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DECEMBER 2021 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
Well, it’s been a long and strange year and we can only hope that next year will restore some normality but I am not holding my breath. Instead let me focus on getting you through the holiday with some healthy advice. No, I am not going to remonstrate you about your eggnog habit or the wassail bowl. Those Xmas cookies and candy studded fruitcakes get a pass in today’s article. I have the whole rest of the year to chide you about your diet. Rather, I am going to give you some gift giving advice.
They have made much in the news about the supply side issues and making sure you can get your presents shipped in time for the holidays.No worries, I have you covered. I always favor the local guy when I can.
Of course you can always start with massage certificates. Either you like massages or you don’t but there are many different types of massage and we have lots of massage therapists in Central New York. Luckily, if you give a person a gift certificate and they are not into massage there is always regifting. If you want to give something a little different why not get a certificate to the Red LIght Spa in Camillus. They offer hot yoga, heat wraps, hot saunas , infrared treatments etc. Surely this is better than another tie or bundt cake. Better to sweat out the toxins than another ugly sweater.
How about something on the literary side? Dr Gundry’s newest book the Energy Paradox is a great gift for someone who feels run down and worn out. Frankly it’s a great book for anyone who wants to improve their health. Sure , he sells a lot of supplements but that’s absolutely not the focus of the book at all. Dr Chris Knobbe also has a great book entitled Omega 6 Apokalypse that will interest any of your friends who are health conscious. It’s a stunning exploration of the seed oils that are ruining our health one donut, one french fry and one salad dressing at a time.
On a budget? Give the most important thing…the gift of time and companionship.. Take someone for a walk…a tour of the MOLST…. a trip around the Zoo..check out the Christmas tree display at the Everson. Get out with a friend and do something active like snowshoeing at Highland Forest or ice skating downtown. Ok, maybe not take grandma ice skating but you can take the grandkids. How about bringing the family or a friend to the Desantis Holiday Show at St Charles Church Sunday December 12th at 5 pm? This is always a great show for the holidays.
It’s also time to start making your plans for your health next year….if you don’t make plans and have goals you are just drifting through your health care. You are not just some leaf in the gutter swirling around in reaction to the rains..Like it or not your health depends on your diet and environment and you control this. .Make a plan about weight loss, make a plan regarding your exercise, alcohol use, etc. Plan it, track it, change it. It’s great to give gifts to others but what about gifting yourself a plan for better health. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year . Until next year ….get well and stay well….
JT BARRY MD
NOVEMBER 2021 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
NEXT GEN
Once again I learn more from my patients than I have from the medical literature. Most of the medical stuff I read in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Green Journal, The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association involves obscure medicines for end stage diseases or political editorials . There is very little in the mainstream medical literature about diet, exercise, sleep and stress. It’s all about chronic disease management not improving health. The phase angle machine that can measure your fat, muscle bone etc as well as provide a measurement of your basic cellular health didnt come from these journals. The alpha stim device which can help anxiety, depression and insomnia didnt come from these journals. Ditto the vitamin scanner and the vascular reactivity test. One of my patients brought me a test that can tell you which metals you are allergic to before you have a joint replacement. Another of my patients keeps challenging me with the energy medicine machines which I thought were a little too new for me until I discovered that NASA uses these machines in all space flights. So too, I discovered the services from RGCC from one of my patients.
Right now, most people go to the cancer doctor and get standard therapies which are based on large clinical trials. We usually treat this cancer with 4 cycles of one combination or other of chemo drugs etc. There is a company called Foundation ONe that will use cell free DNA samples or tissue taken from your cancer to guide the Oncologist in choosing which chemo or therapy to use depending on the bloodwork.. Until now this was the best you could expect. Right now, most people find their cancers either by routine screening i.e. mammograms and colonoscopies or by scans that show tumor growth when the tumor is big enough to be seen. By the time you can see a tumor on a scan we are talking about billions and billions of tumor cells. Until now this was the best you could expect.
Now, however, there are new kids in town. There are two companies that now offer a chance to have your blood taken and look for cancer cells before it shows up on scans. Although I think it’s very much cancer specific, most experts would say that early detection saves lives. If that’s the case then finding the cancer before it shows up on scans or before it becomes clinically apparent should make a difference. The two companies use different technologies but both say they can detect a variety of cancers from just a sample of your blood. One company is based in America and is called GRAIL and their product is called Galleri . Up to 70% percent of cancer deaths are caused by cancers we don’t have screens for. i.e. pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer etc. It’s too new to be covered by insurance and, of course, it isn’t perfect but if you test negative it’s very reassuring and if you test positive you can pursue the possible diagnosis. There are 50 different types of cancer this test can detect. There is no perfect test and false positives and negatives occur just as in mammograms and colonoscopies. Of course, these tests do not replace the traditional screens at least for now.
The other company interests me even more. It’s called RGCC and they are out of Greece. They too, offer a blood draw test for cancer but they are not just looking for genetic material that suggests cancer …they are actively looking for cancer cells. Cutting edge tech that has evolved dramatically in recent years is used to isolate any cancer cells and study them This has benefit not only to patients that want to be screened for cancer but for patients who have had cancer in the past and is an independent way to study your cancer cells..Lets say its been 5 years since your breast cancer diagnosis and the doctor says you are disease free …maybe they say you are cured. This blood test will check for the presence of any circulating cancer cells….not just your prior breast cancer but any new or different cancers that may have developed. Then, they give you actionable information about your specific cancer cells…How they react to different chemotherapies as well as how they react to a host of natural substances you might use to augment your treatment like green tea extract or turmeric. This is precision medicine at its best ! The RGCC group also offers cutting edge, personalized, RNA based therapy, not only therapy for cancer but for chronic viral illness and even lyme disease but that’s going to have to wait for another column. The RNA message in the Covid Vaccines turn on protein production and create an immune response. The RNA message in the RGCC injection turns off protein production in the cancer cells, and only the cancer cells, and causes those cancer cells to die.
So, the downside is the cost….Neither test is covered by insurance yet but they are both under a thousand dollars and can buy you a lot of peace of mind. Say your mom and grandmom and sister all had breast cancer….besides just mammos and ultrasounds would you get this test? Your best friend dies of prostate cancer ….you are not curious about you? For you, if it would help you, the future is now…
Until next month….get well and stay well.
Check out the links below and discuss with your healthcare provider.
https://grail.com/clinical-expertise/
https://www.rgcc-group.com/
JT BARRY MD
OCTOBER TABLE HOPPING 2021
YOUR DOCTOR SAYS YOU CAN’T PREVENT OR TREAT DEMENTIA ARE THEY WRONG ON BOTH COUNTS??
I have been reviewing Dr Chris Knobe’s excellent work on the dangers of the seed oils, the omega 6 oils as inflammatory and related to most modern diseases. The oils, canola, corn oil, sunflower oil etc are polyunsaturated and therefore highly likely to oxidize which is a chemical change in their makeup that makes them antinutritious. Or you could equally call it slow food poisoning because this stuff is ineverything processed. Excess Omega 6 , and by that I mean the Standard American DIet, is dementogenic, atherogenic, obesogenic, carcinogenic , carcinogenic….I mean come on people how many “genics” do you have to hear before you get the idea these are man made chemicals that don’t belong in your body and are sabotaging your health.
Then I was listening to the Rhonda Patrick Found my Fitness Podcast with Dr William Harris who has worked his entire career investigating Omega 3 oils which are thought to be anti-inflammatory. The higher your Omega 3 index is the better your overall health and the lower your mortality. This is something you can easily measure at your doctor’s office and treat at your grocery store.
Then, to really hammer it home comes the recent Youtube videos of Dr Paul Mason who has posted lectures again linking dementia to your diet. Once you whet your appetite with the short video linked here you can refer to his other work.
In this video posted in September he reviews the literature and confirms that dementia is a dietary issue…not a genetic one. Sure there are genetic risk factors that can affect your risk but they seem to do so only in the presence of an inflammatory diet. Dr Mason reviewed the famous Nigerian study where people who have the highest possible genetic risk still have very low rates of dementia unless and until they adopt the Western diet. …watch the great dr paul; mason reversing .look at the nigerian study…proves its not genetic…didn’t have dementia 100 years ago and our genes have not changed in that short a time…seed oils and fructose….table sugar is 50% fructose….causes insulin resistance…after nine days you can reserve the liver.
There were only rare cases of dementia diagnosed 100 years ago and dementia is rampant now and our genes have not changed over 100 years…genetics takes hundreds of generations. What I liked about this video was the inclusion of the damage done by fructose and how this makes oxidation worse. So you have the one – two punch of insulin resistance / diabetes (which affects most of us if you do the right test) and the damaged and damaging seed oils which acts as a double whammy. I had not previously seen evidence that diabetics actually absorb more of the oxidized oils than non diabetics…makes sense when you think of the damaged gut lining. Also his finding that the highest risk allele the apoe4 ( the gene variants that affect your risk factor for dementia) is the highest risk because it’s the most susceptible to oxidation (from the seed oils) and glycation (damage from the high insulin/ fructose) was new to me and makes sense and might even be true.
What’s that Mr. It won’t happen to me!? Well , currently the risk of dementia doubles every 5 years starting after age 65. 43% of people over 85 carry the diagnosis and we haven’t really come up with an effective treatment since it was first diagnosed in 1906 despite spendin billions and billions of dollars and over 200 failed trials.
What’s that Mr So there’s nothing to be done about it? Well there is if you look at things from a metabolic angle. The brain has 2 percent of total body volume but uses 20% of metabolic energy. The brain is a stove ! And by using sugar as a fuel you are gunking up the pipes . By using ketones as fuel you clean out the pipes and burn more evenly. Ketones can allow the brain of demented patients to use a new stable healthy reliable food soursce as glucose is no longer able lto be used as fuel djue to insulin resistnace. High sugar levels are not good for the brain long term.
Diabetics are two to five times more likely to get demented..the bigger the belly the bigger the risk of dementia..triple the risk compared to slim people.There have been 31 trials comparing low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets that reached statistical significant results every single one of them showed better weight loss with a low carb diet.
Certain cells of the brain can take up sugar without any help but other cells which are spread throughout the brain but interestingly are concentrated in the hippocampus. This is a major memory area. These cells need insulin in order to get the sugar in the brain and if you have insulin resistance you’re not getting adequate sugar to these cells. These cells can however use ketones without any difficulty whatsoever.
People talk about amyloid plaques in the brain being associated with dementia . Actually the amyloid monomer is at very protective of the brain it’s when they are clumped together that it becomes pathologic but the amyloid itself is normally produced by the brain and has protective effect Studies have shown that HDL, that’s right the components of the lipid panel that your doctor has ordered for you many times, actually has protective effect on the brain trying to clear it of these amyloid products . That gets back to the Apoe4 allele…these genetic variants affect the hdl ..damaged hdl can’t clear plaque as well hence their increased risk of dementia. And oxidation ( damage from seed or plant oils) and glycation (damage from higher fructose and high fructose corn syrup/diabetes etc ) are what affects the HDL particles.One study showed that HDL levels over 55 offers a 50% protection of Alzheimer’s. It’s possible that the higher your HDL the less likely you are to have Alzheimer’s Looking at this from the angle of reducing dementia risk we have to mention sleep as well. Sleep deprivation increases beta-amyloid deposition so deprivation equals deposition equals dementia. And this has been shown to happen after only one night of poor sleep based on the Dr Mason data. Sleep deprivation worsens insulin resistance and that’s a consistent if not unifying theme. Check your continuous glucose monitor, your normal morning insulin spike will be higher in the mornings after poor sleep.
Interestingly the dietary supplement carnosine has been shown to both to lower insulin resistance and to prevent glycosylation . Carnosine comes only from flesh that is meat ,it’s not found in plants and Doctor Paul Mason points out that this lack of carnosine might increase the risk of dementia in vegetarians. I am not suggesting you start popping carnosine…do your own research . I haven’t taken it …yet….but it’s intriguing.
Bottom line is an ancestral diet of unprocessed food is your best bet to optimum health. Check out the Weston Price Foundation. https://www.westonaprice.org/ .Of course the most comprehensive approach to dementia I think is the Dr Dale Breseden approach which you can look up as well and a local resource for real evaluation and treatment is right here in town at Clarity Clinical Research . I have not become an official Dale Breseden but I am looking into it bacause I dont see other people locally doing it.
J T BARRY MD
SEPTEMBER 2021 TABLEHOPPING
I have two interesting things for you this month..both can be very helpful regarding your health and both are widely available and both are free ! How often does a doctor say that ! I am always on the outlook for tools and techniques that can improve your health and you need look no further than your smartphone.
First up is an app for those of you who want to try intermittent fasting and need a little motivation or advice. The app is called Zero…..its produced by Dr Peter Atia who has made healthgevity his lifelong mission. This guy has done every conceivable experiment on himself in regards to exercise, diet, supplements etc and has produced this app to help with what he ( and most people in the health improvement arena) thinks in an effective and important strategy to improve your health. He is a big Insulin guy as well. As I have written previously, keeping your insulin low is important to keep your inflammation low and Intermittent Fasting is one way to do that. Most of us eat from the time we get up until we tuck ourselves in at night and that’s a lot of work for your pancreas. If you can limit the time frame in which you eat to 8 hours or less that can help lower your overall insulin and improve your health. Of course, the most restrictive time frame besides completely fasting is a 2 hour window. This is the one meal a day model which studies have shown is very healthy and results in very low insulin and inflammatory markers but most of us don’t have the fortitude for that. My suggestion is to skip breakfast…(dont break fast) and eat between noon and 8 pm. Work your way towards that and use the Zero app to keep yourself honest and answer questions like taking supplements when you are fasting etc. There is a premium version of the app but you can get plenty of milage with the free version. Peter Atia is all over podcast and Youtube so you can see for yourself the guy behind the app. Also for more on intermittent fasting and insulin etc I refer you to the great Dr Jason Fung who you can youtube (Did I just use a noun as a verb? ) While you are at it, ask your doctor to check your fasting insulin level. It’s very simple…the lower your fasting insulin the overall healthier you are. And visa versa. It’s a cheap, simple , independent test of your health and you should ask for it. Your doctor has been trained to check your glucose but your insulin level will reveal your metabolic status years and years before you would otherwise be considered a diabetic. Don’t take my word for it, ask Drs Gundry, Mercola, Attia, Saladino, Knobbe, Gregor, etc…these doctors may have very different opinions on the best diet to improve your health but they universally believe that a low insulin level is desirable.
Now the second app is really a series of apps and again it’s oriented towards trying to help you with your resolve and motivation. You don’t lose weight because you should , or could you lose weight when you must. As Tony Robbins says you meet your musts. I could, I should, I think …those are not change words…I must, I will, …those are change words. But the apps are not about changing words, they are about changing your focus and attention. These apps, which are also free at the app stores, work via hypnosis. You can get hypnosis apps for weight loss , for drinking issues, to improve sleep etc. Before you start fumfering around that you can’t be hypnotized, let’s look at how well you are doing with your bad habits on your own. Most of us need help changing habits…You can join a group, zoom, or journal , but what’s really important is changing your motivation and outlook and that’s where hypnosis comes in.
Hypnosis is a state of relaxation with heightened and focused attention. It was first made popular by a German physician named Franz Mesmer who invoked the concept of animal magnetism. Later, a British physician named James Braid coined the term hypnosis from the Greek god of sleep hypnos. None less than Sigmund Frued took it up but later abandoned its use in favor of free association techniques he later championed. I am not talking about stage hypnosis. I am talking about one on one sessions with a trained practitioner to see if you can work on a particular problem. That’s what I have always recommended to my patients having trouble with making progress on a particular health problem. We have several well established hypnosis practices in the Central New York area.
Now, however, as apparently everything will be, it’s available on the smartphone. Why not give one of the many apps a try and see what happens. I have personally seen the effects of hypnosis and the literature is full of support for this modality. If the app helps but not enough , then perhaps, seek out an in person experience with a qualified professional.
Take control of your health. Take control of your behavior. Change your health destiny.
Until next month….get well …stay well
J T BARRY MD
AUGUST 2021 TABLEHOPPING
One thing I notice as people are out and about more but honestly I see every day in my office is that people slouch. Yes you…you slouch a lot. Your posture sucks and it’s possibly affecting your health. Your mother was right again. Posture affects more than just how tall you appear. Poor posture can create a host of symptoms from back pain, headache, fatigue, breathing problems, jaw pain and even knee hip and foot pain at least according to the Cleveland Clinic. According to the American Posture Institute bad posture is a major risk factor for falls in the elderly and since falls in the elderly are a major risk factor for death ….poor posture = increased mortality. So it’s not just about how you look ..it’s about your whole body health. Most of the articles about posture on the internet are oriented around gaining height but my concern with your slouching is that it contributes to your poor health. I am a primary care physician not a chiropractor but both professions can agree that posture is important and working on your posture can have real benefits. So, your posture is bad but your grandkids posture is even worse since they are always looking down at their cellphones and there’s little chance of that changing.
Here’s a simple test from the Mayo Clinic to check your posture…it’s called the wall test.
Stand so that the back of your head, your shoulder blades and your buttoc ks touch the wall, and your heels are 2 to 4 inches from the wall. Put a flat hand behind the small of your back. You should be able to just barely slide your hand between your lower back and the wall for a correct lower back curve. If there’s too much space behind your lower back, draw your belly button toward your spine. This flattens the curve in your back and gently brings your lower back closer to the wall. If there’s too little space behind your lower back, arch your back just enough so that your hand can slide behind you. Walk away from the wall while holding a proper posture. Then return to the wall to check whether you kept a correct posture.
There are lots of options to help you work on your posture including some devices which buzz like the Upright Go and the Uposture which signal you if there is a change in posture ….I have no experience with them and just ordered the Uposture to check it out. I often recommend to my patients that they consider a garment to help their posture….they are called posture guards. I can’t recommend any of them in particular but they are not expensive and you can get a good sense of what they look like on the internet. You can also go to physical therapy and work on your posture and sometimes they use flexible tape that acts like the garments and helps maintain posture. There is a school of posture called the Alexander Technique and we have a local expert in this technique..Kathryn M Miranda….who has taught this program for decades. She can be reached at 315-412-4829.
I don’t think any of us are usually aware of our posture unless someone points it out …that’s why I like the garment idea …it’s a constant reminder to straighten up and fly right. I too am working on my posture…my wife and I are taking dance lessons in preparation for my daughter’s upcoming wedding and posture is the first thing the dance instructor focused on. Well, that’s what the second dance instructor focused on anyway…the first dance instructor fired us….That must tell you something right there…..I have discovered I like taking dance lessons. My wife and I have been married over 30 years and I worry that things could get a little stale and dancing once a week together really gives us something to do that focuses on both of us. Thankfully she seems to enjoy it as much as I do. If you are in a relationship that in any way could benefit from something new in your life I highly recommend giving dance lessons a try. Our instructor is suffering enough…go find your own and …work on your dance steps and your posture at the same time.
JT BARRY MD
JULY 2021 TABLEHOPPING
THE ENERGY PARADOX
I will get to Magnesium in my next article but I just read Dr Gundry’s The Energy Paradox and wanted to bring it to your attention. His earlier works including the Plant Paradox radically changed my approach to illness and wellness and since so many people suffer from a lack of energy I thought you should know about it. I also highly recommend Walking with Peetey the dog who saved my life but that’s another article entirely.That book too brings together many of the concepts I bring up in the office everyday but again …another day.
The Energy Paradox addresses the issue around fatigue….When your get up and go has gotten up and gone. Many people erroneously believe that you run out of energy as you age but Dr Gundry points out that you are just running out of the right fuel ..that you are not recharging your body’s power and battery pack …your mitochondria. Mitochondria are tiny organelles that are found in almost every cell in your body and produce the vast percentage of all the energy your body manufactures in a day. If your mitochondria are happy …you are healthy. If they are not…you are not. Furthermore the mitochondria are heavily influenced by the bugs in your gut …there’s that microbiome connection again ! The mitochondria need full spectrum light ( which controls energy production via quantum mechanics..read the book for details ), properly constructed cell membranes (which brings us back to the omega 3 / 6 ratio I preach about and which your doctor can easily test for) and interestingly enough melatonin. Yes , it turns out the sleep inducing chemical produced by your pineal gland is a major protector of mitochondrial function. You don’t have to depend on just your own production of melatonin…it’s found in abundance in certain foods like olives, olive oil,pistachios and mushrooms. Dr Gundry posits that it’s not the resveratrol in red wine that makes it so healthy, it’s the melatonin !
The standard american diet overwhelms your mitochondria, damages your gut lining, changes the character of the microbiome in your gut and the processed foods damage energy production so it’s no wonder you lack the energy of youth. Furthermore , as Dr Gundry points out, our eating habits overwhelm the gut and the mitochondria by presenting too many nutrients too often that the mitochondria shut down to protect themselves. When the mitochondria are damaged it TAKES energy to destroy them and activates the immune system. The restorative medicine field has long held that all disease is inflammation and all disease is mitochondrial dysfunction and all disease begins in the gut and now you begin to see the interconnectivity of these theories. Dr Gundry’s research takes a whole different approach to the benefits of the keto diet. I thought the keto diet produced ketones which are a clean fuel for your cells and mitochondria. He postulates that these ketones and butyrates are actually communicating to your cells that times are hard and the mitochondria have to be more efficient and more plentiful in response to this stress.
How to improve your mitochondrial function and thereby improve your energy production? Get exposed to light…get outdoors. Dramatically cut down on the linoleic acid in your diet ( canola oil and the other seed oils) while adding Omega 3’s like fish, fish oil etc. He has long recommended Olive oil but now adds sesame oil as an oil that is a powerful antioxidant, a blocker of inflammation at the gut wall level and even has a protective effect against electromagnetic fields! Do some strength training or resistance work which increases the number of mitochondria in your cells. Change the composition of the bugs in your gut and the signals they send your cells and mitochondria by eating more fiber ( the term he uses to describe these substances that are made by the bacteria which then communicate with our bodies is post biotics).
Finally he again promotes the concept of time limited eating. Not grazing from sunup to sundown and beyond as most Americans do but limiting the time you consume food so the mitochondria are not overworked and have some down time to rest and repair. I am not going to get into the details about his dietary recommendations , his suggested supplements and his list of medications and chemicals to avoid. That’s too much for one or two columns to give justice to. This book is packed with details, loaded with references and pretty easy to read. If you want to change your energy level, lower your inflammation, and raise your overall health you want to read this book. Do yourself and your mitochondria a favor and read this book. You don’t have to get any special lab tests done to see results. You don’t have to read any testimonials. You will feel the results for yourself. This is called a N of 1 trial. You be the judge. Until next month…get well…stay well….
JT BARRY MD
JUNE 2021 TABLEHOPPING
Covid 19 might be calming down finally but the world is still going crazy. I was going to write an article about Magnesium or maybe review Dr Gundry’s latest book The Energy Paradox. I was thinking I would review the vaccination rates in various states and show their correlation or lack thereof with infection rates. But then I came across an article about my profession that I couldn’t believe. Last week the biggest medical organization …the American Medical Association .. issued statements to the effect that it supports critical race theory and no longer supports equal treatment to all people. The article I read states that “ The AMA also makes clear that it now rejects the concepts of “equality” and “meritocracy,” which have been goals in the fields of medical science and medical care. “ Furthermore, and I am quoting again..“Equality as a process means providing the same amounts and types of resources across populations,” the association said. “Seeking to treat everyone the ‘same,’ ignores the historical legacy of disinvestment and deprivation through historical policy and practice of marginalizing and minoritizing communities.”
I am of course not suggesting that minorities have not been screwed over in the past and may be still today but isn’t it the essence of America and shouldn’t it be the essence of medicine to treat everyone equally? How can this major organization reject equal treatment of all people? Needless to say I am no longer a member of the AMA and it’s interesting that I got an offer via the internet to renew my membership at 50% off. I wouldn’t renew my membership if they paid me. In my office its our explicit policy to treat everyone….no matter where you come from, no matter where you are going, no matter how you identify your gender or sexual preferences (as long as it doesn’t involve minors) no matter how much you are worth, no matter your age , no matter what…everyone deserves to be treated equally with fairness and kindness and hopefully understanding of your medical issues. As the well known business expert Mr Rogers has so aptly stated there are three rules of success….Rule #1 Be Kind. Rule #2 Be Kind…Rule #3 Be Kind.
Of course I have felt for some time now that my profession has lost its way. I have seen how we, instead of looking for the cause of disease, now only look to treat the symptoms with medications and procedures. Interestingly it all started when I read Dr Gundry’s second book the Plant Paradox. I realized then I was only focusing on the symptoms and not the cause. The obvious fact that every physician knows but few acknowledge is that we should be focusing on the basics of your health…your diet , your exercise, your sleep and your stress. Don’t cover up the indigestion..find out the cause. Don’t just treat the high blood pressure…it’s a sign that the patient is doing something wrong…find out what is wrong and fix it and the high blood pressure goes away. Healthy people do not have heart disease, cancer and diabetes…it’s when we deviate from healthy habits that we get ill. Returning to healthy habits will resolve the illness. My profession has been trained to study pathophysiology in medical school then completely ignore it in practice.
The current practice of medicine is superb at managing your illness but if you want to really improve your health…to regain your wellness you are not likely to find a champion in your primary care office. We pay the most by far of any nation for health care and we rank low on real health measures. And now I find that the most prestigious medical association is more focused on social considerations than real equality of health care. Sorry , but I am going to stay firmly in the camp that believes all people should be cared for equally and if that somehow gets me in trouble with the “powers that be” so be it. Opposing the AMA shouldn’t get me in trouble with the Medical Society or the Health Department should it? Free speech may not be so free in America anymore. Maybe it’s a little hubristic but I close with the words of Martin Luther at the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521..”I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.
Until next month…get well and stay well
JT BARRY MD
MAY 2021 TABLEHOPPING
Vitamin C is not just about treating your cold.
I just finished reading Dr Thomas Levy’s book entitled Stop America’s #1 Killerwhich is about vitamin C deficiency. Perhaps you know it better as scurvy. Almost allanimals can make their own vitamin C but we humans, bats and guinea pigs cannot. We must get it from the environment. It’s said that scurvy killed more British sailors than warfare did but this is not a story about historical malnutrition. It’s about you and your risk of Vitamin C deficiency. 40% of patients with septic shock had Vitamin C deficiency. The Nutrition Journal reported that up to 87% of critically ill patients with Covid 19 had Vitamin C deficiency. Of course Vitamin C deficiency is not limited to seriously ill individuals. As reported in the American Journal of Public Health in May 2004 “vitamin C deficiency and depletion were common (occurring among 5%–17% and 13%–23% of respondents, respectively)” Based on my experience it’s actually more common than that. Doctors don’t routinely assay for Vitamin C deficiency but we probably should give your SAD diet. That’ s standard american diet …full of food depleted of nutrients, loaded with trans fats, extra sugars , exotic chemicals and seed oils.
Vitamin C is a potent natural antioxidant and is concentrated in white blood cells 80 times more than in the serum. Vitamin C deficiency at the cellular level has been shown to be a cause if not the cause for the changes at the arterial level that cause hardening of the arteries…ie heart disease. The literature supporting Vitamin C deficiency as a cause of heart disease is much stronger than the literature that high cholesterol causes heart disease. Dr Levy sites studies that show people with higher levels of Vitamin C have lower incidence of heart disease. Vitamin C facilitates lecithin’s ability to add esters to the cholesterol in your arteries thereby making it more soluble and allowing HDL to bind it and remove it from the artery wall and transport it to the liver. Lower levels of VItamin C are associated with higher levels of fibrinogen. High Fibrinogen levels are associated with increased risk for heart disease and blood clots. Dr Levy also reports that patients with the highest levels of Vitamin C have lower risks for cancer.
So, Vitamin C deficiency has been linked to both heart disease and cancer. Do you need more impetus to supplement than that? No article about Vitamin C would be complete without a mention of its prior champion ( preceding Dr Levy) Linus Pauling. His belief that Vitamin C would treat the common cold has been much debated and he further postulated that it would prevent cancer. It’s true he died of prostate cancer but not until the age of 93 ! Dr Levy’s book is very heavily and meticulously referenced but it’s an easy and informative read. I highly recommend his prior book entitled Death by Calcium and have just ordered his book on Magnesium so expect more to come.
Until then …get well and stay well
JT BARRY MD
April 2021 TABLEHOPPING
Well , the vaccines have arrived and with it the push to vaccinate everyone. Never had covid? Better get vaccinated. Had a bad covid infection ? Better get vaccinated. Tested positive but didn’t get sick? Better get vaccinated. Immunocompromised? Pregnant? Able to get pregnant? Better get vaccinated. New strains are coming…get ready for more vaccinations.
All three currently available vaccines have been thoroughly tested and reviewed. They all appear very safe and effective. Of course, there are people who have a strong reaction to the vaccines but that’s true of many previous vaccines. There does not appear to be a relationship between having a reaction and having protection from Covid-19. Whether the shot bothers you or not doesn’t seem to make a difference in terms of protection. It’s all good in the hood.
So why shouldn’t absolutely everyone get the vaccine and we can get this whole ugly pandemic behind us? The supposition is we must get a high vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity. The WHO website says you must vaccinate 95% of people to have herd immunity to protect against measles. You must vaccinate 80% of people to have herd immunity to polio. We currently don’t know how many people you have to vaccinate to achieve herd immunity to Covid-19 but it will probably be in that range of 80% or above.
Again, the vaccines appear very safe and very effective so why am I proposing that it would be nothing less than scientifically disastrous if everyone is vaccinated. That’s right…there is a very very strong rationale to NOT vaccinate everyone. To vaccinate everyone violates very basic tenets of science and scientific experimentation.
Absolutely no one familiar with science will deny that any real experiment MUST have a control group. Without a control group you have no basis to understand interventions. This has been true since the beginning of experimentation. Without control groups you have no way of knowing whether any intervention, be it a drug, a procedure or a vaccine is really effective and safe. Even the WHO, the CDC, and the federal government completely agree with this. That’s why every single study of the vaccine safety and efficacy had these control groups.
Say what you want about President Trump but he did indeed facilitate the fastest development of a vaccine in the history of science. A term from the great Star Trek series..”warp speed” was used to describe the process. I personally have faith and confidence that the process was thoroughly vetted and all safety concerns were addressed. There were, as mentioned, controls on all the vaccines trials so what’s my beef? Absolutely none of the vaccine trials have LONG TERM controls. And we absolutely have to have long term controls. It remains vital to the scientific process. WIthout long term controls we have no way whatsoever to assess long term or distant effects of the vaccine. Like it or not, politically correct or not, but the need for long term controls is a scientific necessity.
It’s an unfortunate fact that prior coronavirus vaccine research was halted not because the viruses didn’t provide a good immune response in the animals tested but because those animals when later exposed to the virus got worse instead of better. so the vaccine instead of protecting the animals actually made their immune systems react overly aggressive when they were next exposed to that virus. It wasn’t for lack of money. It wasn’t for lack of trying. It was because of this viral potentiation that prior coronavirus vaccine research was giving up. None of the current available vaccines had trials that extended beyond a year. So we really have no way whatsoever of knowing about long-term side effects of the vaccine. I’m not saying in any way shape or form that the vaccine causes infertility but we have absolutely no information on this and therefore we have to have controls that are people that aren’t vaccinated. It does not appear right now that the vaccine causes viral potentiation in humans but again we’ve only been at this a few months. Without controls there is no way whatsoever to know whether some side effect or condition down the road is due to prior vaccination or some new virus or Chinese intervention or global warming or some new toxic agent. We have to have short-term controls and we have to have long-term controls and that means that it is, in fact , absolutely vital that we have people that do not receive the vaccine. If the government said we’re going to withhold the vaccine from 10 to 15% of the population in order to achieve this scientific goal, people would be outraged .But when people volunteer not to get the vaccine they’re considered anti-scientific . Not so.
Many of my friends think the vaccine will be mandatory for travel or to gain admission to concerts and events. I think they are probably right but who really knows? We will find out together pretty soon. Until then…Get Well and Stay Well.
JT BARRY MD
MARCH 2021 TABLEHOPPING
DETOX COCKTAIL….MAKE MINE A DOUBLE
This is going to be a longish article and there is too much to cover in one issue but it’s another very important topic for you to get a handle on. When I first heard of people doing detox’s I thought it was some hippy dippy West Coast wheat grass dealio but when I started to look into it I realized there is a lot to this and its important , as a healthcare provider, that I get a handle on what this entailed. Detoxifying regimens basically try to eliminate the build up of the various toxins both fat soluble and water soluble in the body you have built up over time.
Do I really need to convince you of how toxic you are? I have previously written that the US Government has been sampling human tissues for years this is taken directly from the EPA website. “The National Human Monitoring Program (NHMP), established by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1967, used an exposure-based approach to assess human exposure to toxic substances. Its primary component was the National Human Adipose Tissue Survey (NHATS), an annual survey conducted from 1970 to 1989 to collect and chemically analyze human adipose tissue specimens for the presence of toxic chemicals.”
According to their research 100% of fat samples contain styrene which is a breakdown product of styrofoam. Most samples tested contained dioxins, organophosphates etc. As reported in his book Toxic Solutions, Dr Joseph Pizzorno reflects on Dr Sanjay Gupta noted that there are up to 200 chemicals in the blood of babies even before they are born. Does that get your attention ? Over 90% of people in America have measurable levels of phthalates ( which is a breakdown product of plastic) and glyphosate ( the main ingredient in roundup ) Puget sound , the waterways off the coast of the State of Washington…have had the fish in the estuaries tested and they were found to have measurable levels of these drugs in the fish… Flonase Aleve Tylenol Paxil Valium Zoloft Tagamet Oxycontin and Cipro and other antibiotics.
Dr Pizzorno’s book mentions a study from Harvard which determined that Americans have lost 41 million collective IQ points as a result of exposure to lead , mercury and organophosphate pesticides. This doesn’t even include the question of fluoride exposure and mental retardation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/
What about these many products we use daily that makes them dangerous? The average woman uses 12 health and beauty aids a day and the average man uses 6. These chemicals are not well regulated. Think this is all just conspiracy theory? Watch the documentary Dark Waters which is about the Dow Chemical company and teflon type coatings. The government is coming late to the game and is heavily influenced by the very companies it’s supposed to be regulating.
We call these chemicals toxins because they affect your body’s insulin sensitivity, they affect the cell membranes, they affect the microbiome in your guy, they directly affect your DNA and its expression. Toxins disrupt hormone function , mitochondrial activity, nervous activity and displace needed minerals in your body. Furthermore the toxicities are synergistic…each one making the next more damaging.
As reported by the President’s Cancer Panel of 2010 there were 80,000 chemicals in the market in the US the vast majority of them understudied and unregulated. There is no point in listing the long string of chemical names and abbreviations that we are exposed to and consume, breath in, coat our skin with etc..it’s just too long and most of the names are unpronounceable.
Do you recall the article I wrote about children’s sunscreen and how recent evidence showed that the kids had much higher levels of these chemicals in the circulation than had previously been reported? Is there anyone who thinks this is harmless or unimportant?
The issue of toxins affecting Insulin sensitivity is a particularly interesting one. Dr Pizzorno’s book makes a compelling argument that it’s very likely that simply increased sugars are not the sole cause for the diabetic crisis we are experiencing. It makes sense that diabetes has increased as our consumption of sugar has increased. We went from consuming 5 pounds of processed sugar in a year to over 152 pounds a year as reported in 2014. But if you look at the graph of sugar consumption versus diabetes it is not a tight correlation. On the other hand when you graph diabetes against chemicals on the market there is a much tighter correlation. Now correlation doesn’t prove causation but it certainly raises the intellectual eyebrow.
So this month’s article laid out for you the basic facts that you are loaded with chemicals that disrupt your health at a cellular level. Next month I will lay out what to do about it…Until then Get well and Stay well.
JT BARRY MD