Are You Getting Enough Vitamin P?

Even small doses of pleasure can raise our levels of immune-boosting chemicals.

Recently, at a healthy-living conference, I had one of those quickie checkups. In five minutes, you get a blood-pressure reading; a finger-stick blood draw; a computerized printout of your triglyceride, cholesterol and blood sugar levels; and a mini-analysis of your results from the attending health pro. Amazing!

If you can access these kinds of tests at your fitness club or a local health fair, do–it’s a great snapshot of your overall health, and a solid motivator to make positive lifestyle adjustments if you don’t like what you see.

In my case, the numbers were all good. So I’m going to keep on doing what seems to be working for me–namely, eating mostly whole foods, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep and managing my stress. And, being an inveterate self-improver, I’m going to continue experimenting and fine-tuning my approach.

One adjustment I’ve been working on over the past few years involves upping my daily intake of what nutritional psychologist Marc David, MA, has dubbed “vitamin P,” which stands for Pleasure.

To date, there’s no blood test that can directly assess your baseline level of this nutrient, and no official recommended daily intake. But as a key factor in both our physical and mental vitality, pleasure counts for far more than most of us realize.

That’s why, ever since we did a feature on the relationship between pleasure, satisfaction and optimal health (“A Real Pleasure,”), I’ve had a clipped-out pull quote from the story posted on my kitchen bulletin board. It reads:

“What’s clear is that our levels of pleasure and satisfaction are directly related to our biochemical balance.”

Seeing this little clipping reminds me that, just like our nutrition and fitness regimens, a steady supply of feel-good satisfaction is important to our physiological well-being.

Posted right next to our household calendar, the snippet nudges me to look ahead at my upcoming schedule with a view to what’s fun, exciting, novel or relaxing. If drab deadlines are ruling my weeks, I know it’s time to get something a little less obligatory (and a little more joyful) on the books.

On many days, the clipping also entices me to stop and appreciate what’s going on right in the moment: Look, there’s our dog curled up on the dining room rug, snoring in that grunty little way that makes my heart melt. Oh, there’s a vine in bloom just outside the window, with a big ol’ bee buzzing around it. And my, what a delightful caramelizing-cauliflower aroma that is, coming from the oven. Simple stuff like that.

Science suggests that training ourselves to be aware of such blips of pleasure, happiness and appreciation is the best way to begin experiencing more of them. And such small “noticings” of what’s right and good can have a surprisingly large effect on our overall mindset–and, by extension, on our biochemistry.

Even small doses of pleasure can raise immune-boosting chemicals like proenkephalin, for example, as well as feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Pleasure- and satisfaction-triggering experiences also help reduce and offset the pro-inflammatory effects of stress hormones like cortisol, which plays a significant role in many chronic health conditions like heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

Of course, unchecked hedonism can also have its downsides. Overindulging in any pleasure–or becoming dependent on certain “fixes” as a way of coping with an otherwise joy-deficient existence–is a sure recipe for eventual misery.

The key, I think, is expanding our sense of what brings us pleasure, and taking stock of the full range of healthy satisfactions that are available to us.

For me, there is always pleasure available in slowing down, for example. I also love getting regular bodywork (for fascinating specifics on the healing power of massage, see “Mmm… Massage“). And I have learned to appreciate the visceral satisfactions that come from simply treating my body with care and sensory respect.

Many of my daily practices–stepping outside every morning, doing a little yoga, drinking really great herbal tea, using plant-based stuff on my skin–these are healthy little individual choices that, taken together, vastly amplify my pleasure in living. But that’s just me. What nourishes you may be entirely different.

What’s true of most of us, I suspect, is that regardless of what our lab results say, we could all use a daily infusion of vitamin P.

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds

How to Stop Attacking Yourself: Nine Steps to Heal Autoimmune Disease

Inflammation is a “hot” topic in medicine. It appears connected to almost every known chronic disease: from heart disease to cancer, diabetes to obesity, autism to dementia and even depression. Other inflammatory diseases such as allergies, asthma, arthritis and autoimmune disease are increasing at dramatic rates. As physicians we are trained to shut off inflammation with aspirin, anti-inflammatory medication such as Advil or Motrin, steroids and increasingly more powerful immune-suppressing medication with serious side effects. But we are not trained to find and treat the underlying causes of inflammation in chronic disease. Hidden allergens, infections, environmental toxins, an inflammatory diet and stress are the real causes of these inflammatory conditions.

Autoimmune diseases, specifically, now affect 24 million people and include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, thyroid disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and more. These are often addressed by powerful immune suppressing medication and not by addressing the cause. That’s like taking a lot of aspirin while you are standing on a tack. The treatment is not more aspirin or a strong immune suppressant, but removing the tack.

If you want to cool off inflammation in the body, you must find the source. Treat the fire, not the smoke. In medicine we are mostly taught to diagnose disease by symptoms, not by their underlying cause. Functional medicine is the emerging 21st century paradigm of systems medicine that teaches us to treat the cause, not only the symptoms, to ask why you are sick, not only what disease you have.

Functional medicine is a different way of thinking about disease that helps us understand and treat the real causes of inflammation instead of finding clever ways to shut it down. Medicine as it is practiced today is like taking the battery out of a smoke detector while a fire burns down your house!

Autoimmune conditions are connected by one central biochemical process: A runaway immune response also known as systemic inflammation that results in your body attacking its own tissues.

Autoimmunity: What It Is and How It Occurs

We are facing an epidemic of allergies (60 million people), asthma (30 million people) and autoimmune disorders (24 million people). Autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, celiac disease, thyroid disease, and the many other hard-to-classify syndromes in the 21st century. These are all autoimmune conditions, and at their root they are connected by one central biochemical process: a runaway immune response also known as systemic inflammation that results in your body attacking its own tissues.

Your immune system is your defense against invaders. It is your internal army and has to clearly distinguish friend from foe — to know you from other. Autoimmunity occurs when your immune system gets confused and your own tissues get caught in friendly cross-fire. Your body is fighting something — an infection, a toxin, an allergen, a food or the stress response — and somehow it redirects its hostile attack on your joints, your brain, your thyroid, your gut, your skin or sometimes your whole body.

This immune confusion results from what is referred to as molecular mimicry. Conventional approaches don’t have a method for finding the insult causing the problem. Functional medicine provides a map to find out which molecule the cells are mimicking.

Interestingly, autoimmune disorders occur almost exclusively in developed countries. People in poor nations without modern amenities like running water, flushing toilets, washing machines and sterile backyards don’t get these diseases. If you grew up on a farm with lots of animals, you are also less likely to have any of these inflammatory disorders. Playing in the dirt, being dirty and being exposed to bugs and infections trains your immune system to recognize what is foreign and what is “you.”

In this country, autoimmune diseases are a huge health burden. They are the eighth leading cause of death among women, shortening the average patient’s lifespan by eight years. The annual health care cost for autoimmune diseases is $120 billion, representing nearly twice the economic health care burden of cancer (about $70 billion a year).¹

Unfortunately, many of the conventional treatments available can make you feel worse. Anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil, steroids, immune suppressants like methotrexate, and the new TNF-alpha blockers like Enbrel or Remicade can lead to intestinal bleeding, kidney failure, depression, psychosis, osteoporosis, muscle loss, diabetes, infection and cancer.²

When used selectively these drugs can help people get their lives back. But they are not a long-term solution. They shouldn’t be the end of treatment, but a bridge to cool off inflammation while we treat the root cause of the disease.

If you have an autoimmune disease, here is what you need to think about and do.

Nine Steps to Treating Autoimmune Disease

1. Check for hidden infections — yeast, viruses, bacteria, Lyme, etc. — with the help of a doctor and treat them.
2. Check for hidden food allergens with IgG food testing or just try The UltraSimple Diet, which is designed to eliminate most food allergens.
3. Get tested for celiac disease with a blood test that any doctor can do.
4. Get checked for heavy metal toxicity. Mercury and other metals can cause autoimmunity.
5. Fix your gut.
6. Use nutrients such as fish oil, vitamin C, vitamin D and probiotics to help calm your immune response naturally.
7. Exercise regularly. It’s a natural anti-inflammatory.
8. Practice deep relaxation like yoga, deep breathing, biofeedback or massage, because stress worsens the immune response.
9. Tell your doctor about Functional medicine and encourage him or her to get trained. Go to http://www.functionalmedicine.org/ for more information and to get a copy of the “Textbook for Functional Medicine.”

Give these steps a try and see if you don’t start feeling less inflamed. The answers are right in front of you. Treat the underlying causes of your illness and you will begin to experience vibrant health once more.

For more information on how to optimize your health, see http://drhyman.com/.

Now I’d like to hear from you … Have you been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease? How is your doctor treating you? Have you been frustrated by the medical advice that you’ve been given? What steps have you taken to get to the root of the problem, and what have your results been? Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.

References

1. Nakazawa, D. (2008). The Autoimmune Epidemic. Simon & Schuster. New York.

2. Siegel, C.A., Marden, S.M., Persing, S.M., et al. (2009). Risk of lymphoma associated with combination anti-tumor necrosis factor and immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of Crohn’s disease: a meta-analysis. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 7(8): 874-81.

Photo credit: Trace Meek

Breast Milk Is The Bomb!

Mother Nature designed the perfect complete nourishment for your newborn. Breast milk is a highly alkaline, nutritive, substance that contains immune factor, an impeccable balance of fats, DHA, protein water, and happy hormones that meet the nutritional demands and emotional needs of your baby while promoting bonding and neurological development.

Mindful eating during pregnancy, after birth and while breast-feeding is essential to maintain optimal health and wellness of a growing baby and new mother. Your diet during this finite period is of the utmost importance. The dietary requirements for a nursing mom are high. Nourish yourself with whole foods to support ample milk supply, adequate energy and hormonal balance.

Your little baby’s complex immune system
Every baby is born with passive immunity. This is the protection that your immune system provides for your little one throughout pregnancy. At birth, your baby has a supply of maternal antibodies that help protect against common childhood infections in the first months of life: coughs, colds, chicken pox, ear infections. During the second and third trimesters, the baby’s immune cells are forming but not able to work on their own. Around six months, your baby’s immune system will be able to produce its own antibodies and the timing is great because your passively acquired antibodies run out at about six months of life. This is one of the reasons why it is best to breast-feed exclusively for at least the first six months of life. The longer you breast-feed the better off your baby, so consider it an investment.

Your milk is the bomb!
Breast-feeding is the best protection against illness and support for the baby’s immune system that a mother can provide. Breast milk wards off illnesses common in formula-fed babies, provides protection against allergies and gastrointestinal infections. Your milk is a good source of highly absorbable minerals, antioxidants and other antibacterial substances that protect the baby against bacterial or viral infection. Your milk is also a top-notch source of essential fatty acids, which are vital to proper neurological development, immune development and growth. Not to mention that each time you breast-feed you are bonding with your baby. When you experience the letdown reflex your body also secretes oxytocin (the love and bonding hormone) and you and your baby fall in love. So your milk is literally a love potion.

Maintaining your milk factory
While breast-feeding you must make it a priority to look after yourself. Feeding and caring for your baby is awesome and it’s tiring too. It helps to have lots of healthy, nutrient-packed snacks around to provide you with energy. Fruit smoothies, green juice, nut and fruit bars, yogurt, nuts, porridges, soups, hummus and crackers, sandwiches and trail mix all help to provide sustainable energy throughout the day.

Drink adequate water. Your body requires a lot more water to make breast milk, which is mostly water. Avoiding chemical additives and excess sugar is always good too.

Eat at least five portions of fruit and veggies daily. This will provide the fiber, vitamins and phytonutrients needed by you and your baby. Having a fresh green juice or fruit smoothie in the morning is a great way to get an antioxidant boost!

Avoid taking stimulants while breast-feeding. Caffeine found in coffee, tea, sodas and chocolate can cause irritability and restlessness in you and your baby, so beware.

Protecting a formula-fed baby
For a number of reasons some mamas aren’t able to breast-feed exclusively. If formula milks are the only option or if you have to supplement for any reason, then this section will come in handy. Avoid cow’s milk-based formulas! Cow’s milk is designed to take a baby calf from 65 pounds to 600 pounds within one year. Why would you want to feed your child a hormone-laden substance that builds body mass at an alarming rate? You could opt for a vegetarian formula. There are also milk banks for moms interested in finding breast milk donors. Just be sure to compare the essential fatty acid profile of the formulas and choose the best option.

Add a quarter teaspoon of infant probiotic to your baby’s bottle once a day. This will provide some of the beneficial bacteria that is present in breast milk and protect against gastrointestinal infection.

Add a few drops of organic flaxseed oil into your baby’s bottle once daily to provide a source of omega-3 essential fatty acids. Rub the contents of a 500-mg evening primrose oil capsule onto your baby’s tummy after bath time to ensure a source of omega-6 essential fatty acids.

Avoid overfeeding with the bottle. Bottle-fed babies don’t have to work their jaws for the milk and often overeat. Fat cells are laid down in infancy and an overweight baby is likely to be an overweight adult.

Kiss your baby!
Okay, so by now you’re obsessed with your baby! Did you know that breast-feeding moms can protect their babies by providing tailor-made antibodies to the bacteria and viruses their babies come in contact with? You already have a plethora of antibodies that have been created throughout your life that protect you against certain diseases. Many are totally irrelevant to your newborn, but others will give your baby’s immune system a vital boost.

When you kiss your baby’s cheek, you are effectively sampling the bacteria and viruses on his face that he is about to ingest. The bacteria get transferred to your body where your immune system is stimulated to create specific antibodies to fight these pathogens. You then pass the tailor-made antibodies back to your baby through your breast milk. So each time the baby is at the breast he is inoculated. Keep kissing and nuzzling your baby. What a perfect miracle!

Your shrinking waistline
Hey Sugar, good news! Did you know that breast-feeding helps to contract the uterus back to its normal size? It also burns calories. Breast-feeding can burn up to 600 calories daily. Just from breast-feeding alone you can lose a pound every week. Breast-feeding is also linked to lower maternal weight gain.

Photo credit: nicora

Keep Your Immune System Healthy This Winter

With winter comes the solstice, holidays, friends and families; there also comes cold, stress, sugar and often illness. To make sure we enjoy all the beautiful and magical offerings of the winter season, it’s important to keep up with our health in some really easy and right-at-our-fingertips ways. So how do we stay vital and bug-free during winter? It can start with making a promise to yourself that self-care will be high on your list of things to do.
 
Rest. Get enough sleep. Make your evening routine relaxing and nurturing enough to ensure that you fall asleep easily and early, waking up rested and ready to go (especially as it gets light earlier now!).
 
Move your body with gentle stretches, yoga, walking, cross-country skiing, sledding, snowman building with the kids (or friends), ice skating, snowshoeing, and even shoveling. While burning calories and building lean muscle mass, it’s also important to keep circulation moving; exercise enables toxins to leave the body through flowing lymph and sweat. Indoor exercise is great especially when it’s cold, but it’s also important to get outside in the fleeting hours of sunlight whenever possible and breathe that invigorating cold air!
 
You can follow a cleanse to boost immunity. By taking the time to heal the gut, which houses 90 percent of your immune system, you’re ensuring that your body is well equipped to fight any colds or flus that are being passed around. It can be simply eating very light meals based on whole foods and liquids whenever possible to lighten the load on the digestive system.
 
Choose unprocessed whole foods, making sure they are local, organic and seasonal whenever possible. Avoid white foods (flour, rice, potatoes and sugar), packaged foods, “quick” cooking methods like microwaves, and anything artificial!
 
Eat warming foods and spices. Cold and raw foods are full of enzymes, vitamins and minerals. But during the colder winter months, it’s best to consume mostly cooked, steamed, broiled (i.e. warm) foods and liquids. No ice cream, ice cubes or leftovers from the refrigerator. Use spices that are warming as well, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, turmeric, cumin, fennel and ginger. They are also anti-inflammatory, which is crucial for all systems in the body. Adding these spices to your dishes will boost immune building properties of fruits, vegetables and grains.
 
Here are some foods to eat: 

-Apples, which are full of soluble and insoluble fiber and antioxidants.
-Sweet fruits like pears, mangoes, peaches, pineapple and plums.
-Pomegranate seeds and papaya to enhance digestion.
-Dark green leafy vegetables, which provide important vitamins and minerals and cleanse the digestive system,  especially when steamed, juiced, or stir-fried.
-Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, which boost the immune system and provide antioxidants and flavonoids.
-Whole, non-gluten grains, which provide fiber and nutrients.
 
We love Michael Pollan’s thoughts: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Try to eat foods that your grandmother would recognize, meaning if it has more than five ingredients, it’s probably too processed and full of junk.
 
So here’s to a healthy winter. Get out and make some snow angels and give thanks for all the amazing gifts in our everyday lives – most of all, our incredible bodies!

Jenny Nelson is a Wellness Specialist & Coach for Dr. Alejandro Junger’s Clean Program.
 

Photo credit: Luminitsa

The 411 on Probiotics

Probiotics – sometimes called “good bacteria” – help to keep a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria in your digestive tract. There are many strains that come together to allow this, but the two most prevalent are Lactobacillus, which make up the majority of the probiotics living in the small intestines, and Bifidobacterium, which is more prevalent in the large intestines (colon). They help to maintain healthy colon cells as well as promote bowel regularity.

Recently, a lovely client of mine was suffering from constipation. She did not like taking fiber and saw no use for it. I explained how important it is to get at least 35 grams of fiber a day. She looked at me like I was insane. I asked her to at least try to increase her fiber intake to help her bowel contract (peristalsis). There are two basic types of fiber: soluble (pectin, mucilage) and insoluble (cellulose, hemicellulose). The insoluble type is considered roughage, does not break down in the digestive tract and does not dissolve in water.

In addition to the fiber, I also had her increase her probiotics. Why you may ask? Well, good bacteria love to eat soluble fiber. When probiotics eat soluble fiber, they multiply enormously. They then can beat out the bad bacteria by crowding them out of the large intestines. This helps to maintain the proper balance of bacteria in the colon and strengthens the immune system as probiotics make up three-quarters of the immune system.

Around the holidays, we encounter more and more sweets. These delectable sweets not only help to cause cavities but also increase one type of yeast (Candida albicans) in our colon. This particular yeast can spread throughout the body and cause health problems if we don’t take care of the situation. Candidiasis is very common with our sugar addiction these days. Besides eliminating simple carbohydrates, sugar products, fruits, caffeine, soda, etc, I also suggest my clients increase probiotics to 50 billion twice a day on an empty stomach. This particular issue takes longer to resolve, but if you stick with it diligently, the results will come.

So what else can these good guys do?

Promote better digestion: Probiotics support production of proteases (protein-digesting enzymes) and lipases (fat-digesting enzymes).

Create essential vitamins: In the gastroinstestinal (GI) tract, probiotics manufacture several B vitamins and vitamin K.

Balance intestinal bacteria after antibiotic therapy: Antibiotics disrupt probiotic populations in the lower GI tract, potentially causing unpleasant side effects during and after antbiotic therapy. Studies show that the large intestinal ecosystem returns to its prebiotic balance more quickly following antibiotic therapy when probiotics are administered.

Competitively inhibit “bad bugs”: Good bacteria compete with bad ones for fuel and space, making it difficult for harmful bacteria to gain presence in the GI tract. Some probiotics produce natural antibiotic substances (like acidophilin, in the case of L. acidophilus DDS-1) that directly attack harmful bacteria. Today’s growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria makes the need for alternatives all the more urgent.

Balance immune response: Probiotics impact the immune system, stimulating the production of immunoglobulins (antibodies) and cytokines (chemicals made by the body that modulate inflammation) that promote greater resistance to infection and inflammatory disorders of the GI tract such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Affect pathogenic gene expression: Just like you and me, harmful bacteria have genes that control their function. Probiotics appear to have the capacity to affect the expression of those genes in ways that reduce pathogens’ virulence.

A good probiotic is vital for our well-being. Find a good probiotic, preferably with an enteric coat so it opens in the intestines. Although L. acidophilus is more pronounced in the small intestines and L. bifidophilus in the large intestines, a wide variety is key.