Surviving the Medical Meltdown (13 page)

So, in addition to the addictive factor (gluteomorphine) and the autoimmune factor (amylopectin-A), modern wheat contains a big, fluffy starch that spikes your insulin. As noted before but is worth repeating, insulin is a fat-storage hormone. The caveman, who ate very few carbohydrates, had chronically low insulin. He was a lean, mean, hunting machine. In our wheat- and carb-saturated society, we constantly elevate our insulin, and this is responsible for our diseases of aging – especially obesity and diabetes. It is not fat that makes you fat. It is carbohydrates, and the worst of the worst is wheat.

I stopped eating wheat Christmas Day 2012. By June 2013, without really changing my exercise routine, I had gone from a size 12 to a size 6, had lost all the so-called cellulite from my thighs, and had reacquainted myself with the waist I had as a young girl. I also noticed that the loose stools I routinely had after eating my meals (this developed in my fifties) totally stopped. Wow, did my life change – with one simple dietary shift!

In his book
Grain Brain
, neurologist David Perlmutter reviews the world literature on wheat and brain function. Although doctors traditionally saw celiac disease as a gastrointestinal problem, it turns out the major organ affected may be the brain. Perlmutter provides ample citation about this widespread neurological disease due to wheat gluten, and how he has cured, or at least significantly improved, everything from ADHD to schizophrenia to depression – simply by cleaning up the diet and eliminating wheat. The new MRI technology has shown many headache sufferers to have an abnormal signal in the brain, and both the signal and the headaches go away when patients go off wheat. It was my fondness for an intact brain and clear thinking that finally pushed me to go gluten-free years ago.

WATCH THOSE OILS!

Another agribusiness-produced death factor in our Western diet is vegetable oil. Primitive man got fat from animals and perhaps from some olive, palm, and coconut trees. He did not squeeze a hundred acres of corn to produce Mazola. He did not eat Crisco or soy oil or canola oil or margarine. These vegetable (omega-6) oils produce inflammation in the body and are associated with arterial clogging. They damage not only your blood vessels but your brain, which is made nearly entirely of fat. Eat artificial oils, have an artificial brain. In this case, it may seem too simple, but it is that simple. The only oils that should cross your lips are olive oil, meat fat and lard, butter, fish oil, coconut oil, and palm oil. As an aside, it turns out that coconut oil is nearly perfect food for the brain, bypassing the metabolic block in dementia. Adding coconut oil to the diet of Alzheimer’s patients has been shown in some cases to rapidly improve mentation. Recently Dr. Brian Peskin, a very smart and innovative researcher, has shown that PEOs (parent essential oils) are better at reducing vascular aging than fish oil (EPA/DHA). This is new information, but his studies done on patients by monitoring finger blood vessels are quite persuasive. His book
PEO Solution
, cowritten with Dr. Robert J. Rowen, is worth reading, and I expect their conclusions to be confirmed independently. His oils are available on the Internet.
¹⁴

THOSE NASTY LITTLE EXCITOTOXINS

Another product of a Western diet is our exposure to
excitotoxins
, chemicals that are damaging to nerve cells by producing overstimulation of the cells. These damaging chemicals have crept into our food supply in boxes and jars and cans. You really don’t get exposure to them if you “shop the circle” – eat foods from the outside circle of the grocery store (where all the fresh foods are) and avoid the inside aisles (filled with packaged pseudofoods). The big three excitotoxins are MSG, aspartame, and Tylenol. Yes, Tylenol. In addition to liver
failure – where the science is quite well worked out – Tylenol is bad for the brain and the kidneys.

More than fifteen years ago, an article was published in the journal
Neurology
, looking at the risk of Alzheimer’s in people taking anti-inflammatories. Anti-inflammatories include drugs such as Motrin, Advil, Naprosyn, Celebrex, Voltaren (Diclofenac), and Mobic. Whereas Tylenol is just a pain reliever, these anti-inflammatories block a chemical pathway that first and foremost inhibits inflammation; then, by this effect, they secondarily relieve pain. It was found in the
Neurology
study that those who took an anti-inflammatory medication for two years had a lower relative risk of Alzheimer’s dementia, by about 50 percent, as compared to those people who took nothing.
¹⁵
This makes sense with what we know about Alzheimer’s being partly an inflammation of the brain. In the main section of the paper, the data also showed that people who took Tylenol for two years
increased
their risk of developing Alzheimer’s by 40 percent. Interestingly, this finding – buried as it was deep in the body of the study – was not reported in the news release or mentioned in the abstract summary of the article. (Increased Christmas bonuses to the Tylenol PR people!) So most physicians have not heard of this troubling information.

The mechanism for this brain injury is not yet proven, but it is thought to involve Tylenol’s interaction with the NMDA receptor in brain cells. The NMDA receptor regulates calcium channels that lead to excitation of nerve cells, and this excitotoxicity is probably one of the final common pathways for the development of Alzheimer’s.

In 1971 scientists reported on the appearance of brain plaques resembling the plaques in Alzheimer’s that appeared after exposure to phenacetin – an older Tylenol-type compound.
¹⁶
Later, lending further credence to this concern, there have been reports of acute memory loss in patients with only ten days’ exposure to Tylenol. When this Tylenol-induced memory loss happened recently to an oncologist, the doctor became aware of the same phenomenon in his patients, and he now is attempting to bring this to the attention
of the medical establishment.
¹⁷
Fortunately, these acute memory losses seem to be reversible once the Tylenol has been removed. But memory is difficult to quantify precisely, so I don’t think we can be sure of this.

Tylenol in the presence of alcohol poses a double whammy to the liver. Alcohol consumption decreases glutathione in the liver – a potent detoxifying agent for Tylenol. Combining alcohol with Tylenol can prove fatal even though the amount of Tylenol ingested is within the recommended dose limits. This is magnified if the patient has been fasting, which further depletes glutathione. Since 6 to 7 percent of Americans are heavy drinkers, and 39.5 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 25 report binge drinking,
¹⁸
and since the difference between the safe range and the unsafe range for Tylenol is relatively small, this makes the population very much at risk for adverse effects. Fasting – which may be involuntary after, say, surgery, also makes the liver more vulnerable to these effects. So having too much to drink, forgetting to eat or vomiting, followed by some Tylenol for hangover, is the “perfect storm” of toxic cocktail to the liver. There are numerous cases of acute liver toxicity and death from exactly this scenario.

Additionally, in a meta-analysis done at Harvard, prolonged use of Tylenol was associated with an increased risk of renal cancer (up to 33 percent), whereas aspirin and other anti-inflammatories have been shown to slightly decrease cancer risks.

Take a close look through your medicine cabinet. First look for all the obvious Tylenol medications – Tylenol, Tylenol PM, Tylenol Cough and Cold, and acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol). Next, look for any prescription pain medications you may have, such as Lortab or hydrocodone/APAP (the APAP means Tylenol has been added). Check cold medications – Nyquil, Alka-Seltzer Plus, St. Joseph Aspirin-Free, Zicam, etc. Any drug that has
APAP, cet
, or
acetam
as part of the name probably contains Tylenol. Notice how many of your medications contain acetaminophen/Tylenol. This hunt is not just an academic exercise. The Tylenol
people have done a great job of slipping their product into a myriad of commonly used drugs.

Instead of Lortab or other combination painkillers, I routinely give my patients plain codeine after surgery, but until I specifically asked for it, my local pharmacy had no common prescription narcotic painkiller without Tylenol. Generally, pain medicine given post-op contains Tylenol.

I never prescribe Tylenol for my patients. I warn my arthritis patients against any prolonged use, and I don’t use it for myself and my family. Although all drugs have side effects, some effects are easier to deal with than others. The major side effects of anti-inflammatories are gastrointestinal ulceration and/or bleeding and occasional decreased kidney function with prolonged use. But kidney function is much more easily monitored than memory, which may be gone before the patient realizes the problem. And this type of kidney function is generally reversible. For now, I would expunge Tylenol from your medicine cabinet. If you are going to have surgery, talk to your doctor about a pain reliever that does not contain acetaminophen. And if you must take a Tylenol-containing medicine, be sure to supplement with N-acetyl cysteine, which boosts protective glutathione in the liver.

Aspartame is the sweetener in our diet soda drinks, although some manufacturers are beginning to use sucralose and even stevia, a totally organic plant leaf–derived sweetener. The dangers of aspartame are debated, but biochemically it acts like an excitotoxin, displacing the ion channel blocker at the NMDA receptor. Knowing the physiology, I’m not waiting for a thirty-year study to tell me definitively it is bad. I stopped drinking all diet sodas the day I was attending an “anti-aging” seminar, and the lecturer caught me drinking a Diet Pepsi and said, “You actually still drink that stuff?” It is generally believed in that crowd that aspartame is the work of the devil. When I quit drinking the diet sodas, I got a headache that was variably present for three months – and I never get headaches. I thought the headache was due to caffeine
withdrawal, but subsequently I have drunk and stopped drinking caffeine in a form that does not contain aspartame, and I did not experience a prolonged headache. Although this is not a rigorous study, I believe that aspartame is an independent risk factor for headache and withdrawal from such drinks. It is most probably an excitotoxin and bad for the brain.

THE HIGH FRUCTOSE PROBLEM

Finally, don’t expose yourself to a darling of Western agribusiness – high fructose corn syrup. Regardless of the corn processors’ PR campaign, the truth is, high fructose corn syrup causes liver dysfunction and obesity. I have seen patients with elevated liver enzymes, who were extensively studied (to include liver biopsy) without coming to an understanding of their problem. When the patients eliminated all high fructose corn syrup from their diet – presto! The liver functions normalized. Again, I don’t have thirty-year studies to prove it, but it doesn’t take too many of these observations to make one a believer in the liver-altering power of corn syrup.

And in spite of the protests of the corn syrup producers, high fructose corn syrup
does contribute
to obesity. Here is how it works: You have a very sophisticated hormone system – the leptin–ghrelin system – that controls weight by controlling appetite and other factors, but appetite is the most important issue for the purposes of discussing corn syrup. In the old days – let’s go back to the 1950s – when a teenager drank a Coca-Cola from those old, greenish glass bottles, he was taking in about 100 calories of real sugar. His body sensed these calories via the leptin–ghrelin hormone system and diminished the kid’s appetite proportionally. So for dinner, instead of eating 759 calories, his appetite cut off at 659. He lost out on 100 calories of real nutrition to ingest 100 calories of sugar, but at least he didn’t overindulge.

But here is the rub. High fructose corn syrup is a new product interacting with an age-old genetic makeup. And the leptin–ghrelin
system simply doesn’t see it, so it doesn’t count this 100 calories of high fructose corn syrup when calculating the body’s appetite suppression. So now the kid goes ahead and eats his full dinner, not having any dampening down in his appetite. And if he drinks more than just one cola with high fructose corn syrup with his dinner, many calories can slip by unnoticed by his innate appetite control system. It’s the perfect formula for obesity. And sadly, schools, instead of employing real cooks and serving home-cooked food made from real ingredients, have opted for prepackaged crapola from various national food services. One of my favorite anecdotes about school food was told to me by my younger son when he was a freshman in high school. He attended a mandatory assembly at which time they were forced to watch the movie
Super Size Me
– a very interesting documentary of a man who purposely ate every meal at McDonald’s for an entire month. The movie is worthwhile because there are actually some very interesting points made, including the fact that it was better financially and much better nutritionally if schools went back to having home cooking by real cooks, rather than the prepackaged, Sodexho Marriott stuff. At the assembly, the movie was paused midway, and the kids were let go for lunch – to go eat Sodexho Marriott prepackaged artificial crap. So apparently, this mandatory assembly was not about science or nutrition but gave English credits for “irony”?

THE CHOLESTEROL AND LOW-FAT MYTH

There has been no more pernicious and persistent lie perpetrated upon the American people than the idea that to be healthy we should eat low fat and specifically avoid cholesterol. During the time we have been following that advice, we as a nation have become sicker, fatter, and more demented. Great. And now we are doubling down on this bad idea by lowering cholesterol levels even further using “statin” drugs. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of business, rather than clean science, driving medicine. Although it
is true that anyone can be wrong, that even the best minds err, and we in medicine have not always treated disease properly, when we err – in the absence of compelling economic interest – the error is usually short-lived. It is only when billions of dollars are riding on a medical treatment that truly bad ideas can be promulgated widely, scientific dissenters quieted, cheering sections bought, and the truth suppressed for decades.