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August 29, 2011  In This Issue... - The Prescription That Can Add Years to Your Life -- But Your Pharmacy Can’t Fill
- Styrofoam Really Is Bad for Your Health
- Drug-Free Treatment Reverses Even Bone-on-Bone Arthritis...
- High-Fat Diet Helps Kidneys
The Prescription That Can Add Years to Your Life -- But Your Pharmacy Can’t Fill It’s a universal prescription everyone should follow, but you won’t find it at your local drugstore. It lowers your risk for serious health problems, including heart disease, stroke and some forms of cancer. It preserves your independence, and protects your mobility. What is this promising elixir? It’s exercise -- and hundreds of studies have shown it can help you feel better, look great, and live a longer life. Let the experts at Harvard Medical School help you create a well-rounded exercise plan that fits your life. Click here to learn more...
Styrofoam Really Is Bad for Your Health My niece is a college student, and forget about the healthy snacks that my sister once plied her with -- frozen blueberries, raw carrots and peppers, Greek yogurt. Now she and her roommates subsist on salty soups in Styrofoam containers that they heat in the communal microwave. This, too, will pass, I know, but a recent US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report provides greater cause for concern. In June, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of HHS, added styrene -- the chemical used in the manufacture of Styrofoam cups and food containers -- to its list of substances that are "reasonably anticipated" to cause cancer. Styrene has also been linked to nerve damage and hormonal disruption. The Chemicals Leach Into Your Food Styrofoam is made from the plastic polystyrene, which is based on building blocks called styrene monomers. When you drink your steaming cup of coffee or spoon your chicken noodle soup or chili out of a Styrofoam cup, you also take in small doses of chemicals that leach from it. "Trace amounts of styrene as well as various chemical additives in polystyrene migrate into food -- particularly when liquids are hot," explains Olga Naidenko, PhD, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group ( www.ewg.org). "This is a problem, because polystyrene is very commonly used as disposable packaging for hot food and beverages" -- and has been for many years! The HHS says that the levels released from food containers are very low -- but for me, that’s not very comforting when I think about the literally thousands of doses that we each have taken in over the years. Then, too, every day we are bombarded with a multitude of toxins in the environment. It all adds up... so now, are you willing to accept toxic industrial chemicals in your soup? Don’t Swallow It Reducing exposure to cancer-causing agents is something we all want, but it takes knowledge and action on each person’s part to achieve that... - Boycott Styrofoam. Do not eat or drink out of Styrofoam containers (even if you’re a college student). I know it sounds obvious, but in today’s food culture, that’s easier said than done. It’s especially important not to consume anything hot, oily, acidic (including tomato sauce-based foods) or alcoholic from Styrofoam, since heat, oil, acid and alcohol increase leaching. This rules out, for example, hot drinks, citrus beverages, dressed salads, take-out burgers and, of course, beer and wine. Don’t store food in Styrofoam -- there are plenty of other packaging options. Be especially cognizant when you’re eating out at a restaurant and find yourself asking the waiter if he/she will pack up what you didn’t finish so that you can take it home. Ask if they have alternatives to Styrofoam, or even bring your own container from home.
- Choose healthier food and beverage containers. Eat and drink out of toxin-free glass, ceramic, stoneware or BPA-free plastic -- not Styrofoam. (Read about health concerns with the chemical BPA in standard plastic containers in the July 4, 2011 issue of Daily Health News.)
- Beat the heat. Whatever else you do, don’t microwave food in Styrofoam. Reheat leftovers in glass, ceramic or stoneware.
- BYOC. Bring your own cup to coffee shops and diners that use Styrofoam for beverages. Some ecofriendly businesses in my neighborhood even give you 25 cents off to encourage you to do the right thing for the environment -- which happens to be the right thing for your body as well.
- Vote with your feet. Patronize food establishments that provide recyclable cardboard take-out containers, not Styrofoam.
Source(s): Olga Naidenko, PhD, senior scientist, Environmental Working Group, Washington, DC. EWG is a nonprofit, research-based organization dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. www.EWG.org.
Drug-Free Treatment Reverses Even Bone-on-Bone Arthritis... "Bone-on-bone" is the term doctors use for the last agonizing stage of arthritis. Your cartilage is totally ground away. Steroids and supplements are pointless. Alice was told her only hope was total knee replacement. Yet thanks to a brilliant physician, she skipped the surgery and feels like new. That's right. Alice licked "bone-on-bone" arthritis without surgery or drugs. And she did so with astonishing speed. In fact, not long after seeing this doctor, she left on a three-week shopping vacation -- then returned to the doctor's office with gifts for the entire staff and pronounced herself pain-free! What's the secret? Learn more...
High-Fat Diet Helps Kidneys Not only is diabetes a difficult disease in and of itself, but it also brings some terrible complications, some of which are life-threatening -- including kidney damage, long thought to be irreversible. But maybe it’s not... I just read a fascinating new study showing that there is a way to reverse kidney damage from diabetes (type 1 and type 2), and believe it or not, the key is eating a high-fat diet! Is This for Real? It’s not quite as simple as dining regularly on marbled steaks and rich ice cream, however. This research focused on what’s called a ketogenic diet, a type of diet that has been used for decades to control seizures in children with severe epilepsy. It’s a rigid eating plan in which people typically eat about four times as much fat (described in detail later) as carbohydrates and protein, for a diet that is 75% to 80% fat. Charles V. Mobbs, PhD, professor of neuroscience, geriatrics and palliative medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, told me that this study is the first one ever to suggest that dietary intervention can turn around kidney damage and possibly other diabetes-related complications as well. At Mount Sinai, Dr. Mobbs and his team examined the effects of a ketogenic diet in mice bred to have diabetes. They allowed the diabetic mice to develop kidney failure and put half on the diet (in this case 87% fat, 8% protein, 5% carbohydrates) and half on a high-carbohydrate control diet of standard mouse chow (11% fat, 23% protein, 64% carbohydrates). After eight weeks, kidney failure was reversed -- meaning that urine analysis showed normal, healthy levels of albumin and creatinine -- in mice on the ketogenic diet. The mice on the control diet died. Tricking the Body Here’s how the ketogenic diet works: Similar to the low-carb, high-fat Atkins diet, it essentially tricks the body into believing that it is in starvation mode, a condition that produces lowered blood glucose levels and higher blood fat levels. These cues trigger the body to manufacture molecules called ketones -- an indication that the body is using fat to provide fuel for energy to the cells. (Normally, the body uses glucose for fuel.) People with diabetes have elevated blood sugar (as you know), causing excess glucose metabolism -- this is what causes diabetes-related kidney failure, Dr. Mobbs explained. But once blood glucose is relatively low and ketones are high (providing an alternative source of energy), the kidneys can take a rest from glucose metabolism -- and thereby regenerate themselves. These findings were published in the April 20, 2011 issue of PLoS ONE. If this process is found to work in humans -- and Dr. Mobbs told me he believes it probably will -- using a ketogenic diet would be a dramatic improvement over dialysis or a kidney transplant, which are at present, the only ways to treat kidney failure. It Works Fast The problem, however, is that the ketogenic diet is so strict and extreme in its requirements (for instance, even toothpaste is restricted in case it has sugar in it) that people find it hard to follow for any length of time. To illustrate: Children put on this diet to control seizures are hospitalized and begin with a 24-hour water fast. Their diet is gradually modified, eventually comprising 75 to 100 calories per 2.2 pounds of body weight with a ratio of three or four times as much fat as carbohydrate and protein -- emphasizing lots of butter, heavy whipping cream, mayonnaise and oils. The children are closely monitored for adverse reactions -- since this is a high-calorie diet, their calorie intake is also watched to be sure that they don’t gain weight -- and if all goes well, they are sent home to continue the diet for several months. So it’s logical that the next question would be how long does a person have to follow this eating plan for it to work -- forever? The answer is, probably not. Dr. Mobbs told me that he believes that following a ketogenic diet for a short period of time -- perhaps only a month -- may be enough to "reset" the kidneys to begin functioning normally. But this is only a guess, he said, noting that he and his team are conducting further mouse trials to determine exactly how many weeks or months are needed to reverse kidney damage. The research team is also organizing trials in humans, and Dr. Mobbs sees great potential for additional future uses of the ketogenic diet. In years to come, we may see it prescribed to treat a variety of both diabetes-related and nondiabetes-related complications -- for instance, age-related kidney failure not caused by diabetes. No question, this is compelling stuff, and I promise that you’ll be hearing more about it in Daily Health News -- but in the meantime, Dr. Mobbs asked me to emphasize that the ketogenic diet is a serious medical intervention that should be attempted only under a doctor’s supervision. Do not try it on your own. Source(s):
Charles V. Mobbs, PhD, professor of neuroscience, geriatrics and palliative medicine, Mobbs’s Aging and Metabolism Lab, Fishberg Department of Neuroscience, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.
Be well, 
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line's Daily Health News
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