Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 11

Riboflavin (Vitamin B2)

Unlike superstar vitamins like vitamin D– which consistently garners attention in the nutrition press—you don’t hear much about vitamin B2. That’s because it’s best known as a supporting player. But don’t make the mistake of underestimating its importance. Vitamin B2 goes about its business quietly, helping with things like metabolizing food, helping to convert vitamin B6 to its active form, helping to create hemoglobin in the blood, and acting as an antioxidant. It’s also needed to make one of the body’s most important endogenous antioxidants—glutathione.

And while riboflavin deficiency on its own is rather rare in the developed world, sub-optimal levels can affect pathways in the metabolism of vitamin B6, nicacin, iron and folate, and deficiency has been linked to preeclampsia in pregnant women. Cracks at the corner of the mouth can sometimes be caused by vitamin B2 deficiency as well.

As is true of many vitamins, not having a deficiency disease doesn’t guarantee you’re getting optimal levels. As recently as 2004, a British survey found a high proportion of adults 19-64 years of age had poor riboflavin status.(2).

Interesting fun fact: Many people who start taking vitamins—particularly B-complex—often notice that their urine seems bright yellow. That’s riboflavin, which produces yellow fluorescent substances. And it’s perfectly harmless.

SEVEN PART LIFESTYLE PLAN – STEP FOUR: Upgrade your sleep

Sleep is the ultimate anti-aging strategy.

Anyone remember from the old movies how people who were stressed out and experiencing what was then quaintly called a “nervous breakdown” were sent away to a sanitarium for the “rest cure”? Makes sense when you think about it—after all, when your dog gets sick, what does he do? He usually curls up in a corner, won’t eat, and sleeps a lot. He’s basically taking a rest cure. This is the animal’s natural way of healing. No extra energy is spent on external things such a sdigestion, and all the body’s resources are mobilized for the task at hand. Sleep and rest minimize the “output” and allow the body to replenish, renourish, and repair. We were programmed to get about eight hours at the end of every day to accomplish much the same thing your dog accomplishes when he curls up and naps till he feels better.

Except that we’re not doing it. Not even close.

Scientists don’e even fully understand exactly why our bodies need sleep, but they know that we do. Sleep generates hormones, such as human growth hormone, the ultimate anti-aging hormone (released only in the dep stages of sleep), and melatonin, which appears to have powerful antioxidant and anticancer properties. Biochemicals get replaced during sleep.

And let’s not forget that lack of sleep is a huge stressor, causing our bodies to secrete cortisol, whose aging effects can be considerable. (Cortisol shrinks a portion of the brain called the hippocampus; it also puts on belly fat.) In short, not getting enough sleep can shorten our life and diminish its quality in multiple ways.

But it’s not just the quantity of sleep we get, it’s also the quality.

Sleep is essential to memory, mood, and cognitive performance, all markers for a healthylifestyle. All diminish as you get older unless you take good care of your sleep. Inadequate sleep is linked to increase anger, anxiety, and sadness, all diminishers of the quality (and potentially length) of your life. One study at the University of Pennsylvania showed that when subjects were only allowed to sleep 4.5 hours a night they exhibited significantly more stress, anger, and mental exhaustion.

Then there’s obesity and diabetes and all the life-shortening syndromes and conditions that come with being overweight and having an impaired metabolism. A study at the University of Chicago showed that under-sleeping for even a few days impairs sugar metabolism and disrupts hormone levels– in some cases to a prediabetic level!

Sleep also affects immunity. One study showed that after being restricted to only four hours a night for four nights straight, people who got the flu shot actually produced less than half as many flu-fighting antibodies as the folks who weren’t sleep deprived!

What to do, what to do?

1) Go to bed ½ hour earlier.

It’s way easier to add sleep on at the beginning of your sleep than at the end of it. Keep going to bed ½ hour earlier each week till you get to the ideal number of hours for your body (for me it’s six, for many it’s eight, for a very few it might be nine).

2) Change the temperature.

The bedroom should be cool and comfortable. Dr. Sara Gottfried recommends 68 degrees.

3) Accept that you’re not Hugh Hefner.

The bedroom is not an office. It should be a place to retreat to. Ideally, the bedroom should be a sanctuary, and should be for two things only: sleeping and getting lucky. Don’t try to make your bed an office. It’s not, and trying to make it one will only screw up your sleep.

4.) Prepare properly.

Watching the news is not a calming preparation for sleep. Turn off the TV for ½ hour before bed, make some tea, and for goodness sake, relax. You deserve it! And more importantly, you need it.

Who really won the second presidential debate?

I’ve never written a column about politics and I’m not going to start now—at least not in the way you might expect from the title of this column.

So let me be clear—I’m not going to discuss Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

I am going to discuss the winner of the debate Sunday night.

His name is Karl Becker.

This is what he looks like.

In case you missed it, here’s what happened.

The debate was in a Town Hall format, which means that

pre-selected audience members were called on to ask questions that they themselves had written.

A variety of people from all over the political spectrum were called on. Each nervously read their prepared question from a notebook, often with (understandably) trembling hands. Each candidate was given two minutes to respond.

The two candidates had a vitriolic debate. (The New York Times called it “brutal”, the Wall Street Journal called it “caustic”, and the New Yorker correctly labeled it the “darkest and nastiest Presidential debate in modern history”.) The candidates detest one another so much that they couldn’t bring themselves to shake hands. No matter how you feel about the individual candidates, you’d have to agree that the atmosphere was poisonous.

And that would be generous.

Almost exactly at the moment this slugfest was scheduled to end, Martha Radich announced that they had somehow managed to squeeze in just one more question before signing off, and that question was to come from one….

Karl Becker.

Who stood up, with straight shoulders and no notes, looked both candidates in the eye, and in a calm and unwavering voice said the following words:

“My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?”

With those 26 words, this mild-mannered auto parts salesman from St. Louis accomplished something that very few people on the planet will ever come close to accomplishing: He changed the energy of about 80 million people.

Instantly.

He certainly changed the energy in the debate hall of Washington University.

Both candidates—just for a nanosecond—visibly softened.

Donald Trump said the first kind and gracious words about Hillary Clinton that he’s uttered publically in more than a year.

Hillary Clinton said the first kind and gracious words about Donald Trump that she’s uttered publically in more than a year.

Donald Trump said that he admired how Hillary was a fighter and how she never gave up.

Hillary Clinton said that she admired how Donald Trump had raised his kids.

And then they shook hands.

Forget politics for a minute. Just on a human level that’s got to move your emotional needle just a little.

Look, folks, I’m not saying this whole mess is going to have a Disney ending. But it’s still worth talking about exactly what happened in St. Louis last night, because it was momentous.

Karl Becker changed the conversation. He completely transformed the energy of the debate. And I’m willing to bet he momentarily affected the physiology of about 80 million people, including the people present in the debate hall.

If, in some science fiction universe, you were somehow able to plug electrodes into the brain of every single participant and audience member in the moments after Becker asked the question you would have seen significant neurological activity. You would have seen areas associated with empathy and gratitude (the prefrontal cortex) light up, while the lights in areas associated with anger and fear (the amygdala) would be turned down.

If ever there was a demonstration of how your thoughts can change your physiology—and even the world— this was it.

What you actually think about—what you concentrate on, what occupies your psychic real estate—actually does make a difference.

Not just to you, but to the people around you.

Focusing on positive and loving things—even when it seems like the hardest thing in the world to do—has real benefits. And those benefits show up regardless of what metric you use to demonstrate them—adrenal health, brain waves, blood pressure, mood, optimism, energy—even body weight. ‘

The fact that the internet is all a-buzz about Karl Becker and that he is, apparently, a new social media hero is just confirmation of this fact that no one aspires to hatred and bitterness. People aspire to be like their better angels.

That’s who we really want to be.

Karl Becker reminded the country of that last night.

He was the true hero of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Thiamine (Vitamin B1)

Vitamin B1 (also known as thiamine) is one of the eight B vitamins sometimes collectively known as B-complex. All B vitamins help you turn your food into energy, but they each have specific (if overlapping) functions.

Many people may remember beriberi from high school biology textbooks. Beriberi is a nutritional deficiency disease caused by inadequate intake of vitamin B1. (The word ‘beriberi’ is Singhalese, and means, literally “I can’t I can’t”, a reflection of the absolutely debilitating effect on every aspect of human functioning the disease produces.)

Though we don’t see much beriberi these days—certainly not in the US—that doesn’t mean everyone’s getting optimal amounts of B1. Like all eight B vitamins, thiamine is water soluble, so it doesn’t stay in the body very long after ingesting. That means it’s important to get a continual supply of it from your diet. And many life situations increase your need for this important vitamin—for example pregnancy, lactation, high carb diets, exercise, or even drinking alcohol.

Cooking, baking, pasteurization—any kind of heating destroys a substantial amount of the B1 in foods. Though junk foods often are made with “fortified” flours, the amount of thiamine they fortify with doesn’t amount to anything worth mentioning. What’s more, since it’s usually flours that are fortified, the heat from the baking knocks out most of the small amount of B1 they used to fortify the flour in the first place. “Fortified” foods are rarely your best choice for any vitamin. The only reason the need to be fortified in the first place is because without fortification they’d be nutritionally empty foods—and usually high glycemic to boot!

Low thiamine status has been found in patients with heart failure and diabetes, and there’s some suggestion from animal studies that thiamine deficiency might play a role in Alzeimer’s. And thiamine helps the body manufacturer hydrochloric acid, which is absolutely critical to digestion and to the absorption of nutrients.

SEVEN PART LIFESTYLE PLAN – STEP THREE: DOUBLE YOUR WATER INTAKE

Years ago, I participated in a panel at a health and wellness fair sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. On this panel were a number of practitioners, many of them forward-thinking specialists in integrative and functional medicine.

I don’t remember who I shared that panel with that day—I’ve been on more than 100 such panels—but I do remember one pearl of wisdom offered by one of the docs sitting next to me.

“When I have a patient with lots of complaints and symptoms I often tell them to do one thing”, he said. “Take your weight, divide by two, and drink that number of ounces of water every day. When they come back to see me in two weeks, 90% of the time their symptoms have significantly improved.”

Though there is no real science behind the “8 glasses of water a day” rule, that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. About sixty percent of our bodies are water. And if we don’t stay hydrated, the first thing to go is physical and mental performance.

Even as little as a 2% loss of your body’s water content can make a significant difference. (Athletes can lose up to 10% of their water just by sweating.) And let’s not forget that muscle is a whopping 80% water!

Water can also affect mood. One study of young women showed that fluid loss of as little as 1.36% following exercise impaired both their concentration and their mood. It also increased their number of headaches. And in case you think that’s just a “woman” thing, the same thing happens in men. A study in young men found that a fluid loss of only 1.59% increased feelings of fatigue and anxiety. That small amount of dehydration also had an effect (not a good one) on their working memory.

Drinking more water can also help with headaches, kidney stones, and constipation (especially constipation!).

And then there’s weight loss.

In two separate studies, drinking about 17 ounces of water was shown to increase metabolic rate by up to 30% for up to 1.5 hours. A third study showed that dieters drinking half a liter of water before meals lost 44% more weight.

In the weight loss community, it’s long been an article of faith that drinking more water can help you lose fat. The prescription has always been the one my unnamed colleague at that LA Times health fare repeated so many years ago: Take your body weight, divide by 2, and drink that number of ounces of water.

It’s an easy way to make a quick upgrade to your overall health—and it might even help you shed some body fat at the same time!

Seven Part Lifestyle Plan – STEP TWO: Front Load Your Calories

Most of you probably never heard of Adele Davis, but back in the 60’s and 70’s she was the most recognized nutritionist in the country. And she had one piece of brilliant advice that I still remember to this day. Here’s what she said:

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince,and dinner like a pauper”.

And that, my friends, is the essence of step two.

You don’t have to change a thing you’re eating (and that goes double if you did step one). This is not about what you eat, it’s about when you eat it and how much.

Now you probably know that front-loading our calories early in the day is the exact opposite of the way we normally eat. Most of us skimp on breakfast and lunch and then have a huge dinner, especially when we eat out.

That’s precisely the wrong way to do it.

Years ago, Health magazine did a really interesting feature on how to gain weight. (Yes, you read that right.) They figured if we knew what people did to successfully gain weight, we’d know what not to do. Clever, right?

But who in the world wants to gain weight, you might ask?

Sumo wrestlers.

Health magazine followed around a few competitive sumo wrestlers whose living depends upon them being enormous. Know what they’d do? They’d train for hours, then eat a huge meal and go to sleep.

Conventional dietitians and other mainstream health know-it-alls have been telling us for years that “a calorie is a calorie” and it doesn’t matter when you eat it.

Excuse my French, but they’re full of shit.

Try front-loading your calories earlier in the day. Eat lightly at night, and early.

And watch what happens.

Vitamin A

The first installment in my new series- Vitamin and Mineral Mondays- is here! Join me each week for a look at a new vitamin or mineral and its benefits.

Vitamin A is one of a select group of vitamins and minerals that are known to be powerful antioxidants (this group includes C, E, and the mineral selenium). Antioxidants prevent or reverse damage to cells and DNA caused by nasty little moelcules called “free radicals”. In fact, there’s a famous theory called the “Free Radical Theory of Aging” that holds that free radicals are at the heart of why we age, basically causing “rusting from within”.

But vitamin A is more than just a powerful antioxidant. It also has the power to boost immunity and is a great weapon against infections and colds. At the first sign of “coming down with something”, I recommend a very high dose of vitamin A in mycellized (oil) form mixed with liquid zinc, plus vitamin C and astragalus. (Metagenics makes a mycelized vitamin A that you can find online.) I’ve used this combination myself for decades, and although I can’t prove it scientifically, it sure feels like it helps shorten the duration of anything I happen to “catch”. Not for nothing did vitamin A used to have the reputation as the “infection fighter”.

Vitamin A is one of the few vitamins that have the potential for toxicity, but at ridiculously high and unrealistic doses. (Toxicity has occurred in Arctic explorers who ate polar bear liver, which is extremely high in vitamin A. Not exactly a situation you need to worry about.)

Vitamin A—like vitamins E, K, and the whole family of carotenoids (including beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin) are all fat soluble, meaning they are far better absorbed when consumed with some fat. The vitamin is an absolutely essential part of the diet, and deficiencies can cause serious health problems.

Seven Part Lifestyle Plan- STEP ONE: Eat Real Food

Whenever someone tells me how confused they are about diet—which is pretty much every day of my life—this is what I tell them to do. It’s the simplest, easiest “intervention” you can do. It doesn’t require counting grams, calories, ounces. It doesn’t require that you evaluate the pros and cons of high fat, low fat, paleo, vegetarian, raw food, high protein or any of that stuff.

In fact, it’s so simple it’s hard to believe it works as well as it does.

But it does work. Probably more powerfully than any diet program and certainly easier to sustain for the rest of your life.

So here’s the deal. Every morsel that goes into your mouth has to pass one test, and one test only.

It has to be real food.

OK, I can almost hear some of you saying, “I wonder what he means by “real food”?”

Good question. We all know that broccoli and almonds are real food, and we all know that Twinkies and Corn Flakes aren’t. But most other foods fall in between.

So here’s the rule: If you’re not sure if it’s “real food” or not, it’s probably not. Don’t eat it. Don’t give it the “benefit of the doubt”. If it comes in a box, if it has ingredients you don’t recognize except from chemistry 101, if it looks like it could live on the shelf for a couple of years, don’t eat it. Period.

I realize there are exceptions and some decent “real” foods might be tossed aside, but I’d rather you err on the side of safety and clean eating. I want you to eat from what I call the Jonny Bowden Four Food Groups: Food you could hunt, fish, gather or pluck.

I don’t care what or how much you eat, as long as it passes this single test: Is it real? Is it food your great grandmother would recognize as food? (Hint: Great grandma would have no idea what to make of “Lunchables”. Or a box of juice. Or a frozen dinner, even the supposedly “healthy” kind like Amy’s. Sorry.)

I don’t even care if you eat dessert. Raw food desserts are beyond luscious, especially if you like the taste of coconut, and even though they’re sweet and delicious, they’re still made with real food, so they get a green light.

You get where I’m going here? This is not a diet. It’s a “pre-diet”. You can always figure out the proportions of protein, fat, and carbs later on. You can always figure out the timing of meals later on. All those things are details. Will fine tuning make a difference? Sure. But right now, let’s save the fine tuning for the “advanced course”. We’re working here with basics—basics that will make an enormous difference in how you feel and how you look.

Real food is the first step. And allow me to let you in on a secret—sometimes a first step is all you need.

In 12 step programs like AA, there are a whole lotta people who got sober without going beyond the 1st step (“Admitted I was powerless over alcohol”.) They may never get to the amends part or the inventory part, but they still get sober because that first step is so powerful.

Real food is your first step. It might even wind up being your only step, which would still be OK because by eating nothing but real food, you wind up eliminating half the junk in the American diet.

Autism, Politics, Vaccinations and Cytochrome P450

Spoiler alert: I’m going to talk about vaccinations.

This subject has become so polarizing that any slight deviation from the establishment line on this—no matter how nuanced or reasonable—gets you lumped in with the antivaxxers, widely derided as crazies, science-denying, conspiracy-theorizing wing nuts.

Believe me, I get the risks associated with speaking out about this. I know you can’t talk about the vaccination issue without pissing off large swatches of the population, not to mention risking the wrath and condemnation of your fellow health-professionals.

I also get that the majority of the people reading this have already made up their minds on the subject of vaccines. Either you think it’s madness not to vaccinate, or you think it’s madness to vaccinate.

Well, relax. I’m actually not writing this column for either group.

I’m writing it for the small sliver of people who might still be somewhere in the middle.

But first, let me introduce…

Before we get into vaccinations and autism—and I promise, we will— let me introduce someone named Dr. Roger Williams.

Roger Williams, MD, was the spiritual father of the whole integrative and functional medicine movement. Everyone in the “health space”—or at least, everyone you’re likely to be reading if you’re reading me— has studied Roger Williams’s landmark book—Biochemical Individuality. That book taught us that everyone is biochemically unique and that despite all our similarities, we should never lose sight of the enormous, measurable differences in all sorts of “out of the box” specifications. (I’ll get to why that matters in a moment.)

Now let’s jump forward to the subject of vaccinations, specifically vaccinations and detoxification.

Vaccinations and Detoxification

Every single time you introduce any foreign substance into the body, that substance will ultimately wind up in the liver. The liver then begins the process of detoxification—essentially rendering the foreign object harmless, and turning toxins into water-soluble waste that can be eliminated through urine, stool, skin and sweat.

The liver accomplishes this through a two-phase process of detoxification involving a group of enzymes called the Cytochrome P450 enzymes, and metabolic processes such as conjugation and glucuronidation. The end result—when all goes well—is that foreign compounds are effectively disposed of. These foreign compounds include (but aren’t limited to) toxins in the air, recreational drugs, pesticides, birth control pills, alcohol, prescription medicines… and, yes, vaccines.

While Dr. Williams didn’t specifically study the Cytochrome P450 enzyme system, let’s look at what he did study and see if it might be able to shed some light on detoxification and vaccinations. I think it can.

Dr. Roger Williams and Biochemical Individuality

Williams showed illustrations of 19 different laboratory specimen human stomachs and 17 different human livers, each of dramatically different shape and size. He showed that the thyroid gland in normal people varies from a weight of 8 grams to 50 grams. He demonstrated that pepsin, an important digestive enzyme produced by the stomach, varies in the normal stomach by a thousand-fold.

He reported dramatic differences among normal healthy infants in leukocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, lymphocytes and monocytes, all specific types of blood cells.

He reported on huge differences in the musculature of the pectoralis minor muscle, and on variations in the amount of islet tissue in the pancreas. He suggested that the potential rate of production for insulin probably varies throughout a ten-fold or greater range, and that the number of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas varies from 200,000 to 2.5 million—all, mind you, in normal people.

So now I’d like to pose a theoretical question.

Is it not possible that there might also be significant differences in the Cytophrome P450 enzyme system? The very same system that detoxifies foreign substances like, for example, vaccines?

Is it completely impossible that different individuals might vary in the strength and effectiveness of their ability to detox effectively, perhaps due to inborn variations in their detoxification pathways?

And could an unusual variation in the ability of one’s Cytochrome 450 enzyme system to function effectively under certain conditions of challenge—like a vaccine–explain why there might be an atypical, extreme response to a foreign compound even though that foreign compound doesn’t seem to cause harm in others?

It’s hard to see how there could not be such individual differences.

After all, if the detoxification system of the Cytochrome P450 enzymes worked exactly the same way at exactly the same efficiency with exactly the same results in every single human on the planet, then it would be the only such system in the human body that did so. (Remember, every other system Williams studied showed enormous individual differences.)

And if you’re still skeptical about how this notion of individual variation could possibly apply to detoxification pathways, consider two people of the same size, age and sex: one drinks a bottle of Jack Daniels and walks a straight line home while reciting the Constitution, the other gets wasted on one beer. That difference in response to alcohol is almost certainly due to individual differences in the amount of an enzyme known as alcohol dehydrogenase, which detoxifies ethanol in the human body.

We’ve all seen with our own eyes huge individual differences in the ability to handle alcohol. Is it so inconceivable that there might be significant differences in the ability to handle a particular vaccination?

Isn’t it at least possible that there are some children— not all mind you, not even a majority, maybe not even a double digit percentage, but some percentage of children nonetheless—whose enzyme system simply cannot handle the challenge of the vaccination as it is currently given?

Averages don’t tell the whole story

Now please understand me here. I am talking about a small sub-set of children. And that’s a critically important point.

See, when researchers do huge, studies looking for a connection between vaccinations and autism in multi-thousand patient populations followed over many years, they consistently find no relationship. And they are not lying. When you look at the data with that kind of helicopter view —which is exactly the way public health officials look at data—the conclusion is irrefutable. Vaccines don’t “cause” autism.

So this is what you need to understand about that research, and about epidemiological research in general.

The data on thousands and thousands of people followed over many years often obscures small sub-group differences.

So a study that examined the medical records of, say 50,000 children who were vaccinated over the course of a decade would indeed find no increase in the incidence of autism.

I completely accept that research—you’d be crazy not to.

But there’s a “but”…

I’m suggesting that there might be a sub-group of children, obscured in the averages, for whom the connection between autism and vaccines is a little more complex.

Here’s an easy way to understand how something that is true for a sub-group can get completely lost in statistics about the general population.

Malibu billionaires, Kentucky coal miners

The United States is ranked internationally as the 8th best place in the world to get old.

But suppose you’re in the small sub-group of people who have 25 million dollars in assets, happen to live in Malibu, and have unlimited access to the beach, the sun, the best food in the world and the A-team at Cedars Sinai.

If you’re in that group—and believe me, those folks exist— the US is probably the best place in the world to grow old.

But if you happen to belong to the small sub-group of retired coal-miners with black lung disease who live in western Kentucky on government assistance—and believe me, those folks also exist— the US might possibly be the worst place in the world to grow old.

The point is that the averages don’t capture the experience of specific sub-groups.

Taken as a whole, averaging all the numbers, the US is indeed the eighth best place to grow old. True story. But that average rating simply does not adequately describe the real-life experience of specific groups—like Malibu billionaires or Kentucky coal miners. Their distinct, exceptional characteristics get lost when their numbers are folded into the averages.

Is Cytochrome 450 variation worth exploring? Yes.

Back to the liver and detoxification.

What, if in those thousands of children who were studied for a connection between vaccinations and autism, there was, buried in the data, a small sub-group—just for fun let’s call them Cytochrome P-450-challenged individuals— who just couldn’t “handle the load” of the conventional vaccine?

Overall, looking at millions of people over a decade or more, no causal connection could be seen between vaccines and autism. Of course there wouldn’t be. Millions and millions and millions of people are vaccinated and most don’t become autistic.

But that doesn’t mean that’s the whole story.

Flu shots for all? Not.

It’s not as if we don’t all accept that there are special cases when we don’t recommend vaccines. After all, we tell people not to get a flu shot if they’re: elderly, infirm, or have impaired immunity.

It’s also not as if there’s never been any evidence of harm from vaccinations before.

There’s published research showing a connection between keratitis, an inflammation of the cornea, and the chickenpox vaccine. The reaction is rare, but it happens. Research also shows that 60% of girls given the supposedly 100% safe HPV vaccine, develop a condition called postural tachycardia syndrome. In fact, there’ve been so many reports of adverse effects from the HPV vaccination—including a few deaths—that the European Medical Agency if carrying out a review of the vaccine’s safety.

Correlation is not causation… but still.

Look, let’s be very clear about something. Drawing conclusions about causality when you’re talking about vaccines is almost impossible. And it’s a fool’s errand.

You’re talking about millions of people being vaccinated in all kinds of circumstances, with adverse effects being reported sporadically and inconsistently, and with dozens, ne; hundreds of other variables operating concurrently that could be responsible for any adverse effects. And you have hard data showing that the vast majority of people who are vaccinated aren’t harmed. Drawing any cause and effect conclusions about something as complex as autism would be a statistical nightmare.

I get that.

And I believe that on balance, looked at purely in terms of number of people harmed vs. number of people helped, the public health value of mass vaccination outweighs the cost. More lives are saved than people are harmed.

But that is small comfort to any parent whose child happened to be part of the collateral damage incurred for the greater good.

Is there a “third way”?

Much like American politics, the vaccination issue has created two polarized camps.

On the one hand there’s the “antivaxxers”, many of whom call for a ban on vaccinations and all of whom are dismissed by the establishment as anti-science nut jobs.

Yet many of these people are reasonable, thoughtful individuals who have observed real phenomena in their own homes with their own children, evidence dismissed by the establishment as “anecdotal”. Which it may in fact be, though that hardly makes it irrelevant.

On the other hand, there is the establishment—all the major health and medical organizations—who dismiss any suggestions that the vaccinations might not be completely safe and urge vaccination for all in the name of public health. They suggest we look no further than polio and smallpox for proof of the conventional wisdom on mass vaccinations.

There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground at all.

But maybe there’s a third position, a third way of approaching the issue.

And maybe it begins with giving those who have reasonable questions about vaccines a hearing rather than marginalizing them.

Maybe it begins with the consideration that there are significant individual differences in Cytochrome P450 enzyme systems and detoxification pathways, and that some people might indeed be more vulnerable to ill effects from a safe (for most people) vaccine.

And if there is a group of people who are more vulnerable to ill effects from certain vaccines—just as the elderly and the infirm are more vulnerable to ill effects from the flu shot–

wouldn’t it be good to pursue ways to test to see who might be at risk?

That might be a far wiser approach than marginalizing and demonizing anyone who questions vaccination orthodoxy— even when, as I hope this article did, questioning that orthodoxy is reasonable, nuanced, and very much in the spirit of finding answers.

THE REAL DEAL ON FIBER: It’s way more important than we thought

When I was a kid, my grandmother was always trying to get me to eat a lot of foods you had to chew a lot. “Gives you roughage”, she’d say wisely. “Keeps you regular”.

Well, that was then, this is now.

Our prune-eating grandmothers were onto something, but they had just scratched the tip of the iceberg. Research on fiber is exploding, and its resume of health benefits now extends to weight loss, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, blood sugar management. Fiber is absolutely essential to the care and feeding of a healthy microbiome.

When it comes to weight loss, fiber works like a charm. More than a dozen clinical studies have used dietary fiber supplements for weight loss, most with positive outcomes. (Murray, Encyclopedia of Natural Supplements). Fiber supplements have also been shown to enhance blood sugar control and insulin effects and even to reduce the number of calories (adding up to about 3-18 pounds a year) that the body absorbs (Spiller, 1994).

Remember, the benefits of fiber aren’t limited to weight loss. High blood sugar and high insulin have now been implicated in a baker’s dozen of unwanted degenerative disease, including heart disease. Even Alzheimer’s is now being called “Type 3 Diabetes” because of the connection to insulin resistance, which has consequences not only for your waistline but for your brain as well.

Americans currently get a paltry amount of fiber in their diets, estimated at around 10-11 grams a day. That’s not nearly enough. Current recommendations range from 25-38 grams a day (depending on age and sex) but in my opinion more is better. Our caveman ancestors got much more (between 50 and 100 grams daily, according to most research).

Insoluble fiber is what your grandmother was talking about when she said to eat “roughage”. It doesn’t break down in the gut, so it acts as a “bulking” agent and is really good for reliving constipation.

Soluble fiber does break down in the gut. It’s specifically broken down by good bacteria which do something great with it– they convert it into short-chain-fatty acids (SCFAs), the most important of which is butyric acid (also known as butyrate). The cells that line the gut depend on butyrate for food.

If you’re not getting enough soluble fiber you’re probably not making enough butyric acid, and you may be setting yourself up for gut problems.

Food sources of soluble fiber include beans, oatmeal, Brussels sprouts, apples, nuts, blueberries, oranges and flaxseeds. Food sources of insoluble fiber (known to grandma as “roughage”) include the seeds and skins of fruits (eat the peel!), avocados (especially Florida avocados), wheat bran and brown rice. Food sources of resistant starch—a third kind of fiber that also feeds good bacteria— include white beans, chickpeas, lentils, rolled oats, peas, black beans, red beans, kidney beans, unripe bananas, and potato starch.

I’m a big believer in fiber supplements, simply because just about no one gets the ideal amount from food anymore. Dr. Masley and I worked with Thorne Research—one of the most respected vitamin companies in the world—to create what we feel is the world’s best fiber supplement- Ultimate Fiber. One serving gives you seven grams of fiber, six of which are soluble and will feed the good bacteria in your gut. Ultimate Fiber blends in perfectly with any smoothie recipe, and goes particularly well with our own Smart Fat grass-fed whey protein.

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