Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Your Omega Omen

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I harp on inflammation a lot.  I’ve mentioned inflammation coming from the immune system, your belly fat, and even your liver.  Another source of inflammation that can cause your body to keep cycling in protection mode and away from growth and recovery are your levels and ratios of Omega fats.

We have all heard of Omega 3 being good for us.  You will see commercials advertising Omega 3 supplements and I’m seeing more and more, medicine-first minded MDs even telling their patients to start taking fish oil.

Why are Omega 3 fats so good for you?  Omega 3 fats are extremely important in the structure and function of every cell in the body.  The function of your cells is what determines your health.  Your cells are what determines your immune function, healing, hormone levels, heart function, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, digestion, moods etc.  Literally, the function and health of your cells determines every aspect of your health.

Omega OmenThink of Omega 3s like your bouncer at your favorite club (your cell membrane).  You want strong bouncers to keep the riff raff out of the club.  If I showed up to be your bouncer, you would laugh, push me to the side, and the club would be in shambles.  All hell would break loose and the club owner would have to spend a lot of time and money to repair all the damage (inflammation) that could have been prevented with bigger, stronger bouncers.

One of the problems is that when people jump on the Omega 3 bandwagon, they supplement with either an inferior type or not enough of the good type.

Club Troubles

Me being a bouncer at your club would be the inferior type of Omega 3.  Most often, this comes in the form of flax seed or vegetable based omega 3s.  There’s nothing wrong with them.  They provide a type of omega 3 (Alpha-Linolenic Acid) but what the body requires and craves the most are omega 3s in the form of EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).  EPA and DHA would be the 6’6″, 245 lbs bouncer that is also a blackbelt in all martial arts, a trained sniper, and expert hostage negotiator.

I could try and train to become those things and pack on the mass but it will be a lengthy process, not serve your immediate needs, and most likely not serve your long term needs.  In other words, the body has the capability of converting ALA to EPA and DHA.  The problem is that even though the body can do those things, there’s a limitation to the amount of how much EPA and DHA can be produced just from an ALA source alone.

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Fat and Fabulous or Inflamed and Ignorant

Fat and Fabulous

I was giving a presentation to a group of other doctors and students and in the mental health field last week. One attendee interrupted me when I was talking about insulin resistance.

She was probably 100 pounds overweight but told a story that she has already lost about 30 pounds, had decreased her thyroid med dose by 1/3, and even had regression of ovarian cysts. These were fantastic changes and I praised her.  She said she was fat and fabulous.

But the part that made her over step her boundaries was her statement that I shouldn’t lump all fat people as unhealthy and that all skinny people are healthy.  After all, she was fat (her words not mine) and she is healthy.

First of all, I didn’t; those words never spewed from my mouth nor will they ever. What I was discussing was how certain areas of the body have more or less affinity to store energy (insulin resistance), hence why people gain weight in the butt, gut, and thighs.  It’s an area that is a lot less resistant to insulin than the liver or muscles.  It’s an easy area to store excess energy.

Then she went on to say how healthy she was and that all her labs came out looking good, etc. I didn’t have time to get into why both of those statements are false in front of the group, so I thought I would tackle it here.  She wasn’t looking for my help, just looking to be heard in a crowd.

In my mind, I don’t look at fat as fat. I look at fat as an outward expression of inflammation. You can be fat and fabulous but don’t let that blind you to being inflamed and ignorant.

The fact that she said her labs look good is a huge red flag in my book, especially when she says that other conditions are present, like hypothyroid.  Those ‘normal’ ranges on blood work lump 95% of the population as ‘normal’ and fabulous. When I read them, I tighten and interpret those values in a much more narrow spectrum.  It ends up being more predictive and preventative in nature.

Secondly, the standard lab work is the epitome of lazy healthcare. I doubt that she was tested for anything of value, especially anything that would be measuring levels of inflammation.  If your doctor is only running a TSH to assess thyroid, your cholesterol levels to assess heart disease, or blood glucose to check diabetes, it’s time to go elsewhere.

With that said…

Inflammation

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Before You Take that Cholesterol Drug…

You may not have heard of some recent news that is happening across the pond in the mother country concerning taking statins.  You know statins as those drugs that are recommended to every man, woman, and child to “prevent heart attack due to all that pesky plaquing in the arteries.”  For the past 40 years, our national government has had a vendetta against the little waxy substance called cholesterol.  

statinsEven dietary changes are happening.  Hopefully it’s not another 40 years before they change the medical management of elevated cholesterol.  Before you decide to take a statin or if people you know and love are on statins, you may want to consider a couple things.

Type 2 Diabetes

Taking statins can increase your chance of Type 2 diabetes by almost 50%, while doing NOTHING to prolong the lives of those at a low risk heart attack.  In England, close to 8 million Brits take statins.  It’s closer to 25 million Americans taking the essential molecule blocking drugs.  Is it really working to reduce heart disease?

Researchers in Finland studied 8,749 non-diabetic men to see whether taking two of the most popular statins increased the chance of developing Type 2 diabetes.

They found those who took simvastatin or atorvastatin were 46 per cent more likely to develop the condition and those on higher doses were at even greater risk.

Last year, Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence issued guidance making 40 per cent of adults eligible for statins.

It said anyone thought to have a greater than 10 per cent chance of a heart attack or stroke within 10 years should be offered the drug on the NHS.  It means virtually all men aged over 55 and women over 65 are encouraged to take statins to stave off fatal ­cardiovascular disease.

Back in 2013, the American College of Cardiology created new guidelines that would increase statin use in the states by an additional 13 million Americans.

If that study that involved 8700 people in Finland translates into 38 million Americans, we should see an increase in diabetes by at least 19 million Americans as well as a drastic increase in heart disease in the coming decades.

“Ironically diabetes triples the risk of heart ­disease for men and multiplies it by five for women, so the very drugs given to prevent heart disease may well be causing it in, potentially, ­millions of people.  Many researchers have been aware for many years that the true rate of side effects from statins have been hidden and under-reported.”

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick

Parkinson’s

Dr Kailash Chand, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, was speaking following research which found those who take the cholesterol-lowering drugs are more than twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease in later life than those who do not.

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Heart Smart…Really?

It’s February and with no surprise, the media is all over ‘heart disease’ awareness campaigns.  But if you keep following what the media (and your doctor) push, you will probably get what most of Americans are going to get.

What are Americans going to get?

How about 1 in 3 will die of CardioVascular Disease (CVD)? How about a death from CVD every 40 seconds?

How about every 40 seconds someone has a stroke and about every 4 minutes someone dies from a stroke?

They like to say deaths have decreased from CVD by 31% from 2000 – 2010.  How about an almost 30% increase in heart related surgeries from 2000 to 2010?  I’ll give it to modern medicine for saving your life in the immediate danger but if our healthcare system was truly about health, you shouldn’t be laying on the OR table in the first place.

How about 920,000 Americans having a heart attack this year?  How about 1/2 of those will show no prior symptom?  How about 1/2 of those silent heart attacks have a first symptom of death?

And if you don’t think your health is at risk, how about your wallet?  Since we are shifting to a universal health care system, your taxes go to paying $315 Billion dollars every year.  Don’t think your tax dollars are paying for it?  In 2010, it was estimated that over 2150 Americans died every day of CVD.  That equates to about 785,000 deaths/year in 2010 (today it’s estimated closer to 1 million).  ONLY 150,000 came from people younger than 65.

What rite of passage does a 65 year old have in this country?  They qualify for Medicare, the government funded health plan.  How does the government fund a health plan?  Through your tax dollars.

One of the ways that the media via the government and heart association try to change your behavior is to drill into your head that cholesterol is the enemy and is an early warning sign of CVD and should be controlled…or you will die.

A UCLA study analyzing heart attack patients nationwide found that 75% of the heart attack victims had LDL (supposed bad cholesterol) within the safe limit.  The researchers analyzed data from 136,905 patients whose lipid levels upon hospital admission were documented in the AHA data base. This accounted for 59 percent of total hospital admissions for heart attack at participating hospitals between 2000 and 2006.

UCLA

The deadly irony is that the researchers conclude that maybe cholesterol isn’t low enough?  How about opening your mind to the possibility that the cholesterol – heart disease connection is about as solid as the Iraq War – Weapons of Mass destruction connection?

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