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January 17, 2005 Research Update |
James Bogash, D.C. Mesa, AZ
info@lifecarechiro.com
www.lifecarechiro.com
Should diet be a medical intervention?
I am truly hoping this is just a rhetorical question put forth by the author!! It still amazes me the resistance mainstream medicine has against lifestyle changes and the therapeutic and preventative potential. I know the typical medical training is not there for a full understanding, but how can such a large group be clearly blind to literally an avalanche of medical literature supporting the benefits of diet and lifestyle as therapy? I had an email discussion (argument?) with a cardiologist a few weeks back. He was so far off the mark it was scary. I just hope he's not practicing anymore. He felt my estimate of 25% prevelance of the metabolic syndrome was way too high (it's not) and felt that in diabetes and CVD it is probably even lower (actually, it's 88% in CVD patients). But, he concluded by saying that patients don't stay with lifestyle changes anyway so why recommend them. I responded by saying that it is not his job to guess what the patient will or will not do--it is his job to explain the options to the patient. Anything short of that is malpractice by lack of informed consent.
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Isorhapontigenin, a new resveratrol analog, attenuates cardiac hypertrophy
My wife thinks I'm nuts, but I really am starting to believe that oxidative stress and subsequent mitochondrial definition is darn close to the root of all evil. Here we see the link to enlargement of the heart and how this event is protected against by a synthetic version of resveratrol. Resveratrol is the compounds found in red wine, grapes and peanuts that is known to protect the heart. My question is, we already know that resveratrol protects the heart--why are we looking for a synthetic version? Can you say patent...?
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Nutrition and Aberrant DNA Methylation Patterns in Atherosclerosis: More than Just Hyperhomocysteinemia?
I just love situations like this. Basically, mainstream medicine is just begining to embrace the idea that maybe we should check homocysteine levels when evaluating for cardiac risk. And I have notice over the years that more and more people that attend my seminars are aware of homocysteine. Some still fight with their PCPs to get the test ordered. So here we are, now looking for factors that are even more fundamentally important than homocysteine. The authors of this review acknowledge that elevated homocysteine coupled with inadequate levels of methylation factors (such as folic acid, B12, B6, SAMe...), but feel that there is yet a more basic alteration at the nutritional levels that occurs that makes the arteries more suseptable to damage from homocysteine. Stay tuned..
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Flavonoid Glucosides Are Hydrolyzed and Thus Activated in the Oral Cavity
You can add this one to the damaging effects of antibiotics. Always irks me when all the concern about antibiotic overuse focuses on antibiotic resistance, when the real, long term damage comes from destroying normal bacterial flora. This study finds that the bacterial conversion of certain flavonoids (genistein from soy and quercetin from onions) can occur as early as the oral cavity, thus producing more effective compounds to protect the oral cavity from diseases such as cancer. So, while antibiotics may not cause cancer, they may remove some of the potential protective effects given to us by foods. We have seen an association with antibiotic use and breast cancer recently as well.
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Vitamin C conjugates of genotoxic lipid peroxidation products: Structural characterization and detection in human plasma
This is a perfect example of needing to get the whole story before we jump to conclusion. Compare this with recent media exposure of the Vit E increasing mortality review. In this study, the authors looked further at the process by which Vit C has been shown to cause lipid peroxidation products (not a good thing...). Looking more into detail, these authors found that Vit C then went on to complex with the lipid peroxidation products to get them out of the body and keep them from doing damage.
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Beneficial metabolic effects of regular meal frequency on dietary thermogenesis, insulin sensitivity, and fasting lipid profiles in healthy obese women
This concept is one of the hardest to get across to patients trying to lose weight. So many patients have tried to lose weight by skipping meals (especially breakfast) in an attempt to lower the number of calories taken in. But the body responds to this method by conserving calories as well as slowing metabolism via a reduction in thyroid function. Multiple small meals throughout the day ensures that the body's metabolism believes another meal is coming soon and thereby does not conserve.
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Sulfonylurea Induced beta-Cell Apoptosis in Cultured Human Islets
There are times when I feel I read too much medical literature. It scares me. The research on this issue started to arise about 4 years ago. We started to realize that a major class of diabetic drugs (sulfonylureas such as glyburide) actually slowly kills off the beta cells of the pancreas. So, while they do help the blood sugar issue for a time by forcing the pancreas to produce more insulin, ultimately they are killing off these same cells. If this information does not prompt a more natural approach to diabetes, then nothing will.
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Synbiotic therapy (Bifidobacterium longum/Synergy 1) initiates resolution of inflammation in patients with active ulcerative colitis
While the use of probiotics to aid in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease is not new, sometimes it's nice just to reaffirm the efficacy and safety of this approach with a wide range of GI disorders. Once again, we see that the long term damaging effects of antibiotic use extend well beyond the fear of antibiotic resistance.
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Effect of atorvastatin on left ventricular diastolic function and ability of coenzyme Q10 to reverse that dysfunction
The idea of using CoQ10 along with statins is a no-brainer, but unfortunately rarely, if ever, used. I was at a health fair this past weekend, and many patients expressed side effects with statin therapy. Most, if not all, of these side effects can be linked to the reduced endogenous production of CoQ10. If you understand that CoQ10 is absolutely essential to the energy production of all cells, especially the high respiratory cells like heart, skeletal muscle and GI mucose, then the side effects are very much expected. While I personally do not see any need for the statins because there are so many other effective ways to lower cholesterol, at the very least every prescription should come with a bottle of CoQ10.
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Metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism
Although the powers that be have desperately tried to debunk the idea that autism is environmentally mediated, the research and the physiology seem to point otherwise. Autistic children seem to have a reduced ability to defend against oxidative stress--so the bombardment of a genetically suseptable infant with large amounts of mercury could lead to serious adverse effects on the developing nervous system. The problem is that we have not yet come up with any way to identify those infants at risk. Until then, vaccinations can be a crap shoot--just stab and hope that child does not have impaired antioxidant defenses...
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