The Health Detectives

 Welcome to the New Year – we look forward to working with you and your friends and family to make it the best it can be.

Clearly any year has challenges to face, both expected and unexpected, but do we really stop and think about how ‘fit we are to face it’ … beyond making a few new year’s resolutions to counter balance our guilty festive excesses?

Yes –  good decisions (resolutions plus an action plan we WANT to succeed at) can really reduce stress, improve our health and facilitate happiness. It is alot to do with our state of mind. But have we stopped to look at our HEALTH … if this is not on our side those intentions will never become decisions, and before we know it we will be beating ourselves up with some nasty negative self-talk.

What health aspects can help us feel clearer headed and fit for the fight .. and the fun?

H is for Hormones – if out of balance this can range from depression, debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, horrible periods, muddled thinking, unwanted sensitivities and emotions, that is for starters.

A is for adrenals – again part of the bigger hormone picture, and adrenal exhaustion is all too common. Not helped by stress, xmas and money worries , family issues, lack of sleep and much more. We force ourselves to go on being super wife, mother, man etc.  but at some point our adrenals (or worse, our heart chemistry) starts to rebel and it becomes harder to pick ourselves up.

S is for sleep – this can be elusive and causes of poor sleep can be emotional, or biochemical (if you have got rid of other external factors – noisy neighbours etc) and lack of good quality sleep can again lead to depression, and loss of self confidence. That would not help in achieving goals and enjoying the year ahead. Often rebalancing the biochemistry with nutrients when we are working on patients has the positive side effect of improving sleep even when we are not working on that directly. For many patients its one of the first changes they report back, when we are for example working on their digestion or hormones.  Without good sleep it is hard to keep our moods even and our self esteem intact.

D is for digestion. Many of our patients have been told that their ‘IBS’ can only be managed and not cured. Poor digestion is not only painful, but is a real stress for many people who have to constantly watch what they eat, worry about what they eat, and keep a short clear path to the nearest loo , where ever they are. That is one stress we wish to remove for anyone looking forward to living life more freely in 2012. We have MANY happy patients who have had fast relief and lasting relief from IBS symtoms Without having to stay on long term remedies – so make getting rid of IBS a new years’ resolution for yourself or someone you care about. It does NOT need to be lived with in normal cases.

Finally… F is for Fungus… an amazing number of us can suffer from fungal imbalances which can have a wide range of impacts from Candida, to thrush recurring, to cravings for sweet things, to unfairly awful hangovers from moderate intake of alcohol, to mystery skin lesions, to really foggy headed problems thinking straight!  It can if left untreated also weaken key body systems such as the immune system, with nasty potential future risks, but it can be treated and left behind.

Our new years’ resolution??? To work with even more lovely patients than in previous years to get them through whatever health problems have stood in the way of them being who they really want to be – and to be a simple back up for them to stay that way and enjoy being… well … WELL!

Join us for an MOT for yourself or give an MOT as a gift for a great year to anyone who is being held back by ill health.  We will work with anyone who wants to be well and is willing to work with us using natural medicine and determination!

Wishing you a wonderful 2012.

Best wishes – Gitti and Lise – The Health Detectives

Eggs have long been demonised as being bad for the heart. Yet research now suggests that this is not only untrue, but that eggs could even be considered a ‘superfood’. Eggs could actually protect against heart disease, breast cancer and eye problems and even help you to lose weight.

For years people assumed eggs were bad for cholesterol levels but research has found that they ‘have no clinically significant impact’ on heart disease or cholesterol levels. Egg yolks contain cholesterol, but we now know it is the saturated fats in food, not dietary cholesterol, that raises blood cholesterol levels, a risk factor for heart attacks.

Eggs are actually good for you. One egg provides 13 essential nutrients, all in the yolk. (Egg whites contain albumen, an important source of protein, and no fat). Eggs are also an excellent source of B vitamins, which are needed for vital functions in the body, and also provide good quantities of vitamin A, essential for normal growth and development.

We don’t often advise people to stay off a dietary product on a long-term basis. We usually try to find out why someone cannot tolerate a certain drink or food source and thus correct the problem from a biochemical angle rather than say to stay off it indefinitely because it doesn’t agree with you. If you correct the biochemistry, you should be able to enjoy that food or drink in moderate amounts.

However, talking about drinking cow’s milk, when we buy non-organic milk in the supermarket, it has been homogenised. This means:
- Uniform distribution of fat, no cream layer.
- Full-bodied layer.
- Whiter, more appetising colour.
- It lasts longer.

Does this benefit your body and health?
Natural cow’s milk or non-homogenised milk has fat particles that are so big that they cannot go through the intestinal mucosa and into the bloodstream; so the body will eliminate them. Unlike the fat particles of homogenised  or non natural milk, which the processing has made so small , that they can enter your blood stream. Now you have undigested fat particles directly in your blood. The stressed body stores this undigested fat in the arteries, the joints and the heart.

In the process of extending shelf life and stopping the cream separating out of milk, medicine has a clear culprit for increased arteriosclerosis. Some findings link the formation of the plaque which clogs arteries directly to ingesting homogenised milk.

According to Dr Oster and Dr Donald Ross of Fairfield University of Delaware, homogenising allows the enzyme xanthine oxidase to pass intact into the blood stream. There it attacks the plasmologen tissue of the artery walls and parts of the heart muscle. This causes lesions that the body tries to heal by laying down a protective layer of cholesterol. The end result is scar tissue and calcified plaques with a build-up of cholesterol and other fatty deposits. According to these experts, dietary cholesterol is not the main cause of heart attacks; it is homogenised or non natural milk.

So what should we do?
We must minimise our intake of transfats (bad fats), i.e. homogenised milk fats, processed oils, margarine and excess animal fat. Instead use good oils such as, evening primrose oil, flaxseed oil, olive oil and small amounts of butter and cream.