Let Food Be Your Medicine

Full Nutrition is Better than Drugs

The ancient healer Hippocrates once said, “Let your food be your medicine… and let your medicine be your food.”  As I think about that thought I realized that we do treat our food as a drug, albeit in a destructive way.  Our consumption of fast food and sugar has enabled us to be the kings and queens of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and nearly every chronic disease found on earth.

Conventional thinking is to let your drugs become your food and your food the vicious promoter of the ailments we try to battle with our pharmaceuticals.

The reality is that drugs don’t provide you with nutrition — they only block or fool the body into believing, on a temporary basis, that something is balanced.

New scientific data is teaching us that Hippocrates was right.  There are foods and ways we can eat that absolutely promote health.  The trick is to weed through the data in order to address what works and what doesn’t.

Let’s journey through some of my recent discoveries regarding food as a drug.

The medical profession is beginning to understand the role of chronic inflammation as the cause and effect of most illnesses.  One can say that anti-inflammation equals wellness.  So how do we instruct the body’s flood of biochemical pathways to move in the right direction with food?

To begin, let’s find out where inflammation comes from.  Foods loaded with sugar turn on the hormone insulin in the body, which produces fat which in turns produces chemicals that turns on inflammation.  Pesticides, saturated fats, trans-fats and other chemicals foreign to the body complicate the picture.

A group up at Harvard looked at with one solution called “Calorie Restriction.”  It is the most documented method of extending lifespan and healthspan in all species studied.  Unfortunately for us, we enjoy our food and find it very difficult to be on starvation mode for any lengths of time.

Another way to approach inflammation is to pursue an anti-inflammatory diet.  The best place to start is on your plate.  If you divide your plate into thirds, you can begin with placing a piece of lean protein the size and thickness of the palm of your hand in one third of your plate, with the other two-thirds consisting of low glycemic fruits and vegetables.  Make sure to get enough Omega-9 fats consisting of olive oil and avocado oil for example.   Omega-3 oils are a very important part of squelching the inflammation.  These oils are found in cold water fish such as Salmon, Sardines, Cod Liver, and others.  A starter dose of EPA/DHA (the main ingredient in Fish Oil) is 2000 mg to 3000mg per day without disease.  The dose goes up with specific diseases.

A December 2003 British Medical Journal looked at diet as a superior way to fight cardiovascular disease over drugs.  The polymeal approach looked at red wine, fish, dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic and almonds to replace such as statins, ACE inhibitors, Aspirin, Diuretics and Beta-blockers, the polypill approach.  The study concluded that ½ glass of red wine, 100 grams of dark chocolate, 400 grams of fruits and vegetables, 2.7 grams of garlic (one clove) and 118 grams of fish per day four times per week reduced cardiovascular disease events by 76%.

How is this possible?

The power is in the combination.  Power phyto-flavanols found in grape wine (Vitis vinifera), tea (Camellia sinensis), and cocoa (Theobroma cacao) have been found to have an inverse relationship when their intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease.  These phytonutrients show improvement of vasodilation, blood pressure, insulin resistance, and glucose tolerance.

Dark chocolate in and of itself has been shown to decrease blood pressure according to an article published in Hypertension in August 2005.  According to the study, 100 grams per day of dark chocolate (containing 88 mg flavonols) times 7 days decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure while also decreasing LDL cholesterol and improving insulin resistance.

Some non-flavonoids derived from foods are also showing great promise in the fight against chronic diseases.  Three examples include Resveratrol, Curcumin and Lignans.

Resveratrol is derived from the skin of grapes.  Red wine has about 1.5 to 3 milligrams of resveratrol per liter.  A 150 pound person would need to drink 750 to 1,500 bottles of red wine per day to get a therapeutic dose, which is 24mg per kilogram of body weight.  Therefore the best approach is with extract supplementation.  Resveratrol turns on a longevity gene in mice known as the Sirt-2.  This is the same gene turned on during caloric restriction.

The Allium found in garlic is beneficial in the fight against Prostate and other cancers as well.

Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and broccoli sprouts contains two powerful anti-cancer compounds called Indole-3 Cabinol (I3C) and Diindo-methane (DIM).  These compounds have been very effective in shutting off cancer cells in the breast and prostate.

Capsicin, the major pungent ingredient in red peppers, has an antiproliferative effect on prostate cancer cells.  That means it arrests their division and stops the cancer’s growth.

Tomatoes contain Lycopene, which essentially quenches free radicals and effectively decreases the risk of prostate cancer by 25% to 80% depending on the study.

Curcumin, from turmeric, blocks the action of xeno-estrogens, which are synthetic estrogens coming from cosmetics, hair products and plastic drinking bottles to name a few.  Essentially curcumin inhibits our good friend NFKB we spoke about earlier.   In fact an article in Cancer Research in January 2006 reported how Curcumin effectively inhibited cancer cells in mice.

This is just a small example of foods that can be used as drugs to fight disease.  So the next time your ready to marinade your favorite piece of meat you might want to try the drug, Tumeric Garlic Marinade- 2 tsps garlic powder, 1 tsp ground turmeric, ½ cup orange juice- mixed well and poured over meat, fish or poultry for 10 minutes.

Happy eating.

Many Faces-One Cause in Gluten Sensitive Patients

What is the common link between low blood levels of calcium, protein, albumin, vitamin B12, urea nitrogen with osteoporosis and heart burn with or without a positive test for H. Pylori?

The answer Parietal Cell damage.  Parietal cells are the little cells in your stomach that are supposed to produce  hydrochloric acid (HCL) and a carrier chemical called Intrinsic Factor.  Autoimmunity Reviews in 2007  reported a higher than normal incidence of Parietal Cell Auto-antibodies (PCAs) in patients with Gluten Sensitivity and Celiac Disease (da Rosa Utiyama et al).

Mechanisms of Disease

1. HCL is needed to maintain an acidic pH in the stomach between 1 and 3.  When HCL is not available the pH of the stomach becomes alkaline, which can often lead to heart burn.  (Most doctors believe the opposite and thus give acid blocking drugs to patients with heart burn).  When the environment of the stomach becomes alkaline, minerals such as calcium and others are not able to diffuse across the gastric membrane into our blood stream, and thus the low blood levels.
2. As the alkaline solution mixes with the food and enters into the small intestine, the pancreas, that joins this portion of the intestine, does not release the enzymes necessary to break down and absorb proteins.  A total protein below 6.9 in the blood is a clue that this is an issue.
3. An alkaline gastric environment eventually leads to an acidic internal environment in the body’s attempt to buffer the alkali.  The pH of the urine becomes acidic, i.e., 5.0-6.0.  The body uses calcium as a buffer against the acidity and thus goes after the largest pool of calcium, which is the bone.  This causing leaching of calcium in the bone leading to osteopenia and osteoporosis.
4. Intrinsic factor is a carrier molecule necessary to carry vitamin B12 across the stomach lining into the blood stream.   Therefore, low intrinsic factor translates into low vitamin B12 that may lead to a particular type of anemia known as pernicious anemia or megaloblastic anemia.
5. Finally, since the pH of the stomach is no longer acidic, the natural antibiotic properties of the HCL will no longer be in affect.  This situation allows overgrowth of Helicobacter Pylori, which is considered a class I carcinogen of the stomach by the World Health Organization.  H. Pylori can further lead to increasing heart burn, ulcers and “leaky gut.”   H. Pylori produces an enzyme called Urease, and that is what causes the low blood urea nitrogen (BUN) in some patients.  Another clue to the mystery.

Diagnosis and Treatment

After proper diagnosis, preferably by a Functional Medicine physician, treatment is simple.  Replacing what is missing is the best strategy.  Increasing the acid in your stomach can be achieved with either Betaine HCL or with apple cider vinegar.  Ask your health care provider for proper dosing.  Ultimately, continue to remain Gluten free and enjoy your great health.

High Dose IV Vitamin C

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