Pangaea Clinic of Naturopathic Medicine

Things have been very busy in the clinic, and as such our newsletter hasn’t been able to keep pace. With the catch-up game from a vacation being completed, I thought a quick synopsis of interesting medical news that has a direct impact on your health from a naturopathic medicine standpoint would be useful. Naturopathic medicine stipulates that both nutrition and detoxification are paramount, and you’ll see that that statement is being shown even today to be true. Here are five interesting reports:

Asthma rate may be associated with indoor chlorinated swimming pools: The July issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has published statistical data that shows that the incidence of asthma increases with the number of indoor swimming pools. They found that both asthma and wheezing rose by about 2-4% per additional indoor chlorinated swimming pool per 100,000 people. The major flaw in this study is of course that a city that has increased numbers of indoor pools probably has an increased population, leading to a whole host of other factors that might contribute to asthma (lack of exercise due to more time commuting in cars, increased environmental pollution, city lifestyle, etc). Nonetheless chlorine from swimming pools can form a host of toxic chlorine-nitrogen compounds that concentrate above the water, where swimmers focus their breathing. These compounds are known to irritate and damage the lungs. If you are a swimmer, increasing the amounts of the toxin neutralizer glutathione may help to protect the lungs. This is done using oral N-acetyl cysteine, and by the ozone therapy treatment of the blood.

Alzheimer’s disease is linked to pre-diabetic and diabetic conditions: More specifically, one study showed a roughly 70% increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease for people who have a pre-diabetic condition. Similar data presented at the 10th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders showed that restoring tight control of sugar levels lessened this risk. Conventional medicine recognizes pre-diabetes as a condition where the fasting blood sugar is borderline high, but not in the diabetic range. From a naturopathic standpoint, I test patients for their fasting insulin level and their sugar level 1-2 hours after a meal to check for pre-diabetes, in order to be more sensitive and to focus on optimal health in stead of disease. Interestingly, most of my patients know that I focus on heavy metal chelation in order to prevent Alzheimer’s. This increased risk with elevated blood sugars was only present for Alzheimer’s patients who didn’t have the common genetic problem of APOE4 – this genetic problem doesn’t allow Alzheimer’s patients to bind and excrete heavy metals, including aluminum. For my patient’s who have pre-diabetes, (borderline high sugars and high fasting insulin), the treatment of choice is exercise, weight loss, and treatments to increase oxidation. The treatments that increase oxidation improve the efficiency at which the cells use sugar, thereby increasing sensitivity and decreasing the blood sugar levels, long term and without drugs. Thus for patients being treated for their diabetes and pre-diabetes, the increased risk of Alzheimer’s should go down once the sugar is consistently under control, and we probably won’t have to look at metals.

Exercise even starting at age 40 can cut heart and artery disease by 55%: This study published in Heart seems to confirm common sense – that its never too late to start a healthy lifestyle. The study also showed the opposite, that if someone 40 years of age didn’t make an effort to increase their physical activity, heart disease risk rose by 44%. Exercise is one of the best ways to increase oxidation and oxidative capacity within the body. At high intensity, up to 5% of the oxygen inhaled goes into oxidation generating species such as hydrogen peroxide or superoxide anion. These are the same oxygen species we increase in the clinic when we use intravenous hydrogen peroxide and ultraviolet/ozone therapy for heart and artery disease. In patients who agree to preventative assessment of their risk for heart and artery disease, we like to check for plaque build-up in the arteries with an EBT (electron beam tomography), which gives a quantitative picture of plaque in the heart arteries. In patients who can’t make the trip to Seattle for the scan, a profile of tests called the Comprehensive Cardiovascular Profile gives far more information about heart and artery disease risk than the standard cholesterol panel done. It checks for independent risk factors such as low magnesium, high ferritin, and high insulin, amongst a panel of other tests (costs $500 USD).

Exercise also can almost double the disease free survival time of patients treated for advanced colon cancers: Another one that promotes the benefits of regular exercise. This report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, August edition, reported on two separate studies, with a total of over 1200 patients. It showed that people who had exercised and been more active had a lower recurrence rate. One of the studies even showed that females who increased their activity rate after diagnosis had roughly 50% of the recurrence risk compared to those who did not. Similar studies have shown the same benefits for breast cancer, and for prostate cancer. Once again, increasing the rate and consumption of oxygen and thus increasing the oxidation generating species has a protective effect on another major disease. My extension of the study when thinking about the mechanisms involved confirm the use of ozone therapy along with exercise to treat patients who previously were diagnosed and treated for cancer. It is already known that ozone therapy has specific effects on the immune system, including increasing the tumor fighting capacity of the immune system through elevation of certain chemicals in the blood.

Vitamin D may help to prevent colon cancer (amongst others) – IF the dose is right: Recently the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) seemed to “debunk” the report that vitamin D could help to prevent colon cancer. The WHI study showed that supplementation of vitamin D at a dose of 400-600 IU a day did not have any protective effect on the development of colon cancer. However, the dose becomes all important as most of the time 400-600 IU is way too low. Last December in the American Journal of Public Health a review of studies on vitamin D and cancer was done. For colon cancer in particular, 20 out of 30 showed that supplementation could reduce colon cancer incidence. Importantly, the blood level had to be maintained at or above 30 ng/ml (when we test our patients, we strive for a level of 40 ng/ml). To achieve this level in most people, supplementation of at least 1000 IU a day had to be used (double the WHI study!). Two of the colon cancer studies showed that a person with less than 30 ng/ml had roughly twice the risk of someone with higher than that level! Vitamin D really shouldn’t be called a vitamin, as it has many hormonal effects, including making cells differentiate (an undifferentiated cell is more likely to have uncontrolled growth). I’ve found that vitamin D is extremely useful in auto-immune diseases, including vasculitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. The autoimmune diseases can often be treated effectively by identifying and eliminating food sensitivities, restoring proper gut flora, and giving treatments that rebalance the immune system.