Children, ADHD, and Sensory Disorders


It is any parent’s greatest wish to see their children happy and healthy. There is nothing more joyful than seeing a carefree, innocent smile light up your child’s face. Read more

Leaky Gut and Autoimmune Disorders


Your gastrointestinal system is an incredible design. It contains endocrine (hormonal) and immune system cells. It cooperates with beneficial bacteria to break down food and protect against harmful pathogens. Read more

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Heart Health and Inflammation

March 21, 2013 Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP Aging, Medicine, Nutrition, Research, Wellness Leave a comment  

You should be aware of two studies on heart disease produced by the Cochrane Collaboration in the past 6 months. These good folks comb through medical research studies and look at the combined evidence. In fall 2012, they reported that for people with mildly elevated blood pressure, drug therapy had no impact on heart attack, stroke, or death. In fact, “about 9% of patients treated with drugs discontinued treatment due to adverse effects.” It appears that for people with systolic blood pressure 140-159 mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure 90-99 mgHg, blood pressure-lowering drugs offered more harm than benefit. In early 2013, the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 18 research trials and found that “of 1000 people treated with a statin for five years, 18 would avoid a major CVD event.” This means that less than 1% of people on statins received a great benefit. For many of us, drug therapy has limited results.

Yet we cannot afford to get sick! Every 30 seconds, someone files for medical-related bankruptcy. Our top killers are heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. We’ve seen almost no change in cancer death rates since 1971 (New York Times, Apr 2009). Chronic illness is 70% of medical expenses, but it is also about 75% preventable! This is great news! Cancer does not develop purely by dumb luck. Five fail-safe mechanisms have to break down.

Understanding inflammation is key to understanding chronic illness. According to Time magazine (Feb 2004), “Toxins, diet and infection can cause inflammation directly, or by triggering a gene that sparks your immune system to attack itself and drive chronic inflammation.” In the short-term, inflammation is a normal part of the healing response. Chronic inflammation contributes to disease by damaging cell membranes so fewer nutrients get in, wastes accumulate, and cells can’t “hear” hormones. This places us in a state of hormone resistance: Type 2 diabetes, thyroid disease, or weight loss resistance. Chronic inflammation has also been linked to heart disease, cancer, depression, Alzheimer’s, and autoimmune diseases. Our main sources of inflammation are bad fats (trans/hydrogenated and inflammatory fats like seed oils), sugars, and toxins (heavy metals, plastics, pesticides, and household cleaning products).

Your Heart Health To-Do List!

  1. Switch to good fats: Grass-fed organic meats, olive oil, coconut oil, and butter. Supplement with high-quality EPA/DHA “fish oil.”
  2. Cut way back on grains & sugars. Ideally, have 1 serving of whole grains daily (brown/wild rice, quinoa). Replace sugar with stevia & xylitol.
  3. Reduce toxicity in your home and your food. Switch to cleaner household products. Drink only spring or reverse-osmosis filtered water. Re-evaluate your use of personal care products.
  4. Get 21stcentury health testing, so you know what’s going on inside your body.
    1. Vitamin D, available as a fingerprick test. For optimal health, you need 50-80 ng/mL.
    2. Lipid peroxidation (Meta-Oxy) to measure oxidative stress and cellular damage.
    3. Nerve system testing to identify body malfunctions caused by accumulated stresses.

Top 3 Diet Changes to Make: 2 of 3

January 16, 2013 Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP Aging, Balanced living, Digestive Health, Healing, Nutrition, Wellness Leave a comment  

Last posting outlined the top three diet changes to make:

1. Eat less sugary foods.

2. Change the meats you eat.

3. Replace bad fats with good fats.

Let’s cover the second diet change this week.

Change the meats you eat. Many studies link commercial meats with cancer and heart disease. This is not because eating animals is unhealthy, but because we have changed what these animals are made of. Cows are genetically designed to eat grass. Grass-fed cows have a healthier range and amount of fatty acids, like omega-3 fatty acids. Commercially raised cows are fed grain instead of grass because they put on weight faster. Coincidentally, the same thing happens to humans who eat too many grains.

It is a widely held belief that saturated fats are bad and cause heart disease. But it is not the meat, it is what humans have done to it. Certain saturated fats are essential for brain function and cell function. Between 2009-2010, several Harvard studies showed that higher levels of vegetable oils contributed to atherosclerosis. The same studies also showed that consuming more meat actually reversed atherosclerosis and type 2 diabetes.

AVOID: commercial meat, eggs, and poultry

CHOOSE: grass-fed meat, wild game, organic eggs and poultry

Natural food stores will carry healthier meat and animal products, but they do cost more in the store. In the Midwest, it is easy to find a farmer who will sell their products directly to the consumer, at a significant cost savings. Go to eatwild.com or americangrassfed.org for directories.

Next posting will cover the third dietary change to make: replacing bad fats with good fats.


The Fires Within: Inflammation

January 25, 2012 Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP Aging, Balanced living, Digestive Health, Healing, Hormonal Balance, Immune System, Wellness Leave a comment  

Let’s talk about inflammation. In the short-term, inflammation is your body’s intelligent healing response to an injury. The pain and stiffness associated with inflammation after you stub your toe forces you to protect your foot from further injury while the tissues heal. When inflammation becomes systemic and chronic, it damages your body. In 2004, Time magazine published a special issue about inflammation. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic pain, thyroid disease, autoimmune conditions, even brain conditions like depression and Alzheimer’s disease have all been linked to chronic inflammation.

Why is chronic inflammation bad? It damages your cells. Chemical signals created during the inflammatory process are called cytokines. When cytokines are elevated, they interfere with normal cellular communication. They can go even further and damage your cellular membranes, which starts you down the path to organ dysfunction and illness.

Would it surprise you to know that what we think of as a “healthy diet” is pro-inflammatory? Doctors, magazines, and websites typically recommend avoiding saturated fat and cholesterol, eating pro-inflammatory polyunsaturated seed oils, and eating grains. Grains, even “heart-healthy” whole grains, contain the pro-inflammatory sugar amylose. In fact, an excess of sugar drives inflammation, which plays a part in developing type 2 diabetes. Sugar is known to feed cancer cells, and it is the damage from high levels of sugar in blood that causes plaque to form in the arteries. So we should really get the message to focus on eating low-sugar, not low-fat!

About the author: Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP, is a wellness-certified family chiropractor at Vital Life Chiropractic in Eagan, Minnesota.


Cholesterol, Statin Drugs, and Heart Disease

January 18, 2012 Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP Aging, Balanced living, Brain, Digestive Health, Healing, Hormonal Balance, Immune System, Medicine, Nutrition, Research, Supplements, Wellness 1

In 2004, the National Cholesterol Education Program issued guidelines calling for Americans to lower their LDL cholesterol to less than 130 mg/dL. In 2006, a review of the literature found that there was no strong evidence to support the NCEP recommendations. The review noted that dropping LDL cholesterol below 130 mg/dL showed no decreased risk of cardiovascular death in elderly people, and that having high HDL was protective when LDL was around 130 mg/dL.

Every cell in the body needs cholesterol to make the cell membrane flexible and waterproof. Cholesterol is needed for tissue repair. It is the main building block of vitamin D and several hormones which are essential for normal body function. Cholesterol is also a powerful antioxidant.

Statin drugs interfere with the liver’s ability to synthesize cholesterol. There is a sequence of 32 distinct biochemical reactions to produce cholesterol, and statin drugs stop this sequence at the third step. The tenth step produces CoQ10 (ubiquinone), which is an antioxidant that all cells need to produce energy from glucose. The heart, since it beats constantly, has the highest requirements for CoQ10. Heart failure is one of the side effects of CoQ10 deficiency. CoQ10 also maintains the integrity of the cellular membrane, which has recently become known as the true brain of the cell. To offset for this side effect, studies indicate 200-600 mg/day of CoQ10 should be taken with a statin drug. Step 30 of the cholesterol synthesis sequence produces a compound that synthesizes vitamin D from sunlight, so statin drugs keep your body from making its own vitamin D. Statin drugs also inhibit nuclear factor kappa B (NFKB), which is a part of the immune system that helps fight infection and cancer.

There are no studies that prove significant improvements in overall mortality for women, or for people over age 65, who take statin drugs. The statin drug companies distort the statistics on mortality. In a study where 100 patients take statin drugs, 2 will have a fatal heart attack, while 3 of 100 people taking a placebo will die of a heart attack. To prevent a single heart attack, 100 people must be treated with statin drugs. The absolute risk reduction is an unimpressive 1%. The drug companies, however, promote statin drugs according to the relative risk reduction, which is a 33% reduction.

In studies on rodents consuming a similar relative dose of statin drugs prescribed to humans, the rodents developed cancer. Statin drugs raise a person’s risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage) by 1600%. Signs of polyneuropathy include pain, tingling, numbness, weakness, and difficulty walking. The degree of symptoms is proportional to the duration of statin drug usage. Statin drugs are also known to cause myopathy (muscle damage) which is characterized by muscle wasting, weakness, and fatigue.

Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to be 44% more effective than statin drugs in reducing death from heart attack and stroke. Omega-3 fatty acids have also been shown to be 32% more effective than statin drugs in reducing all causes of death.

These facts have been brought to you by the world’s leading medical journals. You want references? We’ve got ‘em!

About the author: Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP, is a wellness-certified family chiropractor at Vital Life Chiropractic in Eagan, Minnesota.


The math on prescription drug benefits

September 19, 2011 Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP Aging, Bone Health, Medicine, Research, Safety Leave a comment  

Here is something you and your medical doctor may both be unaware of: the math on prescription drug benefits. If you see a drug advertisement, the numbers sound impressive: 45% or 50% reduction in heart attack, stroke, or bone fracture. That’s what the drug companies tell medical doctors, too. But these numbers are misleading because they are relative, not absolute. Let’s explain this important difference in reporting the math.

Let’s say we study 100 people for 5 years and tally the number of heart attacks. If four people have heart attacks, the absolute risk is 4%. If a second group of 100 people of similar age and lifestyle take a drug for 5 years and three people have heart attacks, the absolute risk has dropped to 3%. The absolute risk reduction from the drug intervention is 1%. However, the relative risk reduction has gone from 4% to 3%, which is a 25% drop in heart attacks. This 25% is what the drug companies broadcast in the news media, in medical education courses, and directly to you as a consumer. But what they are truly hanging their hat on is a 1% benefit, and a 99% chance that the drug will be useless.

Now let’s say you really want to be that one person out of 100 that is able to avoid a heart attack through drug therapy. As an informed consumer, you need to consider the risks of long-term drug therapy. Do the risks outweigh the benefits? For example, is there a 1% chance of developing a chronic illness like diabetes?

Let’s stop using hypothetical numbers. What is the math from medical research journals? Here it is: of people without known heart disease who took statin drugs for 5 years, 98% saw no benefit. The most recent literature suggests a 0.6% risk of developing diabetes as a result of long-term statin drug use. For every 20 people who avoided a heart attack or stroke, 6 people developed diabetes, which carries its own set of cardiovascular risks, plus kidney, visual, and neurological disabilities.

If health truly came in a bottle, Americans would be dying of old age.

 

About the author: Dr. Barbara Kaiser, DC, CCWP, is a wellness-certified chiropractor at Vital Life Chiropractic in Eagan, Minnesota.