If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, a balcony, or even just a sunny window sill, then you can grow your own herb garden. Herbs grow easily, are delicious, and certain plants are not only adored by your kitty, but can also be very good for her health (not to mention yours), and useful for treating certain ailments she might have.
Even if you don’t have a green thumb, herbs tend to be easy to grow and are worth the minimal effort. And the bonus is, you can grow some for your own cooking pot, too.
Catnip
Ah, the king of cat herbs. Catnip is beloved by felines the world over, and for good reason, it makes them very happy. It’s sort of like an after work cocktail for cats, relieving them of stress and nervousness. Also, if your cat is always scratching, and seems to have itchy skin, a catnip “tea bath” can soothe kitty’s skin.
Cat Thyme
If your cat doesn’t react to catnip, then cat thyme may just be you and your cat’s best friend. That is, if you can withstand its awful odor. Cat thyme has the same soothing effects as catnip, with the attendant feelings of contentment. And everyone loves a content cat. If you do go for cat thyme, however, you may want to pot a few plants, as they are very slow growing.
Valerian
This pungent herb is best known for helping people to relax and get a good night’s sleep. Not so for Mr. Whiskers. Valerian works as a stimulant on cats; good for transforming lazy, fat cats into exercise machines. Pair this with the fact that cats actually like eating the plant and you’ve got the perfect formula for a healthy, furry feline.
Peppermint, Pennyroyal and Rosemary
While not quite the right combination (or the right amount of herbs) for a Simon and Garfunkel song, the oil from these three herbs have soothing properties and act as natural insect repellents. If your cat has fleas or is intensely scratching itself, any one (or a combination of all three) can help boost your flea treatment. The most common application for these herbs is in the form of a bath. (Note: Pennyroyal may be harmful or fatal if swallowed, so do not leave the herb lying around where the cat may get to it.)
Licorice Root
Not only does it taste good to your cat, licorice root is good for you, too. As a natural cortisone, licorice root can be used to soothe itchy kitties with allergies, endocrine (the endocrine gland affects metabolism, growth and mood) and digestive issues, as well as respiratory problems like colds, since it soothes mucus membranes. Other benefits of the licorice root include blood cleansing and anti-inflammatory properties, so it can be very useful for cats with arthritis.
Cat’s Claw and Dandelion Root
Both of these herbs are good for you and your cat. A tincture made out of dandelion root and cat’s claw can help with itching for cats, especially those with allergies, as it contains natural cortisone. If kitty is trying to watch her figure, try making her a salad with dandelion leaves.
Goldenseal
No, this isn’t the title of a new James Bond film, but an herb that’s useful for your cat. Goldenseal can be used as a natural disinfectant on wounds, and, in conjunction with saline, may help shrink swollen eyes due to infections and allergies.
Of course, with any treatment, herbal or otherwise, make sure you consult your vet prior to treatment. You can also check in with your local holistic pet store for advice, and read our how-to guide for growing an indoor or outdoor herb garden. Like you, your cat should benefit from these natural wellness boosters, but only under professional supervision. Happy herb growing
Thursday, June 30, 2011
5 Steps To Reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Resistance
As we get older we don't have the same insulin response, especially in this society. If we adopt this diet now we may lessen the risk for diabetes down the road. It also helps with inflammation. It is up to day so if you are on a diabetic medication and not taking the newer class of drugs, talk to your doctor about the ones mentioned in the following article. Doctors lie about diabetes. Don’t know why…well yes I do but it’s just my opinion.
Anyway, if you can't afford this diet, I buy what I think will do me the most good. Sometimes supplements are cheaper to buy then the actual food, especially these days. Just remember, snack on seeds, nuts and berries. I eat toasted sesame seeds by the handful. Sunflower seeds and pumpkin are the healthiest. TJ's has a variety of Hummus. Make a habit of eating this stuff and ya can't go wrong. I go to the Asian grocery store and by toasted sesame seeds in bulk, (quart jars) and chick peas are inexpensive. If you make your own you can flavor it any way you want. Pesto with walnuts...ummm.
5 Steps To Reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Resistance
BREAKING NEWS! Some newly discovered compounds have just been found to turn off all of the genes that cause diabetes. Are these compounds found in a pill bottle? No! Instead, you’ll find them on your dinner plate — in rye bread and pasta.
As I wrote in another blog about diabetes, rye contains special phytonutrients that turn off all the genes responsible for diabetes — in just a few weeks. I explained how to find out if you are pre-diabetic or diabetic. Half of the 24 million people with diabetes don’t know they have it and nearly all the 60 million people with pre-diabetes don’t know they have it.
Today, I want to share with you more information about what you can do NOW to prevent and reverse diabetes and pre-diabetes.
And rye bread isn’t the only answer — I’ve got a lot more good advice, too.
But first I want to emphasize new research that should be headlines news but never saw the light of day. Do our current drugs treatments for diabetes actually work to prevent heart attacks and death?
Surely lowering blood sugar in diabetics is an effective strategy for reducing the risk of death and heart disease. It would seem obvious that if diabetes is a disease of high blood sugar, then reducing blood sugar would be beneficial.
However elevated sugar is only a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The real problem is elevated insulin unchecked over decades from a highly refined carbohydrate diet, a sedentary lifestyle and environmental toxins.
Most medications and insulin therapy are aimed at lowering blood sugar through increasing insulin. In the randomized ACCORD trial of over 10,000 patients, this turns out to be a bad idea.
In the intensive glucose-lowering group, there were no fewer heart attacks, and more patients died. Yet we continue to pay $174 billion annually for this type of care for diabetes, despite evidence that lifestyle works better than medications. We also pay for cardiac bypass and angioplasty in diabetics when evidence shows no reduction in death or heart attacks compared to medication.
So now that we know what doesn’t work, let me review what does work.
Dietary Recommendations to Reverse Diabetes
Eating in a way that balances your blood sugar, reduces inflammation and oxidative stress, and improves your liver detoxification is the key to preventing and reversing insulin resistance and diabetes.
This is a way of eating that based on a whole foods diet that’s high in fiber, rich in colorful fruits and vegetables, and low in sugars and flours, with a low glycemic load.
It is a way of eating that includes anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and detoxifying foods. It includes plenty of omega-3 fats and olive oil, soy products, beans, nuts, and seeds.
All these foods help prevent and reverse diabetes and insulin resistance. This is the way of eating than turns on all the right gene messages, promotes a healthy metabolism, and prevents aging and age-related diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
Here are more specifics.
Meal Timing
• Eat protein for breakfast every day, such as whole omega-3 eggs, a soy protein shake, or nut butters.
• Eat something every 4 hours to keep your insulin and glucose levels normal.
• Eat small protein snacks in the morning and afternoon, such as a handful of almonds.
• Finish eating at least 2 to 3 hours before bed. If you have a snack earlier in the day, you won’t be as hungry, even if you eat a little later.
Meal Composition
• Controlling the glycemic load of your meals is very important.
• You can do this by combining adequate protein, fats, and whole-food carbohydrates from vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and fruit at every meal or snack.
• It is most important to avoid eating quickly absorbed carbohydrates alone, as they raise your sugar and insulin levels.
Travel Suggestions
Two handfuls of almonds in a zip-lock bag make a useful emergency snack. You can eat them with a piece of fruit. Remember, real food is the best.
What to Eat
• Choose from a variety of the following real, whole foods:
• Choose organic produce and animal products whenever possible.
• Eat high-quality protein, such as fish — especially fatty, cold-water fish like salmon, sable, small halibut, herring, and sardines — and shellfish.
• Cold-water fish such as salmon, halibut, and sable contain an abundance of beneficial essential fatty acids, omega-3 oils that reduce inflammation. Choose smaller wild Alaskan salmon, sable, and halibut that are low in toxins. Canned wild salmon is a great “emergency” food.
• Eat up to eight omega-3 eggs a week.
• Create meals that are high in low-glycemic legumes such as lentils, chickpeas, and soybeans (try edamame, the Japanese soybeans in a pod, quickly steamed with a little salt, as a snack). These foods slow the release of sugars into the bloodstream, which helps prevent the excess insulin release that can lead to health concerns like obesity, high blood pressure, and heart problems.
• Eat a cornucopia of fresh fruits and vegetables teeming with phytonutrients like carotenoids, flavonoids, and polyphenols, which are associated with a lower incidence of nearly all health problems, including obesity and age-related disease.
• Eat more low-glycemic vegetables, such as asparagus, broccoli, kale, spinach, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts.
• Berries, cherries, peaches, plums, rhubarb, pears, and apples are optimal fruits. Cantaloupes and other melons, grapes, and kiwifruit are suitable; however, they contain more sugar. You can use organic frozen berries (such as those from Cascadian Farms) in your protein shakes.
• Focus on anti-inflammatory foods, including wild fish and other sources of omega-3 fats, red and purple berries (these are rich in polyphenols), dark green leafy vegetables, orange sweet potatoes, and nuts.
• Eat more antioxidant-rich foods, including orange and yellow vegetables, dark green leafy vegetables (kale, collards, spinach, etc.), anthocyanidins (berries, beets, grapes, pomegranate), purple grapes, blueberries, bilberries, cranberries, and cherries. In fact, antioxidants are in all colorful fruits and vegetables.
• Include detoxifying foods in your diet, such as cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, and Chinese broccoli), green tea, watercress, dandelion greens, cilantro, artichokes, garlic, citrus peels, pomegranate, and even cocoa.
• Season your food with herbs such as rosemary, ginger, and turmeric, which are powerful antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, and detoxifiers.
• Avoid excessive quantities of meat. Eat lean organic or grass-fed animal products, when possible. These include eggs, beef, chicken, pork, lamb, buffalo, and ostrich. There are good brands at Whole Foods and other local health-food stores (also see mail order sources).
• Garlic and onions contain antioxidants, enhance detoxification, act as anti-inflammatories, and help lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
• A diet high in fiber further helps to stabilize blood sugar by slowing the absorption of carbohydrates and supports a healthy lower bowel and digestive tract. Try to gradually increase fiber to 30 to 50 grams a day and use predominantly soluble or viscous fiber (legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, vegetables, and fruit), which slows sugar absorption from the gut.
• Use extra virgin olive oil, which contains anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants, as your main cooking oil.
• Soy Products such as soymilk, soybeans, and tofu are rich in antioxidants that can reduce cancer risk, lower cholesterol, and improve insulin and blood sugar metabolism.
• Increase your intake of nuts and seeds, including raw walnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, and pumpkin and flax seeds.
• And yes … chocolate can be healthy, too. Choose only the darkest varieties and eat only 2 to 3 ounces a day. It should contain 70 percent cocoa.
Decrease (or ideally eliminate) your intake of:
• All processed or junk foods
• Foods containing refined white flour and sugar, such as breads, cereals (cornflakes, Frosted Flakes, puffed wheat, and sweetened granola), flour-based pastas, bagels, and pastries
• All foods containing high-fructose corn syrup
• All artificial sweeteners (aspartame, Sorbitol, etc.) and caffeine
• Starchy, high-glycemic cooked vegetables, such as potatoes, corn, and root vegetables such as rutabagas, parsnips, and turnips
• Processed fruit juices, which are often loaded with sugars (Try juicing your own carrots, celery, and beets, or other fruit and vegetable combinations, instead)
• Processed canned vegetables (usually very high in sodium)
• Foods containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils (which become trans fatty acids in the bloodstream), such as most crackers, chips, cakes, candies, cookies, doughnuts, and processed cheese
• Processed oils such as corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut, and canola
• Red meats (unless organic or grass-fed) and organ meats
• Large predatory fish and river fish, which contain mercury and other contaminants in unacceptable amounts, including swordfish, tuna, tilefish and shark
• Dairy — substitute unsweetened, gluten free soymilk, almond milk, or hazelnut milk products
• Alcohol — limit it to no more than 3 glasses a week of red wine per week
Balance Blood Sugar with Exercise
Exercise is critical for the improvement of insulin sensitivity. It helps reduce central body fat, improving sugar metabolism. Regular exercise will help prevent diabetes, reduce your risk of complications, and even help reverse it.
Ideally you should do 30 minutes of walking every day. Walking after dinner is a powerful way to reduce your blood sugar.
More vigorous exercise and sustained exercise is often needed to reverse severe insulin resistance or diabetes. Doing sustained aerobic exercise for up to 60 minutes 5 to 6 times a week is often necessary to get diabetes under full control. You want to work at 70 to 85 percent of your target heart rate, which you can find by subtracting your age from 220 and multiplying that number by 0.70 to 0.85.
Interval training can be an added benefit to helping improve your metabolism and mitochondrial function. It helps to increase the efficiency calorie burning so that you burn more calories and energy during the time you are NOT exercising. This is described in detail in UltraMetabolism.
Strength training also helps maintain and build muscle, which can help also with your overall blood sugar and energy metabolism.
Supplements that Can Help Reverse Diabetes
Nutritional supplements can be very effective for Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. I recommend a number of different supplements, depending on the severity of the problem:
• A multivitamin and mineral.
• Calcium and magnesium and vitamin D.
• Fish oil (1,000 to 4,000 mg) a day improves insulin sensitivity, lowers cholesterol, and reduces inflammation.
• Extra magnesium (200 to 600 mg a day) helps with glucose metabolism and is often deficient in diabetics.
• Chromium (500 to 1,000 mcg day) is very important for proper sugar metabolism.
• Antioxidants (such as vitamins C and E) are important in helping to reduce and balance blood sugar.
• B-complex vitamins are important and are part of a good multivitamin. Extra vitamin B6 (50 to 150 mg a day) and B12 (1,000 to 3,000 mcg) are especially helpful in protecting against diabetic neuropathy or nerve damage.
• Biotin (2,000 to 4,000 mcg a day) enhances insulin sensitivity.
• I also encourage people to use alpha-lipoic acid (300 mg twice a day), a powerful antioxidant that can reduce blood sugar significantly. It also can be effective for diabetic nerve damage or neuropathy.
• Evening primrose oil (500 to 1,000 mg twice a day) helps overcome deficiencies common in diabetics.
• I encourage people to use cinnamon as a supplement. One to two 500 mg tablets twice a day can help blood sugar control.
• Other herbs and supplements that can be helpful include green tea, ginseng, bitter melon, gymnema, bilberry, ginkgo, onions, and garlic. Fenugreek can also be used to help improve blood sugar ,although large amounts must be taken.
• Banana leaf (Lagerstroemia speciosa) can be an effective herb. Take 24 mg twice a day.
• I recommend konjac fiber, such as PGX (WellBetX), four capsules 10 minutes before meals with a glass of water. This helps reduce blood sugar after meals and improves long-term blood sugar control while reducing appetite and cholesterol.
Manage Diabetes by Managing Stress
Stress plays a dramatic role in blood sugar imbalances. It triggers insulin resistance, promotes weight gain around the middle, increases inflammation, and ultimately can cause diabetes. So it’s essential to engage in relaxation practices on a regular basis, such as yoga, breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, hot baths, exercise, meditation, massage, biofeedback, hypnosis, or even making love. Your survival depends on it.
Use Medications if Necessary
A number of medications may be helpful for diabetes. There are several specific classes of medications, each with their own effects. Sometimes combinations are helpful.
These are the main classes.
1. The biguanides, especially metformin (Glucophage), is one of the best medications to improve insulin sensitivity. It can help lower blood sugars by improving your cells’ response to insulin.
2. Thiazolidinedione drugs are a new class of diabetes medication and can help improve uptake of glucose by the cells by making you more insulin-sensitive. They also reduce inflammation and help improve metabolism working on the PPAR, a special class of cell receptors that control metabolism. They can cause weight gain and liver damage. Thiazolidinediones include rosiglutazone (Avandia) and pioglitazone (Actos).
3. Alpha-glucosidase inhibitors include acarbose and miglitol, which can help lower the absorption of sugar and carbohydrates in the intestines, reducing the absorption of sugar after meals. And there are newer medication on the market every day.
Older medications include sulfonylureas include glipizide, glyburide, and glimepiride. I strongly recommend against these medications because they only reduce your sugar in the short term and cause further insulin production, which actually worsens diabetes over the long term. They have also been linked to high risk of heart attacks, which you are trying to prevent. They treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
Insulin is the last resort after all other measures have failed and often leads to a slippery slope of weight gain and increased cholesterol and blood pressure. Many patients have been able to come off insulin entirely if they are treated early and aggressively through the other methods I’ve listed.
Diabetes and its precursor, insulin resistance, are looming as the major threat to our health in the 21st century. It will affect 1 in 3 children born today, and 1 in 2 minority children. This is a tragic consequence of our toxic food environment, our unmitigated exposure to stress, our sedentary lifestyle, and environmental toxins.
However, these problems are completely preventable and often reversible through aggressive lifestyle changes, supplements, and exercise and stress management.
Diabetes is the biggest health epidemic triggered by the obesity epidemic, but all of our medical efforts to treat it are focused on medications and insulin. It is simply the wrong approach.
If you follow these guidelines instead, you will see a dramatic change very quickly in your health, your weight, and your diabetes.
Just try it!
Organic Jan
Anyway, if you can't afford this diet, I buy what I think will do me the most good. Sometimes supplements are cheaper to buy then the actual food, especially these days. Just remember, snack on seeds, nuts and berries. I eat toasted sesame seeds by the handful. Sunflower seeds and pumpkin are the healthiest. TJ's has a variety of Hummus. Make a habit of eating this stuff and ya can't go wrong. I go to the Asian grocery store and by toasted sesame seeds in bulk, (quart jars) and chick peas are inexpensive. If you make your own you can flavor it any way you want. Pesto with walnuts...ummm.
5 Steps To Reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Resistance
BREAKING NEWS! Some newly discovered compounds have just been found to turn off all of the genes that cause diabetes. Are these compounds found in a pill bottle? No! Instead, you’ll find them on your dinner plate — in rye bread and pasta.
As I wrote in another blog about diabetes, rye contains special phytonutrients that turn off all the genes responsible for diabetes — in just a few weeks. I explained how to find out if you are pre-diabetic or diabetic. Half of the 24 million people with diabetes don’t know they have it and nearly all the 60 million people with pre-diabetes don’t know they have it.
Today, I want to share with you more information about what you can do NOW to prevent and reverse diabetes and pre-diabetes.
And rye bread isn’t the only answer — I’ve got a lot more good advice, too.
But first I want to emphasize new research that should be headlines news but never saw the light of day. Do our current drugs treatments for diabetes actually work to prevent heart attacks and death?
Surely lowering blood sugar in diabetics is an effective strategy for reducing the risk of death and heart disease. It would seem obvious that if diabetes is a disease of high blood sugar, then reducing blood sugar would be beneficial.
However elevated sugar is only a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The real problem is elevated insulin unchecked over decades from a highly refined carbohydrate diet, a sedentary lifestyle and environmental toxins.
Most medications and insulin therapy are aimed at lowering blood sugar through increasing insulin. In the randomized ACCORD trial of over 10,000 patients, this turns out to be a bad idea.
In the intensive glucose-lowering group, there were no fewer heart attacks, and more patients died. Yet we continue to pay $174 billion annually for this type of care for diabetes, despite evidence that lifestyle works better than medications. We also pay for cardiac bypass and angioplasty in diabetics when evidence shows no reduction in death or heart attacks compared to medication.
So now that we know what doesn’t work, let me review what does work.
Dietary Recommendations to Reverse Diabetes
Eating in a way that balances your blood sugar, reduces inflammation and oxidative stress, and improves your liver detoxification is the key to preventing and reversing insulin resistance and diabetes.
This is a way of eating that based on a whole foods diet that’s high in fiber, rich in colorful fruits and vegetables, and low in sugars and flours, with a low glycemic load.
It is a way of eating that includes anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and detoxifying foods. It includes plenty of omega-3 fats and olive oil, soy products, beans, nuts, and seeds.
All these foods help prevent and reverse diabetes and insulin resistance. This is the way of eating than turns on all the right gene messages, promotes a healthy metabolism, and prevents aging and age-related diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
Here are more specifics.
Meal Timing
• Eat protein for breakfast every day, such as whole omega-3 eggs, a soy protein shake, or nut butters.
• Eat something every 4 hours to keep your insulin and glucose levels normal.
• Eat small protein snacks in the morning and afternoon, such as a handful of almonds.
• Finish eating at least 2 to 3 hours before bed. If you have a snack earlier in the day, you won’t be as hungry, even if you eat a little later.
Meal Composition
• Controlling the glycemic load of your meals is very important.
• You can do this by combining adequate protein, fats, and whole-food carbohydrates from vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and fruit at every meal or snack.
• It is most important to avoid eating quickly absorbed carbohydrates alone, as they raise your sugar and insulin levels.
Travel Suggestions
Two handfuls of almonds in a zip-lock bag make a useful emergency snack. You can eat them with a piece of fruit. Remember, real food is the best.
What to Eat
• Choose from a variety of the following real, whole foods:
• Choose organic produce and animal products whenever possible.
• Eat high-quality protein, such as fish — especially fatty, cold-water fish like salmon, sable, small halibut, herring, and sardines — and shellfish.
• Cold-water fish such as salmon, halibut, and sable contain an abundance of beneficial essential fatty acids, omega-3 oils that reduce inflammation. Choose smaller wild Alaskan salmon, sable, and halibut that are low in toxins. Canned wild salmon is a great “emergency” food.
• Eat up to eight omega-3 eggs a week.
• Create meals that are high in low-glycemic legumes such as lentils, chickpeas, and soybeans (try edamame, the Japanese soybeans in a pod, quickly steamed with a little salt, as a snack). These foods slow the release of sugars into the bloodstream, which helps prevent the excess insulin release that can lead to health concerns like obesity, high blood pressure, and heart problems.
• Eat a cornucopia of fresh fruits and vegetables teeming with phytonutrients like carotenoids, flavonoids, and polyphenols, which are associated with a lower incidence of nearly all health problems, including obesity and age-related disease.
• Eat more low-glycemic vegetables, such as asparagus, broccoli, kale, spinach, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts.
• Berries, cherries, peaches, plums, rhubarb, pears, and apples are optimal fruits. Cantaloupes and other melons, grapes, and kiwifruit are suitable; however, they contain more sugar. You can use organic frozen berries (such as those from Cascadian Farms) in your protein shakes.
• Focus on anti-inflammatory foods, including wild fish and other sources of omega-3 fats, red and purple berries (these are rich in polyphenols), dark green leafy vegetables, orange sweet potatoes, and nuts.
• Eat more antioxidant-rich foods, including orange and yellow vegetables, dark green leafy vegetables (kale, collards, spinach, etc.), anthocyanidins (berries, beets, grapes, pomegranate), purple grapes, blueberries, bilberries, cranberries, and cherries. In fact, antioxidants are in all colorful fruits and vegetables.
• Include detoxifying foods in your diet, such as cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, and Chinese broccoli), green tea, watercress, dandelion greens, cilantro, artichokes, garlic, citrus peels, pomegranate, and even cocoa.
• Season your food with herbs such as rosemary, ginger, and turmeric, which are powerful antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, and detoxifiers.
• Avoid excessive quantities of meat. Eat lean organic or grass-fed animal products, when possible. These include eggs, beef, chicken, pork, lamb, buffalo, and ostrich. There are good brands at Whole Foods and other local health-food stores (also see mail order sources).
• Garlic and onions contain antioxidants, enhance detoxification, act as anti-inflammatories, and help lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
• A diet high in fiber further helps to stabilize blood sugar by slowing the absorption of carbohydrates and supports a healthy lower bowel and digestive tract. Try to gradually increase fiber to 30 to 50 grams a day and use predominantly soluble or viscous fiber (legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, vegetables, and fruit), which slows sugar absorption from the gut.
• Use extra virgin olive oil, which contains anti-inflammatories and anti-oxidants, as your main cooking oil.
• Soy Products such as soymilk, soybeans, and tofu are rich in antioxidants that can reduce cancer risk, lower cholesterol, and improve insulin and blood sugar metabolism.
• Increase your intake of nuts and seeds, including raw walnuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, and pumpkin and flax seeds.
• And yes … chocolate can be healthy, too. Choose only the darkest varieties and eat only 2 to 3 ounces a day. It should contain 70 percent cocoa.
Decrease (or ideally eliminate) your intake of:
• All processed or junk foods
• Foods containing refined white flour and sugar, such as breads, cereals (cornflakes, Frosted Flakes, puffed wheat, and sweetened granola), flour-based pastas, bagels, and pastries
• All foods containing high-fructose corn syrup
• All artificial sweeteners (aspartame, Sorbitol, etc.) and caffeine
• Starchy, high-glycemic cooked vegetables, such as potatoes, corn, and root vegetables such as rutabagas, parsnips, and turnips
• Processed fruit juices, which are often loaded with sugars (Try juicing your own carrots, celery, and beets, or other fruit and vegetable combinations, instead)
• Processed canned vegetables (usually very high in sodium)
• Foods containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils (which become trans fatty acids in the bloodstream), such as most crackers, chips, cakes, candies, cookies, doughnuts, and processed cheese
• Processed oils such as corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut, and canola
• Red meats (unless organic or grass-fed) and organ meats
• Large predatory fish and river fish, which contain mercury and other contaminants in unacceptable amounts, including swordfish, tuna, tilefish and shark
• Dairy — substitute unsweetened, gluten free soymilk, almond milk, or hazelnut milk products
• Alcohol — limit it to no more than 3 glasses a week of red wine per week
Balance Blood Sugar with Exercise
Exercise is critical for the improvement of insulin sensitivity. It helps reduce central body fat, improving sugar metabolism. Regular exercise will help prevent diabetes, reduce your risk of complications, and even help reverse it.
Ideally you should do 30 minutes of walking every day. Walking after dinner is a powerful way to reduce your blood sugar.
More vigorous exercise and sustained exercise is often needed to reverse severe insulin resistance or diabetes. Doing sustained aerobic exercise for up to 60 minutes 5 to 6 times a week is often necessary to get diabetes under full control. You want to work at 70 to 85 percent of your target heart rate, which you can find by subtracting your age from 220 and multiplying that number by 0.70 to 0.85.
Interval training can be an added benefit to helping improve your metabolism and mitochondrial function. It helps to increase the efficiency calorie burning so that you burn more calories and energy during the time you are NOT exercising. This is described in detail in UltraMetabolism.
Strength training also helps maintain and build muscle, which can help also with your overall blood sugar and energy metabolism.
Supplements that Can Help Reverse Diabetes
Nutritional supplements can be very effective for Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. I recommend a number of different supplements, depending on the severity of the problem:
• A multivitamin and mineral.
• Calcium and magnesium and vitamin D.
• Fish oil (1,000 to 4,000 mg) a day improves insulin sensitivity, lowers cholesterol, and reduces inflammation.
• Extra magnesium (200 to 600 mg a day) helps with glucose metabolism and is often deficient in diabetics.
• Chromium (500 to 1,000 mcg day) is very important for proper sugar metabolism.
• Antioxidants (such as vitamins C and E) are important in helping to reduce and balance blood sugar.
• B-complex vitamins are important and are part of a good multivitamin. Extra vitamin B6 (50 to 150 mg a day) and B12 (1,000 to 3,000 mcg) are especially helpful in protecting against diabetic neuropathy or nerve damage.
• Biotin (2,000 to 4,000 mcg a day) enhances insulin sensitivity.
• I also encourage people to use alpha-lipoic acid (300 mg twice a day), a powerful antioxidant that can reduce blood sugar significantly. It also can be effective for diabetic nerve damage or neuropathy.
• Evening primrose oil (500 to 1,000 mg twice a day) helps overcome deficiencies common in diabetics.
• I encourage people to use cinnamon as a supplement. One to two 500 mg tablets twice a day can help blood sugar control.
• Other herbs and supplements that can be helpful include green tea, ginseng, bitter melon, gymnema, bilberry, ginkgo, onions, and garlic. Fenugreek can also be used to help improve blood sugar ,although large amounts must be taken.
• Banana leaf (Lagerstroemia speciosa) can be an effective herb. Take 24 mg twice a day.
• I recommend konjac fiber, such as PGX (WellBetX), four capsules 10 minutes before meals with a glass of water. This helps reduce blood sugar after meals and improves long-term blood sugar control while reducing appetite and cholesterol.
Manage Diabetes by Managing Stress
Stress plays a dramatic role in blood sugar imbalances. It triggers insulin resistance, promotes weight gain around the middle, increases inflammation, and ultimately can cause diabetes. So it’s essential to engage in relaxation practices on a regular basis, such as yoga, breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, hot baths, exercise, meditation, massage, biofeedback, hypnosis, or even making love. Your survival depends on it.
Use Medications if Necessary
A number of medications may be helpful for diabetes. There are several specific classes of medications, each with their own effects. Sometimes combinations are helpful.
These are the main classes.
1. The biguanides, especially metformin (Glucophage), is one of the best medications to improve insulin sensitivity. It can help lower blood sugars by improving your cells’ response to insulin.
2. Thiazolidinedione drugs are a new class of diabetes medication and can help improve uptake of glucose by the cells by making you more insulin-sensitive. They also reduce inflammation and help improve metabolism working on the PPAR, a special class of cell receptors that control metabolism. They can cause weight gain and liver damage. Thiazolidinediones include rosiglutazone (Avandia) and pioglitazone (Actos).
3. Alpha-glucosidase inhibitors include acarbose and miglitol, which can help lower the absorption of sugar and carbohydrates in the intestines, reducing the absorption of sugar after meals. And there are newer medication on the market every day.
Older medications include sulfonylureas include glipizide, glyburide, and glimepiride. I strongly recommend against these medications because they only reduce your sugar in the short term and cause further insulin production, which actually worsens diabetes over the long term. They have also been linked to high risk of heart attacks, which you are trying to prevent. They treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
Insulin is the last resort after all other measures have failed and often leads to a slippery slope of weight gain and increased cholesterol and blood pressure. Many patients have been able to come off insulin entirely if they are treated early and aggressively through the other methods I’ve listed.
Diabetes and its precursor, insulin resistance, are looming as the major threat to our health in the 21st century. It will affect 1 in 3 children born today, and 1 in 2 minority children. This is a tragic consequence of our toxic food environment, our unmitigated exposure to stress, our sedentary lifestyle, and environmental toxins.
However, these problems are completely preventable and often reversible through aggressive lifestyle changes, supplements, and exercise and stress management.
Diabetes is the biggest health epidemic triggered by the obesity epidemic, but all of our medical efforts to treat it are focused on medications and insulin. It is simply the wrong approach.
If you follow these guidelines instead, you will see a dramatic change very quickly in your health, your weight, and your diabetes.
Just try it!
Organic Jan
Saturday, June 25, 2011
I refer to this guy quite a bit in my research and he understands the link between food as medicine and the need for supplementation. He does not know however, that one of the easiest ways to get rid of intestinal parasites in animals and humans is by taking food grade diatomaceous earth, the main ingredient in Flea Free Organically. Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease. I have done a lot of research on myself and my animals and the number one problem in both animals and humans is intestinal parasites. I had psoriasis all my life but when I started taking food grade DE it disappeared completely! The doctors will tell you it’s a lifelong disease. Cleaning out your gut also has the added advantage of reducing cravings for certain food like sugar and even cigarettes. I have been on DE for 4 years now and I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. In case you’re wondering, the good bacteria are too small to be affected by DE in that environment. DE also reduced cholesterol and blood pressure.
Our new product does twice work with half the dose. I.e., ½ t for a 100lb dog!
5 Steps to Kill Hidden Bad Bugs in Your Gut that Make You Sick
DOCTORS ARE TRAINED TO IDENTIFY DISEASES by where they are located. If you have asthma, it’s considered a lung problem; if you have rheumatoid arthritis, it must be a joint problem; if you have acne, doctors see it as a skin problem; if you are overweight, you must have a metabolism problem; if you have allergies, immune imbalance is blamed. Doctors who understand health this way are both right and wrong. Sometimes the causes of your symptoms do have some relationship to their location, but that’s far from the whole story.
As we come to understand disease in the 21st century, our old ways of defining illness based on symptoms is not very useful. Instead by understanding the origins of disease and the way in which the body operates as one whole, integrated ecosystem we now know that symptoms appearing in one area of the body may be caused by imbalances in an entirely different system.
If your skin is bad or you have allergies, can’t seem to lose weight, suffer from an autoimmune disease or allergies, struggle with fibromyalgia, or have recurring headaches, the real reason may be that your gut is unhealthy. This may be true even if you have NEVER had any digestive complaints.
There are many other possible imbalances in your body’s operating system that may drive illness as well. These include problems with hormones, immune function, detoxification, energy production, and more. But for now let’s take a deeper look at the gut and why it may be at the root of your chronic symptoms.
Symptoms Throughout the Body are Resolved by Treating the Gut
Many today do have digestive problems including reflux or heartburn, irritable bowel, bloating, constipation, diarrhea and colitis. In fact, belly problems account for over 200 million doctor’s visits and billions in health care costs annually. But gut problems cause disease far beyond the gut. In medical school I learned that patients with colitis could also have inflamed joints and eyes, and that patients with liver failure could be cured of delirium by taking antibiotics that killed the toxin-producing bacteria in their gut. Could it be that when things are not quite right down below it affects the health of our entire body and many diseases we haven’t linked before to imbalances in the digestive system?
The answer is a resounding yes. Normalizing gut function is one of the most important things I do for patients, and it’s so simple. The “side effects” of treating the gut are quite extraordinary. My patients find relief from allergies, acne, arthritis, headaches, autoimmune disease, depression, attention deficit, and more—often after years or decades of suffering. Here are a few examples of the results I have achieved by addressing imbalances in the function and flora of the gut:
• A 58-year-old woman with many years of worsening allergies, asthma, and sinusitis who was on frequent antibiotics and didn’t respond to any of the usual therapies was cured by eliminating a worm she harbored in her gut called Strongyloides.
• A 52-year-old woman who suffered with daily headaches and frequent migraines for years, found relief by clearing out the overgrowth of bad bugs in her small intestine with a new non-absorbed antibiotic called Xifaxin.
• A six-year-old-girl with severe behavioral problems including violence, disruptive behavior in school, and depression was treated for bacterial yeast overgrowth, and in less than 10 days her behavioral issues and depression were resolved.
• A three-year-old boy with autism started talking after treating a parasite called Giardia in his gut.
These are not miracle cures, but common results that occur when you normalize gut function and flora through improved diet, increased fiber intake, daily probiotic supplementation, enzyme therapy, the use of nutrients that repair the gut lining, and the direct treatment of bad bugs in the gut with herbs or medication.
A number of recent studies have made all these seemingly strange reversals in symptoms understandable. Let’s review them.
Research Linking Gut Flora and Inflammation to Chronic Illness
Scientists compared gut flora or bacteria from children in Florence, Italy who ate a diet high in meat, fat, and sugar to children from a West African village in Burkina Faso who ate beans, whole grains, vegetables, and nuts.(i) The bugs in the guts of the African children were healthier, more diverse, better at regulating inflammation and infection, and better at extracting energy from fiber. The bugs in the guts of the Italian children produced by-products that create inflammation; promote allergy, asthma, and autoimmunity; and lead to obesity.
Why is this important?
In the West our increased use of vaccinations and antibiotics and enhancements in hygiene have lead to health improvements for many. Yet these same factors have dramatically changed the ecosystem of bugs in our gut, and this has a broad impact on health that is still largely unrecognized.
There are trillions of bacteria in your gut and they collectively contain at least 100 times as many genes as you do. The bacterial DNA in your gut outnumbers your own DNA by a very large margin. This bacterial DNA controls immune function, regulates digestion and intestinal function, protects against infections, and even produces vitamins and nutrients.
Can bacteria in the gut actually affect the brain? They can. Toxins, metabolic by-products, and inflammatory molecules produced by these unfriendly bacteria can all adversely impact the brain.
When the balance of bacteria in your gut is optimal this DNA works for you to great effect. For example, some good bacteria produce short chain fatty acids. These healthy fats reduce inflammation and modulate your immune system. Bad bugs, on the other hand, produce fats that promote allergy and asthma, eczema and inflammation throughout your body.(ii)
Another recent study found that the bacterial fingerprint of gut flora of autistic children differs dramatically from healthy children.(iii) Simply by looking at the byproducts of their intestinal bacteria (which are excreted in the urine—a test I do regularly in my practice called organic acids testing), researchers could distinguish between autistic and normal children.
Think about this: Problems with gut flora are linked to autism. Can bacteria in the gut actually affect the brain? They can. Toxins, metabolic by-products, and inflammatory molecules produced by these unfriendly bacteria can all adversely impact the brain. I explore the links between gut function and brain function in much greater detail in my book, The UltraMind Solution.
Autoimmune diseases are also linked to changes in gut flora. A recent study showed that children who use antibiotics for acne may alter normal flora, and this, in turn, can trigger changes that lead to autoimmune disease such as inflammatory bowel disease or colitis.(iv)
The connections between gut flora and system-wide health don’t stop there. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that you could cure or prevent delirium and brain fog in patients with liver failure by giving them an antibiotic called Xifaxan to clear out bugs that produce toxins their poor livers couldn’t detoxify.(v) Toxins from bacteria were making them insane and foggy. Remove the bacteria that produce the toxins, and their symptoms clear up practically overnight.
Other similar studies have found that clearing out overgrowth of bad bugs with a non-absorbed antibiotic can be an effective treatment for restless leg syndrome(vi) and fibromyalgia.(vii)
Even obesity has been linked to changes in our gut ecosystem that are the result of a high-fat, processed, inflammatory diet. Bad bugs produce toxins called lipopolysaccardies (LPS) that trigger inflammation and insulin resistance or pre-diabetes and thus promote weight gain.(viii)
It seems remarkable, but the little critters living inside of you have been linked to everything from autism to obesity, from allergy to autoimmunity, from fibromyalgia to restless leg syndrome, from delirium to eczema to asthma. In fact the links between chronic illness and gut bacteria keep growing every day.
So what can you do to keep your gut flora balanced, your gut healthy, and thus overcome or avoid these health problems?
Five Steps to a Healthy Gut (and a Healthy Body!)
Follow these five simple steps to begin rebalancing your gut flora.
1. Eat a fiber–rich, whole foods diet—it should be rich in beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables—all of which feed good bugs.
2. Limit sugar, processed foods, animal fats, and animal protein—these provide food for unhealthy bugs.
3. Avoid the use of antibiotics, acid blockers, and anti-inflammatories—they change gut flora for the worse.
4. Take probiotics daily—these healthy, friendly flora can improve your digestive health and reduce inflammation and allergy.
5. Consider specialized testing—such as organic acid testing, stool testing (new tests can look at the DNA of the bacteria in your gut), and others to help assess your gut function. You will likely have to work with a functional medicine practitioner to effective test and treat imbalances in your gut.
And if you have a chronic illness, even if you don’t have digestive symptoms, you might want to consider what is living inside your gut. Tending to the garden within can be the answer to many seemingly unrelated health problems.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
References
(i) De Filippo, C., Cavalieri, D., Di Paola, M., et al. 2010. Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and rural Africa. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 107(33): 14691–6
(ii) Sandin, A., Bråbäck, L., Norin, E., and B. Björkstén. 2009. Faecal short chain fatty acid pattern and allergy in early childhood. Acta Paediatr. 98(5): 823–7.
(iii) Yap, I.K., Angley, M., Veselkov, K.A., et al. 2010. Urinary metabolic phenotyping differentiates children with autism from their unaffected siblings and age-matched controls. J Proteome Res. 9(6): 2996–3004.
(iv) Margolis, D.J., Fanelli, M., Hoffstad, O., and J.D. Lewis. 2010. Potential association between the oral tetracycline class of antimicrobials used to treat acne and inflammatory bowel disease. Am J Gastroenterol. Aug 10 epub in advance of publication.
(v) Bass, N.M., Mullen, K.D., Sanyal, A., et al. 2010. Rifaximin treatment in hepatic encephalopathy. N Engl J Med. 362(12): 1071–81.
(vi) Weinstock, L.B., Fern, S.E., and S.P. Duntley. 2008. Restless legs syndrome in patients with irritable bowel syndrome: response to small intestinal bacterial overgrowth therapy. Dig Dis Sci. 53(5): 1252–6.
(vii) Pimentel, M., Wallace, D., Hallegua, D., et al. 2004. A link between irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia may be related to findings on lactulose breath testing. Ann Rheum Dis. 63(4): 450–2.
(viii) Cani, P.D., Amar, J., Iglesias, M.A., et al. 2007. Metabolic endotoxemia initiates obesity and insulin resistance. Diabetes. 56(7): 1761–72.
Our new product does twice work with half the dose. I.e., ½ t for a 100lb dog!
5 Steps to Kill Hidden Bad Bugs in Your Gut that Make You Sick
DOCTORS ARE TRAINED TO IDENTIFY DISEASES by where they are located. If you have asthma, it’s considered a lung problem; if you have rheumatoid arthritis, it must be a joint problem; if you have acne, doctors see it as a skin problem; if you are overweight, you must have a metabolism problem; if you have allergies, immune imbalance is blamed. Doctors who understand health this way are both right and wrong. Sometimes the causes of your symptoms do have some relationship to their location, but that’s far from the whole story.
As we come to understand disease in the 21st century, our old ways of defining illness based on symptoms is not very useful. Instead by understanding the origins of disease and the way in which the body operates as one whole, integrated ecosystem we now know that symptoms appearing in one area of the body may be caused by imbalances in an entirely different system.
If your skin is bad or you have allergies, can’t seem to lose weight, suffer from an autoimmune disease or allergies, struggle with fibromyalgia, or have recurring headaches, the real reason may be that your gut is unhealthy. This may be true even if you have NEVER had any digestive complaints.
There are many other possible imbalances in your body’s operating system that may drive illness as well. These include problems with hormones, immune function, detoxification, energy production, and more. But for now let’s take a deeper look at the gut and why it may be at the root of your chronic symptoms.
Symptoms Throughout the Body are Resolved by Treating the Gut
Many today do have digestive problems including reflux or heartburn, irritable bowel, bloating, constipation, diarrhea and colitis. In fact, belly problems account for over 200 million doctor’s visits and billions in health care costs annually. But gut problems cause disease far beyond the gut. In medical school I learned that patients with colitis could also have inflamed joints and eyes, and that patients with liver failure could be cured of delirium by taking antibiotics that killed the toxin-producing bacteria in their gut. Could it be that when things are not quite right down below it affects the health of our entire body and many diseases we haven’t linked before to imbalances in the digestive system?
The answer is a resounding yes. Normalizing gut function is one of the most important things I do for patients, and it’s so simple. The “side effects” of treating the gut are quite extraordinary. My patients find relief from allergies, acne, arthritis, headaches, autoimmune disease, depression, attention deficit, and more—often after years or decades of suffering. Here are a few examples of the results I have achieved by addressing imbalances in the function and flora of the gut:
• A 58-year-old woman with many years of worsening allergies, asthma, and sinusitis who was on frequent antibiotics and didn’t respond to any of the usual therapies was cured by eliminating a worm she harbored in her gut called Strongyloides.
• A 52-year-old woman who suffered with daily headaches and frequent migraines for years, found relief by clearing out the overgrowth of bad bugs in her small intestine with a new non-absorbed antibiotic called Xifaxin.
• A six-year-old-girl with severe behavioral problems including violence, disruptive behavior in school, and depression was treated for bacterial yeast overgrowth, and in less than 10 days her behavioral issues and depression were resolved.
• A three-year-old boy with autism started talking after treating a parasite called Giardia in his gut.
These are not miracle cures, but common results that occur when you normalize gut function and flora through improved diet, increased fiber intake, daily probiotic supplementation, enzyme therapy, the use of nutrients that repair the gut lining, and the direct treatment of bad bugs in the gut with herbs or medication.
A number of recent studies have made all these seemingly strange reversals in symptoms understandable. Let’s review them.
Research Linking Gut Flora and Inflammation to Chronic Illness
Scientists compared gut flora or bacteria from children in Florence, Italy who ate a diet high in meat, fat, and sugar to children from a West African village in Burkina Faso who ate beans, whole grains, vegetables, and nuts.(i) The bugs in the guts of the African children were healthier, more diverse, better at regulating inflammation and infection, and better at extracting energy from fiber. The bugs in the guts of the Italian children produced by-products that create inflammation; promote allergy, asthma, and autoimmunity; and lead to obesity.
Why is this important?
In the West our increased use of vaccinations and antibiotics and enhancements in hygiene have lead to health improvements for many. Yet these same factors have dramatically changed the ecosystem of bugs in our gut, and this has a broad impact on health that is still largely unrecognized.
There are trillions of bacteria in your gut and they collectively contain at least 100 times as many genes as you do. The bacterial DNA in your gut outnumbers your own DNA by a very large margin. This bacterial DNA controls immune function, regulates digestion and intestinal function, protects against infections, and even produces vitamins and nutrients.
Can bacteria in the gut actually affect the brain? They can. Toxins, metabolic by-products, and inflammatory molecules produced by these unfriendly bacteria can all adversely impact the brain.
When the balance of bacteria in your gut is optimal this DNA works for you to great effect. For example, some good bacteria produce short chain fatty acids. These healthy fats reduce inflammation and modulate your immune system. Bad bugs, on the other hand, produce fats that promote allergy and asthma, eczema and inflammation throughout your body.(ii)
Another recent study found that the bacterial fingerprint of gut flora of autistic children differs dramatically from healthy children.(iii) Simply by looking at the byproducts of their intestinal bacteria (which are excreted in the urine—a test I do regularly in my practice called organic acids testing), researchers could distinguish between autistic and normal children.
Think about this: Problems with gut flora are linked to autism. Can bacteria in the gut actually affect the brain? They can. Toxins, metabolic by-products, and inflammatory molecules produced by these unfriendly bacteria can all adversely impact the brain. I explore the links between gut function and brain function in much greater detail in my book, The UltraMind Solution.
Autoimmune diseases are also linked to changes in gut flora. A recent study showed that children who use antibiotics for acne may alter normal flora, and this, in turn, can trigger changes that lead to autoimmune disease such as inflammatory bowel disease or colitis.(iv)
The connections between gut flora and system-wide health don’t stop there. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that you could cure or prevent delirium and brain fog in patients with liver failure by giving them an antibiotic called Xifaxan to clear out bugs that produce toxins their poor livers couldn’t detoxify.(v) Toxins from bacteria were making them insane and foggy. Remove the bacteria that produce the toxins, and their symptoms clear up practically overnight.
Other similar studies have found that clearing out overgrowth of bad bugs with a non-absorbed antibiotic can be an effective treatment for restless leg syndrome(vi) and fibromyalgia.(vii)
Even obesity has been linked to changes in our gut ecosystem that are the result of a high-fat, processed, inflammatory diet. Bad bugs produce toxins called lipopolysaccardies (LPS) that trigger inflammation and insulin resistance or pre-diabetes and thus promote weight gain.(viii)
It seems remarkable, but the little critters living inside of you have been linked to everything from autism to obesity, from allergy to autoimmunity, from fibromyalgia to restless leg syndrome, from delirium to eczema to asthma. In fact the links between chronic illness and gut bacteria keep growing every day.
So what can you do to keep your gut flora balanced, your gut healthy, and thus overcome or avoid these health problems?
Five Steps to a Healthy Gut (and a Healthy Body!)
Follow these five simple steps to begin rebalancing your gut flora.
1. Eat a fiber–rich, whole foods diet—it should be rich in beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables—all of which feed good bugs.
2. Limit sugar, processed foods, animal fats, and animal protein—these provide food for unhealthy bugs.
3. Avoid the use of antibiotics, acid blockers, and anti-inflammatories—they change gut flora for the worse.
4. Take probiotics daily—these healthy, friendly flora can improve your digestive health and reduce inflammation and allergy.
5. Consider specialized testing—such as organic acid testing, stool testing (new tests can look at the DNA of the bacteria in your gut), and others to help assess your gut function. You will likely have to work with a functional medicine practitioner to effective test and treat imbalances in your gut.
And if you have a chronic illness, even if you don’t have digestive symptoms, you might want to consider what is living inside your gut. Tending to the garden within can be the answer to many seemingly unrelated health problems.
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, MD
References
(i) De Filippo, C., Cavalieri, D., Di Paola, M., et al. 2010. Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and rural Africa. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 107(33): 14691–6
(ii) Sandin, A., Bråbäck, L., Norin, E., and B. Björkstén. 2009. Faecal short chain fatty acid pattern and allergy in early childhood. Acta Paediatr. 98(5): 823–7.
(iii) Yap, I.K., Angley, M., Veselkov, K.A., et al. 2010. Urinary metabolic phenotyping differentiates children with autism from their unaffected siblings and age-matched controls. J Proteome Res. 9(6): 2996–3004.
(iv) Margolis, D.J., Fanelli, M., Hoffstad, O., and J.D. Lewis. 2010. Potential association between the oral tetracycline class of antimicrobials used to treat acne and inflammatory bowel disease. Am J Gastroenterol. Aug 10 epub in advance of publication.
(v) Bass, N.M., Mullen, K.D., Sanyal, A., et al. 2010. Rifaximin treatment in hepatic encephalopathy. N Engl J Med. 362(12): 1071–81.
(vi) Weinstock, L.B., Fern, S.E., and S.P. Duntley. 2008. Restless legs syndrome in patients with irritable bowel syndrome: response to small intestinal bacterial overgrowth therapy. Dig Dis Sci. 53(5): 1252–6.
(vii) Pimentel, M., Wallace, D., Hallegua, D., et al. 2004. A link between irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia may be related to findings on lactulose breath testing. Ann Rheum Dis. 63(4): 450–2.
(viii) Cani, P.D., Amar, J., Iglesias, M.A., et al. 2007. Metabolic endotoxemia initiates obesity and insulin resistance. Diabetes. 56(7): 1761–72.
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