Coronary Heart Disease: Making Real Changes to Reduce Risk

As we approach cumulative sales of $1,000,000,000,000 for “Statins” worldwide, we have witnessed the steady, unrelenting deaths, heart failure and debility related to strokes and heart disease not just in the United States but the world over. What is amazing is that when I was in Medical School and participating in my first Advanced Cardiac Life Support Course in 1979, I was taught that there were approximately 200,000 out of hospital victims of sudden cardiac death in that era. That number has risen to somewhere between 350,000 to 700,000 people suffering from the same malady in recent years (depends on what you read as to the exact number) in spite of spending massive amounts of money to try to reduce that number. Why is it that [more]

The Omega-6 Imbalance Found in Vegetable Oils

If you have been following my posts or read my books concerning nutritional health for any length of time, you know that it is critical to balance omega-3 fat with omega-6 fat intake. Omega-3 fats are the oils that we must consume in order to preserve neurologic function and reduce inflammatory processes in our bodies. Omega-6 fats are also essential fats (the ones we need to stay healthy but can't make in our bodies so we must eat them) that stimulate inflammation through several immunologic pathways. It is imperative that we consume both of these oils daily to maintain our dietary fitness; but, the critical aspect of this is that they must be ingested in the proper ratio.  Balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fat in our [more]

Central Obesity: The Deadly Fat

For you ladies, is your waistline more than 35 inches around at your navel? And, for you gentlemen, is your waistline more than 40 inches around at the same location? If so, you could be carrying excess fat in your abdominal cavity even if you are not overweight. This fat is known as belly fat, visceral fat, central obesity or abdominal fat. What is the big deal about belly fat? Well, this deposited fat is an outward sign of activation of the metabolic syndrome. As you have learned from my second and third books as well as other posts on this website, metabolic syndrome can manifest itself a bit differently in each of us but can include; elevated serum triglycerides, elevated LDL cholesterol, depressed HDL cholesterol, [more]

The Importance of Vitamin B-12

Vitamin B-12 Deficiency Are you or do you know of anyone who is vitamin B-12 deficient? And, why does it matter? I can tell you that when I was a young doctor, I had a patient who was hospitalized because he could not feel his feet when he walked. I was on a Neurology rotation at the time and it was my job to find out what was causing his neuropathy. It turns out that he was profoundly vitamin B-12 deficient and with treatment, much of the neuropathy reversed itself. He was left with some residual numbness but he could feel his feet again. This is a profound case of vitamin B-12 deficiency but more and more of us are developing this deficiency annually; over a million [more]

Hiatal Hernia: The Anatomic Abnormality of the 21st Century

In the late 1970’s I was attending a radiology class during medical school. The esteemed Radiology Professor was the author of many textbooks of his profession and he was a proverbial “walking textbook” of knowledge about his field. He told us that 25% of the U.S. population suffered from the presence of a hiatal hernia. Fast forward to today; that number has exploded to approximately 60% of the middle-aged adult population in America. If you venture into the textbooks, not much is written about the causes of this dramatic explosion of an anatomic abnormality that predisposes many of us to all kinds of symptoms related to gastroesophageal reflux disease. This question has plagued my mind for several decades as I watched more and more of my [more]

Fructose Malabsorption: A Very Frequent Problem

How often do we suffer from gas, bloat, nausea, cramping and diarrhea or know of someone with similar symptoms? At least one in every eight people suffer from these symptoms on a rather regular frequency. While the causes of these symptoms can be caused by a number of reasons such as celiac disease (gluten allergy), giardia, pancreatic insufficiency, inflammatory bowel disease, H. pylori gastritis, lactose intolerance and the like, many of us suffer from an intolerance/malabsorption to fructose. We cannot absorb this sugar in the small intestine so it passes into the colon where our bacteria ferment it and generate the symptoms. It is unclear how many of us suffer from fructose malabsorption but it is more common than one might think. I see many patients [more]