This post is for a good friend who will be doing an overland adventure through the Amazon.  He asked me if there was anything he could do that would help keep him from getting sick while on his journey.  Travel healthy!

For my readers who live in litigious countries, I am legally obligated to say to you:  Please note the information below is not meant to diagnose, prevent or treat any disease.  The information is provided for information only. There are inherent risks with travel (in fact there are inherent risks with living).  If you make the sovereign decision to implement any of the information you obtain here, be sure that you aren’t allergic to any of the products I mention below BEFORE you go on your trip. 

Before I submerged myself into indigenous Ecuadorian existence for three weeks back March of 2010, I researched the medical literature and interviewed several herbalists, nutritionists and conventional doctors about disease prevention for rainforest travel.  Traveling with a group of Chinese Medicine Practitioners I had plenty of opportunities to see what other practitioners were trying, what worked and what didn’t.  The following is an assembly of what I learned from the medical literature, what I’ve learned from treating disease and what actually worked while we were traveling.

When traveling in the Amazon, several things became quickly apparent.  First, the South Park episode about saving the rainforest is a fairly accurate depiction.  The Amazon literally wants you to become a part of it.  Second, there are so many insects there who want to eat you that concerns about mosquito bites almost become a joke.  Just be grateful that malaria can be treated and hope that you don’t get something worse.

Prevention of Gastrointestinal Infections:

Step One:

Your digestive tract should naturally be full of an incredibly diverse population of gut flora composed mostly of bacteria and fungi.  When you consume food and water, unless it has been sterilized or chlorinated, you are naturally exposed to these various organisms and you establish a balance of both beneficial and pathogenic flora. Like an ecosystem, the more diverse, the more difficult it is to cause disruptions or allow invasion of non-native species.  When antibiotics or chlorinated water are introduced, the balance of the digestive flora is significantly disrupted and the diversity plummets.  Critters that wouldn’t normally be able to grow there are given the opportunity to invade.  Doing a 14-21 day course of probiotics, prior to embarking on your journey, can add an extra barrier of defense by reducing the viability and survivability of any potential bacterial and fungal invaders.  This is especially important for anyone who has been on a course of antibiotics in the past few months. You should also note that if you are on any proton pump inhibitors for heartburn like, Prilosec, Protonix or Zantac, you are at a much higher risk of GI infection since you have no stomach acid. 

The Best Probiotics:  Obtain a combination that provides various forms of bifidobacterium, lactobacillus and saccharomyces boulardii.  In my clinical experience, the refrigerated brands, which contain live bacteria, and are much more effective despite claims from companies that sell the non-refrigerated forms.  It’s important to get it from a company that ships these cold otherwise they die during shipping.  My favorite brands are Jarrow, Natural Factors, Metagenics and Pharmax.  These can be obtained from health food stores or from several online companies. If you order it online in the summer, pay the extra money for overnight shipping so it doesn’t overheat.  Take the suggested dose with at least 8oz of water, 30 minutes before or two hours after eating.  During your course of treatment, reduce your fruit and sugar intake and eat more vegetables, onions and legumes.  This will ensure proper survival and establishment of these bacteria. 

Of course you should take all the necessary precautions and try to minimize your exposure to unclean drinking water, uncooked vegetables and fruits that can’t be peeled. Be sure to educate yourself with more complete information at the CDC’s website.  

Step Two:

While You are Traveling

Oil of Oregano – I use this in my clinical practice for various bacterial and fungal infections.  I recommend it with a high level of confidence for prevention of GI infections while traveling.  To emphasize its effectiveness, I often have patients with GI symptoms send in stool samples for analyses.  Whenever pathogenic bacteria or fungi are found, sensitivity testing is performed so we know what substances will and will not kill the invaders.  Oil of oregano often tests equally or more effective than antibiotics for clearing the various pathogens.  Follow up stool tests almost always confirm these findings.  In over ten years of practice I’ve never seen any side effects. However, if you have a tendency toward gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining) oil of oregano can irritate it.  If you develop any pain in the area above the naval (your stomach) I would discontinue it.  Make sure you aren’t allergic to it before you decide to use it as you main defense.

 In addition to the fact that this stuff really works, it provides additional benefits that make it ideal for travel in hot, humid areas.  First, it doesn’t seem to wipe out the beneficial bacteria in the gut.   Second, it has pretty strong antifungal properties and is an added tier of protection from topical fungal infections like, jock itch, candida and athlete’s foot, that thrive in warm, damp climates.  For women, if you do end up having to take strong antibiotics on your trip, it’s very effective at preventing yeast overgrowth.

Dosage:  For travel, I recommend 300 mg before every meal and an extra 150mg if you consume any small meal or drinks of unknown origin.  My favorite brand from Designs for Health but most brands in health food stores are acceptable.

 Story:  In my own experience traveling through the Amazon, I was in several situations where I ended up sharing foods prepared by the indigenous peoples and even sharing drinks out of one cup passed around entire communities.  No, I don’t recommend this.  However, I was fine for the first 17 days.  There was finally an incident where I decided to hike back from a village with a friend.  The kind Santa Agua gentleman, who guided us back down the mountain, led us to his home where his wife offered us some fresh strawberries.  It was so hot, we were tired and hungry, and the strawberries smelled so amazing.  I didn’t have my oil of oregano but decided to take a chance.  Sure enough, the next day I had new visitors in my tummy.  This leads me to what to do if you do get sick.

If You Get a Gastrointestinal Illness or Disturbance

For the reasons mentioned above, I do everything I can to avoid taking antibiotics.  However, I fully acknowledge that there is a time and a place for their use and urge travelers to get a prescription from their doctor to have if needed.  I think it’s important to understand that developing diarrhea is an immune response that is designed to make the intestinal tract uninhabitable for those little invading critters.  Just because you get diarrhea, doesn’t mean you have an actual pathogenic bacteria.  Your body will initiate an immune response against almost anything it’s not familiar with.  Stopping it with anti-diarrheal medicines can give invasive pathogens an opportunity to really establish themselves and make you really sick.  There is, of course, a balance.  If you are so sick that you are unable to stay hydrated then these medications might be necessary.  Consult a physician. 

Below is a combination I have found to be very effective at treating diarrhea or GI infections while traveling.  This combination usually results in significant improvement within a day or two and is even capable of warding off more severe infections.  It’s quite normal to still have loose stools and some cramping for several days after the initial infection.  Important:  If the diarrhea becomes severe or explosive, continues to get worse or is accompanied with vomiting or fever then it’s time to seek and use conventional medicine.

v  Apo-Enterit 30 drops in water 3-4 times per day.  Available from BioResource Inc.  This is a German Biologic Drainage Remedy designed specifically for food poisoning and diarrhea. 

v  Pil Curing (aka Culing Pills) – these are available in vials from Chinese Medicine Pharmacies or from Chinese Medicine Herbalists.  The best one is from the US Distributor, Solstice Medicine Company and is screened for various chemicals.  Take 1-2 vials three times per day.

v  Coptis – this is an herb with extremely potent antibiotic properties.  It was one of the primary herbs used for bacterial infections for several hundred years in China.  Take a small dose of 2-3 pills with each dose of Pil Curing.  Available from Chinese Medicine Pharmacies and Practitioners.  The company Mayway makes a nice preparation.   

v  L-Glutamine – this is optional but very helpful.  1000mg twice per day on an empty stomach helps to reduce inflammation in the wall of the intestines

Dietary recommendations if you are having gastrointestinal issues:  Avoid raw vegetables and fruit. Eat easy-to-digest grains and small amounts of animal protein.  A little fruit, fruit juice or coconut water throughout the day can provide extra potassium to help prevent dehydration. Careful, too much will make everything worse. Broth with lots of salt will also help to keep you hydrated. 

Watch for future posts about travel medicine.  Until then, travel healthy!

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I will be traveling to Mongolia for a few weeks and don’t expect to have the ability to do any posts. With regards to my series on Sugar’s Contributions to the Evolution, Then Devolution of Humans.   I would like to leave you with a story that demonstrates why it has taken so long for our society to become informed about the adverse health effects of sugar.  Before I start, I would also like to add that when I was traveling through Ecuador a few months ago, every medicine man and shaman that I met said one of the best things you can do to keep your people healthy is to minimize sugar.  They understood that fruit sugar was the same as any other sugar. It’s amazing to me that they didn’t require any scientific evidence for this.  They simply understood. 

A few months ago, our nurse practitioner was following a study that was supposed to show that fructose, specifically from agave, had no adverse health consequences.  At the time, she was admittedly hopeful about the outcome because she loves sugar and was convinced that fruit sugar, because it’s natural, couldn’t be that bad.  The study looked at healthy individuals as well as type 2 diabetics.  Each group consumed a controlled amount of agave syrup daily in addition to their regular diets. After just a few weeks the researchers had to abandon the study because the blood markers in both groups (fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C) continuously rose.  In the diabetics, the numbers reached unsafe levels.  Since the intention of the study was to show that fructose from agave was safe, nothing was published and this valuable information never made it into the scientific literature. 

This is a photo of Intipaxi, a traveling healer, whom I met in Ecuador.  He would visit villages and teach the people how to use their local plants medicinally and how to keep themselves healthy. He continually talked about the importance of sunshine and walking barefoot on the Earth.

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Overconsumption of any sugar has deleterious effects on our health.  However, of the primary types of sugars that our cells can utilize; glucose (common in root vegetables and grains), fructose (common in fruit, honey, agave and corn) and galactose (common in legumes and milk) I propose that fructose has the most detrimental effects on human health. Unlike glucose, which is metabolized by most cells as an energy source, fructose is mainly metabolized by liver cells.    As I mentioned in my last post, a study appeared way back in 1988 in the Journal of Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice that showed fructose has a reaction constant 7.5 times higher than glucose as well as a much higher calculated biohazard rating.  Supporting research has increased exponentially since then.

In small amounts AND in the presence of adequate antioxidants, the liver has no problem metabolizing fructose.  In fact, it converts it into glycogen which is the primary fuel for anaerobic muscles (the ones that get really big when you lift weights).  Any fructose left after the muscles have had their fill of glycogen is converted into triglycerides.  These “feed” fat cells for later use.  Depending on which study you read, this occurs if more than 5-7 grams of fructose is consumed in one sitting. In addition to being converted into triglycerides, the excess fructose initiates a damaging, inflammatory response in the liver along with producing elevated levels of free radicals known as reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Here is a brief summary of the amounts of sugar contained in one cup of various fruits and beverages:  Please note that I couldn’t find a breakdown of the glucose to fructose ratio.  Source: http://nutritiondata.self.com/

• Coke                      (26g sugar) – almost all fructose
• Bananas               (28g sugar)
• Apples                 (13g sugar)
• Apple juice         (24g sugar) – 15 grams of fructose
• Grapes                 (23g sugar)
• Apricots               (14g sugar)
• Cherries               (15g sugar)
• Grapefruit            (17g sugar)
• Cantaloupe         (14g sugar)
• Pears                     (16g sugar)
• Plums                    (16g sugar)
• Blueberries         (15g sugar)
• Blackberries       (7g sugar)
• Raspberries        (5g sugar)
• Peaches               (13g sugar)

At first, the inflammation and free radical activity initiated in the liver from fructose results in fat accumulation inside the cells and mildly reduced function. If it continues along this path for any amount of time, a condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, NAFLD, develops.  Scores of studies demonstrate that along with obesity, NAFLD incidence has been steadily rising in Westernized, developed countries and in counties that are becoming developed.   A study showed a 10-year doubling of NAFLD in one Chinese Population and demonstrated that a similar trend was seen in both Korea and Japan. 

Note:  I thought it would be interesting to compare fructose consumption and NAFLD incidence in various countries.  I spent several hours and had a research assistant spend several more hours trying to find information on fructose sales or consumption in various countries. The information is very difficult and seemingly expensive to obtain.  If anyone has access to this type of information, please contact me or enjoy the dissertation subject. 

I would like to point out that many of these studies are performed by checking serum levels of the liver enzymes ALT and AST.  The pathological changes occur way before these enzymes levels begin to rise.  According to Dr. Michael Cave, a professor of hepatology, gastroenterology and nutrition at the Univerisity of Louisville, ALT and AST parameters should be much lower because these enzymes only begin to increase long after the inflammation and fat accumulation starts.  To be objective, Dr Cave also presents a strong case for an increase in fatty liver disease as a result of chronic exposures to several persistent organic pollutants  and xenobiotics.  Several studies show that exposing liver cells to fructose, then adding a xenobiotic, results in accelerated inflammation and disease.  It is possible that the rise of fatty liver disease has been a combination of increased fructose intake and exposure to these various environmental pollutants that are now ubiquitous in our environment.

Depending on which study you read, NAFLD is seen in 10-24% of America’s general population and 57-74% of obese individuals.  According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, they describe fatty liver disease as “common and for most people causes no signs, symptoms or complications”.  However, long before any physical symptoms present, the liver’s various functions diminish.  If this continues permanent liver damage occurs along with the cumulative toxicity effects of secondary dysfunction.  In addition, any persistent organic compounds that aren’t removed from the blood by the liver accumulate in fat tissue.

Here is a brief summary of the main functions of the liver:

• Eliminating endogenous toxins like testosterone and estrogen
• Eliminating exogenous toxins like gasoline vapors, prescription medications, pesticides, artificial fragrances, hormones from birth control usage that are now in the water supply and BPA from the PVC pipes that carry our water.
• Generating antioxidants like glutathione which not only carry out Phase 2 detoxification in the liver but neutralize pollutants in the lungs and assist with the recycling of neurotransmitters in the nervous system
• Metabolizing fat along with various types of cholesterol
• Generating proteins and enzymes for physiological functions all over the body

It makes me cringe to think what is happening to the livers of those poor souls who become motivated to lose a few extra pounds.  They go running five miles per day, lift weights then drink a bunch of carrot juice or eat a banana because they’ve been misinformed into thinking it’s healthy.  Not only are they putting an extra burden on their liver to metabolize the fat that is being burned, they also have to detoxify the various persistent organic compounds that are released from that fat.  For the final assault they add massive doses of fructose.  It would be really interesting to check the liver enzyme levels on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” contestants before and during the competition.  If I were them, I would do things to support the poor liver like eating more protein and vegetables, getting rid of the fruit and adding supplements like phosphatidylcholine, folic acid, B6, B12, alpha lipoic acid and N-acetyl cystiene.

Clearly, we evolved with the ability to eat fruit.  For the next post in this series, I will discuss this seeming idiosyncrasy along with how the rise of fructose consumption is causing us to devolve.

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Before I begin this first section of my series on sugar, I would like to note that I usually provide references for everything I write.  The information below is based on my daytime profession and years of assembling research.  It would take me too long to find all the references.  However, most of the facts on physiology can be obtained from any basic cell biology book. There are also several books available that are well-researched with solid references.  Here are a couple:  Transcend by Terry Grossman M.D. and Ray Kurzweil and The Zone by Barry Sears.

In our medical office where I’ve practiced longevity nutrition for over ten years, the term “The White Satan” (conceived by Terry Grossman, M.D.) is used synonymously with sugar.  Efforts to educate our “ever-expanding” population about the powerfully, deleterious health effects of sugar consumption have been like turning the Titanic.  The information has been clear and out there for at least 12-15 years but the emergence of sugar-induced obesity and its accompanying diseases; diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, heart disease etc. has continued to increase in numbers.  The average age of people affected by these diseases has been falling steadily and it is no longer uncommon for teenagers to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.  Several factors have contributed to this trend.

• Sugar’s highly addictive nature
• The emergence of an entire monoculture-based industry providing the public with cheap, foods and  sweetened drinks packed full of high-fructose corn syrup
• The false belief that fruit and fruit juice is healthy
• Emphasis on starches and fruit on the Food Pyramid
• The non-evidence-based, low-fat revolution which led people to believe that anything that didn’t contain fat, especially saturated fat, was good for them
• Slow, weak and uninformed efforts to educate the public

Any time the level of sugar in the blood surpasses what the cells are capable of managing several problems occur. 

• Inflammation – the hormone insulin is released by the pancreas into the blood to enable our cells to turn sugar into energy.  We obviously need insulin to survive.  However, excessive levels tend to magnify any inflammatory responses that are happening in the body.  In addition, sugar itself, especially fructose, causes direct inflammation in the liver.  Simply eliminating sugar from one’s diet will almost always result in improvement of inflammatory conditions like asthma, acne, and even back pain.
• Elevated triglycerides – Insulin signals the liver converts excess sugar floating around in the blood into triglycerides.  Unless you possess a rare, genetic disorder, elevated blood sugar is the ONLY physiologic mechanism for producing triglycerides.
• “Feeding” of fat cells – Triglycerides floating around in the blood are the direct contributor to “feeding” fat cells.  The higher the blood sugar goes, the higher the triglycerides and the faster weight gain occurs.
• Immune system dysfunction – As pointed out in Transcend, excess sugar interferes with the ability of white blood cells to utilize vitamin C to carry out a proper immune response
• Intestinal Dysbiosis – Excess sugar changes the body’s terrain, feeding and promoting overgrowth of yeast along with unbeneficial and some pathogenic bacteria.  The inflammatory response that results from the immune system fighting these critters has an effect on the entire body.  It can manifest as various diseases as the inflammatory chemicals make their way through the lymphatic system. 
• Advanced Glycated Endproducts (AGE’s) -Glycation is a caramelizing, chemical reaction that occurs when sugars come into contact with proteins.  This reaction can be demonstrated easily in a Petri dish or seen when we bake a chicken and the skin becomes brown and crispy.  The same thing happens to our tissues upon exposure to sugar.  Glycation causes gumming up of enzymes and tissues which render them functionless. 

**Good story:  When I was in college, a gross human anatomy class was lucky enough to have an elderly lady as their study subject.  One of the first things the professor pointed out was the amount of glycation in her tissues.  If you sliced through a piece of her lung or liver, it was never difficult to find these areas of brown, crispy, glycated tissue.  Many age spots are the result of glycation.

It is important to know that these “excess” levels of sugar occur when a healthy human consumes more than 5-7 grams of sugar within a given meal.  Diabetics can tolerate 0-5 grams depending on the severity of their insulin resistance.   The glycemic index  is a useful gauge of how quickly a food raises blood glucose levels.  For example a medium, white potato releases glucose into the bloodstream very quickly and is the equivalent of eating 26 grams of sugar.  The glycemic load  is a measurement of the net glucose-release into the system.  For example, if you eat just a bite or two of that high-glycemic potato, the blood glucose goes up just a little.  I’ve noted that most of my readers are incredibly sophisticated in the thinking and I’m sure most have known about the glycemic index and glycemic load for more than a decade.  However, if you somehow missed out, I strongly encourage you to familiarize yourself with it and take it seriously. One teaspoon of sugar is approximately 5 grams. One teaspoon of honey is 6.5 grams of sugar.  A banana contains 28 grams of sugar. 

Here is a link to the most dangerous foods in America http://www.rense.com/general91/20_Worst_Drinks_in_America_2010.pdf

A severe misconception that has resulted from the spotlight shining on the glycemic index is that fruit and fruit sugar is healthy and safe because it has a low glycemic index.  Fruit contains a completely different sugar, fructose, which cannot be measured with a glucose meter.   A study appeared way back in 1988 in the Journal of Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice that showed fructose has a reaction constant 7.5 times higher than glucose as well as a much higher calculated biohazard rating.  Since then, there is a 1000 fold increase in the research that confirms these findings about the dangers of fructose. This information is just reaching the fringes of the mainstream now.  How sad.  In the next post, we will explore this further and then go on to discuss how the emergence of fructose in the Western diet has led to a rapid devolution.  Later I will present a hypothesis that fructose availability was a primary contributing factor to lifespan and longevity throughout the evolution of humans.

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Greetings and gratitude to all my supporters and followers,
I have a series of posts coming up, especially for all of you, on the seemingly contradictory dilemma of the adverse health consequences of sugar and that fact that humans likely evolved eating significant amounts of fruit sugar. I will clarify the facts about the direct health consequences that fruit sugar has on the individual. This part will have very useful information for anyone who is trying to slow the aging process, prevent the onset of diseases like heart disease and diabetes, lose weight or heal certain health issues. Then I will move on to the topic of post-modern humans and the devolution that has occurred with the rise in consumption of fructose. Finally, I will discuss evidence and possible mechanisms, such as climate cooling and reduced availability of fruit, which may have led to necessary adaptations and changes to the reproductive strategies of humans which may have ultimately led to our increasing longevity.
On July 25th, I will be falling into technology-absence abyss and will be offline for three weeks as I travel across Mongolia on horseback. I will be with a small group of Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners from the World Healing Exchange Program and Acupuncturists Without Borders. We will be visiting several nomadic tribes and learning about their traditional medicine. I will be eager to share when I return. We will also exchange knowledge of our medicine and of course help them in any way we can. The best part…I get to wake up on my birthday to complete silence under the Mongolian sky.

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happy

“If you had the opportunity, would you want to live to be 150 years old?”  This question was posed by Alex Lightman at the November 2009 Humanity Plus Summit.  Based on the way you perceive this question you may or may not be surprised that about 30% of the people raised their hands.

 When I first began practicing longevity nutrition ten years ago at my husband’s clinic, I had some fairly negative, preconceived notions of the types of people who would deign to spend a significant amount of money to take advantage of cutting edge science with an outlook towards living longer.  To my absolute delight, instead of overflowing egos, I discovered a unique group of illuminated, fulfilled, alive, happy human beings.  I believe I can say with certain objectivity that people with a true desire to extend their lives don’t partake in this endeavor for any ego-based reason.  They partake in this endeavor because they absolutely love the lives that they have created for themselves.

I recently got together with one of these remarkable people, Kazuo, who periodically makes the long trip from Japan to our clinic to make sure he is growing younger.  If there were a contest to identify the happiest people on the planet, Kazuo would be one of the finalists. Sharing a bottle of Perrier Jouet* over sushi I asked Kazuo what he thought the secret was to happiness. Before giving his final answer there was some discussion about theories of happiness.  Aside from the usual subject of Bhutan and the National Happiness Index, he mentioned a study performed on money and happiness. First of all, it is important to know that if you ask people if they are happy you will get a certain percentage say yes.  If first however, you ask them how much money they make and then ask them if they are happy, the percentage decreases dramatically.  Kazuo also pointed out that to be happy, you cannot make your happiness dependent on external events.  That if you think your money or your marriage are what make you happy then you give the outside world the power to influence your happiness.  Kazuo went on to discuss Nobel Prize Laureate, Daniel Kahneman’s, theory of Focused Illusion.  In a great TED talk, Kahneman points out that “We make decisions about the future based, not based on experiences but based on memories of experiences.  We can think of our future as anticipated memories”. Our perceptions of how positive or negative a previous outcome was is the basis for our future because it’s the basis of our decisions.  My question to you is:  are you making your decisions based on avoiding unpleasantness or are you making your decisions based on creating happiness. 

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise” –Tacitus

He goes on to ask, “Why do we put so much weight on memory relative to the weight that we put on experiences?” Kahneman’s assessment of our experiences is not unlike the teachings in Buddhism as well as some new age philosophers like Eckhart Tolle who emphasizes that our mind is not our reality and only creates our perception of reality based on past experiences. Kazuo’s final answer was, “I keep saying thank you.  I say thank you to my body, thank you to my food, thank you to God, thank you…”  I asked Kazuo what he does when he in particularly difficult times and surely he must be affected like we all are.  He replied, “you may experience the emotions that accompany difficult times but these emotions don’t have to determine your happiness.  In challenging times, I say thank you even more”

 Other cultures view happiness differently.  The following is a quote from Tanya Tagaq, an Eskimo Throat Singer, responding to the question regarding her perception of beauty after performing a “lullaby” on NPR’s, The World.

 “I’m not trying to sound beautiful.  I remember seeing the blood of caribou splattered across the snow, you know and seeing their insides and touching it and feeling the warmth…that beauty is so intense to me and commenting on life…it’s OK to die, it’s OK to have bad things happen.  I think everyone tends to chase this eternal happiness or utopia that’s completely non-existent.  I just don’t think that’s smart.  It’s so beautiful that times of life challenge you”

Working as a longevity nutritionist has truly altered my perception of people’s happiness.  Now if I want to know if someone is truly happy, I don’t ask them if they are happy. This question is too subjective.  I ask them Alex’s question…If you could live to be 150 years old, would you want to?  If they answer “No” then I know that they are not happy.  I would estimate that only one out of ten people answer yes to this question.

Here are some tools that I give my patients for achieving happiness:

• Realize that your experience of the world is the perception that your mind creates.  Everything is already as it is.   Shakespeare said it perfectly, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
• Learn about and spend time in Nature.  If you can give yourself the opportunity, find an area that is still wild (un-tampered with my man).  Realize that everything you are seeing at this moment started from the beginning of time.  Try to understand that your body is made of the same thing as everything you see around you.  Ultimately we are all made of the Earth and ultimately everything comes from the death of stars.  http://karenkurtak.com/?p=15 If you live in an area where it’s difficult to access Nature read some of the greats:  EO Wilson, Darwin, and Thoreau.  Watch Planet Earth or start studying astronomy. 
• Reduce or eliminate your exposure to the mainstream media. Period.  These organizations point their telescope towards anything that they know will increase their viewer numbers. Once they’ve identified their next drama, they use their zoom lens to alter your perception of how pertinent any subject is to your life.  “Believing” that you know what is going on in the world through these organizations is like a goldfish in her fishbowl believing that she understands the oceans.  Instead, fill this time with simply being or read something more positive like Ode Magazine which comes from the Netherlands.  I read this every morning while I exercise or have tea. 
• If there are subjects that you notice often spike your interest embark on a deeper understanding of them.  For example, if you notice you get emotionally fired up about climate change, read the IPCC reports and make the decision for yourself.  If the daily gossip column suits your fancy then learn about the psychology behind these behaviors. 
• Remember, there are certainly atrocities but there are also just as many, if not more, good things happening around us.  Seek out information about new ways of thinking and new technologies that have the potential to not only solve some of what you perceive as the “world’s problems”,  but that will help to make the world more amazing.  Check this one out: http://www.ild.org.pe/
• Remember to live.  Two of my favorite quotes spontaneously came from friends whom I was sharing time with.  “Just because you are on the planet doesn’t mean you are living”
• “Are you living, or are you watching other people live?”
• Practice gratitude. Take a few moments in the morning or evening and simply identify and try to feel gratitude for the various things in your life.  Like Kazuo said, if you are having a difficult time or can’t feel gratitude, “Say thank you more.”

*For anti aging discussion, champagne raises blood sugar and HgA1C less than almost any other alcoholic beverage

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A raging river, swollen past its banks reveals standing pools of water as its fierce vale of rapidy froth recedes.  Those little forest pools, as if by magic, warm slightly then give birth to a new cosmos of flying life in the air.  Insects become food for the birds and the keepers of the flowering plants.  Mosquitoes become pests to some but Gods to the parasites and viruses that they hold sacred in the proboscis.    The fresh supply of newly evolved viruses, brought to us by the birds arriving from the other hemisphere. The mixing of blood, potentially across all creatures,…birds, elk, beaver, coyotes, humans. The sharing of viruses, Earth’s great force behind the Evolution of DNA.

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A recent publication appeared in the April 7th issue of Science Translational Medicine concerning a novel approach to lung cancer prevention through detection of the oncogenic pathway, PI3K, and effective prevention of lung cancers with myo inositol.  This study represents the emergence of epigenomics and nutritional medicine into mainstream medicine.  It also represents a supreme opportunity for us to examine how the upregulation (switching-on) of a gene is directly related to a nutrient that acts as part of the whole. The study had two important aspects that were elegantly merged. 

First was that the researchers were able to identify a gene that upregulated (switched on) the cancer-related pathway PI3K, in people with lung cancer.  90% of lung cancers occur in people who smoke, used to smoke, or had significant exposure to second-hand smoke.  Of all those smokers, only 10-20% of them ultimately develop lung cancer.  In the past, lung cancer had been diagnosed using invasive procedures that are usually only utilized when the cancer has already progressed enough to produce symptoms.  At this stage both the treatment and prognosis are grim.  As the press releases stated, the gene(s) that upregulate the PI3K pathway are detectable in the airways of smokers long before the cells become cancerous.  This offers a novel approach to identifying those at high risk of lung cancer.   

Second, the researchers were able to identify what they call “a lung cancer chemopreventive agent” that down-regulates, or “turns off” the expression of the PI3K pathway-inducing genes.  The “chemopreventative agent” that they refer to is the semi-essential nutrient, myo-inositol. 

Before you run out to the health food store to get your bottle of inositol, there are two important considerations. First, the cancer-promoting PI3K pathway also plays some very beneficial roles in our physiology. For example, it is likely involved in the formation of long term memories in a process called Long Term Potentiation (LTP).  Chemicals that inhibit the PI3K pathway have been found to stop the expression of LTP.    The PI3K pathway is also involved in normal cell growth and development.

Second, myo-inositol is formed naturally in the gut when various species of bifidobacteria convert phytic acid, (found in grains, nuts, seeds, brewer’s yeast, and many vegetables) into myo inositol.  Bifidobacteria are an example of the good bacteria that have recently become part of the new nutriceutical digestive drink craze. Myo inositol facilitates several cellular functions like proper metabolism of cholesterol and transmission of neurotransmitter signaling of serotonin.  I use inositol (along with other appropriate supplements) in my practice in some cases of depression, insomnia and fibromyalgia when there are obvious signs of digestive issues.  I’ve found that if a person is actually low in inositol, they respond very quickly small doses (500-1000mg) with improved sleep and mood.  Ultimately this is a sign of imbalanced gut bacteria which must be addressed in order for the person to become healthy again.   Some practitioners use large doses of inositol for insomnia.  It works but because large doses may be too inhibitory of the PI3K pathway, I don’t think it’s making the patient healthier…it’s just using too much of the substance to knock them out.

A couple other interesting facts:  EPA, the omega-3 fat found in fish oil, improves the absorption of myo inositol in the gut which may partly explain why fish oil helps with depression.  Phytic acid intake (as mentioned above, phytic acid is the precursor to myo inositol) is associated with lower risk of colon cancer and also switches off the PI3K pathway in the colon.  There are several studies suggesting that colon cancer is also associated with the upregulation of the PI3K pathway.

Candida albicans, a yeast that commonly occurs in the gut, can use myo inositol as its primary food source.   Overgrowth of this yeast can significantly alter bioavailability of myo inositol creating a scenario in which it would compete with its host, the human, for the nutrient.  Giving a person myo inositol in a situation like this might initially help with symptoms but will ultimately lead to more yeast overgrowth in the gut making the situation worse.

Interestingly, many pathogenic species such as Salmonella prevent the production of myo inositol and produce more toxic and inflammatory byproducts of phytic acid.  These organisms can survive in the gut in smaller numbers that don’t produce an all out infection. It’s possible that constant, low-level persistence of these pathogenic organisms could result in a functional, myo inositol deficiency.

Since overgrowth of some pathogenic bacteria and yeast can halt or alter the production of myo inositol, here are the questions we should be asking: 

• Is the expression of PI3K a functional deficiency of myo inositol? 
• Is it possible that gut dysbiosis (depleted colonies of beneficial bifidobacter and overgrowth of candida) can result in a deficiency of myo inositol and ultimately lead to an increase in cancers related to the PI3K pathway?
• How can we establish ideal ranges for myo inositol? 
• At what level can PI3K be suppressed without negatively impacting its physiological benefits? 
• Is it possible that the demographic with a high exposure to cigarette smoke has a higher incidence of upper respiratory infections which ultimately require more frequent use of antibiotics than the general population?  Would this lead to reduced bifidobacter species and candida overgrowth in the gut resulting in a functional deficiency of myo inositol?

 As with vitamin D and sunlight, will conventional medicine decide to replace myo inositol with a pill or will it strive to treat the root of the problem and create the conditions in which we evolved to give rise to its natural occurrence and create a healthier individual?

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I just wanted to let eveyone know that I´m traveling in Ecuador with the amazing organization, Acupuncturists Without Borders.  http://acuwithoutborders.org.  I´m in Quito today, but communications may be very challenging over the next couple of weeks.  I may not have the opportunity to post.  Our group has hired an ethnobotanist as a guide so in addition to treating people with acupuncture in the smaller villages,we will be doing lots of hiking in the Andes and the Amazon and learning about local ecology and medicinal plants.  Very rough life for me.

If anyone would like to see photos I´ll try to post come on flickr.com under the name Darwingirl1.

I´ve been receiving so many great comments and would like to thank everyone for taking the time.  A special thanks to http://crazyerniescopybarn.com.

I wanted to leave you with an interesting article that

was published in JAMA in January discussing the effects of marine lipids, EPA and DHA on telomere length.  Here is a good assessment of the study. 

Hopefully this link works…http://theheart.org/article/1041013.do

With several fish populations declining from a combination of overfishing and sea water acidification, krill oil may be a better alternative omega 3 fatty acid source.  At least it´s lower on the food chain. 

By the way, in areas like off the coast of Somalia fish populations along with the entire ecosystem are thriving as a result of pirate activity leading to reduced fishing.  Very reassuring that by removing the human factor, ecosystems recover well.

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Human beings constantly strive to be more than what we think we are.  We look outside of ourselves for the next thing to make us smarter or younger, stronger or live longer.  This yearning has given birth to the multi-billion dollar industry of nutritional supplements.  We are subject to a continuous stream of advertising and information on the next great discovery.  If you drink this berry juice from the Amazon you will live longer!  Take this new antioxidant discovered in these roots from some exotic part of China!

What are we really discovering?  That the fruits and roots and herbs and leaves that come from our Earth are good for us? These are not new discoveries.  The discovery is that these foods are what we should be eating!  From red wine to tobacco, amazing health-giving qualities can be found in any real food that we consume.  The ancient civilizations like China and India have known this for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Their diets have evolved to the point that their day to day meals are their medicine.   

Let’s take the seemingly miniscule example of folic acid.  Its name is derived from its source, foliage.  One study after another has shown the incredible health-giving benefits of folic acid.  To name a few:  reducing the incidence of birth defects, reducing the incidence of lung cancer in smokers and several other types of cancer, reducing the risk of Parkinson’s disease, and increasing fertility in both men and women. I can’t tell you how many women I have seen for infertility who became pregnant within a month of two of taking large doses of folic acid along with B6 and B12.  Folic acid has perhaps a couple hundred biochemical functions in the body.  One of the more interesting is its ability to turn genes off by giving up (donating) part of its chemical makeup known as a methyl group. (many other vitamins and substances do this as well). 

In the emerging field of epigenetics one of the most mind-blowing experiments done to date was with Agouti mice.  Scientists use a genetic strain of mice known as “Yellow Mice” which have a high risk of cancer, diabetes, obesity and reduced lifespan to study these very diseases.  They discovered that when they fed pregnant “Yellow Mice” folic acid, not only did the offspring look completely different (leaner, brown-gray fur, etc) but even feeding the offspring the same disease-inducing diet as the “Yellow mice”, the offspring had lower incidences of cancer, obesity, diabetes and lived longer!  This “new” strain of mouse was called the Agouti mouse even though it was genetically identical to its predecessor.  Discoveries like these in epigenetics are forcing scientists to reconsider major theories like “nature vs. nurture” and certain mechanisms in the theory of Evolution. 

On the flip side a few studies have come out recently showing that folic acid supplementation increases the incidence of some types of cancers especially in the prostate.  We have to consider that everything in nature functions as part of the whole.  When we eat green, leafy vegetables we receive not only folic acid but also an array of B vitamins and trace minerals which so often function with folic acid in the body.  We also receive hundreds of plant chemicals that alter how our genes control our immune systems, detoxification pathways, etc.  This is what we evolved with. The more we delve into the awesome intricacies of Mother Nature, we reach two realizations.  (1)How little we know.  (2) We already know everything because we evolved with it and are a part of it. 

So what it the conclusion I am asking you to come to today?  Is it that you should take more folic acid?  Perhaps it’s not that taking large doses of folic acid is good for us.  It’s that NOT consuming it in the amounts and forms that we evolved with is making robbing us and our progeny of our health and vitality.  Imagine living before farming.  What do you think you would eat in the springtime?  Look around at what is emerging from Earth.  What are you made of?

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