings in balance better than any other processed drink. We need more fluids during these hot summer months, make sure you are getting the ones that will improve your health instead of making it worse.
Vitamin Supplements – Do Not Believe What They Are Telling You!
Many people believe they can stay healthy by taking a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement. Even medical doctors are saying any one-a-day multi-vitamin and mineral complex is enough. But don’t you believe it! Just this past month, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association Volume 294(3), 20 July 2005, p 351-358, stated that whole food is the best source for nutrition, not the fragmented parts put into in multi-vitamins. We need all of the thousands of nutrients, put together in whole foods, to have our cells function properly.
Other recent studies have also shown that single vitamins do not do what they originally thought they should do. (As reported by American Journal of Clinical Nutrition January, 2004;79(1):86-92, vitamin E supplements do not work as well as foods naturally rich in vitamin E.) Yet this information is not really new, the knowledge that synthetic vitamins do not work as well as whole food vitamins has been known for almost 50 years.
Old News on Vitamins
Back in 1956, Royal Lee, MD defined a vitamin as" a working process consisting of the nutrient, enzymes, coenzymes, antioxidants, and trace minerals activators." - Royal Lee "What Is a Vitamin?" Applied Trophology Aug 1956.
Today components of vitamins are being passed off as real vitamins with the same benefits. Ascorbic acid is not vitamin C, alpha tocopherol is not vitamin E, and retinoic acid is not vitamin A, etc. Yet these synthetic chemicals are put into daily vitamin complexes pretending they are the real things.
For example, ascorbic acid is only a fraction of the actual Vitamin C complex. Real vitamin C is part of something living, and so can help heal living creatures. It is found in small but adequate amounts in most fruits and vegetables. In addition to ascorbic acid, vitamin C must include rutin, bioflavonoids, Factor K, Factor J (to help carry oxygen to the cells), Factor P (for blood vessel strength), Tyrosinase (an enzyme for help white blood cells function), with the proper amounts of mineral co-factors. Ascorbic acid is just the antioxidant outer shell – that protects the functional parts of the vitamin from rapid oxidation or breakdown. If any of these parts are missing, there is no vitamin C activity.
Ascorbic acid is made from a corn starch derivative, with a sulfuric acid by-product. In your body it's just another drug. Synthetic vitamins have toxic effects with high doses and actually can increase the white blood cell count indicating that your immune system is stressed. Vitamins are only necessary in minute quantities on a daily basis. Whole food vitamins, by contrast, are not toxic since the vitamin is complete, and does not require extra energy from the body that triggers an immune response.
Scurvy is a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. Bleeding gums, slow wound healing, softening bones, loose teeth, ulcerations of the mouth and digestive tract, general weight loss and fatigue, characterize scurvy. We find that there is less than 20 mg of ascorbic acid in a potato. Yet this small amount, since it is from a whole food source, is all the body needs not only to prevent scurvy, but also to cure it, even in its advanced state. By contrast, the fractionated chemical ascorbic acid has been shown to be insufficient in resolving a scurvy condition, simply because it does not act as a nutrient. (Lancet 1842)
The body cannot make most vitamins. They must be taken in as food. The best sources then are whole foods, rich in vitamins and minerals together. Vitamins and minerals are not functionally separable. They make each other work. Example: vitamin D is necessary for the body to absorb calcium. Copper is necessary for vitamin C activity. B-complex vitamins work better together with minerals to support their absorption.
Whole food vitamins are obtained by taking a vitamin-rich plant, removing the water and the fiber in a cold vacuum process, free of chemicals, and then packaging for stability. The entire vitamin complex in this way can be captured intact, retaining its functional and nutritional integrity. Upon ingestion, the body is not required to draw on its own reserves in order to complete any missing elements from the vitamin complex.
Mainstream marketing of vitamins and minerals has successfully created the myth that vitamins and minerals can be isolated from each other, and that we can derive total benefit from taking these fractionated chemical creations. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Vitamins and minerals, and enzymes, work closely together as co-factors to increase each other’s effectiveness. If just one nutrient is missing, or in the wrong form, or the wrong amount, the whole metabolic process becomes out of balance. The result is a slow downward spiraling of health, which is probably undetectable for a long period of time until it is too late.
Are you getting the whole food nutrients you need?
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting concentrated whole food nutrition in your daily diet. And since the highly processed foods we have available are not that nutritious it is vitally important that you take Juice Plus+, the only totally whole food source nutritional supplement I know. It gives the concentrated whole food nutrition found in 7 different fruits and 10 different vegetables that you need on a daily basis. And according to many research projects done on Juice Plus+ we now have proof that it truly is as beneficial to our health, and the benefits are cumulative, meaning that the longer you take it the healthier your immune system will be. Click her to learn more about Juice Plus+
So How Do You Know If You Are Healthy?
More than one research study has shown that taking Juice Plus+ regularly reduces free radicals in your body. Free radicals cause cell damage and faster aging. Yet, how do you know if you have excess free radicals right now? You can watch how quickly you are aging, looking for wrinkles, how rapidly your skin heals after a cut, and monitoring your energy levels and pain levels. As we age we get more of these markers of free radical damage. You can also do an in-home urine test called the Oxidata test (a.k.a. Free Radical Test) to see where you free radical levels are now. This Free Radical Test kit is available to order at my Free Radical Test page. It involves taking your first morning urine sample and putting a small amount into a vial and recording the level of color change in 5 minutes. This will tell you if you have free radical damage going on right now.
I use this test as one of the 15 bio-chemical markers I use to measure metabolism in my clients. My clients who take Juice Plus+ consistently have much better readings than those who take just single vitamin fragments found in a multi-vitamin. It is a way to prove to yourself that you are getting the antioxidant levels you need on daily basis.
Many bio-chemical urine tests are not available to be done at home. This Free Radical test is one of the best ones you can do every 6 months to monitor your health. Also pH testing is another marker of different patterns of stress in your system.
There is a Quick and Easy Patterns of Stress Testing kit that helps you to measure your saliva and urine pH on a regular basis, and find out if you have one of the four Patterns of Stress:
Immune system stress – low urine and low saliva pH
Joint and Muscle Stress – low urine and high saliva pH
Circulatory Stress – high urine and low saliva pH
Toxic Stress – high urine and high saliva pH
This Quick and Easy Patterns of Stress Testing kit comes with the pH paper, and charts, graphs, and explanations on how to measure your pH. It also gives you a Food Acid and Alkaline chart that you can use to evaluate your diet to see if it is causing your pH to be out of balance. You can find out more about this test at my Quick 'n Easy Patterns of Stress ordering page
Key to Preventing Heart Disease
Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. And within the past year inflammation has been identified as the cause of heart disease. So in this newsletter we are going to look at nutritional factors that can reduce inflammation, thereby preventing heart disease.
Your cholesterol level along with other blood levels indicates your heart disease risk. How do you reduce cholesterol levels? Medical doctors often recommend statin drugs, but they do very little in improving health levels. They artificially reduce cholesterol levels, and do not get rid of the inflammation that caused the cholesterol to occur in the first place.
Statin drugs block the formation of cholesterol in the arteries, but they also have side effects. The most common side effects are nausea, diarrhea or constipation, and muscle aching. The more serious side effects are break down of the muscles, and elevated liver enzymes. That is why you need to have regular blood tests to know if your liver is becoming stressed from the medication. Breakdown of muscle tissue shows up as continuous pain and weakness in many of the muscles. Other long-term complications include impaired memory and concentration ability.
Better Ways to Reduce Inflammation and Cholesterol
The dietary factors that are needed to keep inflammation down are:
· Whole vegetables
· Fruits –especially berries
· Good monounsaturated fats, low saturated fat foods, and NO partially hydrogenated oils
· Low fat protein, especially incorporating wild (not farm raised) white fish and salmon
· Avoiding all high fructose corn syrup in all foods.
Lifestyle factors that can make inflammation worse are:
· A lack of regular exercise
· Smoking
· Chronic stress
So What Else Can You Do To Prevent Heart Disease?
If your diet is good, you do not smoke, and get some regular exercise, what else can you do? Some nutritional supplements are often needed to increase the amount of phytonutrients you are getting. Whole food fruit and vegetable supplements (such as Juice Plus+,) give you additional concentrated antioxidants, minerals and enzymes all combined in a very bioavailable form. Juice Plus+ does not increase liver stress since your body knows exactly what to do with it, and can use all of it since there are no fillers.
Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and fish oil supplements increase your “good” HDL cholesterol, and lower triglycerides by reducing inflammation in the blood vessels. I recommend a minimum of 2000 mg per day of fish oil supplements. If you already have inflammation then it is better to take up to 4000 mg per day. Also make sure you are getting salmon in your diet a couple times per week. Salmon has omega-3 fatty acids, and the antioxidants (seen by the pink color) to help reduce inflammation.
DO NOT take your fish oil supplement without getting your antioxidants from whole foods at the same time. Your body needs the nutrients from the concentrated whole foods to keep your “bad” LDL cholesterol down, and to counteract the free radicals made by metabolism of the fish oil in your digestive tract.
Other Food Factors Used to Reduce Cholesterol and Inflammation
Policosanol is made from sugar cane in Cuba and can be used in the same way as statin drugs to lower cholesterol without side effects. Policosanol helps your liver to produce less cholesterol overall, and to especially absorb more of the LDL cholesterol. An article in the American Heart Journal published in 2002 reported that policosanol "lowers total cholesterol by 17% to 21% and LDL cholesterol by 21% to 29% and raises HDL cholesterol by 8% to 15%." This was at doses of 10 mg to 20 mg per day taken at dinnertime.
Soy protein, at a rate of 25 grams per day, can also lower the risk for heart disease. In one study soy protein reduced total cholesterol by 9%, as well as lowered LDL and triglycerides. But too much can cause estrogen imbalances and affect the thyroid. 25 grams per day is equivalent to 6 ounces of tofu. So a minimal amount is okay unless you have thyroid imbalances or are having peri-menopausal symptoms.
More information on a full Anti-Inflammatory Diet is available at: Natural Choices for You
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