I came across an article in a newsletter recently that I finally found a minute to read. It is about sensibly resisting the aging process and I noted that with very little change, it is quite consistent with material already published here in The Health Gazette. Since it’s an important topic I have provided a significant excerpt below.
From "Secrets of Feeling Younger" by Carole Jackson.
CHOOSE YOUR AGE
One example of youth-focused living is the group of seniors who tour in their own rock show (no, I don’t mean the current tour of the Rolling Stones), belting out witty takes on aging like "Stairway to Heaven," "Every Breath You Take" and "Forever Young." These seniors and many like them choose to live not by the calendar or number of candles on their birthday cake but from their heart — and to enjoy all their time on earth.
To learn more about how to "age gracefully," I spoke to Edward L. Schneider, MD, dean emeritus and professor of medicine and gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC) and author of AgeLess: Take Control of Your Age and Stay Youthful for Life (St. Martin’s).
Dr. Schneider told me that there are two secrets to taking control of your aging…
Keep living. If you drop out of life and just watch TV all day, you’re going to feel your age (and more). Staying active and engaged is the real key to aging gracefully.
Stay healthy. Even if your spirit says, "I’m young," your body won’t keep up if you don’t take good care of it.
To maintain youthful zeal, Dr. Schneider recommends a number of basic elements to good health. They sound simple — no high-tech treatments or high-priced medications. That’s the beauty of it.GET MOVING
Physical activity is the single most important thing you can do. This doesn’t have to mean intense workouts at the gym, stresses Dr. Schneider. Just get off the couch.
Dr. Schneider recommends: Put on your walking shoes, and join a few friends for a daily morning trek through the park. It’s never too late to start moving, and exercise will make you feel better all around, mind and body. According to one study, walking 30 minutes five or more times a week at a rate of two to three miles an hour reduces your risk for cardiovascular disease by a big big 30%.
WEIGHT TRAINING, TOO
Important as it is to get moving, that’s not enough — you also need to pay attention to weight training. Falling down and breaking a hip is just about the worst thing that can happen to an older person.
Dr. Schneider recommends: Invest $10 in a set of hand weights, and use them every day. Weight training keeps bones strong and intact as you age. For more on easy weight-bearing exercise, see Daily Health News, November 11, 2003.
GET YOUR SLEEP
Older people often find it difficult to get to sleep at all, let alone get a good night’s sleep. But getting sufficient sleep is essential to remaining active, cheerful and alert.
Dr. Schneider recommends: Alternate hot and cold. Soak in a hot bath or shower, and then slip in between cool sheets in a cool, dark room.
WATCH WHAT YOU EAT
Good nutrition is the secret to preventing the degenerative diseases of old age, yet for one reason or another — social isolation, dental problems, reduced taste or smell or physical or mental health issues — many older people fail to eat properly.
Dr. Schneider recommends: Sprinkle antioxidant-packed berries on whole-grain cereal for breakfast… have a salad garnished with a few chicken strips or shrimp for lunch… or opt for the salmon instead of the prime rib the next time you go out for dinner. Try to eat omega-3-rich coldwater fish (such as salmon, tuna or sea bass) at least twice a week, and aim to meet the USDA recommendation of nine daily servings of fruits and veggies. If you live alone, make an effort to get together with friends for at least a few meals each week.
TAKE SUPPLEMENTS
According to Daily Health News contributing editor Andrew L. Rubman, ND, even a good daily multivitamin cannot provide all the nutrients you need, so talk to a trained physician — preferably a naturopathic one — about supplementation. (Caution: Many older people have chronic health concerns for which they take multiple medications. This makes consulting an expert an absolute must before taking supplements.) Dr. Schneider recommends…
Calcium. If you’re age 50 or older, take 1,500 mg daily. For maximum calcium absorption, be sure your supplement includes magnesium.
Fish oil. Take 1,000 mg to 3,000 mg daily. This is one of the best things you can do for your heart, notes Dr. Schneider. Note: Do not take fish oil if you have a bleeding disorder or if you are taking blood-thinners, such as warfarin (Coumadin) or aspirin.
Folic acid. Take 800 mcg daily. Folic acid is a B vitamin that lowers levels of homocysteine, an amino acid in the blood that damages blood vessel walls and contributes to cardiovascular disease.LEARN TO LIVE WITH STRESS
Stress is not going to go away, so the best thing you can do is learn how to cope with it.
Dr. Schneider recommends: Develop your own coping mechanisms, such as exercise, meditation or talking things over with a friend. Try to keep a perspective on what’s really important, and don’t sweat the small stuff.
THE POWER OF PREVENTION
Of course, there’s lots more you can do to stay healthy as you age — get regular check-ups, control chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes, stay sharp by reading books and doing crossword puzzles, keep up with your friends and community connections and steer clear of unhealthy habits such as drinking too much alcohol or smoking.
The ageless truth? Treat yourself well and maintain a healthy attitude inside and out — and the future is yours to enjoy.
Source: Bottom Line’s Daily Health News, 14 November 2005
There it is, all quite sound. Stay engaged with life and remain physically active. One significant improvement would be to utilize optimum, balanced nutritional supplementation rather than the ad hoc and piecemeal approach. You can find all you need from our recommended source.
One other thing I think is important to include when advising people to get plenty of sleep is to avoid taking sleeping tablets. The hypnotic (that’s the technical name for the class of drugs) medications prescribed by orthodox doctors are quite a bad idea.
The quality of sleep provided is poor and the potential to significantly interfere with achievement or resumption of healthy sleeping patterns is marked. Add the known side effects and possible dependency and they can be a disaster.
By following a few simple rules for living you can actually free yourself from adverse aging. Who says following rules is so bad, when you get to age on your own terms?
Here is an important alert from the FDA. If you have asthma please read it carefully. If you know people with asthma please bring this information to their attention, especially if they are using any of the drugs named below.
FDA Public Health Advisory
Serevent Diskus (salmeterol xinafoate inhalation powder),
Advair Diskus (fluticasone propionate & salmeterol inhalation powder),
Foradil Aerolizer (formoterol fumarate inhalation powder)
Today, FDA requested manufacturers of Advair Diskus, Foradil Aerolizer, and Serevent Diskus to update their existing product labels with new warnings and a Medication Guide for patients to alert health care professionals and patients that these medicines may increase the chance of severe asthma episodes, and death when those episodes occur.
All of these products contain medicines belonging to the class known as “long-acting beta 2-adrenergic agonists†(LABA), which are long-acting bronchodilator medicines. Bronchodilator medicines, such as LABAs, help to relax the muscles around the airways in the lungs. Wheezing (bronchospasm) happens when the muscles around the airways tighten. Even though LABAs decrease the frequency of asthma episodes, these medicines may make asthma episodes more severe when they occur.
FDA is issuing this public health advisory to highlight recommendations about use of a LABA medicine for asthma:
- LABAs should not be the first medicine used to treat asthma. LABAs should be added to the asthma treatment plan only if other medicines do not control asthma, including the use of low-or-medium dose corticosteroids.
- Do not stop using your LABA or other asthma medicines that your health care professional has prescribed for you unless you have discussed with your health care provider whether or not to continue treatment.
- Do not use your LABA to treat wheezing that is getting worse. Call your health care professional right away if wheezing worsens while using a LABA.
- LABAs do not relieve sudden wheezing. Always have a short acting bronchodilator medicine with you to treat sudden wheezing.
The information in FDA’s proposed changes to the product labels explains that, even though LABAs decrease the number of asthma episodes, these medicines may increase the chances of a severe asthma episode when they do occur.
In one asthma medicine study, an increased number of people taking a LABA in addition to their usual asthma care died from their asthma compared to people taking a placebo in addition to their usual asthma care, although the number of asthma deaths in the study was small. The Medication Guide has information about these risks for patients and caregivers in language approved by FDA and will be given to patients when a prescription for a LABA is filled or refilled.
LABAs are used for long-term control and prevention of asthma symptoms, for preventing wheezing (bronchospasm) caused by exercise in adults and children and for long-term control of wheezing (bronchospasm) in adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The new warnings are about LABA-use for asthma. Information is not available to know whether there are similar concerns when LABAs are used for exercise-induced wheezing (bronchospasm) or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
I quite often appreciate the work of the Harvard School of Public Health. Much of what they do is both sound and reasonable. Among orthodoxy, a surprising amount of sense comes from Harvard and I have generally found them to be principled in their position on issues rather than partisan based on funding sources or professional politics. However, the following story is one where they have dropped the ball. In short, this is a fishy story. Take a look at the following which was provided by Harvard School of Public Health. I have some further comments below.
A comparison of the risks and benefits of fish consumption suggests that government advisories warning women of childbearing age about mercury exposure should be issued with caution. The study warns that if advisories cause fish consumption in the general public to drop out of fear about the effects of mercury, substantial nutritional benefits could be lost. The study is presented as a series of five articles in the November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"Fish are an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids, which may protect against coronary heart disease and stroke, and are thought to aid in the neurological development of unborn babies," said Joshua Cohen, lead author and senior research associate at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis at HSPH. "If that information gets lost in how the public perceives this issue, then people may inappropriately curtail fish consumption and increase their risk for adverse health outcomes."
Fish are a major source of mercury exposure, a neurotoxin that may cause subtle developmental effects in utero, like the loss of a fraction of an IQ point, even at the modest exposure levels typical of the American population. As a result, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have issued advisories warning women of childbearing age about mercury in fish.
Because fish are also a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, the advisories have had to walk a fine line. The most recent U.S. government advisories emphasize that other adults need not worry about mercury in fish. They even advise women of childbearing age to keep eating fish, although they caution that group to keep away from some species (shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish) likely to contain more mercury and to limit total fish intake to about two meals a week.
The Harvard project looked at whether the benefits of lower mercury exposure to pregnant women justified the loss of omega-3 fatty acids from decreased fish consumption. The project also went one step further, asking what would happen if the public did not follow the government’s recommendations exactly as they were intended. Although evidence on how people actually react to advisories is limited, one study found that pregnant women cut their fish consumption by one-sixth following a 2001 government advisory. Nor is it difficult to imagine that other adults, not targeted by the advisory, cut back on fish based on misperceptions about the risks.
In order to synthesize the available evidence, the Harvard project convened a panel of experts, chaired by Steven Teutsch, a medical epidemiologist formerly with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now at Merck and Company. Other panel members included David Bellinger (Harvard University), William Connor (Oregon Health Sciences University), Penny Kris-Etherton (Pennsylvania State University), Robert Lawrence (Johns Hopkins University), David Savitz (University of North Carolina), and Bennett Shaywitz (Yale University). The panel identified important health effects to consider, assessed the dose-response relationships between fish consumption (or its constituents) and health outcomes, and developed an overall health effects model. In addition to Joshua Cohen, Harvard scientific staff included Colleen Bouzan and Ariane König, and principal investigator, George Gray, executive director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
The study found that if pregnant women were to eat the same amount of fish but replace fish high in mercury with fish low in mercury, cognitive development benefits, amounting to about 0.1 IQ points per newborn baby, could be achieved with virtually no nutritional losses. However, if pregnant women were to decrease their fish consumption by one-sixth, the loss of omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy would cut the nutritional benefit by 80%. If other adults were to also decrease their fish intake by one-sixth, then risks from coronary heart disease and stroke would increase. For example, among 65 to 74 year old men, the annual mortality risk would increase by nearly 1 in 10,000.
The study also found that increasing fish consumption among individuals who were not going to become pregnant would substantially decrease stroke and coronary heart disease risks. Much of this benefit appears to be associated with getting people to eat at least some fish (e.g., one meal a week), rather than no fish at all.
Cohen explained that the problem with fish advisories is that we do not know what their overall impact on the population might be. "Depending on how the population reacts, that impact could very well be negative." Because of the potential downside, Cohen urges the government to carefully evaluate the pros and cons. He concluded, "Before the government issues advisories, it needs to gather data on how people actually will react, how those changes in behavior will influence nutrient intake and exposure to contaminants, and how those changes in intake and exposure will translate into changes in health. In other words, before we put an intervention into action, we need to estimate its real world impacts – both its benefits and its countervailing risks."
The work was funded by a grant from the National Food Processors Association Research Foundation (now the Food Products Association Research Foundation) and the Fisheries Scholarship Fund.
Now I do give credit where it is due. They did do the right thing in disclosing the source of their funding. That’s a good thing.
However, the whole report smacks of a beat-up. We have a smoke and mirrors game rather than anything of real substance. Basically, the people who make money from selling fish hired Harvard to deal with a marketing challenge. They faced a problem given that both the EPA and FDA issued warnings about the mercury contamination of fish, noting associated health hazards, particularly the risk to fetal development.
To their shame, the Harvard people accepted the challenge. They decided to use a panel of experts, which is very interesting. This is clever. It dilutes the blame and guilt by roping in other universities and it creates the illusion of soundness to their finding since they chose only high profile institutions with which to partner.
But what did all these experts do actually? Nothing really. The rather obvious argument that if people heed the warnings and curtail their fish intake (the desirable outcome according to the FDA and EPA) they will thereby reduce their fish-source of omega-3 fatty acids did not warrant such a talk fest. Their claim to be able in any meaningful sense to quantify the relative cost-benefit impact on population health is sheer conjecture.
Overall, I cannot see that this exercise has done anything more than harm the good name and reputation of the Harvard School of Public Health and perhaps tarnish a few other participants. The fact remains that people have foolishly allowed our oceans to become polluted and now a significant food source is contaminated.
What actions should follow? Stop further pollution as a matter of some urgency, warn people about the dangers of eating contaminated seafood, educate people about alternate sources of nutrients such as omeg-3 fatty acids and proteins, support best-practice fish farming, monitor the oceans and respond with appropriate controls where needed. That gives some sensible direction and it took just me less than a minute! Pick up the ball Harvard, we need you in the game and up to speed, not up to no good.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, a long used simple Chinese depression cure out performs costly and dangerous drugs. In a groundbreaking study, depression sufferers given painless, drug-free acupuncture did as well as those given dangerous and costly antidepressants, or even expensive therapy.
Drug companies and their medical pushers will be quick to try to discredit the findings because they stand to lose millions of dollars. In fact, drug companies routinely try to discredit findings like these because their livelihood is so threatened by them. Scientists believe it works by gently stimulating the brain’s natural balance. Notice the term ‘gently’, not at all like the chemical or electrical sledgehammer approach favored by orthodox doctors.
Just imagine, no expensive pills to take. No risk of dry mouth, blurred vision, constipation, urinary problems, sleep problems, weight gain, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea, impotence, loss of sex drive, problems achieving orgasm, agitation, anxiety, or increased risk of suicide.
No wonder a growing number of open-minded physicians are incorporating acupuncture into their practices. Of course, you won’t see ads about acupuncture for depression on television or in magazines. Certainly not as long as drug companies can’t make billions from it, as they do from chemical antidepressants.
It is amazing to see how quickly so many doctors will prescribe the highly toxic antidepressant drugs. They do so knowing that there will be unpleasant side effects and that a certain number will result in serious worsening of the condition supposedly treated, and even deaths. The few who even bother to read the scientific literature describing the drugs’ trials (and that’s very few in truth) would know that pharmaceutical antidepressants have only a very small margin of efficacy over placebos.
Now let’s think about this. The drugs are shown to be only very slightly more effective than placebos in controlled trials. This very slight, possible clinical benefit must be weighed against the other known facts. These include that the drugs are quite dangerous, cause adverse side effects, even including death.
Countless people who have been treated with antidepressant drugs talk about surviving the experience. Not about surviving depression, but about surviving the treatment. These are among the lucky ones, many do not survive the treatment. Depression is a serious problem and deserves to be treated seriously. This may include drug therapy in some cases but it should not include drugs in the vast majority of cases that are treated this way today.
We yesterday noted a serious problem caused by long term or high dose usage of ibuprofen, the widely used NSAID class of drug. Here is a much safer anti-inflammatory that does quite a good job, without the nasty side effects. And without the high price-tag and therefore without any interest or promotion from the pharmaceutical industry.
A recent study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia demonstrated how four teaspoons of extra-virgin olive oil taken daily for 12 weeks reduced pain and morning stiffness among rheumatoid arthritis patients. In the journal Nature, the Monell team reports that the key to olive oil’s effectiveness is oleocanthoal.
Oleocanthol is a pungent compound that has been shown to inhibit two key inflammation triggers: COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes. In other words, oleocanthol and ibuprofen have the same beneficial effect on inflammation. But that’s where the similarity ends. Because while ibuprofen can prompt bleeding and gastrointestinal damage, olive oil does not. In fact, extra-virgin olive oil can be quite good for you.
A 2002 study from the University of Barcelona reported that virgin olive oil contains high levels of vitamin E and phenols. Phenols contain flavonoids – biologically active compounds that are remarkably high in antioxidants. The study concluded that virgin olive oil may inhibit the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, and might even do a little cancer fighting as well.
In a University of Athens Medical School study researchers assessed dietary data, blood pressure, physical activity and clinical variables on more than 20,000 subjects. The result: High intakes of olive oil, vegetables and fruits were significantly associated with lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Interestingly, of these three factors, olive oil proved to have the most beneficial effect on blood pressure.
Dr Alan R. Gaby, M.D., writing for Healthnotes Newswire, notes that researchers don’t know if oleocanthol remains intact after the refining of extra-virgin olive oil. ("Extra-virgin" simply means that the oil is made from only freshly harvested olives.) Dr. Gaby adds: "Several other compounds with potent antioxidant activity are almost entirely lost in the refining of olive oil; also, refined olive oil is less effective than extra-virgin olive oil as an inhibitor of LDL oxidation."
So there you have it. Once again we see a natural food that provides a range of very significant health benefits, so good in research studies that we should be exploring ways to incorporate extra-virgin olive oil in the daily diet. Certainly if you are using ibuprofen it may be wise to consider adding the good oil while gradually reducing your intake of dangerous drugs. Visit a naturopathic doctor and talk it over. It’s your health.