Hello everyone: Here is some news that has been known for quite some time and is now making headlines once again. The following quote sums it up quite nicely: “A new study questions the conventional wisdom of using steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen to treat low back pain if exercise and other non-drug therapies don't work right away. Those medications offer relief from acute pain but may actually increase a person's chances of developing chronic pain, said the study published in Science Translational Medicine. The study indicates that inflammation is a normal ... Read more
Archives for May 2022
Health Update: Inflammatory Foods Shrink Your Brain…For Real!!
Hello once again everyone: This is definitely news you can use. Diets high in inflammatory foods were linked with global markers of brain aging, brain shrinkage, and cerebral small vessel disease on MRI, a cross-sectional study showed. "Systemic inflammatory processes in the body, including the brain, can be influenced by diet, leading to its important contributory role in brain aging," the researchers observed. "In our study we found evidence of an association between DII (Dietary Inflammatory Index) scores and global markers of brain volumes and vascular brain injury, which are early markers of dementia," they wrote. "Moreover, previous studies have shown associations between the DII and risk factors of dementia. Our findings indicate potential for prevention by dietary modification." Read more
Health Update: Inflammation from Energy Surplus…Say What?
Hello everyone: This is a very intriguing paper on a subject that affects 75% of us and that is the balance of essential fatty acids in our diet. It turns out that the modern dietary changes (which refers to an increase in processed foods loaded with damaged Omega-6 oils and reduced Omega-3’s) alter cellular communications. This translates to reveal that an imbalance in, and/or an excess of nutrients is a form of metabolic stress that leads to negative alterations in the immune system that leads to chronic inflammation and further abnormal function. Gradually this chronic overload of food energy expands fat tissue that leads to oxygen stress and negative alterations in immune function. In our country, there is a profound shift in consumption of greater and greater amounts of saturated and Omega-6 fats, and lower and lower amounts of Omega-3 fats. This in turn results in the ... Read more
Health Update: Vagus Nerve and Long-Covid
Hello everyone: The first link in this blog is a 1-page read from Medscape and highlights several important considerations for those with Long-Covid symptoms. It goes over why these symptoms are from how the virus has damaged the vagus nerve. As a practicing functional neurologist this article caught my eye. We have seen that inexpensive non-invasive transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is often very helpful in the recovery of post-virus long-haulers with vagus nerve symptoms and now the information is growing and important to share. “Feb. 15, 2022 -- Several long COVID symptoms could be linked to the effects of the coronavirus on a vital central nerve, according to Read more
When to Eat is as Important as What to Eat: Simple Rules to Follow
Hello everyone: The good news is that all of us have probably heard that the pandemic phase of Covid has ended. Lockdowns and working from home have caused a significant number of sub-optimal issues with food that have resulted in poor health outcomes. But now we can move on…and one important strategy that is easy to implement is meal timing. As it turns out, when we eat is as important as what we eat. There is more and more evidence to support this finding as reported in the research literature and why this is so important: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419892105 “When your biological clocks are out of sync with the environment, health can be negatively affected. For example, we know that the body expects to use certain kinds of fuel (i.e., fat, sugar) at specific times of ... Read more
