Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Can I Blow Off Some Steam?

I hope you heard the news that MEDICAL ERRORS are now the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.  Just so it sinks in a little bit; there’s heart disease, cancer, and MEDICAL ERRORS as your top 3 most likely ways of dying this year.  What’s the 5th leading cause of death in the US (of course, not listed)?  Non-error effects from medication use.  You got the right diagnosis, the right treatment, and the treatment killed you.

3rd Leading Cause of Death

A quarter of a million people will die because someone said “oops, my bad,” that is contracted with your insurance plan.  100k die from the treatment itself.  I started this website to help people create a culture of health so they don’t have to use the healthcare system because of inefficiencies and ineffectiveness.  This latest news takes it to a whole new level.  Let’s say that by you reading my posts it did nothing to prevent your heart disease and cancer risk of dying but it kept you away from taking medications or having surgery…this would be an enormously successful outcome, saving the lives of 350k people each year.

After all, 1/3 of medical spending is for “services that don’t appear to improve health or the quality of care—and may make things worse.”

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Soft Tissue Adhesions: A Common Problem With an Uncommon Solution

Guest Post – Dr. Scott A. Mills DC

One thing I have not done much of on this website is to discuss pain, muscle issues, and other structural problems that could indeed be a stressor to your health expression as much as Twinkies and self-esteem deficiencies.  I have asked a friend and colleague, Dr. Scott A. Mills, to add some insight into the soft tissue arena.

Full Body Fix

Dr. Scott A. Mills DC, San Francisco Chiropractor, creator of The Full Body Fix.

Dr. Scott A. Mills is a chiropractor with a passion for empowering others with the knowledge and tools needed to eliminate pain and improve the way they move. He is currently located in San Francisco with his wife, Diane Sanfilippo (Balanced Bites and Practical Paleo). In addition to his Doctor of Chiropractic degree, he holds a Master’s degree in Exercise Science and worked as a collegiate Certified Athletic Trainer for 6 years prior to his chiropractic career.

His latest project The Full Body Fix is a series of corrective exercise video protocols designed to address the most common aches & pains he’s seen in over 15 years of helping athletes and everyday people back to health.

From Dr. Scott.

As a chiropractor, one of the most overlooked and under-diagnosed problems I see on a daily basis is the presence of soft tissue adhesions. These scar tissue like formations can occur as the result of repetitive stress injury, acute soft tissue damage or chronic poor posture. Once they embed in and adhere to normal soft tissue, they can be very difficult to resolve, causing a host of aches, pain and even unseen problems.

Let’s take a deeper look to find out more about this pervasive problem.

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3 Rs for Gut Restoration

I’m sure there isn’t a day that goes by that you don’t see a Facebook post talking about the gut.  In fact, I just posted one from some researchers concluding:

The study results support the hygiene hypothesis which, in the case of IBD, argues that the absence of exposure to worms in too-clean modern living spaces has left some with oversensitive, gut-based immune systems vulnerable to inflammatory diseases. Gut worms have helped to train and balance immune systems throughout human evolution, but are now missing in developed nations, which, in turn, have the highest rates of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. #GetDirty.

I’m currently reading Dr. Kelly Brogan’s book, A Mind of Your Own:  The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives.  She is tackling the gut as a major source of mental illness.  The gut’s affect is linked to WAY more than just belly discomfort.  It’s linked to thyroid issues, hormones, joint destruction, autism, chronic fatigue, and so on and so on.

So what’s a person to do about it?  How do you know if you have gut problems?

The safe answer is to assume that you do have gut problems.  The solution is to create an internal ecosystem that promotes gut health.  What’s the danger of doing this if you don’t have gut problems?  Nothing.  It’s called creating health.  If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your brain.  If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your hair. If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your sex drive.  If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your mitochondria.

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The Study Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

The Autism-Vaccine controversy is not going to die off any times soon.  The pro-vaccine side says there are hundreds of studies debunking any link.  What I find most interesting, is that all those studies are in response to one little observation with 12 children back in the late 90’s.

The controversy has been heightened in recent days due to the scheduled showing of the film Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe.

 

The part that interests me is that whenever the link gets mentioned in major news media outlets, the name Dr. Andrew Wakefield is included.  It’s not just his name, it’s the fact that his study of 12 children gets blamed on Dr. Wakefield starting the autism-vaccine link.  Not only is he blamed, there’s an immediate statement that his study has been tarred and feathered and anyone thinking of using it as credible evidence is just as much of a quack as Wakefield.

Let’s take a look at Dr. Wakefield’s study that turned the world up side down.  The study was only 12 kids.  The kids were sent to Dr. Wakefield, a GI specialist, not to diagnose an MMR link with the autism, but to assess the child’s bowels.  Here is a paraphrased version of it.

We investigated a consecutive series of children with chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder.

12 children (mean age 6 years [range 3–10], 11 boys) were referred to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a history of normal development followed by loss of acquired skills, including language, together with diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Children underwent gastroenterological, neurological, and developmental assessment and review of developmental records. Ileocolonoscopy and biopsy sampling, magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and lumbar puncture were done under sedation. Barium follow-through radiography was done where possible. Biochemical, haematological, and immunological profiles were examined.

None had neurological abnormalities on clinical examination; MRI scans, EEGs, and cerebrospinal-fluid profiles were normal; and fragile X was negative. Prospective developmental records showed satisfactory achievement of early milestones in all children. The only girl (child number eight) was noted to be a slow developer compared with her older sister. She was subsequently found to have coarctation of the aorta. After surgical repair of the aorta at the age of 14 months, she progressed rapidly, and learnt to talk. Speech was lost later. Child four was kept under review for the first year of life because of wide bridging of the nose. He was discharged from follow-up as developmentally normal at age 1 year. In eight children, the onset of behavioural problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child’s physician, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination. Five had had an early adverse reaction to immunisation (rash, fever, delirium; and, in three cases, convulsions).

Asperger first recorded the link between coeliac disease and behavioural psychoses. (4) Walker-Smith and colleagues (5) detected low concentrations of alpha-1 antitrypsin in children with typical autism, and D’Eufemia and colleagues (6) identified abnormal intestinal permeability, a feature of small intestinal enteropathy, in 43% of a group of autistic children with no gastrointestinal symptoms, but not in matched controls. These studies, together with our own, including evidence of anaemia and IgA deficiency in some children, would support the hypothesis that the consequences of an inflamed or dysfunctional intestine may play a part in behavioural changes in some children.

We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue. If there is a causal link between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and this syndrome, a rising incidence might be anticipated after the introduction of this vaccine in the UK in 1988. Published evidence is inadequate to show whether there is a change in incidence (22) or a link with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. (23)

Urinary methylmalonic-acid concentrations were raised in most of the children, a finding indicative of a functional vitamin B12 deficiency. Although vitamin B12 concentrations were normal, serum B12 is not a good measure of functional B12 status. (25) Urinary methylmalonic-acid excretion is increased in disorders such as Crohn’s disease, in which cobalamin excreted in bile is not reabsorbed. A similar problem may have occurred in the children in our study. Vitamin B12 is essential for myelinogenesis in the developing central nervous system, a process that is not complete until around the age of 10 years. B12 deficiency may, therefore, be a contributory factor in the developmental regression. (26)

We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunisation. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.

The bold font is my emphasis.

And then the world lost it’s sh*t.

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The #1 Thing To Impact Your Health

I had an ‘aha’ moment this morning that I think can potentially help a lot of people.  Most of my days begin between 4- 5 am…planned and willing (mostly).  Yesterday, Colorado had one of those Spring snowstorms that shuts down major highways, international airports, and causes mass hysteria on all local news outlets telling people to stay home.  The next morning, there’s always a good chance that local businesses and schools have delayed starts.  On a typical Thursday morning I go to CrossFit for the 5 am class and then I meet with a men’s group at 6:30 am.

With the knowledge that most people (the ones I workout with and the guys from the men’s group) are going to roll out of bed a little later than normal and there’s potential for icy roads that could still be a bit hazardous, there’s an internal dilemma.  Should I still get up early or create a lazy morning?

The #1 Thing That Impacts Your Health

Functional Medicine Colorado SpringsThe ‘aha’ was that the changes and success I have made and been able to sustain in my own personal health, my career, and other proud moments in life is that my strength is in the consistency of just showing up.  I’ve never been the most talented.  I’ve never been the smartest.  I’ve never had an abundant of resources.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes.  I have failed too many times to count.

But when you show up a lot more times than not, there’s a chance you get ahead of the curve.  Showing up that day doesn’t mean you will have a win that day or be greatly rewarded.  It means you showed up.  There’s a lot of things that I show up for that I still really suck at.  But I’m still going to show up.  Eventually, I will suck a little less at it.

The more you show up to do something about your health, the more impact you will create in your outcomes.  Keep showing up.

Why don’t people show up?  They let their emotions and feelings get in the way.  I know we’re in a post modern society where experience and emotion are more valued than information, but experience and emotion are the constant variable in the showing up equation.  Information is abundant.  Your lack of health success is rarely due to a “I didn’t know” factor.

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To Antibiotic or Not

It’s no mystery that we have a massive over-use of antibiotics problem in our culture.  Once the miracle cure for anything that ails you, has now been linked to auto-immune conditions, obesity, and the rise in drug resistant bacteria.  The use of antibiotics on the human ecosystem is like an atomic bomb, wiping out any and all types of bacteria present.  It’s able to end internal wars when used appropriately but over use can lead to the end of civilization as we know it.

For these reasons, many of the parents in my practice are weary about putting their kids or themselves on antibiotics.  For clarification, I cannot prescribe antibiotics nor can I tell you to not go on them.  We just strive to have good relationships with our practice members so many want to know what I would do and are comfortable asking.  What I do is give circumstances about how I would approach the situation if my kids needed them.  Thankfully, at the time of writing this, my 3 boys of 4 yo, 2 yo, and 3 months, have never been on antibiotics nor needed them.

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If my boys or wife, or even myself had need for them, I would be just as cautious as my practice peeps are.  As a kid, I was on antibiotics more than I can remember.  Eventually, someone realized I was allergic to them and they were causing more harm than help.  I would say my repeated doses were a major contributor to the horrific eczema that I had in college.

Fortunately,  the nurse practitioner at my college was severely wrong about my diagnosis, and pretty much every other kid that walked into her office in the late 90’s, early 2000’s.  If you were a female not feeling well, her top differential diagnosis was that you were pregnant and she automatically gave you a pregnancy test.  For college males, you automatically had an STD.  In my case, she tried to label my eczema as scabies.  Ridiculous and not possible to say the least.

I digress….

What is a parent supposed to do with facing the potential for antibiotics?  If the illness is viral, the antibiotic is useless and wipes out anything beneficial that would have helped the body fight.  But if it’s bacterial, the antibiotic will still wipe out everything but can have benefit.  Most doctors and most parents don’t want to wait for a culture to see the the type of bug that is causing the problem.  This doesn’t fit the profile of the parents I see.

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Magnifying Magnesium

The past 2 months, I feel like I have had more and more people indicate on their intake forms that they are taking magnesium.  It’s not taking magnesium for general health.  It’s often the consumption of magnesium for symptoms like headaches, constipation, hypertension, poor energy, sleep, and restless leg.  Magnesium is being used and consumed like a medicine.

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I know you’ve seen the Hippocrates quote of “Let food by thy medicine and medicine by they food” but I think with a little understanding of magnesium’s role in the body in addition to my favorite hormone, insulin, you will start magnifying magnesium.

Magnesium:

Searching the the criteria “magnesium deficiency”[MeSH Terms] OR “magnesium deficiency”[All Fields] in Pubmed elicits over 4,000 references.  Although it’s the least abundant blood electrolyte, it plays critical roles in regulating other processes in the body.  It is extremely important for the metabolism of Calcium, Potassium, Phosphorus, Zinc, Copper, Iron, Sodium, Lead, Cadmium, Hydrogen chloride, acetylcholine, and nitric oxide (NO).  Magnesium is essential in the production of ATP.  It’s necessary for your methylation processes.

Why are so many deficient?  Other than our poor soil quality, magnesium levels are decreased by excess alcohol, salt, phosphoric acid (sodas) and coffee intake, by profuse sweating, by intense, prolonged stress, by excessive menstruation and vaginal flux, by diuretics and other drugs and by certain parasites (pinworms).

Therefore the range of ailments associated with magnesium deficiency is staggering: hypertension (cardiovascular disease, kidney and liver damage, etc.), peroxynitrite damage (migraine, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.), recurrent bacterial infection due to low levels of nitric oxide in the cavities (sinuses, vagina, middle ear, lungs, throat, etc.), fungal infections due to a depressed immune system, thiamine deactivation (low gastric acid, behavioral disorders, etc.), premenstrual syndrome, calcium deficiency (osteoporosis, hypertension, mood swings, etc.), tooth cavities, hearing loss, diabetes type II, cramps, muscle weakness, impotence (lack of NO), aggression (lack of NO), fibromas, potassium deficiency (arrhythmia, hypertension, some forms of cancer), iron accumulation, etc.

What do many people do to treat these ailments that don’t want to to use pharmaceuticals?  They take more magnesium.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But if you want to magnify magnesium, there’s one physiological process that may have the most impact on how your body utilizes this key nutrient.

I'm exhausted, but I just can't seem to relax. Maybe it's more of an insulin problem than adrenals. Click To Tweet

Insulin Sensitivity:

Many are confused on the concept of insulin sensitivity.  Let me try and put it in context.

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Breaking Fear

There’s a saying, ‘We fear that which we do not know.’  Many will recite this as a way of self comforting after being criticized.  While I think this is true, I also think ‘we fear that which we do know.’

After the birth of our 3rd son, we joined the ranks for minivan owners.  If I could give advice to my 25 year old self, I would tell me, ‘Don’t fear the minivan, those things are freakn’ sweet.’

We got a used one, with all the features possible.  Since it wasn’t a hassle to get 3 kids into the back of a sedan anymore, we were more open to driving around a bit.  Little did we know, we had a battery terminal that could pop off the positive terminal just by blowing on it.  My wife found out the hard way after being stranded in a parking lot after a mom’s group.  Thankfully, when it appeared to be a dead battery, the cable had come off.

It doesn’t seem like a big problem except now we know something.  We know that there could be a possibility of hitting a pot hole (a probability of that here in Colorado Springs), it could shake the cable loose and then risk the battery not being charged while driving. The fear of getting somewhere, enjoying our time together, and then not being able to start the van back up, permeated through our thoughts.

Constant #fear is just as damaging as drug addictions, trans fats, and cubicle living. Click To Tweet

I decided that I would use Google University to see how to change the battery terminal.  Surprisingly, it looked like something I could handle, and I’m not a car guy.  I built up the confidence, went to the car parts store, found all the parts I needed in less than 2 minutes and was ready to tackle the project of saving the minivan.

I opened the hood up, located the battery cables and was dismayed at all the extra cables that weren’t on the Google videos. I began to fear that which I did not know, especially when it comes to electricity.  Long story short, under the many suggestions from my wife, I called our car whiz, motor-cross racing friend.

He looked at it, assessed the situation and fixed the problem in about 8 minutes.

What’s the point?  The point is that fear is paralyzing, whether you know what you’re getting yourself into or you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.  As I watch and observe our nation during this political season, I think fear of the known and unknown is destroying our nation’s physical health just as much as our low fat diet recommendations, sedentary lifestyles, sugar obsessions, and badges of busyness.

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1958 Cholesterol Wisdom

A friend of mine passed an article to me from The Wall Street Journal.  It was an article about how stress raises cholesterol.  My initial mental reaction was, ‘Duh, what have I been talking about for the past 10 years?’  Teaching moment:  Pride comes before the fall.

I was all proud of myself that I was ahead of the curve from a major publication.  As I looked for the references in The Wall Street Journal article, one was from back in 1958.  This information that lifestyle (not just bad bugs, bad luck, or bad genes) affects health outcomes was being quantified 20 years before I was born.  More specifically, they were looking at how stress affects cholesterol and blood clotting.

The 1958 study was titled ‘Changes in the Serum Cholesterol and Blood Clotting Time in Men Subjected to Cyclic Variation of Occupational Stress.’  It is published in the journal Circulation by the American Heart Association.  The intro to the study states the following:

Accountants were selectively chosen as a self-controlled group for studying effects of cyclic occupational stress upon serum cholesterol and blood clotting time, since their routine work schedule is interrupted by urgent tax deadlines, associated with severe occupational stress. Forty male accountants (age 28 to 56) were bled biweekly for serum cholesterol and monthly for blood clotting time from January to June 1957. Complete records also were kept of weight, exercise, diet, relative work load, and any exposure to unusual avocational stress. When studied individually, each subject’s highest serum cholesterol consistently occurred during severe occupational or other stress, and his lowest at times of minimal stress. The results could not be ascribed to any changes of weight, exercise, or diet. Marked acceleration of blood clotting time consistently occurred at the time of maximum occupational stress, in contrast to normal blood clotting during periods of respite.  The possible implications of these results are discussed in relation to the problem of clinical coronary artery disease.

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In the chart above, group A are ‘tax’ accountants.  Group B is made up of ‘corporate’ accountants.  These are plots of cholesterol levels tested in 2 week intervals from January to June.  Of particular interest is that the corporate accountants had higher cholesterol levels and a higher reported stress level in January than in April.  But overall, it’s evident the spike in cholesterol correlates with the as the April 15 tax deadlines.

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Before Running For Suncreen

Earlier this week, mega star High Jackman posted this on his Instagram page.  In case you missed it, here it is.

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Mr. Jackman is making a plea for anyone that has had skin cancer or if you want to prevent skin cancer, to wear your sunscreen.  Before running for sunscreen, let’s take a look at the giant elephant in the room first.

Sun Exposure is Not the Cause of Cancer

There are no absolutes when chronic illness develops like cancer, Alzheimer’s, autism, heart disease, and auto-immune conditions.  Chronic illness does not occur because of an event.  It takes a lot of hard work to get really sick.

“There’s no such thing as a healthy person with a bad body part or organ.” – Jeffrey Moss, DDS, CNS, DACBN

How can someone like Hugh Jackman get cancer?  He works out, eats right, and looks so healthy.  This is what traditional doctors think too.  If diet and exercise don’t work, then it must be something else.  Let’s blame the sun.

Did anyone consider job hazards?  He’s had some major movie roles.  What do you movie sets provide all the actors?  LOTS of makeup.  How many times has his skin been lathered in lotions, sprays, powders, concealers, fragrances, and spray tans?  Then how many different soaps, shampoos, and cleaners have been used to get all that makeup off?

Many, if not all the cosmetics have links to being carcinogenic (cancer causing), hormone disruptors, developmental and reproductivity disruptors, as well as toxic to the liver and kidneys.  In what bottle of lotion do you find many of these same chemicals?  Check your sunscreen.

It’s a contradictory message.  You will hear about the chemicals in your cosmetics and how they can be harmful but in the same breath you’re told to wear sunscreen.  It’s as ridiculous as telling kids not to do drugs but don’t forget your Ritalin.  Or what about how chocolate milk is a superfood, power recovery beverage but chocolate ice cream is horrible for you?  Contradictions lead to destruction.

The Sunscreen Elephant

With almost any diagnosis, the more it’s ‘early detected and treated,’ the more disability is associated with that diagnosis.  In Robert Whitaker’s book, ‘Anatomy of an Epidemic,’ he states,

“The rise in the number of disabled mentally ill has been especially pronounced since 1987, the year that Prozac, the first of the “second-generation” psychiatric drugs, arrived on the market. The number of adults on SSI or SSDI due to mental illness has risen from 1.25 million in 1987 to more than 4 million today. The number of children and youth on SSI due to a serious mental illness has skyrocketed from 16,200 in 1987 to more than 600,000 today.”

The use of sunscreen and skin cancer is no different.  See the chart on increasing sun screen consumption by the world. Guess who consumes the most?  What has happened to skin cancer rates as sunscreen consumption has increased?  Are people that much more irresponsible?  Are people just buying sunscreen but not applying it?  It’s like Bill Clinton claiming he smoked but didn’t inhale marijuana.

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Source: Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program (www.seer.cancer.gov) SEER*Stat Database: Incidence – SEER 17 Regs Limited-Use, Nov 2006 Sub (1973-2004 varying) – Linked To County Attributes – Total U.S., 1969-2004 Counties, National Cancer Institute, DCCPS, Surveillance Research Program, Cancer Statistics Branch, released April 2007, based on the November 2006 submission

Skin Cancer is a System of Dysfunctions

Could there be a component to skin cancer that is sun related?  Sure.  But any cancer has a series of underlying dysfunctions that are contributing to the expression of cells growing and dividing faster than programmed.

There is going to be cell damage, inflammation, insulin resistance (insulin is a power promoter of melanocytes), nutrient deficiencies, non-required chemical toxicity, and so much more.   For your doctor or anyone with influence to automatically conclude that they have skin cancer because they are deficient in sunscreen is practicing lazy healthcare and dogmatic healthcare that is no different than assessing your thyroid function with a TSH or heart function with a cholesterol panel.

I know Hugh Jackman means well and his intent is probably pure.  It’s just that his recommendations have no basis for proven outcomes.  As we head out of winter and into the warmer weather, you have some time to think and do your research before running for sunscreen.  Need help?  You know how to find me.