Spry Health

Researchers reported today in the journal Science the results of an insulin study with mice. “This study provides a new explanation of why it’s good to exercise and not eat too much,” said Dr. Morris White, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Children’s Hospital in Boston who led the study.

The researchers created mice whose brains were less sensitive to insulin, the hormone that regulates glucose. The genetic engineering mimicked the effects of less insulin in the brain, as occurs when people eat less and exercise. The mice lived 18 percent longer than normal lab mice.

The mice were also more active than normal mice, and after eating, their brains had higher levels of a compound called superoxide dismutase, an antioxidant that protects cells from damage.

The researchers note that people who live to be 100 or more often have reduced insulin levels and their cells show better insulin sensitivity. People who exercise regularly live longer on average. Studies also show that animals on a strict diet live longer.

Exercise and lower weight keep your peripheral tissues sensitive to insulin and your body reacts by making less. This study suggests that the resulting lower levels of insulin are healthier for the brain and lead to an increased lifespan.

The findings of this study raise questions about how desirable it is to use insulin to treat type 2 diabetes.

Researchers have discovered that large doses of inositol can help fight anxiety without harmful side effects. Inositol is a vitamin that your body needs in order for your nervous system to function properly. Inositol can be found in vitamin supplements and lecithin. A good way to get extra inositol is to sprinkle lecithin granules on your food. Lecithin granules can be found at health food stores.

Every day you lose water through breathing, perspiration, urination and bowel movements. For your body to function properly, you must replace the lost water by consuming beverages and foods that contain water.

An average, healthy adult living in a temperate climate, needs to consume 2 liters (about 8 cups) of water or other beverages a day along with his normal diet in order to replace lost fluids.

The Institute of Medicine advises that men consume roughly 3.0 liters (about 13 cups) of beverages a day and women consume 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of beverages a day.

If you drink enough fluid so that you rarely feel thirsty and produce between one and two liters of colorless or slightly yellow urine a day, your fluid intake is probably adequate.

Situations requiring extra water

During exercise, drink an extra 1 or 2 cups of water during the first hour and 2 to 3 cups extra during each additional hour of exercise. You may need to drink another extra cup or two of water after long, intense exercise.

During long bouts of intense exercise, it’s best to use a sports drink that contains sodium, as this will help replace sodium lost in sweat and reduce the chances of developing hyponatremia, which can be life-threatening.

Hot or humid weather can make you sweat and requires additional intake of fluid. Heated indoor air tends to be dry and can cause your skin to lose moisture during wintertime. More water is required at altitudes above 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) because of increased urination and more rapid breathing.

Bladder infections and urinary tract stones increase the need for water. Fever, vomiting and diarrhea also increase the need for water and may even require oral rehydration solutions, such as Gatorade, Powerade or Ceralyte.

Women who are pregnant or breast-feeding need additional fluids to stay hydrated. The Institute of Medicine recommends that pregnant women drink 2.4 liters (about 10 cups) of fluids daily and women who breast-feed drink 3.0 liters (about 12.5 cups) of fluids daily.

When should you drink less?

Heart failure and some types of kidney, liver and adrenal diseases may impair excretion of water and thus require that you limit fluid intake.

Dr. Joel Wallach is the creator of the popular audio tape “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” in which he claims doctors die young and we should therefore ignore their advice and instead turn to veterinarians who have a much better track record of keeping their patients healthy cost effectively.

I did a Google search on “wallach dead doctors” and I found Dr. Joel Wallach’s official Dead Doctors Don’t Lie site in the #2 spot. The #1 spot was held by a site attacking Dr. Joel D. Wallach. The author, Robert Todd Carroll, who fancies himself a sensible debunker of “deceptions and dangerous delusions,” challenged many of Dr. Wallach’s claims without providing any supporting evidence. Mostly he just states “that is nonsense” without offering any proof.

Here is an example of his complaining:

…let me inform you that, according to Dr. Wallach, for the past twenty years there have been cures for arthritis, diabetes and ulcers. These cures were discovered by veterinarians, who also discovered the cause of Alzheimer’s disease years ago. Tell that to the millions of people suffering from these diseases.

It seems to me that is exactly what Dr. Wallach is doing. Is Mr. Carroll suggesting that because millions of people are suffering from these diseases, there can be no cures? That’s not very logical thinking. It seems like stuck-in-the-mud pig headed thinking to me. Ironically, Mr. Carroll teaches classes in “Logic & Critical Reasoning.”

Robert Todd Carroll Ph.D. is the author of The Skeptic’s Dictionary. What are his qualifications to evaluate Dr. Wallach’s medical competency? He is a philosophy instructor at Sacramento City College, Sacramento, California USA. He bills himself as an atheist with a passion for skepticism.

Gods are unnecessary. Do they exist? I doubt it but I don’t know…

Sorry, Professor, but you sound more like an agnostic than an atheist.

Here are some of the rare “facts” that Mr. Carroll offers:

In May 2006, a committee of physicians impaneled by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that little information exists as to whether people should take supplements. The previous March the NIH noted that research suggests that vitamins and other supplements may do more harm than good, and that antioxidants are of little use.

OK, let’s examine this evidence. In March 2006 the NIH noted that research suggests that vitamins and other supplements may do more harm than good. Then just 2 months later they announced that little information exists as to whether people should take supplements. They contradicted themselves. They sound confused. Like they don’t know what they are talking about. Not very convincing evidence.

Dr. Wallach falsely claims that there are five cultures in the world that have average life spans of between 120 and 140 years: the Tibetans in Western China; the Hunzas in Eastern Pakistan; the Russian Georgians and the Armenians, the Abkhasians, and the Azerbaijanis. He also mentions the people of the Vilcabamba in Ecuador, and those who live around Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia.

Mr. Carroll calls this a false claim, yet offers no evidence to refute it. The fact that he cannot believe it does not make it false.

However, Mr. Carroll did score a couple of good hits on Dr. Wallach. For instance, Dr. Wallach claims that while the average life span of an American is 75 years, the average life span of an American doctor is only 58 years. Mr. Carroll quotes Kevin Kenward of the American Medical Association:

Based on over 210,000 records of deceased physicians, our data indicate the average life-span of a physician is 70.8 years.”

Dr. Wallach apparently relies on anecdotal evidence to compute his statistic. He collects obituaries of local physicians as he travels from town to town. It looks like Mr. Carroll scored a bulls-eye on this one.

Last year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that American male life expectancy hit a record 75.2 years in 2004. For females it is higher, but let’s assume most doctors are male. This puts doctors life spans at 4.4 years below average. Given that doctor’s are affluent and “medical experts” and have access to the “finest healthcare system in the world,” shouldn’t they be living much longer than average? I, for one, would not seek advice on how to live longer from someone who has a shorter than average life span.

As Mr Carroll points out, Dr. Wallach calls himself a physician and says he spent 12 years in Portland, Oregon, in general practice. This certainly implies that he is an M.D., a medical doctor, but, in fact, he is not. He is an N.D., a doctor of naturopathic medicine.

Dr. Wallach also claims he did thousands of autopsies on humans while working as a veterinarian in St. Louis. Mr. Carroll raises an interesting question, “how does a veterinarian get to do human autopsies?”

Well, again, to make a long story short, over a period of some twelve years I did 17,500 autopsies on over 454 species of animals and 3,000 human beings who lived in close proximity to the zoos, and the thing I found out was this: every animal and every human being who dies of natural causes dies of a nutritional deficiency.

Mr. Carroll correctly points out that, if true, Dr. Wallach would have to have performed six autopsies a day on animals and people for 12 years while working as a veterinarian. That’s approximately five animals and one human every work day. He must have been the Quincy of the veterinary world. (Quincy was an investigative coroner on a popular American TV show a few years back.)

Well, perhaps he was. Dr. Wallach’s bio says that he was a research veterinary pathologist with The National Institute of Health in St. Louis, Missouri. As a veterinary pathologist his job would be to find out why animals died. Perhaps he also was occasionally tasked with finding out why humans living near zoos died. I suspect that while you must be a licensed medical doctor to cut open living people, the same requirement does not exist for cutting open dead people.

I visited dictionary.com to look up the word physician. One source included a rather liberal definition: a person who is skilled in the art of healing. Most sources defined physician as a medical doctor licensed to practice medicine. It is not clear that that would exclude naturopaths in states where they are, in fact, licensed to practice medicine. As Dr. Wallach puts it, a naturopath doctor can

be a primary care physician-deliver babies, sew up chain-saw wounds, write prescriptions and get paid by insurance.

It does seem to be common for doctors of naturopathic medicine to refer to themselves as naturopath physicians and doctors of medicine as medical physicians.

Wallach learned all this from living on a farm, working with Marlin Perkins (of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” fame), doing necropsies on animals and humans, reading stories in National Geographic magazine … He certainly didn’t learn any of it from science texts.

Certainly not. You aren’t going to learn anything new by reading a textbook. You will only learn what is already known to the textbook author. You have to do research to learn something new. Dr. Wallach was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

It does seem ironic that Dr. Wallach, along with 3 medical physicians, was nominated for a Nobel Prize for the very same achievement for which the NIH fired him: proving that Cystic Fibrosis is caused by a selenium deficiency of the human fetus.

Mr. Carroll has published a book showcasing some of his “thinking” titled The Skeptic’s Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions.

I found some interesting shaving tips in an article by Dave at Disabled World.

Dave suggests that you use olive oil instead of shaving cream. You will get a smoother shave and gradually get younger looking skin. He recommends it for men and women. He suggests men also apply a small amount to your forehead so your forehead will look as young as the rest of your face. Wash off the olive oil after you are done shaving.

He suggests using cheap olive oil. I think using olive oil is good advice, but you may want to use a brand that has a milder scent. Some have a pretty powerful oder.

He also has some tips on razor blades.

The men of the Low Countries are now the tallest people on Earth and still growing. The average Dutchman stands just over 6 feet tall, while women average nearly 5 foot, 7 inches.

The Dutch have a protein-rich diet and a national health service that pampers infants.

Four years ago the Dutch government adjusted building codes to raise the standards for door frames and ceilings. Doors must now be 7 feet, 6 1/2 inches high.

The collective growth spurt began in the mid-1800s and has been attributed to the prosperity which actually began long before that. In the 17th century Amsterdam was the world’s richest city. However, at that time wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few merchants.

The Dutch passed the Americans in the 1950s. The Americans were the tallest people for most of the last 200 years. Denmark has also passed the United States in average height.

In 1848, 25% of recruits were rejected by the Dutch military because they were shorter than 5 foot 2. Today, fewer than one in 1,000 is that short.

Two thousand years ago, Dutchmen stood about 5 foot 9. This was considered tall back then and they were favored as guards for the Roman emperor.

Average height declined over the next 1,800 years as population outgrew food supply and people moved into disease-ridden cities.

Then, in the mid 1800s, height began to increase. The 150 year growth spurt was interrupted by the harsh years of the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, when the average height actually declined.

There were other years, during this growth period, in which height declined. A study done in 1861 correlated the height of military conscripts to the availability and price of rye, then the main food crop. One year after a poor crop, the number of men rejected as too short for military service shot up.

It seems to me that there are only 2 likely explanations for these 2 periods of height decline. During hard times individuals actually shrink, or tall people die at a higher rate then others.

Tallgrass Beef Company touts the nutritional benefits of its grass-fed Kansas beef. Tallgrass beef is sold in a few Chicago-area restaurants, upscale markets, a school and on the internet.

Bill Kurtis (pictured at left), the owner of Tallgrass, is the host of A&E’s “American Justice” and “Cold Case Files.”

Tallgrass cattle roam freely in open pastures and eat natural grasses. They are never confined to feedlots and never fed grains, unnatural supplements, growth hormones, or antibiotics.

Tallgrass beef has half as much fat as traditional beef and twice as much Omega-3 essential fatty acids. It has significantly higher levels of Vitamin E.

It also has as much as five times the amount of CLA, a fat which helps prevent cancer and has also been proven to improve metabolism regulation and help overweight people lose weight.