Best Health And Wellness Info

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The role the brain plays in pain, The Mind Body Syndrome

The video above explains the basics of how unresolved emotional conflicts can produce physical pain and other symptoms.  The video gets a little bit technical but the basic idea is that emotional reactions that we have been taught to suppress create alterations in neurological function which in turn can produce pain and evn organ dysfunction. 

While I do not have any experience with Dr. Schubiner’s technique for correcting the mind-body syndrome, I can attest to the effectiveness of mind-body techniques in general.  I would say that Dr. Schubiner’s approach is definitely worthy of investigation.  In addition, I would recommend looking into Emotional Freedom Technique, the Sedona Method, and the techniques of Anthony Robbins.  Emotional Freedom Technique even provides a free manual on how to do the technique, and I’ve seen it produce nearly miraculous results in conditions as diverse as frozen shoulder, gallbladder attacks, headaches, digestive problems, high blood pressure, and back pain, so it is definitely worth a try. 

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for updates.

Share This

How To Cure A Migraine Headache Naturally

The above video shows some simple acupressure points you can use to both treat and prevent migraine headaches.  When you are trying to find the points, feel around with your fingertips for a sore spot in the areas shown on the video.  Typically, you will get the most benefit from rubbing the points that are the most sore.  Usually, rubbing the points with your fingertips for 1 to 2 minutes or more each will provide some relief during an active headache, and you may repeat the process several times if necessary until the headache is gone.  For prevention, as Dr.Chen suggests, you may rub each of the points for 1 to 2 minutes every day. 

Share This

There are two common types of testing for hormone levels when working with women with symptoms of PMS or menopause and men with symptoms of andropause.  These are serum (blood) testing, which is favored by many conventional medical doctors, and saliva (”spit”) testing, which is favored by most “alternative” health care providers and those select few medical doctors who have looked beyond their medical school brainwash… er, training, yes, training is the word I’m looking for! 

I poke fun at the conventional medical docs who favor serum testing because when one sets aside preconceived notions and actually investigates the potential reliability (I say “potential” because reliability depends on the quality of the individual lab) of the two testing methods, saliva testing is the clear winner, especially if hormone balancing is to be done with any type of topical hormone (skin creams/gels, suppositories, patches, etc.).  In fact, serum testing is so unreliable with regards to monitoring the effects of topical hormone supplementation that it really could be considered totally useless - which is why conventional medical doctors typically recommend against topical hormones (more on this shortly). 

If salivary hormone testing is so much more reliable, why then do so many conventional doctors disparage it?  As I alluded to earlier, part of the problem goes back to their medical school training.  Blood testing is given a great place of honor among medical tests, and rightfully so for most types of testing.  Because doctors are taught, and have come to wholeheartedly believe, that blood testing is the “gold standard” for everything having to do with body chemistry, there is an automatic presumption that saliva testing would be a weak substitute at best.  Because of this strong preconceived bias in favor of blood testing, many doctors have drawn completely illogical conclusions regarding the experiments that have compared the reliability of blood testing to saliva testing.

Repeated experiments have shown that topical application of hormones in test subjects creates a much higher increase in the levels of hormone found in saliva testing than is found in serum testing.  In fact, topical hormone application produces only very minimal increases in serum hormone levels.  This has led many conventional doctors to draw two very illogical and very incorrect conclusions. 

The first conclusion is that saliva testing must be faulty because it shows a much greater increase in hormone levels - when topical hormones are applied - than serum testing (and since serum testing is the presumed “gold standard”, the saliva testing must be wrong in some way).  Now does that conclusion make any sense at all?  Of course it doesn’t!  When you give someone hormones, you should see their test levels rise.  Yet somehow, many medical doctors have concluded that the test that shows what you would expect it to show is wrong, and the test that didn’t show what you would expect it to show is right.  That medical school “training” is thorough!

Now they may be brainwa…, I mean, “trained” to think a certain way, but medical doctors aren’t stupid.  They know that with the experiments that have been done, their conclusion that salivary hormone testing is unreliable (as compared to serum testing) doesn’t make any sense, so they’ve had to come up with something to support that illogical conclusion.  This brings us to what I mentioned earlier about the conventional medical bias against topical hormones.  Since they presume that serum testing is accurate, and is in fact the “gold standard” of testing, and serum testing does not show a significant increase in hormone levels when a patient is given topical hormones, the only way to rectify this contradiction is to conclude (again, illogically and incorrectly) that topical hormones don’t “work” - that is, they are not absorbed to any great extent.  So, since they assume that topical hormones are unreliable, it is safe to assume that any test that can measure their levels in the body must also be unreliable.  I really have to marvel at the thoroughness and effectiveness of the medical school “training”!

The fact that saliva testing shows significant increases in hormone levels when topical hormones are used and serum testing does not is actually easily explained, but most conventional doctors have not bothered to investigate this phenomenon and instead fall back on the presumption that serum testing is always the best for anything regarding body chemistry.  To understand what is happening, first you need to know a little about the nature of how hormones travel in the blood.

Steroid hormones (such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) are primarily found in the bloodstream bound to proteins.  Only about 1% to 5% of the steroid hormones in the blood are “free” (not bound to proteins).  Both saliva and serum testing measure free hormones.  When you take hormones orally, most of the hormones are absorbed from the GI tract bound to proteins, so oral hormones do not produce a huge increase in free hormones and therefore they do not show huge sudden increases in hormone levels on either saliva or serum testing. 

When hormones are taken topically (through skin creams/gels, suppositories, etc.), the free hormones are absorbed directly into the blood stream.  Yet as we said earlier, topical hormones do not produce signficant increases on serum (free)hormone tests (this is true of injectable hormones as well).  It is this contradiction that has created so much controversy.  The reason why serum tests do not show this large increase in free hormones is because the hormones are attracted to the blood cells and actually attach loosely to them.  Blood tests for hormones are done on the serum, not the cells (the blood samples are put in a machine called a centrifuge that separates the cells from the serum).  Technically, the hormones that are attached to the blood cells are still “free” but because the cells have been removed from the serum (along with most of the free hormones that have attached to them), the increase in hormone levels from the topically applied hormone supplements are not shown in the serum. 

In the body, as the blood circulates through the tissues, including the salivary glands, the hormones riding on the blood cells are distributed to the tissues. So, the extra hormones are passed into the saliva relatively quickly, and the saliva tests therefore do detect the hormones absorbed from the topical application. 

From all of this, I think it is clear that saliva testing should actually be the preferred method of hormone analysis for patients with symptoms related to PMS, menopause, and andropause, particularly if proposed treatment is to include any kind of hormone replacement/supplementation other than oral hormones.  But there is one potential drawback of saliva testing that needs to be considered - the testing procedures. 

From a lab procedure standpoint, saliva testing is more difficult to do than serum testing, and therefore, choosing a good lab is extremely important.  It is also important for testing to be done on multiple samples, because an individual’s hormone levels can vary considerably over the course of a day, week, and month.  This issue is less of a factor in men and post-menopausal women than in women who still are on a menstrual cycle, but it still needs to be considered.  I recommend using labs that test from multiple samples taken in the same day on all patients and in some cases it may be necessary to run a series of tests over a period of weeks.  Finally, most saliva samples are actually collected by the patient at home (not in a lab), and it is extremely important to follow all of the directions carefully in order to get an accurate test result.  

For additional information on hormone testing, feel free to contact me .

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for more on natural hormone balancing.

P.S. I’ve entered the title of this post in Problogger’s Killer Title Contest.

Share This

After watching this year’s Olympic gymnastics competition, I was blown away by the incredible feats of strength, balance, and flexibility.  As the Olympics gymnastics drew to a close, I came across this video from a gymnastics exhibition from 1988.  While obviously the skills displayed in the video are quite different from those that the athletes demonstrated in Beijing, I think you’ll find the performance quite entertaining.  Enjoy!

1988 Paul Hunt gymnastics comedy beam routine

Share This

Humor Therapy (Part I)

In the spirit of Norman Cousins’ experiences with laughter and healing, the above video is brought to you as “humor therapy” for whatever ails you.  Of course, not everyone shares the same sense of humor, but I thought this video was pretty funny, and I hope you enjoy it as well. 

Share This

Weight Loss Motivation

The above video presents a simple method for helping you to control your eating choices.  Taking just a moment to really think past the momentary pleasure of a poor food choice and consider how it will make you feel when the brief moment of pleasure is gone can create a powerful shift in your thinking.  While no technique works for everyone, this method can be a big boost to the weight loss efforts for many people.

For more information, check out the other weight loss tips here on my blog.

Share This

This is the follow-up to a post from a few days ago on bioidentical hormones.   As I stated in the conclusion to that post, in the long run, I believe that it is better (whenever possible) to bring the hormone that is too high down to a normal range rather than to artificially increase a hormone that is at a normal level into an abnormal range to compensate for the hormone that is too high.  Now I’m going to explain how that can be achieved

There are actually a variety of steps we can take to get the body to balance its own hormones to levels that are normal and natural for the individual’s “physical age” (I use the term “physical age” to refer to one’s general youthfulness and vitality, which has little to do with his or her chronological age). The basic first step is to eat a reasonably good diet, high in fresh vegetables and fruits, and with moderate amounts of healthy fats and lean protein. It is a good idea to stick to natural (hormone-free) meats and organic produce as much as possible, in order to avoid “exogenous estrogens” which are chemicals that mimic the effects of estrogen in the body and come from pesticides, chemical fertilizers, growth hormones given to livestock, etc..

In addition, getting regular exercise, including at least some relatively high intensity interval training is a big help in stimulating your body to produce the hormones you need to maintain your youthfulness and avoid many of the symptoms of menopause and andropause (the male equivalent of menopause that results from declining levels of testosterone and growth hormone). Likewise, getting adequate good quality sleep enhances the body’s ability to produce youth-maintaining hormones, especially growth hormone.

Beyond these basic steps, I have found that there are natural remedies for hormone imbalance that are not themselves hormones.  There are supplements that contain hormone precursors (substances that the body converts into hormones as it needs them), herbs that either mimic the action of certain hormones or stimulate the production of certain hormones, and there are homeopathic remedies that energetically stimulate the body to re-balance its hormone production.

One of the more popular of the hormone precursors for female hormones is a substance called pregnenolone.  Pregnenolone is converted by the body into both estrogen and progesterone, but because it is preferentially converted to progesterone, supplementing with pregnenolone by itself is sometimes enough to correct mild cases of estrogen dominance (excess estrogen relative to progesterone) without driving the levels of either hormone into an abnormally high range. 

There are several popular herbal remedies that are popular in the treatment of hormone-related symptoms.  For example, dong quai and black cohosh are often used by menopausal women to control hot flashes and other symptoms.  Yohimbe is sometimes used to increase sex drive and potency in men because of it’s androgen-like effects (androgens are hormones that accentuate masculine characteristics and are found in men and in smaller amounts in women).  While herbal remedies can be quite effective, they may produce undesirable effects when used improperly.  Herbal treatments should be used with caution, partiularly in women who are estrogen dominant, because many of the popular herbs have estrogenic activity.  In my opinion, herbal products should generally be avoided in pregnancy, unless prescribed and monitored by a licensed healthcare provider who is experienced with their use.

Finally, homeopathic remedies can be remarkably effective in correcting hormone balance and can often alleviate symptoms of hormone imbalance very quickly (within a few days to a few weeks).   Homeopathic remedies (of any kind, not just those used for hormone balancing) are extremely dilute substances that are specially prepared to carry the “energetic signature” of a substance.  The underlying principles of homeopathy are very different from those of conventional medicine and they can be difficult for people to understand at first.  In fact, many dismiss homeopathy because the remedies are so dilute that it is difficult for many people to understand how they could be effective at all, and the notion that one can imprint an “energetic signature or pattern” on some inert liquid or solid seems pretty far-fetched.  Yet we all deal with energetic patterns imprinted on inert materials all the time in the form of computer discs, DVDs, etc..  Homeopathic remedies are simply the same concept applied in a different manner.  In a similar manner to how a computer disc can transmit information to a computer, a homeopathic remedy can transmit information to the body.  In my experience, homeopathics can be used to tell (perhaps “ask” is a better term) the body to change its hormone balance.  Because they work so well in most cases, and because they are non-toxic and relatively inexpensive, such as Total Fem-Bal (for women - usually) or Total Andro-Bal ( for men -usually) by NutriWest, I prefer starting with homeopathics to try to correct hormone imbalances.  In those cases where homeopathics are ineffective, then stronger interventions can be considered. 

If you would like suggestions for balancing your hormones and/or need information on how to find out if you have hormone imbalance(s), feel free to contact me.

Share This

Exercise For Arthritis Sufferers

The video above provides some good basic exercises to help with arthritis in the knees, ankles, hands and shoulders.  There are many other exercises that can help with arthritis depending on which joints are involved, but these are a good start for general mobility. 

Stay tuned to my blog for more on arthritis.

Share This

There is considerable controversy regarding the use of hormone supplementation as a means of anti-aging and for reducing the symptoms of hormone deficiency or imbalance.  Certainly, the use of synthetic female hormones in the form of birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women has had less than ideal effects.  There is also no disputing the damaging effects of using testosterone and growth hormone for the purpose of enhancing muscle growth and athletic performance.  But what about the “new age” use of hormones, including bioidentical hormones for treating PMS, the symptoms of menopause, and for countering the effects of decreasing hormone levels that occur with aging in both women and men?

First, what are “bioidentical” hormones?  These are hormones that supposedly are identical to the hormones your body produces naturally, as opposed to synthetic hormones that are similar to, but somewhat different chemically from your natural hormones.  I say supposedly, because bioidentical hormones may be much more like your body’s natural hormones than synthetic hormones made in a laboratory, but because they are usually derived from plant sources, I have my doubts that they are exactly the same (there may be subtle differences that we are not able to detect with our current methods of chemical analysis). 

Bioidentical hormones are also supposedly much safer than their synthetic hormone counterparts.  Here I say supposedly because this has yet to really be proven conclusively.  I would say that because they are much more chemically similar to the body’s natural hormones, bioidentical hormones are probably much safer than synthetics and probably much less likely to cause problems such as cancer and cardiovascular disease - at least when they are used properly.  Even so, there really has not been much study on the safety of using bioidentical hormones, especially long-term.

But beyond the question of the relative safety of bioidentical hormones as compared to synthetics, I take issue with how hormones of all kinds are often used.  Commonly, what I see happening is hormones are being prescribed in such a way as to create unnatural hormone levels in the person taking them.  It seems that many practitioners who prescribe hormones think it’s a good idea to produce hormone levels in their patients that would be normal for people in their 20’s or 30’s.  This is of course fine if the patient happens to be in their 20’s or 30’s, but what if the patient is in their 50’s, 60’s, or older?  Is this really healthy? 

The body is designed to go through certain changes as we age.  In childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, the body is rapidly growing and developing, and hormones are an important part of these processes.  During one’s 20’s and 30’s the stage is set in the body for reproduction, which requires a slightly different hormone balance.  As we get older, many of the body processes that required high levels of certain hormones are no longer of major importance, and so the hormones that supported those processes begin to decrease.  How much they decrease depends on several factors, including genetics, but in large part depends on the individual’s diet, sleep, and activity and exercise levels.  To put it simply, the “younger” your lifestyle, the younger you tend to stay in terms of hormones. 

But now along comes hormone supplementation and we can artificially (whether we are using “natural” or synthetic hormones) alter our hormone levels.  We now can effectively cheat the system.  We don’t have to watch our diets, get regular exercise, and get plenty of good quality sleep to keep our youth-promoting hormone levels up.  To many, hormone replacement, especially with the assumed to be safe bioidenticals, is the fountain of youth.  To me, the question remains as to whether this fountain of youth may be poisoned in some way, and that question probably will not be answered for at least several years.

Now, I can certainly appreciate that many people use hormone supplementation to control certain unpleasant symptoms.  If they are getting good symptom relief from taking hormones, whether they be bioidentical or synthetic, it is unlikely that the person will change what he or she is doing unless some specific serious risk to them is identified.  So, while I think there is still much we need to investigate regarding the long-term safety of using hormone supplementation, this may be the best option currently available for improving symptoms and quality of life for some people. 

What I am proposing though is to give consideration to another approach first, before resorting to taking hormones for the rest of your life.  What I have found is that in many cases, unpleasant symptoms arise because of an imbalance in hormones, as opposed to an actual deficiency of one or more hormones.  For example, a common scenario in women who experience a lot of PMS symptoms and/or menopausal symptoms (some women transition from PMS to menopausal symptoms as they age), is the pattern of estrogen dominance.  Estrogen dominance means that they have more estrogen relative to progesterone than they should have.  Typically this is treated through some sort of progesterone supplementation, and this may in fact be necessary in some cases.  But in many cases of estrogen dominance, the progesterone level is not low, per se, just low relative to estrogen. 

My premise is that it is preferable to balance the two by helping the body modify its relative production of estrogen and progesterone.  In other words, instead of simply giving the patient progesterone to compensate for the excess estrogen, I prefer to try to get the body to stop producing the excess estrogen. 

In the long run, I believe that it is better (whenever possible) to bring the hormone that is too high down to a normal range rather than to artificially increase a hormone that is at a normal level into an abnormal range to compensate for the hormone that is too high.  So how do we do that?  Visit my follow-up to this post, “Hormone Balancing Without Hormones” to find out! 

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for more on hormones and anti-aging.

Share This

It’s brutal treatment, really.  For most who have gone through it, they’d do anything to avoid repeating the experience.  You are stabbed repeatedly, fed horrible food (if you’re lucky enough to get fed at all), you may be denied anything to drink, you are awakened repeatedly everytime you are fortunate enough to drift off to sleep in the noisy, uncomfortable surroundings, you are forced to ingest various chemicals, some of which make it impossible for you to even function, and you are constantly exposed to infection and disease-ridden surroundings.  Where is this hell on earth?  Is it in a prison in some third world nation?  No.  It’s your local hospital.

Now some of you reading this may think I’m being unfair.  After all, the hospital is a place of healing, right?  Well, there may be some hospitals out there that are better than others, but unfortunately, most hospitals are far from being places of healing.  Places of medical treatment, yes, but healing, no.  Hospitals are of course necessary and can be life-saving, but this is not exactly the same as being health-promoting.

As an example, my father is currently in the hospital in Florida. I’m in Texas and kind of going nuts that for various reasons I have not been able to go watch out for him.  Fortunately, my sister has been there to be his advocate, because, as you’ll learn from the story, he definitely needed one. 

To try to keep a long story relatively short, dad was having a lot of hip pain and he limped around on it for a couple of weeks before finally mom insisted that he go to the hospital, where they determined that he had a broken hip and that he would need surgery.  So far so good.  Unfortunately, the surgeon wasn’t going to be available right away, so they put dad on pain medication and admitted him.  Apparently, he had a clot break loose from the fracture and this caused a heart attack (which fortunately does not appear to have caused any lasting damage). He was put on blood thinners to dissolve the clot and since the heart seemed to be stable, he was scheduled for surgery and they performed a partial hip replacement a few days ago.  Now, all of the forgoing falls into the necessary and potentially life-saving role of a hospital that I alluded to before.  It is what has happened since then that makes me wonder how anyone manages to survive going to the hospital, particularly if they don’t have someone else to look out for their interests like my sister has been doing for my dad.. 

So now we’re at the point where dad’s supposed to be recovering from his surgery.  Due to the fact that he was initially pretty out of it from the pain medication, he was not allowed to have anything to eat or drink as a precaution against aspiration (breathing in food or liquid and choking).  That’s perfectly rational, but they didn’t give him any kind of IV nutrition either.  We’re talking about no food or liquid of any kind for two days for a man in his late 70s who is pretty thin to begin with and has a pretty high natural metabolism, and who has just had surgery (which typically causes increased nutritional needs).  Dad started coming out of the medication haze and he was hungry, his mouth was dry to the point of cracking and bleeding inside, and he was pretty darned cranky - but the nursing staff still would not allow any food or drink.  My sister finally managed to get the surgeon to put in the orders to allow food and drink - which lasted for one meal until the other nursing staff rotation came back in and re-instituted the no food or drink order (despite the doctor’s orders).  So now we’re at a point where dad ate a total of  a few hundred calories over a three day period. 

Enter the physical therapy staff, who thankfully, opted to start pretty gently on the first day and just begin with dad sitting in a chair for 45 minutes with instructions to the nurses to let him get back to bed after that.  Well, dad was to be transferred out of ICU to  a regular room that day, and instead of letting him go back to bed, they kept him in the chair for nearly 2 hours.  Now that might not have been such a big deal if not for the fact that he had to be extremely hypoglycemic by this point (and apparently anemic too as we found out after the fact).  But with the lack of blood sugar and the pain, dad was pretty wiped out by the extra time being upright.   By the time he got to the regular room, he was shaking, hallucinating, and pretty much incoherent.  There was some talk that perhaps he had suffered a stroke.  Thankfully, now that he was out of ICU, my sister was able to finally get him some food, which he managed to painfully eat, since his mouth was so dry and full of sores (not having been allowed to drink anything for days).  Remarkably, his “stroke” symptoms began to quickly improve and he started to show signs of recovery. 

Now, I know I’m just a natural healing “quack”, but it seems to me that  food is a pretty basic physical need that was being knowingly neglected by the hospital staff.  If not for my sister, dad still might not have been given anything to eat. 

And dad was not the only patient being neglected.  After being moved out of ICU, dad had a roomate.  The roomate had been there for ten days and was to be discharged the next day.  That evening, a respiratory therapist came in to see the roomate, but the gentleman had been given a sedative 30 minutes prior and was sound asleep.  The respiratory therapist made some comment about the fact that the patient was supposed to be on a CPAP machine (a machine to force air into the lungs for patients who have sleep apnea).  As it turns out, he was supposed to be on a CPAP the whole time he was there, but in the whole 10 days of the gentleman’s hospital stay, nobody had bothered to fill the order.

I might be able to consider this an isolated case of a bad hospital, but over the years, I’ve heard from many people, including doctors and nurses that work at hospitals about the care, or lack thereof that has become typical in hospitals.  Patients get neglected when they need attention, they get awakened for tests multiple times when they need rest, and antibiotic-resistant infections run rampant.  One patient who is a nurse came to me for allergy symptoms that she only experienced while at work in the hospital and I mentioned that it might be a reaction to one of the cleaning products they use.  She responded, “No, I don’t think it’s that, because they really don’t clean there that much!”  (Note to self - don’t have surgery in THAT hospital!).  The same nurse tells me that she is horrified by the neglect of patients that she sees when she comes back on the clock after her days off - patients not being fed, patients lying in their own feces, patients developing bedsores from not being turned in bed, etc..  Some of these problems are due to budget cutbacks and the resulting understaffing, but some of it is plain old poor management.  As this nurse tells me, yes they are overworked and understaffed, but if the necessary things get done when it’s her shift, there’s no legitimate reason why they aren’t getting done when she’s off.  The personnel simply aren’t being managed properly.

Despite all of this, sometimes there’s no avoiding a hospital stay.  If you have to go in the hospital though, I strongly recommend that you arrange to have someone to be there as much as possible to advocate for you.  You need someone who will complain and work their way up the chain of command on your behalf until you get the care that you need.  In an emergency situation, you will not have the luxury of choosing which hospital to go to, but in situations where you can choose a hospital, take a little time and check with the Department of Health in your state regarding complaints against the hospitals in your area and try to choose those with the best record. 

Ultimately, the best way to avoid a hospital nightmare is to take good care of yourself and your health so hopefully you’ll never have a health problem serious enough to require a hospital stay.  It is my goal to provide you with the information you need through this blog to help you live a healthy lifestyle and maintain your good health for a lifetime.

Share This