Welcome to the Premier Acupuncture & Complementary Medicine Women’s Health newsletter. Although the focus of the newsletter is on women’s health issues, much of the information is applicable to everyone in your family.
In this Issue:
NEW OFFICE AND OTHER MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION
As most of you are aware we moved into our new office in May. We are located in the new addition to the Peak Fitness building. We currently share the building with a chiropractor, massage therapists and All About Herbs. Our drawing for free services was fun and six were winners. We gave away two free appointments, two breast thermograms and two massages through Sartori Health studio.
I have been asked by many about my son with the brain tumor. I appreciate the concern and compassion. He is doing very well. No evidence of disease on his MRI. He just completed another MRI this month and it remains clean. His response has exceeded the expectations of most if not all of the physicians he is dealing with. I believe there are three components to his excellent response. The conventional care he is receiving, the treatments I have placed him on and his faith in God. The complementary therapies I have placed him on are based on my own knowledge as well as others in the natural health care field. I am fortunate to have many contacts and have drawn from their expertise as well as mine. I am quite familiar with complementary therapies for breast cancers, but brain tumors were a new area for me.
PROACTIVE HEALTH CARE
This newsletter is about education, to provide information to encourage further research and to encourage you to take the necessary steps to be healthy. I continue to see young women (and older women) with breast and ovarian cancers on a far to frequent basis. I encourage you to take the steps to reduce your risk. I have written about this many times. I have discussed breast cancer risk assessment using breast thermography and taking the necessary steps to reduce your risk. Some of the areas I have discussed include lifestyle, eating habits, body fat, xeno estrogens, hormone balance, vitamin D, selenium, Iodine and many others. Please take the time to consider these issues and reduce your cancer risk. If you require help please schedule and appointment and let’s address these issues together.
VITAMIN D
An article I wrote and which was printed in the Greatlander can be found below. Vitamin D deficiency is a substantial risk factor for many cancers and other pathologies as well. Take a moment to read the article and if you have not addressed this issue I encourage you to do so.
What’s My Line?
· If I am deficient, your risk of developing one of the following cancers is increased substantially: Breast, colon, esophageal, gallbladder, rectal, bladder, stomach, pancreatic, small intestine, kidney, prostate, ovarian, endometrial and Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Probably others.
· Dr. William grant speaking at UCSD concluded 257,000 cancer deaths occurred in 2007 in the USA because of a lack of me.
· According to Professor Robert Heaney, increasing your intake of me will reduce your risk of getting cancer by about 70 percent.
· Insufficient levels of me are linked to increases in osteoporosis, Multiple sclerosis, depression, diabetes and other health problems.
· I can be used in the treatment of cancer.
· I can be obtained free of charge or taken as a supplement.
· Most people think of me as a vitamin, but I am really a hormone
Who am I? If you guessed vitamin D, you are correct. This wonderful substance exerts many biological effects in us and influences our health in profound ways. Our skin makes adequate levels of vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. Problem is we Alaskans, except in the summer, do not obtain enough sun light. If you wear sun screen this will further decrease your vitamin D production. In fact, living in a sunny environment is no guarantee of adequate UVB exposure. The Arizona Cancer Center found almost 80 percent of Arizonians tested had vitamin D levels below the minimum recommended blood level of 32ng / ml. It is also important to understand that the minimum level is most likely not adequate. Professors Hollis and Binkley have shown that 50ng/ml should be considered the lower limit.
There is a considerable amount of information available on vitamin D at the vitamin D council web site. http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
So how much should you take? A variety of factors influence your need for additional vitamin D. Some of these include sun exposure, how dark your complexion is, disease states, metabolic clearance, and others. You are likely to need more in the winter than the summer. By the way, you want to use vitamin D3 only. The definitive way to establish your correct dose is to have your blood level checked after being on a specific dose for a few months. You want to have your 25(OH)D level checked. There is another test, 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D. This is not the test to use. Additionally, you should have your serum calcium level checked as well. Excessively high levels of vitamin D can raise your serum calcium levels.
I feel your target blood level should be in the 70 – 90’s range for healthy individuals. Based on emerging research, at least a minimum level of 50 ng/ml. Toxicity has always been a concern with vitamin D but there is evidence that toxicity may not occur in most individuals until their levels are around 200 ng/ml. A rough rule of thumb promoted by Dr. James Dowd, MD is 2000 IU for every 100 pounds of body weight. I have also seen a guideline stating 1000 IU of vitamin D will raise your levels by 10 ng/ml. For adults without special needs or unique circumstances, a daily intake of 5,000 – 10,000 IU is a good place to begin. After your level is checked you can increase or decrease as necessary. I have patients taking as little as 2,000 IU daily, reaching blood levels in the 70’s, and others, requiring 10,000 IU daily or more to reach the 70’s. By the way, the RDA (recommended daily allowance) is 400 IU! As with most of the RDA’s, this recommendation is inadequate.
Do yourself and your family a favor, obtain the correct amount of vitamin D. This is a simple and inexpensive way to greatly reduce your risk of many types of cancer and other diseases.
IODINE
Iodine is important in thyroid hormone production, breast health, cancer prevention and in many other areas of your health. The RDA for iodine is 150 micrograms. This amount would appear to be far too low for optimal health. Strongly linked to iodine deficiency is hypothyroidism, fibrocystic breast changes, breast cancer and other problems. Contrast the average daily intake of iodine in the United States, which is about 200 – 250 micrograms with Japanese women who have a low incidence of hypothyroidism, fibrocystic breast changes and breast cancer. In fact they have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer in the world. The average daily consumption of iodine for women in Japan is about 13 milligrams per day. This is a substantially higher intake than women in this country. I have seen women with hypothyroidism return to normal thyroid function over several months time by increasing their iodine intake. A word of caution regarding iodine is in order. Too much iodine has the potential to suppress thyroid function. Like all supplements, proper dosing is necessary. Consider fibrocystic breast changes which are considered normal changes in women. I have expressed my concern over this belief many times. Fibrocystic breast changes are a sign of an underlying problem, typically iodine deficiency or estrogen progesterone imbalance. In cases where iodine deficiency is the problem, bringing iodine levels up to normal can totally resolve this problem. Rather than consider fibrocystic changes normal and ignoring them, see these changes for what they are. I prefer two preparations of iodine. Lugols solution and Iodoral. Lugols solution is less expensive but is becoming increasingly difficult to find. I am told this is due to iodine being used in Meth production. Iodoral is a one tablet per day supplement. It comes in 50 mg and 12.5 mg tablets.
A Tasty Protein Drink
I have tried many protein drinks and found most lacking in the taste department, until fairly recently. So I want to share my discovery with you. It’s called Dream Protein and it comes in chocolate and vanilla. Dream Protein is Hormone Free, whey protein isolate. I have only tried the chocolate. It is made from whey protein which is an excellent source of protein. I have tried several different recipes in creating a drink and have found one I like quite a bit. I will share it with you in a moment. Protein shakes as described below work well as a replacement for one meal, although I have used this shake for breakfast and lunch and found it is very beneficial for weight loss. Additionally the protein is quit beneficial for our bodies. So here is the recipe. This is for a single serving:
· About ¼ cup water. Adjust the amount based on how thick you want your drink
· 2-3 ice cubes
· 3 strawberries. Costco has a large bag of frozen strawberries which works very well.
· 1 small to medium banana
· 1 scoop of the protein mix
· I add 1 scoop of a product called Red Alert. It’s a whole food product of fruits and vegetable in powder form. The manufactures states Red Alert is a new phytonutrient antioxidant energy drink. I don’t know about the energy part, but I think it adds a nice flavor and its good for you. But the protein drink is very tasty even without the Red Alert.
Throw these ingredients into a blender and enjoy. If you would like to try this drink I will be putting in a special order for Dream Protein and Red Alert if you want to add it. A month’s supply of Dream Protein typically retails for 40-50 dollars. This is based on one drink per day. Red alert typically retails for 40 – 50 dollars. Both of the $40 prices come off the internet and do not include shipping.
If you are interested in trying this drink I am going to place a special order for Dream Protein and Red Alert. I can get each product for you for $36 dollars inclusive of shipping. This will be a one time offer and if you want to try it please call us and order (you need to prepay)by September 30th. After this offer is over I will order with my regular supplement order and the price will increase to $44 dollars. I think it is well worth the money. Yes it’s a little expensive, but if it is replacing a meal, then 30 days of meal replacement for 36 dollars ($72 if you want the Red Alert)is really not that expensive.
RED RICE YEAST
Do you struggle with elevated cholesterol? Setting aside the fact that the levels which have been established as target levels for cholesterol may be way to low and leading to cancers and other problems, lets just address the approach to lowering cholesterol if this is really indicated in your life.
The statin drugs do work and work well, but they are hard on your liver and have a variety of significant side effects. Red Rice Yeast is actually a statin as well, but without the side effects often seen with the prescription statins. Just as you should always takes supplemental CoQ10 with a statin drug, you should do so as well with Red Rice Yeast. Consider the following.
“A clinical study on patients who have suffered a heart attack found that a partially purified
extract of Chinese red yeast rice, Xuezhikang (XZK), reduced the risk of repeat heart attacks by 45%; revascularization (bypass surgery/angioplasty), cardiovascular mortality, and total mortality by one-third; and cancer mortality by two-thirds.
The multi-center, randomized, double-blind study, was conducted on almost 5,000 patients, ranging in age from 18-70”. over a five-year period at over 60 hospitals in the People's Republic of China. Corresponding author David M. Capuzzi, M.D., Ph.D, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Program at Jefferson's Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine and Zonliang Lu, M.D., Ph.D, from the Fuwai Hospital at the Chinese Academy of Medical Science report their findings in the June 15th edition of the American Journal of Cardiology.
t's very exciting because this is a natural product and had very few adverse side effects including no abnormal blood changes," said Capuzzi. "People in the Far East have been taking Chinese red yeast rice as food for thousands of years, but no one has ever studied it clinically in a double-blind manner with a purified product against a placebo group until now and we are pleased with the results”
As with all supplements the quality of the product is paramount is its effectiveness. Be careful what you purchase and put into your body.
That’s about it for this edition. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and as we do every year, breast thermography will be heavily discounted for those obtaining a thermogram in October. I am not certain what the special will be as it changes every year. I will send out an email when I know. Additionally I will be giving a talk on breast health, thermography, proactive breast cancer risk reduction, hormone balancing and nutrition for breast health in early October. The talk will be in Anchorage. The time and date are not set as of now. I will let you know when I know more.
Thank you for reading our news letter. If you have any suggestions, comments or questions you would like addressed in the next newsletter please send them to me. The address is pacmnewsletter@yahoo.com
Wishing you the best of health.
Dr. Mike