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Beware the Nano Foods
July 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
An article in The New Scientist recently highlighted the food industries use of manipulation of food using Nano technologies and hailed the concept as a healthier and more nourishing, as told in The Small Food Revolution.
Here are some of the reasons why just like GM food we should be very weary of this new technology.
Firstly one of the main stated advantages was that food could be made to taste fattening but be actually emulsified so that it is a low fat food. Why would food companies want to do this? It has been shown consistently for years that low fat diets cause more harm than good and in particular low saturated fat diets can cause havoc with hormonal dysfunction and even lead to a higher risk of stroke incidence. Some of these foods aren’t being broken down properly until they hit the small intestine and bile salts are acting on them. This could mean a potential disruption to pancreatic enzyme activity and affect key enzymes which break down fats, proteins and carbohydrates.
One of the main advantages for these large so called ‘food’ producing giants to employ this technology is so that food will last for longer. It’s well know that when you change the chemical structure of foods they can cause havoc with the body, just look at the effect of pastuerised milk or gluten on the human body, and then ask the question….why do we need more foods that last longer?
Whiteners in products like chewing gum have amounts of titanium dioxide and silica in them, despite a team of researchers showing that these compounds can cross the gut lining and cause potential damage to the DNA, food researchers suggest that the body’s own immunological response can deal with these products. Peyer’s patches are part of the immune system that help to fight invading pathogens such as bacteria and parasites, these have been suggested to pick up unwanted compounds such as the titanium oxide. Another question is why would we want an immune system response occurring to alien foods, would it just not be best to have them in the food chain?
Another reason for Nano technology has been for helping those who are anaemic or low levels of iron, in order to help the world’s population of which 30 % or so suffer from this condition, it claims that manipulating ferritin, the stored form of iron in plants and meat may help people with anaemia. One of the reasons which might be lost to the researchers is that people suffering from anaemia may be more helped by strengthening the digestive system.
Hypochlohydria is a lack of production of the stomach acid which helps to break down not only protein but iron, calcium, zinc and other minerals and vitamins. Once again the concept seeks to treat a symptom rather than truly evaluating the cause of body dysfunction. For me the concept of Nano foods should be stored with other deleterious concepts like artificial sweeteners, colouring additives and preservatives…….in the bin!!
How to heal your leaky gut
May 25, 2010 By 2 Comments
Healing the gut is probably one of the most important things that you could do to improve your health. The gut is the powerhouse for the body and is responsible for many functions which include
- Emotional wellbeing (serotonin is produced in the enterochromaffin cells)
- Immune system function (up to 70% of the immune system is housed in the gut
- Breakdown and assimilation of nutrients
- Detoxification along with kidneys and liver
The stomach and intestinal tract can often become dysfunctional due to use of parasites, bacteria , fungus and medicines such as antibiotics, and other toxic pharmacological drugs which not only deplete the beneficial bacteria within the gut but strip it of its valuable mucosal layer which protect the villi of the intestines which is where digestion and absorption take place. This is called intestinal hyper-permeability or ‘leaky gut.’
As the mucosal barrier depletes and the intestinal wall becomes damaged the sites of absorption of nutrients become damaged allowing larger molecules to pass into the blood. This is a huge problem as larger particles of food can pass into the body and as they are not totally digested and the body perceives the molecule as a potential threat and marks it for attack by the body’s protective immune system and antibodies are produced for that particular food molecule. This is one of the potential reasons why more people than ever are developing food intolerances and allergies.
Healing the gut can take time but following the 6 R healing program you should start to notice a significant change within 2-3 months, particularly if you are suffering from, low energy, bloated stomach and weight gain, poor skin or autoimmune conditions such as chronic fatigue, Chron’s disease or Ulcerative Colitis
The 6 R healing Program
- REMOVE All offending irritants to the mucosal lining such as parasites/fungus and bacteria
- REDUCE poor food choices such as sugar, alcohol, hormone raised meats, Gluten
- RESTORE gut function and transit time, increasing fibre
- REPLACE digestive supports such as digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid to increase nutrient assimilation
- REINOCCULATE with friendly bacteria such as bifidobacteria which inhabits the low gut and Lactobacillus which should inhabit the upper gut
- REPAIR The mucosal lining of the gut by taking supplements that help to repair the barrier such as glutamine
To find out more about having your gut analysed or to understand more about healing your gut give us a call
Acid reflux medication causing more health threats
May 10, 2010 By 1 Comment
New research suggests that the medication used to treat conditions such as acid reflux or GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease) is responsible for fractures in post menopausal women and higher bacterial infection rates with other patients. Proton pump inhibitors or PPI’s are the name for this type of medication and are commonly prescribed to lower the amount of hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach. Lansoprazole and omeprazole are well recognised versions of PPI’s.
I have seen many clients who have presented with acid reflux and there can be a variety of causes which include.
Helicobacter Pylori – a parasitic infection
Increased Acid production
Stomach Ulcers
GERD
Reactions to certain foods
Inflammation
Despite the new research there have many other studies that show numerous other side effects of PPI’s.
These include
- Cancer in laboratory rats
- Gastro-intestinal bleeding
- Constipation
- Diarrhoea
- Flatulence
- Headaches
- Nausea
- Abdominal pain
- Vomiting
- Skin rashes
Remember this type of medication as with many others, is there to manage a symptom rather than treat the underlying cause. I have had clients who have been taking this type of medication for some 15 years and this has helped to further decimate the function of the gut, reducing the amount of stomach acid, a condition called hypochlorhydria digestive enzymes and subsequent ability to digest proteins and usually become deficient in iron, calcium and vitamin B12. The use of these medications also helps to lower the level of mucosal lining in the gut, which helps to fight infections and unwanted microbes that enter the stomach and intestines.
With this same client within a month we had managed to cease taking the medication (in consultation with his GP) simply by removing offending foods, putting on a metabolically typed anti inflammatory diet with some key supplements to help replenish the gut lining. To this day he still has not had a case of acid reflux reoccur and he is very happy to be off the medication.
If you know someone who is taking medication for acid reflux or stomach ulcers and would benefit from managing and eradicating their symptoms without taking medications that adversely affect their health then please forward them this blog.
Death Begins in the Colon!
April 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
‘Death Begins in the Colon’ so said the Russian pathologist, E.E. Metchnicoff back in the early 1900’s and never a truer word can be spoken. There can be so many modern symptoms associated with gut and colon dysfunction that the mind boggles.
Here are just a few issues that I see at my clinic that can be traced back to gastro-intestinal or stomach to colon dysfunction.
- Depression, a lack of tryptophan and other essential amino acids has been linked to the production of serotonin the hormone responsible for happiness
- Colon cancer has been linked to low levels of N butyrate which is responsible for the health of cells in the colon, it is also where a large amount of Vitamin K and B12 is produced
- Increase in food allergies due to intestinal hyper permeability or leaky gut syndrome
- Muscle wasting and injury due to lack of protein digestion
- Putrefication of undigested foods leading to bacterial overgrowth, think bacteria, bugs, fungus and potential disease
- Decreased immune system function, when the mucosa of the gut is overwhelmed or depleted, the 75% of immune cells of the body, which are found in the gut become compromised
- Skin disorders such eczema, psoriasis, sores, hives, rashes and many other dermatological conditions can be traced but to health of the digestive tract.
- Chronic fatigue and Fibromyalgia have origins linked to digestive dysfunction
What can you do to help prevent these conditions? Well for starters having a healthy bacterial population in the gut is a start. A healthy body actually contains over 15 pounds of beneficial bacteria. The beneficial bacteria that are often analysed to confirm gut health are
- Bacteriodes
- Clostridia
- Prevotella
- Fusobacteria
- Streptomyces
- Mycoplasma
Other beneficial bacteria include Lactobacillus and Bifidobacter and there is considerable research that has shown that when a branch of the bacterial groups called Firmicutes are in abundance over Bacteriodetes, there is a link between enhanced calorific storing and subsequent weight gain and obesity.
More often than not advertising tells us that we should consume dairy products and the like that contain high levels of probiotic’s, but these often contain sugar and help to feed parasitic, fungal and bacterial matter that are often overgrown in the digestive tract.
If you have any conditions such as the ones above having an analysis of your digestive system is a huge step in clearing up unwanted symptoms and preventing disease. At Balanced Body Mind we have access to the best clinical analysis techniques from DNA detection of parasites to energy metabolism and detoxification pathways. Get in touch if you would like any advice
7 Foundations for optimal health and fitness
March 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
With the spring weather upon us, I think we are all happy with the end of a truly protracted winter. This time of year, many people think about upping their commitment to a healthier lifestyle and throw themselves into a regime that either constitutes one or more of the following regimes.
1. Restrict calories or dietary fats
2. Increase the amount of cardiovascular exercise
3. Increase the amount of resistance or weight exercise
More often than not these can lead to a less than optimal balance of emotional, physical and hormonal harmony. There is actually no need to beat yourself into the ground with ascetic diets and punishing training programs as less is often more with an individualised approach to fitness and wellbeing. Here are my key 7 points to get the balance just right in the quest for optimal health and fitness.
1. Thinking right. Believe it or not thinking right, lays the foundation for you achieving your goals, thinking positive thoughts about want you want in your life, helps you to create the environment that you desire. Also setting yourself realistic targets that can be revisited on a regular basis to help you see tangible results creates a good structure for you achieving your goal.
2. Breathing Right. There is plenty of research that shows that breathing pattern dysfunction can be the cause of many physical, chemical and emotional issues. Leon Chaitow’s work in this area highlights that with a shift from normal diaphragmatic or belly breathing to an inverted breathing pattern using the chest and neck muscles, can cause a knock on effect to pain syndromes in the neck and anywhere below the head, not to mention migraines, increases in anxiety and many other issues.
3. Drinking right. So what’s wrong with tap water? So many of my clients ask me this and the answer is simple you don’t want to drink it. Chlorine for example kills off microbes we know that much, but what about the beneficial microbes that need to exist in our gut? Futhermore there are thousands of different chemicals that find our way into our water, from industrial chemicals, to pharmaceuticals that add a significant toxic load to the already burdened liver. You can also see many documented cases of cryptosporidium, giardia and other nasty parasites that still thrive in these environments. I have had clients that have picked these up from municipal drinking supplies
4. Digesting right. You can eat the best quality organic food but if you’re not digesting it you sure as hell are not getting the nutrients. Hydrochloric acid, gastrin, pepsinogen and digestive enzymes are all substances that the body needs to produce in order to break down foods so that the body can utilse the nutrients. A lot of clients that I have tested often have low levels of these enzymes and are suffering from malnutrition. Coupled with intestinal hyper-permeability or leak gut syndrome, foods that they are consuming on a regular basis are becoming potential allergens due to a faulty digestive system, causing all sorts of issues such as weight gain, decreased detoxification issues, skin conditions and many more
5. Eating Right. Understanding which foods do what to you is a key step in finding out how your body functions. Your own energetic requirements differ substantially. Look at your own thumbprint, it differs so much that there’s not another quite like it. If you think about how your glands, digestive system, hormones, metabolism and the like operate, is it any wonder that there is no such thing as one type of diet that fits all. Metabolic typing helps to fill in the blanks and determine which foods support your body and those that don’t so that weight loss, emotional balance and energy levels stay where they should be.
6. Training right. Exercises that are functional, that require squatting, bending, lunging, pushing, pulling, twisting and gait or running and walking, can be considered functional and require use of motor abilities such as balance, agility, co-ordination, strength, flexibility etc. How much of those do you use when sat on a chest press machine? If you have structural weaknesses they will show up as instability and pain, so try and get yourself checked out by someone who understands biomechanics and you, before getting a generic gym program.
7. Sleeping right. Ah the easiest one of all, or so we would like to think, following normal patterns of the sun rising and setting is how we should be living, however with the advent of electricity we are staying up a lot later. This means that as it gets dark we are producing way more stress hormones such as cortisol instead of DHEA which is a growth and repair hormone. When cortisol levels are increased or depleted they can play havoc with body fat regulation. Getting to be by 10/10:30 not only helps to rest optimally it can help you stay looking young. Forgot about those chemical based moisturisers that you always see on TV, get to bed on time and you really will look amazing!
More research on Statins to cause concern.
March 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
More research on Statins to cause concern. For most people diagnosed with high cholesterol the medical communities answer is to place on a Statin to help lower cholesterol. Whilst there has been some research to suggest that Statins are suitable for those with imminent risk of a major coronary incidence, far too many people are placed on this medication as a quick answer to lowering cholesterol without the results.
In a new piece of research published in The Lancet last month a meta-analysis of Statin therapy has been associated with an increased risk of diabetes.
‘Statin therapy is associated with a slightly increased risk of development of diabetes, but the risk is low both in absolute terms and when compared with the reduction in coronary events. Clinical practice in patients with moderate or high cardiovascular risk or existing cardiovascular risk or existing CV disease should not change’
Naveed Sattar et al 2010
It would be interesting to note that whilst no funding was attained for this meta-analysis, all of the reviewers had received funding from most of the major companies associated with statin production.
So the long and short of the research outlined that for each 225 people assigned statins, one person had a chance of developing diabetes , and statins prevented approximately 5 deaths from a coronary incident. Looking closer at the research LDL or supposed ‘bad’ cholesterol only reduced in a range of 11.5%-50% that means in some cases statins had a mere success rate of close to 10%!
Here are some of the side effects of statins
- Gout and/or elevated uric acid
- Peripheral Neuropathy (numbness and/or tingling of the hands or feet)
- Myopathy (muscle weakness, cramps, spasms, stiffness)
- Insomnia
- Loss of libido
- Impotence
- Heart palpitations or arrhythmias (irregular heart beat)
- Depression
- Memory loss, either long-term or short-term
- Transient Global Amnesia (TGA)
- Chest pain
- Neck and shoulder pain
- Fatigue
- Migraine headaches
- Digestive disorders
- Rhabdomyolysis
- Trouble walking (either shuffling or balance)
- Hand tremors
- Slurred speech or trouble finding the right word
- Dizziness
- Sciatica-like pain
>From my own education and from talking to peers it would appear that elevated cholesterol essentially comes from two main sources.
1. Inflammation
2. Thyroid dysfunction
An article by Ray Peat helps to shed more light on this if you want to read further.
As you can see from the many negative side effects it would be much wiser to clarify the source of cholesterol elevation and takes steps to reduce the inflammation. Often the gut and liver have a huge part to play within cholesterol levels also.
If you want to have your cholesterol measured or find out how you can reduce your cholesterol without the use of medication then please feel free to get in touch for a chat.
Key reasons why you may be putting on weight
March 4, 2010 By 1 Comment
Have you often wondered why despite your best efforts with food and exercise you haven’t lost the weight that you wanted to, or just put the weight on soon after returning to your normal program. There are many reasons why individuals gain weight, here a few not so obvious reasons.
1. You may have a food intolerance
2. The balance between fats, proteins and carbs are not correct for you
3. You may be exposed to an avalanche of environmental toxins
4. The balance of the bacteria in your gut has been disrupted
Food intolerances have slowly been causing havoc to our gut and immune system, daily consumption of foods can cause the body to perceive certain foods as a stressor, especially when individuals have leaky gut and larger molecules of food can pass into the blood stream. Other foods such as gluten have been implicated in auto immune diseases such as Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis causing mal-absorption of key nutrients. This also serves to create elevated levels of cortisol which is a stress hormone implicated in weight gain.
Getting the right balance of nutrients is a subjective task, that’s why low fat diets don’t work for a large amount of people or the diet that worked for your mate, definitely doesn’t do well with you, in fact you even gained weight. A key way of determining the right balance is if your energy levels, cravings and emotional balance remains optimal throughout the day.
Environmental toxins are all around us, for the average person has put hundreds of noxious chemicals on or into their body by consumption of municipal water supply, make up, deodorant, toothpaste, aftershave or perfume, household cleaning products and many other sources. So what you may cry, what can we do about it? Well, a lot especially if any of your goals are disease prevention/reversal, weight loss or optimal health. As the liver is the key detoxifier and becomes backed up with these chemicals, as it struggles to function it creates excess body fat to store any toxic compounds that it can’t adequately remove from your system.
The are trillions of bacteria in our gut, The Independant today discusses how scientists have been mapping the DNA of the gut 1000 or so flora capable of inhabiting our insides
However there is emerging research that people who are overweight have a dominance of Firmicutes which include lactobacillus, clostridia and other beneficial flora, compared to bacteriodes such as Bifidobacterium. This ensures that the breakdown, conversion and storage of nutrients is increased in a dysfunctional way causing weight gain. Removing these hidden barriers to your success can help you succeed where you and others have failed before in getting the ideal figure or feeling on top of your game.
Here are some winning tips to help you with your goals.
1. Have a food antibody test to determine which foods are problematic for your
2. Get yourself Metabolically Typed to determine which foods build health promote optimal weight
3. Aim to remove harsh unnecessary chemicals from you and your family’s daily lives
4. Have a Gastro panel assessment to determine levels of bacteria in your gut and find out if there are any other unwanted nasty’s that may be causing you to gain weight.
Or Just get in touch for a free health and lifestyle analysis
Why are auto immune diseases running wild?
February 12, 2010 By 1 Comment
Over the last couple of years, as I have integrated more and more chemical, hormonal and internal balance work with my physical practice, I have had the opportunity to work with an increased amount of clients presenting with autoimmune disorders. Some examples are:
• Chronic fatigue
• Fibromyalgia
• Chron’s disease
• Lupus
So what exactly is an auto immune disease? When the immune system becomes overactive the body fails to recognise a part of the body and literally turns on itself. Recently a clients’ wife was diagnosed with lupus, one of the first tests that I decided to run was a gastro-intestinal panel to determine the health of the digestive system.
The findings were as follows:
- Multiple parasite overgrowth
- Bacterial and fungal overgrowth
- Reduced digestive enzyme output
- Antibody or allergic responses to gluten
The medical practitioner’s course of action was to recommend a course of steroids, which one of many side effects is the suppression of the adrenal glands. The lab test that I ran was effectively ignored. The problem…… that all these potential pathogens or disease causing microbes were causing an immune system reaction. When the body identifies an antigen or foreign body that it doesn’t like, it starts to go to work with the production of antibodies.
A vicious cycle often ensues, for many people are often in a state of adrenal fatigue. The adrenal glands control a host of major functions, one of these is the regulation of cortisol, cortisol is produced to help regulate many things from waking up, blood sugar regulation and control anti inflammatory reactions. Too much cortisol produced through long term stress can not only suppress the immune system but over time exhaust the adrenal glands and a decreased amount of cortisol is readily available and its anti inflammatory properties.
Once this occurs, an overproduction of antibodies and other natural defences can often elevate and perceive parts of the body as a threat and sees friend as foe, the attack or auto immune response occurs. Like most medical conditions symptom suppression rather than causative investigation is sought.
Here’s some top tips to help avoid autoimmune disease and to help recover. Removal of
• Environmental toxins, from perfume, to mould and other household substances
• Exposure to daily foods which cause inflammation, such as flour
• Exposure to drugs, contraception, pain killers etc
• Emotional stress
Testing or identifying these factors is a relatively simple process and is a step in the right direction when treating any autoimmune issue
