The Health Plus Letter
January 20, 2009 Vol. 7, No. 2
By Larry Trivieri, Jr. – founder & publisher
http://www.1healthyworld.com
Table Of Contents
New This Issue
Quote of the Day
Fast Fact
Vitamin K: The Little Known Nutrient That Is Good For Your Heart
The Mediterranean Diet: A Delicious Alternative To Statin Drugs
Recommendation
Medical Freedom
Contact Information
New This Issue
Welcome to another issue of The Health Plus Letter. This week it’s a heart-centric issue, as I’m sharing two articles that can help you protect yourself against heart disease. The first article is on vitamin K, a nutrient that few doctors today are telling their patients about. And the second is on the Mediterranean Diet and why it is far superior than statin drugs for maintaining healthy cholesterol levels and a whole lot more.
As always, please spread the word about The Health Plus Letter by passing it along to your friends and inviting them to subscribe.
Quote Of The Day
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
-- Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
Fast Fact
A newborn baby’s body has 350 bones, while an adult’s has only 206.
Unabashed Plug
Protect Yourself From Energy Pollution With the BioElectric ShieldTM. Energy pollution is all around us in the fo/rm of harmful electromagnetic frequencies and radiation (EMFs and EMR) emitted by power lines, cells phones, computers, and many other so-called modern conveniences. By wearing the BioElectric Shield pendant, you can protect yourself from the harmful effects of EMFs and EMR. To obtain a BioElectricShield, visit http://www.mcssl.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=408491. To learn more about how and why the BioElectric Shield works, see my article about it at http://www.1healthyworld.com/ezine/vol4no9.cfm.
Vitamin K: The Little Known Nutrient That Is Good For Your Heart
In recent years, scientists have shown that a fat soluble vitamin known as vitamin K helps to protect against bone loss and osteoporosis, especially among men and women in their 50s and older. The key to these benefits, however, lies in the type of vitamin K that is used.
Just as there are various forms of vitamin D, with vitamin D 3 now being found to provide the most important health benefits, so too are there various forms of naturally-occurring vitamin K. The first form, or vitamin K1, is also known as phylloquinone, which is synthesized by plants. Vitamin K2 is the name given to various other forms of the vitamin that are synthesized by bacteria. Collectively, these forms of vitamin K are also known as menaquinone-n (MK-n). MK-4 is found in a number of organs in the body, including the liver, at higher concentrations than phylloquinone. This fact, along with the existence of a unique pathway for its synthesis, suggests that MK-4 has a unique biological function that is different from vitamin K1.
To get the benefits you will learn about in this article, you need to use vitamin K2, which has been scientifically proven to preserve and restore healthy bone density. By contrast, vitamin K1 does not provide such benefits, as was shown in a study conducted by researchers in Denmark involving more than 2,000 women who were given vitamin K1 supplements. At the study’s conclusion it was found that vitamin K1 offered no protection against osteoporosis.
Because of vitamin K2’s ability to protect against bone loss, an increasing number of doctors now feel that it is more important in this regard than calcium supplements. And now scientists have discovered another major health benefit of vitamin K2.
It’s good for your heart!
More specifically, researchers have found that vitamin K2 helps to protect and reverse hardening of the arteries, a major cause of heart attack, especially as we age. However, very few doctors today are aware of this fact, so learning about vitamin K from your personal physician is not something you can depend on. In fact, the majority of physicians today still remain unaware of vitamin K2’s value in protecting bone health either.
(Doctors do know, however, that vitamin K is known as the clotting vitamin, because without it healthy blood clot function would be impossible. In fact, vitamin K gets its name from the German word koagulation. Coagulation is another name for blood clot formation.)
Here’s something else you doctor may tell you: Bone loss and hardening of the arteries can often go hand in hand. That’s because, as they age, the vast majority of Americans—as well as most people in other industrialized nations—will simultaneously experience bone loss and calcification of the arteries and other cardiovascular tissues.
According to Dr. Garry Gordon, one of our nation’s leading integrative physicians and anti-aging experts, the aorta tissues in people age 80 or older are, on average, 140 times more calcified (hardened) than that of most ten-year-olds. For this reason, Dr. Gordon, who successfully cured himself of heart disease and a variety of other serious health problems primarily using nutritional medicine, states that his major anti-aging focus is to keep his patients’ bones strong and their arteries soft well into old age. He uses vitamin K2 to help accomplish this twofold goal.
The Proof Is In The Science
Scientific evidence of vitamin K2’s ability to prevent and reduce hardening of the arteries was presented at American Society of Nephrology Convention, which was held in Philadelphia, PA on November 14 2008. During the convention, a number of scientists discussed research studies that explored the significance of adequate vitamin K2 intake for the prevention of vascular calcification in both healthy and diseased populations, as well as the vitamin’s role in promoting overall cardiovascular health.
One of the presenters was Leon Schurgers, PhD, Senior Scientist at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM) at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands. Speaking at the Vascular Calcification in Chronic Kidney Disease Symposium that was held during the convention, Dr. Schurgers stated that, “Calcification of the arteries seen in chronic kidney disease is the same type of calcification which is found in aging populations. The accumulation of calcium salts in the arteries results in stiffening and increase fragility. This might be considered a ‘silent killer’, as hardening of the arteries develops without any symptoms over time.” Dr. Schurgers then went on to present evidence that “the process of calcification is an actively regulated process and that adequate vitamin K2 intake can prevent this process and potentially reduce this risk factor.”
Among that evidence was a study of 53 hemodialysis patients. Compared to a control group of 102 patients, the study showed that the hemodialysis patients all suffered from impaired “mineralization inhibitors,” meaning that their bodies were incapable of protecting against hardening of the arteries. The study further found that the hemodialysis patients had significantly reduced activity of a substance known as Matrix GLA Protein (MGP). MGP is a protein considered by scientists to be the most potent natural inhibitor of unhealthy arterial calcification. It is also known that MGP, in order to function, requires vitamin K.
During the study, the hemodialysis patients were given daily supplements of vitamin K2. Within six weeks of vitamin K2 supplementation, all of the patients showed increased MGP activity. Based on this finding, the researchers concluded that vitamin K2 supplementation can improve the body’s ability to resists arterial calcification, as well as reducing calcification that may already have occurred.
Similar findings were also found in another study of 54 hemodialysis patients who were compared to a control group of 44 healthy patients. As in the previous study, MGP activity was significantly reduced in the patients undergoing hemodialysis compared to the control group. But when the hemodialysis patients were given daily supplements of vitamin K2, it was found that vitamin K2 “rapidly eliminated the inactive MGP species, suggesting improved calcification-inhibitory activity.”
Based on their research, the researchers of this study also suggested that vitamin K2 supplementation could reduce the risk of death caused by heart disease among patients in need of dialysis, all of whom “suffer from high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality,” compared to healthy people. According to the researchers, “Moderate to severe vascular calcifications are found in approximately 60 to 80 percent of patients undergoing hemodialysis, resulting in 20-fold higher risk of cardiovascular mortality (than in healthy population).”
The ability of vitamin K2 to reduce the risk of death by heart disease was previously confirmed by a research project known as The Rotterdam Study, which was conducted in 2004. In that study, researchers found that increased intake of vitamin K2 significantly reduced the incidence of arterial calcification, and, more importantly, the risk of death caused by congestive heart disease by 50 percent, compared to people with low levels of vitamin K2. By contrast, the same study found that dietary vitamin K1 offered no such benefits.
Based on the above studies, you can see why vitamin K2 is so important for your heart, and why more and more doctors now recommend vitamin K2 supplements for their patients. In addition, they also recommend eating foods that are rich in vitamin K2, such as certain types of cheese, eggs, fermented foods, and liver. A particularly rich source of vitamin K2 is natto, a fermented food from Japan.
Note: Since vitamin K2 is also produced by the bacteria that line your body’s gastrointestinal tract an adequate supply of healthy bacteria (also known as intestinal flora) is needed for vitamin K2 to most effectively carry out its functions. For this reason, Dr. Gordon and other physicians recommend eating a fiber-rich diet and taking probiotic supplements such as acidophilus in order to maintain your body’s supply of healthy bacteria.
Caution: Vitamin K is not to be confused with ketamine, a potentially dangerous drug that can produce hallucinations. In addition, because of its role in producing blood clots, vitamin K supplements and vitamin K-rich foods should not be used by people who are taking blood-thinning medications such as coumadin (warfarin) without a doctor’s supervision.
Unabashed Plug
Learn the Truth about Heart Disease, Stroke and Hypertension. Most of what conventional medicine has to offer for treating these conditions is based on faulty and potentially dangerous assumptions. Discover the real causes behind these diseases and learn what you can do today to prevent and reverse them using safe and natural alternatives that have been scientifically proven to be effective. Read the critically-acclaimed eBook Burton Goldberg’s Definitive Guide to Heart Disease, featuring the contributions of Dr. Garry Gordon, Dr. Stephen Sinatra, and many other leading heart specialists. To order or to find out more about this potentially lifesaving guide, visit http://www.1healthyworld.com/ebooks/Heart-Book-Info.cfm.
The Mediterranean Diet: A Delicious Alternative To Statin Drugs
Statin drugs comprised one of the most frequently prescribed class of drugs in the United States. That’s because statins are the number one choice of many physicians for managing cholesterol levels. As a result, today more than 11 million Americans use statin drugs on a daily basis to keep their cholesterol levels in check. And statin use is only likely to grow, now that recent research indicates that stains can also reduce levels of chronic inflammation in the body, another contributing factor for heart disease and stroke.
However, stains are not without risk. In fact, they can be downright dangerous in some cases. That’s because statins, like all other prescription drugs, can cause harmful side effects.
Common Side Effects of Statin Drugs
The most commonly reported side effects caused by statins are muscle pain, muscle weakness, neuropathy, and memory loss.
Muscle Pain: While muscle pain may seem to some to be a reasonable price to pay to reduce the risk of heart disease, in reality the muscle pain that can be caused by statins can be quite severe. That’s because the muscle pain experienced by statin users—usually in the jaw, shoulders and/or legs—is caused by a breakdown of muscle tissue that ius a direct result of stain use.
As this muscle breakdown continues, it produces waste fibers and tissues that need to be eliminated by the body. This, in turn, can place a severe burden on the kidneys and result in a condition known as rhabdomyolysis, which results when muscle fibers and tissues spill into the bloodstream. Severe rhabdomyolis can cause death due to kidney failure brought on by the overload of the kidneys with waste muscle tissue and fiber.
Muscle Weakness and Neuropathy: Muscle weakness and neuropathy are two other common side effects of stain drugs. Neuropathy is a condition characterized by malfunctioning of the peripheral nervous system that is not due to inflammation. It can be caused by stains because of how residues of the drugs build up in the body over time.
Symptoms of neuropathy include burning sensations, numbness, and tingling, as well as sensitivity to touch. Other symptoms include fatigue, difficulty in arising from a chair or getting out of bed, shortness of breath and difficulty walking. Over time, neuropathy can lead to muscle deterioration and paralysis. In the extreme cases, severe neuropathy as a side effect of statin use can also lead to death.
It’s estimated that approximately ten percent of statin users will develop some form of neuropathy over time. Even more alarming, researchers in denmark have found that long-term (two or more years) statin users have between and four and 14 times the risk of developing neuropathy compared to non-stain users.
Muscle weakness caused by statins can also be due to residue build-up, as well as the breakdown of muscle fibers and tissues that can cause muscle pain. Researchers have found that statin use can cause muscle weakness in as little as a few days or weeks in some people, while others may not experience it until a few months time. In many cases, statin users fail to recognize the signs of muscle weakness, thinking they are simply signs of fatigue, over-exertion, or simply due to aging.
Researchers estimate that as many as eight percent of all statin users experience muscle pain or weakness. They also report that some statin users suffer permanent muscle damage because of the drugs’ use.
Memory Loss: Memory loss is a more recently discovered side effect of stain drugs. In some cases, statin users report symptoms of memory loss that they believed to be related to Alzheimer’s disease due to their severity. In some cases, statin users experienced severe amnesia that lasted for up to 12 hours, and their symptoms were objectively corroborated by family members, eliminating the possibility that the symptoms were “all in the stains users’ heads.”
A scientific review of such cases reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that about half of the memory loss problems occurred within two months of statyin use. But some cases occurred in less than a week of beginning statin use. Although most people return to normal after they stop using statin drugs, some people continue to experience memory loss and other cognitive problems long after statin use is discontinued, in some cases indefinitely.
A Safer, More Effective Solution
Based on the potential severity of the side effects mentioned above, it’s clear that not having to rely on statin drugs to prevent heart disease makes very good sense. One such solution is the Mediterranean Diet, so named because it is based on the most commonly eaten foods by people in countries encircling the Mediterranean Sea.
The Mediterranean Diet offers a number of important advantages over the use of statin drugs. To begin with, it’s completely free of side effects. Plus it’s far cheaper than statin drugs (not to mention far more delicious!) And, best of all, its more than twice as effective as statin drugs for reducing the risk of heart disease. This fact has been confirmed by multiple scientific studies, which show that that the Mediterranean Diet reduces the risk of heart disease by 72 percent. Statins, by comparison, only reduce heart disease by 34 percent.
You can find out more about the Mediterranean Diet by doing a search of the term online. For now, here are the basics:
The diet is completely free of foods high in saturated fats, such as beef and pork, and, with the exception of certain low-fat cheeses and yogurt, is also low on dairy products. Sugar, sweets, and simple (white) carbohydrate foods are also kept to a minimum or eliminated altogether.
In place of such foods, staples of the Mediterranean Diet include:
Eating seven to ten servings or more of fresh fruits and vegetables per day. One way to easily accomplish this is to prepare salads for both lunch and dinner, making sure to include a wide range of vegetables. Walnuts, pine nuts, or other healthy toppings can also be added to salads to make them even more nutritious.
Substituting fish high in omega-3 oils for beef and pork. Healthy fish choices include sardines, wild caught salmon, mackerel, trout, and herring. Lean poultry can also be consumed a few times each week.
Eating nuts such as almonds, Brazil nuts, pecans, and walnuts as snacks.
Eating complex carbohydrate foods such as beans, barley, rich, quinoa, and whole-grain pasta. (Ideally, however, your consumption of carbohydrate foods at each meal should be smaller than your intake of non-starchy vegetables.)
Cooking with canola or olive oils, and using olive oil in place of butter, margarine, and commercial salad dressings.
One or two glasses of red wine can also be included with dinner.
By switching to a Mediterranean style diet you should start to notice improvements in your health, including your cardiovascular health, within one or two months. By taking the time to walk for a half hour each day after lunch or dinner, you can create even more benefits for yourself.
Don’t try to achieve everything at once, however. The key to success is to be more like the tortoise and not the hare. By being consistent and going “slow but surely” you will achieve the results you want and they’ll be well worth your effort.
Unabashed Plug
Discover and Gain Control of Your Human Energy Field. Read Dr. Valerie Hunt’s Mind Mastery Meditations: A Workbook for the “Infinite Mind,” the empowering guide created by one of the world's foremost researchers into the human energy field, energy medicine, and the relationship between consciousness and health. Each of the meditations this eBook contains is designed to give you mastery of your mind and to empower you to discover the answers to why you are the way you are, your soul's needs, your unique talents and capacities, and your self-designed destiny. By practicing and mastering these meditations, you will become able to live your life with greater ease and success, speed your self-healing, and dramatically increase your ability to manifest your deepest goals. To order this life-changing guide, visit
http://www.1healthyworld.com/ebooks/Mind-Mastery-Book-Info.cfm.
Recommendations
Book
The Passion Test by Janet and Chris Attwood. I found this book very helpful for deepening my understanding of what most excites and satisfies me. I think you will too.
Medical Freedom
Please contact and support the following organizations dedicated to protecting our health freedoms.
Citizens for Health - http://www.citizens.org
Alliance for Natural Health – http://www.alliance-natural-health.org (The leading organization fighting to preserve health freedom in England and the EU.)
Institute for Health Freedom – http://www.ForHealthFreedom.org
International Advocates for Health Freedom (IAHF) – http://www.iahf.com
And to learn how corrupt and extensive Big Pharma’s monopoly is, visit http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/index.html the website for the Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research. In particular, read their in-depth report The Pharmaceutical Drug Racket that you will find there.
That’s all for this week.
Health and Blessings!
Larry Trivieri, Jr.
Contact Information: Due to the inordinate amount of spam my email account receives, I no longer use it to receive emails. To contact me, please visit www.1healthyworld.com/contactus
Disclaimer: The Health Plus Letter is a weekly eZine published by Larry Trivieri, Jr. and Library of Health, LLC (dba www.1healthyworld.com) 3 Greenwood Court, Utica, NY 13501. It is made available without charge for information purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for medical care. If you are experiencing a health problem, seek prompt medical attention.
The Health Plus Letter is fully compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
Legal Notice: The information in this eZine may be freely and widely disseminated so long as full attribution is made as follows: The Health Plus Letter, January 20, 2009, Vol. 7, No. 2. Copyright © 2009 by Larry Trivieri, Jr. All rights reserved.
To Subscribe Or Unsubscribe to The Health Plus Letter, please visit http://www.1healthyworld.com/lists
