Your Nutritional Education Site
1. Be Very careful in replacing missing teeth.
2. Chemotherapy
& Neuropathy
3.
Difference between Drugs & Supplements in the Treatment of Neuropathy
4. Is inflammation burning up your health?
5. Having trouble building muscle?
Tooth Replacement - when is it a problem?
An article by Dr. Mercola, a physician for over 20 years talks about this
issue. Read and hear him here:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/08/Be-VERY-Careful-When-Replacing-Missing-Teeth.aspx
Chemotherapy & Neuropathy
Individuals at risk for acquiring neuropathy are those associated with chemotherapy and other conditions (for a complete list of risk factors go to http://www.mcvitamins.com/neuropathy-risk-factors-nerve-pain.htm )
Why? Because these conditions all result in the nerve
damage, specifically the myelin sheath surrounding the nerve starts to
deteriorate.
Symptoms include:
Chemotherapy and other chemicals and drugs can cause the nerve’s myelin sheath to deteriorate and this is what needs to be repaired.
Go here to www.mcvitamins.com/chemotherapy-neuropathy.htm for more information
The Difference Between Drugs and Nutrition Supplements for the treatment of Neuropathy
No matter what the cause of your neuropathy, a person has only a few choices about what to do about it..
The Drug Approach
What a drug does is it forces the body to do something that it normally wouldn't do.. When it comes to a medication, the body reacts in certain ways to this medication and it is done in order to achieve a desirable effect. For instance, in order to balance itself and handle the effects of a drug, the body has to lower its blood pressure. If this is what you want to happen because its a blood pressure medication, it's a good thing. However, there are also various other ways the body can react to the drug and sometimes this is not such a good thing - this is called a "side effect". It is the reason someone can wind up on 4 blood pressure medications. Each drug is given in an attempt to balance another drug so as not to create the various side effects of the other drugs. It is a balancing act.
The Natural Approach
What a nutritional supplement does is give the body the actual tools it needs to fix the body.
In the case of neuropathy, it is the nerve cell that is damaged. The body needs certain tools (nutritional factors) to do this repair. Drugs don't repair anything; they treat the symptom, not the cause of the problem.
As with our example of blood pressure, if they don't know what is causing the high blood pressure, the drug just lowers it artificially.
The cause of nerve damage is known - it can be the result of too much sugar in the blood, the chemicals used in cancer treatments, etc. - but one thing is known, the damage is done to the cell and this causes the pain.
You can cover this up with pain killers, or with other drugs that are manufactured to handle this, but the drugs aren't repairing anything. They are trying to forces the body to not give you pain, not give you numbness, etc., And sometimes more damage to the nerve cell might happen due to the drug or other drugs you are taking,
The Nutritional Approach
Nutritional supplements are actually vitamins and minerals that the body needs to repair the cells.
In the case of neuropathy, there are specific ingredients needed by the body to repair the cells. These are the supplements you want to take.
Another difference is that if you are taking a drug and just covering up symptoms, you have to continue to take the drug to get relief and sometimes even have to increase the drug to get the same relief.
If you take natural supplements, the body can fix the problem, and as long as you don't do anything to damage the cells again, there is an end to taking the supplements.
For neuropathy nutrition go to: http://www.mcvitamins.com/wsn/nerve-support-formula.htm
Is Inflammation burning up your Health
Inflammation -- the immune response your body uses when you're injured -- can spiral wildly out of control and become a chronic condition that can cause health problems and symptoms, and even damage your bones. Discover how chronic inflammation can smolder inside your body for years without you knowing, and find just which steps you can take today to cool the fire inside.
What is inflammation and what can you do about it Go to http://www.womentowomen.com/inflammation/whatischronicinflammation.aspx?
(Not just for women)
Also an article Is Inflammation making you Hot & Bothered? http://www.mcvitamins.com/chronic-inflammation.htm
A Fitness Trainer Who Can't Build Muscle?
By James LaValle, R.Ph, ND, CCN
Are you a person that works out but still has trouble losing body fat and/or gaining muscle?
If you search the web for how to build muscle, you are likely to find a lot of talk about eating plenty of protein. But I have found that while boosting protein intake may be needed and is sometimes helpful, if you do not respond well to exercise, very often there is a metabolic imbalance somewhere.
One factor that people almost never think about when it comes to building and maintaining muscle is SLEEP.
A few months ago, I had a fitness instructor ask me if I might know why he wasn't able to build muscle. Despite the fact that he used protein shakes, had a very regular workout routine and had worked out for years using the best of equipment, he just couldn't build muscle. He was also a little overweight with too high a percentage of body fat. A 30-something male fitness instructor can't put on muscle? Something is desperately wrong!
The first question I asked him was "Do you sleep well?" His answer was no; in fact he told me had sleep apnea. Strike one! When you lose sleep, you lose growth hormone production. In childhood, growth hormone makes you grow in every way. In adulthood, it's most important function is to make you build and maintain your muscle.
If you aren't sleeping well as an adult, your growth hormone production will be reduced and your ability to gain muscle from exercise will be greatly compromised. So make no mistake, getting your zzzzzz's is very important for your fitness.
If taking simple measures like reducing your caffeine intake and trying a natural sleep aid
are not effective, the most likely suspect is elevated evening cortisol, which most often occurs from chronic stress. To get the full benefit of a sleep aid, you also need to down regulate your daytime stress response, or address any other potential sleep confounders.
For sleep apnea, food allergies can be involved. So, we find switching to an elimination diet (low in common food allergens, especially wheat and dairy) is helpful. And it was for this trainer. So, first things first to improve his muscle mass -- we got him sleeping better.
The next thing we did for this trainer was look at his fasting blood glucose. It was on the high end of normal indicating he had some insulin resistance. Insulin is an anabolic hormone, so it can help muscle building. But if it elevates too high for too long after meals, it also builds fat stores.
To address that we advised changing to a low glycemic index/glycemic load diet. We also recommended blood sugar supportive nutrients like alpha-lipoic acid, chromium and magnesium (which also helps sleep).
It wasn't very long at all and he was losing body fat like crazy and building lean mass.
Had these measures still not worked very well, I would have dug deeper. Other problems I might typically find in a person who doesn't respond like they should to exercise are things like sex hormone imbalances and suboptimal thyroid hormone levels.
For instance, this trainer could have been low in testosterone. Testosterone is not only supremely important for muscle building, it also influences insulin and glucose regulation. Thyroid hormones drive the rate at which cells burn fat and glucose for fuel, so they profoundly affect a person's ability to burn fat.
We also evaluate GI health because it can be a source of inflammation and very disruptive to metabolism. In some instances, when people are just not responding well to anything we do, we test for heavy metal levels, which can affect thyroid function and insulin resistance.
So you see we have a whole host of things that could be involved in the inability to lose fat and gain muscle:
Thyroid levels
Sex hormone levels
Food allergies
Chronic stress
Blood sugar and insulin regulation
GI health
And possibly heavy metals
Why is this important to understand? We are told that to lose weight and become fit, we need to eat less and exercise more. But it is not that infrequently that I see people doing just that, but it doesn't work like it should for them. They struggle in vain, exercising hard and often, and still they don't respond appropriately to the exercise.
These people need to realize it's a sign that something is wrong. If this is you, get to a practitioner that can help you evaluate possible underlying causes. It may take some digging, but you can get to the root of the problem, and not only help your fitness, but improve your overall health and vitality.
[Ed. Note: James LaValle is the founding Director of the LaValle Metabolic Institute, one of the largest integrative medicine practices in the country. Dr. LaValle is the author of 14 Days to Less Stress and Better Sleep, a revolutionary program to improve your sleep and banish stress for good. To learn more, click here.]
For more information on Sleep go to www.mcvitamins.com/sleeplessness.htm
For more information on insulin resistance go to www.mcvitamins.com/insulin-resistance.htm
For more information on allergies and food allergies, go to http://www.mcvitamins.com/allergies.htm we also recommend the book H.O.P.E. Formula and Gut Solutions found here http://www.mcvitamins.com/Hope-book.htm
For more information on hormones, how to balance them go to: http://www.mcvitamins.com/hormones.htm
The reason that stress becomes a problem go to http://www.mcvitamins.com/adrenal-exhaustion.htm