The Health of Your Gut Helps Determine Your Overall Health

Noted UK Professor Jeremy Nicholson has come to the conclusion " ... almost every sort of disease has a gut bug."

Dr. Nicholson’s focus has been on deciphering the roles of different pro-biotic strains, of which there are many, and their relationship to how they signal areas outside the gut. It's been discovered that our friendly intestinal bacteria go beyond even their important role of digestion.

If spread out on a flat surface the inner linings of our GI tract would cover a tennis court. The friendly bacteria that colonize this vast inner surface produce the acids necessary to breakdown and assimilate nutrients into our blood. These acids transport our food's nutrients through the gut linings so that our cells can recognize and utilize them correctly.

Most digestion and absorption takes place in the small intestine and is regulated by pancreatic enzymes (digestive) and bile. The pancreas aids in digestion by releasing proteolytic enzymes, which help break down proteins into amino acids. Natural digestive enzymes are found in raw fruits and vegetables. Processed foods are usually devoid of digestive enzymes. Over consumption of these processed foods can lead to digestive enzyme deficiencies. This may then lead to malabsorption and or intestinal permeability syndrome (bloating, gas, indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, and intestinal inflammation). To ensure proper digestion, absorption and elimination, I recommend taking pancreatic enzymes with each meal.

Foods nor supplements  get absorbed sufficiently without substantial healthy intestinal flora. Healthy gut flora actually creates Vitamins K2 and the B vitamins daily to maintain proper levels of those nutrients. Healthy gut flora also signal appropriate reactions to pollutants and pathogens that trigger immune system activity. This activity includes T-cell actions. Many knowledgeable scientists have ascertained that approximately eighty percent of our immune system depends on the GI tract's friendly bacteria.

Probiotics

The human intestines are inhabited by billions of beneficial bacteria. These bacteria, which are mostly located in the colon, aid in digestion by fermenting substances that were not digested in the small intestine and by breaking down any remaining nutrients. A healthy intestinal tract contains some 2-3 lb. of bacteria and other microorganisms, such as yeast, that normally don’t cause ay health problems. However, when the intestinal tract is repetitively exposed to toxic substances (antibiotics, steroids, NSAIDs, etc.), these microorganisms begin to proliferate and create an imbalance in the bowel flora. Harmful organisms like yeast and some normally dormant bacteria, begin to overtake the good bacteria. This is known as intestinal dysbiosis.

IBS and small-intestinal bacterial overgrowth may share similar symptoms. One study showed that 78% IBS participants had small-intestinal bacterial overgrowth. To aid in digestion and prevent intestinal dysbiosis, patients with IBS should take probiotics (Lactobacillus and Biidobacterium) on a daily basis.

For a more thorough explanation of gut health and “Leaky Gut” please visit my website http://drrodgermurphree.com/intestinal-permeability/

Do You Know What Your Drug Does?

Most of the material you’re about to read comes right out of the Physicians Desk Reference, the bible for prescription drugs. You’re usually given this information when you purchase your prescription drug.

Do you know anyone who actually reads his or her prescription inserts? Unfortunately, due to the never-ending promotion of “a drug for every ailment” campaign, we’ve become jaded to the potential side effects of various prescription medications. The commercials sound something like this; “Do you suffer from wanting to spend time alone? If so, you may be suffering from ‘I’m too shy’ disease. Ask your doctor about the latest psychedelic pill for shyness disorder.” Then, in happy, positive, inflected, mind-numbing fashion comes, “In clinical trials, this drug had the following minor side effects: headaches, diarrhea, nausea, cough, bladder infections, depression, suicidal thoughts, colitis, fever blisters, weakened immune system, and hair loss.”

Drugs can and do save lives. However, relying solely on drug therapy for symptom management can be risky, even deadly. Most drugs don’t cure anything. They merely mask the symptoms. This isn’t all bad and we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. However, the public at large is being lulled into a false belief that drugs, particularly cardio drugs, are a safe (and only) option to managing high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Today’s standard, AMA-approved medicine is rooted in treating symptoms, rather than causes. Its dependence on drugs and surgery is ruinously expensive to patients, insurance companies, and society as a whole.”

—Derrick Lonsdale, MD, “Why I Left Orthodox Medicine

Calcium Channel Blockers

Calcium channel blockers include the drugs Diltiazem (Cardizem CD, Cardizem SR, Dilacor XR), Nifedipine (Procardia XL), and Verapamil (Calan, Calan SR, Isoptin, Isoptin SR, Verelan).

Calcium channel blockers slow the rate at which calcium passes to the contractile fibers of heart muscle and into the vessel walls, a sequence that relaxes the vessels. Relaxed vessels allow the blood to flow more easily, thereby reducing blood pressure. Calcium channel blockers are used to treat chest pain (angina), high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and irregular heart beats (arrythmias).

In 1995, the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration to add a warning to the labeling of all calcium channel blockers. This action was in light of observational studies, which revealed that calcium channel blockers increase the risk of heart attack and death.¹

Calcium channel blockers were put on the market without proper testing, according to Dr. Kurt Ferver, Wake Forest School of Medicine. For those who take them, there is not only an increase in strokes, but a five-fold increase in the risk of heart attacks.²

The National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute has warned doctors not to use short-acting Procardia, if at all. The warning comes from 16 studies involving over 8,000 patients. The risk of dying is 1.06 times greater than average when a dose of 30 to 50 milligrams a day is used. However, the risk jumps to 3.0, or three times the average, when 80 milligrams a day is recommended. The maximum dose listed for Procardia is 180 mg a day.

Death is a pretty scary side effect

Why in the world are doctors still using calcium channel blockers for individuals with moderately elevated high blood pressure? Especially when there are safer and more effective drugs to choose from.

One study shows that those taking a calcium channel blocker are 60% more likely to have a heart attack than those taking a diuretic or beta blocker.³

Common Side Effects associated with calcium channel blockers are fatigue, flushing, swelling of the abdomen, ankles, or feet, and heartburn. Less common side effects are changes in heart rate, tachycardia or bradycardia (slow heart rate), shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing, dizziness, numbness in hands and feet, gastrointestinal bleeding, chest pains, jaundice, and fainting.⁵

Calcium channel blockers may increase the risk of developing breast cancer.⁶ Reports have demonstrated an increased risk of cancer among users of Verapamil, but it is too early to conclude that calcium channel blockers are associated with cancer.⁷

Beta Blockers

Beta blockers “block” the effects of adrenaline (and norepinephrine) on a cell’s beta-receptors. This slows the nerve impulses that stimulate the heart. Therefore, the heart does not work as hard. Beta blockers are generally prescribed to treat high blood pressure (hypertension), congestive heart failure (CHF), abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias), and chest pain (angina). Beta blockers are sometimes used in heart attack patients to prevent future attacks. Commonly prescribed beta blockers include: Atenolol (Tenoretic, Tenormin), Metoprolol (Lopressor, Toprol XL), Nadolol (Corgard), and Propranolol (Inderal).

Beta blockers have several potential side effects, including congestive heart failure, shortness of breath, heart block, fatigue, lethargy, drowsiness, depression, insomnia, headaches, dizziness, tingling in the hands and feet, wheezing, bronchospasm, increased severity of asthma or chronic pulmonary obstructive disease, decreased sex drive, muscle fatigue, reduced HDL (good cholesterol), and increased LDL and triglycerides.⁸

I’m going to guess that if you knew a drug could cause heart death (congestive heart failure), you wouldn’t take it.

I’d surely say, “No thanks doc. I think I’ll pass on that drug.”

Does every female in America suffer from a beta blocker deficiency? There are periods in my practice where every new female patient is on a beta blocker.

Beta blockers must be the drug du jour since anyone with slight mitral valve prolapse, high blood pressure, or migraine headaches is placed on these drugs. Beta blockers can be very valuable for a minority of patients.

However, the majority of patients who take beta blockers don’t need them and suffer all sorts of health-robbing side effects. Depression, poor sleep (depletes the natural sleep hormone melatonin) severe fatigue, and breathing problems (bronchitis, Asthma, etc.) are common side effects in those taking beta blockers. Patients taking these medications often report that they just don’t have any energy.

I remember a recent patient who was on at least three medications to control her beta blocker side effects. She was taking Lexapro, an antidepressant, Ambien to help her sleep, and was using a bronchial inhaler for asthma. Once she discontinued her medications with the help of her family doctor and substituted nutritional supplements I recommended, her mitral valve prolapse and blood pressure returned to normal. The fatigue, depression, and breathing problems are slowly disappearing now that she is off her beta-blocking medication.  There are a number of safe and effective natural approaches to reverse mitral valve prolapse. I share these can’t miss protocols in chapter 9 of my book Heart Disease What Your Doctor Won't Tell You.

Here's one of the most important health tips I could ever share-research your medications, be an informed consumer!

Prevention-A Heck of a Bargain

In 2010 Americans spent over $2 trillion dollars, or 17% of the gross national product on medical care- the majority of which went to treat chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, both of which are preventable and certainly reversible.

Rather than focusing on prevention, our "health-care system" is primarily a disease-care system.

The unspoken message has generally been to ignore prevention, wait until it’s broken, and then seek out the “magic bullet,” or latest, greatest, usually most expensive, drug to cover up the symptom(s). Or if that doesn’t work, simply cut it out.

This expensive approach, one that is threatening the welfare of a growing number of American households, will cause some 54 million Americans to go without health insurance this year alone.

Spending money on expensive medical procedures is often worthless as well as foolish.

Take for example the data provided by the American Heart Association showing that 1.3 million coronary angioplasty procedures were performed in 2006 at an average cost of $48,399 each. And in the same year 448,000 coronary bypass operations were performed at a cost of $99,743 each.

Americans spent more than $100 billion in 2006 for these two procedures alone.

Yet a randomized controlled trial published in April 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that angioplasties and stent-therapy don’t prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients (i.e., in 95% of those who receive them).

Coronary bypass surgery prolongs life in less than 3% of patients who receive it. In spite of the studies, and there are several which show that bypass and stent therapy are ineffective, physicians, insurance companies, and the public at large, all continue to robustly support these expensive and dangerous procedures.

When it comes to our health we should heed the words of the great philosopher, Virgil, who said, “The greatest wealth is health.”

Save Money and Live Longer With Healthy Habits

If you really want to save some money, invest in prevention- a healthy diet, exercise, proven nutritional therapies, and proactive health habits.

Research continues to show that those who eat antioxidant-rich foods reap health-enhancing, disease preventing benefits. Antioxidants are intimately involved in the prevention of cellular damage -- the common pathway for cancer, aging, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, and a number of other diseases.

Radicals and Disease

Our bodies are made up of cells. Our cells are composed of molecules. Molecules are nothing more than positive and negative charged atoms-protons and electrons.

Oxidation is a chemical reaction at the molecular level that changes the body’s protons and electrons, which in turn produces something called free radicals.

Free radicals are created through internal external sources. External sources include stress, alcoholic beverages, unhealthy foods, cigarette smoke, toxins, and pollutants.

Free radicals are atoms or groups of atoms with an odd (unpaired) number of electrons and can be formed when oxygen interacts with certain molecules. Once formed these highly reactive radicals can start a chain reaction, like falling dominoes. Their chief danger comes from the damage they create when they react with important cellular components. Free radicals damage our cells and cause numerous disease processes and accelerated aging. Fortunately, antioxidants can prevent this. They stop free radicals from initiating disease reactions in our bodies.

Evidence continues to show that most of the degenerative diseases that afflict humanity have their origin in deleterious free radical reactions. These diseases include atherosclerosis, cancer, inflammatory joint disease, asthma, diabetes, senile dementia, premature ageing, and degenerative eye disease. 

If you want to prevent of these diseases, rather than treating their symptoms with expensive medical therapies, antioxidants are the way to go.

Lowering Cholesterol Isn’t The Answer

Sally Fallon, the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, call high cholesterol "an invented disease, a 'problem' that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood."

Cholesterol is a potent antioxidant. Its job is to help reduce inflammation and free radical oxidative damage.

The body makes 85% of our daily cholesterol-reducing dietary intake only causes the body to make more. The more stress a person is under the more cholesterol the body produces.

If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased stress and inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to do a job: help your body to heal and repair.

Conventional medicine of course advocates the use of dangerous cholesterol lowering drugs as the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks.

This approach demonstrates the idea that conventional medicine is missing the forest for the trees.

What is actually needed is to address whatever is causing your body damage, NAMELY STRESS, which leads to inflammation and increased cholesterol. Cholesterol isn’t the villain of heart disease only a small player in the process.

Noted researcher Dr. Rosedale so rightly points out:

"If excessive damage is occurring such that it is necessary to distribute extra cholesterol through the bloodstream, it would not seem very wise to merely lower the cholesterol and forget about why it is there in the first place.

It would seem much smarter to reduce the extra need for the cholesterol -- the excessive damage that is occurring, the reason for the chronic inflammation."

I totally agree and in my book “Heart Disease What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You,” outline study after study that demonstrates the fallacy of treating high cholesterol with dangerous statin drugs.

Here’s what the drug companies don’t won’t you to know-

Using Drugs to Lower Cholesterol Is Potentially Dangerous

One meta-analysis of over 41,000 patient records found that people who take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol as much as possible may have a higher risk of cancer, while other studies have linked low cholesterol to Parkinson's disease, mood disorders, low libido, and problems with poor memory and mental clarity issues.

But The Question Is-Are Cholesterol Drugs Even Effective?

Most cholesterol lowering drugs can effectively lower your cholesterol numbers, but are they actually making you any healthier, and do they help prevent heart disease?

Have you ever heard of the statistic known as NNT, or number needed to treat?

NNT answers the question: How many people have to take a particular drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack)?

For example, if a drug had an NNT of 50 for heart attacks, then 50 people have to take the drug in order to prevent one heart attack.

According to Lipitor's own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose.

BusinessWeek did an excellent story and found the REAL numbers right on Pfizer's own newspaper ad for Lipitor.

Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:

"That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor."

What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.

The NNT, in this case, is 100. One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack.

If you want to learn the truth about reducing your risk of heart disease, heart attacks, and or strokes then get a copy of my book “Heart Disease What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You.”  I site medical studies from the Lancet, British Medical Journal, AMA, and other prestigious journals, which clearly show that using cholesterol drugs to lower cholesterol is a dangerous and ineffective approach-one that can cost you your life.

Don’t fall victim to the medical myths of heart disease get a copy of my book and help protect yourself and your loved one’s by following my clear and simple advice for reducing and reversing your risk of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke.

Learn how you can take an inexpensive over he counter supplement to lower your risk of heart attack and stroke by 41%. Find out how you can lower your blood pressure by an average of 10-20 points by simply adding 3 things to your daily diet.

Do you have mitral valve prolapse? If so read how you can reduce or eliminate your potentially dangerous drugs and control your MVP with the right combination of diet and supplements.

My Book Heart Disease What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You gives you the information you need to avoid the dangerous medical myths.

Don’t delay get my book today it may save your life.

Order online here http://drrodgermurphree.com/heart-disease-what-your-doctor-wont-tell-you/

Or -Available at Amazon.com or ask for it at your favorite bookstore.