ALZHEIMER'S AND CHOLESTEROL

". . . those people on extremely low fat diets are starving themselves for some of the most needed and powerful anti-disease nutrients on earth."

Grandma used to say I should eat my scrambled eggs fried in a little butter. She said the same thing about flounder filets. She said these were brain foods. Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did enjoy these foods.

One of the reasons these are considered brain foods is that they encourage proper cholesterol levels in the blood. Cholesterol is a brain fuel, playing an essential part in the makeup of brain and nervous system tissue. In fact, the arachidonic acid found in butter and eggs is absolutely vital for the makeup of cell membranes. Cell membranes are the building blocks of good health, especially mental health.

Besides encouraging proper brain function via cholesterol production, foods like butter and eggs that contain natural fats are also rich in arachidonic acid. Arachidonic acid is essential for the produc­tion of prostaglandins, which are hormone-like chemicals that are produced in every single cell of your body. These play a major role in how your glands, organs, and your entire body function.¹

Without adequate amounts of the fat found in these foods, prostaglandin and cholesterol production would be impaired. You would then be prone to poor mental health and Alzheimer's. When your body is properly producing prostaglandins and cholesterol from fats (including saturated fats like butter and eggs), you are better able to maintain good mental health.

Ironically, the most powerful block to proper prostaglandin production comes from the very foods that are touted by the food industry and the medical profession as "healthy." These are trans fatty acids found in margarine, shortening, and hydrogenated fats. ² Avoid these at all costs. On the other hand, do consume good sources of natural fat, especially if you are prone to mental health prob­lems.

While we're at it, for you new moms: I recommend that pregnant women eat eggs and a little raw butter. (Try to obtain organically produced butter and eggs.) The fat and cholesterol from egg yolks and butter are essential for your developing baby's men­tal health. Following birth, start your baby eating these foods after six months of age. (For instance, serve baby a scrambled egg cooked over low heat in just a little butter.) This will help ensure proper development of the brain, which will impact on speech, coordination, and freedom from learning disabilities.

Alzheimer's

The message here is simple. Do not fall for the low-fat craze! The Japanese put an extremely high value on eggs and fish as brain foods. As a population, the Japanese are not prone to high cholesterol, blood fat problems, or heart disease. Keep in mind that the enzyme functions that maintain proper cholesterol and prostaglandin activity in the body generally become less efficient as you age. This means more good fats are in order for your diet.

If you doubt this, here's evidence of how egg con­sumption alone makes a big difference in mental function in older age. A University of California at Berkeley study compared two groups of men in their 80s. One group suffered from dementia or Alzheimer's, the other did not. Their diets were almost identical except for one factor—the men who were free from dementia consumed at least one egg daily, the others did not.³

By the way, unless vegans are very careful about their diet, they also have problems with getting enough of the type of fat necessary for good mental health. The majority of vegans are probably deficient in the most important fatty acid nutrients needed as the source for proper brain and nervous system function.⁴

^Notes

1. Horobin. David F, "The regulation of prostaglandin biosynthesis by manipulation of essential fatty acid metabolism," Reviews in Pure and Applied Pharmacological Studies, Vol. 4, pp. 339-383, 1983.

2. "Margarine, the `un-health' food." Health Alert. Vol. 5, No. 11. "The low-fat craze," Health Alert, Vol. 12, No. 4.

3. "Let's get technical...about prostaglandins," Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Health Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3.

4. Sanders, TBA. et al. "Studies of vegans: The fatty acid composition of plasma choline phosphoglycerides, erythrocytes, adipose tissue and breast milk, and some indicators of susceptibility to ischemic heart disease in vegans and omnivore controls." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 31, pp. 805-813.

Be sure to check out our website at www.drkentaylor.com

ADRENAL FAILURE

On autopsy, it was rumored President Kennedy's adrenal glands were so shriveled and destroyed that they were impossible to find. President Kennedy suffered from Addison's, an adrenal disease, hence his was an extreme case. However, in today's high-stress world, it is not uncommon to find people with moderate to severely disrupted adrenal gland function. Since the adrenal glands are the stress glands of "fight or flight," and since stress is such a part of daily modem life, it is easy to understand how millions of people can suffer ill health due to adrenal dysfunction.

If your adrenal glands are not working properly, you may suffer from chronic fatigue, hypoglycemia, lowered resistance to colds and infections, blood pressure problems, asthma, weak ligaments, ridged nails, allergies, dizziness, and more. Old-time healers were well aware of this, and they paid close attention to the adrenal gland system in sick patients. They used foods and supplements to enhance the adrenal glands, and they monitored patients and charted their progress back to normal.

Posture and Adrenal Glands

Using postural alterations is an easy way to test the integrity of the adrenal glands. A postural test is not an examination of the way you stand up straight. Rather, it is taking your blood pressure in two dif­ferent postures to evaluate your adrenal glands. You see, once you are lying down, your blood has a ten­dency to pool in deep areas of the body. When you jump up suddenly, your heart cannot normally pump blood up to your brain fast enough to keep you from getting dizzy and falling over. This is where your adrenal glands come in.

Sensing your postural change, your adrenal glands instantaneously secrete adrenal hormones which immediately induce a rise in blood pressure which normalizes blood flow to your brain. This pheno­menal response occurs in a matter of milli-seconds, and it provides us with an easy way to test the adre­nals. You will need a partner and a blood pressure cuff to perform this simple test.

Lie flat on your back and after several minutes take your blood pressure and record it. Leave the blood pressure cuff on your arm and immediately stand up. Take the blood pressure again as soon as you are standing and record it. This test is called the Ragland test. If your adrenal glands are working properly, your blood pressure (the systolic or first number) will rise. If it drops five points or less, you are experiencing mild adrenal weakness. If it drops six to ten points, your adrenal glands are in worse shape. If it drops more than ten points, you are bordering on adrenal failure.

Remarkably, more than half of all patients will fail this test. Some of the main causes for adrenal failure are drugs including Prednisone and other hormones, chronic stress, severe emotional burden, refined diet with too many carbohydrates, synthetic vitamins, ascorbic acid in high doses, a chronically toxic liver and/or congested kidneys, and more. Left alone, this condition will worsen, leading to chronic, intract­able, debilitating conditions.

What to Do

Naturally, as with all conditions like this, the causes must be removed or diminished. This includes all the potential causes (as listed previously). In addi­tion, real whole food or fuel for the adrenal glands is needed to help them recover. We use Drenamin from Standard Process Labs at a dose of two to three, three times daily. You can even test this product after a month. Simply perform the same Ragland test with a Drenamin tablet in your mouth. If your blood pressure rises normally, you have in-disputable proof of its effectiveness.

Drenamin contains adrenal gland protomorphogen (tissue extract) and real vitamins B and C from plant and animal sources. The adrenal glands are rich in vitamin C and need whole vitamin C com­plex (which includes bioflavonoids, organic copper, and more) in adequate doses to function normally. The same is true for B complex vitamins (including riboflavin). When it comes to adrenal function, there is no product that is better. If you doubt this, simply perform the Ragland test with different products and see for yourself. When 50 to 80% of the general patient population cannot pass the Ragland test, it clearly shows that the daily fare of syn­thetic vitamins, hormones, drugs, bad diet, and lots of stress is killing Americans by the millions. I do not want you to be one of them.

About the Clinic

Integrative Healthcare Solutions (IHS) is at the leading edge of a new and exciting movement in health care known as integrative medicine. Dr. Russell Phillips is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine and is board certified in family practice. Dr. Ken Taylor is a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine and Clinical Nutritionist. Together they combine both traditional and alternative medicine to the benefit of you, the patient. An integrative medical approach can be distinguished from other medical systems in two important ways.

First, the emphasis is patient-centered rather than disease-centered. This means that the focus is on all aspects of your life and health rather than just a specific disease or health condition. You become a partner in your health care decisions and work with doctors who take the time to listen to your needs. An integrative medicine evaluation takes not only physical, but also emotional and lifestyle factors into consideration to promote wellness and cope with illness.

Second, integrative medical systems combine the strengths of conventional and alternative healing traditions, creating a wider range of safe and effective options for you. A team of experts from many different disciplines has the opportunity to work together every day to provide integrated medicine and stay on the cutting edge of health care.

Integrative medicine, or holistic medicine, is a philosophy of health care that recognizes the importance of physical, emotional, and spiritual factors in health and disease. The word holism refers to both healing and wholeness. Integrative medicine is not limited to any particular specialty or type of treatment. It encompasses a wide variety of conventional and complementary therapies, while emphasizing education, personal responsibility and cooperation between patient and practitioner.

At Integrative Healthcare Solutions we use complementary modalities, including nutrition, (both oral and intravenous) with emphasis on whole foods, chelation therapy, herbal therapy, and ion-cleanse detoxification system. What each of these doctors have in common is an appreciation of the "whole person". We follow the philosophy of great minds in medicine such as Weston A. Price, DDS, Royal Lee, DDS, Francis Pottenger, MD, and Melvin Page MD.

Integrative medicine, as practiced at Integrative Healthcare Solutions, is an effort to utilize the best that modern biomedicine has to offer and then to extend our ability to serve our patients by expanding our therapeutic tool box with those complementary or alternative treatments that can contribute to the overall health and wellness of our patients. A key element of Integrative Healthcare Solution's philosophy is having physicians who have an understanding of both traditional medical techniques and the alternative/complementary disciplines and where they can be effectively used.

At Integrative Healthcare Solutions a typical initial visit will involve a thorough consultation and history of the patient. One difference from what one might expect in many physicians' offices is the time spent and the degree of listening by the physician as he attempts to gain an understanding, not only of the disease that the patient may have, but also to gain an understanding of the unique person who is with them. Laboratory and other diagnostic tests are also used as required by the physician. All of this allows the physician to consider all of the physical, psychological and spiritual components that may be contributing to the state of health and illness of the patient.

After the initial consultation and testing a Integrative Healthcare Solutions physician meets with the patient to discuss with the patient what they have found, the patients goals and the therapeutic options available to them to meet those goals. An emphasis is placed on relating conditions to whole person, not just a set of physical symptoms and providing therapeutic options that both minimize invasiveness and risk and treat all of the appropriate aspects of the whole person. Treatment may or may not involve complementary practitioners depending on the condition and the patient's goals. (As one IHS physician was heard to say: "If someone comes to me with a hernia, I send them immediately down the street to a surgeon - there are no complementary treatments for a hernia.") Important aspects of any encounter at Integrative Healthcare Solutions are providing education and understanding to the patient of their role in achieving and maintaining their health.

Many insurance plans can be accepted. Please call to schedule an appointment at 972-233-2346. You may also visit our website at www.drkentaylor.com.