050-Ask Dr. Soram-Preconception Pregnancy Preparation, Probiotics, Autism, Unsafe Bottled Water, and Your Questions Answered.

04/01/13 • -1 min

I open the show with the announcement that I have a new website! You can find it at Integrative Medicine Update. I’ve made this a free membership site so that you may add articles on integrative medicine to share with the world. It has a Digg style interface and it is very easy to use. Please check it out and catch up on the latest in integrative medicine.

MY NEW WEBSITE AND STORE

I’m also delighted to announce that on April 18 I will be opening a new online nutritional supplements store. Many of you after my Dr. Oz appearance asked me if I had other products that I endorse. In this new store I will be able to make available to you most all the products I use in my private practice of medicine. These are products that are not available at health food stores, because they are of a higher quality and designed for physicians to use with their patients. More about this in my next issue!

VITAMIN D AND DIABETES

I then go on to give you an update in the latest this week in Integrative Medicine. First off we talk about the new study that has shown that vitamin D is able to decrease the risk for diabetes and obese children and adolescents. In fact a quote by the author said, “By increasing vitamin D intake alone, we got a response that was nearly as powerful as what we had seen using a prescription drug”. Click here to read this article.

Although this article was written about children and teenagers I’m sure that it would also be true for adults. If you have family or friends with diabetes be sure to tell them to get their vitamin D levels checked and to optimize their vitamin D.

OUR GUT BACTERIA

We then talk about the importance of gut bacteria and its relationship to obesity. A new study done at Cedars Sinai Hospital here in Los Angeles is the first to show an association between gas production and body weight. The author stated “This could prove to be another important factor in understanding one of the many causes of obesity.” Click here to read this study.

Back to back with this article about gut bacteria, another study has come out saying that part of the benefit of gastric bypass surgery could be a change in gut microbes. The author of this study, Lee Kaplan stated “Our study suggests that the specific effects of gastric bypass on the microbiota contribute to its ability to cause weight loss and that finding ways to manipulate microbial populations to mimic those effects can become a valuable new tool to address obesity.”

Over and over again, we are getting the importance of our digestion for our whole body’s health.

FRENCH BOTTLED WATER

I then review a study showing that one in five French bottled waters contain drugs or pesticides. Specifically it contained chemotherapy drugs as well as pesticides. The authors of the study say that the amounts are “miniscule” and not to be worried about. However consumer groups along with integrative doctors know that very small amounts of chemicals can work very powerfully on the body. This is especially true if there is more than one chemical.

They have not done this study on American waters yet but it does make you wonder. Click here to read about this study.

HEAVY METALS AND AUTISM

The next study I review is the one that shows several toxic metals are found in children with autism. This dovetails very well with the subject of our interview today. It was found that between 30% and 47% of the variation of autism severity was associated with the level of several toxic metals, with cadmium in Mercury being the most strongly associated. Click here to read.

ORGANIC FOOD AND HEALTH

I then talk about an article showing that organically grown food provides health benefits for fruit flies! Specifically, flies there were raised on diets with organically grown produce, had greater fertility and longevity.

I know it is only a matter of time until organic foods are shown to benefit humans in the same way!

MINDFULNESS TRAINING

And then we turn the conversation to the importance of mindfulness training. One new article shows that mindfulness training reduces mind wandering. They measured college students ability to perform on exams. The students who receive mindfulness training showed improved accuracy on the GRE and higher working memory capacity...

MY NEW WEBSITE AND STORE

VITAMIN D AND DIABETES

OUR GUT BACTERIA

Over and over again, we are getting the importance of our digestion for our whole body’s health.

FRENCH BOTTLED WATER

They have not done this study on American waters yet but it does make you wonder. Click here to read about this study.

HEAVY METALS AND AUTISM

ORGANIC FOOD AND HEALTH

I know it is only a matter of time until organic foods are shown to benefit humans in the same way!

MINDFULNESS TRAINING

Previous Episode

049-Ask Dr Soram-Predictive Antibodies Part 2-CNN Special on Integrative Medicine-New Smart Phone App and Your Questions Answered

Our whole country is moving in the direction of Integrative Medicine! CNN had a special this past weekend entitled Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Health Care. If you missed it on CNN you can see it on iTunes or Amazon.com.

Here’s a link to the trailer for the movie

In the movie they show the need to reorient ourselves towards preventive medicine and positive well-being, rather than being reactive and waiting for a disease to strike.
Andrew Weil states “We don’t have a healthcare system...we have a disease care system” and I could not agree more!

A direct quote from a corporate executive interviewed in the movie is “70% of health care costs are driven by people behaviors.” Our system will be bankrupt if we do not fix it and reorient to healthy lifestyles.

You can find out more about the movie here and here.

Keeping with the theme that everybody is focusing on staying or getting healthy, a new app for both the iPhone and android has come out. It is called Fooducate. With the App on your phone at the grocery store or health store you can scan a barcode and the App will give you information on how healthy that product is. If it is not healthy, it will make recommendations of similar products that are much healthier for you and your family.

Here is a link to the website where you can get the app.

Along the lines of my logo -Enlightened Medicine, and Conscious Living a new article has come out entitled “Ruminating about stressful events may increase inflammation in the body”:

This is really where the tire meets the road for many diseases. It is so good that it is finally being documented scientifically.

We all know that heart attacks are related to stress and studies are also showing now that cancers related to stress. How does the mind affect the body in these cases? This landmark study shows that just the act of worrying about something and ruminnating on it, can raise inflammation in the human body. Specifically a marker called HS – CRP gets elevated when a person dwells on negative and/or stressful events.

Previous studies have correlated stress with these health problems but this is the first study to prove that inflammation markers in the blood go up when a person ruminates on something negative. Integrative medicine doctors think that inflammation as represented by the HS – CRP is the primary cause of coronary artery disease, the major cause of death in the United States. Many integrative doctors feel that cholesterol is an innocent bystander.

Here’s a link to the article.

In other news about integrative medicine, a new study has just shown that acupuncture improves memory, test performance and reduces anxiety.

This too is a major study showing what many of us have observed for a long time. Dr. Jason Bucell, PhD did the research with 90 undergraduate students. Half the students received acupuncture and half did not, and the placebo effect was controlled for. Then the students took a computerized test of working memory. These tests are associated with predicting performance with such diverse abilities as reading comprehension, arithmetic calculation, notetaking, language comprehension, learning to spell, building vocabulary, writing and many other performance measurements.

Previous research has shown that a series of acupuncture treatments can help individuals with impaired memory. This research was unique in that it is the first study to show the just ONE acupuncture treatment can improve performance in healthy individuals.

It will be exciting to see if this has any benefit for patients with Alzheimer’s or other less severe memory problems that people over age 50 often complain of.

You can read the article here.

Another study, just recently been published, shows that mindfulness contributes to more stable emotions and people who perceive themselves to have better control over their mood and behavior throughout the day. Higher mindful people also described less cognitive and physiological activation before bedtime. This suggests a greater emotional stability during the day might even translate into better sleep.

These results will be presented later this month at the ann...

Next Episode

051-Ask Dr. Soram-My New Healthy Living Shop- Preconception Planning and Newest Numbers for Autism and ADHD Rates

I open the show announcing the opening of my new online Healthy Living Shop on April 18, 2013.

This is pictured Here :

Since I first started my podcast and blog, followed by the tremendous response I got from my appearance on the Dr. Oz show, I have wanted to open an online store for my listeners and readers. This new online shop is an important part of my mission, because for the first time I am able to offer you the same physician – quality supplements that I’ve helped so many of my patients with in my practice here in Los Angeles.

In more exciting news is that I’m celebrating the launch of my new Healthy Living Shop by offering a special 10% discount on all your first-time purchases in the first month of opening.

You may have read and you’ve heard me talk about, that more and more studies are revealing that the ordinary products that you buy at a health food store discount store are lacking in quality, and even lacking in the ingredients they claim to have.

That is why my new Healthy Living Store is so exciting! You will be able to order the same physician quality products that I’ve used for so long in my own Integrative Medicine practice.

When you hear me talking about things on my podcast you will usually be able to find those products from my Healthy Living Shop.

Please do sign up for my weekly email newsletter on this site. On a regular basis, I will be spotlighting a supplement I recommend daily at my clinic, and I’m hopeful this information will help you, too. I will explain the health conditions I prescribe them for and how my patients take them.

I’m happy to say that my new online store will have a very responsive customer service department to meet any inquiries or issues that you may have.

When you enter my store you can look at the product categories in the left column and click on the category that best describes your health needs today. Or you can choose one of the supplement kits that I’ve put together on the main page.

INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE UPDATE

In this issue I talk about how the month of birth impacts immune system development of a fetus. This study was done in England and is related to Multiple Sclerosis.

Basically what they found is that a mother’s vitamin D level during pregnancy is connected to the likelihood that she will have a child who develops multiple sclerosis. This only reinforces what I’ve been saying for a long time now, that pregnant women must have sufficient vitamin D throughout their pregnancy. In my practice I measure a pregnant woman’s vitamin D level every trimester to make sure it stays in the normal range.

SUGARY DRINKS

In a new study more than 180,000 deaths worldwide in 2010 were linked to a high intake of sugar laden drinks. This includes 25,000 deaths in the United States. This paper was presented at the most recent meeting of the American Heart Association.

Although the American Beverage Association objected to the findings, the author Dr. Singh said that on a “population level” it is possible to estimate the number of deaths attributable to sugary drink composition.

Suzanne Steinbaum, MD, the director of women and heart disease at Lennox Hospital in New York City stated “This sheds light on the linear connection between sugary drink consumption and deaths.” Dr. Steinbaum was not associated with the study.

You can read more about it here.

AIR POLLUTION IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Exposure in the first two months of pregnancy to air pollution from traffic sharply increases the risk for birth defects is how this article started out.

They found that a mother living in areas with the highest level of carbon monoxide or nitrogen oxide concentrations was almost twice as likely to give birth to a child with neural tube defects is one living in areas with the lowest concentrations.

This article fits in with the subject of my interview today about preconception pregnancy planning.

You can read about it here

and here.

AUTISM

The percentage of US kids with autism continues to rise. The latest estimate is that autism affects one in 50 kids! This includes c...