The toll of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) on our nation is enormous and growing.Roughly 5 million American seniors age 65 and older are living with AD and that number climbs to around 16.5 million (about 1 in 3) for those 85 and older. Worse, Alzheimer’s cases are expected to more than triple by 2050. Alzheimer’s disease is a result of progressive brain cell death, causing memory loss and cognitive decline. While physically debilitating, an even bigger threat is the accumulated stress AD places on the finances, relationships, and independence of its victims and their families. New evidence also shows that women may be bearing the brunt of this debilitating condition. The burden of Alzheimer’s and its impact on women According to a new report released last month from the Alzheimer’s Association, AD takes a disproportionate toll on women more than men. In 2010, the Alzheimer’s Association partnered with Maria Shriver and The Shriver Report to conduct a groundbreaking poll explorin…

Seeing blood in your urine (doctors call it “hematuria”) can mean different things. Most often in women it’s due to a urinary tract infection. But it can also be caused by kidney stones, bladder stones, or, in men, a prostate infection. And, according to an article in the Johns Hopkins newsletter, Health After 50, 10% of those who report blood in their urine have bladder cancer. This is especially true after the age of 55. But doctors seem to be dragging their heels in referring women with hematuria to a urologist to be tested for bladder cancer compared with men. This was found in Great Britain in a study published in 2013 in the British Medical Journal.  In 2008, similar results were found here in the US. In the British study, 27% of the women reviewed had to see their doctor three or more times before being referred to a urologist compared with 11% of the men, even though clinical guidelines in England say patients with hematuria should be “referred urgently” to a urologist. I…

Vitamin D continues to impress as an important protective nutrient. Previous research linked this amazing nutrient to reduced risk of heart disease, bone fractures, depression, and more. Now, a research team at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has confirmed the important role vitamin D plays in helping women survive breast cancer. Vitamin D doubles a woman’s chances of surviving breast cancer Led by Professor Cedric F. Garland, the team analyzed five separate studies investigating the presence of the activated form of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D or 25(OH)D) in the blood. The research included data from 4,443 breast cancer patients who had their blood levels tested upon diagnosis and at periodic intervals over the following nine years. Then researchers compared women with high blood serum levels of 25(OH)D averaging 30 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) or more to those with low levels of 17 ng/ml or less, which is the current average for breast cance…

You may have heard that overuse of antibiotics has created dangerous “superbugs” that no antibiotic drug can tame or about people losing hands, feet, legs and arms to these “flesh-eating” superbugs. Could you get attacked by one? It’s possible. But maintaining a strong immune system can keep you safe from harm. In 1947, just four years after penicillin was mass marketed, a common bacterium, found on the mucus membranes and skin of about 1/3 of the population, called Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) was found to be resistant to it. That is, someone got a staph infection, and a health practitioner gave them penicillin expecting it to make short work of the critter . . . but it didn’t. Oh-oh. Methicillin then became the antibiotic of choice. But an S. aureus was found to be resistant to methicillin in 1961. Oh-oh again. This time the resistant strains of S. aureus were called methicillin-resistant S. aureus, or MRSA. Vancomycin became the next antibiotic of choice; the first vancomyc…

With warmer weather, grilling fish and meat outside is a great way to enjoy the fresh air. But there’s a catch: high heat used in grilling reacts with proteins in the meat to form cancer-causing toxins called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). The longer these proteins are cooked, and the higher the temperature used, the more HCAs develop. This is one reason why people eating high meat diets get more cancer. If that’s not bad enough, fat dripping into fire produces another cancer-causing compound, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Smoke dense with PAHs gets into lungs and also coats the meat being cooked. Fortunately, you can greatly reduce HCAs and PAHs and the damage they do: Trim fat. This reduces the formation of PAHs as less fat drips into the fire. Use smaller, thinner cuts of meat to reduce cooking time. Flipping burgers once a minute versus only once reduced cooking time in one study by 1.8 minutes, and cut HCAs by more than 11-fold. Score thicker cuts of meat…

According to a recent article in the New York Times, each year more than half a million Americans get a metal mesh tube called a stent inserted into a clogged artery to push back arterial plaque, allowing for better blood flow. A stent can save your life during a heart attack, but it will not prevent a future attack. Yet nine out of ten patients who choose to have stents inserted believe that they do. And, despite the evidence, many cardiologists share this mistaken belief and recommend stents for patients with stable heart disease. In an editorial written for the American Heart Association journal, Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, Michael B. Rothberg, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, explains that the belief that stents prevent heart attacks is based on an outmoded picture of coronary artery disease as the slow build-up of arterial plaque until it comes to completely block an artery. “Although the image of coronary arteries as kitchen pipes clogged with fat is sim…

Olive oil is good for us. Studies have shown that olive oil is an especially healthy food that is good for the heart, protects against cancer, reduces pain, lowers blood pressure, protects against oxidative damage, prevents gallstones, protects against ulcer development, controls cholesterol and protects against cognitive decline. The road to getting healthier includes incorporating natural olive oil into your diet. So you probably have some “extra virgin” olive oil in your cupboard that you use to make “healthy” salads. But what if you found out that your olive oil was a sham—a fake food designed to fool both regulators and the public, made from a mixture of olive oil and processed sunflower, soy or hazelnut oil? That it wasn’t healthy at all; in fact it wasn’t any better or less toxic than the processed supermarket oils you must avoid. You’d probably be pretty angry about it. Well, if you don’t already know about the olive oil scandal, be prepared to be outraged. One of the…

Ever feel like you’re aging faster than your years? For Baby Boomers, premature aging is cause for concern. According to a recent AARP survey, nearly 3 out of 4 adults age 48 to 66 fear they’ll need to work at least part-time into retirement to survive financially, while half anticipate never retiring at all. This highlights the importance of preventing chronic diseases in aging Boomers. Yet, if you’re like many Boomers, you regularly engage in unhealthy habits that produce dangerous free radicals and cause you to age faster than your years. As you probably already know, free radicals are highly reactive atoms or molecules that are produced in the body by natural biological processes or introduced from the outside. They can damage cells and tissues through a process called oxidation. Some free radical production is normal and your body is designed to handle it. Yet, excessive free-radicals damage your cell’s DNA, membranes, mitochondria and other structures, and over time, cau…

All mammals eat raw food. Unfortunately for us, humans have departed from what nature intended, and we are paying a heavy price for this foolishness. One of the most egregious assaults on the nutritional quality of our food is cooking. Heat damages nutrients, makes food more difficult to digest, and high heat even creates carcinogenic (cancer-causing) toxins.Cooked foods will not support healthy life in animals or humans. Accordingly, some researchers have suggested a diet of at least 50% raw foods. Others have suggested at least 80%. The long-lived Hunza people ate about 80% of their diet fresh and raw. What is the ideal percentage? Nobody really knows. It may be 100%.As I was researching the effects of food processing, I came across some shocking experiments. I found that a calf would die from its own mother’s milk, if that milk had been cooked (pasteurized). As a chemist, I knew that heat altered the chemical properties of food, but I had never considered that pasteurized cow’s milk…

Big Pharma has been padding their profits by selling drugs for “disease prevention.” For example, the very successful campaign to get everyone on a daily “baby aspirin” to prevent having a heart attack or a stroke. Taking a daily baby aspirin, which is ¼ the dose of a regular aspirin, is known as “low-dose aspirin therapy.” Although there is evidence that low-dose aspirin therapy can help prevent a second heart attack or stroke, major studies have confirmed that it does NOT prevent first heart attacks or strokes in people who have no history of heart disease, even when they are at high risk due to family history and other factors like having diabetes. What low-dose aspirin therapy does do is increase the risk of bleeding events by about 30%! Internal bleeding is serious business; you can die from it and thousands do yearly. Despite its cozy relationship with industry, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has had to bow to the evidence and recently denied a reques…

According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 67 million adults have high blood pressure. Yet many don’t know it. Because high blood pressure, or hypertension, has no warning signs, earning it the title “America’s silent killer.” That means 1 in 3 adults—maybe even you—are at an increased risk of suffering a fatal heart attack or stroke, two of the leading causes of death in the United States. If you have hypertension, your doctor has likely prescribed one or more of the dozens of medications designed to lower your blood pressure...but there’s a big problem with that. Prescription drugs are toxins that are specifically designed to poison one part of the body in order to suppress a symptom in another part of the body. Poisoning the body causes entirely new diseases, but to obscure this fact, the new diseases are called "side effects." Anti-hypertensive medications cause significant side effects, including dizziness and fainting, which is particularly dangerous for aging…

A huge new study from Canada that followed about 90,000 women for almost 25 years has told us what we already knew: mammograms don’t save lives. Raymond Francis has been arguing for more than two decades that not only do mammograms not save lives, ionizing radiation, as found in mammograms, is one of the things that we know for certain causes cancer. Chest X-rays are known to increase the risk of cancer, and mammograms expose your body to 1,000 times more radiation than a chest X-ray. Before you get a mammogram, please read his article, Mammograms Are a Bust. In the new study, 15 different screening centers throughout Canada collaborated in providing 5 yearly mammograms to women ages 40-59. The women were then followed for up to 25 years and compared with similar aged women who had been given only physical breast exams. At the end of the study period 500 of the women who had received mammograms had died of breast cancer compared with 505 of the women who had had breast exams onl…

A growing body of exciting new research supports the old adage, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper, especially the “dinner like a pauper” part. It seems that human physiology works best when we consume most of our calories early in the day and have a light meal at night. And if you’re trying to lose weight, two studies have shown that when the number of calories consumed, energy spent and sleeping times were kept constant, dieters who ate a big breakfast or lunch lost considerably more weight than those who saved their calories for a big dinner. A Spanish study recruited 420 overweight/obese men and women to follow a 1,400 calorie per day diet for 5 months. However half of the group ate their main meal before 3:00 p.m., while the other half ate theirs after 3:00 p.m.. Those eating early lost an average of 22 pounds; the late eaters lost an average of 17. In a second study, 93 overweight/obese women with metabolic syndrome (a constellation…

Most people aren’t. Most Americans get about 15 grams of fiber daily. In 2002, the US government recommended that the average adult get between 21 and 38 grams each day. These recommendations were based on several large studies that found people who consumed 14 grams of fiber for each 1,000 calories had significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Many nutritional experts believe 35-45 grams would be even better. What is fiber? It’s the indigestible portion of plant foods. Most people think of fiber as bulk that helps move the bowels, but there’s much more to know about fiber. There are two kinds of fiber—soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber becomes gelatinous in the intestines. It’s soothing to intestinal walls and helps make bowel movements easier. Studies show it also decreases cholesterol. Insoluble fiber acts like an intestinal broom. Both kinds ease elimination by increasing fecal bulk and making stools softer. Both kinds of fiber absorb and remove toxins,…

February is Heart Month, and an absolutely critical nutrient for the heart and cardiovascular system is vitamin E. When experimental animals are deprived of vitamin E, they die of heart disease. The two principle roles vitamin E plays in heart health are as an antithrombin, preventing clots inside blood vessels, and as an antioxidant, preventing lipid peroxidation, or oxidation of fats. While vitamin C is our body’s major water-soluble antioxidant, vitamin E is its major fat-soluble antioxidant. Maintaining healthy arteries, free of plaque, is key to maintaining a healthy heart. Plaque forms when cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein or LDL), which is a type of fat, becomes oxidized. Vitamin E plays an essential role in protecting LDL from such oxidation. Cell membranes are composed primarily of fats. As we age our cell membranes tend to become stiffer, primarily due to oxidation. The blood cells themselves become thicker, which increases blood viscosity and impedes circulation…

In honor of Heart Health Month, here are 10 fairly easy things you can do today to support your heart’s health. EAT A RIPE PEACH A study done at Texas A&M found that phenolic compounds in stone fruits (peaches, plums and nectarines) have anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic properties (diabetes is a risk factor for heart disease) and may also reduce the oxidation of LDL (the “bad” cholesterol). These compounds are also antioxidants. Fruits with the deepest colors, at peak ripeness, have the most antioxidants. EAT AN OUNCE OR TWO OF NUTS An analysis of data from almost 120,000 men and women followed up to 30 years found that those who ate the most nuts had the least risk of dying from several diseases, including heart disease. DRIZZLE SOME BALSAMIC VINEGAR ON YOUR SALAD Acetic acid in vinegar has been shown to normalize blood pressure in rats and to inhibit oxidation of cholesterol in humans. EAT BREAKFAST In various studie…

A credible scientist is worried about the high oxalic acid (aka oxalate) content in green drinks and vegetarian diets.  Should you be concerned?  Maybe. Oxalic acid is found in plant foods. It’s also produced by the body in the course of normal metabolism.  Pretty nasty stuff, it’s the most corrosive acid in the body, a pro-oxidant, and it can combine with most minerals and heavy metals to form oxalate crystals. The most well-known of these crystals are kidney stones, but, according to chemist William Shaw, PhD, formerly of the Centers for Disease Control, high levels of oxalate can form crystals just about anywhere in the body, including glands, heart and brain. Like tiny pieces of glass, these crystals cause tissue damage and inflammation and have been implicated in arthritis, fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis and a painful condition in and around the vagina called vulvodynia. Fortunately the human body is well-equipped to dispose of oxalate. If you’re in go…

Natural food stores and even major grocery chains are now offering bottled teas. While healthier than many beverage alternatives, bottled teas can be high in fluoride from pesticides and the use of fluoridated tap water for brewing. Even an organic, Fair Trade tea in glass bottles, like Honest Tea, is pricey and contains sugar. Also, since they don’t specifically say their tea is brewed with pure water, we can probably assume they use regular tap water, most of which is chock full of toxins and not fit for human consumption. And if you’re drinking green tea for its health benefits, according to Tod Cooperman, President and Founder of ConsumerLab.com, an independent testing laboratory that acts as a watchdog to the supplement and nutraceutical industries, bottled teas aren’t a good bargain. The most potent health benefits in green and white tea lie in their antioxidant polyphenols, primarily a type of polyphenol called catechins. Most research has been done on a particularly po…