Healthy Andy

All right, you horny little freaks.  I know at least some of you out there are quickly scribbling down 800 numbers listed during late night TV commercials for male sex enhancement pills, but seriously, lay off of that crap. 

The FDA agrees with me, at least in the case of the ridiculously named Man Up Now pills, which they have labelled as dangerous, and rightly so.  Like many other sketchy supplements out there, these pills contain dangerous active ingredients that closely mimic prescription drugs.

For Man Up Now (Really?  That’s REALLY the name?  Jeesh!), we’re talking about Viagra.  Big shock there.  The way Viagra works is, by encouraging the relaxation of arteries (called vasodialation) and therefore an increase in blood flow to the, um, area of interest.  Since an erection is essentially a hydraulic phenomenon (more blood goes in than out, filling up the penis and making it hard), that increase in blood flow helps those with erectile function get what they’re looking for.

Folks, there’s really no way to talk about this stuff without using terminology that’s going to make you snicker.  So go ahead and giggle.  I can’t hear you.

Okay, so here’s the thing.  Vasodialation, or widening of the arteries, lets more blood through, but also reduces blood pressure.  Any time you increase the diameter of a hose, you decrease the pressure of the fluid travelling through it.  The opposite is also true… decrease the diameter, increase the pressure.  You know this if you’ve used your thumb to block off part of the end of a garden hose to make the water shoot out further.

What this all translates to is, if you’ve already GOT low blood pressure, you really don’t want to go making it even lower by gobbling down questionable male enhancement pills and forcing it so low you keel over dead.  That’s really not how you want your body to be found.

I know what (most of) you are thinking.  “Okay, Healthy Andy, but what CAN I take?”

Perverts.

Well, without getting into this too much and thereby turning this site into something that will get filtered out by your workplace internet, remember what I said earlier about the erection being all about hydraulics?  That means that the healthier and more responsive your vascular system (arteries and veins) is, the more responsive your equipment will be as well. 

So anything that helps your cardiovascular system, basically, will help you out down below.  As a prime example, read this post on how antioxidants keep arteries elastic to steer you down the right path.  Pliable, responsive arteries are the key to success with the vascular system.

That’s right, boys.  Turns out the best male enhancement pills are blueberries and other superfoods.  Other than that, good old fashioned stuff like regular exercise will help you out far more than any supplement with a silly name.

Avoid the late night 800 numbers and stay healthy!

Link to the FDA’s warning:  http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm236538.htm

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!

 More and more news on the health benefits of green tea keep pouring in.  The latest comes from Japanese researchers published in the journal Chinese Medicine.

They did what’s called a literature review, which is what it sounds like.  Rather than set up a specific experiment and generate new data, the researchers instead sift through many, many other research papers and try to use the sum of that data to achieve some new insights.

These are tricky to do, more tricky than you might think.  The main thing is, what studies do you include in your review?  If you go cherry-picking this article you like here, that article you like there, you may end up biasing your results significantly. 

At the same time, there’s a lot of junk science out there, my friends.  You can’t take every article, because some are just crap (here’s an example of a bad study on fish oils) and will skew your results in an inaccurate direction.  So it can be a bit of a delicate dance.

Health Benefits Of Green Tea

So what did the researchers find?  Well, after selecting 105 articles to go through, the researchers reported:

• There are very potent antioxidants in green tea called catechins that strongly contribute to the overall antioxidant network in the body.  Catechins keep coming up over and over again in the study, and if you read much at all about green tea, you’re going to keep coming across the word “catechins”. This antioxidant effect is actually measurable in the blood plasma (by reducing signs of oxidative stress).  For more on how antioxidants actually work, find out how blueberries will take a bullet for you.
• Going back to catechins, there’s some evidence that they help prevent degenerative diseases of various kinds, including cardiovascular diseases like hypertension and coronary heart disease (clogged arteries).  For more on this, read this article on antioxidants and arteries.  Trigycleride levels are also reduced when green tea extracts are used.
• Green tea and extracts of green tea like EGCG can help with obesity.  It’s possible that this is due to an increase in thermogenesis (creation of body heat), or it could be due to more optimized use of glucose.
• Which leads us to the health benefits of green tea for diabetics.  Green tea and it’s extracts seem to help in glucose metabolism… there is a measurable reduction of glucose levels in the presence of green tea anitoxidants.
• Various anti-fungal and anti-viral (including influenza) benefits were found, including Candida Albicans specifically .
• How about bone density?  There’s evidence green tea can help with increased bone mineralization (density), which makes sense considering this study on how green tea helps your teeth (actually, it helps reinforce that study quite a bit).

In short, green tea is pretty amazing stuff.  A lot of the benefits can be attributed to the strong antioxidant properties found in green tea, but there seems to be a lot more to it than that.  As much as we know, there’s still a long way to go to understand exactly how this stuff is so darn good for us.

By the way, green tea is actually rather low in caffiene.  Ounce for ounce, it has about one-fifth the caffiene content of a cup of coffee.  Which is good for me, because too much caffiene makes my heart explode out of my chest.

Fire down some green tea and stay healthy!

Yet more evidence has come out regarding garlic and heart health.  

It’s no big news that garlic is helpful for the heart and cardiovascular system in general; plenty of articles have been written before on the topic.  However, this latest study highlights the actual mechanism by which garlic oil can protect the heart from the ravages of diabetes.

Diabetes And Heart Health

So what’s the big deal about that?  Simple, really.  Diabetes tears up the cardiovascular system- diabetics are almost 70% more likely to have heart disease as a cause of death and adults with diabetes are 2-4 times more likely to die of heart disease than non-diabetics (more fun statistics on diabetes here).  Oh, and by the way, diabetes also happens to be exploding in this country at a breakaway pace.

I’m not exaggerating.  As of the writing of this article, something like 1 in 10 Americans has Type 2 diabetes… that’s the kind you acquire later in life, usually by burning out your pancreas by eating sugar by the bucketfull.  ONE IN TEN.  For those over 65, it’s more like one in FOUR.

Oh, but it gets better.  The CDC recently released an estimate that Americans are on track to raise those overall rates to one in five or perhaps even one in THREE.

I don’t want to get off topic with a rant on how bad diabetes really is, but I feel the need to include a little something because it seems like people shrug off this disease like it’s no big whoop.  WRONG.  Back in my diagnosis classes, the running joke was this… if on a test, you’re asked which organ does something, and you don’t know, guess “liver” (because the liver does so darn much).  If you’re asked which disease can inflict some horrible symptom on you, and you don’t know, guess “diabetes” (because diabetes does so many bad things to your body).

Garlic And Hearth Health

Okay, now that I’m done ranting about diabetes, let’s get back to what garlic oil can do to prevent heart disease in diabetics… because as we’ll see, the mechanisms of action should also help non-diabetics as well.

The researchers fed diabetic rats either garlic oil or corn oil (as a control group).  One nice part of this study is the researchers actually made their own garlic oil with fresh garlic using steam distillation, which would ensure high quality.

While the rats were still alive, they tested their cardiac function with echocardiography (ultrasound, basically) and found that while diabetes (which they induced with a drug) caused decreases in heart rate, body weight, ejection fraction (that’s a measure of how much blood is actually squirted out of the heart with each beat), and fractional shortening (another measure of heart function), all of these nasty effects were reversed with garlic oil.

When they physically examined the hearts of the diabetic rats, they found cardiac damage typical of that caused by diabetes (altered gene expression, decrease in the actual muscle protein fibers that make the heart contract).  Again, for the rats given the garlic oil, these telltale signs of heart damage were decreased… and the more of the garlic oil the rats got, the less damage there was to their hearts.

The researchers believe that the garlic oil helps prevent damage caused by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which you may have heard of out on the streets by the term “free radical”.  Diabetes-caused hyperglycemia (too much sugar in the blood) leads to an increase in free radicals, which are especially damaging to the heart tissue.

If you read my article on how antioxidants work, you know that basically they absorb those nasty free radicals before they can cause damage to your body.  What sort of damage?  How about altered gene expression (switching inappropriate genes on and off like a crazy little kid playing with a light switch), or altering the electrical conduction of the heart (remember it’s a muscle and needs to contract rhythmically, which is done electrically), or even apoptosis (programmed cell death). 

That last one, apoptosis, is done by your body on a regular basis to clear out the worn-out cells. A somewhat harsh metaphor is, to take the weak, lame horse out of the herd and shoot it to put it out of its misery (and perserve the health of the rest of the herd).  But free radicals seem to send that process haywire, so perfectly good horses are getting shot with no rhyme or reason, and much too often. 

(My apologies to you horse lovers out there.   No actual horses were harmed during the writing of this metaphor.)

The bottom line is, free radicals tear your heart muscle down… make it weaker bit by bit by breaking down the heart muscle itself and altering how well it conducts the very electrical signals that make the heart beat nice and regular like it’s supposed to.  Since diabetes increases the level of free radicals dramatically, that obviously will cause a lot of damage to the heart… unless you have some trusty-dusty antioxidants to absorb those ugly free radical and spare your heart muscle.  That’s why when you increase your intake of garlic, heart health increases along with it (according to this research).

Further Implications Of The Garlic Oil Study

By the way, there’s a lot implicated by this really well-designed study.  While the researchers were looking at extreme cases of damage induced by diabetes, free radicals are constantly on the attack in your body.  It isn’t just diabetes that creates free radicals.  You’ve got free radicals in you right now, just from regular, normal metabolic processes.  Then, exposure to all the junk and toxins and crap floating around in our food, water, air, and sprayed onto our furniture, clothing… I’m going to stop before I get on a rant, here. 

Suffice it to say that all the toxic crap surrounding us in the modern age dramatically increases the levels of free radicals in our bodies.  This study shows in a very real, nuts-and-bolts sort of way what the damage caused by free radicals looks like… at least in the heart.  But similiar damage is caused throughout your body by free radicals.  We just haven’t gotten around to cataloging it so thoroughly as in this study on the heart.

That’s why I keep telling people to get some extra antioxidants into their lives.  A healthy diet isn’t enough.  If this were a thousand years ago, and we didn’t have an environment so polluted that even seabirds in the Arctic are full of mercury, then sure, a healthy diet should do the trick.  But we’re under chemical stresses our ancestors never even dreamed of.  So along with a good multivitamin and fish oils (I talk about the reasons for those in other articles), I definitely advise that you take a good, potent antioxidant supplement to protect you from the ravages of free radicals.

Get a little garlic in you and stay healthy!

Source article:  http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/jf101606s

 Nice work, FDA.  The gov-ment put out a warning last week on Slimming Beauty, a dangerous weight loss supplement that, whoops, happens to contain prescription drugs.

If this sounds mildly familiar, it’s because the same thing happened with a weight loss supplement called Que She, which I talk about in this article.  Que She had all kinds of ridiculous stuff put in their formulation; Slimming Beauty isn’t much better.

Specifically, it contains a stimulant called sibutramine, which is a no-joke stimulant.  Like Fenfluramine, a stimulant used years ago in sketchy weight-loss clinics, sibutramine increases the risk of all kinds of fun stuff: heart and kidney failure, and my favorite, “sudden death”.

This isn’t the first time sibutramine has been put in weight loss products.  Earlier this year, “Herbal Diet Natural” was put on Health Canada’s danger list for containing this dangerous stimulant, and a couple of years back, the FDA put out a similar warning on over two dozen weight loss products.

In fact, there were even counterfeit versions of Alli, which is a prescription drug for weight loss, that contain sibutramine instead.  The irony of THAT is, Alli has its own safety problems.

What’s shocking to me about this isn’t that yet another weight loss supplement has been found to contain dangerous substances, it’s that people keep falling for this crap.  Seriously!  How many times do we have to get burned by yet another “weight loss miracle pill” before it finally sinks in that THERE IS NO MAGIC IN WEIGHT LOSS?

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  You gain or lose weight due to physics and biochemistry, not magic.  If some pill is going to make fat go away, just how it that going to happen?  In the absence of exercise or a proper diet, just how are you going to create an energy (caloric) deficit WITHOUT using some sicko dangerous stimulant to hop up your metabolic rate? Or perhaps some sort of laxative to make you uncontrollably void out everything you just ate (obviously also a dangerous and rather disgusting manuever)?

There is one path to losing weight, and that’s fixing your diet and exercise habits for the long term.  That’s why my weight loss book is all about how to change your fatness habits to fitness habits, not how to explosively poop your way to a slimmer you.

Sure, there’s a few supplements that can help move you in the right direction, but the healthy ones do it by replacing vital nutrients you may be missing, not by trying to create short-cuts with a thinly disguised version of crystal meth.  Things like antioxidants, fish oils, CoQ10 and chromium, all help by making the mechanisms of weight loss work properly… but you still have to eat right and exercise in order for it to work.

In other words, you can remove road blocks to weight loss with healthy supplements (like if excessive cortisol is making it tough to lose weight even if you’re exercising and eating a whole foods diet), but you can’t force the issue.  So rather than wait for the FDA to save you from yet another dangerous weight loss supplement… and believe me, there will be more… avoid the issue altogether by fixing your diet and exercise habits, and losing the weight that way.

Source article from the FDA: http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm228801.htm

Link to sales page for my neurologically-based weight loss ebook, “Road Map To Abs”, on my weight loss sister site: http://www.roadmaptoabs.com/info/ .

Learn how to fix your fitness habits for the long term and stay healthy!

A recent study shows some postitive results for the use of the supplement pycnogenol and tinnitus relief.  Tinnitus is a condition usually just called “ringing in the ears“, which affects a suprisingly large number of people.

TINNITUS

Usually, tinnitus is just annoying.  It’s not really a disease all by itself, but more of a symptom.  A rushing, hissing, or ringing sound is heard, even though there isn’t anything creating such a sound.

It’s more of a concern as a sign of another underlying disease process than anything else, but the ringing sensation itself can also become a problem.  Think about it.  If you constantly have an annoying ringing sound in your ears, how well are you going to sleep? Or focus?

One of the causes of tinnitus is a problem with blood flow in the area of the ear.  This is where our old friend pycnogenol comes in.

PYCNOGENOL AND TINNITUS

Pycnogenol is a supplement based on a pine bark extract that has been shown to have a number of beneficial properties.  If you’ve looked around this site much, you’ve probably seen me mention it here and there… like in this article on how pycnogenol helps asthma symptoms or this one on reducing inflammation with pycnogenol. 

One of its more impressive characteristics is its ability to aid circulation, both in the major arteries and the smaller arterioles and capillaries.  Remember, your circulatory system looks like a tree branch… a large vessel branching out into progressively smaller, more complex, and more delicate structures.

Pycnogenol helps to make those arteries more elastic and pliable, which in turn makes them more capable of adapting to changes in demand for blood flow.  Not every part of your body needs the same amount of blood flow all of the time or the same as every other body part.  Demand varies, and the more responsive your circulatory system is, the better those demands are met.

THE STUDY

For this particular study, subjects rated their tinnitus symptoms and also had their blood flow velocities measured (side note:  it is super cool that we can actually measure blood flow velocities).  Some subjects were in a control group, some on a low dose of pycnogenol, and some on a high dose.

After four weeks, the results were pretty obvious.  Blood flow velocity increased proportionally to the amount of pycnogenol used in supplementation, and tinnitus symptoms reduced in a similar manner.  No changes were noted in the control group, so there wasn’t any Jedi Mind Trick placebo effect.

So, this study is a pretty strong indicator of the use of pycogenol for tinnitus relief, and the circulatory-enhancing effects of pycnogenol in general.

Stay healthy!

 Source article: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-10/mg-sdp101310.php

A recent study published in the British Medical Journal suggests the popular joint pain supplement glucosamine is ineffective, which brings up the question I’m often asked:  does glucosamine work?

First off, let’s define what we’re talking about.  The reason why people take glucosamine is they’re having joint pain, which can be caused by a lot of different things.  One of the potential causes is something called osteoarthritis or DJD (degenerative joint disease).

WHAT IS DJD?

I prefer the term DJD to osteoarthritis, partly because it’s easier to type, but mostly because it’s a more descriptive term and less likely to confuse people.  “Arthritis” is a general term, and a lot of people simply say they’ve “got arthritis” without knowing what KIND of arthritis they have.  Osteoarthritis is very, very different from Rheumatoid arthritis, but they’re often confused, so let’s define the terms.

DJD or osteoarthritis is, simply put, wear-and-tear arthritis.  It’s the arthritis of overuse.  Think of a marathon runner who doesn’t have any cartilage left in their knees, and you’re getting the picture.  Essentially, you’ve been breaking down the supporting structures of the joint faster than your body can replace those damaged bits, and by slow degrees, you’ve “degenerated”, or worn out, that joint. 

Rheumatoid arthritis, on the other hand, is an autoimmune condition in which the body attacks itself.  One way you can tell the difference is that RA affects many joints all over, while DJD only affects one or two joints (the ones you’re over-using).  There’s blood tests that will tell you the difference too.

The point is, DJD is the slow wearing down of the joint.  Specifically, the cartilage that cushions and protects the joint.  And, as that cartilage wears away, you start to get bones grinding on bones.  Ouch.

HOW DOES GLUCOSAMINE WORK?

The basic idea behind glucosamine supplementation is to make it much easier for your body to create cartilage.  Glucosamine is a precursor for glucosaminoglycans (try saying THAT with a mouthful of marbles!), which are a big ingredient in cartilage.

It’s kind of difficult to make cartilage.  Your body tends to do it pretty slowly.  So, the theory goes, if we give the body tons of the building blocks of cartilage, the body will be able to make cartilage more quickly and perhaps keep up with that slow degeneration associated with DJD.  Or, if we’re lucky, even reverse that decline and build up a surplus of cartilage to replace what’s already been lost.

That’s the idea, at least.  But does glucosamine really work?

LATEST STUDY ON GLUCOSAMINE

This British Medical Journal study took a look at the use of glucosamine and another common co-supplement, chondroitin, to see if people were getting any pain relief.  They also took a look at seeing if there was any increase in joint space (from more cartilage being formed, which doesn’t show up on an Xray but will make the space between bones look bigger).

Their findings were not encouraging.  They found very small, clinically insignificant differences in pain from placebo.  They didn’t find much at all for increase in joint space.  Their conclusion?  Glucosamine doesn’t work.  Chuck it out the window.

But is their study any good?

The researchers used what’s called a meta-analysis, which isn’t a term for the Monster Truck of studies. It basically just means you add up other people’s research.  In a regular study, I take a bunch of people and call them “subjects” and do stuff to them I can measure and compare to a control group.  In other words, I generate data.

In a meta-analysis, I take the data from your study, and another guy’s study, and his friend’s study, and their second cousin’s barber’s study, and any other study I can find, and use that.  Rather than generate data, I borrow it from other people.

The upside is, wow, now I’ve got tons of really, really cheap data.  I don’t have to recruit unsuspecting schulbs to be in my study, or pay for materials, or really do much of anything.  Awesome.

The downside is, my results can very, very easily be skewed in an inaccurate direction.  What if I pick only those research articles that support my position, and leave out the ones that might disagree with me?  That’s hardly accurate.  And it happens a lot more than you think. 

Oh, it’s not always due to an evil desire to confuse people just for the sake of getting published. Researchers get attached to their ideas.  Often, they will “discard” studies they feel don’t meet up to their standards, when really, those studies just disagreed with their pre-conceived ideas.

I bring this up because these researchers’ findings conflict somewhat with my clinical experience with glucosamine.  So let me share that with you and why I think a lot of studies are flawed when it comes to this particular supplement.

MY RESULTS WITH GLUCOSAMINE

Put most simply, about fifty-fifty.  About half of people who try out glucosamine end up seeing some results.  It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s the sulfate version, chondroitin, or if they add in MSM (a common co-supplement for joint pain). 

What DOES matter is that they take the stuff religiously for six to eight weeks at LEAST to find out if it’s going to work.  And, they need to spread the dose out during the day.  Glucosamine usually comes in 500 mg tablets, and you need 1500 mg a day as a typical therapeutic dose, so you take a tablet with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And when I say take it religiously, I mean it.  Don’t miss one dose.  And after about two months, you’ll have a fifty-fifty shot at whether or not it works.

So the first question is, did these British researchers pick studies for their meta-analysis that followed those guidelines?  All I can see in their abstract (study summary) is that they chose studies with a large sample size (over 200 subjects).  Nothing about length of time, dosage used, or any of the other details that can derail any sort of clinical regimen.

If something works, but you don’t use it right… it doesn’t work!

INCREASE YOUR ODDS

Here’s a little something extra from your buddy Healthy Andy.  You can increase your odds of making glucosamine effective by making sure you add in light to moderate exercise while you take that supplement.

Wait, what? Didn’t I say earlier that DJD came from overuse?  And now I’m telling you to use the very joint that’s been broken down by overuse?

That’s right.  Because you didn’t break it down with use.  You broke it down with OVERUSE.

Here’s the secret to building up any area of the body you want to.  There are three basic components that interact to create growth: the signal to grow, the material needed to grow, and the opportunity to use that material to grow. 

The signal to grow is called stress.  Exercise is a really just stressing the body to signal it that it needs to grow.  That’s all.  It’s the body’s reaction to that stress that leads to the actual growth of tissue.

So first you signal the body.  Then, of course, the body needs the physical building blocks to make it happen.  This is different for various tissues (muscle, bone, tendon, whatever), but in the case of DJD, we’re talking cartilage so we’re also talking glucosamine.

Lastly, you have to give the body a freakin’ chance to actually do its work.  We call this “rest”, and it’s an often-ignored part of physical training, because it sounds lazy and you can’t sell books or DVDs called “Get Ripped And Huge With Rest!”.

HOW TO MAKE CARTILAGE GROW

Therefore, if we want cartilage to grow, not only do we need to provide the materials (like glucosamine), but also we must SIGNAL the body that it needs to actually USE those materials for something. 

It doesn’t do me a damn bit of good to suck down gobs and gobs of protein powder if I never bother to work out.  So why should just popping glucosamine pills help me if I never signal the body to build up that joint?  Again, we signal the body to build up a joint with stress (exercise).

The tricky part is, we don’t want to put so much stress on the joint that we continue to break it down.  So the dance is, find the right amount of stress to signal the body for growth while not overwhelming an already weak area.

A good rule of thumb is, let discomfort be your guide.  Light to moderate is the buzzword, and the other key phrase is “to tolerance”.  That means, don’t go until it hurts.  If you put discomfort on a scale from one to ten, one being “I notice it, but I only barely notice it” and ten being “Oh Dear God, I feel like I am burning alive, please shoot me!”, then don’t let your discomfort go past a one.

Walking and light swimming are good choices.  Anything that’s low-impact.  But make sure you’re using the affected joint- walking isn’t going to help your elbow.  For resistance training, use light weights and slow movement.  Explosive, sudden moves are out, as is heavy lifting.

And then you simply slowly, gradually add more stress over time, just like you would if you were recovering from a muscle strain.  Except that cartilage recovers at a much slower rate than muscle, so account for that in your progression of training.

That, my friends, is where I think most of glucosamine research is flawed.  Everybody just shoves pills down peoples’ throats and nobody bothers to actually have those people send the signal to their bodies to actually USE those pills.

So does glucosamine work? Like I said, in my experience, it’s about fifty-fifty whether this stuff will help you.  If you follow my recommendations on exercise, you might boost those odds a little bit.  But either way, glucosamine isn’t going to hurt you, so I usually tell people to give it a shot.

Please feel free to share you experiences with glucosamine in the comments section below, and if you have friends or family with DJD-related joint pain, be sure to pass this article on to them!

Stay healthy!

P.S.  Here’s the link to that study:  http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4675

I recently got a request to discuss theanine as an autism supplement, so let’s start by briefly setting the stage with a quick description of autism.

Autism is a developmental condition that is in the press a lot, and for good reason.  It can be difficult to deal with (especially in severe cases) and is surprisingly common (6 per 1000 births have some autism spectrum disorder).  Classified as a neurological developmental disorder, it is characterized by problems with social development and communication, and children with autism often perform repetitive or compulsive tasks.

It’s widely considered to be genetic in nature, but like many genetic conditions, cues or stresses from the environment can trigger or worsen these sorts of conditions.  You’ve probably heard some of the controversial arguments about the possible link of certain vaccines and autism- we’re not going to get into that in this article.

Instead, I want to focus on the potential merits of a nutritional supplement called theanine, and what it can (or can’t) do to help those with autism.

WHAT’S THEANINE?

So glad you asked.  Theanine is an amino acid- which is essentially a little piece of a protein.  This particular amino acid is commonly found in tea (especially green tea), but you can also get it in supplement form.  As a supplement, you’ll ususally see it advertised as “L-theanine”… the “L” refers to an organic chemistry designation that has to do with how the molecule bends polarized light (NOT important to remember).

One of the interesting properties of theanine (and really, why we care about it) is that it can cross the blood-brain barrier.  Here’s what that means.  Your brain does not use the same blood supply as the rest of your body (muscles, organs, etc) uses.  In fact, blood will damage brain matter… this happens with a hemmoraghic stroke, which is a topic beyond today’s discussion.

Instead of blood, the brain and spinal cord are surrounded by a tough membrane which is filled with a filtrate of blood called cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF).  You know this already.  You’ve heard of a spinal tap, right?  That’s the test where they stick a big needle into your lower back to draw off some of this CSF and test it for abnormalities.

The reason any of this matters is, not a lot of stuff can cross that membrane and get into the CSF.  That’s kind of the point- to protect the brain and spinal cord from foreign elements.  Some things, though, can cross this barrier, and therefore have some psychoactive effect.

WHAT DOES IT DO? 

So what does it do?  Studies suggest theanine works by affecting neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.  A neurotransmitter is a chemical involved in the proper transmission or activity of nerves.  Since your brain is a giant bundle of nerves, it uses a lot of neurotransmitters.  Also, studies suggest that theanine will increase levels of a neurological inhibitor called GABA… think of it as a substance to “calm things down” on a neurological level.

The big thing, though, is that studies have shown theanine to increase the alpha wave activity in the brain.  So what’s an alpha wave?  Well, since your brain is a bunch of nerves bundled together, and since nerves transmit an electrical signal, your brain is constantly creating an electromagnetic field that we can actually measure. 

You may have heard of the term EEG (electroencephalograph, blimy that’s a mouthful).  That’s a device which measures this EM field.  And, various patterns of a brain’s EM field gets different names.

Alpha waves are those patterns which are associated with “wakeful relaxation”.  Think of being awake and alert but with your eyes closed and being very calm.  That’s an alpha wave state.

BACK TO AUTISM

So, the theory goes, by encouraging the awake-calm alpha waves, supplementing with theanine can help some of the symptoms of autism.  It’s an intriguing concept.

Here’s the bad news. While studies have been conducted and have shown pretty clearly that theanine supplementation DOES increase alpha wave activity, there are NOT any studies on theanine and autism.  I checked.  So it might or might not work.  Just because something makes logical sense that it SHOULD work, doesn’t mean it will. 

The good news is, theanine is extremely safe.  Studies have shown that you’re not going to hurt yourself even on high doses of the stuff.  So, it won’t hurt to try it out.  A 50 mg dose is sufficient to alter brain waves toward the alpha state, and 200 mg is often used as a therapeutic dose.

If any of you folks try theanine as an autism supplement, let me know what your results are.

Stay healthy!

The normally-inept FDA stirred from its usual peaceful slumber to actually do its job and warn consumers about a shifty, shady weight loss supplement called Que She.

What’s that, you say?  A weight loss supplement that isn’t completely and utterly legit?  Say it isn’t so!

True story, my friends.  And while there are some supplements that can naturally aid in healthy weight loss, let me tell you, the crap that is out there can be downright terrifying.  Que she is a great example of one of these nightmares.

It calls itself a “supplement”, but really, it contains a number of PRESCIPTION DRUGS as its active ingredients.  If that sounds illegal, that’s because it is.  Horribly, horribly illegal. 

My favorite controlled substance in Que She is fenfluramine, a stimulant drug that isn’t even legal in the US, and hasn’t been since the ’90s.  Fan-tastic.  Not only are they illegally putting drugs into their supplements, but they’re using drugs that aren’t even legal in the first place.  What the heck, let’s just put some crack in there while we’re at it!

Fenfluramine was part of the stupid, ridiculous “Fen-Phen” medical weight loss extravaganza/fiasco that was all the rage back in the ’90s.  These stupid clinics popped up everywhere; as I like to say, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of these Fen-Phen clinics.

They used a two drug combo, fenfluramine (also called “Redux”) and phentermine, to try yet again to create a magical situation where people could lose weight without actually changing their eating or exercise habits.  Brilliant.  Fen-Phen is supposed to reduce appetite and all that sort of thing by jacking up various neurotransmitter levels.  What it really did is, make people go really wacky and crazy in the head.  Trust me, I dated a girl on the stuff.  Scary.

Surprising, right?  That if you feed somebody handfuls of the chemicals regulating BRAIN FUNCTION, that maybe, just maybe, things might not go exactly as planned?  Maybe a side effect or two?  Mmmm? Maybe?

Bah!  Details, my friends, details!  So you go a little crazy, so what?  But then, people starting keeling over dead, and THAT caught somebody’s attention (mostly litigation attorneys).  Turns out, fenfluramine causes damage to the valves of the heart as well as pulmonary hypertension (increase in blood pressure leading to the lungs, bad stuff). 

Whoops.

So, Fen-Phen got pulled, and drug companies and clinics got the BeJesus sued out of them, and of course, nobody learned a damn thing, because they’re STILL trying to create a magic weight loss pill.  Jeeesh!

I digress.  We were discussing Que She.  Not only does it have the bad half of Fen-Phen in it, it’s also got a prescription beta blocker as an active ingredient.  That’s a drug used for cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heartbeat).  Pretty sweet, hunh?  Weight loss AND you don’t have to bother going to see your cardiologist!

What, were they TRYING to kill people? 

There’s more, of course, but you get the idea.  Bunch of prescription drugs, some not even legal with a prescription any longer, and the best part is, all mixed up in a cocktail that creates God Only Knows what sort of interactive effects?  Don’t forget, drugs tend to interact with each other and change how they work when mixed together, and the more you mix in, the more difficult it becomes to predict the outcome.

So, it’s a good thing this crap has been identified and pulled off of the market.  But folks, there’s going to be more.  How many similar “supplements” are out there, flying under the FDA’s radar?  The real problem here, is people trying to take a magic pill to lose weight.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  There is no magic in weight loss.  THERE IS NO MAGIC IN WEIGHT LOSS.  There’s just physics and biochemistry and various other natural laws.  Yes, there are some actual real healthy supplements that can aid you along the way, but even still, it’s re-tooling your diet and exercise habits that is going to do the majority of the work.

Everybody wants a short-cut.  I get it.  But there aren’t any.  Every thinks they can outsmart Nature, and it’s all fun and games at first, until your heart valves go boom and you can’t pump blood through your lungs anymore.  Trying to outsmart your body’s physiology is like trying to outsmart gravity.  You can’t do it.  Sooner or later, you’re going to get squashed.

Do it the smart way and switch to a whole foods diet, cut out the sugar, flour and processed foods, and get your butt off the couch and move around more.  That’s the long-term path to weight loss, and the only one that won’t put you in an early grave.

Stay healthy!

Source: http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm218427.htm