Spicing Up Your Hormones Without Hormone Replacement

One of the insurmountable problems with hormone replacement therapy is that when you replace a hormone you risk feeding the underlying glandular deficiency.  In the exuberance associated with the idea of overcoming age-associated declines in sexual, cognitive, skeletal, cardiovascular, etc. function, with both synthetic and bioidentical hormones, the hormone replacement advocates have often neglected to educate their patients to several unintended, adverse effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT): 1) the endocrine system has a negative feedback loop which guarantees that with time the body’s ability to produce adequate quantities of the very hormones being targeted for replacement will decline, resulting in the development of biological dependency on an external source of hormones — not exactly a picture of empowerment. 2) increasing levels of the target hormones will also result in increased production and possible accumulation of hormone metabolites with potentially toxic, as well as carcinogenic effects, e.g. estradiol turns to 16-hyroxylestrone, a potential carcinogen. While these risks may be outweighed by the benefits, and many of these risks can be reduced through dietary and supplemental regimes and plenty of vigilant clinical surveillance, the point is that HRT is not without its problems and limitations. Which brings us to an entirely different approach (one, no doubt, used for thousands of years), using foods and spices as our medicine….

Cumin Is As Potent As Estrogen In Preserving Bone Health

The human fascination with spices is as old as cultural time itself. There is an obvious beauty to the various aromas and flavors these plant extracts express (have you smelled cumin lately?), and undoubtedly these qualities first drew us closer to them. But, our primordial relationship with them involves much more than aesthetic infatuation.  Spices are the original food-medicines that were worth their weight (or more) in gold because they were capable of both improving the quality, and prolonging the length of human life.

Cumin, like most spices, has a wide range of potential health benefits. Thirty of these, in fact, can be viewed on our cumin research page. But cumin’s hormone-modulating properties have only recently been confirmed through scientific research. In 2008, a study was published in the journal Experimental Biology and Medicine demonstrated that cumin seeds were capable of inhibiting loss of bone density and strength as effectively as estrogen in a female rat model of age-associated osteoporosis. Moreover, they found that the cumin seeds did not have estrogen’s weight-promoting and possibly carcinogenic side effect on the uterus.[1]

Cumin seeds are actually indehiscent fruits (i.e. these fruits do not dehisce, or “burst open” at maturity) of the archene class; which means that what we think of as the cumin “seed” is actually a fruit containing a seed. It only appears like a seed because the wall of the seed-vessel hardens and encloses the seed so tightly as to appear like an outer seed coat.

The Farmacy of HRT Alternatives

As discussed in a previous article on pomegranate, which is the fruiting ovary of the pomegranate plant, nature provides mammals with hormone-like or hormone-eliciting compounds which make hormone replacement therapy unnecessary. In the animal experimental model, the removal of the female ovary (ovariectomy) results in rapid onset of menopausal-type changes, e.g. loss of bone mineral density and strength, depression, midsection weight gain, etc. Pomegranate and cumin are two plant ovary-produced fruits (the first is technically classified as a berry) which may enable women to undergo the hormonal transition that attends the natural (or accelerated) tapering off of ovarian hormone production gracefully.

Other substances which have been demonstrated to have these valuable hormone-modulating properties include:

1. Anthocyanins: Reduces ovariectomy-induced learning and memory problems.


2. Blueberries: Reduces ovariectomy-induced cellular aging (senescence) and bone loss.


3. Beans (especially soybean): Reduces ovariectomy-induced bone mineral loss.


4. Ginger (Curcuma comosa): Reduces ovariectomy-induced spatial memory loss.


5. EGCG (green tea polyphenol): Reduces ovariectomy-induced bone loss.


6. Fennel: Reduces ovariectomy-induced bone loss.


7. Genistein (found in cultured soy, coffee, red clover): Superior to bone drugs Fosomax, Evista and Estradiol in reducing loss of bone strength and quality in ovariectomized animals.


8. Royal Jelly: Reduces ovariectomy-induced changes in collagen production in rat skin.


9. Whey: Reduces ovariectomy-induced bone loss in rats.


10. Coconut water: Reduces ovariectomy-induced neurodegeneration.


11. Plums: Reduces postmenopausal and ovariectomy-induced bone loss.


12. Blackberry: Prevents ovariectomy-induced bone loss.


13. Black Tea: Prevents ovariectomy-induced bone loss.

Other relevant food/spice research on our database associated with hormone modulation can be found at the following sections:

• Progesterone: Low (14 studies)


• Testosterone: Too Low (74 studies)


• Estrogen Deficiency (14 studies)


• Low Human Growth Hormone  (7 studies)


• Secretagogues (38 studies)


• Adrenal Insufficiency (18 studies)


• Hypothyroidism (79 studies)

We have also taken several dozen of the most commonly used culinary herbs and spices on our database and have provided a list of their composite therapeutic value for over 500 diseases. You can view the research, which took years to index, on our Culinary Herbs and Spices page.

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[1] Methanolic extract of Cuminum cyminum inhibits ovariectomy-induced bone loss in rats. Exp Biol Med (Maywood). 2008 Sep 29. PMID: 18824723

© February 21, 2018 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.

The post Spicing Up Your Hormones Without Hormone Replacement appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Stoned To Death: Calcium Supplements Proven To Kill Again

Calcium Supplements Increase Heart Attack Risk by 86 Percent

Research published in the journal Heart has confirmed the findings of two controversial studies on calcium supplementation and heart attack risk published in the British Medical Journal last year, and which found a 24-27% increased risk of heart attack for those who took 500 mg of elemental calcium a day.[1] [2]

The results of this newest review, involving 24,000 people between the ages of 35 and 64, were even more alarming. Those participants who took a regular calcium supplement increased their risk of having a heart attack by 86% versus those who took no calcium supplements at all.

Why Do We Obsessively Consume Rock, Bone And Shell Calcium?

People really should not be so surprised at the idea that calcium supplementation may be toxic to cardiovascular health. After all, many subject themselves to coronary and cardiac calcium scans in order to ascertain their risk of cardiovascular events and/or cardiac mortality. This is because we know that calcium of the wrong kind in the wrong place can result in serious adverse health effects. There are, in fact, quite a few in the field of nutrition who have long warned against supplementation with elemental calcium; which is to say, calcium from limestone, oyster shell, egg shell and bone meal (hydroxylapatite). There are also those who have not needed to be “experts,” because they exercised common sense when it came to not eating rocks or shells.

The seemingly universal popularity of taking elemental calcium supplements results from the promotional efforts of conventional health “experts” and organizations like the National Osteoporosis Foundation (whose corporate sponsors include the calcium manufacturers Oscal and Citrical). Also, the World Health Organization created a radically new definition of “normal” bone density in 1994 when it took the 25-year old young adult standard (which is peak bone mass in a women’s life cycle), also known as the “T-score,” and applied it to all women, irrespective of their age.

This resulted in redefining the normal and gradual loss of bone mineral density that comes with aging as a disease, essentially medicalizing a non-condition. It also resulted in millions of women being coerced into taking unnecessary (and dangerous) “bone-building” drugs and inorganic calcium supplements to drive bone mineral density higher, by any means necessary. Suddenly, healthy women were being told they had a disease called “osteopenia” or “osteoporosis,” even while their bone mineral density was normal for their age, gender and ethnicity (which would have been clear as day, had the age-mediated “Z-score” been used). Moreover, the #1 and #2 cause of death in women are heart disease and cancer, respectively, with heart attack and breast cancer being the primary causes of morbidity and mortality.

When you consider that the risk of death as a side effect of fracture associated with low bone mineral density is infinitesimal relative to that of dying from calcium-induced heart attack, and/or high bone mineral density associated malignant breast cancer (300% higher risk for those in the top quarter percentile of BMD), the justification for promoting osteopenia/osteoporosis prevention and/or treatment in women’s health above far more serious and likely health threats completely falls apart. In fact, it appears that this myopic fixation may be significantly contributing to their premature death.

[Further reading on the topic: Osteoporosis Myth: The Dangers of High Bone Mineral Density]

Turned To Stone: When Calcium Goes To The Wrong Place

The reality is that the habit of consuming inorganic, elemental calcium simply does not make sense.  After all, have you ever experienced visceral disgust after accidentally consuming eggshell? If you have, you know your body is “hard-wired” to reject low-quality calcium sources (stones and bones as it were), in favor of getting calcium from food.

Inorganic or “elemental” calcium, when not bound to the natural co-factors, e.g. amino acids, lipids and glyconutrients, found in “food” (which is to say other living beings, e.g. plants and animals), no longer has the intelligent delivery system that enables your body to utilize it in a biologically appropriate manner. Lacking this “delivery system,” the calcium may end up going to places you do not want (ectopic calcification), or go to places you do want (e.g. the bones), but in excessive amounts, stimulating unnaturally accelerated cell-division (osteoblasts), resulting in higher bone turnover rates later in life (this is explained in the article below).

Or, the body attempts to disburden itself of this inappropriate calcium and dumps it into the bowel (constipation), or pushes it through the kidneys (stones). Worse, high levels of calcium can accumulate in the blood (hypercalcemia), which can contribute to destabilizing the atherosclerotic plaque through the formation of a brittle calcium cap on the atheroma, can contribute to thrombosis (clot) formation, hypertension (that’s why we use calcium channel blockers to lower blood pressure), and perhaps causing arrhythmias/fibrillation and or heart muscle cramping, or coronary artery spasm (a rather common, though rarely recognized trigger of ‘heart attack’).

The breasts too are uniquely susceptible to ectopic calcification, which is why we use the same x-rays to ascertain bone density that we do to discern pathological microcalcifications in the breast, i.e. x-ray mammography. Due to the fact that the hydroxylapatitate crystals found in malignant breast tissue may act as a cellular ‘signaling molecule’ or mitogen (inducing cell proliferation), it is possible that certain breast calcifications may be a cause, and not just an effect, of the tumorous lesions (“breast cancer”) found there. This may also help to explain why women with the highest bone density (often obtained through massive, lifelong calcium supplementation) have up to 300% higher incidence of malignant breast cancer.

“Brain gravel” is also an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, where autopsied patients have been found to have pebble-size calcium deposits distributed throughout their brains, including the pineal gland (‘the seat of the soul’). The wide range of existing calcium-associated pathologies, and their increasing prevalence in calcium-fixated cultures, demand further investigation and explanation.  One aspect of this, no doubt, is our obsessive cultural fixation on mega-dose calcium supplementation for non-existing “conditions” associated with bone mineral density that is normal-for-our-age, but not for our doctors and the “experts” who guide them with industry-friendly misinformation.

I believe this new research puts the nail in the coffin of any remaining doubt that we should stay as far away from inorganic calcium supplements as possible, as well as the empirically and intellectually bankrupt disease models being used to coerce women into taking them in the first place.

To learn more, read “How Too Much Calcium & Over-Medication Can Break Your Bones”

For a comprehensive list of Vegetables with high calcium levels, visit the NutritionData.com page on the topic.

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[1] BMJ 2010; 341 doi: 10.1136/bmj.c3691 (Published 29 July 2010)

[2] Calcium supplements with or without vitamin D and risk of cardiovascular events: reanalysis of the Women’s Health Initiative limited access dataset and meta-analysis. BMJ. 2011;342:d2040. Epub 2011 Apr 19. PMID: 21505219

© February 16, 2018 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.

The post Stoned To Death: Calcium Supplements Proven To Kill Again appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Why Most Doctors Are Dead Wrong About Osteoporosis

What if everything your doctor told you about osteoporosis and osteopenia was wrong? 

What if osteoporosis were not the primary cause of fractures in aging populations? What if both the definitions of osteoporosis and osteopenia used to justify pharmaceutical treatment were both misleading and age inappropriate?

These are questions we explored in a previous exposé titled, “Osteoporosis Myth: The Dangers of High Bone Mineral Density,” wherein we explored evidence showing the so-called “osteoporosis epidemic” is not an evidence-based concept but a manufactured one designed to serve the interests of a growing industrial medical/pharmaceutical complex.

A paper published in the Journal of Internal Medicine titled, “Osteoporosis: the emperor has no clothes,” confirms that the primary cause of what are normally labeled “osteoporotic fractures” are falls and related modifiable lifestyle factors and notosteoporosis, i.e. abnormally “porous” or low-density bones.

The new study pointed out three false notions that can be disputed:

1. 
   

   Mistaken pathophysiology: “Most fracture patients have fallen, but actually do not have osteoporosis. A high likelihood of falling, in turn, is attributable to an ageing-related decline in physical functioning and general frailty.”

   
   


2. 
   

   Ineffective screening: “Currently available fracture risk prediction strategies including bone densitometry and multifactorial prediction tools are unable to identify a large proportion of patients who will sustain a fracture, whereas many of those with a high fracture risk score will not sustain a fracture.”

   
   


3. 
   

   Unproven and unsafe treatment: “The evidence for the viability of bone-targeted pharmacotherapy in preventing hip fracture and other clinical fragility fractures is mainly limited to women aged 65–80 years with osteoporosis, whereas the proof of hip fracture-preventing efficacy in women over 80 years of age and in men at all ages is meagre or absent. Further, the antihip fracture efficacy shown in clinical trials is absent in real-life studies. Many drugs for the treatment of osteoporosis have also been associated with increased risks of serious adverse events. There are also considerable uncertainties related to the efficacy of drug therapy in preventing clinical vertebral fractures, whereas the efficacy for preventing other fractures (relative risk reductions of 20–25%) remains moderate, particularly in terms of the low absolute risk reduction in fractures with this treatment”

   
   

The open access study is well worth reading in its entirety, but below are a few takeaways that we want to highlight.

Falling and Not Low Bone Mineral Density Is The Primary Cause of Fractures

Millions of men and women whose bones are actually normal for their age group (Z-score) are being manipulated into thinking that their bones should remain as dense as an approximately 30-year-old young adult (T-score) despite the natural process of bone thinning and reduction of density that attends the aging process. This T-score based bone density system pathologizes/over-medicalizes normal bone density variations, creating disease diagnoses where none should be found — a situation that is incredibly lucrative from the perspective of the bottom line of pharmaceutical and medical services companies. This has lead to a massive problem with overdiagnosis and overtreatment — two euphemistic technical terms to describe what happens when asymptomatic and otherwise healthy populations are told they have a ‘specific disease’ that they do not have (overdiagnosis), and subsequently pressured into taking pharmaceuticals (overtreatment), whose adverse effects often contribute to morbidity and premature mortality.

The reality, however, is that falling and not low bone mineral density are the primary reason why fractures occur. Since it is a statistical fact that the older you get the more often you fall, and since the older you get the less dense your bones become, it is easy to confuse the lower bone mineral density as a “cause” and not just an “association” with increased fracture risk. The authors of the new study provided this clever cartoon to drive the point home:

 

Given the reality behind what causes (and prevents) fracture, exercise and its resultant muscular and neurological health effects are of vital importance when it comes to minimizing the risk of falls, as well as surviving them without a fracture. And yet the reality is that the x-ray based DXA scans used to ascertain bone density do nothing but determine the density of the skeletal system, and not bone quality, i.e. strength. Nor can the DXA scan ascertain the structure/function (and therefore health) of the other tissues within the body that directly contribute to determining the risk of falling and the effects that the impact of a fall will have on the skeletal system. The following diagram shows the discrepancy that emerges between reality and the DXA image:

While anti-resportive bone drugs like Fosamax (a bisphosphonate) may contribute to increased bone mineral density, they do not necessarily improve bone quality and strength. Very dense bone created by destroying osteoclasts (bone-degrading cells) may be far more brittle than less dense bone where there is healthy turnover of the osteoclasts and osteoblasts (bone-building cells). In fact, drugs like Fosamax are notorious for contributing to bone degeneration in the jawbone (osteonecrosis). Also, we have discovered an extensive body of research indicating higher-than-normal bone density greatly increases the risk of malignant breast cancer, further calling into question the present day fixation on increasing bone density at any cost with highly toxic calcium supplements and drugs. Moreover, the new study points out that meta-analyses of the clinical literature on pharmacological treatment of osteoporosis for fracture risk reduction have produced almost no supportive evidence. Despite this, they point out that, “Osteoporosis guidelines systematically ignore the obvious ‘evidence void’ in the RCTs.”

The authors conclude: “Given all this, should ‘osteoporosis’ be added to a long list of diagnoses for which doing less, or even nothing, is better than our contemporary practice?”

Thankfully, we don’t just have to “do nothing.” Exercise, nutrition, and practices like yoga, tai chi, etc., can go a long way to reduce the risk of fracture, as well as supporting healthy bone mineral density, and more importantly, bone strength and structural integrity. To learn more use our natural osteoporosis prevention and treatmentdatabase to explore study abstracts and articles relevant to this topic.

© July 8, 2017 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.