Bruce West has done it again!

This issue has a lot to think about.  The topics inside:

1. Anti-aging medicine

2. Anxiety (chronic)

3. Cancer, Women, Estrogen, Vegetable Powder

4. Gas (chronic)

5. Sciatica

6. Stress (chronic)

Bruce West October 2008 PDF Full Newsletter

In case you don’t have time to read all 8 pages here is my summary of what I’d like you to learn.

Chronic Stress can break anyone down.  It eats away at your nervous system, your adrenal glands and your pancreas.  you will never solve the problem until the stressor is addressed, job, marriage,family, social problems, or health.  This constant seesaw between the adrenals and the pancreas wreaks havoc on your blood sugar.   Try Min-Tran, Cataplex G, and high-vitamin cod liver oil.

Just don’t do nothing.  Have someone else help with your nutrition.  Force yourself to exercise.  Learn to deep breathe or practice meditation.

There are more people that have heart attacks with cholesterol below 200 than over 300.  There is not one study that shows a benefit of statin drugs for women whether they have heart disease or not.

Most patients who have heart attacks don’t smoke, drink, have high blood pressure or diabetes.  Bypasses and angiograms are bandaid treatments at best.  Cholesterol has little to nothing to do with heart disease.  Inflammation is where research is looking for a cause.  Some of the greatest protection is offered by HDL’s and vitamin K2.  K2 is primarily found in animal foods, raw butter, High vitamin butter oil, high vitamin cod liver oil and Cataplex F by Standard Process.

Sciatica: Surgery or NOT.  Conservative treatment, including chiropractic and deep tissue therapy, is the best course of action.  If you throw in some nutrition for bones and joints you will do even better.

Most women know that high levels of estrogen are related to higher risks of uterine and breast cancers.  That’s why for the first time in history the rates of breast cancer fell when medical doctors stopped prescribing estrogen.

What if you make too much or get it from the environment?

Your liver has to detoxify it.  That takes  very special foods.  mainly Brussels sprouts and Kale.  Cruciferous Complete was independently tested by  a lab and was shown to increase rates of estrogen excretion.  If the estrogen levels were very high the rate of excretion was 5x greater than normal.

Anti-aging is a big medical business.

There is a fundamental fact to understand, older people are sick because they are sick, not because they are old!

The truth is that good nutrition, a diet of whole foods, pure water,  and some exercise can provide real anti-aging treatments.

Chronic Gas:

This is mainly a digestive problem, so before you subject yourself to a battery of medical tests, try some digestive enzymes.  Try 2-4 Zypan first.  If you happen to get intense burning, you most likely have an ulcer.  Stop Zypan and you have now figured out a like cause of your problems.  If Zypan doesn’t solve it move on to the Gall bladder.

If your gall bladder is slow and sluggish your can’t digest fat well and it rots in your guts.  Take 2-4 A-F Betafood for a few weeks.  If symptoms improve continue for 6 months.

If those don’t work then look at dairy and gluten.  Just eliminate those from your diet and see what happens.

For the past months there has been a problem with a new distributor for Bruce West’s newsletter. So I am a few months behind in getting the info to you. Maybe it is supposed to be that way, because this new issue contains a potentially life-saving heart test you can do for free and at home. It goes well with our focus on heart disease.

Inside the issue:

…Back and Rib Pain. The amazing help a chiropractic adjustment can give.

…How some prescription drugs cause blindness, check the list.

…Kids shaking at night and growing pains.

…The Heart Recovery Test – If you don’t know this you could miss early heart trouble warning signs.

…The dangers of the chicken-pox vaccine.

…The lost vitamin of amazing joint health.

For the full Newsletter click the file below

Bruce West September 2008

Last night Dan Buettner was in New Ulm talking about his book the Blue Zones.  He was the keynote speaker for the kick-off of New Ulms Heart health project.  They are sure this is going to be followed nationally and possibly internationally.  They want New Ulm “to be a model for the world” -Lori Wightman

Here are the highlights of my notes in case you did not make it there.  I saw a few of you there.

…According to the CEO of Allina hospitals, the U.S. healthcare system costs 2.5 times more than any other country and we get to be #24 on the list of countries for longevity.

Basically our medical money is wasted.  The nice thing is he recognizes the problem and wants to do something.  They are looking to “focus upstream on wellness.”

According to the CEO, 60% of the resources are wasted in chronic diseases like heart disease.

And I thought this was shocking!

The hospitals don’t get any payments for wellness visits, only for E.R. visits.  Basically there is no financial incentive to promote wellness.  I have no idea how they intend to solve that one.

Wait, wait, wait they answered this question on KARE 11.  They are getting 40 million for the project.

The next speaker was Dr. Kevin Graham, Cardiologist and President, Minneapolis Heart Institute .

“1/3 of the people with a heart attack never make it to the E.R.”

“1/3 of the deaths in Brown County are from heart disease”

We could create a dramatic  reduction in risk if “everyone took an aspirin and 2 fish oil capsules a day”  I couldn’t believe that they would recommend something besides a drug.  I have to give them a lot of credit, that’s a big jump.  This time a year I will argue that cod liver oil would be a better choice, so if you aren’t taking any everyday, get down here and get some.

85 people died last year of Heart attacks in New Ulm.  They are trying to get that down to zero.  A very noble effort, but I think they have the wrong focus in HOW to do it.

Dr. Graham is looking to make heart disease a “medically treated disease”  He talked about this on KARE 11 last night.  They are looking for a magic drug to treat heart disease or to early detect people to get them on a drug cocktail that will hopefully prevent heart attacks.

One thing I found impressive was that Dr. Graham talked about calcification  (plaque) in the arteries as being a MORE important indicator of heart disease than cholesterol.  It “trumps” cholestrerol.  I loved it.  Maybe the great cholesterol myth will finally die.  Plus, Dr. Graham said that diabetes makes it all worse.

Well if diabetes makes it all worse, we can also focus on preventing diabetes.  Which is purely a nutritional issue.

Now, stay tuned to my emails because I am going to fill some gaps for you on plaque, on cholesterol, on heart attacks and ways to prevent them and ironically the next Bruce West newsletter (which you will see shortly) has a lot of these very issues in there.

PART 2 of New Ulm’s Heart health project was a lecture from Dan Buettner on the BlueZones.  Areas in the world that outlive the rest.  This is very similar to the work Dr. Weston Price did in the 1930’s.  There were more places back then that hadn’t had modern influences.

Here are some of my notes from the BlueZones.

The 4 BlueZones are Loma Linda, California;Okinawa, Japan; Saldinia, Italy; Northwest corner of Costa Rica.

In Sardinia, the cheeses were very high in omega-3 fatty acids (decreases inflammation and pain) compared to our cheese which is higher in omega-6 fatty acids (pain, inflammation).  Why?  Because their animals are still grass-fed.  Most of ours are grain fed.  Products from grass-fed animals are healthier for you.  They also drink wine regularly.

In Okinawa, they have a saying they say before every meal kind of like our Grace.  I couldn’t repeat the Japanese, but this was the rough translation.  “Stop eating when your stomach is 80% full”  they say that before each meal.  It takes 20 minutes before your stomach realizes what you have eaten, so the message here is eat slowly.  If you remember to stop at 80% you will consume about 400 calories less per day which = about 8lbs. a year.

Also, they have a social circle that is setup when they are 5 years old.   Basically given friends that they are expected to take care of for life.  Dan had slides of a group of ladies that had beengetting together regularly for 96 years.  They all were 101.

They also have an “ikigei”  .  The rough translation is “why I wake up in the morning?”  What is your purpose?

Off the cuff he said the longest lived people sleep 7 hours a day.

In Loma Linda, they were only the 7th day Adventists.  They took their diet from the bible.

Grains, seeds, nuts, green plants, no meat, and some fish.  They had regular routines they followed and they focused on keeping the sabbath.  They focused on God, family and going for nature walks together.

In Costa Rica, they had a special diet, very hard water, family focused, a light dinner, dry climate, strong social network, worked into older age and had a strong PURPOSE in life.

Dan Buettner summed up his findings for living to 100 and beyond in a few simple terms.

#1 Move naturally.  They didn’t run marathons or any other extreme.  They all lived inn walkable communities.

#2 They had the right outlook.  They had positive attitudes and lived a downshifted life.  They either prayed everyday, or napped, or meditated.

#3 They didn’t diet.  They eat wisely.  They ate a lot of plants.  They followed the 80% rule and ate slowly.  This may surprise some of you.  They had a few alcoholic drinks / night.  Mostly wine.

There has been a long association between alcohol and a decrease in heart disease.  2 drinks max.

#4 They put their family first.  All of them.  Grandparents on down.

#5 They had a strong sense of belonging.  All but 5 of them believed in God.  Being religious adds 4-7 extra years to your life.

#6 The hung out with the RIGHT people.  Positive people like them.  He noted that you are your peer group.  Smokers tend to be with smokers.  Overweight people cluster together or influence others in the group to gain weight.  BBC NEWS

For some fun 
Take their longevity test.  Here was mine.

Now realize that telling the future is impossible, but it is still a fun look at your lifestyle.  See how you are doing at bluezones.com

My Biological Age and life expectancy from the BlueZones.com

If you are looking at the above numbers and thought, “Dr. Altman could squeak out 2.2 more years.”  Well, I have a few nit-picks with their questions.  So I don’t think this is perfect but it has many admirable qualities.  They don’t differentiate between salts.  They just assume all salt is bad, and that isn’t true at all.  They also want people to regularly consume whole grain bread, and I don’t, and you shouldn’t either.  3-6 servings of grain a day is no way good for you.

#1 Grains have omega-6 fatty acids that contribute to inflammation and heart disease.

#2 Grains are considered simple carbs for all practical purposes.  The more carbs you eat the easier it is to gain weight.  Every extra 1lbs. of fat takes 100 miles of blood vessels to support that.  Simple math tells you that isn’t good for your heart.

So that is where I got docked some points for their scale.  But, I thought I’d share it with you
Have fun,

Bruce West July 2008

Inside is info on

#1 Bogus Alternative Medications

#2 Synthetic B vitamins don’t help the heart

#3 Knee surgeries often worthless

#4 Pitfalls of Lasik Surgery

#5 Peripheral Artery Disease

#6 Restless Leg Syndrome

For the complete newsletter the .PDF format is below.

Bruce West July 2008

This is my chance to share and possibly change the world. If you realize that cholesterol isn’t as big a deal as drug commercials portray and you look at being healthy as your responsibility and not insurers. Then you will be astonished with the information in this article. If you have questions or want more specific advice, just leave a comment below.

In remembering Tim Russert, we can learn a little, and in my case a lot.

Unusual facts forgotten by drug commercials.

#1 Think for a moment about how far America has come and changed in the last 100 years. From airplanes to cell phones, truly amazing. What did people eat 100 years ago? Eggs, milk, butter, meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, in a nut shell. By todays standards, lots of saturated fats, right? If you think this is a mistake quit reading and go to a history book, and do not pass go (Monopoly, patented 1933).

#2 In the 1930’s there were about 3,000 deaths from heart attacks. By the 1950’s, deaths were 500,000 and the leading cause of death. Thats a huge jump in ~20 years, for a relatively rare disease. Ironically, in the 1950’s the cholesterol theory was born.

What most people know about Heart Disease is summarized by USA Today:

“Half of all heart attacks occur in people who have no risk factors and 20% in people with no major risk factors.

The reason lies in the biology of the coronary artery. In landmark research, Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic has shown that when cholesterol begins collecting in artery walls, it pushes them outward, not into the channel where blood flows. So many patients — Russert included — experience no symptoms of heart disease.

Heart attacks occur when a plaque becomes inflamed and bursts, sending blood clots and debris downstream to lodge in arteries supplying the heart. Standard diagnostic tests don’t reveal these inflamed cholesterol deposits or plaques. Over the past few years, researchers led by Paul Ridker of Harvard have shown that testing for a chemical signal of inflammation, called C-reactive protein, or CRP, can add predictive power.

But many heart attacks are still unpredictable. Russert’s is a textbook example.”

USA TODAY June 16^th, 2008

The cardiology industry is based on one premise, arteries get blocked with plaque.

What if it was all wrong?

What if our common belief was like a flat earth?

It is fairly close to once per year than an article rocks my world and gets me to sit up and take notice. Most of the printed material on health and nutrition would be better served for use in the bathroom. Most of it is regurgitated crap.

I came across an article, quite by accident, about research that has been going on for 29 years out side of the USA.

There are a few holes in the “blockages cause heart attacks theory”.

#1 Not all heart attacks have blockages

#2 The more time it takes from heart attack until death the more blockages that are found. If a person dies within 1 hour of an attack there is 16% of people had blockages. If they die after 24 hours 53% of people had blockages. Meaning: the blockage is a consequence of the attack not the cause of the attack.

#3 In 1988, a 20 year study of coronary surgery from the VA and NIH found that survival for those who had surgery and those who used drug therapies were no different. Not what you’d expect if blockages were the real cause of heart attacks.

Sometimes standing on the threshold of greatness is amazing. The insider secrets to heart attacks and how to prevent them and maybe, just maybe, avoid them. Truly amazing information is available through our website. This is unlike anything you have ever read about heart disease before. As usual, the info has been buried for many years.

 Click Here…What causes heart attacks?