Is the HCG Diet for Rapid Weight Loss Really All That?

Whether you’re looking to lose weight for health or appearance, one tool worth considering is the HCG diet.

It’s not new by any means, having been developed in the early 1950s by Dr. ATW Simeons, who published the theory behind it in The Lancet in 1954. So you may have heard something of it before – spurring weight loss through the combination of a very low calorie diet and daily injections of human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG for short.

HCG is a hormone produced in the placenta during pregnancy. It’s crucial for maintaining the production of other hormones essential to fetal development.

It also appears to make fat stores more accessible. As Dr. Jeff Egler nicely sums it up,

In this way hCG acts as a key that unlocks access to energy in otherwise abnormal fat stores and therefore provides additional energy to a growing fetus; or, in the case of an hCG dieter, allows the individual to access and burn their abnormal fat. The diet works by having the body run on this now accessible energy (anywhere from 1400-7000 calories per day) wherein it is burning off what is otherwise stagnant and persistent body fat while simultaneously preserving normal and structural fat as well as muscle.

Yet critics of the diet say that there’s really no difference in weight loss compared to placebo, drawing on research conducted in the 1970s and 80s. Yet lately, more physicians have been taking a second look.

There is a difference between how a body loses weight by simple calorie restriction and by restriction paired with injections of HCG. Using a higher, customized dosage than originally proposed by Dr. Simeons, for instance, clinician Dr. Sheri L. Emma has found that

HCG injections keep you from losing muscle while you diet. By elevating hormone levels in the body, including testosterone, the HCG hormone creates an anabolic state (muscle-building) which counteracts the catabolic state (muscle-breakdown). There are hormone receptors on muscle fibers that respond to the increased hormone levels in patients taking the HCG hormone.

Why does that matter? During a fast, dramatic loss of pounds with crash dieting, there is a high amount of muscle that is lost. Because muscle is heavy, this loss looks good on the scale because the pounds are dropping quickly. When you lose muscle, it’s bad for your body, shape, and metabolism. The metabolism slows so much that dieter regains weight quickly, often regaining all the weight that was lost and then some.

Her research bears this out. In a clinical trial involving four randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies, both the HCG and placebo groups lost about the same amount of weight – an average of 13 pounds per month in the HCG group and 15 pounds in placebo.

But in the placebo group, 5 of those pounds consisted of muscle. In the HCG group, muscle loss was limited to an average of 2 pounds. That’s significant.

It’s important to note though that these results came about with injectable HCG. While various HCG products are readily available in pill, powder, and liquid form, they dissolve before reaching the bloodstream. Consequently, they’re not nearly so effective as injectable HCG.

Here in our West LA office, we’ve observed the same. We’ve seen magnificent results for our patients who come from Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and plenty of points both between and beyond for the individualized integrative treatment that Dr. Joe specializes in.

HCG should only be used under the care of a physician using nutritional guidelines specific to the individual.

While it’s in no way a substitute for healthy living and smart choices when it comes to diet, exercise, and lifestyle, the HCG diet can promote rapid weight loss and be an excellent boost toward reaching your health goals. As such, it remains an important tool in anti-aging longevity medicine.

The post Is the HCG Diet for Rapid Weight Loss Really All That? appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Live Your Best, Healthiest Life with Longevity Medicine

Over the past few years, we’ve been hearing more about the quest for immortality among Silicon Valley types in particular. Some are even so bold to predict that we’ll soon conquer death entirely.

Yet the dream of living forever has been around…well, seemingly forever.

In Greek mythology, we get the story of Eos, goddess of the dawn, who was completely infatuated with a young, smart, good-looking prince of Troy named Tithonius. He was more interested in music and art, but that didn’t stop Eos. She chased him everywhere!

She finally won him over by promising him eternal life. But when she asked Zeus to grant this, she made a critical error.

She forgot to ask for eternal youth.

After years of watching him shrivel and waste away, she closed him up in a chamber.

From there his voice pours out—it seems never to end—and he has no strength at all,
the kind he used to have in his limbs when they could still bend.

If living forever means something like that, who would want it?

Rather, the dream is of a long life in which we feel, look, and function at our best so we can really enjoy those years, the time we have with our loved ones, the pursuit of our interests and dreams.

For while aging is an inescapable fact of life, it doesn’t have to mean we’re fated to withering into helplessness, isolated from so much of what has made our lives meaningful.

In fact, we have excellent examples of what healthy aging can look like in Earth’s Blue Zones areas where we typically find the oldest and healthiest people. What’s their secret?

Healthy eating (plant- or protein-based) and routine physical activity are only a part of it. Consider the people of Nicoya, Costa Rica, for example:

Nicoyans ascribe to a “plan de vida”—a guiding life purpose—that they claim helps fulfill them both mentally and spiritually. Their plan de vida supports a positive outlook among elders and helps keep them active. They have strong faith communities and deep social networks. Nicoyan centenarians live with their families and are said to engage in frequent visits with neighbors. This focus on family and social ties bolsters their emotional well-being with support.

In addition, the Nicoyans’ lifestyle involves plenty of regular, low-intensity physical activity. Even centenarians seem to enjoy physical work, and chores are fundamental to daily life.

There’s even a Blue Zone right in our own backyard – in Loma Linda, to be exact, which is home to one of the largest concentrations of Seventh Day Adventists in the world, around 9000 people.

Adventists tend to live longer than their fellow Americans thanks to their plant-based diets, regular exercise, and abstention from tobacco and alcohol. As with other Blue Zone populations, there’s also a strong emphasis on faith, family, friends, and nature.

Notably, these are all among the keys to what Dr. Joe calls “Radiant Health” – a state of being “better than well,” living a vibrant, active, healthy, and meaningful life.

Call it longevity medicine or anti-aging medicine or regenerative medicine; the goal is the same: restore vitality and resilience – physical, mental, sexual, spiritual – that endures into your later years.

Our tools are many: bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), ozone, prolozone, chelation and other detoxification programs, IV drip therapy, the HCG diet and other weight loss options, sexual health support, customized nutritional programs, and so much more.

The key is to support your body’s own regenerative abilities, to address health all the way down to the cellular level.

In our holistic, integrative West LA clinic, there’s no one-size-fits-all medicine. Dr. Joe provides individualized care. He looks at your overall health history and current status, talks with you about your goals and challenges, and works with you to create a thoroughly customized longevity plan, tailored to your needs.

For while we all have much in common, we also each have experienced a completely unique life, with different influences and exposures and ways we’ve tried to address them in the past, different values and goals, different life circumstances that drive how we can approach treatment and support.

The things you can do on your own will take you far. We’re here to help you take the next steps after that, so you can live the long, vibrant life you wish for and deserve.

Beach image by Army Medicine, via Flickr

The post Live Your Best, Healthiest Life with Longevity Medicine appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Why EDTA Is the Right Chelator for Gadolinium

When you get an MRI, a contrasting agent may be used to improve the clarity of the imaging. The downside, however, is that those dyes usually contain gadolinium, a toxic heavy metal.

It was once thought that this was a risk mainly for people with impaired kidney function, but as a 2018 literature review noted, newer evidence suggests that the metal can deposit in bone and brain tissue of people whose kidneys work perfectly fine.

The metal can remain long after the MRI is a memory.

One recent study of nearly 70 primary glioma patients who had MRI before their surgery found gadolinium in 57% of the glioma samples and 62% of the normal tissue samples.

“While the brain tumor provides an obvious explanation for gadolinium retention, we additionally found gadolinium deposits in the adjacent normal brain,” the authors wrote. “Furthermore, a small but significant correlation between the amount of gadolinium in the tumor and normal brain was detected implying passage of gadolinium from the site of pathologic brain lesion….”

The good news is that chelation can help clear the metal from these tissues. But is EDTA the best chelator for the task? One person asked about this after reading our previous post on gadolinium toxicity, and we thought the answer deserved more than a quick reply.

There has only been one human study on the matter, and it used healthy adult volunteers who were given just three chelation treatments. The remaining relevant studies were done on rats, often using chelating agents that do NOT chelate the most common form of gadolinium used in contrast agents, Gadavist.

Studies suggesting that gadolinium isn’t effectively removed by EDTA also fail to periodically measure its presence in post-chelation urine samples over time. In our West LA clinic, we regularly measure this and see regular evidence of the compound’s effectiveness.

Simply, EDTA binds gadolinium to remove it in a much more moderate way, preventing rapid shifts in electrochemical gradient balance. This is especially important for patients dealing with chronic health issues. A more gradual chelation helps ensure patient safety.

Yes, stronger chelating agents can make for a faster detox, but this often results in the patient becoming even more ill due to aggressive binding and rapid removal of the metal from tissues.

“I’ve treated a number of patients who suffered from too aggressive use of chelating agents for mercury and lead,” says Dr. Joe.

They wanted faster results. Their actual result was damaging inflammatory electrochemical equilibrium shifts, expressed through symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, brain fog, blood pressure changes, muscle and joint pain, fever, and other adverse effects.

These patients successfully regained their health under my care with careful and very individualized recovery programs which INCLUDED the successful removal of metals from their body without ill effects.

Using oral amino acids such as the L-forms of methionine, isoleucine, leucine, reduced glutathione and N-acetyl L-cysteine will protect the body and may be beneficial in chelating gadolinium when used with oral DMSA – another chelator. However, no clinical studies have been done on this. Alpha lipoic acid should only be used in low doses as it can also transport metals into the central nervous system at higher doses.

Chelation should always be performed by a physician with established chelating experience who can moderately and when needed, very gently remove toxic metals with utmost respect for the health and welfare of the patient who has sought their care.

Image by deradrian, via Flickr

The post Why EDTA Is the Right Chelator for Gadolinium appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Nutritional Support with IV Drip Therapy

So, yes, the whole diet is vitally important. But with respect to nutrition, there are times when even that alone might not be enough.

Is your body getting all the nutrients you give it?

As we noted last time, many factors can affect nutrient absorption. For instance, some genetic variants can cause issues. MTHFR mutations, for instance, affect folate uptake, while HFE variants affect how we absorb iron.

Age is another factor. As we get older, B12 and magnesium absorption tends to go down, and vitamin D becomes harder to synthesize.

Medication use can likewise have a negative effect on nutrient levels. Different genders at different times have different nutritional needs. Alcohol, caffeine, and even stress can alter how your body processes the nutrients it gets.

This is why it can be helpful to get a full nutritional workup from a well-trained integrative physician – so you can identify and address any barriers to optimal nutrition, as well as be more aware of your unique nutritional needs.

But it’s also another reason why IV nutritional drip therapy can offer such a boost to your health.

Unlike food and oral supplements, which require the involvement of your gastrointestinal system to get nutrients into your blood, drip therapy bypasses the GI tract all together. The nutrients go right into your bloodstream so they can go to your cells to do the work you need them to do.

While drop-in and mobile clinics with their standardized menus have become a thing, what they can’t offer is the individualization and customization that a physician can.

At a clinic like ours, you can know that the specific nutrients being delivered are medical grade and provided in the right amounts for your particular needs. We take the time to get to know you as a person, as well as your health history, situation, and goals.

More, because components of a drip can interact negatively with certain natural or pharmaceutical medicines you’re taking, customization helps minimize the risk of a bad interaction.

Meantime, the blood levels of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients you get intravenously are many times higher than the levels you get from taking them orally. They’re at levels that support Radiant Health.

Of course, we do have some off-the-shelf options available – hangover relief, say, or jet lag recovery – as well as blends for supporting detox of heavy metals and other environmental toxins. These include ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and glutathione drips.

Patients in our West LA clinic report numerous other benefits following IV drip therapy. These include increased energy and improved performance, better sleep and reduced anxiety, and healthier skin.

Nutritional IV therapy is safe and painless (well, except the initial needle prick). You just sit back and relax in our cozy drip room, and our supervising staff will see to your needs. Within the hour, you’re done.

Your body will thank you.

Image by Robert Geiger, via Flickr

The post Nutritional Support with IV Drip Therapy appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

It’s the Whole Diet that Matters, Not Any One “Superfood”

As we were saying, your body needs real food. Can we take that a step further and see food as medicine?

You’ve probably heard the saying “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” – an idea that’s usually attributed to Hippocrates. In truth, though, the phrase doesn’t seem to turn up in his work. In fact, it may only date back to the early 20th century.

Regardless of the source, though, the phrase can be a little misleading.

Of course, the broad idea is sound: What you eat is a major driver of health and illness. Your body needs nutrients to operate as it was designed to do. When we fail to regularly give it what it needs – including wholesome, healthful, real food with a minimum of processing between field and plate – we not only deprive it of what it needs. We wind up feeding it with products that, over time, can interfere with its optimal function.

But the idea of food as medicine also overlooks the fact that food is more than just medicine, just as it’s more than mere fuel. Its emotional, social, and cultural aspects provide their own kind of nutrition.

At the same time, we shouldn’t take the idea to mean that food has pharmaceutical-like effects. Yet when we’re bombarded with the latest hype over each new “superfood” that comes along, it’s all too easy to make that leap. Headlines touting “the healing power” of this food or that – chia seeds, turmeric, avocado, acai, quinoa, and on and on – come at you fast and furious through your social media feeds or news sites and blogs every day.

But what are we really talking about when we talk about “superfoods”?

The common understanding is that these are foods that contain compounds that are considered especially beneficial to your health. But this doesn’t tell us much. As one blogger put it,

By that definition, pretty much any plant food could be considered a superfood. Pretty much all plant-based foods contain compounds that are innately good for us. Antioxidants, fiber, nutrients—we thrive off of plant-based diets. Each fruit, vegetable, grain, and legume has its own uniquely healthful properties. Blueberries are rich in anthocyanins. Brown rice contains essential minerals. Lentils are dense in protein. And beets are loaded with iron and nitric oxide.

To deem any one of these foods more super than the others is not only incorrect, it’s also extremely misleading.

Indeed, what “superfood” really is, is a marketing term. It came into use back in the early 20th century when the United Fruit Company started promoting bananas for their “food value.” Bananas, after all, were their major import.

Initially the company had advertised the practicality of bananas in a daily diet, being cheap, nutritious, easily digested, available everywhere, good when cooked and not cooked, and sealed by nature in a germ-proof package. To get people to eat more, they suggested adding bananas in cereal for breakfast, in salads for lunch, and fried with meat for dinner.

Then the medical community got into the act, suggesting that bananas could be used to treat disease.

Soon, physicians began treating conditions like celiac disease and diabetes with bananas. Children with celiac disease, for instance, gained weight and grew taller while on a banana diet, and these findings were highlighted in medical journals. Erroneously, scientists attributed these results to the special properties of bananas and not the removal of gluten from the diet.

No matter. The United Fruit Company, in turn, cited the doctors and sold even more bananas. Ever since, many other superfoods have come to the fore, often falling out of fashion for a time before being rediscovered by later generations.

One factor fueling this is the simple fact that nutrition science is “a wickedly difficult field,” as Harvard nutritionist David Ludwig has put it. The challenges are many, starting with the fact that we seldom eat single foods in isolation but as ingredients in recipes and meals made from multiple recipes.

Studying that in any useful way would be extraordinarily difficult and cost-prohibitive.

More, the real impact of diet doesn’t show up right away. Often, you don’t see the significant results of your food choices until much later in life. Meantime, you’re exposed to an array of other factors that can impact how much nutrition you may actually get from your diet, from toxic exposures to genetic variants.

And where those are concerned, no single food will fix things, no matter how super.

As ever, it’s the whole diet that matters – not to mention the other keys of Radiant Health. That might not be as exciting as a clickbait headline, but it does have the virtue of being true.

Images by Eric Astrauskas, via Flickr; Steve Hopson, via Wikimedia Commons

The post It’s the Whole Diet that Matters, Not Any One “Superfood” appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Dietary Emulsifiers, Gut Health, & Mental Health

No sooner had we hit “publish” on our last post, we ran across a new study on another type of additive that may be contributing to modern health woes: emulsifiers.

Emulsifiers are used in a wide variety of hyperprocessed food products to change their texture, extend their shelf life, and keep ingredients from separating. You see them in baked goods, ice cream, salad dressings, chocolate, and processed meat, among other products.

Research has already suggested some serious drawbacks. For instance, a 2015 study in Nature found that emulsifiers may alter the balance of bacteria in the gut and contribute to chronic inflammation, raising the risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

But gut health also appears to affect the brain, as well. So researchers decided to look at the effect of emulsifiers on mental health and behavior. Their findings were just published in Scientific Reports.

For their study, researchers added two common emulsifiers – cellulose gum and polysorbate 80 – to the drinking water of lab mice for three months. They examined changes in their subjects’ behavior, microbiomes, and other physiological aspects.

“We confirmed,” they wrote,

that emulsifier exposure induced chronic intestinal inflammation, increased adiposity, and altered gut microbiota composition in both male and female mice, although the specific microboal taxa altered following emulsifier consumption occurred in a sex-dependent manner.

Specifically, male mice showed more signs of “anxiety-like behaviors,” while female mice showed less social behavior than normal.

Why should the outcomes differ by sex? The researchers aren’t sure, but it may have something to do with key sex differences in the way that the immune system works.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that what you eat can have an impact on mental health and behavior. The mind is one with the body, after all. Other research strongly suggests that the modern Western diet contributes to conditions such as depression and ADHD.

The good news is that even small dietary improvements may ease symptoms of depression considerably.

Hyperprocessed food products are a double-edged sword: They deprive us of many nutrients essential for good health while also delivering anti-nutrients that can further interfere with our health and well-being.

Again, for body – and mind – to thrive, you’ve got to give it the raw materials it needs: not products engineered in a lab but real food.

It’s an essential component of Radiant Health.

Image via Fooducate

The post Dietary Emulsifiers, Gut Health, & Mental Health appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

How What You Eat May Influence How Much You Move (or Don’t)

If you’ve been living the couch potato life, it can be hard to start getting more active. But is it just habit or lack of will power getting in the way, keeping you from making exercise a part of your daily routine?

According to new research in Circulation, what you eat might be interfering, as well. The culprit? Too many phosphates.

Now, phosphorus is an essential mineral. It’s critical for bone and dental health, and plays a key role in how your body uses carbs and fats. It helps your cells generate ATP, an energy source. It’s needed to grow, maintain, and repair cells and tissues. It plays a role in nerve signaling, muscle contractions, and heart and kidney function.

In short, it’s important.

But you can get too much of a good thing, courtesy of the phosphate compounds commonly added to food.

These additives help baked goods rise, they act as emulsifiers in processed cheese and canned soup, they add flavor to cola and color to frozen french fries. They also can be added to meat, poultry and seafood to help the protein bind more water, making it juicier after freezing and reheating.

And most of it is absorbed by the body.

Earlier research has shown that phosphate overload may increase risk of mortality from chronic kidney disease and be “an independent predictor of cardiovascular events and mortality in the general population.” It may have a negative impact on bone health, as well.

What does more recent research say?

For the current study, scientists evaluated two sets of mice. One group was fed a diet high in inorganic phosphate, while the other ate a normal diet.

“We measured their oxygen uptake during exercise and found that their capacity for movement was much lower. The mice were unable to generate enough fatty acids to feed their muscles,” [co-author Dr. Wanpen] Vongpatanasin said. The researchers also looked for gene changes and found that many genes involved in skeletal muscle metabolism had changed levels after 12 weeks of the high phosphate diet.

In other words, the high level of phosphates appeared to make them less physically able to exercise normally.

“But that’s just in mice!” you say?

Well, the researchers also analyzed data from the Dallas Heart Study, in which participants had their activity monitored for a week.

Researchers examined blood test results in this group and verified that the response to phosphate in humans was similar to that in mice. Higher phosphate levels were linked to reduced time spent in moderate to vigorous exercise, while sedentary time increased as phosphate levels climbed.

While more research is needed, of course, to confirm these findings, if you find it tough to get up and moving, it wouldn’t hurt to take a hard look at your diet. Are you eating a lot of takeout food? Hyper-processed products? Try phasing them out – as gradually as you need to – in favor of real, minimally processed food.

Even if the current research were found to be totally wrong, you’d still benefit. After all, real food is what your body was designed to thrive on.

The post How What You Eat May Influence How Much You Move (or Don’t) appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

The Radiant Health Blog in Review, 2018

It’s the time of year when lists abound, reflecting on the year that’s winding down or looking ahead to the year to come and all the promise it holds.

Who are we to buck tradition?

So with that in mind, we take a look back at our year in blogging on Radiant Health, starting with the top 10 posts viewed in 2018. It’s an eclectic mix, to be sure. There are new posts and old. There are posts about scientific research and on particular therapies we offer here in our holistic West LA clinic. Yet others address specific health issues that are often overlooked or misunderstood by the medical establishment.

In short, there’s a bit of something for everyone, with more than 12% of all visits to our site including at least one of the 10 posts listed below:

1. A Heavy Metal You May Have Only Just Heard Of: Gadolinium
2. For Chronic Knee Pain, Think Prolozone Therapy
3. Dr. Joe Talks Supplements
4. The Newest Wellness Trend Isn’t Really So New: IV Drip Therapy
5. Recovering from Chronic Lyme Disease
6. Detox Smart
7. Need Energy? Beyond Caffeine
8. The Facts on Lyme
9. When Medical Issues Have a Psychological Component
10. The Diet-Cancer Connection

But what about just this year? Where has this blog been? The first sentence of each month’s first post offers a great snapshot of what this blog is all about:

January: Self-Care, Purpose, & Creating a Healthful Life
Let’s face it: New Year’s resolutions can be the stuff of angst – especially if you find yourself sliding back to the habits you just told yourself you’d finally kick.

February: Take Care of Your Heart This Valentine’s Day
Hearts, hearts everywhere!

March: When You Vape, You Take in a Lot More Than Just Flavor
You often hear people say that vaping is safer than smoking.

April: Physical Health, Emotional Health
Happiness and health go hand-in-hand.

May: Zero-Calorie Sweeteners: “Doing Everything Else That Glucose Does”
Though artificial sweeteners – aspartame, sucralose, Ace K, and the like – may contain zero calories, they do pack a punch of unintended consequences.

June: When Medical Issues Have a Psychological Component
Think about a time when you were really stressed out – the tangle of anxiety, anger, fatigue.

July: From Basic Health to Radiant Health
If you’re looking to save money on healthcare, prevention is about the best insurance you can get.

August: The Newest Wellness Trend Isn’t Really So New: IV Drip Therapy
Suddenly, IV drip therapy is the one of the hottest wellness trends around.

September: Heavy Metals & Your Heart
No matter how clean your diet, no matter how much physical activity you get, no matter how balanced your lifestyle, you’re exposed to a crazy cocktail of environmental toxins every day – including heavy metals such as lead, copper, cadmium, and arsenic.

October: Medical Ozone for Healing? A Couple of Case Reports
“The world is facing a crisis of antibiotic resistance,” writes Dr. Robert Rowen in a paper just published in the journal Medical Gas Research.

November: Survival Vitamins vs. Longevity Vitamins (& Why You Need Both)
Broadly speaking, good health happens when the body is given what it needs to operate as it evolved to do, with toxic exposures kept to a minimum.

December: Root Canal Teeth & Chronic Illness: Is There a Connection?
Over the years, root canal teeth have been associated with a host of chronic, systemic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, fibromyalgia and other enigmatic illnesses, and cancer.

Happy holidays from all of us here at Dr. Joe’s office! We hope the season is an amazing one for you, filled with joy, love, peace, and togetherness – and that 2019 starts with health and happiness. See you back here in January!

Image by Sam Churchill, via Flickr

The post The Radiant Health Blog in Review, 2018 appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Root Canal Teeth & Chronic Illness: Is There a Connection?

Our thanks to the office of biological dentist Gary Verigin for providing this article.

---

Over the years, root canal teeth have been associated with a host of chronic, systemic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, fibromyalgia and other enigmatic illnesses, and cancer.

In fact, in Cancer: A Second Opinion, German physician Dr. Josef Issels noted that nearly all of the patients he saw in his cancer clinic had infections lingering in “successful” root canal teeth. Each root canal tooth, he said, should be considered “a dangerous toxin producing ‘factory,’”

Research published earlier this year in the journal Dentistry likewise found a connection between root canal teeth and systemic health problems.

For the study, researchers collected data from both healthy patients and those who were chronically ill. The latter included 7 patients with cancer, 32 with chronic fatigue and systemic immunological exhaustion, 19 with rheumatoid complaints, 9 with degenerative neurological disease, 18 with atypical facial pain and trigeminal neuralgia, and 12 with intestinal symptoms.

Dental x-rays were taken, and each set of images was examined for signs of apical periodontitis, or infection at the root tips which can develop into an abscess or cyst. The researchers also measured for toxic compounds that have been associated with root canal teeth.

Patients with chronic health problems were found to be three times more likely to have infected root canals than patients in good health. More than 40% “showed immunological disturbance as a result of root-filled teeth.”

Each Tooth Is a Living Organ

You might not realize it, but each of your teeth is a living organ – although if you’ve ever had a toothache or severe tooth injury, you know all too well how alive a tooth can be. If it weren’t alive, there would be no pain.

Of course, sometimes a toothache goes away. But that doesn’t mean the tooth has healed. It means the tooth is dead.

In that case – or when decay has gone deep or the tooth has been badly broken – a dentist might recommend root canal treatment to “save” the tooth. For some reason, this is deemed good medicine. Yet in no other case would a doctor leave a dead organ in an otherwise healthy body.

With teeth, it’s a different story.

How Root Canals Are Done & How They Can Spell Trouble

First, the dentist drills into the tooth and removes the nerves, blood vessels, and other tissues that make up the living pulp within. The dentist then disinfects the hollowed out tooth and packs it with a rubbery substance called gutta percha before placing a filling or crown on top.

The procedure is simple enough, yet it carries some significant consequences, largely due to the anatomy of the tooth.

Two layers of tissue protect a tooth’s pulp: the hard enamel that covers the outside of the tooth and, below that, the dentin. Though dentin looks solid, it’s actually made up of miles of microscopic tubules through which fluid flows – tubules that are impossible to disinfect completely.

Being dark, moist, hard to access, and lacking oxygen, they become a perfect harbor for harmful bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens.

Although some holistic dentists argue that ozone can do the job that standard disinfectants can’t, the results are only temporary. The infection springs back to action. Nor can lasers do the job since their light can’t bend along curves in a tooth’s roots or get into tiny offshoots from the roots.

So once a root canal tooth is filled and sealed, any remaining pathogens in the tooth are likewise sealed in and free to proliferate. And proliferate, they do.

But even more concerning is the metabolic waste that’s generated by those pathogens, including sulfur compounds such as mercaptans and thioethers. These highly toxic substances can damage mitochondria – the power plants of your cells – which are especially abundant in one of your body’s most important organs of elimination, your liver.

Toxins from the tooth are free to travel there – or anywhere else in the body – courtesy of the fact that while the tooth has been gutted and filled, it remains connected to the body at its roots. Toxins generated within the tooth thus enter the general circulation, free to wreak what havoc they will.

Through years of analyzing extracted root canal teeth, Dr. Boyd Haley has found that more than 90% of them are teeming with dozens of different pathogens.

Each tooth is also connected to the body energetically, via the meridian system. Each of the twelve meridians – energetic pathways – passes through a great many organs and tissues. Consequently, problems with a tooth may show up as problems with other organs that share the same meridian.

See For Yourself

Of course, it’s one thing to read about these issues. It’s quite another to see an individual’s journey from good health to ill and back again.

To that end, you may want to check out the recent documentary Root Cause, which tells the story of one man whose health “went to s***” after root canal therapy was performed on a broken tooth. His story is interspersed with commentary from a wide range of experts who explain why root canals can be as damaging as they are.

Here’s a preview:

The film is currently available for rental or purchase from the iTunes Store, Amazon, and Vimeo. We encourage you to check it out.

And if you’re concerned about the role that root canal teeth may or may not be having on your health, start by consulting a qualified biological dentist. The International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine (IABDM) has a searchable online directory you can use to find such a dentist near you: findabiologicaldentist.com. Other good referral sources include the Holistic Dental Association (HDA) and the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT).

Tooth anatomy diagram by BruceBlaus, root canal diagram by Jeremy Kemp & Jellocube27, via Wikimedia Commons

The post Root Canal Teeth & Chronic Illness: Is There a Connection? appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

The Life-Changing Power of Gratitude

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, thoughts naturally turn to gratitude. Yet it can sometimes seem a hard thing to practice when faced with tragedies and challenges like those our region has faced through recent weeks. There has been loss. There has been pain.

Yet the practice of gratitude teaches us that, even when things are terrible or difficult, there is still much to be grateful for. In that comes strength, happiness, peace.

Gratitude is powerful, indeed.

More

From Dr. Joe and all of us here at the office, a very blessed and happy Thanksgiving to you. Safe journeys to those who are traveling. Wonderful, loving celebrations to all.

The post The Life-Changing Power of Gratitude appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Survival Vitamins vs. Longevity Vitamins (& Why You Need Both)

Broadly speaking, good health happens when the body is given what it needs to operate as it evolved to do, with toxic exposures kept to a minimum. What it needs are nutrients – not just the macro- and micronutrients in our food but also things like exercise, sleep, and more.

Now, a fascinating new paper in PNAS suggests another way of thinking about the nutrients we get through food in particular.

Analyzing the results of numerous studies conducted in his lab at the Children’s Hopsital Oakland Research Institute up in Oakland, Dr. Bruce Ames identifies a particular set of nutrients as “longevity vitamins” – nutrients that play a protective role, sustaining good health and preventing disease.

They stand in contrast to what he calls “survival proteins,” or nutrients that support only the basic processes of survival and reproduction.

When nutrients are deficient, Dr. Ames says, the body tends to favor the production of “survival proteins,” which can lead to a decrease in “longevity proteins,” and thus to a heightened risk of disease.

“Longevity vitamins,” according to the researchers, are the nutrients which support the function of “longevity proteins,” and allow the human body to remain healthy, and live for an extended period.

Critically, they’re the nutrients needed for cellular health, doing everything from repairing DNA to preventing damage from oxidative stress. Most of these are already well-known, such as vitamins K and D, magnesium, selenium, and 26 others.

But Dr. Ames also argues for other compounds to be included, as well. Taurine, for instance – a conditional amino acid that can work as an antioxidant – should be considered a “conditional vitamin,” he says. Ten more compounds, he suggest, also fit his concept of longevity vitamins:

the fungal antioxidant ergothioneine; the bacterial metabolites pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) and queuine; and the plant antioxidant carotenoids lutein, zeaxanthin, lycopene, α- and β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, and the marine carotenoid astaxanthin.

Ideally, we would get all the survival and longevity vitamins we need through diet (or, in the case of vitamin D, regular exposure to sunlight). Real food is always your best source of nutrients, after all. With whole food, you get a complete nutritional package.

But many of us may not be able to fully assimilate the nutrients we consume – whether because of a genetic legacy, toxic burdens, lifestyle habits, or other factors. Identifying, understanding, and addressing such barriers with the help of an integrative physician is a crucial step toward creating Radiant Health.

Supplements, of course, can be helpful in such cases, too. Perhaps even better is nutritional support through IV drip therapies, as these deliver nutrients straight to the circulation where they can be delivered more quickly to the cells that need them.

The main thing? Feeding your body what it needs not just to survive but to thrive.

Image by Shannon Kringen, via Flickr

The post Survival Vitamins vs. Longevity Vitamins (& Why You Need Both) appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

How to Get More of the Master Antioxidant, Glutathione

If you’re looking to raise your glutathione levels – and plenty of people are these days – you don’t have to look too hard for tips. Web pages abound, advising people to eat more sulfuric foods or take supplements or exercise more, or all of the above.

And these are all perfectly legit and helpful ways to get your body to make more of the stuff – a combination of the amino acids cysteine, glycine, and glutamine that’s found in every cell of your body.

Or you could take it through IV therapy.

IV therapy is an ideal way to deliver nutrients to the body. When you take oral supplements, some nutrients are necessarily lost through the long and arduous process of digestion. IV sends the nutrients right to where they’re needed – your body’s cells.

Known as the master antioxidant, glutathione is a pivotal part of your liver detox pathways. It contains sulfur groups which have a tendency to latch onto free radicals, heavy metals, and other toxins so they can then be excreted.

Of course, considering the range of toxins we’re each exposed to every day, it’s no wonder that many of us our lacking in this important nutrient. Restoring it intravenously, though, the high levels achieved amplify its effectiveness in activating other antioxidant and detoxification enzymes inside the cell and protecting healthy cells from inflammatory molecules.

Consequently, it can be considered one of the body’s primary defenses against illness. And not only does it support your body’s natural detoxing abilities; it supports a robust immune response, as well.

Glutathione also protects your mitochondria – the power plants of your cells. It preserves and promotes energy production at its very source. At the same time, research suggests that this ability may also play a role in protecting against chronic conditions such as liver disease, Alzheimer’s, and cancer.

Glutathione – alone or with other nutrients – is one of the most effective IV therapies we have for “brain fog” and neurotoxicity. Taken regularly, it’s remarkable in its ability to help restore clearer thinking, sharper focus, and better concentration and recall.

Between this and the increased energy it can facilitate, it’s no wonder why this therapy can give a big boost to patients who are feeling drained, devitalized, and just plain maxed out. IV glutathione can be wonderfully restorative – a key player in anti-aging medicine.

And it’s just one of the options we offer here in our Los Angeles integrative clinic, convenient from Santa Monica and Beverly Hills alike. Check out some of the others we have available – options that can always be customized to your particular needs and health situation, whether you’re battling chronic illness or simply looking to transform good health into Radiant Health.

IV bags image by NIAID, via Wikimedia Commons

The post How to Get More of the Master Antioxidant, Glutathione appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Why Bother with IV vitamins when you can take them orally?

The answer is to follow the path nutrients must take to get to where they matter – inside the cell!

The difference between absorption of IV and oral vitamins is enormous.  Oral vitamins do have true benefit in ongoing maintenance and treatment.  They’re also effective in helping maintain the high levels of nutrients achieved with IV treatments.

But those nutrients must travel a laborious pathway in which many of them are lost.

That’s not the case with IV vitamins. They move directly into your body’s cells without ever passing through the gut.

In contrast, here’s the path that a single nutrient – vitamin C – must take once you’ve swallowed it:

1. Digestion in the stomach – where gastric acids, enzymes, and “intrinsic factors” may or may not be adequate or overly acidic.
2. Digestion in the small intestine – where fats, protein, and carbs are absorbed, and where essential enzymes must be present, unless there’s a problem.
3. Absorption in the large intestine – where mostly water and minerals are absorbed.
4. Transport of the nutrients to the liver for detoxification and processing.
5. Delivery from the liver to blood vessels going to the rest of the body.
6. Absorption from the blood vessels into the tissues and from the tissues into the cells.

Now, that’s a lot to absorb!

It’s also a pathway on which a lot of mishaps can occur.  At best, only a portion of the nutrients we eat can be delivered to the cells where our metabolism operates.  Patients with bloating, leaky gut, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or food sensitivities often lose many nutrients during these steps. Those taking high doses of vitamin C orally almost always end up with abdominal cramps and diarrhea before their blood levels come close to those of the IV formulas.

And almost all Americans – even those eating a healthy diet – are nutrient deficient due to soil depletion and other factors.  In other words, you cannot get the optimal Radiant Health level of nutrients you need by eating the right foods or just taking supplements.

If we compare the oral route to the IV route, here’s what we find:

Vitamin C and all the other essential nutrients in the combos we offer in the IV therapy we provide in our Los Angeles office  – not just straight C but also options such as glutathione and the Myers Cocktail – are delivered directly into the blood and to the cells. There’s no intestinal path required.  There are no challenges with intestinal absorption or delivery to the liver or transport to the tissues and then to the cells.

And there’s no loss of nutrients along that arduous pathway.

One more enormously important fact: The blood levels of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients given IV are many many times higher than the levels you get from taking them orally. This occurs without any of the stomach upset, nausea, diarrhea seen with too many supplements or too high doses.

With IV vitamin C, you get significantly more nutrients delivered right to where your body needs them: your cells. That means significantly better support for Radiant Health when you make IV therapies a regular part of your health routine.

The post Why Bother with IV vitamins when you can take them orally? appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Medical Ozone for Healing? A Couple of Case Reports

“The world is facing a crisis of antibiotic resistance,” writes Dr. Robert Rowen in a paper just published in the journal Medical Gas Research.

Thousands of patients die yearly in the USA from infections that have failed to respond to anti-infectives. Alarms have been ringing about bacterial infection fatality resurgence, the end of the antibiotic era, a calamity in progress.

But where mainstream medicine keeps looking toward the possibility of new medications – or at least stemming antibiotic overuse to keep our current arsenal effective – they overlook one very important tool that exists in the integrative physician’s medical kit: ozone (oxygen) therapy.

As we’ve discussed before, ozone is kind of a supercharged oxygen. Instead of two-atom molecules – the form that the oxygen you breathe takes – ozone has a third atom. This makes it unstable – and what makes it a powerful antimicrobial.

But there’s more to it than that. As one 2017 paper put it,

copious volumes of research have provided evidence that O3’s dynamic resonance structures facilitate physiological interactions useful in treating a myriad of pathologies. Specifically, O3 therapy induces moderate oxidative stress when interacting with lipids. This interaction increases endogenous production of antioxidants, local perfusion, and oxygen delivery, as well as enhances immune responses.

As such, medical ozone – which is made by passing oxygen through a corona high arc discharge, resulting in a gas mixture of 1-5% ozone in oxygen – has a wide number of applications. Just as it can be harnessed for its antimicrobial power, it can also be used to relieve pain and support healing from chronic conditions ranging from coronary artery disease to autoimmune challenges to fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.

It can also be used to take your current good health to a higher level by supporting robust immune function, improving circulation, stimulating oxygen uptake by the cells, increasing antioxidant protection, and stimulating mitochondrial function.

Or it can be used to treat infection, as in the tick-borne illness case Dr. Rowen presents in his new paper:

A 56 year old male presented with an acute right thigh cellulitis from a tick bite which occurred 1-2 days before. At presentation he was afebrile, but with a rapidly spreading rash on his upper leg….

The patient was a long-term patient of our clinic. He had received ozone from us 3 years before for Lyme disease (without antibiotics), and fully recovered. He was offered antibiotics to take immediately for medical-legal reasons but refused due to his past success with ozone therapy. He did depart with a written prescription upon my demand. He received ozone therapy by the hyperbaric method described above, receiving 144,000 μg over one hour at an average pressure of 1.9 ATA. He returned the following photograph two days later reporting that he made good on his decision not to take antibiotics. The rash began disappearing the following day and disappeared on the second day.

We’ve seen similar results in our own office, as well. For instance, there was one patient with chronic Lyme who incurred a classic bullseye lesion with abruptly increased joint pain and paresthesias (a prickling or tingling feeling caused mainly by pressure on or damage to peripheral nerves) while on antibiotics for her primary infection.

Dr. Joe immediately provided direct intravenous ozone therapy plus an additional antibiotic. Within two days, she reported feeling better. By the third day or so, the lesion had cleared.

This is much faster than antibiotics can typically take effect.

More, the patient reports that she feels better than she has in more than a year, and we continue to see her improve.

This is the kind of patient story we love to see unfold – and even more, love to share!

The post Medical Ozone for Healing? A Couple of Case Reports appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

From the Archives: The Line Between Taking Charge of Your Health & DIY Healthcare

A man goes to the hospital for a routine surgery. Though he has had prostate cancer, it’s in remission. He appears healthy. He says he cycles 50 miles a week.

Then his doctors discover that his blood oxygen levels are extremely low. They run tests and find a elevated levels of cyanide in his blood. Why?

For 5 years, he had been self-medicating with apricot pits and kernel supplements in hopes of keeping his cancer at bay. The amygdalin (also referred to as laetrile) they contain is touted by some as an anti-cancer nutrient. The body converts it to cyanide, which in turn is said to kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.

The case history was published last fall in BMJ Case Reports.

Whether there’s a time and place for this particular supplement isn’t our concern here. What jumped out at us when we first heard about this report is how it illustrates one of the perils of self-medication.

This case illustrates how chronic dosing of complementary medicines can result in harmful toxicities, which may carry potential for serious consequences and how these chronic toxicities may present to physicians in atypical ways.

In these days of soaring medical costs and easy access to all kinds of health info online, it’s not hard to see why someone would choose to self-diagnose and self-medicate. On the whole, supplements are extremely safe – far safer than pharmaceutical drugs – and are readily available. There would seem to be no harm in trying out this “natural” DIY treatment or that.

Yet it’s important to realize that supplements are not drug analogs. Rather, they’re a way of supplying nutrients (or, in the case of homeopathics, information) that the body can use to self-repair and restore as it was designed to do. And there are a lot of things to consider, such as

• Is the supplement the right supplement? Does it address real physiological needs?

• 

  Are you taking a good quality supplement? Not all supplements are created equal. Synthetic forms may not be as effective as natural forms, derived from organic whole foods.

• Are you taking the right dosage? Presuming the supplement is appropriate, are you taking enough to get the effects you desire? Are you taking more than you need and risking harmful side effects?

• Do you know if there are any harmful interactions between the supplement and other medicine you’re taking? Combinations such as St. John’s wort and SSRIs or B complex and statins can cause serious damage. If there is a risk of harm, is there another supplement that might still be appropriate?

• Is the supplement alone enough? Does it need to be taken with other nutrients or medicines in order to do what you want it to? Are other therapies or lifestyle changes called for?

The most common chronic illnesses today are multifactorial and thus need to be addressed by far more than just taking a single supplement or remedy. Because of that complexity, it’s wisest to have a trained and knowledgeable physician or other health professional to guide you – not just to the right supplements but the right overall approach for meeting your health goals.

Taking charge of your health doesn’t mean you go it alone.

Holistic, functional, integrative medicine aims to do more than just manage symptoms. We look for the root causes of your health woes and help you address them by giving your body what it needs to heal and thrive.

So we look at the big picture to give you a proper diagnosis and treatment plan. We analyze your whole health history, as well as your current health status, challenges, and lifestyle.

With this broader understanding, we can create a personalized plan – one suited to your needs, goals, and values – to help your body mend.

No, it may not be as convenient as trying something you saw on the internet, but it’s far more apt to deliver the results you want and deserve.

Image by Clean Wal-Mart, via Flickr

Originally posted September 19, 2017; updated

The post From the Archives: The Line Between Taking Charge of Your Health & DIY Healthcare appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Heavy Metals & Your Heart

No matter how clean your diet, no matter how much physical activity you get, no matter how balanced your lifestyle, you’re exposed to a crazy cocktail of environmental toxins every day – including heavy metals such as lead, copper, cadmium, and arsenic.

Such metals can build up in the body over time and prove a detriment to health in a variety of ways. Mercury toxicity, for instance, can manifest through neurological symptoms, cognitive difficulties, mental illness, and autoimmune disorders.

The specific health problems, of course, depend not only upon the type(s) of metals involved but the length and amount of exposure and the individual’s health history, including any other present physical burdens.

One new study in the BMJ takes a closer look at the impact of heavy metals on heart health in particular – a meta-analysis of 37 previous studies involving nearly 350,000 patients.

As a report on MDLinx summarized,

Compared to people with the lowest levels of arsenic exposure, those with the highest exposure were 30% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease. The highest levels of lead exposure were tied to a 43% higher risk, top levels of cadmium were linked to 33% higher risk, and the greatest level of copper exposure was associated with 81% higher risk.

“These findings reinforce the fact that environmental exposures are equally important (beyond conventional behavioral risk factors such as physical activity or diet) for cardiovascular risk, and should not be ignored,” said lead author Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury of the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Interestingly, the authors didn’t find a link between mercury exposure and CVD – perhaps, suggested Dr. Chowdhury, because so much of our mercury exposure comes through eating fish. The healthy fats in fish may offset any heart-related issues from mercury exposure, though not necessarily other mercury-related health problems.

This link between heavy metal exposure and heart health further reinforces the findings of the important TACT study done some years back, which showed that chelation therapy – a kind of detox using synthetic amino acids to eliminate heavy metals in the body – was both safe and beneficial. Heart attacks were reduced by 23%; heart-related hospitalizations by 28%; and strokes by 23%.

The results were even more impressive among patients with diabetes. They experienced a 41% overall reduction in the risk of any cardiovascular event, a 52% reduction in recurrent heart attack, and a 43% reduction in death from any cause.

Chelation is just one of the detox therapies we provide here in our West Los Angeles holistic health clinic to support not just our patients’ heart health but their overall health and wellness. There is evidence, for instance, that EDTA – one of the common chelators we use – enhances brain function and stimulates mitochondrial activity. It’s also been shown to optimize nitric acid production, which supports healthy circulation and enhances oxygen delivery to the tissues of your body.

While chelation can be done orally, with suppositories, or through IV drip, the latter – IV – is generally recommended when pursued to support heart health. You can learn more about other drip therapies we offer here.

The post Heavy Metals & Your Heart appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Guest Post: Gummy Supplements – Big Business? Yes. Big Nutrition? Not So Much

Our thanks to the office of biological dentist Dr. Gary Verigin for providing this article from their blog Know Thy Health. You can view the original post here.

---

Once upon a time, gummy and other chewable vitamins were just kid stuff. Now, they’re very big business. As the New York Times reported last year,

Millions of people are hooked on gummies as a health supplement. Gummy multivitamins accounted for 7.5 percent of the $6 billion multivitamin market in the United States in 2016, according to estimates from the Nutrition Business Journal and projections from IBISWorld, a research company. And gummy products over all now account for $1 billion of the $41 billion supplement market in the United States, a more than 25 percent jump in sales since 2015, according to IBISWorld.

And why not?

Mintel’s 2016 Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements Report underscored that supplement shoppers are looking to formats like gummies because they like taking vitamins and minerals in fun and easy delivery methods. The report noted that innovative delivery platforms such as gummies, and other confectionery methods, “provide an appreciated departure from consumers’ routine, allowing [the consumer] to have a more sensorial, enjoyable experience than with a tablet.”

Ah, yes. We’re all looking for “a more sensorial” experience with our vitamins.

But sure, gummies are easier to take than pills. They also taste good, as they should, considering how they’re typically made with sugar. While the total amount is low – a few grams per serving – if you’re taking several different gummy supplements or are grazing on them throughout the day (they’re “healthy,” after all), you could easily flirt with or surpass the maximum sugar intake for good dental health. That max is just 3% of your total daily calories from sugar. For the average adult, that works out to about 15.5 grams a day.

Thats the equivalent of less than half a can of Coca Cola or about 4 ounces of grape juice.

More, the nature of manufacturing these supplements typically means they pack less of a nutritional punch than conventional supplements. As Neutraceuticals World reported,

Director of product development for MegaFood (the Derry, NH-based brand from FoodState), Stacey Gillespie, discussed some of the difficulties with the gummy format. “Outside of the fact that there are a limited number of qualified and experienced manufacturers of gummy vitamins today, one of the biggest hurdles is the limited amount of active nutritional ingredients you can add to the gummy matrix, compared to the amount you can include in a tablet and/or capsule,” she said. “For example, to deliver 250 mg of vitamin C in a gummy, you would need three to four pieces to equal one serving, versus one tablet or capsule to deliver 250 mg vitamin C.”

Consider how many pieces you’d need to consume if you actually wanted to take a therapeutic dose of say 1000 mg or more.

That’s a whole lot of gummies.

This manufacturing issue may be one of the reasons why ConsumerLab.com has found

that some gummy supplements – particularly gummy multivitamins – do not contain their listed amounts of vitamins or minerals, or contain impurities. We continue to find more problems with candy-like vitamins like gummies than with traditional forms, such as tablets and caplets. Manufacturing challenges associated with candy-like products likely explain the higher incidence of problems.

Then there’s the fact that gummy candies more easily get stuck on and between the teeth, where oral pathogens can feast on their sugar content. As they say, what goes in must come out, and the end result of that feasting is quite acidic, contributing ultimately to tooth decay.

“Even if the gummies don’t have sugar,” dentist Jonathan Levine told HuffPo, ” what we call ‘biofilm’ is always naturally forming on your teeth, so if they don’t get cleaned properly, plaque is bound to develop.”

That said, there are instances in which gummy vitamins may be helpful, such as for people who have difficulty swallowing pills. For those who would not otherwise take supplements at all, they may be better than nothing.

That said, it’s important to keep in mind that most of your nutritional needs should be met as Nature intended: through a nicely varied whole food diet. Supplements are just that: supplements, not replacements. More, when you get your nutrients through whole food, you get the total nutritional package that helps your body to use them more effectively and efficiently.

With gummies? Not so much.

The post Guest Post: Gummy Supplements – Big Business? Yes. Big Nutrition? Not So Much appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

How Overdoing It with the Probiotics May Lead to Brain Fog

Prevention is good medicine, and for a lot of folks, that includes using things like dietary supplements and herbal remedies on a regular basis.

It may be something they read about on Facebook or saw on YouTube or heard in a podcast or simply stumbled upon through search. Since there’s usually little risk of immediate harm from taking such products, why not? If it works, fantastic! If it doesn’t, no big loss, right?

But unless you’re doing this with a doctor’s guidance, there can be risks over the longer term.

For instance, there can be bad interactions between supplements – or, more often, supplements and prescription drugs – that you may not be aware of. Maybe you don’t take enough to get the effect you desire. Maybe you take too much. Maybe there are side effects that you don’t attribute to the supplements because “everybody knows” that they’re harmless.

Consider probiotics – super popular right now as research into the microbiome continues to suggest the importance of gut health on overall health. Probiotic supplements – including those added to various foods – are intended to add more helpful bacteria to the GI tract, supporting good immune, digestive and brain health in particular.

They also play a role in a recent study in Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology.

For this small but intriguing study, patients with gas, bloating, intact gut, and negative endoscopic and radiological tests were evaluated. Thirty patients also had brain fog, while 8 did not.

The researchers tested for bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine. They ran metabolic tests and measured urinary levels of D-lactic acid and L-lactic acid and ammonia levels in the blood. Bowel symptoms and how food moved through the GI tract were also assessed.

The team found that patients with brain fog tended to have large numbers of bacteria colonizing their small intestine. Their levels of D-lactic acid were especially high – a result of bacterial fermentation of sugars in the food they ate.

The brain fog patients all had one thing in common: They took probiotics, which may have contributed to bacterial overgrowth and a surge in D-lactic acid levels. This is significant, as D-lactic acid is temporarily toxic to brain cells. It can interfere with your ability to think.

In the study, the researchers found some patients had two to three times the normal amount of D-lactic acid in their blood, leading to bouts of brain fogginess that could last for hours after eating, and in some cases were so severe that patients had to quit their jobs.

Sometimes, the effects could be rapid, with the researchers finding one patient who experienced brain fogginess and bloating within a minute of eating.

“It happened right in front of our eyes,” [lead author Satish S.C.] Rao says.

Of course, not all people would experience the same symptoms from taking probiotics, and not all probiotics are the same either.

But Rao says the experience of the patients he and his team clinically observed over three years shows nobody should casually or indiscriminately be taking probiotics without taking medical advice.

“Probiotics should be treated as a drug,” he says, “not as a food supplement.”

The good news? When patients stopped taking the probiotics and took a course of antibiotics to tame the bacterial overgrowth, the brain fog went away. Seventy percent reported significant improvement in all their symptoms, and 85% reported that their brain fog had dissipated.

None of this should be taken to mean that probiotics are dangerous or should be avoided. They can be hugely helpful if the right kind are taken in the right dose.

The best way to make sure you use probiotics in a way that’s helpful to you – your gut, your immune system, your brain, the works – is simply to work with an integrative physician who can offer guidance and steer you toward the results you seek.

Image by Ashley Steel, via Wikimedia Commons

The post How Overdoing It with the Probiotics May Lead to Brain Fog appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

The Newest Wellness Trend Isn’t Really So New: IV Drip Therapy

Suddenly, IV drip therapy is the one of the hottest wellness trends around.

Celebrities from Rihanna and Cindy Crawford to Simon Cowell and the Kardashians reportedly swear by them. Drip lounges and mobile IV units are cropping up across the country, offering everything from hangover cures to energy and immunity boosts, and plenty in between.

But truth be told, drip therapy is nothing new. It’s been around since the 1800s, just as science was shedding light on the human circulatory system. The kinds of vitamin infusions that are offered today have been around for roughly a century.

We’ve been offering such treatments in our holistic West Los Angeles clinic for years now, where we go well beyond the standard wellness supports such as vitamin C + minerals and the well-known Myers’ Cocktail. Such blends are great for energizing and supporting immunity and healthy cellular function. But they’re just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

For instance, ozone and hydrogen peroxide drips can energize and promote detox by getting more oxygen to your cells while improving circulation and stimulating mitochondrial energy production.

Glutathione is another effective immunity-booster and anti-inflammatory compound that’s great for general detox.

Another great tool in anti-aging therapies is phosphatidylcholine. This phospholipid is especially good for detoxing the liver, your body’s main organ of detoxification.

EDTA, DMSA, and DMPS are available for heavy metals chelation, but evidence also suggests that EDTA in particular may help enhance brain function, stimulate mitochondrial activity, and optimize nitric acid production (giving it a role to play in heart health, as well).

We also have blends available for addressing specific situations such as overcoming jetlag, combatting colds and flu, and recovering from a hangover. Or we can totally customize the treatment you receive, based on your specific needs.

While all of these options can be used in treatment of a wide variety of health problems, pursuing drip therapy as part of a broadly preventive health and wellness program can yield great benefits, helping to keep your body functioning at its best.

This is because, unlike with dietary supplements you swallow, IV therapy delivers 100% of the nutrients directly into your circulation so your body can transport them where they are most needed. It also delivers fluids that deeply rehydrate your body.

But while IV therapy is generally safe and easy, it’s important that you have it overseen by a physician or other qualified medical professional who knows you, your health history, and your current health situation, desires, and goals. For one, this will insure that high quality, medical grade nutrients are delivered.

More importantly, components of the IV may react with any pharmaceutical drugs or natural medications you may be taking. Getting your drips from a qualified physician minimizes the risk of a bad interaction.

If you’re looking to take your health and wellness to the next level and think IV drip therapy may have a role to play in your pursuit, we encourage you to contact us and set up your first appointment. We would be pleased to help you get to that next level.

The post The Newest Wellness Trend Isn’t Really So New: IV Drip Therapy appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.