Almost half of all Americans take a multivitamin-mineral supplement. They do it to maintain and improve health, and for protection against the chronic diseases associated with aging, like heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer, arthritis, and metabolic syndrome. While many studies validate all the above claims, other studies find multis to be ineffective. Some even claim vitamins are dangerous! Often researchers who’ve found multis are effective in preventing disease—like Swedish researchers who followed a group of women for 10 years, and found that among over 30,000 women who began the study with no heart disease, those who took a multi for 5 years or more had 41% less risk of having had a heart attack—have trouble explaining why other studies come to such different conclusions.  The answer is that the doses and compositions of ingredients in multivitamin supplements were very different in different studies. Let’s get one thing clear: While prescription drugs are the 3rd lea…

Widespread magnesium deficiency has been implicated in a host of chronic diseases, including obesity. How would healthy levels of magnesium in our cells help us to attain and maintain a healthy weight, and how does magnesium deficiency sabotage those goals? Fatigue. The number one complaint patients bring to doctors is “feeling tired.” Being unable to lose weight probably ranks a close second.  The two concerns are related: It’s hard to eat less and exercise more when you’re already feeling tired all the time. Fatigue is one of the first signs of magnesium deficiency. Magnesium and the B vitamins are our main energy nutrients, involved in almost every step of energy creation in the cells’ energy factories, the mitochondria. Nutrient Deficiency. Magnesium and the B's activate enzymes that control digestion, absorption and utilization of all three macronutrients—fats, proteins, and carbohydrates—making the vitamins and minerals they contain available for our bodies to use.…

The most common complaint bringing patients to doctors’ offices these days is low energy.  Most often, if you go in complaining of fatigue, after a battery of tests, you will be told there’s nothing wrong with you. Well, although it may not show up in their tests, there is something wrong! Low energy means not only that you don’t have the energy to do what you want to do; it means your body doesn’t have the energy to do what it needs to do to keep you healthy. In fact, the amount of energy your body can make may be the single most important measurement of your health. It’s important to get to the bottom of what’s going on.  (A doctor who specializes in functional medicine may find answers that conventional doctors don’t.) One of the most common reasons for low energy today is a sluggish liver. The liver is the largest and most hard-working gland in your body, performing over 500 essential functions, and when it isn’t up to par, every other system in your body suffers as a…

Climate change is making life tougher for those with allergies, but it’s possible to be allergy-free. A European study published online concluded that allergic reactions to ragweed (the most common cause of what is known as “hay fever”) are in fact getting worse; people who are already sensitive to ragweed are becoming more sensitive, and more and more people who never had problems before are becoming allergic. In fact, in 25-40 years, these researchers estimate the population of Europeans sensitive to ragweed will double, from 33 million to 77 million. Although this study was done in Europe, similar factors, associated with climate change, are at work here in the US. As explained by Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at the US Department of Agriculture, warmer temperatures and higher levels of carbon dioxide have encouraged ragweed growth, producing a larger plant and about ten times more ragweed pollen. In addition, it appears that this pollen is a more potent allergen.The Europea…

Getting enough magnesium is a problem for most people in industrial societies, where soil depletion and food processing have stripped minerals, especially magnesium, from our food; and magnesium deficiency is showing up in all kinds of health problems, from heart disease to neurological and emotional problems, from chronic fatigue to diabetes, and more. But taking too much magnesium—or more specifically, taking more magnesium than you can absorb—can be a problem too. Magnesium that the body can’t absorb causes an osmotic pressure in the bowel that stimulates bowel movement, decreasing “transit time” (the time it takes food to travel from the mouth out through the anus) and causing loose stools and/or diarrhea. When food is rushed through the gut in this way, there isn’t enough time for the intestines to absorb nutrients adequately.  Such was the case for a chemistry professor who consulted renowned alternative health doctor Dr. Jonathan V. Wright due to low energy…

The new COVID-19 world is a world beset by fear. Unseen viral particles can be lurking anywhere. Should one find us, we don’t know for sure how we would respond. And with social patterns dramatically altered and the economy collapsing, we are losing our sense of comfort, safety and being in control, leading to a stressful sense of chronic uncertainty and anxiety. We know from many scientific studies that stress negatively affects health. But although there may be little we can do to avoid stress in a COVID-19 world, we can use self-care to decrease and minimize the negative effects of stressful feelings. For example, you can pray or meditate.  Or you can simply bring calm and non-judgmental attention to how you’re feeling.      We’ve talked before about a helpful exercise called Body-Feelings-Mind. In this exercise, you find a comfortable position in a quiet place and, with eyes closed, check in with how you’re feeling, first physically, t…

A strong immune system is your best defense against COVID-19, and drinking enough water is crucial for supporting immunity. But it needs to be pure water; contaminated water will hamper an effective immune response. Unfortunately, most tap water is contaminated with hundreds of toxic chemicals! Most people believe the government makes sure their tap water is safe to drink, a belief bolstered by yearly reports from local water departments showing low levels of certain contaminants in their water.  But thousands of contaminants aren't included in these reports! The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established safety standards for only 87 of the thousands of chemical compounds that have been found in public water.  Pesticides, herbicides, toxic wastes from landfills, fertilizers, chemical and oil spills, acid rain, run-off from feedlots and sewage treatment plants, prescription drugs, industrial waste, toxic heavy metals, petrochemicals a…

Do you seem to catch every cold or flu going around? Do you have an ongoing infection, like the yeast infection candida, that you can’t get rid of?  Or do you have the opposite problem—an overactive immune system leading to allergies or to an autoimmune disease? Do you have, or have you had cancer?  These are all indications that your immune system isn’t protecting you as it should, and it’s likely that a primary reason for that is that you don’t have enough glutathione. Glutathione is a critical protein that your body produces. It can also be obtained from food and supplements.  Glutathione has been called “the mother antioxidant” because our antioxidant system can’t function without it. Neither can our detoxification system. And neither can our immune system. Glutathione has the following six essential roles in immune function: Glutathione patrols the bloodstream directly killing many pathogens before they can begin…

The Opioid Epidemic is big news these days. Committees are meeting to discuss ways to get Americans off these dangerous drugs, while scientists look for new drugs with less destructive side effects than our current choices. Too bad Dr. Stanley W. Jacob, MD, one of the great innovative scientists of our time, was never given the attention he deserved. Dr. Jacob helped to develop two sulfur-based natural supplements—DMSO and its derivative, MSM—and spent his life advocating for them and using them to help thousands of patients alleviate pain. But he died in 2015, at age 91, without having managed to convince conventional medicine in the US of the value of these two compounds. However, that didn’t stop people from coming to his DMSO Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland from all over the world for treatment. This clinic-of-last-resort for pain problems that nothing else had helped had an estimated success rate of about 70%. Jacob became interested in using DMSO…