Toss the Prozac and Try This for the Kiddos

Without dredging up horrid memories of high school, do you remember that our cells are made of a lipid bilayer?

That means that the outside of our cells are formed of two layers of fats sandwiched together.  For cells to function properly, a message needs to pass through this sandwich layer.  It works out that the healthier the fats in this sandwich, the better a message gets into or out of a cell.  Things just work better.

So, healthier fats = better messages.  Unhealthy fats = messages get lost.

Consider this in the brain.  Would you want the message to get to where it’s supposed to?  Of course.  So, better fats = better sandwich = better messages.

This can translate to neurotransmitters like serotonin or epinephrine or dopamine getting from one cell to another.  So, of course we would expect to see psychological problems like depression get better with higher intakes of healthy fats.  Seems pretty simple, huh?

Which leads us to this particular study, where researchers looked at the relationship between dietary fish intake and depressive symptoms in over 6500 Japanese children who were between 12 and 15 years of age.  Here’s what they found:

• In boys, higher fish intake was linked to 27% lower risk of having depressive symptoms.
• EPA intake had the strongest effect (29% for EPA, 21% for DHA).
• Looking at omega-3 intake (and not specifically fish intake), there was a 28% lower risk.
• The protective effect was limited to boys.

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How to Prevent Osteoarthritis After Injury

Knee arthritis and steroid injections

The more astute of us are rightfully concerned with developing arthritis as we age. Luckily, this is not a foregone conclusion.

Most people incorrectly think that injury to a joint is the only major factor that leads to the later development of arthritis in that joint. While any injury to a joint is an important player, there are other factors at play.

(I also have patients who state that his or her left knee pain is just from old age.  At this point I ask how much older it is than the other knee…)

For arthritis of the spine related to disc degeneration, we have known for a long time that a lifestyle that is pro-heart disease will also increase your risk for disc degeneration and spinal arthritis. The reason for this is simple—discs do not have their own blood supply. Instead, they are fed indirectly by small blood vessels. If these small blood vessels become filled with plaque, they can no longer deliver needed nutrients to the discs. With normal use, these discs will break down because they can’t meet the demands of daily life.

The surfaces of your joints are not too much different. Poor blood vessel health will lower the ability of your joint surfaces to get the nutrients they need to respond to day to day demands.

This means that a lifestyle that is designed to protect your heart will also protect your joints. Pretty cool. NOT killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

This particular study may give us even more insight into how we can protect our joints. In it, researchers looked at the ability of different types of fats (specifically saturated fats, omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids) to protect against damage to the medial meniscus of the knees of mice.

They found that saturated fats and omega 6 fatty acids did not protect against the later development of osteoarthritis and even increased the amount of arthritis that resulted, they increased extra bone formation around the joint (a hallmark of osteoarthritis) and increased scar formation.

Let me put this more plainly: The dietary choices you make WILL absolutely increase the damage to your joints that occurs with an injury, leading to more osteoarthritis in your joints years later.

Luckily, the omega 3 fatty acids were a different story.

The omega 3 fatty acids were able to enhance wound repair as well as lower the risk of later development of arthritis. Pretty cool that diet can play this powerful of a role.

In case you need a refresher on which fats to avoid, here’s some help:

• The main source of saturated fats include fats contained in our society’s poorly raised livestock.
• Omega 6 fatty acids are found in certain oils like corn, sunflower, soybean and peanut oils.
• Omega 3 fatty acids are found in nuts, seeds (such as flax), wild caught fish and game, certain grains (salba, quinoa as examples) and grass fed beef.

Just by making smart dietary choices combined with maintaining an ideal body weight and staying active you can go a long way towards protecting your joints for years to come.

Is would also seem that, just in case all the other things that they are good for has not been enough, fish oils supplements would play a role in preventing osteoarthritis, especially after injury.

Osteoarthritis is NOT something that has to happen to your joints. Think about that the next time you reach for that bag of chips…

 

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Do Migraines Increase Your Risk of Dying?

Let me clarify this once more.  Those experiencing migraines have something wrong with their physiology that just so happens to manifest as headaches.

The headaches are the downstream consequence of the problem, and are NOT the problem itself.  So to fix the problem, you need to look upstream and fix what is wrong.  If you experience migraines and your doctor has NOT talked to you about the absolute need to change your lifestyle, you should find a new doctor.  Period.

Just in case you think this is a strong statement, pay attention to this particular study.  In it, researchers looked at 18,725 men and women to see if migraine sufferers had a higher risk of dying from any cause (all-cause mortality).  Here’s what they found:

• People with migraine with aura had a 21% higher risk of dying from any cause.
• People with migraine with aura had a 27% higher risk of dying from heart disease.
• People with migraine with aura had a 40% higher risk of dying from a stroke.

This is a pretty strong concern.  And let me clarify again that taking medications to control your headaches (even if they work) will do NOTHING to alter your risk of these conditions because they haven’t actually fixed the problem.

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Billion Year Old Treatment Effective for Colic?

I’ve grilled in the idea that the bacteria in our body is not always detrimental and should not be wantonly destroyed with antibiotics.

Quite the opposite–when healthy bacterial flora is present our bodies benefit.  And the list of benefits is quite long and includes pretty much any condition or disease that the human body can experience.  And this relationship between the bacteria in our gut and our health starts early in life.

In this particular study, a group of 46 infants with colic were in the control group or were given a specific form of probiotic (Lactobacillus reuteri to the tune of 800 million / day – which is much lower then I usually recommend in inftants) and found some pretty strong benefits on colic.  For any of those parents out there dealing with a colicky baby, anything that can help is a godsend.  If that intervention happens to be inexpensive and simple, it becomes a no-brainer.  Here’s what the researchers found:

• Responders (50% reduction in crying time from baseline) were higher in the L reuteri group versus the placebo group on days 7 (20 vs 8), day 14 (24 vs 13), and day 21 (24 vs 15).

Now, long before the colic sets in, we need to understand that mom needs to have good bacteria to start with–both in the vaginal vault and in her gut so that she can transport the bacteria to her breast milk for nursing.  That means that if mom has EVER had antibiotics and did not replace the good bacteria that was destroyed, she will likely not have the good bacteria to pass on to the newborn during the travel through the birth canal and subsequently through nursing.  I would also add that, if a nursing mother has an infant experiencing colic, chiropractic adjustments and having mom avoid dairy have been shown to help as well.

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Seizures and THIS B Vitamin; Could it be the Key?

Vitamin B6 and your seizures

It is not in my nature to promote a one cause/one cure mentality. But sometimes certain approaches are so important that they need to be mentioned separately.

This goes for many conditions from diabetes to Alzheimer’s dementia. And certainly over the years I have pointed out research on single approaches that have been proven to help with migraines and seiuzres.

Some approaches, like exercise or the Ketogenic diet, require more much commitment from you. Some, on the other hand, are as simple as a daily supplement. Magnesium, melatonin, fish oils and vitamin D are some examples of interventions that have been demonstrated in medical research to help with seizures and chronic migraine headaches.

Some of these supplements work directly. Fish oils improve the health of the brain cell membrane, ensuring that messages get transmitted appropriately. Magnesium is essential for brain cell to generate energy (in the form of ATP) to function.

This particular article reviews a simple single-nutrient approach that works differently. Pyridoxine is the fancy name for vitamin B6. You may also hear it referred to as P-5-P, or pyridoxine-5-phosphate (the activated form, which skips the need for the liver to activate the B6 molecule).

Pyridoxine plays many roles in the human body, but there are a few functions that rise to the top. Especially when it comes to seizures and chronic migraine headaches.

But before we get into these important functions of vitamin B6, we need to have a brief primer on two different neurotransmitters in the brain:

1. Gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) is an inhibitory transmitter in the brain. It calms things down. Applies the brakes to an overactive brain. Think Ativan, benzodiazepines, alcohol, phenobarb .
2. Glutamate is the opposite. It is stimulatory and puts your brain cells into overdrive. There are drugs that block the action of glutamate like Ketamine that are used for seizures. MSG will also activate this pathway and this is why so many patients are sensitive to processed foods.

Based on this, it would seem that anything that could increase GABA and decrease glutamate would be a really good thing.

Yeah—you guessed it. Vitamin B6 plays a role in both of these actions.

Which brings us back to the study. Researchers discovered low blood levels of pyridoxine in an 8-year old girl with superrefractory status epilepticus (the worst-case scenario; seizures that continue to occur for 24 hours or more after initiation of heavy-duty anti-seizure drugs). Restoring her pyridoxine levels improved her brain function as demonstrated by EEG. This led the doctors to look at vitamin B6 levels in 81 adults admitted to the neurological ICU with status epilepticus. We reviewed the records on patients admitted to the neurological ICU for status epilepticus (SE). Here’s what they found when these patients were compared to a group of epileptic patients in the outpatient clicic:

• All but six patients admitted to the neuro ICU had low normal or undetectable pyridoxine levels.
• This translated to 94% of patients with status epilepticus have vitamin B6 levels in the low to undetectable range (compared to 39.4% in the outpatients).
• However, supplementing with B6 did not lead to an immediate resolution of the status epilepticus.

So what does this mean? It would make sense that vitamin B6 plays an important role in keeping neurotransmitter balance away from seizures and towards a calm brain.  But it would also makes sense that, once the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, that something as simple as vitamin B6 will not be strong enough to stop the wave of seizures that makes up status epilepticus.

This would put vitamin B6 on the list of must-haves for any person with epilepsy (and likely chronic migraines headaches as well). A good quality multivitamin (not your cheap “one per day” type of vitamin) should provide you with what you need.

 

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Prediabetes Makes Your Brain Fat

I have forever been preaching on just how incredibly dangerous prediabetes is to pretty much every organ system in your body.

The disturbing fact is that over HALF of the industrialized world is prediabetic.  The prediabetic condition is largely ignored by mainstream medicine until it crosses that magical point and earns the name diabetes.

Because prediabetes has already been shown to be devastatingly bad for the brain and has been strongly associated with migraines, Parkinson’s disease as well as Alzheimer’s dementia, this particular article should come as no big shocker.  In it, researchers looked at the percentage of palmitate (a fatty associated associated with things like heart disease) in the brains of those people with prediabetes and found the levels 86% higher.

More disturbing, though, is that metformin is the mainstay of treatment of diabetics in the initial course of the disease, but ONLY affects the liver, leaving the fat, bone, muscles, heart and brain (as we see here) in jeopardy.

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Which Comes First? Abdominal Fat or Prediabetes?

Which comes first?  The insulin reistant chicken or the egg with abdominal fat?

To a certain degree, the answer doesn’t really matter all that much because the answer (lifestyle changes) is the same in either case.  But it may change the perspective on which we view the condition of obesity and diabetes.  Diabetics and overweight people are constantly being told they need to take off weight to be healthier.

Unfortunately, the reality of the way our bodies work is the opposite of this common misconception.

I have always told patients that taking off weight is a side effect of taking better care of yourself.  The key is to not focus on the weight.

This particular study supports this idea, AND shows just how fast the fecal matter hits the physiological fan.

In just 28 days of taking in too many calories (1250 extra calories / day) in healthy adults set up prediabetes / insulin resistance without accompanying inflammation in the abdominal tissue.  The insulin resistance in the abdominal fat will then lead to more fat and subsequent inflammation.  THEN things get progressively, rapidly worse.

In other words, excess fat in the abdominal region is the secondary consequence of taking in too many calories.  It is only later that inflammation and abdominal fat starts to accumulate.

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But My Trainer Tells Me I Need to Eat More Protein…

The problem is that many trainers don’t differentiate between the types of protein, and the differences can be striking.

Protein intake after exercise has been shown to help with building muscle mass faster.  But your choice of proteins can make a big difference in your long term health.  It is very well accepted that higher intakes of animal-based proteins increase your risk of cancer.

But what about heart disease?

This particular study looked at the type of protein intake and the risk of heart disease.  Here’s what they found:

• One serving per day of nuts was associated with a 30% lower risk of heart disease when compared with 1 serving per day of red meat.
• Low fat dairy lowered risk by 13%  (again when compared with red meat).
• Chicken came in at a 19% lower risk.
• Fish at a 24% lower risk.

However, given that this study was performed in the US, we have to assume that the authors were looking at the corn fed, abused, antibiotic-laden livestock grown here vs organic, grass fed or wild game, which would definitely change the results.

Regardless, the level of protection for the heart for the nuts and fish is quite hefty.  Macadamia nut encrusted halibut anyone?  Hold the mercury, of course…

 

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Whoohoo! Best News of the Year for Your Brain!!

Ok..we may be jumping the gun because this is a rat study (here is a study PETA can’t complain about!).  But hey…if it turns out to not work in humans are you really going to go stamping angrily to the authors and complain?

Despite the old adage about losing brain cells in college, our brains really do have the ability to create new cells in response to our environment (“plasticity”).  As you can imagine, anything that fosters new brain cell development is a good thing, especially in our hippocampus–the region of the brain that gets damaged in Alzheimer’s.

In this particular study, male rats were either exposed to sex one time (acute) or, were put into a group that got daily action for two weeks (chronic, although I still prefer to call this the “lucky” group).  Researchers looked at stress hormones as well as brain activity.  Here’s what they found:

• Acute sexual experience increased corticosterone levels.
• Acute sex increased the number of new brain cells in the hippocampus.
• Chronic sexual experience, however, no longer produced increased corticosterone levels.
• Chronic sex still continued to promote new brain cells and increased the communication between brain cells (growth of dendritic spines and dendritic architecture).
• Chronic sexual experience also reduced anxiety-like behavior.

So, a little sex is good for the brain, but daily sex is GREAT for the brain and may very well fight off Alzheimer’s.

But really…did we NEED a research study to tell us this?

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Will That Cup of Coffee Protect My Brain?

I’m not sure where along the process caffeine got such a bad rap.  I continue to see suggestions to avoid caffeinated products like coffee and tea.

I can understand if someone has adrenal fatigue and needs an IV directly from the coffee pot just to get started in the AM, but other than that the research is pretty soundly in favor of mild caffeine consumption.

This particular study looks at the ability of caffeine to protect against the free-radical-induced damage to the brain of rabbits that was consistent with Alzheimer’s dementia damage.  They found that even low levels of caffeine were able to protect the brain.

At our office, we have an espresso machine at the office and I play the role of barista at lunch, creating mochas with a double shot of espresso, cinnamon, organic cocao and dark chocolate almond milk.  Just recently switched to organic raw Ecuadorian cocoa…

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Migraines Have Potentially Deadly Consequences

I frequently have patients tell me that this or that condition is “under control” with medication.  As a society we have been completely duped into this type of thinking.

Migraines are no exception.

Regardless of whether someone is medicated or not, the fact that they are having migraines means that something is wrong.  Merely the suppression of the symptoms does NOTHING for the underlying cause.  In this particular study, the research strongly suggests that patients who experience migraines with aura are under much higher levels of oxidative stress and inflammation, which has consequences such as heart disease and stroke.

Here’s what they found:

• Women with active migraine with aura had a 225% higher risk of a haemorrhagic stroke.
• For bleeding within the cerebral cortex (intracerebral haemorrhage) the risk was slightly higher at 278%.
• For fatal strokes, the number skyrocketed at 356% higher risk.

This association plays out pretty consistently in the medical literature.  The bottom line is that we have to make the changes necessary to get rid of the migraines or suffer the long term damage.

 

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Laser Liposuction Versus Traditional Lipo; Which is Better?

Lipo laser prices

You have tried everything.  Diet, exercise, the latest supplements, but the love handles just won’t go away.

At this point, you hit the Internet to find other options.

Before we do this, though, we need to make something very clear.  Anything else that you do should be IN ADDITION TO lifestyle choices that are consistent with a low calorie, high phytonutrient diet.  Avoid refined carbs, keep overall carb intake under control, short burst aerobic activity combined with strength training and a strong intake of healthy fats.

There’s something else I need to make clear.  Abdominal fat is NOT a good thing.  Abdominal fat begins as a storage area for extra calories, just like a bear getting ready for hibernating out the winter.  But this is where the similarity ends because, after a too much fat accumulates, your abdominal fat begins to run out of blood flow.  Without enough blood flow, your abdominal fat gets pissed off and inflamed.

This is were bad things happen.

Your inflamed abdominal fat is now secreting its own set of hormones called adipokines that drive further inflammation and increase your risk of things like cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and osteoporosis.  Not good.

At this point you can now consider your abdominal fat as its own organ system.  And is some cases, this organ becomes the largest organ in your body.

Anything at all you can do to lower the inflammation in this abdominal fat region is a good thing.  This is where lifestyle comes in.  Lifestyle changes are the most powerful tool for lowering inflammation in your body, abdominal region included.

That being said, it might make sense that, if you could remove some of the abdominal fat with surgical procedures or destroy it with cold, heat or sonic waves, this would help with the overall inflammation.

But you didnt really think it was going to be that easy, did you?

Previous research has demonstrated that this is NOT a good idea and works quite the opposite.  Traditional liposuction led to a 10% increase in visceral fat around the heart–a MUCH worse option.

This particular study further points to any type of invasive liposuction as being a bad idea.  In it, researchers looked across 11 studies that included 271 individuals to see if lipectomy (any procedure that removes or kills off fat cells would fall under lipectomy) had any effect whatsoever on diabetic markers after the procedure.

The result?  No evidence that lipectomy does anything positive for your overall metabolism.

Now, I may be biased because our office has had a non-invasive laser lipo unit for almost 4 years now that uses LED diodes to reduce inflammation in the gut and thereby reduce the size of your inflamed abdominal organ safely.

Unlike lipectomy, LED diode laser lipo HAS been shown to positively affect certain diabetic markers like LDL cholesterol (no published studies that I can link to at this time), but this makes sense because the effect of laser and LED has been known to lower inflammation levels for many years now.

For me, the choice would be simple.  Lower inflammation in your abdminal fat safely using light or destroying it without actually fixing the problem.

But, as I mentioned, I’m biased…

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Antidepressants; Billions of Dollars for a 2.7% Improvement

There are some treatment approaches that sound good at the onset; find a neurotransmitter that helps to elevate mood and just synthetically increase the level of the neurotransmitter with a drug.

Conduct a few biased trials with the deck stacked in favor of a benefit and start marketing the heck out of the drug.  Prosac was launched in 1988.  There was a 600% increase in the use of SSRIs during the 90’s and the cost to the US in now well into the billions of dollars per year.

But, once we take out the biased research, what are we left with?

How ’bout a 2.7% sustained improvement according to this particular article?

Do you think PCPs are looking their patients in the eyes as they hand them the script with a smile and saying “you’re going to feel almost 3% better as soon as you start taking this!!”  At least until you get bone loss, become obese or develop diabetes.  Then you’re more upset than before you started.  Compare this improvement to use of fish oils, St John’s wort, 5-HTP.  Throw in some exercise and we’re not even in the same ballpark.

I truly think that if the public knew the sordid details about how little benefit we derive from most drugs, the entire industry would fall like a house of cards.

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Should Every Family Have a Dog?

Being an avid dog lover (just not really a cat person, although I would still put my car in a ditch before I’d even hit a rat on the road), I’ve always felt that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from having an animal for children.  Love, compassion, loss, what to do with food you don’t want….

But here’s an added benefit.

This particular study found that having a dog in the household had lower levels of the immune cell TNF-alpha at birth as well as one year later.  While TNF-alpha is important, an over production of TNF-alpha is linked to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.

It goes along with the “hygiene hypothesis” where we believe that proper immune development requires exposure to “stuff” like bacteria and allergens like dog dander.  This article supports the idea that having a dog as a newborn helps to tone the immune system.  Sorry cat lovers…not the same effect..

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The Ketogenic Diet; How to Make a Good Thing Better

The ketogenic diet has been a powerful tool for seizures forever.  Longer even then the drugs to treat seizures that are commonly used.

The unfortunate fact is that natural approaches to seizures are almost always the last tool recommended by neurologists, despite the fact that they typically perform better than medications.

Maybe one of the reasons that doctors don’t recommend natural approaches like the ketogenic diet because they require a much greater commitment to care than does taking a medication once or twice a day.  But this decision should ALWAYS be left up to the patient—it is not your doctor’s choice to decide whether or not you will make the commitment.

There are basically two “problems,” if you will, with the ketogenic diet.  One is compliance (needing to avoid carbohydrates can be too restrictive for some, especially with hidden triggers in all kinds of foods) and the other is effectiveness.

What if these two issues could be address with additional tools?  And what if these tools were the same?

This cannot be said of medication.  Let’s say you’re on Topamax for your seizures (for the sake of simplicity we won’t go into how often epileptic patients end up on multiple medications).  Really the only options for you to increase seizure control would be to increase the dose.  And along with that added dose comes greater side effects.

(And just in case you thought you’d try the ketogenic diet along with your medication, recent research suggests that certain anti-epileptic drugs can actually reduce the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet–this should be of grave concern to anyone on anti-epileptic drugs.)

And the risks of increasing your anti-epileptic drug dose includes getting shot by overzealous video game addicts who have played one too many zombie-killing games.  That and drooling on a new shirt.

Or you could always add another medication.  Although most often this is mere guesswork and just increases the side effect list without a real improvement in quality of life.

This is not going to be the case when you add tools to the ketogenic diet.  Adding tools could mean that you need to adhere to a slightly less stringent protocol or that you could get even better seizure control.  Just imagine living life on the edge by staring into a strobe light or going to see Blue Man Group.

Let’s cover these two options separately.

First has to do with modifications to the standard ketogenic diet.  Some of these are modifications, while some of them I’m including because they are diets that you should be aware of.  The best resource, unquestionably, is the Charlie Foundation, which was formed to promote the use of the ketogenic diet.

1. Standard ketogenic diet—this one is the most restrictive, with a 4:1 ratio of fats to carbs/proteins.
2. MCT ketogenic diet–this diet uses MCTs from coconut oil as the main source of calories, allowing for a higher carb intake and more variety in the diet
3. Modified Atkin’s Diet (MAD)—the ratio is less restrictive at 1:1 of fats to carbs/proteins
4. Glutamate/Aspartate Restricted Diet (GARD)—designed to restrict the intake of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate found in certain foods (the best resource on the specifics can be found here).

All of these can be extremely powerful natural tools for managing seizures.  The clinical studies have been done and the anecdotal stories from patients are everywhere.  I remain amazed by one particular group on Facebook specifically geared towards Diets for Epilepsy.  The specific knowledge of the people in this group has continually reminded me of how much I have to learn.

One of the problems with the ketogenic diet is that we just don’t really know how it works specifically.  There is lots of educated conjecture, but nothing to date has nailed it.  Some theories about how the ketogenic diet works include:

• Alteration of the gut bacteria, changing the neurotransmitters released from the gut to a less excitatory pattern
• Avoidance of gluten on the ketogenic diet (gluten has been established as a player in many persons with epilepsy)
• Change in dietary fat intake since fat plays such a major role in brain cell function and health

Besides these theories, looking at it from a deeper biochemical level, ketogenic diets are known to increase levels of a compound in the brain called hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α).  HIF-1α is a compound that is released in response to lowered levels of oxygen.  Basically a protective compound released that causes the brain to go into “uh-oh” mode and snap to attention, leading to all kinds of VERY positive changes in brain cell function.

Besides HIF-1α, there is also evidence that the ketogenic diet can activate Sirt1 in brain cells.  For those of you not familiar with Sirt1, it is a gene that does all kinds of wonderful things in our body and is considered by some as a “longevity gene.”  Well-known is its ability to increase both the number and function of the mitochondria in cells.  More mitochondria means more ATP with less by products.  More ATP means a much healthier brain cell able to control firing and thus seizure activity.

Thanks to the author of this particular article, we can look at this mechanism of the ketogenic diet and see if there are other tools that we can use to make the ketogenic diet even more powerful.  The author suggests that the biochemical changes induced by the ketogenic diet can go as far as helping the brain cells “clean house;” removing damaged mitochondria within brain cells.

Here are some ideas of how we could help this process naturally:

• Berberine, a compound found in certain herbs such as goldenseal.
• Metformin (not a natural approach and not my preference, but if a drug like metformin could reduce or eliminate the need of far more toxic anti-seizure drugs, well….).
• Compounds known to increase Sirt1 activity such as nicotinamide riboside and resveratrol.
• Medium-chain triglycerides (found in coconut oil)
• Compounds known to increase the formation of ketone bodies (the compounds formed during the ketogenic diet from the higher intake of fats and very low levels of carbs) like carnitine and hydroxycitrate.

These are just some of the tools that could work.  This list is practically endless as there are a lot of other natural compounds that affect this pathway.

Interestingly, many of these approaches are already well-known to patients using the ketogenic diet.  Carnitine and coconut oil are common additions to the diets of people on the ketogenic diet.

If these tools can help to increase the effectiveness of diets for epilepsy or can make less restrictive diets work for others, this would be a drastic change to the way medicine handles seizures.

If this type of approach seems to make more sense to you then guessing which seizure med you should try next, then I’d strongly advise you joining the Diets for Epilepsy Facebook group as well as getting your hands on a copy of my Migraines and Epilepsy book.

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What’s the ONE Thing You Can Do to Live Longer?

It’s NOT taking that brand new supplement that promises youthful looking skin or memory or will give you “youthful” performance in the bedroom (wink, wink…).

Nope.  It’s just simple exercise.

Nothing will keep you younger longer than exercise.  And not soup-cans-sitting-on-a chair-exercise, either.  I always defer to Jack LaLane as an example of what “exercise” is as we get older.

This particular study finds that, after following a group of men for 20 years, exercise capacity was the greatest predicter of the participants risk of dying from anything.  Here’s some specifics:

• For those who were more fit (5.1-6.0 METs), they were 38% less likely to die during the study.
• Even better, those who were the most fit (> 9 METS) were 61% less likely to die.
• Luckily unfit individuals who got off the couch and improved their fitness levels over the study still benefited with a 35% lower mortality risk.

There is no reason that we cannot maintain good levels of strength as we age, but we have to work harder at it.  That’s one of the beautiful aspects of being a chiropractor–we can remove most physical barriers that patients have that may be keeping them from exercising fully.  The rest is up to you..

 

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Migraine Patients at High Risk for Dangerous Condition

Have I mentioned that patients with migraines are at increased risk for all kinds of bad things because the headache is merely a reflection of something going very wrong with their physiology?  I wasn’t sure if I had…

This particular study finds a strong association between migraines and prediabetes.  Given how very dangerous prediabetes is for us (arguably more dangerous to our health than cigarette smoking), it does not surprise me that there is an association.

The good news for those with migraines?  Regardless of whether the prediabetes is contributing to the headaches or the physiological disturbances leading to the migraines also increase the risk of diabetes, it really doesn’t matter.  Improving the way your brain functions will impact both scenarios.  Kind of simple, huh?

Every migraine sufferer should be leading a lifestyle that is anti-diabetic.  This is of critical importance for chronic migraine relief and not usually a discussion that neurologists typically have with their headache patients.  You can not rely on medications to be the answer–lifestyle is the key to long term relief.

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Taking Drugs for Cholesterol Issues? Maybe Medication Started the Problem

Your microbiome and your cholesterol

Cholesterol lowering drugs seem to have lost some of their luster. Can’t say I’m disappointed about that little tidbit.

Due to staggeringly successful marketing efforts on the part of the drug companies (most notably Pfizer for Lipitor), drugs to lower cholesterol became one of the most successful drugs ever produced. Unfortunately, this had little effect on patient health because of the truly dismal benefits of the statin class of drugs.

One percent improvement. Yup. That’s about all you can expect from taking a statin drug to lower your cholesterol. Pretty much sucks no matter how you look at it.

The cholesterol story has become quite interesting in the past few years. It took some very large studies to put the minimal benefits of statin drugs into perspective, especially in light of the risk of diabetes from this class of drugs.

I think the findings that statins increased the risk of diabetes (ironically, especially in those who were at lower risk in the first place) has finally opened medicine to the idea that this class of drugs is not the miracle drug we once thought it was.

To see how far it’s come, the most recent cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines do NOT include cholesterol as a risk factor nor are there recommendations to limit dietary cholesterol intake.

My how far we’ve come.

Still frustrating, however, when you consider that these recommendations NEVER should’ve been present in the first place. It’s like medicine is just now waking up to the idea that the “statins to lower high cholesterol” approach is just not a good idea.

I’m not saying that high cholesterol is a goal we should shoot for. Quite the opposite. It’s just that cholesterol is just one risk factor among many and putting on blinders to look just at total cholesterol is a bad idea.  To give you an idea of how crazy the idea of using a drug to single-mindedly lower cholesterol is, this particular study should do the trick.  You see, cholesterol levels are merely a reflection of the health of the body. That means that literally hundreds of factors will work together to create the numbers that you see on your blood test.

These numbers can include total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol (generally “bad”), HDL cholesterol (generally “good”), triglycerides (lower is better), Lp (a) (lower is better), Apo B (lower is better) and VLDL (lower is better).  Diet, exercise, stress levels, supplements and environmental exposures can all affect your lipids levels. But according to the results of this study, there may be another factor affecting your levels that your doctor is likely not aware of.

The bacteria in your gut.

Yup. As if we didn’t already link the bacteria in your gut to pretty much every other aspect of health. Now we can chalk up your lipid levels on the list. Here’s the specifics of the study:

• The gut bacteria was evaluated in 893 subjects, with an average 238 different types of bacteria per individual (ranged from 44 to 355).
• As seen in just about every other study looking at the microbiome, higher diversity (as measured by Shannon’s diversity index) led to better lipid values.
• Higher diversity was linked to lower BMI.
• Higher diversity was linked to lower trigylcerides.
• High diversity was linked to higher HDL levels.

The study went into FAR more detail than this as far as the relationship between specific bacterial species, BMI and lipids, but suffice it to say that the results were consistent with prior studies on this same subject.

So what does this mean? It means that someone, somewhere is going to try to financially capitalize on this relationship. You can bet this will be along the lines of fecal transplants (and now for the collective “yuck…”), which is already well on its way to being an acceptable treatment for C. diff infections.

To me, this means that diversity is key. I have said this time and time again and always relate it back to antibiotic use in all but the most life-threatening situations.

Antibiotics WIPE OUT DIVERSITY and it takes years to recover, if ever. IF EVER. I can not state this more strongly—if you are the type of person who runs out and gets an antibiotic prescription for acne, sinus infections, urinary tract infections, sore throats, ear infections or upper respiratory tract infections (ALL of these have very little evidence of effectiveness and can be better managed naturally), even if it is only once every few years, you are absolutely, positively, destroying the diversity in your gut and with it, your long term health.

Thinking that you are OK after antibiotics by just following up with probiotics for a week or two is old school. Taking probiotics is just the first 100 yards of a marathon. But if you can point me to a probiotic with 200+ strains that will survive through to GI tract to the lower regions of the intestines, I’ll revise my thinking on this issue.

Until then, avoid antibiotics unless you are on your deathbed with a fever of 106.

 

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Do Migraines Harm Your Developing Baby?

If you have read any of my articles that relates to migraines, then the answer that springs to mind is a strong YES.

I really don’t need to belabor the prior bit of information.  Bottom line is, if you suffer from migraines, do not be led into a false sense of security if the migraine medication you are on is controlling your headaches.  Fix the problem instead.

This particular article looks at the relationship between migraines sufferers and the risk of of adverse pregnancy outcomes (low birthweight, preterm birth, infants born small for gestational age, Caesarean section (CS) and pre-eclampsia).  Here’s what the researchers found when they looked at the pregnancy outcomes from 4911 women with migraines:

• Low birth weight – 16% increased risk
• Preterm birth – 24% higher risk
• C-section – 16% higher risk
• Pre-eclampsia – 34% higher risk

What does this tell us?  That the problem with migraines are NOT limited to the head.  If they were and medications did anything to fix the problem, than these higher pregnancy risks wouldn’t be present.

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Chronic Migraine Relief; Fats and Your Brain

fats and your seizures

Every migraine sufferer wants that miracle drug, treatment or cure that will provide chronic migraine relief. Personally, I don’t think this will ever happen.

Headaches are too diverse and too complex to be treated with a single approach. The only exception to this is those people who have been incorrectly diagnosed with migraine when what they really have is an isolated “structural headache.”  This is my term for a headache that comes from the structures of the head and neck. These headaches will respond incredibly well to treatment from a chiropractor who also fully understands how to treat the soft tissues involved in addition to adjusting the cervical spine.

But even patients with structural headaches are likely to have migraine-headaches overlaid upon the structural headaches. This means that structural treatment alone is not going to be enough in the long run. It may provide some relief in the short term, but ultimately the headaches will come back until you address the other factors.

Among other things, fats play a big role in how your brain works. If you remember way back to high school biology class, all of our cells are made up of a fatty cell membrane. And this cell membrane is a critical factor in determining what comes into the cell and what leaves the cell. This includes building blocks to make proteins in the cell as well as messages.

A healthy cell membrane makes sure that messages that are supposed to make it in get in and also make sure that messages that are NOT supposed to get into the cell stay out. This is why dietary choices that emphasize intake of healthy fats (raw nuts, seeds, wild caught fish, wild game and olive oil) and avoid the intake of unhealthy fats (corn oil, soybean oils and hydrogenated oils) are good the for brain. This applies whether we are talking about chronic migraine headaches, seizures, Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease or cognitive decline.

Fats play a critical role. Which fits into the results from this particular study. In it, researchers looked at the levels of a particular class of cell-membrane fat called sphingolipids in a group of 88 women with episodic migraine. For those of you a little rusty in Jeopardy’s “I’ll take brain fats for $500, please, Alex” sphingolipids are a specific type of waxy fat found in high concentrations in the cell membranes of your brian cells.  In general, higher levels means that your brain cells are going to be more stable.  In addition, certain sphingolipids play a critical role in sending messages within the brain cells themselves.

With this in mind, here’s what they found:

• Total ceramide and dihydroceramide levels were lower in those with episodic migraine.
• Each standard deviation increase in total ceramide and dihydroceramide led to a 92% lower risk of experiencing migraines when compared to a control group.
• In addition, every standard deviation increase in the sphingomyelin species C18:0 led to a massive 428% higher risk of experiencing migraines.
• The same was true with the sphingomyelin species C18:1, leading to a 293% higher risk.

So what does all of this mean?  Other than the fact that I apparently didn’t pay enough attention in biochemistry?

First of all, higher sphingomyelin levels have been consistently shown in prior studies to be linked to prediabetes.  This fits in incredibly well with the concept that prediabetes is very bad for the health of your blood vessels and the unhealthy blood vessels are the key player in the development of migraine headaches.

In addition, ceramides can be converted into sphingomyelin.  That would lead to lower levels of ceramides (increasing risk of migraines) and higher levels of sphingomyelin (again leading to increasing risk of migraines).  It all seems to fit.

While scientists are still trying to figure out what this all means, I would venture to say that this study again links the poor blood vessel health of prediabetes to chronic migraine headaches.  And an anti-diabetic diet will have huge payoffs when it comes to chronic migraine relief.

 

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