Surviving the Medical Meltdown (16 page)

Let’s start with a quick review of biochemistry. We will use as an example the process of methylation, which is an important function for many body processes. Vitamin B
₁₂
is a cofactor in the methylation process, which moderates and inhibits the expression of certain genes. B
₁₂
works together with an enzyme to help regulate gene function.

There are important genetic differences in people’s ability to methylate because of the activity of the enzyme. This important chemical activity is enhanced by elevating the level of the cofactor, vitamin B
₁₂
. A one-size-fits-all mentality is incorrect in medicine in general, but particularly when looking at levels of cofactors. I may be able to methylate with a little B
₁₂
, and you may need five times as much. Therefore, measuring B
₁₂
levels is inadequate. We need to measure some aspect of the ongoing chemical reactions to check if they are proceeding as needed. Fortunately for B
₁₂
, there is a cheap test that does just that. A reaction that involves methylation is the conversion of homocysteine to methionine. By measuring the level of homocysteine (and there are others), we can determine whether methylation is occurring appropriately.

Today, there are a myriad of such processes we can measure. It is possible and not overly costly to test the effectiveness of the chemical processes that convert food to energy, and then to correct for deficiencies. Organized medicine recognizes so-called inborn errors of metabolism, but only the most overt ones. Practitioners of standard medicine willfully ignore the possibility of less profound – but deleterious – individual genetic variation of everyday metabolism. And in spite of many studies showing benefits of various supplements, they continue to chant, “Supplements don’t work.”

Even without specific testing, it is known that Americans generally are deficient in certain cofactors. The supplements I recommend to everyone are chosen because they compensate for our unnatural dietary patterns. For example, fish oil (or probably PEOs, as mentioned earlier) is needed to compensate for the fact that the aboriginal human ate fish and grass-fed wild game, so they naturally had a high intake of omega-3 versus omega-6 oils. Traditional hunter-gatherer diets contained about a 1:1 ration of omega-3 to omega-6. Today’s grain-fed beef and farm-raised fish simply do not give us the same quantity of omega-3 fat as wild game did. And vegetable oils are high in omega-6. These oils are not naturally occurring. It took the advent of modern agribusiness to efficiently squeeze corn to make corn oil – primitive man’s arteries were never exposed to the stuff. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century the consumption of these man-made oils as well the introduction of feedlots and processed foods have dramatically changed the oil ratio. Estimates vary, but it is reported that by 1900 the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 was 4:1, and now it’s about 25:1.

This has dire consequences for the arterial wall. Dr. Barry Sears has written
The Anti-Inflammation Zone
outlining the need for omega-3 oil in various medical conditions.
²
I asked him personally about the amount needed for healthy people, and he suggested 3 grams a day. It is important not to take in rancid oil. Oil should be kept cool and not kept over a few months. If it smells rancid it is not good. For this reason I do not use the cheap oils from big box stores, but I buy mine from places that keep the oils chilled or sell in bulk frequently. Life Extension Foundation at
www.LEF.org
is a good source. I have transitioned into using PEOs. (See
chapter 8
for more information about oils and PEOs.) And of course, I eat a low omega-6 diet. The point is to have a normal blood ratio.

IODINE

Another dietary problem in modern society is our lack of iodine and our increased intake of bromine (as outlined in
chapter 8
). Everyone in America needs iodine supplementation because we do not eat like the Japanese who ingest hundreds of times more iodine in seaweed. Iodine is critical to thyroid health and is probably an anticancer element. Most iodine in stores is very low dose, on the order of 150 mcg (micrograms), whereas the Japanese ingest 12.5 mg (milligrams). I order “Iodoral” 12.5 mg on line – there are various sources, but as far as I know this is the only brand available in a large enough dose to make a difference.

ZINC

In my experience testing a number of people with advanced tests, nearly everyone – even children – is deficient in zinc. Zinc is critical in intercellular signaling, and it facilitates skin healing. It is a component in most of the OTC cold remedies because it seems to help the body respond to invading viruses. I suspect our soils have been leeched out of this mineral. But for whatever reason, we need to take at least 7 mg if not 15 mg a day. Plastic surgeons give 220 mg a day for a few days to help wound healing.

MAGNESIUM

After observing elderly people in the hospital, I have realized we have a tendency to have lower magnesium with age. And by the time it is low in the blood, it is very low in the cells because the body will leech out the magnesium from cells to preserve blood levels. Our deficiency is probably due again to our diet, which tends to be repetitive and not as natural as it once was. Low magnesium is associated with hypertension (high blood pressure) and headaches. If you don’t have hypertension or headaches, I recommend everyone take 400 mg a day of magnesium. If you have hypertension, you may benefit from much larger doses. My former anti-aging nurse got off her blood pressure pills by taking 1,200 mg a day of a slow-release magnesium.

VITAMIN D

Everyone is low on vitamin D – even people who work and play outside. Instead of wasting a patient’s time and money with testing, I simply recommend some supplements. If there is one anti-aging hormone (D is not really a vitamin), it is vitamin D3. (See the paper on vitamin D in
appendix A
.) I recommend 10,000 units a day for people without renal problems. No one has overdosed on that dose, and it is less than an aboriginal will get in nature when living on the equator.

Without specific testing, I recommend the following for everyone (if you have certain medical conditions, such as renal failure, you must consult a physician first):

In short, there is a scientific basis for taking supplements. Life Extension Foundation (
www.LEF.org
) offers a very extensive summary of literature supporting specific supplements, and their reviews of the science are easy to read and accessible to people without medical backgrounds. Other references are
Dr. Blaylock’s Wellness Report
newsletter or the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine at
www.worldhealth.net
.

12
PREPARING YOURSELF: HORMONE REPLACEMENT

H
ormone replacement is perhaps an unusual topic for a survival book. But as it turns out, hormones are critical to health. Classic medicine – for some reason unknown to me – has approached the topic of hormones in a strange and ostrich-like fashion. Although most doctors measure and treat thyroid hormone problems, they have assiduously avoided dealing with adrenal hormones (except in the most severely deficient cases) or the sex hormones – testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. And don’t even mention “growth hormone,” or you’ll have to call the special agents from the DEA.

Classical medicine spends huge amounts of time and money measuring things like potassium and glucose and magnesium levels. But these are the
downstream products
of metabolic activity. The
controllers
of metabolic activity in the body are the hormones – and we ignore them. It’s stupid, and medicine is slowly starting to change. But you shouldn’t wait thirty years until we get smarter or at least more informed. As I say in my lecture on anti-aging medicine, “Don’t wait until you are dead.”

OVERVIEW

Here’s the big picture according to everything I have put together over a lifetime of studying physiology and, recently, anti-aging science. Our bodies are made up of many, many cells. Each cell maintains itself and contributes to some bigger overall function. To do that, each cell must be able convert digested food to energy and then use the energy for its specialized activity. If the cell is a muscle cell, the energy goes to producing more muscle protein and for causing the muscle to contract and relax. If it is a skin cell, it produces keratin to reinforce the skin. A stomach lining cell produces digestive acid, and so forth. The nucleus of each cell is a protein factory. This nuclear factory contains the blueprint for the entire body in the form of DNA. As we eat food, the cell turns it into energy and into the building blocks to make new parts for the body. The cell takes the amino acids that came in as our food, and it shuttles them to the nucleus, where they are recombined into new proteins using the DNA blueprint. These proteins are then incorporated into the body. In short, your cells are constantly producing proteins that become you.

All this protein building takes energy, so within each cell are little furnace organelles called the
mitochondria
. These mitochondria produce all the energy required for the body to move, breathe, and run its chemical reactions.

All these processes take place under a generalized scheme, which is not entirely understood. The ultimate conductor of the body’s functions may not yet be known, but we do know that hormones are the major cellular level controllers. Take for example the mitochondrial energy machines. Thyroid hormone is produced in the thyroid gland in the neck. The thyroid gland takes protein and iodine and selenium and other substrates and combines them into thyroid hormone. This circulates around in the blood, and depending on what’s happening to the body, it becomes more or less active. Then it attaches to every cell receptor and sends signals to the mitochondria to crank up the energy production. People without enough thyroid hormone get cold, lose hair, and gain weight because
metabolic activity decreases – in short they become slugs. People with too much hormone start getting very warm and hyperactive, and can develop rapid heart rate, excessive weight loss, and sweating. Most people do not exist at either extreme, but in a fairly normal range of thyroid function.

Now let’s consider the other hormones: adrenal hormones act on the cells to produce a variety of products that give us stamina and allow us to deal with stress; sex hormones give us our appearance, help maintain our weight, influence energy, and alter our sex drive; insulin tells cells to store fat; other hormones influence appetite. It goes on and on. But here is the point: there is no biologic advantage in losing your hormones. When we start to feel the effects of aging in our forties, it is due to a noticeable decline in our hormone levels. If hormone levels are not normalized by supplementation, then our cells are not getting the correct controlling signals. Our cell nuclear factories then start putting out abnormal proteins, and those abnormal proteins are incorporated into our bodies. We start feeling older and generally less vital after forty because we are slowly being replaced, protein by protein, with a new, abnormal us.

THE CANCER SCARE

In addition to good diet, adequate sleep, and a sound exercise program, I recommend, and I myself use, hormone supplementation. Women have used hormone therapy for years, but recently concerns about hormones raising cancer risk were voiced after early results from the Women’s Health Initiative were poorly communicated to the public.

The concerns about cancer were overblown from the get-go. In short, the Women’s Health Initiative is a long-term study looking at a variety of health data. It was gleaned from the data that women on postmenopausal hormone therapy had a very small increased rate of cancer. But it turns out the conclusions were very misleading and essentially wrong. When the results were more closely examined, it became apparent that the small bump in cancer was completely
attributable to use of an artificial chemical called
progestin
. It is not correct to equate progestin with natural progesterone. Progestin is a man-made pseudo-hormone whose function and life cycle in the body are very different from the natural hormone progesterone. Because it is disposed of differently, progestin goes through a fairly toxic phase before being eliminated from the body. The carcinogenicity of progestin was again confirmed in recent studies in Europe, where large groups of women on various postmenopausal regimens were examined, but
the only group
to have increased cancer rates was the group taking progestin. Having said all this, even the increased cancer rates reported were offset by the benefit to women by lowering mortality from heart disease.