Fitness, not fatness, predicts how long you live

We’ve long been told if we want to be healthier and live longer we need to drop the pounds, but turns out being fit is the best predictor for longevity, even if you’re overweight.

A team of researchers examined a collection of studies that together looked at thousands of people for as long as 16 years.

They divided study subjects into three groups: normal weight, overweight, and obese. They then divided them into fit and unfit groups based on endurance tests, typically running on a treadmill.

Their analysis showed that the subjects’ performance in the endurance tests determined their mortality risk in the coming years, not their weight. In fact, the unfit people had twice the risk of dying as the fit people, regardless of their weight. Overweight and obese people who were fit had the same mortality risks as fit participants who were normal weight.

In a nutshell  A thin unfit person is twice as likely to die as an obese fit person. This is great news to those who have struggled much of their lives, unsuccessfully, to lose weight. As long as they keep exercising, they can expect to live a longer, healthier life.

A big downside to the study was that the majority of subjects were men, so we can’t say for sure how the results apply to women. Also, it would be interesting to look at a study like this in relation to diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and other chronic health risks. The researchers only looked at length of life and not occurrence of disease.

So what does being fit look like?

Fortunately, enjoying these benefits of being fit does not require you to be a warrior at the gym or at Crossfit. In fact, in functional medicine we know that over exercising (which varies from person to person) is a great way to tax your health.

Most of the “fit” study participants were evaluated for an average of eight to 12 minutes on a treadmill. This falls in line with federal guidelines that suggest as little as two and a half hours of exercise a week, which can be done in increments as short as 10 minutes at a time, qualify you as fit.

Ways to meet those weekly goals can include parking far enough away from your destination that you have to walk 10 minutes to reach it, using a standing or stationary bike desk at work, and taking regular brisk walks.

Exercise is about much more than living longer

The promise of a longer life does not actually provide much motivation for many people, especially those who are younger. Instead, it’s important to look at other benefits of regular exercise.

Regular walking and other exercise have been shown to improve brain function, ward off depression  and boost self-esteem  and even curb cravings and addiction.

FDA sued over gluten in medications; protect yourself

A man with celiac disease is suing the FDA, demanding they take action on the undisclosed use of wheat in an estimated 150 different prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications.

Although about 1 percent of the population suffers from celiac disease, vastly more have gluten sensitivity and must also abstain from eating wheat to avoid a variety of health conditions that typically involve inflammation, such as joint pain, brain-based disorders, skin problems, gut problems, and more.

The man sued the FDA after they failed to respond to a petition he filed after developing gluten reactions to a generic drug he had been taking.

Manufacturers do not disclose the use of wheat in their prescription and OTC drugs, making it a crapshoot for those with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity who must take them. The man filing the lawsuit had to call the manufacturer to inquire about the use of gluten in that specific batch of drugs. (Filler ingredients are changed regularly.)

Although it’s unclear how many drugs contain gluten — a serious problem when it’s that difficult to ascertain — a university pharmacist has so far catalogued 150 drugs that don't contain gluten  Unfortunately, however, even these drugs are questionable as there is no oversight regarding cross-contamination with gluten. In other words, if the drugs are made on equipment or in an area contaminated with gluten, then they are no longer gluten-free. Many drugs also contain corn  potato, or soy, ingredients that may cross-react with gluten, causing symptoms.

It’s good to know which drugs contain gluten, especially since some autoimmune diseases are linked in the science with gluten. If you take a medication regularly to help manage your autoimmune condition (such as insulin), it’s worth calling the manufacturer to ensure it is gluten-free. Gluten is linked to 55 diseases so far, the majority of them autoimmune and many of them neurological.

Gluten also in many household products

Medications aren’t the only thing not required to list gluten as an ingredient. Some body products and household items also contain hidden gluten.

Manufacturers often use wheat in fillers, lubricants or absorbents in various body products. While gluten is not absorbed through the skin, it is possible to transfer traces from your hands or face to your mouth, where it can be swallowed and cause symptoms.

Examples of products that may contain hidden gluten include cosmetics and lip balm; lotions and sunscreens; stickers, stamps, and envelope glue; toothpaste; soaps; play dough; pet food; and laundry detergent.

How to protect yourself from hidden gluten

Unfortunately, your doctor or pharmacist may not know whether a drug or product contains gluten. It may be up to you to hunt down which are safe. The list of gluten-free drugs compiled by the university pharmacist is helpful.

Fortunately, when it comes to body and household products, many people have already done the research and reported their results online  Finding out whether a product is safe may be just a click away so you don’t have to go through the hassle of tracking down the right person in the company.

In response to consumer demand, an increasing number of companies are making and marketing gluten-free body products so just a quick glance at the label can tell you if it’s safe.

Also, for parents of children with a gluten-sensitivity, finding safe play dough can be a hassle; the name-brand stuff is wheat-based and we know it’s difficult for kids to keep their hands out of their mouths. Fortunately, some gluten-free brands of play dough are now available online, as well as plenty of very easy recipes to make your own.

Although it takes a little bit of extra effort to use medications and other products that are gluten-free, it’s worth the peace of mind to avoid provoking inflammatory reactions and symptoms.

Why diets don't work and what you can do about it

After studying dieting for 20 years, a researcher concluded diets simply don’t work, a fact countless Americans have spent 20-plus years of their own lives validating.

Why? Dieting is constructed around faulty principles that defy human biology and psychology. The “calories in versus calories out” model fails to account for hormonal shifts during weight loss, the psychological consequences of deprivation, and the futility of willpower when it comes to eating.

In a nutshell, the human body has mechanisms in place designed to compensate for starvation.

Three things that cause diets to fail

The researcher found three key reasons why diets fail:

• The deprivation of dieting wires your brain to notice food more and to make food appear more appetizing, tempting, and harder to resist.
• Weight loss through calorie restriction causes hormonal shifts that decrease satiety hormones and increase hunger hormones. As a result, you feel less full on the same amount of food than you used to.
• Calorie restriction slows down your metabolism so that you become more efficient at storing fat and less efficient at burning it. This is why people actually become heavier after each diet.

In essence, dieting is starving, and your body responds to a diet just as it would to a famine — with these responses that have kept humans alive throughout the ages.

What’s worse, the dieting industry has spun this built-in failure into a $61 billion dollar industry that preys on insecurities and hopes while ignoring some basic tenets of human function.

What about willpower?

When it comes to dieting, willpower is a poor tool. For example, if you use willpower to avoid Facebook during a two-hour work project and succeed except for during the last 10 minutes, that last-minute lapse does not undo your previous success. However, if you sit in front of a platter of donuts during a two-hour meeting and resist them except during the last 10 minutes, that last-minute lapse has undone your previous success.

The study found that the slightest distractions can trigger overeating in those who are dieting. It also concluded that the paltry 5 percent who do succeed at maintaining their weight loss devote their lives to their weight, living like a starving person.

So does this mean I can never lose weight?

Thankfully, no. The key is to eat consciously with a focus on health and nutrition, not to starve your body and trigger binges and rebounds. Many people who follow a functional medicine approach to health find weight loss is just one of the many benefits they experience.

For instance, your excess weight could be the result of low thyroid function, food intolerances, blood sugar imbalances, sleep deprivation, and even over exercising. Excess weight is typically a symptom of a deeper problem and addressing the underlying cause can result in gradual, healthy, and hunger-free weight loss. And not everyone is meant to be rail thin — you may need to adjust your expectations to honor your body’s set point and not society’s.

Also, many people have dug themselves into a deep hole of self-loathing because of their many dieting failures. This causes chronic and sometimes severe stress that can impact your biology and serve as another barrier to weight loss. It’s important to honor your physiology and rewire your belief systems around eating and your body to facilitate more positivity and relaxation.

Ask my office for more advice on the proper care and feeding of your body.

What HbA1c and a glucometer can tell you about disease risk

High blood sugar is ground zero for chronic disease: diabetes (obviously), heart disease, dementia, autoimmune disease, chronic pain, and hormone imbalances. Testing your HbA1c on a blood panel can tell you whether high blood sugar is setting you up for major health problems.

High blood sugar can:

• Trigger chronic inflammation, thus setting the stage for autoimmune disease
• Radically imbalance hormones, causing high testosterone in women, high estrogen in men, PCOS, PMS, hormone deficiency, and imbalances in hormones that regulate satiety so that you’re always hungry
• Damage the walls of blood vessels
• Damage brain tissue and accelerate brain aging, increasing the risk for dementia (some researchers call Alzheimer’s type 3 diabetes)

High blood sugar is also associated with eye disease, kidney disease, nerve damage, and stroke.

Getting a handle on your blood sugar can help you better manage or prevent these radical health imbalances. The HbA1c shows you your average blood sugar levels over the last three months and is a simple way to look at the influence of blood sugar on your health.

HbA1c stands for glycated hemoglobin, which refers to a protein in red blood cells that has bonded with glucose. The higher your HbA1c the higher your blood sugar and the greater your risk for disease.

Using standard lab ranges, an HbA1c less than 5.7 is normal; 5.7%–6.4% indicates pre-diabetes; and if it is 6.5 or higher this indicates diabetes.

However, in functional medicine, we shoot for optimal health and like to see an HbA1c in the range of 4.6%–5.3%. One study shows heart disease risk rises considerably when HbA1c is over 5%  and another shows risk is higher when it’s over 4.6%.

Although HbA1c is said to look at your average blood sugar levels over the last three months, not everyone’s blood adheres to a strict schedule  In fact, people with pre-diabetes or diabetes have a higher turnover of blood cells, while those with normal blood sugar have longer lasting red blood cells, so that an HbA1c can reflect the last 5 months.

It’s important to look at HbA1c along with a couple of other blood sugar markers. If you’re working to manage your blood sugar, a glucometer is very useful to measure blood sugar throughout the day.

Checking fasting blood sugar first thing in the morning before you eat or drink (except water) is a popular indicator of blood sugar health, with optimal ranges being in the low 80s. A fasting blood sugar of 100 mg/dL or higher indicates pre-diabetes in functional medicine (126 mg/dL is considered diabetes).

However, people on very low-carb diets or on ketogenic diets can also have fasting blood sugar around 100. If you’re fasting blood sugar is around 100 but your HbA1c and post-prandial (below) blood sugars are healthy, then you know this mechanism is at work.

It’s highly useful to look at your blood sugar two hours after meals. This is called post-prandial blood sugar. Optimal blood sugar two hours after a meal should be under 100 to 120 mg/dL.

Lowering blood sugar levels requires eliminating sugar and sweets, minimizing carbohydrate intake (especially processed carbs such as pasta and bread), eating plenty of fiber, avoiding inflammatory foods, and exercising daily. Certain herbs and nutrients can also help lower your blood sugar. Ask my office for advice.

Why are girls starting puberty so early these days?

In the 1800s the average girl didn’t hit puberty until she was 15. Today the average age of puberty is 12, while the numbers of children showing signs of puberty before age 10 is at all time high and rising. We have seen the age at which children, primarily girls, hit puberty drop in just the last generation.

The numbers are startling. Breast development and other signs or puberty are starting by age 7 in 10 percent of white girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls, and 23 percent of black girls.

Early puberty not only may cause emotional pressures, but also may raise the risk of breast and ovarian cancer due to longer exposure to estrogen. Studies link early puberty with increased behavioral and mood disorders, low self-esteem, early sexuality, and increased risk of health disorders.

Why are girls going through puberty so early?

The research points to the abundance of estrogen-like chemicals in our environment and obesity as factors driving early puberty.

We live in an environment saturated with synthetic chemicals. They are in our air, water, food, household products and body products. Only a handful of tens of thousands of chemicals have been studied; we only learn about their effects after the fact. Researchers have drawn many links between environmental chemicals and reproductive hormones.

For instance, in 1973 cattle in Michigan were accidentally fed grain contaminated with flame retardant, which mimics estrogen. The daughters born to pregnant women who consumed meat and dairy from these cattle started puberty significantly earlier than their peers.

Chemicals that mimic estrogen include pesticides, flame retardants, BPA (in tin cans, baby bottles, toys, and other food packaging), phthalates (in cosmetic products, PVC, plastics, food packaging, and numerous products), and parabens (in shampoos and cosmetic products). Phthalates have also been linked with abnormal hormone development in boys, and prenatal exposure to these chemicals has also been identified as a risk factor.

One study showed 90 percent of infants tested showed BPA in their cord blood, meaning this is a problem that can start before a child is even born.

These chemicals are tied not only to early puberty, but also to multiple health disorders, including reproductive cancers.

Although we can’t totally escape these chemicals, it’s important to restrict their use as much as possible in your home and in your diet (i.e., don’t use cleaning or body products with synthetic chemicals and avoid drinking or eating from plastic containers).

Obesity and early puberty

Studies also link early puberty with obesity. Overeating and a diet packed with sugar and processed carbohydrates tell the brain conditions are safe to reproduce. Excess body fat also produces estrogen. Being overweight also typically causes higher insulin levels, which stimulates the production of sex hormones.

A diet high in sugars and processed carbohydrates can raise the risk of early puberty through chronic insulin surges, especially in ethnic populations more prone to diabetes and obesity.

Estrogens in foods and early puberty

It’s not just about obesity but also estrogenic chemicals in foods. For instance, one study showed infants fed soy formula had estrogen levels 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than normal (soy is a known estrogen mimicker). Also, sex hormones are given to beef and dairy cattle, and the antibiotics given to animals may be a factor.

Other factors linked with early puberty

Studies also show puberty begins earlier in populations who live further from the equator and more prone to vitamin D deficiency.

A whole foods diet that restricts sugar and limiting exposure to chemicals can help prevent early puberty.

Hashimoto's not improving? Here are 10 reasons why

For some, managing autoimmune Hashimoto’s is as easy as going gluten-free. For others, it requires trial and error to find the triggers. And for those with severe or multiple autoimmune disorders, symptom management requires a conscious, lifelong approach to diet and lifestyle.

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks and destroys the thyroid gland. Managing Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses immune function.

If you are not getting the results you want, see if any of the factors is getting in the way:

1. Not caring about your thyroid care. If you leave your thyroid care to the standard health care model, you may never see optimal results. The conventional model is based on lowering TSH into lab ranges with T4 medication. The Hashimoto’s patient needs to invest in self-education for the best results. The guidance of an experienced practitioner may still be necessary, but in functional medicine, patient participation is integral to success.

2. Skipping meals. When blood sugar drops too low it triggers autoimmune flare-ups. Symptoms of low blood sugar include shakiness, blurred vision, irritability, being spaced out, fatigue, and loss of function. If you feel more energetic after eating it means your blood sugar was too low. Skipping meals promotes Hashimoto’s flare-ups.

3. Ignoring blood sugar stability. The blood sugar and insulin surges from eating sweets and starchy foods trigger autoimmune flare-ups. Symptoms include fatigue, energy crashes, sugar cravings after eating, insomnia, and waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. If you are not keeping your blood sugar stable it will be difficult to manage Hashimoto’s.

4. Ignoring brain health. Hashimoto’s is hard on the brain, causing symptoms that overlap with Hashimoto’s, such as brain fog, depression, and memory loss, and accelerating brain degeneration. It’s vital to support your brain health as part of your Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism plan.

5. Not truly gluten-free. Being gluten-free is like being pregnant. You either are or you aren’t. Gluten is a significant trigger for most people with Hashimoto’s. If you are cheating on your gluten-free diet, not being careful, or eating foods that cross-react with gluten  you may be sabotaging your recovery process.

6. Eating foods that cross react with gluten. If you eat foods that cross react with gluten, then you may not have success managing your Hashimoto’s. Gluten cross-reactive foods are structurally similar to gluten and can trigger reactions. The most common cross-reactive foods are milk (casein), followed by rice, corn, sesame, and gluten-free oats.

7. Too much stress. Stress is a potent inflammatory trigger, as many have learned through experience. Bad relationships, an unhealthy work environment, not enough down time, and even a persistent negative attitude are chronic stressors. It’s important to mitigate stressors as much as possible and schedule regular time off.

8. Not looking past thyroid meds. Many patients are looking for the perfect thyroid medication  Although finding the right med can make a huge difference, meds alone don’t always go the distance. Hashimoto’s is a complex autoimmune disorder that requires nutritional therapy and lifestyle approaches. If you’re still eating foods that flare your immune system, meds can’t do their job.

9. You are taking supplements that stimulate your immune system. Some supplements can make your Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism worse or better, depending on your immune system. Echinacea, green tea, acai, Astragalus, licorice, and others can either help or aggravate autoimmunity, depending on whether you have TH-1 or TH-2 dominance. It’s very important to be aware of this. Please refer to Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms? for more information.

10. You react to fillers in your thyroid meds. Many thyroid meds and supplements contain fillers you may react to. Some capsules can contain gluten, and some whole-food supplements may contain gluten or be contaminated with gluten. You need to make sure your thyroid hormones are gluten-free and free of corn starch if you react to corn. Investigate the filler ingredients in your medication or supplements in case they are causing a reaction.

Moody and need meds or just a healthy, normal female?

Do you feel you need anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications, or has your doctor said you do? Although true depression or anxiety disorders need management, many women are misled into believing they need treatment for what is actually normal behavior. Women are designed to be sensitive to their environments, emotionally in tune with their children and loved ones, and intuitive — traits that ensure survival. Women are also wired to express emotions and to pick up on the emotions of others.

Unfortunately, emotionality is not socially acceptable despite being a sign of good health in women. What is not so healthy is the constant pressure to apologize for and restrain emotionality for fear of being regarded as weak or hysterical.

Pharmaceutical companies, astute in the psychology of selling, spin this into sales targeted at women. In ads for antidepressants  93 percent feature a woman, usually a lonely single woman or stressed-out single mom. One in four American women take an antidepressant compared to one in seven men.

Women are more likely than men to express negative feelings through sadness and worry, which can be interpreted as a psychiatric disorder requiring medication. Men are more prone to express negative feelings as anger or through substance abuse, which are not as easy to address pharmaceutically.

Furthermore, when we paint depression and anxiety as women’s problems, men truly suffering from these problems are more likely to go overlooked. Women are almost twice as likely than men to receive a diagnosis of depression or anxiety.

Is it a lifestyle issue or a true disorder?

Many women turn to prescription drugs to help them manage feeling that are actually natural responses to unnatural stressors: chronic sleep deprivation, too little time outdoors, unhealthy diets, social isolation, over exposure to toxins and electric light, and over packed schedules. The human animal simply wasn’t designed to live optimally in today’s highly artificial, stressed-out environment.

Again, this is not meant to dismiss or minimize genuine depressive or anxiety disorders. But is your state of mind a reasonable response to your situation or a mental disorder? For instance, crying  which is seen as a sign of weakness, is actually a healthy way for many women to express sadness, frustration, fear, or other strong emotions. Women who take SSRI antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) find it’s difficult to cry. They also experience more apathy and indifference.

Natural approaches to sadness and worry

Unfortunately, we can’t wave a magic wand and remove the stressors from life. However, it’s helpful and important to prioritize basic biological needs: plenty of sleep, good nutrition, healthy socialization, physical activity, and time outdoors.

Also, many natural compounds can address brain chemical imbalances to help boost your mental well being and function. Adrenal adaptogens are herbs that help buffer the effects of stress on your body and brain. Dietary strategies that balance blood sugar and tame inflammation can also result in profound improvements in mood.

It’s also important, though, to know that what you’re experiencing may just be a part of being that finely tuned emotional instrument known as a woman.