Healthy Andy

“Fish Oil May Not Prevent Depression, Says Study”, says the headline on a leading news website, even though the study isn’t about taking fish oil. Lies and misrepresentations tend to make me froth at the mouth in furious anger, so I just can’t let this go unanswered.

The latest in a long tradition of crappy science mixed with crappy journalism, this MSNBC article summarizes the results of a poorly-designed study which leaps to incorrect conclusions, and in the process, misleads the reader even more by interchanging the words “fish” and “fish oil”. Well, let’s see if Healthy Andy can’t untangle this mess for you.

First off, the study is question was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and was based off of a large nutritional survey that followed over 50,000 nurses over ten years. To sum up, the researchers checked to see who was eating fish, compared that to who ended up getting depressed, and found no correlation. Then, they declared that EPA and DHA, the main active ingredients in fish oil, have no effect on preventing depression.

Hang on, buster. Not so fast.

Let’s start by correcting the journalist who wrote that misleading headline. This study did NOT study the effect of taking fish oils. It studied the effect of eating fish. It’s not the same thing.

Does it sound like I’m splitting hairs? Here’s why there’s a difference: dosage. Eating fish obviously will provide EPA and DHA from the oils naturally present in the fish. However, it’s nowhere near as much as you get by taking a fish oil supplement.

In fact, dosage is the big reason why this entire study and subsequent news article should be kicked in the head and shown the door. If you eat some high Omega-3 fish every day, you MIGHT end up with a gram or two of EPA and DHA. And while that’s the dosage range I recommend for people without any problems to use as a basic health maintenance dose, if you look at the dosage used to actually treat depression, that’s a whole other story.

If you want to actually treat depression or similar mood disorders, you need to think bigger than a gram or two a day.  Try more like nine or ten grams a day of EPA and DHA.

So, not surprisingly, if you only give someone about one tenth the required dose to make a certain change in the body, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO SEE ANY CHANGE.

Plus, how much fish were these women eating?  What counts as “eating fish”?  Do shellfish count?  Farm-raised fish (which has very little Omega-3)? Did they calculate out the EPA and DHA content of the fish?  That would be pretty hard to do in this case, seeing as how they are relying on a recall survey (“what did you eat yesterday?”), and people really suck at estimating portion size.  Did these women eat fish every day?  Every other day?  How much and what kind (since different varieties of fish have differing Omega-3 contents)?

The bottom line is, the researchers really can’t tell how much EPA and DHA these people were ingesting on a regular basis.  Which means, they really can’t reach any conclusions about anything.

At best… at BEST… if you ignore the  fact that the researchers couldn’t accurately estimate Omega-3 intake, this study suggests that it’s hard to eat enough fish to improve mental health.  Which, I could’ve told you before, simply by looking at the dosage used to treat depression (nine to ten grams daily… you’re talking several pounds of high-quality fish here).  But to use a headline stating that fish OIL doesn’t have any effect on depression, is just plain wrong and misleading.

In fact, fish oil does seem to have a positive effect on depression.  You just have to take a sufficient dosage.  So shut your face, MSNBC, and do your homework before you go writing headlines.

Everyone’s terrified of fat.  But there’s good fats, bad fats, and REALLY bad fats, and you’d better know the difference unless YOU want to start being called “Fats”.

First off, let’s kill the rumor that all fats are bad, or that low fat diets are the way to fitting into your skinny jeans.  That’s just not true.  In fact, sugar and refined carbs are far worse for you than fat. 

Good Fats

Your body NEEDS fat.  There’s a group of fats called “Essential Fatty Acids” that, as the name implies, are essential to normal body functions.  What sort of functions?  Things like building blocks for hormones, building cell membranes… even the insulation that covers our nerves is made out of fat (well, a big part of it).

And yes, believe it or not, there was a time when even the caloric content of fat was considered good.  Remember, for a very long period of human history, there weren’t grocery stores or freezers or Tupperware, so calories and the life-giving energy they supply were an unreliable resource.  In those conditions, getting a windfall of energy from fat was a very good thing. 

Nowadays, of course, we have more calories around then we know what to do with, which creates a bit of a problem since evolution in that harsh starvation environment has hard-wired us to really, really like the taste of fatty stuff.  I’m getting a little off track here, though…. we were talking about good fats and which fats are good for you.

Basically, we’re talking about Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids… “fatty acids” is just a fancy term for fats.  Oh, there’s a few others, but really, those two kinds are the major essential fats of interest.  Our body needs both of them, so in that sense, they’re both “good”.

However, the tricky part is, we need them in a balanced ratio… I’ll explain why in a second.  Unfortuanately for us, we tend to gobble down tons and tons of Omega-6s (again, I’ll get to why that is in a second), and not a whole lot of Omega-3s, so our ratios tend to be skewed heavily toward Omega-6s. 

How skewed?  Some estimates go up to 20 or even 30 to 1! 

You Need Balance, Grasshopper

So what’s the big deal?  Why is balancing these fats so darn important to us?  There’s two major reasons that we are aware of; hormones and cell membranes.

As I mentioned before, essential fats are necessary in the creation of both of those things.  But having too much of one will lead to a corresponding skew in how your body makes those components.  Let’s talk hormones.

The Omega-6 fatty acids are the building blocks for pro-inflammatory hormones, while Omega-3 fats are the basis for anti-inflammatory hormones.  These two kinds of fats compete for the attention of your body; in other words, if there’s tons of Omega-6s floating around and not a lot of Omega-3s, they will push the Omega-3s out of the way and take over.

As the Omega-6s begin to dominate the body chemistry, the entire body becomes easier and easier to inflame, since Omega-6s form the basis for the chemical signals to start the inflammation process.  It’s like instead of having one mousetrap in the room, you have eighty… the littlest movement is going to set SOMETHING off.

And so, your body becomes a hair-trigger for inflammation.  And while some inflammation is necessary (it kick-starts the healing process), when you have CHRONIC inflammation, you start doing damage to the body.  In fact, chronic inflammation is starting to look like the biochemical boogeyman of the 21st century… it’s cropping up in all kinds of diseases like heart disease, cancer, you name it.

By increasing the level of Omega-3s in the diet, you return that ratio back to normal and reduce how much of the pro-inflammatory chemicals are produced by the body.  Going back to our metaphor, this takes a bunch of the mousetraps out of the room.  Now, your body isn’t going to pop off into an inflammatory state every time the wind blows.

And, as a consequence, since you’ve reduced the amount of chronic inflammation,  you reduce the damage that chronic inflammation causes.  So it’s not so much that Omega-3s CURE something, it’s more that they return your body to a normal state, and stuff starts actually working right for a change.

Wild fish are a great source of Omega-3s (farm-raised fish eat lots of Omega-6s, and therefore become filled with Omega-6s), as are grass-fed beef and chicken, wild game, and eggs from grass-fed chickens.  Fish oil capsules are a popular way to really amp up your Omega-3 good fats.

Bad Fats

Another important way to improve that Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio is to reduce the amount of Omega-6s that you eat.  Here’s the problem:  we stuff tons and tons of Omega-6s into our diet.  This is why our good fats to bad fats ratio stinks so horribly.

Why do we do it?  Well, not on purpose; that is, it’s not like food manufacturers are evil archvillians who are implementing a dastardly plan to destroy us all with bad fats (at least, I don’t THINK they are…).  It’s just that Omega-6s are economically a better choice than Omega-3s.

They’re cheap, in other words.  Corn is a big part of this.  America grows an absolutely ridiculous amount of corn, and we turn that into just about everything you can imagine.  High fructose corn syrup, corn chips… we even feed it to our livestock, when our livestock should be eating mostly grasses (grasses are high in Omega-3s, which is why grass fed animals are full of Omega-3s).

Omega-6s are also more stable and have a longer shelf life than Omega-3s, which makes them cheaper to store.  So we’ve made a trade-off; cheaper food for a really, really unhealthy ratio of bad fats to good fats.

The easiest way to avoid Omega-6s is to stick to a whole foods diet, which I constantly mention on this site.  That means no processed foods; nothing out of a box or a can, basically.  Lean, grass-fed meats and fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables, nuts… all in as close to a natural state as possible. If it’s processed, odds are somebody somewhere along the way stuck corn in it, or some other source of Omega-6s, or even worse, our final bad fats culprit… the trans fat.

Really, Really Ugly Fats

Trans fats are the heavyweight champion of bad fats.  Trans fats are chemically altered fats; they’re man-made (actually, there are a tiny number of naturally occuring trans fats).  They were developed in the early 1900s as a way to stabilize fats for storage… once again, making them a lot cheaper and more accessible.

At first, people thought trans fats like those found in margarine were actually a healthier alternative to the natural fats found in butter.  Partially hydrogenated oils like vegetable oil have become a mainstay of cooking, especially in fried foods… again, because it’s cheap and lasts a super-long time.

Unfortunately, trans fats are horrible for you.  We’re not sure of the exact biochemical reasons for this; it may have something to do with the human digestive system not really being able to break down trans fats very well.  There’s also a link between trans fats and higher levels of C-reactive protein, which is a test for inflammation (remember inflammation?).

Whatever the physiological link, trans fats have been linked to heart disease, obesity, depression, Altzheimer’s disease, and cancer… and I have a feeling more stuff is going to be added to the list as we continue to look.  The short answer is, you don’t want this crap in your body.

Trans fats are common in processed foods, fried foods, and cooking oils.  Just like with Omega-3s and Omega-6s, the best way to keep these bad fats out of your body is to stick to a whole foods diet like I mentioned earlier.

The health implications for increasing the good fats and decreasing the bad fats in your body is huge.  I haven’t even touched on cell membranes in this article (because it’s already getting REALLY long), but it should already be pretty obvious why keeping on the good fats side of the equation is going to play a big part in how long and how healthy you live.

Stick to the good fats and stay healthy!

Recently, a friend asked me about an email she recieved concerning eating fruit on an empty stomach.  The information she’d been sent informed her that if she didn’t eat her fruit on an empty stomach, horrible things would happen and she would die, die, die.

For some reason, this rumor about eating fruit in this way became associated with Dr. Oz, the medical doctor who became famous on Oprah’s TV show.  I’m not really sure why this is, since Dr. Oz didn’t come up with this, and my bet is, he disagrees with this concept as much as I do.

Eating Fruit On An Empty Stomach- A Myth?

The idea behind this old wives’ tale is, if you eat fruit with other foods, it somehow sits in the stomach and “rots” there, causing all kinds of problems.  On the other hand, if you eat only fruit, well then, it slides through your belly like greased owl poop and directly into your bloodstream, leading to your becoming nearly superhuman in strength due to the vast amount of nutrients in your body.

Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.  Gastric emptying is the term used for the stomach releasing its contents into the small intestine (where most of the heavy-duty nutrient absorbtion occurs).  The rate of gastric emptying relies on a number of factors, mostly:

• how liquid the stomach contents are
• how nutrient dense the contents are
• how much volume of food is stretching out the stomach

Typically, even a solid meal is emptied out within a few hours, and no, mixing fruit in with other foods does NOT lead to putrefication.  While fruit does tend to break down more quickly all on its own (due to the high water content), if it’s mixed in with other food, it simply stirs into the liquid mix (called chyme).  It’s not chemically altered due to the presence of other foods.

Actually, for some people, mixing fruits with other foods is a good idea.  For example, diabetics or those with insulin resistance will react poorly to the rapid spike of sugar in their bloodstream from the quick digestion of a meal of only fruit, so mixing in some other sorts of foods with a lower glycemic index (that’s a measure of how sugary a food is) will actually slow down how quickly the sugar  is released into the body.

Don’t fall for this silly myth about eating fruit on an empty stomach.  It was made up out of thin air by some wacko trying to sell his “special” diet plan based on only eating certain foods in certain combinations.  There’s no evidence that he was remotely accurate. 

Here are some REAL guidelines on eating fruit:

• First off, actually eat fruit.  This sounds like a self-evident statement, but studies show Americans rarely eat fruit at all.  Fruits are packed with nutrients and antioxidants that keep your body working correctly, slow the aging process, and generally keep you alive.  So for God’s sake, actually eat some!
• Second, eat ACTUAL fruit, not fruit bars, fruit chews, fruit drink, or any other processed fabrication that pretends to be fruit.  Usually, what you get is a glorified piece of plastic painted pretty colors and stuffed full of artifical sweeteners.  In fact, a whisteblower organization recently found that the “fruit” in many cereal boxes was anything BUT actual fruit.
• Finally, drink fruit juice sparingly.  You’re far, far better off eating the entire fruit.  The whole fruit contains fiber, and there’s about a million studies showing that fiber helps keep you alive in many, many ways… too many to discuss here.  When you juice a fruit, you cheat yourself out of the fiber.  Another result of this is an increase in that glycemic index I mentioned earlier… without the fiber to slow the digestion of the fruit down, you end up dumping a lot of sugar into the bloodstream at once.  Read my article about insulin and weight gain to see why you don’t want that.

Keep things simple and natural, and you really can’t go wrong.  Don’t worry about silly little fads or tricks.  Stick to the basics.  A whole foods diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs, and lean meats will keep you alive and vital in the long term.

Stay healthy!

There’s some really interesting research that recently came out not only on inflammation and obesity, but inflammation and diabetes as well.  Really, the two are closely related because of the influence of the hormone insulin, so this shouldn’t be so surprising, especially if you’ve read my post on insulin and weight gain.

To sum up, consuming a diet high in fat seems to create a problem with inflammation in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that links the nervous system to the endocrine (hormonal) system through a little nubbin at the base of the brain called the pituatary gland (also called the “master gland”).  This inflammation then impairs the effects of two hormones, insulin and leptin, on signalling the body about fat storage.

Okay, let’s break down what that all means.

Inflammation and Obesity

First off, there’s a chemical on/off switch for inflammation in our body called NF-kB (NF- “kappa” B).  When NF-kB is activated, it’s like in those submarine movies where that klaxen horn begins blaring Ah- WOOO-GA!  Ah-WOOO-GA! and a voice shouts over the loudspeaker “Dive!  Dive!”.

Okay, maybe that’s just my hyperactive imagination.  But seriously, when NF-kB is activated, it tells the body that inflammation is necessary in that area.  We’ve discussed NF-kB in detail before in this post on inflammation and antioxidants.  The key thing to realize for this discussion is, a high-fat diet seems to activate NF-kB in the hypothalamus, leading to inflammation in that area.

This leads to resistance to the hormones insulin and leptin.  Insulin we’ve discussed many times before- it’s the hormone involved with controlling blood sugar.  It’s also the hormone of interest in diabetes and the pre-diabetic state called “metabolic syndrome”, “syndrome x”, or just plain “insulin resistance”. 

Resistance to insulin causes all kinds of health problems, but in this case, we’re mostly interested in the fact that abnormal expression of insulin causes weight gain.  If you’ve heard of low-carb diets, the whole mechanism behind their action is to control the levels of insulin in your body so that you don’t get fat.  Once again… abnormal action of insulin leads to fat gain.  Since an inflamed hypothalamus leads to abnormal action (i.e., resistance)  of insulin, it therefore also leads to fat gain.

Inflammation, Leptin, and Hunger

What about that other hormone, leptin?  What the heck IS that other hormone, leptin?

Leptin is a hormone that controls the sensation of hunger and/or saiety (the feeling of being full).  Again, when inflammation kicks in throughout the hypothalamus, you end up with an abnormal expression of this hormone… in other words, an inflamed brain is always telling you you’re not full yet, no matter how full you actually are.

So not only does an inflamed brain disable the hormonal mechanisms that help burn off fat and sugar (that’s insulin), it also disables the hormonal mechanism that tells you to stop stuffing your pie-hole in the first place!  Is it any wonder how this could lead to weight gain? 

There’s been links between inflammation and obesity before, but this is a much stronger link because the hypothalamus, as I mentioned earlier, pretty much runs the show when it comes to your hormones.  That means that inflammation there is going to have a far greater effect than inflammation in the peripheral tissues.

Fat Quality and Inflammation

I talk a lot about the importance of healthy fats in the diet, and how the balance of Omega-3 (anti-inflammatory) fats and Omega-6 (pro-inflammatory) fats is so vital to proper function in the body.  It may very well be that it is not a problem of overall quantity of fats, but an overdose of those inflammatory Omega-6 fats that is leading to this inflammation problem in the hypothalamus.

In fact, one of the articles on the subject shows that saturated fats are far more likely to induce this inflammed state in the hypothalamus, and therefore leading to the disruption in insulin and leptin that contributes to weight gain. Monounsaturated fats did not seem to have the undesirable effects.

My advice is, this is even more evidence to avoid processed foods (which are high in pro-inflammatory Omega-6s) and stick to a whole foods diet (also called a “primal” or “paleo” diet).  Additionally, supplementing with Omega-3 fats like fish oils can help reduce inflammation, and antioxidants can help, as well.  Read that article I linked to above for evidence on how antioxidants seem to shut off that NF-kB inflammation switch.

Since inflammation and obesity are linked, you want to avoid that situation as much as possible.  A healthy whole foods diet is the best defense.  After all, who wants an inflamed brain?

Stay healthy!

There’s some great research I’d like to share with you on how to lower cholesterol naturally in a way that you probably haven’t thought of before.  Even better, this quirky and interesting research comes from my alma mater, Penn State University.  How did they do it?  Pistachios.

That’s right, it’s more than just an ice cream flavor, my friends.  Turns out, pistachios are a surprisingly potent health food with a broad range of effects.  For purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on the effects of these nuts on lowering LDL levels, usually referred to as the “bad” cholesterol.

These Lower Cholesterol Naturally? Who knew?

LDL Cholesterol

As a quick review, when you get your blood cholesterol levels checked, the main variables of interest are High Density Lipoproteins (HDL), Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL), and triglycerides (no acronym for that one).  They’re called “high” or “low” density based on the amount of protein in them. 

The HDL or high-density type is called “good” because that’s the kind that can actually scoop up chunks of cholesterol from the arteries and transport it away.  Nice, right?  So this stuff cleans up the arteries.

LDL cholesterol is pretty much the opposite.  This is the stuff that actually lodges in the arteries (the reasons and mechanisms behind this are the basis of a HUGE number of arguments and many nerdy-type people getting hot under the collar) and causes all kinds of problems… such as dropping over dead from a coronary, for instance.

For that reason, while we look at overall cholesterol levels, even more important is how much of the “good” cholesterol do you have versus the “bad” (LDL) stuff.  Obviously, if you have tons of the HDL cholesterol clearing the junk out of your arteries, and not a lot of the LDL cholesterol gunking the tubes up, that’s a good thing.

Pistachios Lower Cholesterol Naturally

So here’s what these researchers did.  Why they thought to pick out pistachios, I’ll never know, but they started off with a bunch of volunteers who ate the typical horrible American diet, with tons of fat and especially saturated fat.  Then, they switched these folks over to one of three groups:  just a healthy diet (they used one called a “Step One” diet to keep it consistent), that Step One diet plus some pistachios (about 10% of total calories), and the last group, which was the same Step One diet but lots of pistachios (about 20% of calories).

Here’s what they found.  The intake of pistachios increased the effect of the healthy diet on lowering LDL cholesterol in a dose dependent manner.  So the people eating some pistachios (the 10% group) had about a 9% additional decrease in LDL from their non-pistachio eating counterparts, while the heavy-hitter pistachio eaters (the 20% of total calories group) saw a 12% additional decrease from the pistachio-less group.

Pretty cool,  hunh?  What’s even more interesting is, the effects were far greater (seven times greater!) in lowering cholesterol naturally than could be expected by just the lipid profile of the nuts alone… in other words, we knew these nuts had healthy fats in them, and that should lower cholesterol, but not THIS much.  So what the heck is going on with pistachios?

The Inflammation Connection

Consistent readers of this site probably aren’t surprised to see the word “inflammation” popping up.  Chronic, systemic inflammation is the mechanism behind all kinds of diseases, and has been linked to cardiovascular disease big time.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I came across another study about pistachios, also out of Penn State, on a website that something to do with the Western Pistaschio Association.  What did surprise me was, there is a Western Pistachio Association. 

Anyway, this study showed that pistachio consumption ALSO reduced the signs of inflammation on a cellular level.  The researchers were able to suggest a link between this lowered inflammation and the seemingly strange ability of pistachios to lower cholesterol naturally.

Consider adding an occasional handful of pistachios into your diet to give your heart a helping hand… and no, eating pistachio ice cream doesn’t count!

Stay healthy!

Great.  As if there weren’t enough problems with the stuff already, now there’s evidence of the toxic chemical mercury in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

HFCS, of course, is a common artificial sweetener used in practically every processed food imaginable.  Both cheaper and sweeter than sugar, high fructose corn syrup has been linked to a whole host of health problems from obesity to diabetes to you name it.

A 2009 study on the sweetener (published on the web site of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy) found that about 30% of products tested that contained HFCS also contained mercury.  These products included Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup, Frosted Blueberry Pop-Tarts, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, and Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars.

There’s Mercury In High Fructose Corn Syrup?  From Where?

One of the chemical products used to make HFCS is caustic soda, and up until recently, mercury was used to make caustic soda.  Nowadays, hardly anybody in the US uses mercury to make caustic soda, but guess what?  Not everybody buys their high fructose corn syrup from US suppliers. A lot of this stuff comes from overseas.

So, that’s one way in which mercury might find its way into high fructose corn syrup.  But really, it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, only that it’s there.

Dangers of Mercury

The effects of mercury depend on things like how much of it you’re exposed to, what sort of mercury it is (methylmercury is the worst), and the age and health of the person affected.  Elemental mercury is typically a problem when it’s inhaled.  Obviously we’re not dealing with that in a food product.

Methylmercury is more easily absorbed and tends to cause neurological problems, especially in fetuses and children.  Other forms of mercury are linked to GI tract problems (that’s how this type is absorbed) and damage to the kidneys as well as neurological symptoms.  So this is not stuff to mess around with.

Having said all that, the levels of mercury found in these foods was rather small (and the type was unclear).   Here’s the thing, though.  When I read the statement from ConAgra’s spokesperson which goes something like ”the levels of mercury reported in our ketchup are well below the EPA’s safe exposure level”, I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. I said to myself, why is there ANY mercury in ketchup?  How about ZERO mercury in my food?  Can we shoot for that?

Another thing I’d like to point out is the presence of HFCS, which is a seriously unhealthy additive even without the mercury, in what many people might think of as a “healthy snack”:  Nutri-Grain bars.  Folks, just because the word “grain” is the name, and there’s nice pictures of wheat or something on the package, doesn’t make it healthy.  If it comes in a box or a can, it’s probably junk.

It’s too hard to keep track of all of the nasty chemicals and additives put into these processed foods.  High fructose corn syrup is just one of many, many additives that will slowly kill you in disgusting ways, so why not avoid the issue entirely by sticking to whole, organic foods?  It’s a far more simple solution than trying to keep track of which unpronounceable chemicals do what, and a far more effective solution than waiting for the government to actually rein in and control the food industy (which will never happen).

Stick to whole foods, avoid the mercury and high fructose corn syrup, and stay healthy!

Our anti-aging discussion continues with the hormonal component of living longer.  The endocrine system is extremely complex and inter-dependent, each hormone affected by others and affecting others as well, so discussing what one hormone does can get a little dangerous.  It creates the illusion that it’s easy to make one change without causing any others.

But, trying to deal with them all at once is too complicated, so we do have to split things up somewhat.  The main hormones we’ll be dealing with when it comes to how to live longer are HGH (Human Growth Hormone), insulin, and the sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen).

Living Longer:  Human Growth Hormone

HGH is pretty much what the name implies.  It makes little baby people turn into big adult people, and continues to stimulate the growth process (in terms of maintenance and response to exercise) throughout adult life as well.

More specifically, HGH does stuff like:

• increase muscle mass
• mineralize (increase calcium in) bone
• boosts the immune system
• makes internal organs grow/maintain themselves
• promotes fat burning
• general increased sense of well-being

Like most hormones, HGH secretion begins to drop off with age, to the tune of about a 10-15% decline per decade after 30.  Not surprisingly, people started experimenting with hormone replacement about 20 years ago, and found that as HGH levels were restored, there were some positive effects (mostly related to that list I just went over).

Replacing HGH is tricky, though, and expensive.  I talked to an expert on this (an MD who has been doing this in his clinic for years), and here’s what he told me.  First off, the body’s levels of HGH are not constant, they’re pulsatile; your body releases it in waves about every four hours or so.  The size of the pulses varies, too, so you have to inject your HGH at very specific times (usually very early in the morning).

Over-doing it also is a problem… just look at Sylvester Stallone.  Nobody’s really sure what the safety limits are, but the side effects of too much HGH are things like a thickened jaw, finger and toes, or sometimes an acquired diabetes or impotence.  And that’s just what we know about.

The bottom line is, I’d stick with more natural methods until a lot more mistakes get made on people other than you, and those issues work themselves out.  So what can you do about your HGH levels?  Well, you can either stimulate the secretion of HGH or prevent its decline.

The best way to stimulate HGH is through intense exercise.  The more intense the exercise, the bigger the surge.  Of course, you have to be careful not to go too crazy by trying to pick up a Volkswagen or something, because then you’ll just end up hurting yourself.

An interesting stimulant of HGH is ghrelin, a hormone released due to hunger.  There’s some studies out there on caloric deprivation leading to longer life in mice, which may be as a result of increased HGH secretion due to hunger.  Not that I’m recommending starving yourself or anything, but I found that connection interesting.

Sleep is an important part of HGH secretion.  The vast majority of HGH is released during sleep, especially one hour after falling asleep.  Which leads me into how to avoid LOSING Human Growth Hormone.

There are two big hormonal antagonists to HGH- insulin and cortisol.  Insulin, of course, is the blood sugar hormone, and surges way too high on intake of refined carbs.  So sugar and bread and all that stuff not only makes you fat, but old, too.  Awesome.

Related to that, remember that your biggest surge in HGH is one hour after bedtime… so don’t have any insulin floating around messing things up at that time.  In other words, no eating before bed.  Preferably, at least three hours before bedtime.

Cortisol is a stress hormone.  It has nice short-term anti-inflammatory effects, but the long-term effects are pretty nasty.  For this discussion, we’ll stick to its effects on HGH.  Simply put, it acts as an antagonist to HGH, reducing its effectiveness.  So, stress, sleep deprivation, and overloading on caffiene, will not just make you sick, but old before your time as well.

There are some supplements called HGH secretagogues that provide the body with natural enhancers to Growth Hormone production.  The main action seems to be from arginine, an amino acid that suppresses another hormone that acts to block HGH called somatostatin.  The expert I mentioned earlier claims that he’s tested people on secretagogues that had their HGH levels increase by 10-20%, but it takes months to get up to that level.    I don’t know of any official studies backing up those findings, but there is a study on arginine and increased growth hormone levels.

How To Live Longer:  Sex Hormones

Another big area for hormone replacement is with testosterone and estrogren, the two main sex hormones.  Like HGH, both of these tend to decrease with age, with undesirable consequences.  So this is another important factor to living longer.

I’m not going to go too much into HRT (hormone replacement therapy), because it’s not really my area, but I will re-interate that HRT is a tricky business and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.  Too much of a hormone is just as bad as too little, and there’s a bad tendency in our culture to think that if a little of something is good, more is “more good-er”.

What I will talk about is natural ways to prevent decline or other interference with the sex hormones.  Let’s start with testosterone.

Testosterone, of course, is the Manly Man hormone, that makes boys into men and men want to drink beer and kill stuff.  Seriously, though, it is the masculinazing (I think that’s a word) hormone that is responsible for all kinds of physical and behavioral effects like the building up of muscle mass and bone density, and the various secondary male characteristics like facial hair, etc.

As I mentioned, testosterone levels decrease with age, but there’s ways to increase it naturally as well.  Vigorous resistance training will increase testosterone levels.  Proper amounts of sleep also promote the release of testosterone, at least during sleep.

There’s some interesting behavioral effects on testosterone as well, mostly concerning power (really, the perception of power).  Winning competitive events increases testosterone levels, and losing them decreases testosterone. Really, any perception of an increase in power, domination, or social status has a corresponding increase on testosterone, with the opposite being true for a loss in those areas.

So I guess the lesson there is, don’t take on a challenge you can’t beat!

There’s other little things that will decrease testosterone, like a zinc deficiency or eating too much licorice (I know, that one’s a little weird, isn’t it?).  Actually, though, the big threat to testosterone is environmental. 

Specifically, pro-estrogenic or estrogen-like chemicals that are present in the water, air, food- or anywhere, really- due to industrial contaminents.  These are contaminents like pesticides and herbicides as well as other chemicals, that have gotten so prevalent in our enviroment that there are places where fish are experiencing mass sex changes due to the levels of estrogenic compounds in the water.

That means pretty much every guy out there is being exposed to large levels of estrogenic compounds, which reverses the effects of testosterone.  Uh-oh.

It’s bad for women, too, by the way.  Remember, just because women need estrogen (actually, men need some too, just like women need some testosterone), doesn’t mean that more estrogen is more better-er. Sending hormones spiking out of balance is always a health problem.

So what can be done about these negative hormonal influences?  Well, the best thing is avoidance, so here’s another good reason to eat organic, whole foods… to avoid the estrogenic effects of the chemicals in refined foods.  Trying to minimize exposure to man-made chemcials in general is also a good idea… not always possible in today’s society, but the more you can avoid it, the better (you’ll remember from the last post on how to live longer that this also helps with avoiding free radicals).

Oh, and bad news for men… hops is very strongly estrogenic.  Yes, hops, as in, “used to make beer” hops.  In fact, there’s a condition called Brewer’s Droop that’s caused by a beer brewer handling so much hops that he absorbs it through his skin and begins having problems with, erm, “standing at attention”.  So if you beer drinkers want to stay being “real men”, you’d better start eating organic!

The intake of cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli) is also good for helping the body clear out toxins in general, and can help with removing excessive estrogenic compounds from the bloodstream.

All of these interventions are also obviously good for women, too, since as I mentioned, excessive estrogen is just as bad as too little.  In fact, being exposed to excessive estrogen likely reduces the body’s ability to make its own estrogen.  Any time you add extra hormones to the body from an outside source (like, say, anabolic steroids), your body begins to shut down its own production of that hormone, and eventually, the glands that produce them will atrophy (shrink up and get weak).

Soy is another plant that has pro-estrogenic compounds, and huge, raging debates go on all over the Internet about whether or not soy is a dangerous thing to consume.  To be quite honest, the evidence is conflicting and there’s no clear answer, so I’ll just say this.  Considering the potential for hormonal influence, it’s probably a good idea to avoid massive quantities of soy.  Not avoidance entirely… I don’t think that’s necessary… but if you’re guzzling down a gallon of soy milk and day and eating loads of fast food (which uses a ton of soy protein), then you might be causing problems for yourself.

So, to sum up, here’s a list of things to do to avoid problems with these major hormones involved with aging:

• Get vigorous exercise regularly
• Get sufficient sleep and don’t eat before bedtime
• Reduce your stress
• Stick to unrefined (whole) foods that are organic
• Filter your water and try to reduce exposure to man-made chemicals

Those are the major areas in which you can make a difference most easily before you go running to the doctor for HRT.  The natural methods to living longer are always the best ways.

By the way, an excellent book on testosterone, its effects on health, what can interfere with it, and details on its replacement, is The Testosterone Syndrome by Eugene Shippen.  Here’s a link to it on Amazon.  Another one I’ve read and thought was decent was The Natural Testosterone Plan, so you might want to have a look at that one as well.

Stay healthy!

Everybody wants to know how to live longer, right?  I mean, you don’t hear a whole lot about advice about how to shorten the typical life span.

Anti-aging is a big, BIG topic, however, so I’m going to break this up into three sections:  toxins, hormones, and the immune system.  There’s some overlap between the groups, but we’ll stick with that for simplicity’s sake.  Today’s post will be on toxins and free radicals, and we’ll cover the other two in successive posts.

How To Live Longer: Toxins

First off, quit smoking.  Yes, yes, yes, I know that’s cliche’ advice a thousand times over, but there’s a reason why it’s cliche’… because the evidence for it is so overwhelming.  Even a little bit of smoking is bad for you, as I discussed in this article on the smoking dangers of even a light habit. 

That article was just on the obvious downsides of smoking… lung cancer and emphysema.  But, there’s oh so much more that smoking will do.  As an example, as soon as you take a drag on a cigarette, you paralyze the cilia, or little itty bitty hairs that line your respiratory passages… you know, the tubes that carry AIR to your body.

Why are those little hairs important? Well, because they sort of wave around and push mucus up and out of the body to clear out all the gunk that gets trapped in it.  Okay, I know that’s a little gross to think about, but you know what’s even more gross to think about?  Tarry, filthy thick sludge that’s stuck in your lungs and respiratory tract because it ISN’T being cleared out on a regular basis.

This is an important part of the immune system, and even a little cigarette smoke paralyzes it and brings it to a standstill (I told you there would be some overlap between today’s catagories).  But wait!  There’s more!

Smoking is the poster boy of toxins because it’s a dramatic example of one of the main mechanisms by which toxins age you… free radicals.  I’ve written in more detail about free radicals in this post on how antioxidants work, and also in my free guide to nutritional supplements, but let me give you the quick version.

Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that damage anything they touch.  You can think of them almost like little bits of acid floating around, ruining whatever they come into contact with.  A commonplace example of the effect of free radicals is the rusting of metal.  

They occur naturally in the enviroment and in the body (due to regular metabolic processes like energy production), but contact with various toxins and pollutants REALLY ramps up your exposure to these little devils. 

Obviously, increased exposure to those toxins will increase how many free radicals you get bombarded with… or how much acid gets sprayed on you, if you like that metaphor. And these free radicals, once they get inside of you, tear down and break down your cells and tissues and organs bit by bit, until they slowly become less effective and eventually don’t work at all.

Sound like aging to you?  It should, because the action of free radicals is considered one of the main causes of aging.  Not only do free radicals directly break down the substance of your body, they mess with your genes as well.  That’s right, free radicals will eventually attack and break down portions of your very genetic code, altering the function of those genes.

Ever hear of cancer?  There’s a pretty good example of what can happen once DNA goes awry.  But that’s just a major, obvious end-result that we’ve managed to directly link to genetic damage… how many other minor, less noticeable diseases or ill effects are being caused throughout the body by genetic damage caused by exposure to toxins and free radicals?  Odds are, we’ll never sort all that out.

Avoid Toxins For Life Extension

What can you do about these free radicals so you can live longer?  Well, step one is avoidance, obviously, which is why I started this section off with “quit smoking”.  You’ve already got enough free radical nonsense to deal with from all of the industrial pollutants and toxins choking the environment; no need to go making things worse by VOLUNTEERING to pollute yourself further. 

That’s just plain silly.

Oh, and of course, there’s plenty of other ways to pollute yourself besides smoking, so here’s some common sources of toxins to avoid: 

• Other drug use, particularly recreational (that means you too, alcohol).
• Pesticides and herbicides in the food supply (which is why I buy organic).  There’s more to this than just toxins and free radicals.  Some of these chemicals can mess with your endocrine system (hormones), which I will discuss in more detail in tomorrow’s post on living longer. 
• Chemicals in the water supply (I always get the filtered stuff). This is actually a pretty big topic all by itself that I’ll be covering in another post.
• Perfumes, dyes, non-stick or non-stain sprays, coatings, and treatments.  I’m going to lump other industrial toxins and chemicals in here, particularly if you are exposed to them at work.
• The air:  this is a tough one to deal with, because it’s not like you can walk around with a gas mask on.  Well, I guess you could, but it would REALLY adversely effect your love life.  One decent solution is to use air filters in the home, which is an environment that you can somewhat control.  Something is better than nothing.

Living Longer With Antioxidants

Next, you can actually protect yourself from free radical damage, also called “oxidation”, by supplementing with…. “anti- oxidants”.  Do you see now why antioxidants are so popular?  They shield you from all that nasty damage caused by stupid free radicals so that you get to live longer.

The mechanism of how they do this is fairly simple… they neutralize free radicals by donating an electron.  Free radicals are so reactive and damaging because they’re missing an electron.  So, hand over a spare electron, and poof!  That free radical calms down and doesn’t hurt anybody.

Since antioxidants have plenty of electrons to spare, they’re great at making free radicals shut up and go away before they poke a hole in anything important.  You can see this with your own eyes with the following experiment:

Slice an apple in two and set the halves on a plate.  Soon enough, the flesh of the apple will turn brown- that’s oxidation and free radicals at work.  Now do the same thing, but coat the sliced apple flesh with lemon juice.  It won’t turn brown (or it will take a really long time).  That’s because lemon juice is chock full of Vitamin C, a basic antioxidant, which then protects the exposed apple from browning due to oxidative damage.

The “basic” antioxidants are Vitamins C, E, A, and selenium… you’ll find those in most multivitamins.  But I suggest you take some additional, more potent antioxidants because of all the pollutants floating around out there that you just can’t realisitically avoid.

One term for these heavy-duty antioxidants is “polyphenols”.  That term just refers to the molecular structure having many (“poly”) phenol groups.  That particular structure means polyphenols have a lot more electrons to donate, which means that’s just that many more nasty free radicals that can be neutralized.

Things that include polyphenols that you might have heard of include dark chocolate, green tea, and red wine.   The two big heavy-hitter antioxidant supplements I like (because there’s so many excellent studies supporting them) are called resveratrol and pycnogenol.  Resveratrol is a red wine extract, and pycnogenol is a pine bark extract that I’ve written about it in articles like this one on inflammation and antioxidants and this one on natural tinnitus relief.

Another solid antioxidant worth mentioning is Co-Q10, because it does its work in the mitochondria, which are like the power generators of each individual cell.  You can read more about Co-Q10 in this article on CoQ10, the little known antioxidant.

It’s a good idea to take a blend of various antioxidants, since each different type is good at operating in different parts of the body.  So a broad mix is better than super-dosing with just one kind.

Okie-dokie, that’s about it for our discussion of toxins, free radicals, antioxidants, and how to live longer by understanding this particular component of aging.  Next time, we’ll talk about hormones.

Stay healthy!

Anybody here think that delicious genetically modified food is not dangerous?  Well, I have some bad news for you.  A study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences shows that three varieties of genetically modified corn created by monolithic agro-giant Monsanto actually cause organ damage.

Fantastic.  Especially considering how Monsanto is rapidly trying to monopolize the seed market with their patentable GM crops, and the government seems just fine with that idea, seeing as how the Supreme Court recently lifted a ban on GM alfalfa seeds.  So even though we have scientific evidence that genetically modified crops are dangerous, the government’s reaction seems to be “Eh, big whoop.”

How Genetically Modified Corn Is Dangerous

Ah, where to start.  Well, how about this little gem of an excerpt from the article itself: “One corn (NK 603) has been genetically engineered to tolerate the broad spectrum herbicide Roundup and thus contains residues of this formulation.” (emphasis mine)

In other words, these genetically modified crops actually contain pesticide residue embedded within them.  Seeing as how our bodies evolved to break down and digest corn, not “corn with Roundup pesiticide stuck inside of it”, that little extra tidbit of chemistry might just cause some problems.

The Study

What’s wild about this study is, the researchers actually used data from Monsanto itself.  You see, Monsanto actually took rats and fed them GM corn for 90 days to see if there were any effect.  They reported that there wasn’t anything to see here, move along please.

However, it turns out, when you run a proper statistical analysis on their data, there ARE health effects that begin to crop up (pun fully, fully intended).  I’ve said it before… statistics DO lie, if you know how to mis-report them.

There’s a number of disturbing things that come to light as you read this article.  First off, Monsanto only did a study for 90 days?  Are you kidding me?  People are going to be eating this corn for a lot longer than 90 days.  Last I checked, average life expectancy for an American is around 70, 75 YEARS. 

Do you think we might just miss some stuff if we only look at effects over 90 days?  Especially since, as the authors of this study note, it takes one or two years to start noticing a lot of different disease processes beginning to take place (like cancer or immune disorders, among others). 

Also, they only did this one piddily quick-o study on only one species (rats).  If we’re going to be stuffing GM crops into people’s faces for the long term, which Monsanto definitely wants to do, maybe several, longer studies using a number of different species might be in order, no?

Bah, screw all that!  There’s money to be made!

Okay, so Monsanto did a lousy study that was too short and too narrow, so it’s not surprising that they found nothing… except, when you sift through the data correctly, even with this very brief study, evidence of organ damage still comes out. 

I’m not going to go into the particulars of how the study’s authors performed their statistical analysis, mostly because it’s extremely technical and tedious and would bore the hell out of you.  As one example, the authors discuss how male and female rats had significant differences in their level of liver and kidney damage, which makes sense due to gender differences in liver and kidney metabolism, but was dismissed and ignored in the original report.

The Results

So what exactly happened to the rats?  Liver and kidney damage, mostly.  This makes sense, since those two organs do the heavy lifting in detoxifying the body… and in case you were wondering, herbicides and pesticides are toxins.  The authors don’t discount the possibility that something about the mutation process of creating a genetically modified crop might also be responsible.

The effects seemed to be dose- and gender- dependent.  So there was a link between how much GM corn a rat got, and whether it was a boy or a girl.  The effects were also different for each of the three different varieties of GM corn tested.

Effects were also found in the heart, spleen, and adrenals, but not as much as the liver or kidneys.

So, to sum up, Monsanto did a poorly-designed, super-short study on only one species, fudged the statistical data so it didn’t look like anything happened, and on the basis of that, declared their genetically modified corn wan’t dangerous.  Once somebody took the time to sort the data out properly, even in a brief 90 day time span, evidence of organ damage had already started to appear.

And people wonder why I’m so vehemently against genetically modified foods.

Avoid creepy Monsanto GM corn and stay healthy!

Research article citation: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm#headingA11

Concerned because you couldn’t get around to eating that Happy Meal you bought at lunch, and it’s almost four in the afternoon?  Don’t be.  It’s hasn’t started to go bad yet.

In fact, you can wait a little longer.  A LOT longer, to be more clear… like several MONTHS longer.

A disturbing series of pictures taken by a NYC artist shows a Happy Meal set out for months showing no significant signs of decay or rot… the hamburger patty and fries do shrink slightly, but that’s it.

You realize what this means?  Folks, even BACTERIA won’t eat this crap.

See for yourself at  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319562/McDonalds-Happy-Meal-bought-Sally-Davies-shows-sign-mould-6-months.html

Avoid the Deathless Happy Meals and stay healthy!