I recently had my sixth series of prolo therapy injections and thought it was time to provide and update. One of the reasons I hadn’t written earlier was because during this time, a myriad of events have occurred with my son who, it turns out, has severe osteo arthritis in his ankle. He’s had pain in his foot and ankle since he began walking 17 years ago. We’ve sought out answers and remedies all this time but were unable to provide him with anything but temporary and only partial relief. [Read more...]
5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You by Dr. Mark Hyman
June 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
IF YOU CAN’T CONVINCE THEM, CONFUSE THEM.
—Harry Truman
The current media debate about the benefits (or lack of harm) of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in our diet misses the obvious. The average American increased their consumption of HFCS (mostly from sugar sweetened drinks and processed food) from zero to over 60 pounds per person per year. During that time period, obesity rates have more than tripled and diabetes incidence has increased more than seven fold. Not perhaps the only cause, but a fact that cannot be ignored.
Doubt and confusion are the currency of deception, and they sow the seeds of complacency. These are used skillfully through massive print and television advertising campaigns by the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to dispel the “myth” that HFCS is harmful and assert through the opinion of “medical and nutrition experts” that it is no different than cane sugar. It is a “natural” product that is a healthy part of our diet when used in moderation.
Except for one problem. When used in moderation it is a major cause of heart disease, obesity, cancer, dementia, liver failure, tooth decay and more.
Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?
The Lengths the Corn Industry Will Go To
The goal of the corn industry is to call into question any claim of harm from consuming high fructose corn syrup, and to confuse and deflect by calling their product natural “corn sugar”. That’s like calling tobacco in cigarettes natural herbal medicine. Watch the slick ad where a caring father walks hand in hand with his four-year-old daughter through a big question mark carved in an idyllic cornfield.
In the ad, the father tells us:
“Like any parent I have questions about the food my daughter eats – like high fructose corn syrup. So I started looking for answers from medical and nutrition experts, and what I discovered whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar. Knowing that makes me feel better about what she eats and that’s one less thing to worry about.”
Physicians are also targeted directly. I received a 12-page color glossy monograph from the Corn Refiners Association reviewing the “science” that HFCS was safe and no different than cane sugar. I assume the other 700,000 physicians in America received the same propaganda at who knows what cost.
In addition to this, I received a special “personal” letter from the Corn Refiner’s Association outlining every mention of the problems with HCFS in our diet – whether in print, blogs, books, radio or television. They warned me of the errors of my ways and put me on “notice”. For what I am not sure. To think they are tracking this (and me) that closely gives me an Orwellian chill.
New websites like www.sweetsurprise.com and www.cornsugar.com help “set us straight” about HFCS with quotes from professors of nutrition and medicine and thought leaders from Harvard and other stellar institutions.
Why is the corn industry spending millions on misinformation campaigns to convince consumers and health care professionals of the safety of their product? Could it be that the food industry comprises 17 percent of our economy?
But are these twisted sweet lies or a sweet surprise, as the Corn Refiners Association websites claim?
What the Science Says about HFCS
Let’s examine the science and insert some common sense into the conversation. These facts may indeed come as a sweet surprise. The ads suggest getting your nutrition advice from your doctor (who, unfortunately, probably knows less about nutrition than most grandmothers). Having studied this for over a decade, and having read, interviewed or personally talked with most of the “medical and nutrition experts” used to bolster the claim that “corn sugar” and cane sugar are essentially the same, quite a different picture emerges and the role of HCFS in promoting obesity, disease and death across the globe becomes clear.
Last week over lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames, one of the foremost nutritional scientists in the world and Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional biochemist, a student of Linus Pauling and I reviewed the existing science, and Dr. Ames shared shocking new evidence from his research center on how HFCS can trigger body-wide inflammation and obesity.
Here are 5 reasons you should stay way from any product containing high fructose corn syrup and why it may kill you.
1. Sugar in any form causes obesity and disease when consumed in pharmacologic doses.
Cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup are indeed both harmful when consumed in pharmacologic doses of 140 pounds per person per year. When one 20 ounce HFCS sweetened soda, sports drink or tea has 17 teaspoons of sugar (and the average teenager often consumes two drinks a day) we are conducting a largely uncontrolled experiment on the human species. Our hunter gather ancestors consumed the equivalent of 20 teaspoons per year, not per day. In this sense, I would agree with the corn industry that sugar is sugar. Quantity matters. But there are some important differences.
2. HFCS and cane sugar are NOT biochemically identical or processed the same way by the body.
High fructose corn syrup is an industrial food product and far from “natural” or a naturally occurring substance. It is extracted from corn stalks through a process so secret that Archer Daniels Midland and Carghill would not allow the investigative journalist, Michael Pollan to observe it for his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The sugars are extracted through a chemical enzymatic process resulting in a chemically and biologically novel compound called HFCS.
Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together – glucose and fructose in equal amounts. The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body.
HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is sweeter than glucose. And HCFS is cheaper than sugar because of the government farm bill corn subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and cheaper than products made with cane sugar. This allowed for the average soda size to balloon from 8 ounces to 20 ounces with little financial costs to manufacturers but great human costs of increased obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.
Now back to biochemistry. Since there is there is no chemical bond between them, no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides and cholesterol) this is why it is the major cause of liver damage in this country and causes a condition called “fatty liver” which affects 70 million people. The rapidly absorbed glucose triggers big spikes in insulin – our body’s major fat storage hormone. Both these features of HFCS lead to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and more.
But there was one more thing I learned during lunch with Dr. Bruce Ames. Research done by his group at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP (our body’s energy source). This depletes the energy fuel source or ATP in our gut required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little “tight junctions” cement each intestinal cell together preventing food and bacteria from “leaking” across the intestinal membrane and triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.
High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes in the intestinal lining allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and accelerated aging. Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients and fiber that doesn’t exhibit the same biological effects as the free high fructose doses found in “corn sugar”.
The takeaway: Cane sugar and the industrially produced, euphemistically named “corn sugar” are not biochemically or physiologically the same.
3. HFCS contains contaminants including mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA
An FDA researcher asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing.(i) Poisoned sugar is certainly not “natural”.
When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph, strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects and toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but shouldn’t we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15-20 percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake?
4. Independent medical and nutrition experts DO NOT support the use of HCFS in our diet, despite the assertions of the corn industry.
The corn industry’s happy looking websites www.cornsugar.com and www.sweetsurprise.com bolster their position that cane sugar and corn sugar are the same by quoting experts, or should we say mis-quoting …
Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has published widely on the dangers of sugar-sweetened drinks and their contribution to the obesity epidemic. In a review of HFCS in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,(ii) he explains the mechanism by which the free fructose may contribute to obesity. He states that:
“The digestion, absorption, and metabolism of fructose differ from those of glucose. Hepatic metabolism of fructose favors de novo lipogenesis [production of fat in the liver]. In addition, unlike glucose, fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion or enhance leptin production. Because insulin and leptin act as key afferent signals in the regulation of food intake and body weight [to control appetite], this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased energy intake and weight gain. Furthermore, calorically sweetened beverages may enhance caloric overconsumption.”
He states that HFCS is absorbed more rapidly than regular sugar, and that it doesn’t stimulate insulin or leptin production. This prevents you from triggering the body’s signals for being full and may lead to overconsumption of total calories.
He concludes by saying that:
“… the increase in consumption of HFCS has a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity, and the overconsumption of HFCS in calorically sweetened beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity.”
The corn industry takes his comments out of context to support their position. “All sugar you eat is the same.”
True pharmacologic doses of any kind of sugar are harmful, but the biochemistry of different kinds of sugar and their respective effects on absorption, appetite and metabolism are different, and Dr. Popkin knows that.
David S. Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, and a personal friend has published extensively on the dangers and the obesogenic properties of sugar-sweetened beverages. He was quoted as saying that “high fructose corn syrup is one of the most misunderstood products in the food industry.” When I asked him why he supported the corn industry, he told me he didn’t and that his comments were taken totally out of context.
Misrepresenting science is one thing, misrepresenting scientists who have been at the forefront of the fight against obesity and high fructose sugar sweetened beverages is quite another.
5. HCFS is almost always a marker of poor-quality, nutrient-poor disease creating industrial food products or “food-like substances”.
The last reason to avoid products that contain HFCS is that they are a marker for poor-quality, nutritionally depleted, processed industrial food full of empty calories and artificial ingredients. If you find “high fructose corn syrup” on the label you can be sure it is not a whole, real, fresh food full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Stay away if you want to stay healthy. We still must reduce our overall consumption of sugar, but with this one simple dietary change you can radically reduce your health risks and improve your health.
While debate may rage about the biochemistry and physiology of cane sugar vs. corn sugar, this is in fact beside the point (despite the finer points of my scientific analysis above). The conversation has been diverted to a simple assertion that cane sugar and corn sugar are not different.
The real issues are only two.
- We are consuming HFCS and sugar in pharmacologic quantities never before experienced in human history — 140 pounds a year vs. 20 teaspoons a year 10,000 years ago.
- High fructose corn syrup is always found in very poor quality foods that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts of other disease promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals and even mercury.
These critical ideas should be the heart of the national conversation, not the meaningless confusing ads and statements by the corn industry in the media and online that attempt to assure the public that the biochemistry of real sugar and industrially produced sugar from corn are the same.
Know I’d like to hear from you …
Do you think there is an association between the introduction of HFCS in our diet and the obesity epidemic?
What reason do you think the Corn Refiners Association has for running such ads and publishing websites like those listed in this article?
What do you think of the science presented here and the general effects of HFCS on the American diet?
Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
References
(i) Dufault, R., LeBlanc, B., Schnoll, R. et al. 2009. Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: Measured concentrations in food product sugar. Environ Health. 26(8):2.
(ii) Bray, G.A., Nielsen, S.J., and B.M. Popkin. 2004. Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 79(4):537-43. Review.
Do you know where I’m from? by Gypsy Rose
June 13, 2011 By 4 Comments
Hi everyone!
Gypsy here. Whew, it’s been a tough winter and spring for me. I’ll catch you up on the serious side of life and then on to the more fun side, alright?
I apparently have lots of allergies and my asthma has been keeping me low and tired. Carol and I have been all over Austin seeing different doctors about what the cause is of all this stuff and I think we finally have a handle on it.
We saw Dr. Charla Jones who determined that my heart isn’t really enlarged which is great news. She also suspects that what I have is an obstruction in my snout and or in my throat that keeps me from breathing fully.
Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is with an ultrasound. If it turns out to be true then the next step would be surgery. We opted out of those for a lot of reasons and I’m happy about that.
The next best thing to do is what we’ve been doing which is staying cool and nebulization. I’m almost always under a fan now and I get nebulized twice a day for sure and sometimes three times. I also take an antihistamine which keeps my allergy symptoms down but my dryness up.
Needless to say, Carol, Jimmy and I are spending a lot more time together; 20 minutes at a time for each nebulizing treatment gets me a lot of attention. I don’t mind the treatments any more as I get lots of rubs and I always get a cookie. Hey, 2 or 3 cookies a day and a lot of rubbing? What’s a little smoky stuff compared to that?
I still eat special food and treats so I won’t have any food allergy problems. It tastes okay but I’d really love a nice big steak bone or some chicken like I used to get from time to time. I look at everyone the way I used to. You know, with the puppy eyes. It doesn’t do a darn thing for me anymore. They actually look back at me with the same face and then I know I’m not going to get any.
On the fun side of life, and as usual, my family is trying to figure out if I’m a southern belle or a highly sophisticated British chick. I like to keep them guessing by changing my accent, my look and my behavior at times.
Where do you think I’m from? I’ll give you a few hints and you all respond to Carol, alright?
Its true I’m part border collie but do you know where I come from? I have quite nice manners. I’m always dainty when I eat. I prance when I go on my walks and I feel it is truly important to stay nice and tidy. If that isn’t enough, my accent should be a dead giveaway!
But then again, you know, a girl has to have a little fun. Sometimes I throw in a little Jersey shore accent to throw everyone off! Brilliant don’t you think?
Come on now. Give it your best guess.
Off to nap,
Gypsy 
Did you win the survey drawing?
June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment
And the winner is…..Alyssa M from Florida!!!! Alyssa won a $50 gift card to Amazon. Congratulations to Alyssa and a hearty thank you to everyone that participated in the survey. You’ve all been a great help. I wish I could have given you all gift cards.
The results are in and I’m quite pleased with the information garnered.
Most of the responders were American but we did have a few folks join in from Mexico and Brazil!! Gotta love that. Actually, you might be interested to know that I have lovely readers, both male and female, from around the globe. Cool, don’t you think?
Two thirds of you currently utilize alternative therapies and also use supplements as a part of your healthcare regimen. Hooray!!!
I am so happy to know and report that a whopping 93% of you believe that well being is as much a state of mind as it is body and that many of you also feel empowered to act as your own advocate when it comes to your health.
There is a lot more that I’ll be sharing in the coming newsletters. Now, thanks to all of you, I can get down to work writing up and bringing new information to you on preferred topics with the frequency and platforms you enjoy.
Again, many thanks to all of you who participated.
Your Partner In Health,
Carol
Cuboid Syndrome by Carol Bilich
May 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Recently I had the great displeasure of creating two stress fractures in my left foot which were quite painful. But what really took my breath away was the dislocation of my cuboid bone. Having gone to the podiatrist, I learned quite a lot about this injury and thought I’d share what I’d found with you.
Cuboid Syndrome is the diagnosis given when the cuboid bone of the foot becomes dislocated or misaligned resulting in pain and irritation to the surrounding connective tissue. Take a look at the picture to see its location in the foot.
The cuboid bone help to stabilize the foot but it is prone to slipping out of place during movements that twist or invert the ankle. Athletes who enjoy lateral or side to side sports that require intense stabilization and short stops like tennis or racquetball are easy targets for Cuboid Syndrome but everyone from soccer players to dancers can experience this painful problem. Even walking incorrectly over a period of time or stepping off a curb incorrectly can cause the bone to dislocate to a downward position toward the cuboid pad.
The pain can develop quickly or gradually over a period of time following an incident. While the pain is often located directly over the cuboid bone it can also be felt under the arch, along the center and side borders of the foot and surrounding tissue, ligaments and tendons. According to Rick Allen, D.C., “The calcaneocuboid ligament, which extends from the heel to the cuboid may become strained and can mimic heel spur pain along the bottom of the heel.” Pain may be present during weight bearing and non weight bearing activities, when attempting to stand on your toes or inverting the ankle, and in my case, when trying to stabilize or balance on one foot during a dance move.
Cuboid syndrome is typically diagnosed via a thorough palpation by a qualified doctor as the dislocation is so minor that it can’t be picked up by x-ray or MRI.
Cuboid syndrome can be easily treated with a series of manipulations by a qualified doctor or therapist and pain relief is frequently instantaneous. Dr. Gary Prant, DPM has found that “often several manipulations are required because the cuboid may not stay in place once it is relocated. I find that most people require about three manipulations over a period of about five weeks before the ligaments around the cuboid tighten up and hold the cuboid bone comfortably in place.”
Dr. Prant suggests that in addition to manipulation, other forms of treatment including physical therapy, strappings and padding in a certain manner to force the cuboid back into position can be extremely helpful. Many podiatrists and other foot health professionals can create and orthotic with a built in cuboid pad can be very helpful in maintaining the position of the cuboid.
Now, Do I Use Heat or Ice for This Pain? by Robin Delia, PT
May 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Here’s some info on how to use ice and heat especially for chronic pain, or gym workouts gone wrong.
What I taught people when I worked at Austin Pain Therapy is to use ice and heat. In other words 20-30 min of ice followed immediately by 20-30 of heat. The next step is to take a break for 30 min then repeat the process if you are really in a flare-up. It doesn’t matter whether ice or heat is used first, but I generally use ice first if it’s a bad flare-up as ice works to break the pain cycle. I then follow it with heat. But for instance if it’s a sore muscle but not throbbing and burning I would use heat first.
The truth is most people will only take the time to do one thing as there is always laundry to do, email, Dancing with the Stars, dinner, etc. I am guilty of this myself, but when I have a flare-up and finally take the time to use both it makes a significant difference in the pain level or intensity.
Don’t use electric heating pads first because most people stay on them longer than 30 min and this actually can cause more pain at a cellular level. I like the Bed Buddy Back Wrap which is hard to find any more. It has rice in it and is a moist heat, plus it’s portable so guess what, you can do all those chores around the house wearing it and even use it in the car to go pick up a pizza, who knew!
Another strategy is to use ice while getting ready for work and throw on your hot pack while driving to work. I have very expensive ice packs to very cheap and I’ve got to say I prefer my cheap one. Here is how to make one: Fill a one gallon zip lock back about half way with dish washing soap such as Palmolive. Burp it and then put it in another bag in case it leaks. Be sure to burp both bags. Lay the bag horizontally in the freezer and let chill for several hours.
It used to be that when you took them out they would be like a gel, but the formulas have changed and they are hard when you take them out. So I let it sit on the counter for a bit, but beware they are very cold so cover with a towel.
Now, a lot of women say they just don’t like “cold”. But the benefits can be worth it and its worth at least a try. So cover the pack up even more so that it’s just cool and you will gradually get used to the cold.
Don’t use cold packs however, if it really does increase your pain or you have numbness or RSD. A lot of women with Fibromyalgia can’t tolerate cold so listen to your body.
Okay, that covers the cold, so let’s talk about heat. Heat acts to relax the muscles and increase circulation. (Remember cold acts to break the pain cycle.) Now a lot of people say “Well it’s only temporary and the pain comes back”. I say “”True”, but if you have chronic, some relief, any amount of relief during the day is good.”
So here’s a way to make a heat pack and it’s a great way to treat painful hands and feet. Fill a pillowcase with about 4 lbs of dry white rice and then put it in a microwave for about 2 1/2 min. When you take it out, test for hot spots and move the rice around a bit to even out the heat. Next, put your rice filled pillowcase on a pillow on your lap and put your hands in the rice. If you are using this for feet, put the pillowcase on a towel and then slide your feet into the pillowcase.
The majority of my chronic pain sufferers, who regularly used ice and heat, stated at their discharge evaluation that they had a decrease in intensity and frequency of flare-ups. Additionally, they were able to get them under control quicker and were shorter in duration.
If you are suffering from pain, chronic or not, these steps often work and it’s worth it for some relief. Why not give it a shot?
How do I know if I’m gluten intolerant? by Mark Hyman
May 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO TELL if you are gluten intolerant: an elimination/reintegration diet and blood tests. But first, let’s talk about what gluten is and why it’s a problem for so many people.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, and oats. It is hidden in pizza, pasta, bread, wraps, rolls, and most processed foods. Clearly, gluten is a staple of the American diet.
Unfortunately it’s also linked to many diseases and conditions; a review paper in The New England Journal of Medicine listed 55 “diseases” that can be caused by eating gluten. These include osteoporosis, irritable bowel disease, inflammatory bowel disease, anemia, cancer, fatigue, canker sores, and rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and almost all other autoimmune diseases. Gluten is also linked to many psychiatric and neurological diseases, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, epilepsy, and neuropathy (nerve damage). It has also been linked to autism.
Gluten sensitivity is actually an autoimmune disease that creates inflammation throughout the body, with wide-ranging effects across all organ systems including your brain, heart, joints, digestive tract, and more. It can be the single cause behind many different “diseases.” To correct these diseases, you need to treat the cause–which is often gluten sensitivity–not just the symptoms.
To find out if you are one of the millions of people suffering from an unidentified gluten sensitivity, just follow this simple procedure.
The Elimination/Reintegration Diet
While testing can help identify gluten sensitivity, the only way you will know if this is really a problem for you is to eliminate all gluten for a short period of time (2 to 4 weeks) and see how you feel. Get rid of the following foods:
- Gluten (barley, rye, oats, spelt, kamut, wheat, triticale — see www.celiac.com for a complete list of foods that contain gluten, as well as often surprising and hidden sources of gluten.)
- Hidden sources (soup mixes, salad dressings, sauces, as well as lipstick, certain vitamins, medications, stamps and envelopes you have to lick, and even Play-Doh.)
For this test to work you MUST eliminate 100 percent of the gluten from your diet–no exceptions, no hidden gluten, and not a single crumb of bread.
Then eat it again and see what happens. If you feel bad at all, you need to stay off gluten permanently. This will teach you better than any test about the impact gluten has on your body.
There are also gluten allergy/celiac disease tests that are available through Labcorp or Quest Diagnostics. All these tests help identify various forms of allergy or sensitivity to gluten or wheat
This is only part of the story. Read the full article here: Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You.
The Dangers of the Medical Industrial Complex by Dr. Mark Hyman
April 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
YOUR DOCTORS THINK they make decisions based on medical evidence.
But they don’t!
In fact, half of medical evidence is hidden from your doctors. And the half that’s hidden is the half that shows drugs don’t work.
The bad news is that drug companies are not policed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the way they should be. A drug should be proven both effective and safe BEFORE it is prescribed to millions of people.
Sadly, that often isn’t the case.
Let me share with you two recent examples that highlight the dangerous collusion between drug companies and our government agency. They show why the FDA should really stand for “Federal Drug Aid.”
First, we now know that the cholesterol-lowering drug Zetia actually causes harm and leads to faster progression of heart disease DESPITE lowering cholesterol 58 percent when combined with Zocor.
This challenges the belief that high cholesterol causes heart attacks and shakes the $40 billion dollar cholesterol drug industry at its foundation.
Second, it’s come to light that nearly all the negative studies on antidepressants – that’s more than half of all studies on these drugs – were never published, giving a false sense of effectiveness of antidepressants to treat depression.
Don’t get me wrong.
I’m not telling you to blame your doctor.
Instead, blame deceptive scientific practices and industry-protective government polices. Let’s talk a closer look at these findings and their implications.
I once had a patient who worked in the drug approval division of the FDA. She taught me a very important lesson.
When a drug company designs and performs a study, it has to be registered with the FDA and ALL the results must be submitted to the FDA. But it doesn’t work that way.
Instead, the pharmaceutical companies ONLY submit the data they want to get published to medical journals. That means that any negative studies are hidden from the scientific community and from the public.
And when drug studies are sponsored by drug companies – as most are – they find positive outcomes at 4 times the rate of independently funded studies. This is also true for nutrition studies funded by the food industry that show the benefits of dairy or high-fructose corn syrup.
The FDA does not release this information.
Since drug companies fund most of the research in the world, other therapies that work better – such as diet and lifestyle or nutritional therapies – never get enough funding.
That was, it didn’t until 2004 when all the major scientific journals banded together and refused to publish any data from any drug study that did not list the results of all trials, either positive or negative, in a central database. (1)
Well, that sounds good – but listing obscure, unpublished studies buried deep in a hard-to-navigate public database run by the National Institutes of Health is hardly visible public disclosure.
Sure, the research studies are at least listed, but try to find out the results. After a few hours searching around on the website clinicaltrials.gov, I gave up.
Last year, Congress passed legislation expanding how much detail must be listed, but at the end of the day, who even looks at that? Most doctors don’t even have time to read the medical journals they receive. They get tiny bits of information from drug reps, who come to their office with free lunch and a sound bite about their drug.
They get slightly more information from researchers who are funded by pharmaceutical companies and present their findings at conferences sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, using presentations prepared for them by pharmaceutical companies. Not exactly independent, evidence-based medicine!
Now let’s get back to the news about Zetia. Zetia is a new drug that lowers cholesterol by a different mechanism than statin drugs like Lipitor and Zocor.
Why does this matter?
Well, doctors have been brainwashed to think that cholesterol is the cause of heart attacks even though half of all people who have heart attacks have NORMAL cholesterol. And it seemed like the statins, which lowered cholesterol, actually reduced heart attacks.
Seems logical. If you lower cholesterol, you reduce heart attacks, right?
No!
I believe that the reason statins lower risk is NOT because they lower cholesterol, but because they reduce inflammation. In fact, studies by Dr. Paul Ridker of Harvard show that the risk of heart attacks was only reduced if inflammation was lowered along with LDL cholesterol – but not if LDL cholesterol was lowered alone. (2)
So then along comes a drug that can be combined with statins to lower cholesterol even more. Great idea? Not really.
You see, the FDA approved Zetia without any proof that it lowered heart attacks or reduced the progression of heart disease. The drug was approved solely on the basis that it lowered cholesterol.
Yet Zetia was given to 5 million people – and made the drug companies $5 billion a year. That’s almost $14 million a day! And once Zetia was approved, its makers had no incentive to prove that it actually did what it was thought to do – lower heart attacks.
They dragged their feet doing the studies and then released the negative data (which they did only under pressure from news agencies and Congress) after a long delay.
Wouldn’t you drag your feet too if you were making $14 million a day?
But the FDA had the negative data on Zetia – and it didn’t speak up. The data that was withheld proved that Zetia did not reduce heart attacks but actually INCREASED fatty plaques in the arteries despite lowering cholesterol.
Let that sink in for a moment.
That’s right: Lowering cholesterol led to more heart disease!
That turns our whole medical model upside down. It shows us that high cholesterol is NOT a disease and may or may not be related to heart attacks.
Another recent study put another nail in the coffin of the Cholesterol Myth.
A major new cholesterol drug, torcetrapib, was pulled from the pipeline in December 2006 because despite lowering LDL cholesterol and raising HDL cholesterol in 15,000 people, it caused MORE heart attacks and strokes. (3)
This was to be the new cholesterol wonder drug. Oops.
All this points to a big research mess that is flawed in three ways.
First, what gets studied depends on who is funding it.
Since drug companies fund most of the research in the world, other therapies that work better – such as diet and lifestyle or nutritional therapies – never get enough funding.
Second, drug companies are aided by the FDA, which suppresses, hides, and doesn’t publish negative studies on drugs, only positive ones. This leads doctors to think they have all the evidence when they don’t.
Third, doctors, patients, and the media believe they have the whole truth, often until it is too late, like with Zetia or Premarin or Vioxx.
The evidence was there, but no one looked or publicized it. This makes it very difficult for consumers to get the best treatments for their health and the whole truth about drugs.
Here’s my advice on how to make sense of things.
- Follow the money. Look carefully at who funded the study. Be suspicious if it was funded by drug companies.
- Call or email your congressperson or Senator to demand better legislation providing an easy-to-navigate database of all drug trials, with consumer-friendly summaries of both published AND unpublished data submitted to the FDA so you can look up the drug you are prescribed and have a balanced opinion.
- Don’t assume that drugs are the answer to your health problems. Heart disease is NOT a Lipitor deficiency but the result of your lifestyle interacting with your genes.
- Learn to ask the question “why?” – and search for the answers. Dealing with lifestyle and environmental factors (the basis of UltraWellness) almost always works better for chronic illnesses. Drugs are there as a backup only if needed.
So take a closer look at the information you’ve been given about drugs. You might be surprised by what you find. Were you aware of the studies I’ve mentioned today?
Which of the steps here do you plan to follow?
What has you experience been with medications compared to lifestyle measures?
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
REFERENCES:
(1) Laine C, Horton R, DeAngelis CD, Drazen JM, Frizelle FA, Godlee F, Haug C, Hébert PC, Kotzin S, Marusic A, Sahni P, Schroeder TV, Sox HC, Van der Weyden MB, Verheugt FW.Clinical trial registration: looking back and moving ahead. JAMA. 2007 Jul 4;298(1):93-4.
(2) Ridker PM, Cannon CP, Morrow D, Rifai N, Rose LM, McCabe CH, Pfeffer MA, Braunwald E; Pravastatin or Atorvastatin Evaluation and Infection Therapy-Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction 22 (PROVE IT-TIMI 22) Investigators. C-reactive protein levels and outcomes after statin therapy. N Engl J Med. 2005 Jan 6;352(1):20-8.
(3) Kastelein JJ, van Leuven SI, Burgess L, Evans GW, Kuivenhoven JA, Barter PJ, Revkin JH, Grobbee DE, Riley WA, Shear CL, Duggan WT, Bots ML; RADIANCE 1 Investigators.Effect of torcetrapib on carotid atherosclerosis in familial hypercholesterolemia. N Engl J Med. 2007 Apr 19;356(16):1620-30.
Got 5 extra minutes? Take this short survey for a shot at a $50 Amazon Gift Certificate!
April 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Hi!
I hope this finds you doing well.
As you may know, I’ve been practicing the healing arts for many years. Connecting with and truly helping people like you were the reasons I chose this field. It’s this (com)passion for my fellow human that continues to guide the decisions I make in my practice every day.
But, I have to be honest and tell you that lately, I’ve found myself wanting more…to serve MORE. To be MORE. To reach MORE. I’m sure you probably know what I’m talking about Most of us have been there.
Now, I could guess all day long about what YOU want and need in terms of service. But I’m not you, so that doesn’t make much sense, does it?
This is where you come in. I’ve created an easy, fairly quick survey to help collect the information I need to do…more! And believe it or not, by taking just a few minutes out of your day to complete the survey, you will be helping me to better serve you, and countless others. Besides, I would really appreciate it!
Oh yeah, one more thing: if you complete the survey by May 18, 2011, you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Certificate. How cool is that?!?
So, whaddya say?
Thanks so much! Carol
UltraWellness Lesson 7: The Mind/Body & Body/Mind Effect by Dr. Mark Hyman
April 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
IN LESSON 6 WE reviewed how important energy is for life and for UltraWellness. You learned why we lose it and how to make it! But what is more important than almost any other factor in heath? What is the cause or worsens ninety-five percent of all illnesses? What has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease and increased longevity? In fact what is the one thing that is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar or blood pressure or any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life?
It is your attitudes, your social network, community and spiritual beliefs. Oddly, the biggest predictors of longevity are eating breakfast and psychological resiliency, being able to roll with the punches life throws at us.
I was browsing my old library (I hate throwing away books because they are like treasures), and found an old book I read in college called Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, by a friend and leader in the field of Mind Body Medicine, Kenneth Pelletier, Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California (UCSF) and University of Arizona Schools of Medicine.
It was published in 1977. I wish I could say that a lot has changed since the book was published. We have filled in the gaps, learn more about the mechanisms through which the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body, but the basic truths remain the same.
There is a dramatic and powerful connection between our mind and body, and of our body on our mind, in fact it really should not be called a connection because it is just one bidirectional system. Hans Selye, MD, the man who coined the word stress and first mapped out it biological effects said, “The modern physician should know as much about emotions and thoughts as about disease symptoms and drugs. This approach would appear to hold more promise of cure than anything medicine has given us to date.”
It is true. The most powerful pharmacy in the world is right between your ears!
Imagine if you could turn on fat burning–and lose weight–by using only your mind!
We are seeing an epidemic of stress related disorders. Americans live on caffeine and Prozac. We use substances to manage our moods. In fact the four top selling items in grocery stores are all drugs we use to manage our mood and energy – caffeine, sugar, alcohol and nicotine.
Depression, anxiety, autism, attention deficit disorder, memory disorders and dementia are epidemics in our society. They are making the pharmaceutical industry highly profitable. But how do we really deal with the root of this problem?
I will tell you what the causes of brain problems are and how to fix them a little later. But first let’s look at the power of the mind to harm or heal.
How to use your head to heal
One of my long-term patients came to see me after his wife died. He’d suddenly developed heart failure. His heart just wouldn’t pump. It was flooded with grief molecules, hormones like adrenalin, noradrenalin, cortisol and more. The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study about how grief or emotional trauma can cause heart failure, literally a broken heart.
Rather than give him drugs for “heart failure” as I was taught, I suggested he have healing touch, a form of energy and emotional healing. He did and dramatically recovered. Touch, not medication, healed his heart.
We all learned how to read and write in school but never learned how to use our minds to help us with the most important survival skills–staying happy and healthy–that other cultures differ in their training. Herbert Benson M.D., from Harvard Medical School has demonstrated the amazing power of trained meditators from Tibet to control their physiology to slow their metabolism, change their heart rates, brain waves, raise or lower their body temperature.
He even documented on film an ancient practice called tumo, the generating of internal heat, performed by initiated Tibetan monks. They are wrapped in icy cold sheets and must dry them from their internal heat. It is speculated that they do this by actively burning fat – something called brown fat. They can sit naked on a snowy mountaintop all night and not freeze, keeping themselves warm from their internal heat.
That’s something most of us don’t have any consciousness of, or control over. Imagine if you could turn on fat burning and lose weight through your mind!
That is ultimately the power of our mind and beliefs. Unfortunately we are not trained to address the stressful psychic loads that are the burden of the 21st century. And they are killing us.
Just consider these facts:
- 95% of all illness is caused or worsened by stress
- Low socioeconomic status is associated with poorer health outcomes and risk of death from all causes. This not related to poorer health habits, but to feelings of powerlessness and loss of control
- Internalized racism and stress are associated with high amounts of belly fat
- Stress hormones damage the hippocampus – the memory center in the brain causing memory loss and dementia
- In a study of people who volunteered to have cold viruses injected into their noses, only people with a high level of perceived stress got colds
- Women with metastatic breast cancer survived twice as long if they were part of a support group
- Belonging to a group – a religious group, a bowling club, a quilting group – reduces risk of death from all causes and increases longevity despite health habits.
- In a study of doctors, those who scored high on hostility questionnaires had a higher risk of heart attacks than those who smoked, were overweight, had high blood pressure or didn’t exercise!
The good news is that we can change our beliefs and attitudes and their effects on your mind and your body. You may need to learn a few new skills, but they are essential survival skills that we never learned in school or from our families.
We cannot thrive without them!
Even better news is that it is not only about our beliefs and attitudes. Our mind and brain function is also influenced by what happens in our bodies. By addressing all the keys to UltraWellness “mental” problems can often be cured without changing your beliefs.
The effects of beliefs and attitudes are so important, but the effects of problems in our core body systems on our mental state and brain function– such as our hormones, immune system, gut, detox system, energy system – and our nutritional status and other environmental inputs – are just as important and mostly ignored by medicine.
This is the topic for one of my books. For example, a man I saw yesterday was completely stressed out, anxiety, had palpitations, and drank four martinis a night just to calm down. He also had severe muscle cramps and eye twitches.
These are obvious signs of magnesium deficiency. Stress, alcohol, caffeine and sugar all deplete magnesium. He was in a vicious cycle.
What he needed wasn’t Valium or Prozac but to address why he was magnesium deficient (toxins, yeast, stress, alcohol, caffeine), fix that through helping him detoxify, treating his yeast, cutting out alcohol and caffeine, and give him enough of the relaxation mineral, magnesium, to calm his nervous system.
That, in combination with tools for calming the mind and the body, can help him reset his nervous system – using both the body-mind effect and the mind-body effect.
Here is what we know about how to influence the mind body and the body mind system:
- Find the biological causes of problems with the mind by working on all the keys to UltraWellness I have outlined in the last 7 lessons. It could be mercury toxicity or magnesium or B12 deficiency or a toxic gut chemical or gluten allergy that is changing your brain. So by changing your body you can change your mind!
- Learn how to ACTIVELY relax. To engage the powerful forces of the mind on the body you must DO something, you can’t just sit there watching television or drink a beer.
- Try learning new skills such as meditation, deep breathing, yoga, biofeedback, progressive muscle relaxation, take a hot bath, make love, get a massage, watch a sunset, walk in the woods or on the beach.
- Exercise is a powerful way to burn off stress chemicals and heal the mind – well studied and well proven – just do it! It has been proven better than or equal to Prozac for treating depression.
- Clean up your diet from mind robbing molecules like caffeine, alcohol, refined sugars, and eat regularly to avoid the short-term stress of starvation on your body.
- Take a multivitamin and nutrients to help balance the stress response such as vitamin C, the B complex vitamins including B6 and B5 or pantothenic acid, zinc, and most importantly magnesium, the relaxation mineral.
- Use adaptogenic herbs (herbs that help you adapt and be balanced in response to stress) such as ginseng, Rhodiola rosea, Siberian ginseng, Cordyceps, and Ashwaganda
- Take a hot bath or a sauna to help your body deeply relax and turn on the relaxation response.
- Examine your beliefs, attitudes and responses to common situations and consider reframing your point of view to reduce stress
- Consciously build your network of friends, family and community. They are your most powerful allies in achieving long-term health.
Now we have come to the end of my introductory lessons about the revolutionary changes happening in medicine today.
I have introduced you to a set of new ideas and concepts that have the power to transform your health personally and to transform health care. It is no small job personally or for our society, but it is essential to stem the impending tsunami of ill health and economic burden facing us, our children and our children’s children.
The solution is UltraWellness, a fundamental change in our world view about health – a view that helps us get to the core of illness, to learn self-care, to take control and empower ourselves for transformation our own health, and to transform our sick care system to a health care system.
Each of us can contribute and makes small changes that will have a big difference and we can move as individuals and as a community toward UltraWellness.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978)