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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
GOING TO POT…..POTASSIUM I MEAN….
I have written previously to sing the praises of magnesium and now I carry thetorch for potassium. Potassium should be the third most common element in your bodybut often, for several reasons. it is not. Many people are on diuretics for their bloodpressure, heart failure, or edema and, unless they are careful with their electrolytes,their potassium can go dangerously low. You have to be careful because certain bloodpressure pills like ACE inhibitors and ARBs can cause your potassium to go too high.Even certain diuretics can be associated with high potassium . Both high and lowpotassium are dangerous. Luckily your doctor can and should be checking this on aregular basis with your bloodwork.
Potassium is crucial for the normal function of your heart, your nervous systemand muscle function. It is also important in blood pressure management. If yourPotassium or Magnesium are too low that can cause your blood pressure to go up.That’s right…a shortage of either element can be a cause of your hypertension. Theseminerals should be checked in every patient with a blood pressure problem and berepleated before your doctor reaches for the blood pressure pills. The reason thatpotassium is important in blood pressure control is because it has a significant effecton muscle contraction and arterial wall relaxation, but most Americans reportedly gethalf of the recommended daily allowance. A banana a day is not enough potassium tomake a real difference in your health. The average reported intake of potassium fromfood is about half of the 4,700 milligrams (mg) recommended. Research demonstratesthat these low levels of potassium may have a significant impact on blood pressure,especially as it relates to the amount of salt normally found in a Western diet accordingto Dr. Paul Welton, professor of epidemiology at Tulane School of Public Health andTropical Medicine, who did an analysis in 1997 of over 29 trials that demonstrated lowlevels of potassium resulted in higher systolic blood pressure readings. According toDr Welton studies performed since then have found similar results.
“The evidence is very strong and very consistent. A higher potassium intakemay blunt the effects of excess salt on blood pressure. Potassium’s effect isbigger in people who have higher blood pressure, bigger in older people,bigger in people who are consuming a lot of salt and bigger in black people.”
Other recent research found that “women without hypertension who consumed themost potassium (nearly 3,200 mg/day) had a 21 percent reduced risk of stroke. Further, women who consumed the most potassium were 12 percent less likely to die during thestudy period than those who consumed the least”
According to a recent review article by Dr Mercola “Potassium should be thethird most abundant mineral in the human body. Adequate amounts of potassium arealso associated with quicker recovery from exercise and improved muscle strength. Asan electrolyte, potassium helps to regulate the fluid balance in your cells and throughoutyour body. Fluid balance is essential to maintaining life, preventing dehydration at thecellular level and maintaining brain function. Potassium is important in the transmissionof nerve impulses in your brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system.”
There is evidence that low levels of potassium have been linked with high levelsof insulin and glucose, associated with metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. So ,clearly, keeping your potassium at the right level is important. As I said earlier, if youhave any doubts about your potassium level you can easily have your blood checked butyou have to ask for the more sensitive Red Blood Cell Potassium if you want realaccuracy. As Dr Mercola points out “Getting nutrients from your food instead ofsupplements is preferable as your food contains more than a single nutrient and indifferent forms. For instance, potassium found in fruits and vegetables is potassiumcitrate or potassium malate, while supplements are often potassium chloride. Thecitrate and malate forms help produce alkali, which may promote bone health andpreserve lean muscle mass as you age.
So when you are told your blood pressure is too high, rather than reach for yetanother medication, why not look at your magnesium and potassium intake and theirlevels in your blood and work on the basis of your illness than on just trying to medicateit away. The pills will lower your blood pressure but they don’t address the underlyingcause of your high blood pressure and they have many many side effects. Work withyour doctor to focus on the basics…improving your diet, replacing electrolytes, gettingsome exercise etc. If you don’t manage your wellness the medical profession willmanage your illness but we don’t have a great track record of restoring your health.Remember what Thomas Edison said way back in 1903.
“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care ofthe human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” Until then…getwell….stay well.
JANUARY 2021 TABLEHOPPING
Great Barrington Declaration https://gbdeclaration.org/
Sounds like a somber and weighty peace treaty but the Great Barrington Declaration is nothing of the sort. Rather, the Declaration is an open letter published on October 4th 2020 to world leaders beseeching them to avoid another COVID 19 lockdown. Named after a place in Massachusetts the Declaration is the work of three scientists ….each of whom are experts in this field.
Recurrent lockdowns seem to be sweeping the globe as I write this in early December. Lockdown fatigue is also quite prominent but we are told to appeal to reason and follow the science and listen to the experts. Which science and which experts are you hearing from? Since the mainstream media and our governmental authorities are doing a good job presenting the pro- lockdown side let me present a different point of view. Of course, it’s not just my opinion, it’s the opinion of three very different but very accomplished scientists from some of the absolute top education institutions in America. That’s what makes this so important and so credible. I am not quoting some obscure academician from a nowhere junior college.
The “experts”touted by the media say millions of lives have been saved by the lockdowns. These scientists argue just the opposite. Here are the bios taken directly from the website.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta , professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya , professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
A little more about Dr Bhattacharya who recently elaborated on the Declaration in an article written in Imprimis..a publication of Hillsdale college.
Dr Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, where he received both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in economics. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and director of the Stanford Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. A co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, his research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals.
So Oxford, Stanford and Harvard. Pretty impressive lineup of scientists with special expertise in this area who have reviewed the data and have concluded that the lockdown has been a global disaster with terrible consequences especially among the poor. Here I quote directly from his remarks “ Those who dare to talk about the tremendous economic harms that have followed from the lockdowns are accused of heartlessness. Economic considerations are nothing compared to saving lives, they are told. So I’m not going to talk about the economic effects—I’m going to talk about the deadly effects on health, beginning with the fact that the U.N. has estimated that 130 million additional people will starve this year as a result of the economic damage resulting from the lockdowns In the last 20 years we’ve lifted one billion people worldwide out of poverty. This year we are reversing that progress to the extent—it bears repeating—that an estimated 130 million more people will starve.”
Here is a copy of the Great Barrington Declaration for your own perusal. I am one of the 36,000 thousand physicians who have signed the Declaration along with 600,000 private citizens and over 12,000 medical and public health scientists. If we have to trust the experts …why not these experts…?
The Great Barrington Declaration – As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.
On October 4, 2020, this declaration was authored and signed in Great Barrington, United States.
DECEMBER 2020 TABLEHOPPING
TIS THE SEASON
Well, the coronavirus continues its wrecking ball ways with our lives both personally and professionally and it’s certainly had a big effect on our holidays. With that in mind I am not going to nag you this season about too much eggnog…too much Netflix bingeing…or too little exercise. I am not going to spend this column on advice for getting through the holidays which are always a stressful period for some people even in the best of times. Maybe having so many events cancelled or prohibited will give those people more time to focus on what’s important or at least to de-stress. What I am going to write about is some Christmas gift suggestions that you might not have thought about. Don’t expect ugly sweaters, exercise videos or a tin of muffins on this list. Obviously, gym memberships and season tickets are off the table right now as well.
First , why not give the gift of information and have it be the gift that keeps on giving. I am talking about getting your friends and loved ones a health newsletter. For years I have given a subscription to my friends and family to Reason the libertainian magazine just to give them a different perspective but at this point in our lives I worry more about their health than their political leanings. Sure, you can go to Cleveland Clinic or Harvard Health Letter but may I suggest you take a little walk on the wild side and try Dr Sherry Rogers newsletter and get a completely different perspective on your health and healthcare from the regular medical establishment. And you can order it digitally so no worries about the mail, etc. It’s available from Prestige Publishing on the net. Dr Rogers looks at your health from a molecular level instead of a body organ level to get to the real heart of illness. If your mitochondria aren’t happy you aren’t happy and your corner doctor really doesn’t know how to evaluate that. Of course , you know that you need to measure insulin resistance and your essential fatty acid Omega 3:6 ratio and your triglyceride/ HDL ratio etc and Dr Rogers covers all this each month.
Next, if you really love someone get them a heart scan. Heart disease is the number one killer in America and often strikes without warning. Most people just don’t think about their health until something goes wrong. Your family member or friend’s heart and health are too important for that. Get them a Calcium Score. Not a stress test…that type of heart test will only be abnormal when it’s the end of the line. Get them a Cardiac Calcium Score. This is a 120 dollar scan done right here in town and measures the calcium in a patient’s heart arteries. Many studies have shown a very good correlation between the amount of calcium in your arteries with the likelihood of having a heart attack or sudden death in the future. NASA uses it but the vast majority of local cardiologists prefer the old fashioned but high tech stress test even though the calcium score can show you about possible heart trouble building up years and years before things get to stenting or bypass. I say make this a gift because typically insurance will not cover this test yet even though it’s been around for 20 years. Watch the documentary “Widowmaker” for free on YouTube and decide for yourself.
If you want to keep your gift giving local, why not give the gift of Optimism by setting your friend or loved one up with Tim Smith’s Smile Therapy. This is an internet service that starts each day with an uplifting quote, sentiment or story. How you start your day determines your day and who doesn’t need a little positivity first thing in the morning. It’s another gift that keeps on giving. Mr Smith is a local guy and a positive force in the Universe so check out his website for yourself or someone you care about. .
Let’s finish off high tech and personal. Why not get something for yourself. Why not treat yourself to the possibility you can change something in yourself. I have had multiple patients tell me that they changed something about themselves..some habit or activity ..using the Noom app on their phone. There are a variety of apps to help you change yourself whether it’s to stop smoking or to lose weight. You use that phone for many questionable or unimportant things..why not harness its potential to really make a positive impact on your health. You never know until you try so what’s stopping you from trying ? Until next column and next year….Get Well and Stay Well..
NOVEMBER 2020 TABLE HOPPING ARTICLE
TO SUPPLEMENT OR NOT TO SUPPLEMENT THAT IS THE QUESTION
Let’s talk collagen it’s the major structural protein in numerous tissues of the body including your tendons or ligaments, the blood vessels, the muscles, the gut tissues and your skin and cartilage. According to Rhonda Patrick found my fitness. They are the most abundant proteins in the body compromising about 30% of the total protein Mass unfortunately aging reduces protein synthesis and one protein synthesis that’s reduced in aging is collagen so as you get older you don’t make collagen as frequently or as copiously as when you’re younger.
Now you’re familiar with the double helix that’s DNA but collagen has a triple helix that is composed of about 1400 amino acids. There have been 28 distinct collagen proteins identified and they differ in their interactions with other proteins and location within the body. For instance , collagen type 1 and type 3 in the connective tissues, the tendons, the corneas, the bones, the skin and blood vessels Collagen type 2 is found primarily in cartilage cells. Collagen types 1, 2, and 3 are the most abundant collagen types in the body and are made up primarily of glycine, proline and hydroxyproline; these are individual amino acids that are linked together to form these collagen complexes. The sequence of the amino acids and the relative amounts determine whether it’s type 1 2 or 3 etc.
Why am I taking you down this little science highway? Because college is important and there’s something you can do about the fact that it slows down as you age.Collagen type 1 2 and 3 are typically hydrolyzed and used as oral supplements which have shown promise in improving skin health ,decreasing joint pain and improving hypertension no less. When you take natural collagen and heat it up you denature it and you get shorter peptide chains and it forms gelatin Again, it’s the same amino acids; glycine Proline and hydroxyproline. The one amino acid that seems to be absent is the essential amino acid tryptophan so you can’t use collagen as a general protein supplement even though it contains amino acids. You can get this hydrolyzed collagen from chickens, marine animals, pigs and cows. The one concern regarding sourcing your collagen is that if you get it from non bovine sources you do not have to worry about the possibility of mad cow disease People think that bone broth is a good source of collagen but the key components of amino acids, that are, glycine , proline and hydroxyproline were found in lower concentrations in bone broth compared to typical collagen supplements. So , I don’t think bone broth is necessarily a great collagen source but I do think it’s nutritious. Now, once you are taking your collagen how is it absorbed ? Well, hydrolyzed collagen, the kind you get when you buy it in the store probably is even better absorbed because it’s shorter chains then undenatured collagen straight from the source be it marine or mammal.
I had read previously that the collagen that you ingest doesn’t necessarily go into the joints but the ingestion of the collagen prompts the body to produce its own cartilage which is deposited in the joints. However , according to Rhonda Patrick (foundmy fitness.com) at least in rats the oral consumption of hydrolyzed collagen is deposited directly into the skin and joints. Rhonda Patrick points out that by the time a person reaches 80 years old collagen production in the skin has decreased by 70% compared to young adults. Of the skins total collagen, type 1 collagen comprises about 80% with type 2 comprising 15%. Topical collagen as used in cosmetics really doesn’t have a direct effect on collagen stimulation or production in the skin it does hydrate the skin and makes wrinkles less prominent. The topical preparation is not being incorporated into the actual skin but the ingestion of oral hydrolyzed collagen has shown positive effects on improving skin aging and is incorporated into the dermis itself.
As outlined again in foundmyfitness.com, oral intake of hydrolyzed collagen elicited the reversal in the natural decline of skin’s elasticity in aging women There are other critical components as well including Chondroitin sulfate which is an important structural component of cartilage while hyaluronic acid is a structural component of cartilage, connective, epithelial, and neural tissue.
What about collagen supplements in osteoarthritis? Several studies have shown that both placebo and commercial supplements report significant decrease in pain compared to baseline but there is a big difference between the collagen product 35% reduction and 15% reduction with placebo. So placebo helped but clearly collagen supplements worked twice as well as placebo with no serious adverse events reported in this trial.
Furthermore, hydrolyzed collagen may be helpful to bone health. Randomized controlled studies found that hydrolyzed collagen increase bone mineral density in postmenopausal women. Interestingly enough, hydrolyzed collagen has been shown to have a beneficial effect even in rheumatoid arthritis and I’m not talkin 1% or 2% Improvement I’m talking 30% – 50% Improvement in either morning stiffness, swollen joint count , 50 foot walking time etc.
Hydrolyzed collagen has also been studied in athletic joint pain and again both placebo and collagen diminish pain but as before collagen diminishes it by 40% and placebo by 28% so it’s not overwhelming but there’s a positive benefit with no obvious side effects.
Now for the most interesting part, hydrolyzed collagen may be effective at reducing blood pressure and improving metabolic function of people with type 2 diabetes. Multiple studies have found that hydrolyzed collagen primarily from marine sources (bones and skin if you must know ) exhibits antihypertensive activity. There are no big human studies proving that collagen lowers blood pressure yet.. Marine hydrolyzed collagen has also been shown to improve glucose sensitivity and insulin resistance in rodent studies. Most of us aren’t rats but still it’s supportive evidence and in humans hydrolyzed collagen powder induced a notable decrease in hemoglobin A1c including the fact that those receiving hydrolyzed collagen had a 20% decrease in fasting blood glucose after 3 months.
What’s the right dose? Well that’s a good question. Different studies have used 50 mL of liquid supplement containing 1000 mg. Some studies use 300mg twice a day or a gram twice a day to studies that used 5 grams twice-a-day etcetera so draw your own conclusions as to the appropriate and righteous dose for you. If you suffer from hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, athletic pain, changes in your skin etcetera why not take a month or two of this supplement and see for yourself if you feel better. Many people do and the dangers seem quite limited. For references go to found my fitness.com… type in collagen and you’ll see that everything I’ve written here is well-documented and footnoted etcetera.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER
I write today to once again save your life or at least try to. You can’t see or feel or taste the Coronavirus which will directly affect a few people tremendously and most of us not at all. However, there is something else you are constantly exposed to that you can’t see, feel, or taste that is ruinous to your health and that is glyphosate.
What I’m talking about is the active ingredient in Roundup which started out as a pipe cleaner and then graduated to herbicide but if I understand it correctly is also patented as an antibiotic. None of these things can be good for the bugs in your gut. Not only is glyphosate toxic to the bugs in your gut but it’s also toxic to the lining of your gut itself. This drug blows holes in the gut lining and therefore creates inflammation. Inflammation equals immune system overactivation equals chronic illness.
Most of us have less than 2 square meters of skin surface but the lining of our guts, if stretched out, would equal the surface area of two tennis courts. The lining of our gut is very thin, one or two cells only, and chemicals like glyphosate directly attack the tight junctions which maintain gut integrity. If that weren’t enough this drug, separate from what it does to the microbiome and to the gut lining itself, is also directly toxic to the mitochondria in almost every cell of your body. Glyphosate also affects your health on a cellular basis since it, in part, resembles the amino acid glycine and gets incorporated into proteins, cell membranes, Etc. Glycosade has been implicated in Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Glyphosate has been found, according to the European Working Groups website and many others, to be in breakfast cereals, pasta, flour-based products, oat based products, oat-based products, and even in most of the red wines that have been tested. Every American has almost certainly measurable levels of glyphosate in our bodies. A study published in Ecowatch in 2016 showed that 93% of Americans tested had glyphosate in their urine. If it’s measured in the urine that means you’ve ingested it and it’s gone through your body to reach your kidneys so it’s affected both the bugs in your gut and your own cells.
Let me put it to you a little more bluntly; this is food poisoning. You are being poisoned slowly but surely. Of course the Bayer Corporation is going to say these are microscopic levels and is considered safe by the government but it’s having its adverse effects on microscopic bacteria so it’s all relative. The more processed food you eat the more glycosade you’re being exposed to. Remember, I’m talking about the stuff you’re already eating pizza and Cheerios all of which is almost certainly contaminated with this chemical which is sprayed on crops all around the globe to the tune of 6 billion pounds a year. Roundup is commonly used in conjunction with genetically modified food stock to maximize food production. You maximize food production by poisoning all the other plants / weeds. More recently and very widespread is also aggressively used to ripen the crop for harvest.
Map out, as I have, a picture of the United States of America with cancer rates per state. Now superimpose a map showing the greatest amount of glycosade contamination and you will see when you superimpose these two maps that they line up in the scary fashion. This does not prove cause Amity obviously but I don’t think you could ignore this obvious data.
Okay, so we can agree that the biome in your stomach is important. You’re nothing more than a fellow traveler to them. Of the DNA and RNA we could recover from your body, human DNA is only 4% of that so there’s a lot of genetic material inside you that can affect your health. What happens to the bugs in your gut is important. You want a tropical rainforest not a desert. You want all kinds of creatures great and small living in perfect harmony not intestinal armageddon.The international Agency for research on cancer part of the World Health Organization announced on March 20, 2015 that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
The most recent issue of Consumer Reports also addressed the question of pesticides and concluded that many fruits and vegetables have dangerous amounts of pesticides. They did not specifically address glyphosate because that is found more in the grains, the wheats, the Oats etc.
So, if this dangerous chemical whose long-term effects have only begun to be appreciated is found in almost everything we’re eating, what’s the course of action? How do you preserve your health against this singular act of food poisoning? You have to buy local. You have to know the people who are growing your food and you have to ask them directly what they’re spraying on it. You can’t wash these chemicals off. They are not inactivated by pressure cooking . You have to minimize the processed foods and you’ve got to read the labels. Change your diet like your life depends on it because in point of fact it does. Until next month, get well and stay well.
THE POISON IN YOUR KITCHEN
Until recently I thought the biggest risk to your health was insulin resistance. Now I know better. I can fix your insulin resistance in a day or two .. What is much harder to correct is your vegetable fat poisoning. That’s right …the seed oils like canola, corn oil , sunflower oil etc that line your kitchen cabinets are slowly poisoning you. What’s even more maddening is that these oils are recommended by both the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology.
Their reasoning is that these are healthy oils because they lower cholesterol. What they completely ignore is that these man-made oils are unnatural and do devastating damage to every cell in your body. This is not idle speculation, this is an obvious proven fact. Check out the references below and you will never be the same. Run, do not walk ,to your kitchen and toss these oils in the hazardous waste bin where they belong.
In 1890 5% of our fat calories came from animal fat ; butter, tallow and lard. By 198686% of added fat came from vegetable oils This is a complete and Incredibly dramatic reversal of our fat sources. This created a dietary change never-before-seen in the history of man because these oils had never existed in the past and WE won’t exist in the future if we keep using them. These seed oils are made in big refineries and look identical to motor oil. They don’t belong in your body. It’s been calculated that the average american consumes 80 g of these oils a day, over 700 calories.
The great Weston Price foundation looked at diets of people all over the world. Some diets had very very high carbs. Some diets had very very high fats. Neither of these diets produced significant amounts of heart disease, cancer, dementia, blindness etc. The introduction of excess sugars, refined flour ,and the seed oils has been ruinous to every country where they have been introduced. These oils are pro atherogenic, inflammatory, pro-oxidative, and demonstrably toxic. The danger of these oils is they contain excessive amounts of Omega 6 oils.. linoleic acid chief among them. You need tiny amounts of Linoleic acid in your diet in order to make Cardiolipin which is an essential component of the inner matrix of the mitochondria. Excessive linoleic acid completely distorts these membranes making the cells leaky therefore inefficient therefore you have mitochondrial dysfunction which is at the heart of most diseases. These oils are also nutrient deficient and rats fed these oils suffer from the consequences of no vitamin A and vitamin K. Additionally animals fed the exact same amount of calories gained dramatically more weight when the canola oil/linoleic acid was used instead of other fats. So even eating the exact same amount of calories these animals became dramatically obese and there is a direct correlation between obesity and American and increasing consumption of these vegetable oils. It’s only data in rats but the evidence is conclusive that high levels of linoleic acid are directly related to heart failure and diabetes and, as previously mentioned, obesity. If you want to lose weight get off all of these oils . It will take quite some time to flush them out of your system. It may take up to two years so you have to start immediately.
Of course once you heat these oils up as they do in every commercial application like every fast food place and every restaurant in America you produce breakdown products which are also toxic and carcinogenic. That’s right, the repeated use of these oils creates chemicals that are known carcinogens and are found in every fast food restaurant and for that matter every restaurant in America.
If you take nothing else from this article you must immediately go to your cupboards and get rid of all of those vegetable oils. Get rid of all those commercially prepared salad dressings. Much healthier are olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil. Any other oil is a poison to you. Understand that every time you go out to eat you are being poisoned by these oils. I have recently taken to just getting my salads with a bunch of lemon slices which I squeeze over them. It’s not a bad dressing and I know that I’m getting healthy vegetables and not sabotaging the meal with the salad dressing. I am not sabotaging the meal I am sabotaging my health by using these other oils.This is an easy fix; read the label , if it says any canola oil sunflower oil safflower oil etc. it is poison to you.
Don’t be afraid of butter. Butter is your best friend. Butter is natural, the seed oils are not. We are nowhere near as healthy as prior generations and the only explanation I can understand is that our lifestyles are worse and that means our diets are worse. Of course we get much last activities than prior generations and that doesnt help but we consume the most seed oils of all time, these unnatural omega-6’s and we have the greatest disease burden of all time in terms of Alzheimer’s and heart disease and cancer. Like it or not these oils all fundamentally create underperforming cells at the molecular and cellular level. If you don’t give your body the correct building blocks and force it to choose inferior materials for the very essence of your cellular being you’re going to get what we have today. You’re a hot mess and it starts with these oils. Get the sugar under control. Do the oil change; that is, increase your consumption of fish, fish oils, nuts etc. and end your consumption of the processed oils. You must get your omega 3 level up and your omega-6 level down. To save your life get rid of all of the vegetable oils you’ve got in that cupboard today. Watch any of the superb lectures by Dr. Chris Knobbe ….. it’s only data in rats but the evidence is conclusive that high levels of linoleic acid/ Omega 6 are directly related to heart failure and diabetes and as, previously mentioned, obesity. if you want to lose weight ,if you want to lose the fatigue, if you want to improve your health overall…get off all of these oils It will take quite some time to flush them out of your system. It may take up to two years so the sooner you start the better.
This information is not new. Again, I urge you to challenge your doctor about this. This is an essential part of your health; knowing your Omega 3 6 ratio. It should be a 1:4 ratio and most of you are way past that! The higher the ratio the worse your cellular health.
So, I have given you immediate action to take. I have given you suggestions to bring to your health care provider. I have given you references to pursue further research. What’s stopping you now.?!
AUGUST 2020 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
I am always on the lookout for new and better ways to assess the health of patients. Your doctor is measuring your cholesterol, your weight, your blood sugar and your blood pressure and checking for anemia etc…Important measures to be sure but available for decades and not at all inclusive. What your doctor should be measuring is your insulin resistance, your triglyceride / Hdl ratio and your Omega 3 : Omega 6 ratio because these are all markers of your metabolic health and are as important or more important than the traditional labs and they are usually covered by your insurance. As I have written about in the past your blood sugar will be normal for years even if you have metabolic syndrome (which more than half of the American population has) and only by measuring insulin and insulin resistance can you properly assess your metabolic flexibility and status of your pancreas. The triglyceride / Hdl ratio is another independent marker of your nutritional health and I think it’s a far more important measure than your total cholesterol or your ldl cholesterol which is often erroneously referred to as your “bad” cholesterol. The higher your ratio the worse your diet is. This is being measured already by your healthcare provider but they are focused on the cholesterol which is nowhere near as important as this ratio. This ratio is a marker for insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome while cholesterol is not. Finally the Omega 3 : 6 ratio is a marker for brain, heart and cellular health. Again, the lower the ratio the better. If you are 1 : 4 that’s very good and suggests you are getting enough anti-inflammatory Omega 3’s and are avoiding the deadly excess of Omega 6 found in processed food and the seed oils.
There is a new way to measure overall health, biological and cellular health and it’s called the phase angle. Ok, it’s been around for years but it’s new to me. Your gym is using some form of the same technology. The principle revolves around straight physics and how your different body tissues..bone, fat, muscle etc react to gentle electrical currents. The science is called bioelectrical impedance and the same set of measurements will check your visceral body fat, your lean muscle mass, the intracellular and extracellular water content etc. I think measuring these is an excellent idea for anyone to do to get some objective measures of their health. The phase angle measurement is even more important because it reflects your overall cellular heath and therefore your overall health. Multiple papers have been published that link your phase angle to frailty, and nutritional status and aging. Phase angles are different for men and women and are generally higher early in life, and in people who are healthier overall. You can get your phase angle measured and then make changes to your diet and exercise and get remeasured to assess your success. We know your chronological age..the phase angle can give us a sense of your biological age. So you could be 50 years of age but have a phase angle that suggests your body is testing more like 40 or more like 60. You cant just compare numbers between people like you can with all the other measures above because it is affected by age and sex but your number can be used as a reference for your overall health. I just bought a machine and will start testing my patients so we can see how they are doing on an ongoing basis…I expect based on the literature that improvements in their weight, their insulin resistance, their Omega oil ratio etc that they will get a higher ( better ) score. I will use this info to reinforce their progress. Knowledge is power after all. Speaking of which, as always, I would not have you trust whatever you read here…do your own research and I suggest starting with the following references. Just enter them on the search bar and the study should pop up.
● PMID: 23653848
● PMID: 23822677
● PMID: 27504280
This is not expensive technology. Ask your doctor about it or have you already caused a commotion by asking for the other tests listed above? Heaven forbid you should ask about the Cardiac Calcium Score and find out about your degree of heart disease years before standard stress testing would reveal it. I’m going to have my phase angle measured next week and if it doesn’t say I have the body of a 30 year old I am going to throw it out !
Depending on the process, costs of testing etc I am thinking about offering to do this test to any one who makes a contribution to one of my favorite charities….Hope for the Bereaved, Helping Hounds, Father Chaplains Guardian Angel Society and Clearpath for Vets. I don’t need the business but you need the testing so stay tuned.
Until next month….get well and stay well. J T BARRY MD
JULY 2020 TABLEHOPPING
MOLECULAR HYDROGEN
I bring you something different altogether for you this month from my usual dietary diatribes and Covid 19 speculations. I have been seeing more and more articles come up about the use of molecular hydrogen to improve your health and thought I would give you an early heads up. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. It makes up ⅔ of the oceans . For that matter 55% of the atoms in your body are hydrogen.
New interest in hydrogen came out of Japan in 2007 where a mitochondrial researcher was looking for ways to minimize the build up of the toxic compounds generated by energy production. This researcher found that by using molecular hydrogen he got SELECTIVE reduction in the free radicals. From there an explosion of interest has occurred and of course is readily available on the internet.
Mitochondria are the power generators for almost all of the cells in your body. They produce energy but also produce as a by product reactive hydrogen species. These are oxidants and you can look anywhere and see the interest in antioxidants has grown exponentially. Hydrogen can directly work with the ROS (reactive hydrogen species) as well as independently activate autophagy, the body’s clean- house mechanism. Hydrogen chemically acts to diminish inflammation as well. If you do the research there is an alphabet soup of pathways that are activated by hydrogen.
Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is so small that it can penetrate into every cell in your body. It can penetrate through glass, plastic and many substances so it has no difficulty going through even your bulk. It’s inert and it’s safe.
Interestingly enough you produce your own hydrogen or at least the bugs in your gut do….daily. A diet high in fiber feeds the bugs that produce the hydrogen but you can ingest extra hydrogen for extra benefit.
After drinking a glass of hydrogen water it can circulate through the body in about 10 minutes. It is excreted through the lungs in about an hour but its effects on DNA repair and downstream benefits last a day. Various studies have been done and continue to be done to be regarding hydrogen benefits. It’s available in a gas form as an inhaled agent and hydrogen baths and hydrogen water. You can dissolve about 1.5 parts per million into water. Practically speaking there are three commercially available ways to make hydrogen water. You can buy a water alkalizing machine that also hydrogenates, you can buy a hydrogen generating “stick” you put into a container of water or you can buy elemental magnesium tabs that generate hydrogen when you put them in water. Until recently you really had no way of knowing if there was actual hydrogen in the water but test strips and solutions have become available.
Hydrogen water therapy is being used and explored to treat Parkinson’s disease as well as brain ischemia, that is , stroke and heart ischemia ,that is, .heart attacks. Most of this research is being conducted outside of the confines of the United States but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inferior.
I am going to try the tablets and see if I feel differently or if any of my labs improve. If you see me, ask about my experience and I will gladly update you. Below are some references for you from a wide variety of sources. Migraines? Chronic Fatigue? Since there are no real dangers of molecular hydrogen at these concentrations you really have little to lose. Until next month …get well and stay well.
https://www.molecularhydrogeninstitute.com/human-studies
https://medicalgasresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13618-015-0035-1
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03971617