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24 August 2006

Statins increase risk of diabetes

There is a huge push to get all diabetics on a statin for cholesterol control, whether its needed or not.

Please remember that adequate magnesium will help and acts as a natural statin in our bodies and without these negative effects found with manufactured statin drugs. Magnesium is known to lower blood sugars, and prevent insulin resistance. It can prevent and delay type 2 diabetes...we just saw some of the benefits that Betty experienced using magnesium oil in baths, gradually lowering her elevated blood sugars over a few days time.

Here's a new study on Lipitor, showing it to increase blood sugars. Statins such as Lipitor are widely prescribed by MDs, for non diabetics as well, and it doesn't seem a huge leap to expect that their blood sugars may also elevate.

Some believe statins should be used by everyone, even when cholesterol levels are within normal limits. There's even been talk of putting it in the water supply, and including it in superpills (a combination drug).

Many people have suffered neuropathies believed to be related to statins....and there is even a petition requesting this be looked into. http://www.petitiononline.com/Statins/petition.html

Below is the new information in the news this week:

Statins Can Deteriorate Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes
on Tuesday, August 22 @ 15:51:12 CDT

The use of atorvastatin (Lipitor) showed a deterioration of glycemic control in type 2’s.
Atheroscler Thromb. 2006 Apr;13(2):95-100.

http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4054

21 August 2006

Calcium: Important Update


As most would be aware, I have been highly recommending Magesium for all scoliosis patients with an elimination or drastic reduction of all calcium supplements. This advise will correct the imbalance that is usually associated from a society that drinks too much milk and puts too much emphasis on Calcium. Excess calcium causes calcific deposits, wrinkle, arthritis, most degereative and age related changes.

Below is the updated advice on Calcium by Dr Andrew Weil.


New: My Latest Calcium Recommendations

Due to growing evidence that high doses of calcium do not prevent bone fractures and may even encourage the growth of prostate cancer cells, I recently reduced my supplemental calcium recommendation. I now advise that women take no more than 700 mg of supplemental calcium a day to get a total of 1,000 to 1,200 mg of calcium from food and supplements, and I now recommend that men do not take any supplemental calcium.

I’ve based my new recommendations mainly on research conducted by Walter Willett, MD, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Diane Feskanich, ScD, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. These scientists and their colleagues looked extensively at clinical trials and analyzed data from two large observational studies: the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) of more than 70,000 women, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) of 55,000 men.

They concluded that calcium promoted bone health in the clinical trials, which lasted only two to three years, but not in the long-term observational studies. “This may be because the small part of the bone, called the remodeling space, sponges up calcium in the initial year following a boost in intake, but then fills up and additional calcium no longer adds much benefit,” says Dr. Willett. In several clinical trials, most of the reduction in bone loss with calcium supplementation took place only during the first year or two; after this, no lasting benefits were seen in bone mineral density.

This short-term effect may help explain the observational studies. When researchers looked at the relationship between postmenopausal women’s hip fracture risk, calcium and vitamin D intake, and milk consumption in the NHS, they observed a significantly lower risk of hip fracture among women with higher vitamin D intakes, but calcium and milk intake didn’t appear to be associated with hip fracture risk (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, February 2003).

Allergies and the ‘Hygiene Hypothesis’

In our need for cleanliness we have inavertantly created greater chronic health problems through an undeveloped immune system. This is another reason why I recommend everyone drinks kefir everyday to help restore bacterial to our bodies and strengthen our immune system. As this article highlights... even the bad bugs can help us.

Sometime in the 1990s, researchers developed the “hygiene hypothesis” as a way of explaining the steady increase in chronic respiratory illnesses over the preceding 15 years. According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology in Milwaukee, Wis., the number of Americans with asthma increased by 75 percent during that period and the number of those with some kind of allergy doubled. The hygiene theory points to the American obsession with cleanliness as the correlating factor.

Advocates of the hypothesis note that when a baby’s developing immune system doesn’t encounter enough or the right kind of bacteria, viruses, or parasites, the body’s lymphocytes get out of whack and start treating harmless things like dust or pollen as major invaders. Critics of the idea quickly point out exceptions—like the high incidence of asthma in inner city children—but two new studies enhance the hypothesis’ viability. The first, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, found that sewer rats actually have stronger immune responses and higher levels of disease-fighting antibodies than rats raised in the dirt- and disease-free environment of the research lab.

The second involves whipworms. A Michigan State University team found that swallowing the eggs of this threadlike parasite helps relieve the intestinal ulcers and severe bouts of diarrhea that characterize inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Since IBD occurs more frequently in industrialized nations, these new findings also fit the hygiene hypothesis, which says that occasional infections actually bolster the immune system, and that parasites have historically played an important part in our immune development.

20 August 2006

Magnesium: Acid Base balance

This research highlights the need for keeping proper acid base balance in the body, and helps to explain one of the reasons why magnesium is more deficient in diabetics (and others) who suffer from acidosis more often when blood sugars are high.
Avoiding acidosis:
1) Eating according to your metabolic type... Vegetables can be acidic or alkaline depending on the persons metabolic type.
2) Avoid all simple sugars.

2006 American Society for Nutrition J. Nutr. 136:2374-2377, September 2006
Nutritional Epidemiology
Acid-Base Status Affects Renal Magnesium Losses in Healthy, Elderly
Persons1 Ragnar Rylander2,*, Thomas Remer3, Shoma Berkemeyer3 and Jürgen Vormann4

Magnesium and calcium deficiency in humans is related to a number of pathological phenomena such as arrhythmia, osteoporosis, migraine, and fatal myocardial infarction. Clinically established metabolic acidosis induces renal losses of calcium. In normal subjects, even moderate increases in net endogenous acid production (NEAP) impair
renal calcium reabsorption but no information is available whether this also influences renal magnesium handling. The aim of the study was to examine the relation between NEAP and renal magnesium excretion in healthy, free-living, elderly subjects. The subjects (age 64 ± 4.7 y, n = 85) were randomly selected from the population register in Gothenburg (Sweden). Magnesium, calcium, and potassium were measured in 24-h urine samples and NEAP was quantified as renal net acid excretion (NAE). NAE was positively correlated with excretions of magnesium (R2 = 0.27, P < 0.0001) and calcium (R2 =
0.30, P < 0.0001) but not potassium. When 24-h urinary magnesium excretion was adjusted for 24-h urinary potassium excretion, a biomarker for dietary potassium intake, the association between magnesium excretion and NAE remained significant (R2 = 0.21, P < 0.0001). The significant association between potassium-adjusted magnesiuria and NAE suggests that the acid-base status affects renal magnesium losses, irrespectively of magnesium intake. Magnesium deficiency could thus, apart from an insufficient intake, partly be caused by the acid load in the body.

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