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August 23, 2011  In This Issue... - Don’t Let Back Pain Govern How You Live Your Life -- The Experts at Harvard Medical School Can Help You Heal Your Aching Back
- Bugs-R-You? New Approach to Health and Medicine Based on Personal Bacteria Typing
- Drug-Free Diabetes Cure
- Calcium: The Truth Yesterday... The Truth Today
- Vegetarian Week
Don’t Let Back Pain Govern How You Live Your Life -- The Experts at Harvard Medical School Can Help You Heal Your Aching Back Four in five Americans suffer back pain at some point in their lives, and for many, it’s a recurring problem. But thanks to back pain researchers, treatment has undergone a sea change in recent years. Doctors can now tailor treatments that are more likely to help specific conditions. The role of exercise, complementary therapies, and new minimally-invasive procedures all play a role in today’s treatments for low back pain woes. Discover the best way to relieve your back pain. Click here to learn more...
Bugs-R-You? New Approach to Health and Medicine Based on Personal Bacteria Typing Just like we have blood types, research indicates that, depending on the bacteria we carry, we may well have gut types too. Our bodies play host to trillions of microbes that assume a significant role in health and well-being, and now European researchers have discovered three distinct types of microbial ecosystems that exist inside us. Regular readers of Daily Health News know that doctors are paying more and more attention to bacteria in our digestive system -- in fact, we’ve covered the role of bacteria as it relates not only to digestion but also to immunity, anxiety, obesity and mental illness, to name just a few. I believe this may be one of the most important new areas of medical research, so I found this latest report especially intriguing. To learn more about it, I spoke with Manimozhiyan Arumugam, PhD, a research scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. He said that he expects that doctors will someday use bacterial typing to individualize treatment decisions, such as how you are likely to respond to different diets and drugs. What’s Your Type? The study is small but quite compelling. As part of a European consortium, Dr. Arumugam (working at EMBL) and his colleagues at several other institutions took stool samples from 22 Europeans and analyzed the bacterial DNA content to identify the dominant bacteria of each. They then grouped this data together with results from earlier studies typing the gut bacteria of other Europeans, Americans and Japanese (276 people in all). All ate a typical Western diet, Dr. Arumugam told me. Results: Taken together, the scientists identified three microbial ecosystems or "enterotypes" that varied according to the types of bacteria present. Enterotype one had high levels of a genus called Bacteroides... type two contained predominantly Prevotella... and Ruminococcus was dominant in type three. While it isn’t understood how this affects our health, researchers were interested to observe that type one produced more enzymes for making vitamin B-7 (biotin) and was better at processing carbohydrates... type two produced more enzymes for making B-1 (thiamine) and was better at metabolizing mucin proteins (found in the mucosal lining of the gut, where they form a protective layer against pathogens)... and type three was best at processing mucins and sugars. Factors such as ethnicity, sex, weight, health and age had no strong connections to enterotypes, a finding that surprised and perplexed investigators. In other words, a slight, older woman in Japan might have more intestinally in common with a large young man in France than with another Japanese person. The human gut is an extremely complex ecosystem with thousands of microbial species, Dr. Arumugam explained, and this is exactly why more research is needed to identify what determines enterotypes. It might turn out that genetic markers rule bacterial type, or it might be a combination of many factors. These findings were published in the April 20, 2011, issue of the journal Nature. Gut Instinct -- This May Be Big Because the samples have been small and included people who followed primarily a Western diet, Dr. Arumugam warns that we cannot conclude that all human beings have one of these three ecosystems (though that may turn out to be the case). Dr. Arumugam told me there is not currently funding for a large-scale study, but his team is trying to launch a not-for-profit study of willing participants (you can get more information at http://My.Microbes.eu). He noted that it wouldn’t be surprising to uncover additional enterotypes or subtypes since the prevailing belief is that both "nature and nurture" contribute to the population of our gut bacteria. In the meantime, the health implications are tantalizing if still unclear. Unlocking the mystery of gut ecosystems might lead to an alternative to antibiotics -- new drugs that restore the type of good bacteria you have in your gut rather than indiscriminately wiping out all bacteria, good and bad. Additionally, if it turns out that genetic markers determine intestinal ecosystem type, doctors may be able to use this information to predict who is susceptible to disorders such as colorectal cancer, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Stay tuned, as scientists at the EMBL and other facilities around the world continue to study gut ecosystems and their important impact on human health. Source(s):
Manimozhiyan Arumugam, PhD, research scientist, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany.
Drug-Free Diabetes Cure Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have established that 83% of obese patients who try a new natural treatment code-named "LGB" that dramatically corrects the way your body metabolizes food see dramatic improvement in their diabetes. In fact, many see total reversal of the disease. Dr. Philip Schauer, who led the study, also comments, "Most patients in the study with type 2 diabetes... achieved excellent biochemical [blood sugar] control and were able to reap the clinical benefits of withdrawing from most, if not all, antidiabetes medications, including insulin." LGB works in as little as 90 minutes, even on morbidly obese patients... Learn more...
Calcium: The Truth Yesterday... The Truth Today Would you believe a recent study found that in the space of one year, 13% of medical findings published in a prestigious medical journal were reversed? While many are just modified, this group was actually reversed. The study was done at Northwestern University and looked at medical research reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009. "What does this tell us?" That we really need to pay close attention to the ever-changing medical and health information we all too readily take in... and understand that it will continue to evolve. So let’s do that right now with the latest news on the calcium front. While this new calcium information certainly isn’t a total reversal of what we’ve been told in the past, it’s a very important modification... CALCIUM ON A PEDESTAL For more than 20 years, calcium has had an almost magical aura about it, a promise to protect against osteoporosis, which brings bone-thinning and fracture risk. The current Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium is 1,000 mg to 1,200 mg, but so much praise has been heaped on calcium that many women routinely ingest even larger amounts of it -- up to 1,500 mg or even 1,800 mg daily in supplement form -- in addition to what they get from food. It’s also added to many commercial foods now, including the store-bought orange juice that many women, men and children drink every day. At the same time, we are learning that the reality of calcium is more complicated than we thought, as demonstrated in two new studies on calcium needs and calcium risks. The first is a Swedish study that spanned 19 years and looked at more than 60,000 women, average age of 53 when the study started. Researchers found that women who ingested the least amount of calcium had a higher risk for fracture or osteoporosis. This is just what we would have expected, right? But now comes the unnerving part. It turns out that women ingesting just 700 mg of calcium a day versus the recommended 1,000 mg to 1,200 mg had the lowest risk for broken bones and/or osteoporosis and that taking additional amounts of calcium did not lower the risk further. And that’s not the half of it. The second study reports on data from the 15-year Women’s Health Initiative started in 1991 by the National Institutes of Health in the US. Its startling finding is that postmenopausal women who took 1,000 mg per day of calcium as a supplement in addition to about 1,150 mg per day (on average) from food had a 17% increase in kidney stones due to the calcium "overdose." The Expert’s Advice I called Murray J. Favus, MD, professor of medicine at The University of Chicago Medical Center. As an expert on calcium metabolism in the body, Dr. Favus had great insight on the topic. He noted, first of all, that for proper calcium absorption, you need to have vitamin D. Even so, taking lots of calcium will not mean that all of the supplement is in there making more bone for you -- instead your body ends up sending excess calcium out through your urine. And consequently your urine ends up with a concentration of calcium that can sometimes form crystals, and they, in turn, create stones. Dr. Favus thinks the optimum level of calcium for most people to ingest each day through some combination of foods and supplements is about 700 mg, along with 1,000 international units (IU) to 1,200 IU per day of vitamin D-3. But for older men and women, who may have a decrease in intestinal absorption, erring on the higher side -- 1,000 mg to 2,000 mg per day -- may help with calcium intake. Caution: You may be getting much more calcium than you realize. Dr. Favus says that many manufacturers have increased calcium levels (as well as levels of vitamin D) in multivitamin supplements. This can mean that if you’re taking an enhanced multivitamin along with your daily calcium supplement, you may be getting nearly twice the amount you think! It’s important to look at the labels of all supplements you take to total up the amount that you are getting via your supplements as well as your dietary calcium (more on that below). Nature’s Calcium The best way to get your calcium, Dr. Favus says, is through dietary sources rather than a supplement, because dietary calcium does not cause kidney stones. In fact, calcium from food seems to lower the risk for kidney stones. Here are the doctor’s recommendations... - You’ll get about 300 mg of calcium in eight ounces of milk... six ounces of yogurt... or one ounce of cheese. Calcium in dairy products in particular is much better absorbed by your body. Aim for three servings a day of such dairy foods and, for optimal absorption, limit it to 300 mg to 400 mg at any one time.
- People who do not eat dairy products can get some calcium in dark greens -- spinach in particular -- but Dr. Favus says that the body doesn’t absorb calcium in greens very well. Certainly continue to eat greens -- a few almonds will help with absorption. But if you do not eat dairy products, consider foods enriched with calcium such as rice milk, soy milk, almond milk and calcium-fortified orange juice before going to calcium supplements.
My recommendation? Stay tuned for updates on calcium -- I’m sure we still have more to learn as research continues. Source(s):
Murray J. Favus, MD, professor of medicine, The University of Chicago Medical Center, director of the bone program at The University of Chicago, who has for many years studied calcium metabolism in the body.
Vegetarian Week I love meat and chicken and I'm not that crazy about fish, but for the past few weeks, my family and I have been living as "fishetarians"... consuming lots of vegetables and grains, some dairy, and fish but no other meat. Here at Bottom Line, we've done many articles on the dangers of red meats and the virtues of a vegetarian diet, and more recently, healthful fish, to minimize the risk of heart disease, cancer and other deadly diseases. I've thought for a long time that I like meat too much to really cut back—let alone stop eating it -- but my family was eating up whatever was in our house in the weeks prior to going on vacation, so we decided to give it a try. Read on...
Be well, 
Carole Jackson
Bottom Line's Daily Health News
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