Sep
10
2016

Crazy Food Trends

By | Nutrition, sexual arousal

CNN wrote about strange, crazy food trends that seem to receive a following. I thought it would be interesting to analyze them medically and point out to the reader what’s right and what’s wrong.

Crazy food trend one: Ashwagandha

In India this herb, also known as Indian ginseng has been used as part of the Ayurvedic medicine for centuries.

At the 22nd Annual Anti-Aging (A4M) Las Vegas Conference in mid December 2014 Pamela Smith gave a presentation entitled ”How To Maintain Memory At Any Age”. She gave a comprehensive overview of what you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Smith recommended many other supplements, which I will not explain in detail here: B vitamins, vitamin E and C, carnosine, acetyl-L-carnitine, boron, ginger, coenzyme Q-10 (or CoQ-10), curcumin, vinpocetine, zinc, grape seed extract, blueberry extract, Ashwagandha, glyceryl-phosphoryl-choline, SAMe, huperzine A and DMAE and others. She specifically pointed out that she felt Ashwagandha was very powerful. It helps people preserve their memory, more so than regular drugs that doctors prescribe.

When the benefits of taking CoQ-10 were discussed, Dr. Smith reminded the audience “whatever is good for the heart, is good for the brain”. She recommended reading Dr. Perlmutter’s book from which this phrase was borrowed (Ref. 1).

Ashwagandha is an herb with multifaceted effects. Here is a review by a doctor about the various effects of Ashwagandha.

It does not belong into foods; it should only be in use as a supplement, if your doctor agrees with it.

Crazy food trend two: astrologically farmed eggs

Picture biodynamic farming of eggs with the guidance of the moon. Now you are producing astrologically farmed eggs. The Hemsley sisters insist you should eat these astrologically farmed eggs for breakfast. I don’t buy into this. This is hokey! It smells like somebody is trying to lure money out of your pocket by trying to convince you that there is health benefit to “astrologically farmed eggs”. There isn’t.

What does make sense is to buy eggs that do not have antibiotic residue in them and that came from free-range hens. Yes, I buy organic eggs that are somewhat more expensive. If you like to buy organic omega-3 eggs, this would also be scientifically superior to ordinary hen eggs. There is also the difference of “free run” and “free range” hens. “Free run” does not give you any guarantee for a healthy product, as the birds live in crowded barns and are likely receiving medications to combat diseases. “Free range” birds are hens that have access to the outdoors, and there is less of the overcrowding that is common in a barn.

Crazy food trend three: Cordyceps

There are about 400 subspecies to these sac fungi. Cordyceps has been used in Chinese medicines to help as an aphrodisiac, help improve kidney function in the elderly and also with regard to some anticancer activity. There are very few clinical review papers to substantiate any of these claims; yet traditional medicine insists on using Cordyceps for these purposes. If you want to see a traditional Chinese doctor, do so on your own. But don’t consume food that is prepared with Cordyceps.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s morning smoothie cost more than 200$, so if anything, I would be more concerned about bankruptcy than real nutrition with this type of breakfast drink.

I have my doubts that Cordyceps that kill ants to sprout their spores in their corpses (see Wiki link above) could be of any objective benefit to humans.

Crazy food trend four: blue majik

Blue Majik is just another name for a common antioxidant, phycocyanin. It derives from algae, Arthrospira platensis.It has some similarity with the green spirulina. But just because it seems fashionable right now, does not mean that it is superior to vitamin C as a cheap antioxidant or vitamin E. The creators of blue majik are cashing in on color effects and selling false hopes of better health. You can live very well without it.

Crazy food trend five: cannabis

When I heard that people are starting to mix cannabis into foods, it reminded me about a story I heard from one of my patients in the mid 1980’s who worked in the shipyards of North Vancouver. One day he saw some cookies on a tray in the lunchroom. A co-worker offered some to him and he ate it. After 5 minutes his head started pounding with an excruciating headache and he became nauseous. Shortly after he vomited and started getting a rapid heartbeat. His co-workers laughed and told him that these were very special cookies that they treated with marijuana.

I suspect that whoever baked these cookies used a higher dose of marijuana and my patient experienced a marijuana overdose.

This example illustrates that cannabis has special properties that affect the body.

In the brain it binds to cannabinoid receptors. These are not only present in brain tissue, but also in lungs, liver and kidneys. Even the immune cells have cannabinoid receptors.

There may be a place for chronic pain patients under the guidance of a physician to get medical marijuana. But keep cannabis away from your food. Don’t consume it! You have no idea what you are doing to your body that is full of receptors for cannabis. Cannabis requires treatment like a drug. This means a doctor should prescribe marijuana and the patient s should take it according to doctor’s orders. Like with any drug there will be effects and also side effects.

Crazy Food Trends

Crazy Food Trends

Conclusion

Out of five crazy foods reviewed there are only 2 that merit consideration, but not mixed into food. These are Ashwagandha as a supplement (part of memory loss prevention and others) and cannabis for chronic pain. A physician should supervise both. The remainders are fashion crazes. Unfortunately many people will fall for these fashion trends and lose a lot of money. This will make someone who peddles these items very rich. Is this what you want to do: throw your money out and toss it right into the pocket a huckster? Rethink what you want to do. You may just want to buy organic eggs from chickens that happily scratch away in a farmyard. This is very much down to earth, and nothing “astronomically farmed” is needed.

References

Ref 1: David Perlmutter, MD: “Grain Brain. The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, And Sugar-Your Brain’s Silent Killers.” Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2013.

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May
28
2016

Two Sides Of Medical Marijuana

By | Abdominal Pain, Cancer, heart attack, premenopause, Stroke, Women’s Diseases

The newest craze is to treat menstrual cramps with medical marihuana, but there are two sides of medical marijuana. What women with menstrual cramps may not know is that it is estrogen dominance that is the cause of their symptoms. As women get closer to menopause they ovulate less often, and there are anovulatory menstrual cycles. This leads to a relative loss of progesterone from the corpus luteum that will form less frequently in the small cavity where the cyst with the egg was. Nature designed women’s menstrual cycle with mostly estrogen production in the first half of the menstrual cycle and mostly progesterone production in the second half of her cycle.

Other causes of estrogen dominance

When a woman gains weight, estrogen can also be produced in the fatty tissue due to an enzyme called aromatase. Androgenic hormones, which are testosterone-like and produced in the adrenal glands, get metabolized into estrogen through aromatase. This upsets the balance between progesterone and estrogen. Normally that balance when measured with saliva hormone tests should be higher than 200 to 1. But when progesterone production from the ovaries is missing, or when estrogen production is in overdrive through aromatase, estrogen is dominant.

Estrogen dominance

The progesterone to estrogen ratio drops below 200 to 1. This is bad news as it has consequences. It can cause a number of symptoms: migraine headaches, painful menstrual periods, endometriosis, and fibrocystic disease of the breasts with breast pain; even cancer can develop in the cervix, the uterus and the ovaries. Estradiol, the main estrogen compound in women, stimulates cells to divide, when it is not balanced by progesterone. Progesterone does the opposite: it balances the effects of estrogen.

Two sides of medical marijuana: treating symptoms

Drug companies always look out for symptoms that they can treat with a patented drug. The link at the beginning of this blog pointed out that “there are some very sick patients in need” to justify treating them with marijuana. This may relieve their symptoms for as long as they take the chemical compound. But it does nothing for the hormone imbalance. With the next menstrual cycle the symptoms will recur, and the marijuana will be consumed intermittently for years to come.

The problem with treating just the symptoms

What is worse is that the women think that nothing bad can happen to them: they are just relieving their symptoms. But as pointed out, unbalanced estradiol can give them migraine headaches. It can cause painful menstrual periods with or without endometriosis. Breast pain can be caused from fibrocystic disease. The worst of all is that after decades of estrogen dominance cancer of the cervix, cancer of the uterus and cancer of the ovaries can be caused. This is when drug manufacturers have unwittingly victimized their customers.

Proper treatment of menstrual cramps

1) Premenopausal women: The proper treatment for estrogen dominance because of a lack of progesterone in premenstrual women is to replace the progesterone deficit by bioidentical progesterone cream. Naturopathic physicians and anti-aging physicians understand this and treat it this way. Many practicing physicians including specialists, however, use anti-inflammatories and pain medications to treat this. Replacing the missing progesterone is causal treatment. Treating pain is symptomatic treatment. Treating the cause treats the medical problem properly; symptomatic treatment treats the drug company to a profit at the expense of the patient’s health.

2) Women with obesity: As explained already, estrogen dominance can also be produced from estrogen conversion of androgenic adrenal gland hormones due to aromatase in fatty tissue. The key here is to concentrate on watching the diet and exercising regularly. Even 10 to 20 pounds of weight loss can have significant effects on lowering estrogen production. The treating naturopath or anti-aging physician should measure progesterone and estrogen levels in a saliva hormone test. one should calculate the progesterone to estrogen ratio. If progesterone is missing, this can be added by giving a bioidentical progesterone cream or by taking oral micronized progesterone capsules at bedtime. As mentioned above, this is a causal therapy, and will in time not only cure the painful periods, but will prevent all of the other negative conditions mentioned. And most of all, there are no negative side effects, because the body knows the bioidentical hormones.

Two sides of medical marijuana: side effects of marijuana

Marijuana has real side effects. It can cause high blood pressure, dry mouth, headaches, dizziness, hallucinations, depression and sexual problems. Marijuana is unsafe with pregnancy, as it can cause childhood leukemia. Marijuana can cause rapid heartbeats and increases the risk of having a heart attack. Whoever uses marijuana regularly will develop lung cancer or emphysema. There is an association of marijuana use and seizures: in some patients it makes seizures worse, in others it makes them better. But marijuana is a central nervous system suppressant. So it is imperative that you stop marijuana two weeks before any surgical procedure, as the anesthetic and other medicines given during surgery will also depress the nervous system.

Why the difference between hormones and marijuana?

You may ask yourself why there would be such a difference in the side effect profile of hormones versus marijuana? Hormones are natural messenger molecules in the body. Our genes have designed hormone receptors to communicate between our brain, the hormone glands, and cells in organs with these hormone receptors. This design helps to ensure optimal balance of our metabolic processes.

In contrast, marijuana is affecting cannabinoid receptors in the brain. There are several subtypes of cannabinoid receptors that researchers defined at this point. But these were only detected because researchers were curious what marijuana was doing. This research is in flux. We do not know enough about the long term side effects of marijuana. We do know that marijuana has central nervous depressive effects, because it is binding to these receptors. This makes these receptors not available for the normal brain function. One of these effects may even be that it would block pain perception for a period of time. But nobody knows how safe this is in the long term.

Another possible effect, which makes it to the media a lot, is a possible anti-cancer effect. Before you get your hopes up, read this thorough review of all the cancer research with cannabinoids. I am afraid that at this point there is no clear evidence to support that cannabinoids help fight cancer persistently. There are occasional cures reported, but this is not a persistent pattern.

Safety of synthetic hormones versus bioidentical hormones

You may have heard of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) that came to an abrupt halt in 2002. They used synthetic estrogens (derived from horses) and synthetic progestins (bad copies of progesterone). Their results were breast cancer, uterine cancer, heart attacks and strokes that developed in patients who took these synthetic hormones. Originally the investigators wanted to show that HRT (hormone replacement therapy) would prevent heart attacks and strokes. In addition, the purpose of the trial was also to show that osteoporosis would improve. But the opposite was true!

Synthetic hormones block natural hormone receptors

The synthetic hormones blocked the natural receptors, so the woman’s own hormones could not reach their target cells. Had the investigators used bioidentical hormones, these would have stimulated the natural receptors, and research objectives of making these women symptom-free would have been reached. The WHI was a huge debacle, which showed that research with drug company support can lead to disasters. The only problem now is that women are fearful, as they do not understand how hormones work. The bioidentical hormones, when balanced properly, are harmless. Synthetic hormones from drug manufacturers are interfering with the body’s hormone receptors causing all kinds of serious side effects including cancer. Bioidentical hormones don’t do that.

Two Sides Of Medical Marijuana

Two Sides Of Medical Marijuana

Conclusion

Those who like to push the sale of marijuana will minimize the side effects of marijuana. They also push testimonials of women who received help with regard to painful periods.

You rarely hear about a physician who analyzes the hormones of a women and replaces what hormone is missing with bioidentical hormones to normalize estrogen dominance. The latter approach is a safe approach with no side effects, because you are using a natural hormone (progesterone) that stimulates your body’s hormone receptors. Synthetic hormones or marijuana are foreign substances to the body, partially blocking cell receptors, which blocks normal cell function. But nobody knows exactly what these chemicals do other than produce a myriad of side effects. Are you really willing to put your health at risk? After reading this, the answer should be clear.