Dr. Jonny Bowden

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  • New Cholesterol Guidelines: Utter Madness

    Usually I try to write these newsletter articles with a modicum of objectivity and fairness, checking my passion at the gate. But this latest travesty from the Cholesterol Establishment is simply too much to take sitting down.

    On Nov 11, The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute issued new guidelines on cholesterol.

    They now advise screening for all children between 9-11.

    Let me tell you in no uncertain terms why this is utterly ridiculous.

    Number one: Cholesterol is a hormone factory.

    Cholesterol is actually the parent molecule for the whole family of hormones known as steroid hormones. These hormones include cortisol (known as the “flight or fight” hormone), and the entire family of sex steroids including the estrogens, progesterone and testosterone. The sexual side effects of statin drugs has been well documented, and was even the subject of an entire book by one of the top cholesterol researchers in the world, Michel de Lorgeril, MD. Do we really want to put children on a drug that can conceivably impact their entire sexual development? Really?

    Number two: Cholesterol is used by the body to synthesize bile acids.

    Bile acids vitally important for the digestion of fat. They’re synthesized from cholesterol and then secreted into the bile. Bile acids are so important to the body that it holds onto most of them, keeping them from being lost in the feces and instead causing them to be reabsorbed from the lower intestine, put into a kind of “metabolic recycling” container and taken back to the liver. Still, even with its best efforts, the body loses some bile acids and to make up for this, the liver synthesizes approximately 1500-2000 mg of new cholesterol a day (that’s about 7-10 times the amount in a large egg). Clearly the body thinks you need that cholesterol.

    Number three: Cholesterol is an essential component of cell membranes.

    Cholesterol is an essential part of the membranes of the brain, the nervous system, the spinal cord and the peripheral nerves. It’s incorporated into the myelin sheath, a kind of insulation or “cover” for the nerve fibers that facilitates nerve impulse transmission. Cholesterol is also important for stabilizing cells against temperature changes. Memory and cognition problems are one of the most common side effects of statin drugs. (For more on this, see Dr. Duane Graveline’s frightening book, “Lipitor: Thief of Memory”.)

    Number four: Cholesterol is important for the Immune System.

    Cholesterol has an important connection to the immune system. Research has shown that human LDL (so-called “bad” cholesterol) is able to inactivate over 90 percent of the worst and most toxic bacterial products(1-4).

    And a number of studies have linked low cholesterol with a greater risk of infections. One review of 19 large, peer-reviewed studies of more than 68,000 deaths found that low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from respiratory and gastrointestinal disease, both of which frequently have an infectious origin. Another study that followed more than 100,000 healthy individuals in San Francisco found that those who had low cholesterol at the beginning of the 15—year study were far more likely to be admitted to the hospital because of an infectious disease.(1,2). And an interesting finding from the MRFIT study found that 16 years after their cholesterol was first checked, the group of men whose cholesterol level was 160 or less were four times more likely to die from AIDS than the group of men whose cholesterol was over 240! (3)

    Number five: Cholesterol is the parent molecule for vitamin D

    It’s well known that an enormous number of people- perhaps over 50% of the population in this country, though exact figures aren’t known—have far less than the optimal amount of vitamin D in their systems. Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to depression, cancer, physical performance, weakened immunity, the inability to lose weight and even overall life expectancy. Could the huge number of vitamin D deficiency clinicians are seeing on a regular basis be partly due to the overuse of statin drugs? It’s hard to know—but it passes the smell test.

    Do you really want to put a kid on a drug that’s going to clearly impact his body’s ability to make this vital, important nutrient?

    But the biggest, most glaring reason the idea of screening kids for high cholesterol is boneheaded is this: Cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease.

    No folks, we’ve been completely mislead, lied to, bamboozled and just plain misinformed.

    Parents: Do NOT repeat NOT succumb to the inevitable pressure to have your child tested for cholesterol and under NO circumstances consent to putting him or her on a statin drug.

    Cardiologist Stephen Sinatra and I are currently at work on a book explaining the whole thing- how we got on this crazy cholesterol-phobic path to begin with, and why the cholesterol myth continues to persist today despite the fact that it is clearly past its expiration date.

    I’ll save the details for the book, but in light of these new guidelines, I thought it was urgent to get the message out to you now.

    Trying to prevent heart disease by lowering cholesterol is like trying to cut calories from your McDonald’s super-size meal by eliminating the radish garnish.

    Cholesterol is the wrong target, and we’ve been totally and completely misled by those who tell us differently.

    Look, I don’t believe in “conspiracy theories”, at least not the kind publicity seeking hucksters promote in books with subtitles like “Secrets “THEY” don’t want you to know about!”  But I do believe there is a subtle (and not-so-subtle) circle of influence that flows freely between government (the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the National Cholesterol Education Program), regulators (FDA), the pharmaceutical industry and their lobbyists, the medical journals and other movers and shakers in the “medical-industrial” complex.

    For example:  When the National Cholesterol Education Program lowered the “optimal” cholesterol levels in 2004, 8 out of 9 people on the panel had financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, most of them to the manufacturers of cholesterol-lowering drugs who would subsequently reap immediate benefits from those same recommendations.

    Statin drugs are blockbusters. They are literally money factories for their manufacturers. (Lipitor, for example, is the best-selling drug in the history of pharmaceuticals.) Their manufacturers are not necessarily bad, evil people- but they have a responsibility. And that responsibility is to their shareholders, not to some Platonic vision of a healthy population.

    So, like any company, one of their goals is to find and develop new markets. If they can subtly help convince you- through publicity, marketing, influence, behind-the-scenes shenanigans, etc.– that children are at great “risk” from high cholesterol, they have created a brand new, extremely lucrative market for their products.

    Which is exactly what you, as a shareholder, would love to see. But you as a parent or a patient—well that’s another story.

    I consider the cholesterol book I’m currently working on with Dr. Sinatra to be the most important work I’ve ever done. Heart disease is the number one killer in the world, and people need to stop focusing on cholesterol and get to work on what the real issues in heart disease: inflammation, infections, oxidation, glycation and stress.

    I’m almost thinking we need an “Occupy Wall Street” type mass movement telling these folks, “Stop already!!!! Stop inundating us with messages about how “bad” and “dangerous” cholesterol is so you can continue to make 30 billion a year (and rising) selling us drugs to cure a “problem” that plays a very minor part in heart disease. Stop trying to get us to focus on the Radish garnish so that we won’t notice what those super-sized fries and milk shake are doing to us.”

    Just. Stop. It.

    Seriously.

    This has gone far enough.

     

     REFERENCES:

    1)    Iribarren C and others. Serum total cholesterol and risk of hospitalization, and death from respiratory disease. International Journal of Epidemiology 26, 1191–1202, 1997.

    2)    Iribarren C and others. Cohort study of serum total cholesterol and in-hospital incidence of infectious diseases. Epidemiology and Infection 121, 335–347, 1998.

    3)    Neaton JD, Wentworth DN. Low serum cholesterol and risk of death from AIDS. AIDS 11, 929–930, 1997.

  • Start With One Hour A Week

    Chicago Tribune, 11/04/11

    You’ve got to love a fitness expert whose exercise mantra is “make it short and sweet.”

    How short? Twenty minutes, three times a week. But even less at first.

    For those of us who are, shall we say, exercise averse, this is magical.

    Federal guidelines advise Americans age 18 to 64 to get 2 1/2 hours a week of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity.

    Frank Comstock, Tucson, Ariz., doctor and author of the book “Antiaging 101,” specializes in wellness and anti-aging. He insists that all it takes to truly be fit is an hour a week. So why not start there? Anything is better than nothing!

    You’ll also be happy to hear Comstock say, “If I’m out of shape, the last place I would go is a gym. You see all these machines, and you see these guys walking around. You don’t know what you’re doing. The key is to find something you like.”

    So, how does this 20-minute workout do the job? It’s all about “interval training,” he says, which means short bursts of higher intensity aerobics, then returning to shorter periods of lower intensity. For instance, walk at a normal pace for two minutes than as fast as you can for 20 or 30 seconds. Then repeat. Gradually increase the fast bursts and decrease the slow ones.

    Comstock recommends:

    Find the exercise that is least objectionable, like walking, swimming, jump rope, jumping jacks, doing squats.

    If you’re just beginning, pick a shorter time — even 5 minutes twice a week — then build up slowly.

    Don’t give up. If you’re at the 20 minute/three times a week level and just don’t feel like exercising, employ the 10-minute rule. “Start your exercise session and plan on working out for only 10 minutes” that day, he recommends.

    If that doesn’t work, “look in the mirror.” Sometimes, says Comstock. That’ll probably be enough to get you back off the couch and into your interval zone again.

    Dr. Jonny Comments:

    Interval training is definitely the 21st century way to exercise. Enduring an hour at a time on a treadmill, mindlessly staring at the television and wishing the time would go faster is just not an effective option for weight loss (though steady state aerobics like walking briskly continues to be a terrific way to stay healthy.)

    If you’re “just” looking to fitness as a way of staying healthy and living longer– hardly a bad goal!– by all means walk every day. But if, like many, you’re also hoping to lose weight, interval training is a far better way to go. You burn more calories, lose more fat, build some muscle, and accomplish all this in less than half the time.

    It’s a matter of training smarter not harder.

    As the Tribune article points out, interval training is as simple as alternating “high” intensity periods of exercise (as short as 30 seconds) with “lower” intensity periods of exercise. The variations are endless. After a brief warm-up, you could walk at a brisk pace for say two minutes, push yourself for 30 seconds, then go back to walking briskly for another two, repeating the sequence 3-10 times.

    You increase the intensity of the exercise by going faster during your “high” intervals, by shortening the length of time of the “low” intervals (also known as “active rest”), by increasing the number of sequences, or by any combination thereof.

    Interval training also bleeds into circuit training, another very effective way of working out. Traditionally, the term “circuit-training” was applied to weight training routines where you went quickly from one exercise to another, without much rest. You could, for example, go from bench press to sit-ups to leg lifts continuing on this way till you finished the whole body (and then repeating the circuit again or even three times).

    Some folks mix the two in a kind of circuit-interval training wherein after a few weight training exercises, you jump on a piece of “aerobic” equipment like the stairmaster, do a fast high-intensity two or three minutes, and then start your weight training exercises again.

    Here’s an example:

    (after warm-up)

    1. Chest press

    2. Sit-ups

    3. Leg raises

    4. Two minutes on stairmaster

    5. Lat pull-downs

    6. Tricep dips

    7. Shoulder presses

    8. Two minutes on treadmill

    etc…

    You can do incredibly effective workouts using this high-intensity model, hit all your body parts, train your cardiovascular system, and build some toned muscle in the bargain. It’s way more effective– for weight loss and weight maintenance– than long slow aerobics.

    One of the best pieces of home exercise equipment for interval training I’ve ever seen is the Xiser. It’s small and portable, very sturdy, and gets the job done. You only have to do about 4 one minute intervals a day on it, but boy are they challenging! For those who would prefer not to go to the gym every time they work out, an Xiser and a bunch of home dumbbells, bands or even water jugs is all you need to stay in shape.

  • Does Broccoli Really Fight Cancer?

    Does Broccoli Really Fight Cancer?

    Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli have long been known to contain plant chemicals like indoles that have anti-cancer action. Now a new study confirms that another plant compound found in broccoli—sulforaphane—also has cancer-fighting properties.

    The latest study, done by Emily Ho and a team of researchers from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, found that sulforaphane—a powerful antioxidant found in abundance in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables—has the power to selectively target and kill cancer cells, meanwhile leaving normal prostate cells unaffected.

    Sulforaphane- which is also a potent antioxidant—apparently inhibits HDAC enzymes (histone deacetylase) which play an important role in whether or not certain genes—like tumor suppressor genes—are “expressed” (activated) or not. HDAC inhibition is a very promising are of cancer treatment and researchers are working on both pharmaceutical and dietary approaches to inhibiting this group of enzymes.

    Cancer is characterized by inappropriate cell growth, but HDAC inhibitors can help restore cells to their normal function. Previous studies at Oregon State have demonstrated that the growth of prostate tumors in mice were significantly slowed by diets containing sulforaphane. Lead researcher Emily Ho—an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Science at OSU– told Science Daily, “(Sulforaphane) does appear to be a phytochemical that can selectively kill cancer cells, and that’s always what you look for in cancer therapies”.

    And sulforaphane’s cancer-fighting ability doesn’t come solely from its ability to inhibit the HDAC enzymes. As I wrote in “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”, sulforaphane increases the activation of enzymes in the liver which help fight carcinogens. These enzymes-  known as phase-2 enzymes—are essential for detoxification and are believed to reduce the risk of prostate cancer. According to research from the Department of Urology at Stanford University published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, sulforaphane is the most potent inducer of phase-2 enzymes of any phytochemical known to date!

    Other studies have demonstrated the cancer-fighting power of cruciferous vegetables. In 2007, Victoria Kirsh, PhD., of Cancer Care Ontario in Toronto and her team found that eating fruits and vegetables in general was not associated with decreased prostate cancer risk, but greater consumption of dark green and cruciferous vegetables were. “A possible means to reduce the burden of this disease may be primary prevention through increased consumption of broccoli, cauliflower and possibly spinach”, wrote the authors.

    The best news of all is that you don’t have to eat that much broccoli (or broccoli sprouts, which has over 50 times the amount of sulforaphane found in regular mature broccoli) to get  cancer-risk-reducing benefit. An earlier study—also by Emily Ho—found that eating some broccoli sprouts on top of a bagel with cream cheese (not recommended!) resulted in HDAC inhibition.

    “The compound in broccoli may be one of the strongest anti-cancer fighters we have”, said Ho.

    It’s important to remember that the way you cook your broccoli has a lot to do with getting the most cancer-fighting ability out of the vegetable. Broccoli contains an important enzyme of its own, called myrosinase, which has to be present to form sulforaphane. Myrosinase can be destroyed by overcooking their broccoli, so make sure not to do that! Steaming it for 2-4 minutes is absolutely ideal.

    You can also up the sulforaphane content of broccoli—or even of broccoli powder or green drink powders that contain it—by simply adding some broccoli sprouts. One study found a strong synergistic effect between broccoli powder and sprouts. The lead author of that study, Elizabeth Jeffrey of the University of Illinois, told Science Daily, “There was almost a twofold increase in sulforaphane absorption when sprouts and powder were eaten together”.

    So there you have it. An ordinary inexpensive food with solid research backing its cancer-fighting ability. That’s a whole lot more promising than most of the expensive over-hyped “anti-cancer” products on the market!

  • Three Great Ways to Make a Protein Shake

    Three Great Ways to Make a Protein Shake

    From time to time I hear from people who absolutely love the whey protein powders we sell on our website like Dream Protein, Whey Cool Protein and Paleomeal, but are stuck for ideas on how to use them.

    Sure, you can just add water, or some frozen berries, but after a while that can get kind of boring.  So I asked my cookbook writing partner, chef Jeannette Bessinger, to come up with a few original whey protein shake recipes that taste terrific. Here are three she specifically designed for the book of meal plans and recipes that are included in our sensational new program: Unleash Your Thin.

    As a bonus, one of them is dairy-free, while the other two are gluten-free:

    1. Oatmeal Smoothie

    Yield: 1 serving (Dairy-Free)

    Ingredients

    • 1 cup chilled unsweetened vanilla almond milk
    • 1/4 cup whole rolled oats (uncooked)
    • 1 tablespoon almond butter
    • 1 small ripe banana
    • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
    • 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger, optional
    • 1 scoop protein powder
    • Few drops NuNaturals vanilla stevia, or Xylitol.

    Instructions

    Combine all ingredients in a powerful blender and blend until very smooth.

     

    2. Coconut Lemon Smoothie

    Yield: 1 serving (Gluten-Free)

    Ingredients

    • 8 ounces chilled coconut water
    • ½ lemon, peeled and seeded
    • 3 tablespoons dried coconut
    • 1/2 cup plain yogurt
    • 1 scoop protein powder
    • Few drops NuNaturals vanilla stevia, or Xylitol.

    Instructions

    Add all ingredients to blender and blend until very smooth.

    3. Spiced Peach Smoothie

    Yield: 1 serving (Gluten-Free + Dairy-Free)

    Ingredients

    • 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
    • 1 fresh, ripe peach, unpeeled, pitted and halved  (or 2/3 cup frozen peach slices)
    • 1 scoop protein powder
    • 1 heaping tablespoon soaked chia seeds
    • 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root
    • ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
    • ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
    • Few drops NuNaturals vanilla stevia, or Xylitol.

    Instructions

    Combine all ingredients in a powerful blender and blend until very smooth.

  • Are There Any Fattening Vegetables?

    Are some veggies more fattening than others?

    It’s not an unreasonable question.

    As you know, we’re experiencing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in most of the Western world. (Actually, it’s not just the western world- India and China now lead the US in the number of diabetics, but even adjusted for population the percent of the population that’s diabetic in India is almost twice that of the US. But I digress.)

    And although most people don’t think immediately of vegetables when they think of cutting “fattening” foods from their diet, but some people who are really conscious about carbs have nonetheless asked me about vegetables as they relate to insulin, blood sugar and weight loss.

    There’s a lot of confusion about certain starchy vegetables that have a “high glycemic index”, vegetables that people following lower-carb eating plans have been told to avoid. So the short answer to the question about vegetables being fattening is this:

    If you’re a person for whom blood sugar management is a real issue, yes, some vegetables like potatoes (white and sweet), corn, and parsnips might be worth limiting. But in my opinion, the argument about vegetables and sugar is a little bit of a tempest in a teapot.

    Here’s why. There are two real culprits in the obesity crisis. One is the fast-acting carbs and sugars in breads, cereals, pastas, desserts, cakes, rolls, crackers and fast food. Two is the obscenely large portions of everything else. As my wisecracking pal, the brilliant nutritionist and USDA researcher C. Leigh Broadhurst, PhD, says, “No one ever got fat on peas and carrots!”

    So of course, we always want to keep an eye on how much sugar we’re eating, as well as on the foods that can raise blood sugar (and with it, the fat storing hormone insulin). In that regard, we have nothing to fear from most vegetables.

    There are, however, some exceptions, and it’s not always easy to identify them just from the glycemic index. The glycemic load is a far more telling measure of the impact a food will actually have on your blood sugar in the real world.

    • Some starchy vegetables- peas for example—have a glycemic index of 80 (high!) but a glycemic load of 3 (extremely low) meaning the typical portion won’t do much to your blood sugar.
    • Carrots are another vegetable with a bad rap because of its glycemic index but its glycemic load is also 3.
    • Potatoes have high glycemic load and high glycemic index.
    • Tomatoes, actually a fruit, have the ability to raise your blood sugar as well.

    So eat your vegetables and, unless you’re highly sensitive, don’t worry about sugar or carbs (exceptions being the starchy veggies like corn and potatoes).

    Just to get you started, here’s a list of the vegetables that earned a “STAR” for outstanding performance by a vegetable in my book “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”

    You can’t go wrong with any one of them!

    • Beets
    • Broccoli
    • Brussels Sprouts
    • Cabbage
    • Carrots
    • Dandelion
    • Kale
    • Mushrooms
    • Onions
    • Spinach
    • Swiss Chard
    • Watercress
  • Hormones Drive Weight Regain After Dieting

    Hormones Drive Weight Regain After Dieting

    A study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that rebound weight gain isn’t just a matter of having no willpower. Hormones play a huge role.

    Let me explain.

    Hormones related to appetite and hunger can be disrupted by dieting and weight loss, and can remain so for at least one year. When these hormones are out of whack, you can experience tremendous hunger and cravings, and even the best intentions can easily be derailed.

    “Maintaining weight loss may be more difficult than losing weight”, said lead researcher Joseph Proietto, PhD, a professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne’s Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, in Victoria, Australia. “This may be due to biological changes rather than [a] voluntary return to old habits”.

    I’ve said for decades that weight loss is relatively easy—it’s keeping it off that’s the issue for most people. (I’m always reminded of my father’s quip about stopping smoking: “It’s easy to stop smoking”, he’d always say, “I myself have done it 20 times!”)

    Researchers have long known that hormones found in the pancreas (like insulin and glucagon), the gut and the fatty tissues have a huge influence on body weight not to mention hunger, appetite and calorie burning. And when body fat percentage drops, that causes a decrease in certain hormones like leptin  while at the same time causing an increase in hormones like ghrelin.

    Leptin- when working properly– puts the brakes on eating by sending a signal to the brain saying, “Hey! Stomach’s full! Stop shoveling the food in!”. Ghrelin, on the other hand, does the exact opposite, effectively telling the brain, “Don’t listen to leptin! This dude’s starving! Chow down!”

    A decrease in the stop signals (leptin) coupled with an increase in the go signals (ghrelin) is a prescription for disaster when it comes to weight gain.

    The hormone changes that happen during weight loss have been known to scientists for ages. But what wasn’t clear before this new study was how long the hormonal changes actually persist.

    In the study, Proietto and his research team put 50 overweight men and women on a very low-calorie diet for ten weeks and then monitored their hormone levels for a full year.

    During the initial period on the low-cal diet, the average weight loss was 30 pounds, representing about 10% of starting body weight for most of the participants. Blood tests confirmed that levels of the hormones that affect appetite and weight gain (insulin, ghrelin and leptin) had indeed changed as expected. And- not surprisingly—the participants also reported being hungrier.

    After ten weeks on the low-calorie weight loss diet, the participants were told they could resume a “normal” diet, but they were given periodic advice by a dietitian and also strongly encouraged to get a half-hour of exercise on most days of the week. After a year, most of the participants had regained an average of 12 pounds.

    But the blood tests showed that hormone levels hadn’t really stabilized fully. And hunger levels remained a bit elevated as well.

    The moral of this story isn’t that you have to be a victim of your hormones. But it does mean that there are some hidden forces driving appetite and the more you can get them under control the better prepared you are. One of these “powerful forces” is the hormone insulin (also known—for good reason— as the “fat storage hormone”).

    Another of these forces—not discussed in the present study—is brain chemistry. In my weight loss program, New You in 22, we spend a great deal of time addressing the brain chemistry of cravings and appetite, and teaching you how to reprogram your brain so that these cravings don’t rule your life and determine your behavior. Sure, you may still feel a little stirring when you smell a Cinnabon baking, but you won’t be as compelled to do something about it!

    A healthy respect for hormones and brain chemistry is always a good thing, but it’s also good to remember that there’s a lot in our power that can affect these things, and that their power over us can be strongly modified by the actions we take and the choices we make.

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    Ask questions

    Take A Free Assessment!

    Want to know more about how your hormones affect you?  My friend Glen Depke has made his Adrenal Assessment available to the  Jonny Bowden community for free. You can access it by clicking here.

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  • Vitamin E and Prostate Cancer

    If you happen to be a vitamin supplement, you’ve had a bad week. At least as far as public relations go.

    First there was that study on older women and vitamins, suggesting that women taking common vitamin supplements have a greater risk of death. (Last week I told you why I thought you should effectively ignore that study and keep taking your vitamins.)

    Almost at the same time, another study came out suggesting that vitamin E supplements increase the risk for prostate cancer in men by 17%.

    OK, let’s take a look.

    The study everyone was talking about was actually an updated review of data from the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT), which ended in 2008. The SELECT trial was originally intended to test whether vitamins could help prevent cancer. When the trial ended, in 2008, the conclusion was that taking vitamin E and selenium- either separately or together—did not reduce the risk of cancer.

    The present study followed up the original participants for three more years- from the study’s end in 2008, to now. This time they did find a statistically significant 17% increase in prostate cancer risk for the vitamin E group (but not for the combination group nor the selenium-only group).

    OK, a few things to call attention to here.

    Number one is the type of vitamin E given. The men in the SELECT trial were given 100% synthetic vitamin E in the form of di-alpha-topcopheryl-acetate.

    Let me tell you what you should do when you see a “di-“ on the label of any vitamin E supplement: throw it in the garbage where it belongs.

    It’s no longer even a matter of debate that the synthetic form of vitamin E and the natural form of vitamin E are completely different, both in their composition and in their action. (The synthetic dl-alpha-tocopherol is a mixture of eight different molecular entities of which seven do not exist in nature.) I’m not even sure you can buy this crap anywhere, though I’m sure some big box stores have some cheap synthetic vitamin E collecting dust on their bottom shelves somewhere.

    That researchers genuinely interested in finding out the effects of a vitamin on a disease would give an inferior type of the vitamin no longer surprises me. I’ve seen studies where the amount of the vitamin given is so ridiculously small that not getting a positive result was just about guaranteed before the study even started. It’s hard to know exactly why the researchers in the SELECT trial chose a next-to-useless form of synthetic vitamin E, but that’s exactly what they did.

    The second thing worth pointing out is that vitamin E is actually a family of eight- count ‘em, eight—different compounds. Four of them are classed as topcopherols (alpha, gamma, beta and delta) and four are classed as tocotrienols. (The tocotrienols themselves are demonstrated very strong positive benefits, as research is beginning to show.)

    For years, the most commonly available vitamin E supplement was d-alpha-tocopherol. While (natural) d-alpha-tocopherol is a step up from the synthetic dl-alpha-tocopherol-acetate, it still doesn’t contain much of the super-healthy tocotrienols and is significantly lacking in the most important vitamin E compound of all, gamma-tocopherol.

    These days, nearly all the best health practitioners recommend a high-gamma vitamin E, since it now appears that gamma-tocopherol (not alpha-tocopherol) is the fraction of vitamin E that has the most biological activity and the greatest health benefits.

    So what this study basically tells us is that there was a tiny increase in risk for prostate cancer among men taking 400 IUs of a crappy, synthetic vitamin E supplement which may or may not do much of what vitamin E is reported to do.

    Now don’t get me wrong. I’m still not sure vitamin E is the first thing I’d reach for to prevent cancer. But I’m pretty damn sure about the other good things it does.

    It’s a powerful antioxidant, “the most potent (fat)-soluble antioxidant in human plasma and tissues”, according to the NIH’s Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements. Since oxidative damage from free radicals is a part of every major disease from heart disease to cancer to Alzheimer’s, it makes sense that we include vitamin E in our antioxidant defense army.

  • Calcium, Vitamin D and Health Outcomes

    Confused about all these conflicting studies on calcium use? How some studies seem to say calcium is good, then others say it’s bad? (What else is new, right?)

    Researchers writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition did a novel analysis that may shed some light.

    First, some background.

    The Women’s Health Initiative was a big famous study of hormone therapy. Many of the participants were also asked to simultaneously take part in a dietary modification trial that was a kind of “sub-section” of the larger study. This section of the Women’s Health Initiative was called the Women’s Health Initiative CaD trial, with CaD standing for Calcium/ vitamin D.

    In the CaD trial, 36,282 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 were randomized into one of two groups. Group one took 1,000 mg of calcium carbonate and 400 IUs of vitamin D daily. The second group got a placebo. The participants were then followed up for between 7-11 years.

    (Quick comment: Notice that the form of calcium they gave was calcium carbonate, which could have made a difference to the outcome. Calcium carbonate is the calcium used in Tums. It’s the cheapest kind of calcium, but it comes with the most caveats, one of which is that it needs to be taken with food, because it depends upon stomach acid for its absorption. But since we make less stomach acid as we grow older, calcium citrate is the recommended form of calcium for older people. The women in this study were between 50-79 years old. Just sayin’.)

    Overall, that study reported that the calcium/ vitamin D supplements had no effect on the incidence of hip or total fractures, cardiovascular outcomes, colorectal or breast cancer, or mortality.

    Well, you might think, so much for all those claims for calcium and vitamin D. Not a whit of an effect on anything we care about- not bones, not the heart, not cancer, not dying.

    If you didn’t look any further, you might be tempted to dump your calcium supplements, maybe even your vitamin D caps just for good measure.

    Not so fast.

    In randomized controlled trials, calcium/ vitamin D supplements administered individually or in combination decreased recurrent colorectal adenomas, reduced the risk of cancer, reduced the risk of mortality. Unfortunately, other studies showed that calcium supplements given alone increased the risk of myocardial infarctions (heart attacks)!

    Which brings us to the new study.

    A noteworthy feature of the Women’s Health Initiative Calcium and Vitamin D study (CaD) was that many of the women in the study were taking calcium and/or vitamin D supplements on their own when the study started. Realizing this, researchers separated the women into two groups—those who were taking supplemental calcium and or vitamin D on their own at the start of the study, and those who were not.

    Here’s where it gets interesting.

    In participants who were already taking calcium and/or vitamin D supplements at the start of the study, taking the 1000 mg of calcium and 400 IUs of vitamin D given during the study proper didn’t have any affect on cancer.

    But for women not taking personal supplements of calcium and/or vitamin D when the study started, giving them their 1000 mg of calcium and 400 IUs of vitamin D significantly reduced their risk of total cancer, breast cancer and invasive breast cancer by 14-20% and nonsignificantly reduced colorectal cancer by 17%.

    The bad news is that the 1000 mg of calcium and 400 IUs of vitamin D did increase the risk for cardiovascular events by 13-22%, but, strangely, only in the women who were not taking these supplements on their own at the start. For the women who were, the extra calcium and vitamin D didn’t add any risk. The researchers are pretty sure- as am I- that any increased risk for heart trouble comes from the calcium, not the vitamin D, as the risk seen in this study for the combo vitamin treatment was just about identical to the additional risk seen for calcium alone.

    This re-analysis shows how a really beneficial effect of vitamins in any study can easily be obscured by factors like what the subjects were doing on their own, or what their nutritional status was at the start of the study. For example, calcium was long touted by the dairy industry for weight loss, but it turns out any weight loss benefit for calcium is only seen in people who are calcium deficient to begin with; calcium has no weight loss benefit if you’re already getting enough, despite those ridiculous ads showing women with 3% body fat eating fruity yogurt-y junk food and claiming their fabulous bodies are all due to the calcium in the yogurt.

    But I digress.

    This current study has some puzzling results—like why did the women already taking calcium and vitamin D at the start of the study have no additional risk for heart disease when they took the supplements given in the study, but the women who were supplement virgins did? Very strange.

    I think the safest conclusion to make from all of this is that calcium has an overall beneficial effect but should never be taken alone.

    Rather, take it in a good bone formula that contains all the synergistic nutrients like vitamin D, magnesium, boron, silica, manganese and vitamin K (or as many of them as possible).

    And relax a bit on the dose. I think it’s only a matter of time before the powers that be pull back on their recommendations that every women get between 1000-1500 mg of calcium a day. First of all, many people believe that recommendation means you should take 1000-1500 mg of calcium supplements every day, and the recommendation is actually for total calcium. Drinking a lot of milk (not my favorite choice unless it’s raw) or eating a lot of yogurt definitely reduces the amount you need from supplements.

    Second of all, you may not need as much calcium if you cut back on some of the calcium-robbers in your diet. Phosphoric acid from sodas, for example, will leech the calcium right off your teeth. (OK, not really, but it’s a good image.) Sugar is another calcium-robber. If there’s not a leak in the bathtub, you may not have to keep adding so much water, you know?

  • FDA Trying To Take Away Your Right To Buy Supplements!

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently commenced a new assault against the dietary supplement industry – one that could…

    • threaten the availability of supplements currently on the market
    • discourage manufacturers from innovating new and more beneficial products in the future

    In July, the agency issued a draft Guidance document which sets forth its current thinking concerning provisions of the law that dictate what ingredients can be included in dietary supplement products, and what information companies must submit to the FDA if they desire to market a supplement that contains a new dietary ingredient (i.e., one that was not sold prior to October 15, 1994).

    Keep reading…

    “Shocking Confessions Of A Drug Company Insider“

    In this exposé, a top executive of a major pharmaceutical company spills the naked truth about the drugs you and your family take… which drugs heal, and which ones KILL… what doctors turn to when they don’t know the cure… what they do when they themselves or their loved ones are stricken with disease or
    illness… and what life-saving resource they insist should be in every home.

    Watch this must-see video now because your life — or the life of your loved ones — may depend on it.

    The FDA’s draft Guidance ignores the intent of Congress by seeking to impose insurmountable obstacles to the introduction of new dietary ingredients and includes interpretations that will threaten the continued sale of supplements if even the most minute of changes are made.

    If the Guideline is finalized and enforced by the FDA it will go a long way towards establishing the agency’s long-standing goal of requiring pre-market approval for dietary supplements.

    The following are a few highlights of the Guidance document:

    • The FDA’s draft Guidance requires companies to possess exorbitant amounts of information concerning their existing dietary supplements to prove that New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notifications are not required for the products they are currently marketing. In many cases, it will be impossible to gather such information, thereby threatening the future availability of numerous dietary supplement products on the market today.
    • In order to market a product that contains a new dietary ingredient, manufacturers will be required to submit a tremendous amount of information concerning historical use of the ingredient or conduct a multitude of animal and human studies which are overly burdensome and costly. Establishing such excessive requirements is both contrary to Congressional intent and unnecessary given the safety record of dietary supplements over the past few decades.
    • Any change in the manufacturing process of a dietary ingredient that results in chemical alteration of such ingredient or a change in specifications of the ingredient, regardless of how insignificant the alteration or change is, will require the submission of a NDI notification. This will discourage manufacturers from using the most advanced and efficient manufacturing technologies and pursuing methods that can improve the safety and effectiveness of dietary supplement products.
    • Any increase of the amount of a dietary ingredient in a dietary supplement or any change in formula of a dietary supplement, regardless of how minute or insignificant, will require the submission of a NDI notification. This will discourage the innovation of new products.

    FDA’s enforcement of its Guidance as currently drafted could have a devastating impact on the dietary supplement industry and significantly affect the availability of supplement products on the market today and in the future.

    Keep reading…

    Doctor Warns: These 3 Hormones are Destroying Your Metabolism…

    Do you feel like your body is BETRAYING you, laying on ugly flab no matter WHAT you do? If you want to know why and how to FIX it, the answers are right here in Dr. Steven Sisskind’s shocking free VIDEO presentation.

    When you watch the entire presentation Dr. Sisskind reveals how to activate sciences’ newest FAT BURNING hormone, which has been shown to help you melt off those inches NATURALLY…and no, this is NOT about HGH, testosterone, estrogen, or hormone replacement therapy (HRT)…it’s something you’ve NEVER heard of before.  Here’s the rest of the story »

    Don’t just sit back while the FDA threatens your right to access cost-effective and beneficial dietary supplement products. The industry needs your help in fighting back against this bureaucratic power-grab.

    I urge you to contact your representatives in Congress and express your concerns. While personal letters are always best, attached for your convenience is a form letter.

    These letters are samples; please feel free to personalize them.

  • Why You Don’t Need to Worry About that Women and Vitamins Study

    Before I start talking about that vitamin study you all want to know about,  I want to say a few words about MSNBC and FOX NEWS.

    Trust me, it’s relevant.

    No matter what side of the political fence you’re on, I’m sure you’ll agree that cable news has become extremely shrill and highly partisan. Both MSNBC and FOX may agree on the facts they are reporting but then spin them in an entirely different way to reach entirely different conclusions.

    Each political argument is founded on certain “if’s, and’s and “maybes”; i.e. this policy will lower (or raise) the debt assuming certain projections (such as medical costs or unemployment) are in fact true. Different researchers come up with very different projections (just read the Wall Street Journal stock advice columns!) Depending on whose projections and figures you use, even well-intentioned honest people can come to very different conclusions.

    So why am I talking about cable news in a story about women and vitamins?

    Because, sadly, the same thing that happens on cable news happens in nutrition science.

    The problem is everyone knows it’s happening in cable news, but people naively think science is always “objective” and reporting about science is actually accurate.

    Neither is true.

    Take the latest scary study that’s got everybody all a-dwiddle about how if you’re an older woman taking some common vitamins, you might die.

    The Media’s Take: Fair and Balanced, Anyone?

    Let’s start with the reporting. One typical headline I saw about this story shrieked, “More Bad News About Vitamins!” Now if you read that without slowly shaking your head, go back and think for a minute about what’s implied in that headline.

    We’re talking one study with a very mildly (and very questionable) negative result (we’ll get to that in a minute).

    Now compare that one study to the dozens and dozens and dozens of studies that come out on a regular basis showing the benefits of vitamin K, vitamin D, vitamin C, minerals like selenium, magnesium, fats like omega-3’s, and even- in several studies- the lowly multivitamin. A writer or newspaper or television station with a different slant might easily have titled this story, “A Surprising Negative Study on Vitamins Amidst a Sea of Positive Ones”. “More Bad News About Vitamins!”? Serious?

    (Yes, I used “serious?” instead of “seriously” on purpose. I feel like it gives me street cred. Please humor me.)

    OK now let’s get to the study itself, and what it found.

    Which isn’t very much. But let’s take a look.

    “Let’s Go To The Videotape”

    The study was titled “Dietary Supplements and Mortality Rate in Older Women: The Iowa Women’s Health Study“.

    The researchers took the database of the Iowa Women’s Health Study and examined the records of 38,772 older women- average age 61.2 at the start of the study—looking specifically at their use of dietary supplements.

    Well, they didn’t exactly look at the women at all, since it was not a clinical study. No one was given supplements and monitored, supplement use wasn’t confirmed by any outside source, nothing like that.  No, they assessed supplement use with three….count ‘em, three… self-reporting questionnaires given to the women at three different points during the 18 year study, which began in 1986  and continued through 2004.  (No one was asked about doses, brands, combinations, nothing. Just “did you use a supplement?” “Yes: Vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin E, multivitamin, calcium, iron”.)

    OK, cool, see you in 11 years or so!

    The researchers then examined the death records through the State Health Registry of Iowa and through the National Death Index. They checked for all original 38,772 women and found that by Dec. 31, 2008, 15,594 of them had indeed died. (Which was approximately 40% of the women. But do remember, at baseline- 1986—they were pushing 62. This is 22 years later. An optimistic way to look at it is that 60% of these ladies were living into their mid-eighties! But I digress, and this really has nothing to do with the story.)

    But that’s OK, because the study itself is pretty boring and doesn’t have very much to tell us. Although you’d never know it from the media attention it got (see above).

    First let’s look at the conclusions of the study, then we’ll talk about what they mean. (Spoiler alert: they mean next to nothing. I’ll show you why.)

    The conclusions of the study (in the researchers’ words): “In older women, several commonly used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements may be associated with increased total mortality risk; this association is strongest with supplemental iron. In contrast to the findings of many studies, calcium is associated with decreased risk”.

    Since the words “associated” or “association” are used three times in the above paragraph, let’s take a minute and look at what an association (observational) study actually is.

    What Exactly Is An “Observational” Study?

    In an observational study from which many associations are generated, you take a whole bunch of people- thousands of them—and you gather data about a zillion different things.

    Maybe it’s blood pressure and cholesterol, maybe it’s heart disease, maybe it’s what they ate for breakfast, how often they brush their teeth,  how many of their parents had diabetes,  how many of them own television sets, practice the rhumba, love Lady Gaga, take antidepressants, or pop a Centrum now and then.

    OK now you’ve got a statistician’s version of heaven—tons and tons of data. Eighty gazillion gigabytes of numbers from thousands of people, and it’s your job to see if there’s any pattern, to determine which things are “associated”, meaning “found together”. If two things are said to be associated, that means there is some relationship between these two things that’s unlikely to be an accident.

    Which brings us to “yellow finger syndrome”.

    Correlation, Cause and “Yellow Finger Syndrome”

    Interestingly, people with lung cancer are more likely to have yellow, stained fingers. So yellow stained fingers are positively “associated” (correlated) with lung cancer. In any given group, the more cases of yellow fingers you see, the more cases of cancer are likely.

    Hmm…so who would have yellow fingers?

    Let me guess. Smokers?

    You can see in this case how wrong it would be to assume that because two things are associated, there is a cause and effect relationship. An association is not proof of cause. Yellow fingers don’t cause lung cancer, and lung cancer doesn’t cause yellow fingers. They’re found together because they’re both associated with a third variable, namely smoking.  Smoking causes lung cancer, and yellow fingers are a kind of irrelevant by-product of the real cause. (This kind of mistake is made all the time in cholesterol studies where high cholesterol is “associated” with heart disease except it’s not a cause even though everyone thinks it is. But I digress.)

    So one thing we might ask is, what else might be true of women who are taking vitamins? Remember this study began in 1986, and vitamin usage wasn’t what it is now. Maybe these people were a bit sicker at baseline and were seeking out vitamins as a way of not getting sicker? Maybe they were people who were eating a particularly bad diet and told themselves that vitamin caps would make up for it? Who knows?

    You always have to ask yourself, with any association, what else might be going on here? What else might be interfering with or “confounding” the results? Were all the vitamin takers, for example, also soccer players? (Of course not, but there’s a wild example of how an uncontrolled variable can have a huge effect on the results without anyone noticing.)

    The Confounding Variable Issue

    Researchers are very aware of confounding variables, so they try to adjust for these influences with statistical techniques (“adjusting for possible confounding variables”) but they don’t always adjust for the right ones. Or they can over adjust and wind up with an “association” that’s a pure statistical fluke. I’ll come back to this “adjusting” thing in a minute-  it’s very relevant to our little story, and wait till you hear how it relates to this study.

    Though you’d never know it in a million years from any newspaper article or television story about this study, here’s what was true of the supplement using women at the beginning of the study: (This is taken directly from the actual research paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine.)

    “At baseline, compared to nonusers, supplement users:

    1. had a lower prevalence of diabetes
    2. had a lower prevalence of high blood pressure
    3. smoked less
    4. had lower average BMI
    5. had lower average waist to hip ratio
    6. had higher educational levels
    7. were more physically active
    8. were more likely to be on estrogen replacement therapy

    Then, get this—(you’re going to love this one!)

    Adjusted for age and (calorie) intake, supplement use of vitamin B complex, vitamins C, D and E and calcium had significantly lower risk of total mortality compared to nonuse.

    Wait, I thought the study concluded vitamin takers had a higher risk of total mortality?

    Patience, grasshopper. We aren’t finished with the data.

    OK, the researchers must’ve thought, age and calories are important, glad we adjusted for those, but there are probably a few other things to adjust for, so they did just that. “With further adjustment only the use of calcium retained a significantly lower risk of mortality”, they explain.

    So none of the vitamins (except calcium) had a protective effect, which was exactly the hypothesis they set out to prove. (Their words: “Our hypothesis, based on the findings of a previous study by some of us, was that the use of dietary supplements would not be associated with a reduced rate of total mortality”.)

    Great, hypothesis confirmed, vitamins suck, we can all go home now, right?

    Ah what the heck. Let’s squeeze the data a little more, throw in some more things, see what we come up with.

    Uh oh. Squeeze that data even more and presto now those three-times-in-18 years self-reports of vitamin use are now “associated” with a higher rate of mortality.

    Do I have to tell you they were serving champagne that day in every marketing department of every pharmaceutical company in America?

    So What’s the Risk?

    The real punch line is that with all that hoopla, what “increased risk” of mortality are we talking about? Depending on the vitamin, maybe 6%- 15%. But let’s look at what that means, since it sounds way worse than it is.

    Let’s say non-vitamin users died at a rate of 15 per 1000. A 6% increase in the risk of dying associated with vitamin use would mean that vitamin users would be now be expected to die at a rate of  15.9 women per 1000. A 10% increase in risk would mean that 16.5 women per 1000 would be expected to die. Now that’s no small thing if you happen to be among the .9 – 1.5 women affected, but let’s keep it in perspective. It’s a tiny association of questionable meaning-not exactly the death toll for the multivitamin, as Dr. David Katz solemnly proclaimed it on the Huffington Post.

    I mean, come on.

    Look, I’m not dismissing this study completely. But I am saying that there’s very little likelihood there’s anything to it. Put enough data into the mix and you can come up with associations to make almost any case. (The China Study, T. C. Campbell’s book about The China Project—a massive study of diet and health in rural China– is a perfect example of this kind of data selecting. Out of 8000 associations generated in the original China Project, T.C. Campbell picked just those that supported his pro-vegan hypothesis and put them in his book, The China Study, conveniently omitting all the many associations that refuted his theory. But don’t get me started.)

    Now if I were preparing a scholarly rebuttal to this study, I’d put it in perspective by citing the the hundreds of studies that have shown benefits for vitamins and minerals. I could easily go back and search out the many, many studies showing how low folic acid is a risk for cancer, how folic acid helps prevent spinal tube birth defects, how vitamin D affects mood, physical performance, obesity, cancer, how vitamin C increases phagytosis (a function of the immune system), how magnesium is associated with lower blood pressure and better blood sugar control, indeed how virtually every vitamin tested in the study has been shown in other studies to perform vitally important functions essential to your health.

    But honestly, I give speeches, write books and columns and run a health website for a living. I don’t have research assistants. I don’t have graduate student interns who can look all this stuff up and find the references.

    So what I’m hoping is that one of the more brilliant health bloggers like Denise Minger or Chris Masterjohn, avowed and self-described data-nerds, will spend a week sitting up all night with the research and will come up with their usual brilliant, referenced, unimpeachable, “just the facts, ma’am” rebuttals to the findings in this study.

    Meanwhile let me just say this: It’s a tempest in a teapot.

    Does it make any logical sense that in a study of over 30,000 women lasting 19 years, with eight gazillion other factors involved, popping the equivalent of a Centrum or One-A-Day (or saying that you did on the three questionnaires you filled out over the course of the study) made you more likely to die?

    Seriously?

    That just doesn’t pass the smell test for me.