Wholly Nutritious

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Welcome to Dr. Paula Pilcher, ND, who does wonderful massages and backs them up with a wealth of clinical massages. She also has the best laugh, as I’m sure you’ll agree!

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I am pleased to inaugurate video interviews about nutrition on my blog. Look forward to lots more vlog entries here as I speak with a variety of knowledgeable health care professionals about whole food nutrition.

Here, Dr. Gard, my excellent chiropractor/reflexologist in Beaverton, Oregon, discusses the pitfalls of eating grains, especially refined grains.

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I love it when I’m right!

There’s a serious problem, internationally, with bees — it’s called “colony collapse disorder,” where whole colonies of bees just die off. Since bees are the principal pollinators of a tremendous variety of important human foods, we would all be up the creek without a paddle if bees become truly scarce. This seems a credible threat to our food supply, and scientists are racing to identify its causes.

In March of last year, in a post entitled, “Food Variety, The Birds and the Bees,” I proposed that perhaps bees suffer from oxidative stress, when they are forced to live on only one or two kinds of food, just as humans do. (I’m no bee expert, I was just thinkin’ …)

A friend just recently sent me an article from the BBC news that reports on some work by French researchers that makes just this point. Bees had much lower oxidative stress, and much healthier immune systems, when fed 5 pollens than when fed just one.

Why do we care? Well, I mean, besides celebrating the awesome fact that it appears I called this one right on the money?

Well, two reasons. One is, most of the world’s important agricultural crops are pollinated by honeybees. Without them, we would be in a world of hurt. But if this theory points to an important cause of the mysterious death of honeybees, picture this: a simple solution might be to plant lovely flowering garden borders around orchards and other pollinated crops. Gorgeous, too!

Also, in a sense, we have the same need as the honeybees. We don’t eat many flowers (although nasturtiums are yummy, have you ever put nasturtium blossoms in your salad? — But I digress). Yet our bodies do require a wide variety of nutritious whole foods to keep us healthy and thriving.

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Here’s your word of the day: sarcopenia. It means, your muscles fading away as you age. It used to be thought to be an inevitable consequence of getting older.

Now we know it is simple to prevent!

Exercise. Every day.

Eat lots of fruits and veggies. Every day.

Here’s the latest in a very long line of articles on the benefits of fruits and veggies in keeping muscles present and accounted for.

I’ve got those fruits and veggies covered! Anybody want to be my exercise buddy?

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Some new information on folate has put a potential fly in the proverbial ointment.

The research on prevention of some severe birth defects, through the simple, inexpensive addition of folate (aka folic acid) to the diet, was compelling. So compelling that, since 1998, the US has mandated that all baked goods be enriched with folate. There has been at least a 25% drop in these birth defects since the change, as reported in a 2004 edition of the MMWR.

Which is interesting, because they thought it would cause a 50% drop.

It’s also interesting that, in absolute numbers, the best estimate is about 1,000 cases of spina bifida, nationally, did NOT happen because of this supplementation.

Diminished folate levels have also been associated with increased cardiovascular disease, higher homocysteine levels, and higher risks of several cancers.

Yet, it is very rare, maybe even nonexistent, that isolated supplements carry, risk free, benefits that equal those of eating whole fruits and vegetables.

Now, a reanalysis, combining two studies in Norway, which does not mandate folate supplementation of foods, appears to show that taking folate supplements leads to a small increase in lung cancer risk, as well as all-cause mortality.

Since such increases have not been detected in the US since the folate supplementation was introduced, I am still waiting for more data.

In the mean time, I will continue to enjoy my green leafy vegetables. The word “folate” comes from the Latin word for leaf, and dark green leafies are loaded with this powerful B vitamin.

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On Medscape, a recent featured article reviewed a study of the effectiveness of some commonly recommended vaccines. The subjects of the study were children with frequent earaches and runny noses. The study looked at whether those kids were protected after they were vaccinated — 4 times! — for H. flu B (HiB) and pneumococcus. (Pneumococcus is the most common cause of sinusitis and colds, and H flu B causes most of the rest.)

Only 13% of these kids were fully protected, and 40-55% were partially protected.

This article struck me very hard, because for me, and for my children in turn, colds, flus, sinusitis, bronchitis, and asthma were a common and miserable part of our lives for more years than I care to count. As a result, we were advised by our doctors to be sure to get flu vaccines every year. Which we did. And even so, we were sick many times every year. We always thought, “but we’d be sick even oftener if we didn’t get the vaccines!” We didn;t dae go without them, because we were so miserable.

Then, about 7 years ago, we started adding many, many fruits and vegetables to our diets, every single day. Colds and flus and sinusitis all pretty much disappeared from our lives. After a year or two, I dared to stop getting yearly flu vaccines. And never looked back.

I do believe in some vaccines — my mother had polio when she was 2! Luckily, she lived through it, but the rest of her life was very profoundly affected by the disease. I would never dream of letting my family avoid the Salk vaccine. I don’t care to go without tetanus vaccines or boosters either, thank you very much. And I was in one of the last cohorts to get smallpox vaccine, and I don’t regret that, either.

On the other hand, we all had pertussis vaccine at the recommended times, and my husband had whooping cough anyway when he was about 40 (before our fruit and veggie lifestyle change) and that was a very, very, very bad 2 months, believe me.

OK, so this is anecdotal — where’s the science?

The Wall Street Journal (all places) recently had a nice article about why eating right is more effective at actually preventing viral illnesses, like the flu.

Here’s a fascinating quote from that article: “To create immune cells to fight off a specific infection, the body has to rapidly draw nutrients from the bloodstream, says Anuraj Shankar, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. “If you don’t have an adequate intake of vitamins and minerals, you won’t be able to produce the number of immune cells you need, and the immune cells you do produce may be compromised,” Dr. Shankar says. That makes it impossible to mount an effective response to infection, he says.”

Of course, taking multivitamins doesn’t cut it, as numerous studies have shown. (For example, the WHI. You gotta eat those fruits and veggies!

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Dr. David Phillips, MD, Physician/Triathlete
Discusses
The Journey to a Healthy Existence
Dr. Phillips graduated from Harvard University where he earned academic honors and was an All-American swimmer. In 1989, Dr. Phillips received his Medical Degree at Wright State University School of Medicine where he was elected to the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Before turning his interests to the field of Sports Medicine, he was a Board Certified Emergency Physician.

Having competed in triathlons at national and world levels, including the 2005 Ford Ironman World Championships and as a member of Team USA at the International Triathlon Union’s 2008 World Championships, Dr. Phillips has first-hand knowledge of the important role of nutrition in the athletic arena.

Dr. Phillips currently serves as Chief Medical Advisor for Athletic Training Services, LLC in Atlanta.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2009, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
(Doors Open at 6:45PM)

Crowne Plaza Hotel
Downtown/Convention Center
1441 NE 2nd Ave.
Portland, Or 97232
503-233-2401

RSVP to me!

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