The rate of aging
varies significantly in individual humans for many different reasons. If we
study a large sample of people who are middle aged or older, the impact of these
differences become quite obvious, but the vast majority of people do not
understand the complex underlying cause-and-effect relationships.
In general, most
genetic adaptations in a large population take place very slowly over long
periods of time. The human life form has changed very little over many
thousands of years. In contrast, lifestyle changes that dramatically impact the
rate of aging take place quickly in a single lifetime – significant benefits
can be achieved in only a few weeks.
For example, there
has been a significant increase in American morbid obesity since World War II.
For the last twenty years, American obesity has increased 200% to 300%,
depending on age group. More than 60% of Americans are now overweight. 30% to
50% of Americans (over 100 million) are obese, depending on sex and ethnic
group. As the “body mass index” increases, the risk of deadly diseases
increase, while life expectancy decreases significantly. The U.S. Centers for
Disease Control state that obesity is costing over $117 BILLION per year, and
increasing each year.
Many deadly
weight-related, age-accelerating diseases like heart disease (heart attack and
brain stroke), high blood pressure, type II diabetes, cancer and obstructive
sleep apnea (respiration blockage during sleep) have increased dramatically,
due to daily lifestyle choices of poor nutrition, fast foods, insufficient
exercise, improper negative thought patterns and irrational decision-making
cognitive processes.
The expensive,
rapid decline in the health of our sedentary society in recent years cannot
possibly be due to inherited genetics, but they are often passed from
parents to their innocent children through injurious unhealthy lifestyle
training examples.
Food intake has
increased, while the level of healthy exercise has decreased. The average
portion size of unhealthy french fries, sugar drinks and candy bars have
increased 400% to 500% in the last thirty years. In only 20 years, the average
weight of American women has jumped from 140 pounds to 164 pounds (largely due
to low fat, low protein, high carbohydrate female diets).
More Americans
spend more time in front of computers, televisions and video games (eating
large quantities of bad snacks), and less time standing, walking, playing
sports, exercising and doing heavy labor. Parents are transferring their poor
lifestyle choices to their children, with dramatic life threatening results. An
alarming number of young children are getting adult-onset diabetes, etc.
Obesity has
become the most important health problem in America, but clueless board-certified, licensed
medical doctors receive almost NO formal training in this critical. They know
how to prescribe dangerous, expensive, poorly-tested (often recalled) new
pharmaceuticals, procedures like chemotherapy and radiation treatments that are
guaranteed to kill healthy cells, mutate DNA and create new cancer, and they do
risky, often unnecessary surgery. All this, but they don’t have time to learn
how, or discuss deadly disease PREVENTION.
Since the work on
the Human Genome Project, much has been learned in a short time about the
genetics of tumors. They are formed when DNA is damaged (by many diverse
causes). Depending on the unique genetics of each particular individual tumor,
various treatments may or may not be effective. Standard indiscriminately
prescribed chemotherapy and radiation treatments may do deadly damage to the
patient, when if the DNA of the tumor had been studied, it may have been
possible to determine that chemotherapy
and radiation treatments could not possibly be effective on a particular tumor.
For example, the
World Health Organization has already genetically classified over 100 brain
tumor variations, many of which are as different as night and day, having
widely varying responses to different types of prevention and treatments. Until
the details of genetic testing of cancerous tumors is much better understood,
it is both irresponsible and downright idiotic for oncologists to
indiscriminately prescribe deadly chemotherapy and radiation treatments to
naive patients who lack critical thinking skills. Common medical (mal)practice
should be made a felony crime, until doctors are forced to understand and apply
the scientific knowledge that has been published in the last few years.
America spends
far more per person on healthcare than any other nation, but we also have much higher major disease
rates than more intelligent nations that spend far less, but pay more attention
to PREVENTING disease, rather than ineptly dealing with it after the fact,
indiscriminately using expensive treatments that often do much more harm than
good. If you have strep throat or a broken bone, medical doctors do a good job
of dealing with the problem. BUT, if you are obese and having problems caused
by excess body fat, medical doctors are for the most part of very little value.
They waste your time and money, and if they give specific weight loss advice,
it is often incorrect, ineffective or sometimes unhealthy. Remember, there are
a lot of overweight medical doctors, and some of them still smoke.
America has much
higher paid doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, but most other
advanced nations have healthier citizens. The World Health Organization
ranked the over-priced United States healthcare system a very low 37th among
all nations! (We rank just below tiny Costa Rica.)
Our typical
U.S. healthcare is far BELOW international mediocrity – it is relatively abysmal, corrupt,
ineffective and badly misdirected. With respect to LIFE EXPECTANCY, the
United States is a dismal 24th. On average, Americans should
expect to spend more time disabled and die earlier than citizens of most other
advanced nations (who spend far less on healthcare than we do). Obesity
has become a large portion of the problem, BUT, the number of U.S.
doctor-caused (iatrogenic) deaths plus serious
injuries is measured in the millions each year. Even the healthcare given to
U.S. Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon failed to inform them of
the simple steps that could have greatly reduced the risk, and delay or
prevented, the diseases that ultimately disrupted their lives and killed them.
With the overweight
baby boomers about to retire, our bad medical information overflowing, and
low-quality mainstream healthcare costs spiraling upward (faster than the cost
of our poorly-managed gasoline and other energy), medical expenses are
about to bankrupt the poorly-managed, actuarially-unsound, ineffective,
American Medicare system. Preventable diseases (like morbid
obesity, heart disease (heart attacks, brain strokes), cancer, diabetes, Ronald
Reagan’s Alzheimer’s Disease, etc.) will soon far exceed the available
resources of our dreadful healthcare system.
Throwing more
money at the current ineffective, inefficient American medical system, and the
corrupt politicians and government agencies that regulate it, is NOT the right
answer.
New legislation to block
or limit malpractice lawsuits against rotten, uninformed, unqualified doctors
is NOT going to end the many millions of American-doctor-caused iatrogenic injuries or improve the quality of our
failed medical system. The thinking that created this ghastly mess, and the
unwarranted public trust in it, is insufficient to correct it!
It is obvious that
those at fault have strong incentives to hide this clearly-documented
information from American patients and tax payers. Comprehensive disease
prevention (practiced by dozens of other nations with a far superior heath
record) is extremely important.
American
healthcare needs radical rethinking. Do NOT expect it to come from overpaid doctors, pharmaceutical
companies or corrupt government agencies. It must begin from a grass roost
movement of better-informed individuals. This movement has begun among
dissatisfied baby boomers that are nearing retirement and searching for better
healthcare and disease prevention solutions. There has been an explosion in
alternative medicine products and practitioners. Some of it is midnight cable
television quackery. We need to sort out the truth, measure, monitor and
publish what works and what does not (including the worst of the mainstream medicine
that is injuring millions of Americans each year).
Obese Americans
spend billions of dollars each year on ineffective diets, diet books, and diet
products. No study has ever shown that any of today’s dangerous artificial sweeteners has ever helped anyone
lose one pound, but people blindly buy “diet” products and do long-term damage
their health every day, with no loss of ugly excess body fat. Diets do NOT work
in the long term – PERMANENT LIFESTYLE CHANGES DO.
Loss of excess body
fat is an important part of the long-term solution to America’s overall poor
health condition. BUT, weight loss and disease prevention are mostly
overlooked by mainstream modern American medicine and governmental regulatory
agencies. Bad “status quo” ignorant medical doctor arrogance is
unforgivable. Patient blind trust in the highly-flawed American healthcare
system is NOT justified (as documented by World Health Organization comparative
studies and rankings mentioned above).
An important report
in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out that less that
half of American medical doctors discuss weight problems with their patients.
The U.S. CDC believes that this is one of the important reasons that the
“obesity epidemic” has become the most important health issue in America. The
problem prevention solution is being ignored by doctors who could rapidly
help reduce the underlying problem - IF
they knew how to deal with it, and they would take the time. The lack of U.S.
doctors discussing weight problems with their patients is largely due to: (1)
lack of scientific knowledge, and (2) lack of time created by cost-conscience
health maintenance organization insurance penny pinching. The best solution is
NOT a dangerous pill or surgery (all that M.D.s understand). The best solution
is widespread understanding of solid scientific knowledge about nutrition,
exe4rcise and mental aerobics.
Some doctors refer
their overweight patients to registered members of the American Dietetic Association.
The New York Times ran a powerful article on how the corrupt American
Dietetic Association receives significant funds from the worst food industry
offenders to endorse their disease-and-death causing products, like trans fats, artificial
sweeteners, etc.
The people who
created America’s expensive, corrupt, below-mediocre healthcare system are
absolutely NOT capable of correcting its many serious problems. Their
conflicting profit motives, corrupt bias, ignorance and history of deliberate
deceit make it impossible.
This Joyful
Aging material is presented to help the thoughtful intelligent
reader learn more about the simple things that can be done to significantly
slow down your own rate of aging and delay or even prevent the onset of many
age-related diseases. If you have ever known a person who has grown old before
their time, or visited a home that cares for the elderly, then you probably
already understand the powerful emotional motivation to avoid unnecessary
suffering and sadness for all of those who love these declining senior
citizens.
Unhealthy, unhappy
aging is NOT a natural process. It is the result of a poor healthcare system
that ignores disease prevention, and uninformed voluntary lifestyle choices
that the irrational majority makes every day of their lives.
Your thoughtful
concern for your own future and that of your loved ones is demonstrated by the
fact that you are now reading these words.
Joyful
Aging’s goal in sharing the following valuable
information with you is nothing less than to help you understand how to live a
much healthier, happier, productive, and rewarding life, by providing you with
the knowledge to become a living example of success for those around you to
appreciate.
We are not trying
to promote a particular product or service. This website does not attempt to
diagnose or treat any particular individual. We are serious research scientists
and individuals who have spent decades studying the underlying issues and
successfully practicing superior antiaging methods for ourselves and our loved
ones.
We are freely
providing this information as an informal education and lifestyle enrichment
service as a legacy for our families, friends, associates and anyone else on
the worldwide web who is interested. We actively solicit your comments,
interest in future related materials and constructive criticism. Please email
us: JoyfulAging@AOL.com
Premature aging of
the brain, nervous system, sensory organs, motor control, circulation, heart,
joints, bones, skin, digestive tract, hormonal secretions, neurotransmitters
and immune system can begin at any time of life. Feeding a newborn infant a
formula other than mother’s milk introduces the risk of many maladies, as does
improper nutrition of the mother while carrying or nursing the child. Teaching
a baby to like the wrong kinds of foods (like “rewarding” them with candy for
good behavior, or buying them unhealthy food with a toy in the box) accelerates
the rate of aging, as does paying attention to commercials for bad food
products and unhealthy lifestyles (like smoking, drinking alcohol and laziness)
latter in life.
Various factors
cause the body to deteriorate, including genetics, injuries that do not heal
correctly, allergies, toxic chemicals, pesticides, preservatives, synthetic
chemicals and foods (like trans fatty acids,
sugar and sugar
substitutes), heavy metals, free radical
oxidizers, poor nutrition,
excessive radiation (sunlight, industrial and medical), excessive stress (in
various physical and mental forms), and sedentary
inactivity, to name just a few.
Chronological
age and biological age are not the same. By middle age, we can easily observe significant differences in individuals
of the same chronological age. Poor lifestyle choices (like smoking, drinking
and excess sun exposure) are most obvious in the skin, but the same is true of
all internal organs. Aging is a physiological process that is only partially
dependant on how old we are. How we look externally is a partial indicator of
our biological age, but external appearances are often deceptive (due to risky
surgery, unhealthy cosmetics, etc.).
Sometimes,
premature aging occurs without any symptoms until suddenly there is a
catastrophic traumatic event such as a heart attack, cancer, or a stroke. More
frequently, atrophy (tissue and organ decline) occur incrementally, as in
muscle weakness due to lack of exercise, mucous membrane and glandular
deterioration with decreasing hormone levels, increasing blood pressure, and
progressive irreversible neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's,
Parkinson’s, and alcohol-related dementia.
Frequently, a body
that is aging prematurely sends many messages to its owner that it is
malfunctioning. The most common messages are pain and dysfunction. The cause of
the early pain may be acute or chronic inflammation, joint instability,
insufficient blood supply, or pressure in an enlarged / diseased organ or
surrounding tissues.
At the moment of conception, most people are genetically capable of living their lives without serious pain and suffering caused by chronic degenerative diseases, IF their mother provides a reasonable gestation environment AND they adopt a healthy lifestyle as an adult (which the irrational majority do not).
Without premature aging, normal life expectancy is estimated to be over 110 years, but very few people achieve this today, due to a great many non-genetic lifestyle and environmental risk factors. Those who are over 100 years old today. often had simple, back-to-basics lifestyles with good nutrition, exercise and positive mental attitude.
100 years ago there were no televisions, trans fats, artificial sweeteners, X-rays, nuclear fission, or fast food restaurants with “happy meals” to teach children to eat extremely unhealthy foods. Most mothers stayed home and lovingly invested a lot of time in good foods and the mental health and social skills of their children.
Natural foods with minimal processing were the only available option. Nearby friends were important (in stark contrast to today’s Internet-based social isolation). Healthy exercise was required just to make a living. People did not spend all day in front of a computer and come home to bad food in front of a TV. They did not send their children to play violent video games, just because they were too lazy to spend time with the family they had created.
Today’s brave new world is indeed much different than that of our great grandparents. Today’s rate of unhealthy premature aging is generally much worse than was theirs, and it continues to get worse rapidly. Many more people are dying today of heart attacks, brain strokes, cancer, diabetes, violent antisocial behaviors, etc. than ever before in American history. The World Healthy Organization how bad American healthcare and life expectancy is relative to other nations.
In Psalms 90:10, King David said: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten (70); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years (80), …” Three millennia later, with all of our stressful lifestyles, polluted environment, and many dangerous modern U.S. prescription medicines, chemotherapy, radiation, and risky, unnecessary surgical procedures, most Americans still cannot expect to live much beyond 70 to 80 years old, and a great many do not even make it that far. An obese American (with a “body mass index” above 35) has a greatly reduced chance of living 70 years. Our leaner ancestors were much healthier and many lived long beyond 70, as did humans nearly 3,000 years ago.
In many ways, our modern environment is far more chaotic and unhealthy than the world was 3,000 years ago, or even 100 years ago. Most modern people chose a less healthy lifestyle of poor nutrition, not enough exercise, and poor mental aerobics, which all contribute to pervasive premature aging, pain, inflammation, unnecessary suffering and expensive care giving.
Unfortunately for
us, profit-motivated conventional medical care has focused more on short-term
immediate-gratification symptom relief with neurotoxic painkillers and risky
surgical procedures, and insufficient emphasis on slowing the premature aging
process and preventing or curing disease.
Providing quick-fix
symptomatic relief is often much less effective and much more expensive over
the long term than correcting poor lifestyle choices that are the root cause of
unnecessary premature aging. One obvious example it is much better to convince
someone to stop smoking, than to try to ineffectively treat metastasized lung
cancer many years later with high-risk approaches like chemotherapy and
radiation treatments that actually directly CAUSE DNA mutation cancer. Many
similar but subtle issues are difficult-to-understand risk factors for
premature aging.
Poliomyelitis
impacted millions of lives since ancient times. At the peak of its American
polio devastation in 1952, Jonas Salk developed a one-time vaccine that
effectively prevents polio. Older baby boomers are the last generation to have
young friends who were struck down by polio. Today’s youth don’t have a clue
what polio was, and for that we must all be very thankful.
Salk generously
gave his valuable discovery to the world as a free gift. Those days of caring, compassionate,
intelligent research scientists, drug manufactures and medical professionals
now seems to be gone forever in our commercialized selfish world of
“nothing-matters-but-profit medicine.”
Corporations have a
legal fiduciary responsibility to stockholders to maximize return on
investment. It now costs roughly $800 million dollars to get FDA approval to
distribute a new drug. If a corporate executive tried to do what Jonas Salk
generously did, the government and stockholders would have him censured or
thrown in jail! It would be a major mistake for any medical research scientist
to work on trying to prevent or cure any disease, since this would be extremely
unprofitable. The goal is now to develop extremely expensive patent
medicines that people will be forced to take for the rest of their lives.
DO NOT EXPECT ANY PROFIT-MOTIVED CORPORATION TO EVER DO ANYTHING TO PREVENT OR
CURE ILLNESS, ESPECIALLY UNNECESSARY RAPID AGING.
Today’s medical
doctors openly report that they accidentally kill
hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, due to their endless
“iatrogenic” errors. Their peers would not call it malpractice, since everyone
in mainstream medicine has agreed to make the same set of pervasive mistakes - Over
100,000 Americans are killed every year by “properly prescribed and
administered” prescription drugs. Millions more are injured but do not
die immediately. This is over and above the death and injury cause by improperly
prescribed and administered drugs, surgery and unnecessary high-risk medical
procedures like chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which are guaranteed to
kill healthy cells and introduce new cancer into a suffering cancer patient.
How insane is the world we now live in.
American iatrogenic
(doctor-caused death or illness) results in astronomical increases in modern
malpractice insurance. This makes the cost of modern, risky, low-quality
healthcare spiral upward for everyone, while our people are disable more and
die younger than people in nations with superior healthcare that costs far
less.
Several wise
countries Canada, Australia, Denmark, etc.) have made it ILLEGAL to sell
products that are commonly available and consumed in large quantities in
America (like the deadly trans fats used in American bread products, fried
foods, chips, etc.) Consequently, there are now more dollars worth of
healthcare in a Detroit automobile than dollars worth of steel! (How very sad.)
This is NOT true for the exact same car produced in Canada, which has UNIVERSAL
HEALTHCARE COVERAGE FOR EVERYONE (an emphasis on education, prevention and a
healthier population). In the U.S.A., 45 million people have NO HEALTHCARE
INSURANCE, and that number is now rapidly growing by over 1.2 million per year.
Canadians live longer and spend less time disabled with disease, than Americans
doing the same jobs.
The high cost of
America’s healthcare (in contrast to healthier Canada, Japan, etc.) has forced
General Motors to fire thousands of their employees in recently years. In 2005,
GM announced more layoffs of an additional 25,000 people in the near future. It
is very likely that the American corporations are going to be forced to spend
even less on health insurance (to become more competitive internationally).
More than 45 million Americans will have no health insurance, and the health of
the average American will continue to decline. The trend is very predictable.
The thinking that created these trends is insufficient to reverse them.
Europe spends far
less on healthcare than the U.S., but unlike the ineffective U.S. FDA, the
European Union scientifically studies the relationship between food, food
supplements and health. They regulate food
supplement providers and wisely require detailed labeling and product
warnings that the U.S. FDA totally ignores. Intelligent Europeans understand
that disease prevention through good nutrition is far more valuable than
expensive medicine, surgery and risky procedures (like chemotherapy and
radiation treatments AFTER avoidable diseases like cancer, heart disease,
diabetes, etc. are present).
In a foolish
attempt to reduce valid malpractice lawsuits, 2005 U.S. legislation limited
medical law suit claims. If a prescription drug that was approved by the
corrupt U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the direct cause of the painful
death of thousands of people, how much is that worth? Should anyone be held
accountable? What responsibility should the FDA be held accountable for? What
if one of the deaths is you, or the person you love most in the world?
The great American
medical economic disaster is happening just as the baby boomers are about to
retire. We have been conditioned to ignore prevention opportunities and rely on
corrupt, commonplace, inept, ineffective medical (mal)practice to reduce our
illnesses AFTER we have contracted them (instead of avoiding them as other
superior nations do). Almost everyone already knows that Medicare and Social
Security are actuarially unsound and headed toward bankruptcy. More intelligent
preventive healthcare in other nations has been shown to cost less and be more
effective (people are healthier and live longer) than in the U.S.
Many companies can
no longer afford to provide their retirees with lifetime health care coverage,
which was common a generation ago. This economic fact is true, even if we were
not in a severe economic downturn, where pension plans have also gone bankrupt
and corporate corruption and greedy gross mismanagement are rampant. What a
huge negative change we have undergone in the last half of a century, since
Salk represented everything that was good about the medical profession and our
grandparents cared deeply about the world they were leaving their offspring.
America may be one
of the most “successful” nations in the history of this world (by some monetary
standards), but we are also one of the few industrial nations that cannot find
it in our hearts to provide even minimal healthcare benefits for everyone. The
thinking which created today’s problems is insufficient to solve them. We
clearly need preventative medicine and alternative integrated
approaches to lifestyle behavior patterns that have been proven to stop or
reduce many forms of unnecessary premature aging. Anything less will continue
to produce an economic and healthcare disaster, when the baby boomers begin to
retire next decade.
Please forgive me
if I sound a bit cynical, but I think it puts me in a category described by
George Bernard Shaw:
“The power of
accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
I tried to raise my
children, as my research scientist father raised me: Live in the moment; pay
attention to the details of the world around you; try to understand cause and
effect; when you discover that your conceptual models are flawed, strive to
learn more and correct your flawed decision-making thought processes. Whenever
were traveled across town or around the world, we played the “POO Game.”
In an attempt to
expand their Powers Of Observation (POO), I’d ask them about things we
had just seen, often after they were no longer visible. I asked them about how
these things related to their previous knowledge, and how they could apply new
information tomorrow.
I often
complemented them on Good POO, especially when they observed something
interesting that I had missed. This taught me about their curiosity, which I
then encouraged and built upon. Sometimes, I would tell them “Good POO” and
someone nearby would look at us strangely – This always made them laugh about
our inside knowledge of the fun POO game.
It is sad that most
parents and teachers have poopy POO, and so do their children and students.
They get up today and do the same things they did yesterday, futilely hoping
that things will get better tomorrow, but they can’t, don’t and won’t.
Our worst American
classrooms encourage poopy POO. Students are forced to conform to the epidemic
plague of mindless mediocrity. They must sedentarily wait to be spoon fed, like
little baby birds waiting for smelly old worms, rather than paying attention to
the real-world principles of life all around them.
America needs many
more rational skeptics, intelligent cynics, and curious critical thinkers, who pursue high POO
and the long-term laws of cause and effect around them. The very few with good
POO learn to understand so many important things that are not taught in
obsolete schools, and that the irrational mindless mediocre majority will never
become aware of.
Headaches Are Often A Sign Of Unnecessary, Avoidable, Premature Aging
Ask a modern
mediocre American who lives in front of commercial television: “What should
you do when you get a headache?” The answer is almost always “take a pill”
(where “pill” is based on something that they or their mother saw on television
recently or long ago).
This misinformed
“poor POO” pervasive practice, (which most people do blindly without even
thinking), is like irrationally removing the battery from a noisy smoke
detector, rather than investigating and correcting the source of the smoke or
fire.
Over-the-counter
anti-inflammatory drugs like common aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen and
naproxen all thin the blood, effect platelets, and are therefore
statistically linked to a higher risk of brain stroke and various forms of
internal bleeding (including death from peptic ulcers).
The more you take,
the higher your risk of devastating catastrophic permanent brain damage,
neuropathy, ulcers, etc., which also increases significantly with age. Stroke
is among the most significant killers of overstressed, prematurely-aging
Americans. Most painkillers increase its risk.
Acute and chronic
inflammation is directly link to most diseases and unpleasant pain. 90% of
Americans regularly consume some form of caffeine, which increases
inflammation.
Non-Steroidal
Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAID painkillers) are typically “COX-2 enzyme
inhibitors.” NSAIDs include the above OTCs and many prescription drugs like
VIOXX (one of the most widely prescribed drugs before it was withdrawn 9/2004),
CELEBREX and BEXTRA. One of the problems is that they also inhibit COX-1 enzyme
in varying degrees. This directly causes internal bleeding (in the brain,
digestive system, and other organs), ischemic neuropathy (large or small
incremental nerve death –intellectual, sensory and control function loss) and
painful slow death by peptic ulcers, etc.
According to the
scientific studies that followed the removal of VIOXX, MOST painkillers
increase the risk of heart attack – some by up to 71%!
In April 2005, the U.S.
FDA issued new label warnings for all prescription and over the counter
anti-inflammatory painkillers. Prescription painkillers now must carry
"black box" alerts warning of heart disease and stroke risk (which
most consumers sadly ignore). Over-the-counter brands (which are usually taken
at lower doses and for a shorter amount of time) were forced to include more
information about the risk that they impose. The FDA recommends checking with
your doctor if you take over-the-counter painkillers for more than 10 days.
Popular Painkillers
With the Highest Risk
Indomethacin
(Indocin) and sulindac (Clinoril) (traditional NSAIDs) had the highest risk in
the new study. Indomethacin increased heart attack risk by 71% and
sulindac by 41%. Mobic
raised the risk of heart attack by 37%, while the recently pulled Cox-2
drug Vioxx increased risk by 32%. In a study published in the British
Medical Journal, June 2005, commonly used and abused ibuprofen (Advil,
Motrin and many others) was associated with a 24% higher risk of heart
attack.
Bextra was recently
removed from the market during the FDA's sweeping review of anti-inflammatory
drugs. Bextra has been associated with a potentially fatal skin disease called
Stevens-Johnson syndrome.
Heath risks
increase significantly with escalating doses of all the NSAIDs. The higher the dose, the greater the risk,
the studies have all showed.
Although encouraged
heavily by profit-motivated commercial advertisements that ignore
well-documented public health issues, habitually popping legal painkillers
is an extremely DUMB thing to do.
It is interesting
to note that painkillers often INCREASE long-term chronic pain in a variety
of different ways. Not only do painkillers increase the risk of deadly
diseases, they also do NOT reduce long-term pain! Mindless consumers with poor
powers of observation are. hypnotized by misleading commercials. They respond
to their increased level of pain (caused by pain amplifiers like caffeine,
other stimulants and previous use of painkillers) by increasing the dangerous
dosage of risky painkillers, which increase their pain even more in a cascading
cycle of ever-increasing discomfort. This is a downhill snowball
cause-and-effect of continually making things much worse until it eventually
triggers sever personality changes and ultimately results in premature death
(common in most Americans).
All NSAID / COX-2
inhibitors statistically increase the risk of HEART FAILURE and BRAIN STROKE.
This risk increases with dosage and duration of taking common-but-dangerous
painkillers. Should you take them every time you feel a pain?
The irrational
mediocre majority of TV watchers, caffeine consumers and pill poppers (with
limited critical thinking skills and
weak powers of observation) incorrectly think that they should continue their
long-term bad habits. They indiscriminately buy large bottles of painkillers,
and keep them handy. Many foolishly take one or more per day, which increases
their rate of aging and the risk of premature painful death. It should be a
felony crime for parents to teach these bad lifestyle habits to their children!
There are many
reasons for headaches and body aches, including: lifestyle-induced premature aging, improper mental response
to physical and mental stress, vascular inflammation, hangover, stimulants
(neural irritants and pain amplifiers like caffeine, ephedrine / ephedra,
illegal drugs, etc.), unnatural patented prescription drugs, infections, poor
nutrition, toxins, environmental pollution, pesticides, preservatives,
artificial food flavorings, vascular problems, high blood pressure, excessive
anaerobic exercise, uncorrected orthopedic (shoes) and ergonomic problems
(chairs, work center habits), improper use of risky food supplements (poor /
misinformed self-medication), conflicts between multiple drugs, drugs and foods
(like grapefruit), etc.
Commercials teach
mediocre people with poopy POO and limited critical
thinking skills that pain is linked to inflammation and anti-inflammatory
drugs (OTC and prescription) are wonderful painkillers (which just happen to be
very profitable for the misinformation advertisers who degrade public health).
Inflammation may be
“acute” (a temporary injury that will heal if given the chance) or long-term
“chronic”, whose trigger source needs to be identified and corrected. In either
case, masking the problem with painkillers and leaving the source in place is
the wrong thing to do.
Inflammation is
triggered (initiated) by disease or injury to cells, tissues and organs, such
as exposure to toxins, smoke, alcohol, radiation, pesticides, chemicals,
allergens, dander, dust, dust mites, insects, stings, bites, pollen, mold,
fungi, detrimental bacteria, viruses, parasites, carcinogens, stimulants
(neural irritants and pain amplifiers like caffeine, ephedrine / ephedra,
etc.), a fall, blow or concussion, cuts and scrapes, surgery (necessary or
elective/cosmetic), food allergies, too much or too little of critical enzymes
and vitamins, genetic mutations, drugs (legal and illegal, prescription and
OTC), drug interactions with other drugs or certain foods (like grapefruit,
etc.), excess body fat / obesity, and many other subtle or significant
primary or secondary sources that may be difficult to understand.
In response to
trigger event(s), the immune system releases white blood cells (macrophages)
that concentrate in the injured area. Macrophages and “histamine” regulate the
production of pro-inflammatory “cytokines”, chemical messengers that attack and
clean up cells in the affected area.
Inflammation in a
correctly controlled environment is an important part of the healing process. If
you scrape your arm, the reddening of the skin around the injury is an example
of the “histamine response.” It increases red and white blood cell flow to the
injury and thus accelerates the healing, infection-fighting, and
tissue-regrowth processes.
Another common
example of the histamine response is the swelling of nasal passages in response
to allergens. The body is trying to accelerate healing of sensitive mucous
membranes, but excess inflammation creates the unpleasant “stuffy” congestion
feeling.
OTC
“antihistamines” attempt to reduce stuffy inflammation (in nasal passages,
etc.), but antihistamines can slow the healing process and dry out mucous
membranes. This can make nasal tissues crack and allow air born allergens,
bacteria and toxins to directly enter the blood stream, triggering more
disease, infection and inflammation.
If the inflammatory
trigger continues (like daily smoking, environmental pollution, excess body
fat, etc.), “cytokine” production rises, sending more and more signals for white
blood cells to attack the trigger. This excessive, preventable, immune system
response will eventually damage otherwise healthy cells, tissues and organs.
Chronic cellular
damage, caused by long-term exposure to inflammatory triggers, will overwhelm the
immune system and produce DNA mutations that result in viable, uncontrolled,
self-reproducing cancer cells. In some cases, especially in those of advanced
biological age or compromised immune systems, the body loses its ability to
stop the cytokine production and “down-regulate” the chronic inflammation.
Accelerated aging, heart attacks, vascular failures, brain strokes, dementia,
diabetes, various forms of cancer and many other deadly diseases are the direct
result of unrestrained inflammation, which is often combined with increased
pain and the bad habit of taking OTC or prescription anti-inflammatory
medications (to merely mask the inflammation triggers caused by poor lifestyle
choices, without resolving the underlying source of the avoidable inflammation).
Inflammation is the
result of trigger event causes (many of which are preventable), but inflammation
also CAUSES many diseases throughout the body. Inflammation is BOTH a
cause and an effect of illness.
Inflammation causes
pain. This pain reflects cellular, tissue and organ damage that can eventually
result in premature death. Here is one example: Suppose that taking a
painkiller (or neurotoxic alcohol, drugs, or an excitotoxin like aspartame or
MSG) weakens micro capillaries and there is a tiny hemorrhage that cuts off the
blood supply to one-or-more neurons. Most people would not immediately notice
such an isolated event, except for the fact that it triggers a cascading set of
more serious reactions.
As one-or-more
neurons begin to die, there is a histamine response that attempts to repair the
damage by increasing blood flow to the starving cells. This causes
inflammation. In tiny bundles of compacted nerves (in the brain, eyes, and
throughout the body), inflammation caused by the death of one nerve, pinches
off the blood supply to adjacent nerves in the same bundle.
When the small
initial inflammatory trigger source causes the death of large numbers of
neurons, people begin to notice a wide variety of central nervous system
symptoms, such as: increased pain, headaches, blind spots, loss of memory, loss
of sensation, loss of motor control, shaking, etc. If the person merely masks
the inflammation trigger with a risky anti-inflammatory painkiller, and the
original inflammation trigger is not removed, the problem will get
progressively worse over time. Most individuals and medical doctors are
extremely short sighted and only deal with symptoms, rather than the underlying
causes of progressive disease, which are harder to understand.
Masking the pain
with anti-inflammatory painkillers not only eliminates the immediate motivation
to study and deal with the inflammation trigger (often due to poor lifestyle
choices like smoking, drinking, caffeine, or taking painkillers), but the
anti-inflammation drugs themselves CAUSE unnecessary heart disease, internal
bleeding, etc. that accelerates aging, INCREASES inflammation and the risk of
drug-induced premature death. (This foolish concept is similar to the common
medical malpractice of prescribing radiation treatments and
chemotherapy, (which directly CAUSE DNA MUTATION CANCER, for people who already
have a serious case of cancer.)
The relatively new CRP
blood test is a measurement of inflammation, which has been found to be a
fairly accurate predictor of many deadly diseases like heart attack, diabetes,
accelerated aging, and many other common severe ailments.
In quick summary, a
good diet rich in certain high-antioxidant fruits and vegetables can
significant reduce CRP in only a few weeks. Conversely, medical research
scientists can now use CRP to help quantify the life-threatening impact of poor
lifestyle choices like: smoking, drinking, caffeine, insufficient exercise,
excess body fat, not enough sleep, violence, negative thought processes, etc.
If a bad lifestyle
choice is made, inflammation increases and so does measurable CRP. Improve your
lifestyle (nutrition, exercise and mental activity) and your CRP will be
reduced – indicating lowered risk for many diseases that are directly caused or
aggravated by inflammation.
Your CRP number
is a statistically significant measure of your rate of aging and risk factors
for many deadly diseases.
Repetitive CRP testing over time allows research scientists to precisely
demonstrate, compare and rank the most valuable ways to reduce these measurable
inflammation risk factors. They can also quantify the negative impact of
elective procedures like cosmetic surgery, and other poorly studied
potentially-dangerous inflammation-causing lifestyle choices.
Briefly consider
the inflammation associated with painful arthritis. This disease has many
different causes and treatment options. The dumbest option is anti-inflammatory
painkillers (like VIOXX, NSAIDS, etc.), which temporarily mask the problem, and
do nothing to reduce the source of the pain. For many people with certain
types of arthritis, there are modern food supplements like glucosamine or
hyaluronic acid for individuals who are allergic to shellfish. Such
products hydrate the joints and encourage the growth of new cartilage. In many
cases, this can completely eliminate arthritic joint inflammation and the need
for risky, invasive joint replacement. These inexpensive nutrition solutions
can be (for many people) far superior to the standard prescriptions for
disease-causing anti-inflammation drugs like Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra and OTC NSAIDS,
which are widely advertised in medical journals and on television, while
inexpensive, less profitable glucosamine and hyaluronic acid are simply not
understood or recommended by most of the doctors who injure their patients with
dangerous high-profit prescription painkillers. In fact, the corrupt U.S. FDA
will not even allow the providers of glucosamine and hyaluronic acid to
advertise the potential specific benefits of their food supplements, since they
are not classified as FDA-regulated “drugs.”
The
easy-to-administer CRP blood test can precisely measure and document the many
benefits of improved nutrition. Long-term consumption of anti-inflammatory
drugs can be a serious health risk. The CRP test demonstrates that lifestyle
choices are much more effective at reducing inflammation and the related pain
and secondary injury. The CRP test does not account for anti-inflammatory
drugs, or measure the health risks that such drugs add to your life.
CRP has recently been found to be even more important to monitor than other older, less-effective blood tests like serum cholesterol, etc.
The CRP test is
relatively expensive. Misinformed lazy medical doctors who have not kept up
with modern literature about CRP and the many anti-aging scientific advances
are not using CRP enough. They treat only symptoms and fail to investigate
lifestyle-related, preventable disease causes.
If you feel that
you are at risk for the many diseases that chronic inflammation is related to,
discuss adding a CRP test to your annual physical examination. Find a licensed
physician who will work with you to find causes, rather than treat only your
symptoms.
If your CRP
number is more than 1,
improve your lifestyle and then have your CRP checked more frequently, until
you see it drop below 1. Remember, your medical doctor has almost no formal
training in non-prescription lifestyle improvements, so you will have to
look elsewhere for authoritative information. CRP is an excellent way to
receive precise, scientific, widely-recognized feedback about improvements to
your diet, exercise and mental aerobics.
If you are one of
the 45+ million Americans without health insurance, you can become a member of
organizations like the Life Extension Foundation and receive significant price
reductions on a variety of laboratory tests, including CRP, homocysteine and
other comprehensive blood tests. You should budget at least $250 per year for
comprehensive blood tests – more if you are found to have any values that are
out of range.
Indiscriminately taking
some food supplements (like iron) or eating foods that are artificially
fortified with them (without knowing that you are already too high or too low)
can kill you. Regular laboratory blood testing is critical, but be very careful
about doctors’ subsequent recommendations to mask symptoms, rather than
identifying and correcting the underlying source of your health problems and
pain. Investigate the opinion of others and alternative solutions and
treatments before adding the risk of dangerous drugs or unnecessary surgery.
Natural disease prevention is a much better solution than things like joint
replacement, chemotherapy, radiation, painkillers, etc.
The many
manifestations of migraine can vary dramatically from one patient to another,
and even within the same patient at different times. During a migraine pain
attack, changes in brain activity (negative mental images and
stress-related thought processes) produce inflamed blood vessels and nerves
around the brain. Inflammation accelerates aging. High
blood sugar (increasingly prevalent among overweight Americans) increases
inflammation-related pain, disease and premature aging processes. Inflamed
nerves can fire erratically. Inflamed nerves can pinch off the blood supply to
adjacent nerves, causing progressive, irreversible, nerve bundle death. In
extreme cases nerve inflammation can result in a variety of sensory illusions,
such as hallucinations, unusual voices, hypersensitivity to light, sounds,
temperature, touch, etc. and radical thoughts, fears, depression or muscle
contractions. Stimulants (neural irritants and pain amplifiers like caffeine,
etc.), increase nerve sensitivity and migraine pain.
High stress and
mental anguish can trigger severe migraine headaches. When blood vessels tighten (especially the
sides of the neck below the ear lobes), blood pressure increases. The heart can
pump blood to the throbbing brain, but tight neck muscles and vascular
inflammation prevent some of the stale blood from returning to the heart and
lungs to receive a fresh supply of oxygen. This lack of oxygen increases the
inflammation response and further aggravates the migraine pain / inflammation
spasm cycle.
Many people can be
trained in calming “mental imaging relaxation techniques” (such as prayer,
relaxing meditation, self hypnosis, positive mental imaging, etc.). These
techniques can often effectively interrupt the migraine pain / stress /
inflammation cycle in only a few minutes.
We all need to learn
how to cope, relax and let things go that are beyond our control. Most stress
is self-generated. Our mental images release “fight or flight” adrenaline,
which accelerates our heart rate and stimulates sensory perception, including
our throbbing pain. It is not the situation or the stimulus that creates the
stress – It is the mental image (good or bad) that we associate with it
that triggers either comfort or stress, which aggravates inflamed blood vessels
and pain-producing nerves. In modern introductory psychology courses, this is
called Stimulus / Imagery / Response (SIR). Improving lifestyle and proper
SIR mental conditioning can significantly reduce migraine pain.
It is not what other people do to us, or the situations that we find ourselves in, but rather, the mental image that we link to our current situation is what results in unhealthy levels of stress. Happiness Is A Learned Mental Attitude, Not A Situation.
Migraine headaches are common among children, as well as adults. Young and middle-aged women are especially susceptible. People with migraine headaches tend to be chronically tense. Ironically, sometimes the migraine pain greatly increases when they finally relax. This type of migraine can happen on Friday afternoon, when the person is able to relax after a week at work or school. In this case, relaxation of blood vessels causes them to expand and push against sensitive inflamed nerves. One shortsighted symptomatic prescription drug approach is the use of vasoconstrictors, without dealing with the source of the stress.
Very few stressed
out medical doctors take the time to understand SIR mental imaging techniques
or to teach relaxation exercises to their patients who experience
self-generated unnecessary stress-related pain. Writing a risky (neurotoxic)
painkiller prescription is much faster (and thus more profitable). AND,
pharmaceutical salespeople have long provided perks and incentives for doctors
to prescribe their most-expensive recently patented unnatural drugs.
Most general
practice medical doctors, and even specialized neurologists, are unfamiliar
with other ways to treat migraine pain and the cascading complications. Among
the most successful are self-control strategies using biofeedback to
quantitatively measure and give the patient guidance about relaxation
techniques..
Biofeedback simply
means giving patients information about their physiological states and allowing
them to learn how to control them. At one level, biofeedback is a way to gain
conscious control over one's physiology: mind over matter. But, in a deeper
sense, biofeedback is also a way to tune into one's body's wisdom, correct
invalid mental images, and allow the brain to self-regulate. This mind-body
unity is achieved when the conscious mind is in a state of focused relaxation -
quiet but highly alert. It is like the state of "flow" that
successful athletes sometimes feel when they are at their peak performance.
A New York
psychologist, Dr.
Jeff Carmen, has specialized in treating migraines with biofeedback for
many years. He began with a group of traditional procedures that have proven
successful in many research studies. These are ways of learning consciously to
relax, to turn off the "fight-or-flight" side of the autonomic
nervous system (ANS), the so-called "sympathetic" branch. This allows
the relaxed "parasympathetic" arm of the ANS to become dominant.
Sympathetic over arousal has a number of effects: cold hands, fast heart rate,
fast shallow breathing, muscle tension, and sweat glandular over activity.
Traditional
biofeedback training to reduce migraine pain involves learning the correct
mental images required to warm the hands, reduce sweating, slow down breathing,
and lower muscle tension (especially in the neck).
There are separate
instruments that measure each of these, and information can be presented to the
client on a computer screen. By watching the display, one can learn to control
these physiological processes by simple trial and error mental image
refinement. In addition to biofeedback in the office, home practice is
essential. Two twenty-minute periods of daily practice, and numerous short
periods of a few seconds each are essential, as one slowly learns to stop
generating unnecessary, undesirable levels of self-induced unproductive mental
stress.
After years of
experience with traditional biofeedback methods, Dr. Carmen invented a new
procedure, which is faster to learn and offers greater migraine control. It
involves learning to control the temperature, (and hence the blood flow and
metabolism), of the prefrontal areas of the brain, the location of the
so-called "executive" functions of self-control, memory, and attention,
and the highest concentration of “feel good” endorphin receptors. A sensor is
placed on the forehead that looks deeply into the brain by measuring far
infrared temperature. Infrared radiation passes directly through the skull and
can be seen by the optical sensor. The new sensor is similar to the new
heat-imaging techniques police use to look through the walls of houses in
search of illegal drug grow lights. Most people are able to learn to control
their temperature within a very few sessions. The results have been striking:
about 80-90% of clients report significant improvement in migraine frequency or
intensity, and over half have no migraines at all following the treatment,
which involves no medications, just mental conditioning.
Dr. Carmen has presented
his results at the Society for Neuronal Regulation. Other physicians and health
practitioners are now using his system with good results. The best news is that
in most cases brain temperature biofeedback is quite fast, often giving relief
from headaches in as little as 2-5 sessions. The older processes of finger
temperature biofeedback, breathing, etc. have been around for much longer and
are understood by more biofeedback specialists. In all forms of biofeedback
training, a similar mental attitude is important.
Thousands of years
before the work by Dr. Carmen, or the use of the term “biofeedback,” countless
others discovered similar mind / body mental image control processes. The
ancient Greek term “hupnos”. from which we derive the word hypnosis, was used
hundreds of years before Jesus. The word appears 5 times in the Greek New
Testament. Jesus used and taught hupnos to His disciples. It is also linked to
miraculous observations.
If you have
migraine pain, or medical complications caused by an inability to control or
cope with stressful situations, you CAN learn how to change your mental images,
lower your frontal lobe brain temperature, warm your hands, reduce sweating,
slow down your breathing, and lower muscle tension that aggravates many painful
conditions. You can do this by visiting a licensed biofeedback neuronal
regulation specialist, certain psychologists, some religious counselors, or
simply by taking control of your negative mental images and replacing them
with tranquil,
positive, happy, upbeat images of the
way things ought to be. In this case, reality clearly does not matter – Perception
is far more important than reality in combating chronic migraine pain and
reducing many of the mind / body factors
that control the immune system and processes of unnecessary premature
aging.
One important message from Laughter and Humor Therapy in Psychoneuroimmunology - In the 1960s, Norman Cousin used funny movies and laughter to help cure his otherwise hopeless debilitating disease. He later wrote a book on "Laughter Therapy" that promoted this method. Today, the American Cancer Society references it as potentially beneficial, without scientific proof. Having experienced its many benefits myself, I recommend that participating in humorous situations is even more beneficial than passively watching television situation comedies.
Laughing out loud increases healthy respiration (a problem for many ill people). Tightening the upper cheek muscles with a big smile opens sinus passages. The creative frontal lobe of our brain is fed by blood vessels that flow past the nasal sinus cavities. The brain is a 7/24 hotbed of metabolic activity. It appreciates having its blood supply cooled. When the brain gets too hot, our stress level increases and we become grumpy, irritable and more sensitive to pain. Laughter releases calming endorphins (endogenous opioids). Increasing cool blood flow to the frontal lobe, that is loaded with endorphins can reduce stress-related pain and accelerate the healing process. If we simply smile and laugh when we are depressed, we will quickly become happier, healthier individuals.
Our hands can be
warmed by merely petting a warm fuzzy animal (real or even a fake-fur stuffed
toy). Holding hands with a smiling dance partner
will also raise hand temperature, release endorphins, and provide many other
mental, musculoskeletal and cardio vascular benefits.
Stressed neck
muscles (which can restrict the flow of stale blood from the brain back to the
heart and lungs) can be relaxed with a simple mental image of being in a warm
relaxing happy place. I have a dominant personal sensory image of a beach in
Florida with the sun shining on my neck, the blue waves rolling in and the
rustle of palm fronds in a fresh, gentle, ocean breeze. I also have one of
being suspended effortlessly in three dimensions while scuba diving in warm
water on “Rainbow Reef.” By taking a deep breath I can rise or go deeper while
enjoying the curious reef life forms.
Your autonomic
nervous system responds more effectively, if your imaginary happy place has
many vivid imaginary sensory inputs: color, motion, sounds, smells, etc. I also
use such images to help me quickly fall asleep
at night and dream pleasant dreams without disturbing nightmares. People who
experience premature aging due to unproductive sleep caused by unpleasant night
measures can use biofeedback techniques in a professional sleep laboratory, to
learn “lucid dreaming,” which teaches you to recognize a nightmare while it is
happening, and redirect it to your happy place image.
Mental conditioning
can (without any drugs) help you effectively use productive REM sleep (rapid
eye movement dreaming) to consolidate your short-term daily memories with your
long-term stereotypes and discover creative alternatives to problems that you
encounter during the day. My rainbow reef image (above) has matured on its own
over time into a fantasy of Peter-Pan-like flight, that allows me to rise above
the day’s details during my dreams and see a broader view of an otherwise
complex situation context. During a stressful day, we rely heavily on logical,
business-as-usual thinking. Productive REM sleep is irrational and fanciful
creative thinking. I usually wake up refreshed and happy, ready to deal with
issues that now seem much less stressful than they were the day before.
Headaches are extremely rare for me, and I am convinced that this reduces my
personal rate of aging.
If you
frequently come home with a headache, you need some mental reconditioning. Unnecessarily elevated levels of stress
almost always impair cognitive processes and increase sensitivity to pain..
Adrenaline from the sympathetic nervous system shuts down higher-level
intellectual problem-solving creative capacity and enhances glucose metabolism
in the muscles to help you run faster or fight harder. This was the correct
thing to do when hungry bears chased our ancestors, but it is NOT what you need
in today’s high-pressure office politics.
To help reduce
high-pressure deadline stress, try to complete large jobs in small increments
throughout a given time period instead of all at once with an impossible
deadline. This is an issue of high-productivity job-related time management
skills.
Long hours of
sitting with a fixed focal length in front of a computer can cause severe
eyestrain headaches, If
this ever happens, you probably need glasses, specially design to make your eyes
completely relax at the precise distance of your computer display. Carefully
measure the distance from your eyes to your computer display when you are in
the proper ergonomic position (neck-straight – nose perpendicular to shoulders,
back vertical and supported, wrist at or below the elbow, knee at or above hip
and toes elevated/supported – foot perpendicular to leg). Bring the
eye-to-display measurement with you when you have your next refractive eye
exam.
High
blood sugar makes the refractive index of your eye unstable and you will
frequently need to change your eyeglass prescription. Get your blood sugar
under control and stable before you get new glasses. If you still get eyestrain
headaches, you are still doing something wrong. Don’t give up until you get it
right. Avoid popping pain pills – the problem will only get much worse.
Pain in your
head is trying to tell you not to do what you did that caused it, but the
irrational majority would rather temporarily mask their pain, rather than alter
their unhealthy lifestyle
(nutrition, exercise, mental activities, work-and-play habits, etc.) that
caused the pain in the first place. It is generally easier for you to pop a
pill than to investigate what caused the problem, regardless of the fact that
the pill may cumulatively increase your risk of ultimate catastrophic brain
devastation or other serious potential side effects (some of which include
sudden death).
OBVIOUSLY
IRRATIONAL THINKING: Perhaps you know that your pain is a common hangover,
just pop two pills and then make plans to go drinking with your friends again
soon. (GAK!) Alcohol is undoubtedly neurotoxic – it kills nerves all over your
body. The hangover is merely the first proof that this is irrefutably true.
Ultimately regular alcohol consumption
WILL lead to untimely death (breast cancer, etc.), or extremely
unpleasant alcohol-related dementia (if you live long enough).
People rapidly
build resistance to pain killers. As the pain gets worse and over-the-counter
drugs become ineffective, it is easier for your doctor to prescribe a
more-dangerous painkiller, rather than to study your lifestyle and then try to
convince you to change your bad habits, so they usually don’t even try.
MORE IRRATIONAL
THINKING: Scribble a quick prescription, and move on to temporarily reduce the
next patient’s pain, while ignoring cause-and-effect avoidable lifestyle
choices. (Double GAK!)
Consider this: If
premature aging could be reduced and normal bodily function reestablished, then
people would not only live longer and be happier, but they would also have a
higher quality of productive life AND eliminate their recurring pain
problems. BUT, cured patients would spend much less on drugs and medical
doctors, so American corrupt medical practice deals mostly with temporary
symptom relief, rather than intelligent disease prevention.
The modern
profit-driven medical profession clearly has a negative economic incentive to
develop a long-term cure for your problems, rather than to make you dependant
on their long-term, high-risk, money-making medical care. Likewise, they have
no monetary reason to do the research to develop a one-time inexpensive
vaccine, or to teach you how to improve your lifestyle to prevent or delay the
pain of many age-related diseases.
Let’s take a more
detailed look at other things that are clinically linked to premature aging,
associated with severe migraine pain.
Stimulants (like those in caffeine, ephedrine /
ephedra, etc.) are actually neural irritants and pain amplifiers. Every living nerve in our body is
constantly “firing,” whether we are awake or asleep. You can see these pulses
clearly on electrocardiograms and brain electrical activity monitors. Many
neurons normally fire roughly ten times per second. They are constantly saying
“I’m alive – Keep listening.” When a nerve dies, the nerves that were attached
to it will in a matter of seconds start looking for other nerves to listen to.
(In advanced neurodegenerative disease, reduce numbers of neurons to talk with
results in loss of memory, cognitive capacity, motor control, etc.)
When a sensory
nerve is stimulated (sight, sound, smell, touch, temperature, etc.) or a chain
of thought process / memory nerves or communication nerves are activated, they fire
more frequently than normal. Cut yourself and many nerves will fire rapidly and
tell you in a fraction of a second to do something quickly.
Stimulants irritate
nerves throughout your body, which makes you more alert, since you are
constantly experiencing elevated levels of pain from everywhere. Many adults
become totally addicted to stimulants and cannot function without their
unhealthy morning cup of coffee, but this pervasive lifestyle error is clearly
accelerating premature aging of your entire central nervous system.
By clinical
definition, stimulants make you more “irritable.” Many medical doctors are extremely
addicted to caffeine (some to stronger stimulants). They will tell you that “Coffee
is not so bad – it is the only way I made it through my 36 hours shifts as an
intern in the ER.” Then, they will prescribe a neurotoxic pill to kill your
pain, which is being made even worse by the stimulants you ingest every day.
Simple lesson: If
you are in pain, STOP TAKING PAIN AMPLIFIERS! Stimulants and sugar unnecessarily
accelerate the aging of your entire central nervous system and cause other
premature aging problems like diminishing
the capacity of the immune system.
Among the worst
pervasive neural stimulants are “excitotoxins”, such as monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame (Nutrasweet®, Equal®, etc.).
Excitotoxins don’t stop working once they get past your tongue – they
overexcite nerves throughout your body and burn them out like flipping a light
switch on and off rapidly (excito-toxin). They release minute amounts of
neurotoxic methanol, which is well known to cause nerve death, blindness, and
damages micro-capillary blood vessel walls causing inflammation, migraine
headaches, etc. (See Excitotoxins:
The Taste That Kills)
Excitotoxin
ingestion can be greatly reduced by knowing what to look for, reading
ingredient labels, and asking restaurant owners if they use MSG or aspartame. Most
modern diet foods and diet drinks contain neurotoxic aspartame.
There seem to be no
credible studies that anyone has lost weight by consuming aspartame. In fact,
it is so strong that they become addicted and often crave more sugar. There are
however clinical studies that demonstrate that many people who STOP taking
aspartame begin to lose weight!
Here are a few of the common dangerous foods that contain MSG: Accent seasoning, bacon bits, baking mixes, bouillon cubes, bread stuffing, breaded foods, canned meats, cheese dips, clam chowder, corn chips, croutons, dry roasted nuts, frozen dinners, frozen pizza, gelatins, Oriental foods, pot pies, potato chips, processed meats, relishes, salad dressings, salt substitutes, seasonings, soups and soy sauce.
Some people who suffer from frequent migraine pain are particularly sensitive to foods that contain “tyramine,” such as aged moldy cheeses; and preserved meats with nitrates and nitrites that can trigger migraine headaches. Here are a few examples of common foods with nitrates: bacon, beef jerky, bratwurst, corn dogs, corned beef, ham, hot dogs, liverwurst, lunch meats, pastrami, pork and beans, salami, sausage, smoked fish, Spam (the kind that you eat) and most turkey lunch meats.
Too much or too little sleep can trigger a migraine pain attack. Roughly 7.5 to 8 hours is appropriate, which allows time
to fall asleep and then 5 or 6 productive uninterrupted 75 minute sleep cycles
(plus or minus). The REM (rapid eye movement) sleep that occurs when we fall
asleep and dream between each sleep cycle is essential to mental heath and long
term memory consolidation. A repetitive lifestyle pattern of too little sleep,
followed by strong morning coffee, will definitely accelerate aging. If you
suspect that too much or too little sleep is a cause of your migraine pain,
then adjusting your workload, stress level, and sleep schedule may help.
High stress combined with too
little, or unproductive, interrupted sleep can increase many migraine
irritability risk factors. Frequent middle-of-the-night urination (caused by
high blood sugar, prostate problems, bladder infections, etc.) can aggravate
this pervasive premature aging problem. Possible solutions include correcting
urinary problems and going to bed at the same time each night and waking up at
the same time each morning. It may be important to adhere to this schedule,
even on weekends and holidays, to prevent migraines. If you cannot manage 8
hours of sleep every night, then be sure that you do it whenever you can. See:
Those Who Sleep
Only 5 Hours Have 39% More Heart Attacks Than Those Who Sleep 8
Sleep Information Links (from
Stanford University)
Sleeping with too large or too
small of a pillow, where the neck is not
straight, can trigger migraine pain and may lead to neck muscle / ligament
strains with painful inflammation spasms. The potential problem seems to increase
with age. If this happens to you even once, it will leave a strong memory that
should motivate you to take corrective action to prevent it in the future.
Watching television with your neck propped up can have a similar negative
impact. Having one side of your neck very warm and the other side very cold can
cause a painful asymmetric neck muscle nerve pinch. Proper neck position
ergonomics and manual neck massage can sometimes help avoid or reduce such
unnecessary pain.
Calcium, magnesium, vitamin D supplements (in combination) just before going to bed can
help relax muscles, and they may provide many other health benefits for most
aging adults. For some people, taking a low-dose (300 mcg) of natural
melatonin improves productive sleep, but avoid the common
unnecessarily-high doses of 1 mg to 3mg that are in most over-the-counter
melatonin products – too much is not good. In general, the minimal amount that
does the job is a superior solution with fewer adverse potential side effects.
Many women with severe migraine pain have attacks linked to the stress of their menstrual cycle. Fluctuating estrogen levels are thought to play a role. Menstrual migraines can be more debilitating, difficult to treat, and last longer than other migraines. Migraine also may worsen in early pregnancy, but in later pregnancy, it generally improves. Migraine typically declines in frequency as women age and estrogen levels decline. There is evidence that oral contraceptives or estrogen-replacement therapy can provoke or worsen migraine in some women. Post menopausal hormone replace is linked to other premature aging processes, breast cancer, etc. Hormones are a very delicate balance that changes significantly as we age. Indiscriminate self medication with food supplements that encourage hormonal changes is dangerous to do without adequate monitoring and analysis. Incorrect food supplementation can trigger migraine attacks – Remember: Pain often means “Don’t do that!”
If you are have headache pain, don’t just take a pill – try to understand the source and take corrective action to avoid the problem in the future. Every time you have a headache, write it down, and try to think what you did, ate, drank or thought that may have triggered your pain. Then rethink your unhealthy premature aging lifestyle choices. If you lack “will power”, seek a support group or professional behavior modification therapy – it may be well worth the investment, but be careful to not become a dependant personality. Developing discipline and self-control is a valuable character asset that will greatly assist you in the future.
One serious modern
medical deficit is that very few medical doctors have much exposure to
nutrition, integrated medicine or complementary therapies. Patients with
serious medical problems should NOT passively accept professional advice that
they are "just getting older" or that they "will have to learn
to live with it" or that there is "nothing more we can do." If
your medical professional says these words to you, and offers nothing more than
temporary quick-fix painkillers, then you should proactively study alternative
sources of important healthy lifestyle information, since no one human knows
everything about everything going on inside of you. We live in a complex
society of isolated specialists, with only partial knowledge about most topics.
Antiaging,
integrated medicine, and complementary medicine currently offer proven
alternative therapeutic approaches that are slowly being recognized more by
traditional medical doctors, (who have generally only been trained in surgery
and unnatural patented prescription medicines). Very few medical doctors have
the intellectual capacity or time in their busy schedule to keep up with the
latest scientific research in areas that may be of great interest to your
personal health and well being.
If you have been
diagnosed with a serious problem, be careful about paying too much attention to
unreliable anecdotal evidence from late night cable TV infomercials and biased
individuals who know little about the underlying scientific cause-and-effect.
(See Pill Pushing Quacks)
Take the time to
read everything you can on
the subject from reliable sources with diverse opinions, being sure it
investigate alternative points of view, based on (often contradictory) clinical
trials, laboratory tes, etc. (Do you remember when the tobacco industry funded
clinical research that said that there was nothing wrong with smoking?).
Better yet,
study the risk factors for common age-related diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer,
diabetes, neurodegenerative disease, hemochromatosis, etc. and learn how to
PREVENT them in the first place, or at least delay their onset and
reduce the lifetime cumulative damage of preventable premature aging.
Inherited Genetic Blueprint (the DNA that is in the nucleus of every human
cell in our body and brain) accounts for only a portion of the reasons for
faster-or-slower individual aging rates, and the premature onset of age-related
physical and mental problems. The environmental and the lifestyle
choices that each of us make every day of our lives account for the
majority of the reasons that many people appear to age much faster than
others who have similar genetic factors.
We
do not get to pick our parents, or the life-influencing genetic program that is
built into our DNA from the moment of conception, but mature adults have the
ability to make extremely critical lifestyle choices about nutrition,
exercise, attitude, and the various environments that they decide to live, work
and play in.
We
will introduce basic genetic issues and future hopes, and then discuss how
simple lifestyle choices interact with our individual genetic blueprint
throughout our entire life, and dramatically influence our rate of aging.
Our Hereditary Genetic Blueprint For Life
We
know scientifically that (almost) all humans inherit 23 chromosomes from our
father and 23 from our mother. Rarely, minute DNA mutations occur during
gestation that result in a human blueprint with factors that neither of our
parents possess. The multi-source (male/female) genetic combination form of
human reproduction, plus the possibility of rare random mutations, make all of
us what we are today. If a DNA genetic blueprint is “good,” it will result in
an individual that is more successful than others in a particular environment
(for example, one who is resistant to a common, contagious, life-threatening
disease like the Black Plague).
Through
natural selection, (in animal populations and challenging environments where
only a small percentage of the offspring can survive), successful genetics are
transferred to future generations, which tend to produce more successful
children. But, in human cultures where a high percentage of our children
survive, some studies have shown that “less successful” couples, (as measured
by level of income, education, etc.), tend to produce more children than
many “more-successful” couples (depending on your personal definition of
“success”). Recent studies have also shown that better-educated, higher-income,
far-sighted individuals tend to pay more attention to living a healthy lifestyle
and teaching it to their children. This at least in part helps us understand
why the majority of our population suffers from avoidable premature aging
problems and diseases.
Genetics and Insurance
Insurance
companies must quantify mortality and morbidity risk factors for life and
health insurance. People with higher risk factors for early death and
people who cost more to treat should pay higher premiums for their insurance.
From a purely monetary perspective, dispassionate insurance company “actuaries”
have a strong incentive to carefully study all issues that can be used to
quantify risk factors and calculate “fair” (and profitable) insurance premiums.
The
Human Genome Project progressed much more rapidly than most business (and
insurance) companies thought possible. Many international companies and actuarial organization
members are now rapidly studying molecular DNA issues that may have a
scientific basis for quantifying risk factors. There are also MANY
controversial social, political, ethical and legislative issues about what all
of this implies for our future.
One
point is important to observe: Since actuaries have significant funding to
study and quantify risk factors (of all types), intelligent humans can
study actuarial data to understand how important specific risk factors are in
their own life. This valuable information can be used by smart
individuals to intellectually prioritize lifestyle decisions, to reduce
personal and family risk factors to greatly enhance the length and quality of
your own life and those around you that your example will influence.
Example: Genetic Risk Factors For Breast Cancer
Significant
scientific research has taken place in the last decade. Deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) is a chemical found on cell chromosomes that provides the blueprint for
life. “Chromosomes” are threadlike structures in every cell nucleus throughout
every tissue and organ in every living thing. Human DNA’s double helix
structure makes it possible for chromosomes to be replicated during cellular
division and replication (mitosis).
Chromosomes
are composed of multiple “genes” that contain precise instructions for
controlling when different types of cells should grow/divide/die and the
proteins and enzymes that the genes produce. Some types of genes called “tumor
suppressors” slow the process of cellular division and shorten their life.
Abnormal
DNA mutations can cause normal cells to become cancerous by de-activating the
tumor suppressor genes (and other mechanisms). Researchers are investigating
“why” and “how” some genes mutate (exposure to carcinogenic toxins, radiation,
etc.). DNA mutations in parents can be transferred to their children. This
partially explains why some cancers occur more frequently in some families.
However, most DNA mutations that cause breast cancer are NOT inherited; they
occur during a woman’s life and may be caused by a variety of factors
(radiation, alcohol, smoking and other known and unknown environmental and food
toxins).
Breast
cancer genes (BRC1 and BRCA2) are two tumor suppressor genes that help repair
damage to DNA and prevents tumor development. In 1994, researchers discovered
that women who carry mutations of BRCA1 or BRCA2 are at higher risk of developing
both breast and ovarian cancer than women who do not have these genetic
mutations. Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, MD, a Breast Health Specialist at the Mayo
Clinic, estimates that 20% of women who carry BRCA1 mutations will develop
breast cancer by age forty, 51% by age fifty, and 87% by age sixty.
There are over 2000 known genetic mutation variations associated with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Women w