March 2008
In This Issue:
How Can You Be Athletic On A Low-Carb Diet?
Many people today are told by their doctors that hormone replacement will help them. Men are told that their testosterone is low. Women are told that their progesterone is low, their testosterone is low, or that taking hormones will protect their bones or their heart. While there is a grain of truth to these claims, often there is more harm than good coming from many hormone replacement programs. The topical creams (usually bio-identical) are the worst offenders.
Since most doctors use blood tests to test hormone levels (if they test them at all), they miss the dangerous side effects of these hormone creams. These creams have two main dangers. The first has to do with the delivery method – which is through the skin and the fat to the blood. Hormones are fat-soluble and will therefore get stored in the fat tissue. This leads to extremely high doses of these hormones months down the road – regardless of whether you are still applying the cream or not. The second problem has to do with how the body manages excess levels of hormones. This causes A) resistance at the receptors and B) enhanced conversion into other hormones.
Think of insulin resistance. The cells no longer pay much attention to insulin and your body needs to use more to get the same job done. You can have the same resistance to progesterone, testosterone or estrogen. Then the excess hormone levels of, for example, progesterone can be converted into cortisol (stress hormone), or testosterone (bad for women) or excess estrogen. In fact, there is no way to know how your body will react. We’ve seen women convert progesterone creams into extreme levels of cortisol and be at risk for heart attacks, strokes and Alzheimer’s. We’ve seen other women convert the same creams into strong androgens (male hormones) and suffer male pattern baldness and increased heart risk.
Why don’t doctors see this? Two reasons: 1) Blood tests show protein-bound hormones. These high levels of hormones from these creams are mostly in the protein-free state. 2) Most doctors do not look at whole families of hormones. So a male patient given testosterone may show normal levels of testosterone on a testosterone cream. However that same patient could have very high levels of weak androgens (androstenedione) blocking the testosterone receptors OR extremely high levels of estradiol (the strongest estrogen). Ask your doctor if s/he is watching the effect of your hormone therapy on your other hormones.
How does one avoid this? Get your body healthy so that you don’t need hormones. If hormones are absolutely needed, use bio-identical sublingual drops. They are low dosage and clear out of your body in 12 hours.
It seems impossible to exercise when you’re not eating carbs – people imagine being tired all the time, and “hitting the wall”. Well, we put it to the test. Will Mitchell did a low-carb diet for 3 months and exercised pretty aggressively – see how it went!
This may be surprising, but as practitioners, we actually treat ourselves and try out many of the products and procedures that we prescribe to our patients. In January, I (Will Mitchell) decided to try a low carbohydrate diet to see how it would affect my energy. I began with a very low carb intake to experience ketogenesis or the making of ketones for energy rather than glucose. I did notice low blood sugar and fatigue for the first 48 hours as predicted. That’s how long it takes for a person to begin making ketones. As the days and weeks pass, more organs in the body begin to make the switch and after several weeks, even the brain is not using glucose as its primary fuel. (It has been noted as far back as the 1920’s that children with epilepsy were often cured by using a low-carb diet for two months.) After the first two days, my energy and concentration were extremely stable. I had gone from some sugar cravings to absolutely zero. If lunch was delayed, I felt no ill effects other than an appetite. After doing this for a few weeks, I decided to add a few more carbohydrates, but I kept it around 72 grams a day.
Then I went on a three-day mountain bike trip with a friend and rode 7 hours on the first day. I carried nuts, water and electrolyte capsules with me on the trail. I found that intense bursts up long steep hills were hard in the last few hours, but I doubt that would have been any better on any diet! During the weekend I did notice some sugar cravings and more appetite. I found that after long exercise I did need to eat more and more often and then the cravings were gone again. Now I am off this diet and currently exploring one of the cleanses we use for food intolerances and metabolic disorders.
Soy is often touted as a health food – it is found in nearly every processed food, and whole sections of health food stores are devoted to the many forms of soy. Check your labels – it’s in salad dressing, chicken nuggets, baby formula, in every bread you eat.
Modern soy is NOT a healthy food. There are healthy soy foods, but to understand them we need to learn a little history.
Soy has been cultivated for thousands years. The Chinese used it as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop to allow rice to thrive. It was well known to be inedible for hundreds of years. Some time between 100 BC and 300 AD someone discovered it was edible when fermented into natto, tempeh and miso. Soy sauce was originally a liquid poured off of the fermenting beans. A very long fermentation allowed soy to be eaten without gastric distress. Why is this necessary? Soy, like all seeds, tries to prevent being digested by animals by having digestive-inhibiting chemicals (trypsin inhibitors). Soy has some of the strongest inhibitors of all and simple cooking or soaking will not deactivate them. When cooking beans or grains, soaking them in water for a few hours (as is done in traditional cultures) will deactivate the digestive inhibitors and allow proper digestion when eaten. Today, we do not soak or ferment soy. Soy milk, tofu and textured vegetable protein (soy) is industrially made without regard to digestibility. The trypsin inhibitors are still present in the soy foods we eat today.
Soy has chemicals that act like the hormone estrogen, sometimes called phytoestrogens or estrogen receptor modulators. They act like a weak estrogen and compete with our body’s strong estrogens for estrogen receptors. This means that they reduce the estrogen effect in women, which can sometimes be desirable. In babies, soy formula has a huge estrogen effect and is akin to giving babies birth control pills, sometimes causing secondary sexual development to occur in children. Today we have problems with three year-olds developing breasts and 6 year-olds beginning to have periods! Monks in China ate soy to reduce their libido. Desert plants can increase their production of phytoestrogens in dry years to make the animals that eat them less fertile. It can be considered Nature’s contraception.
Soy is also high in phytates, which bind to minerals such as calcium, zinc, iron and copper. Zinc, iron and calcuim are often added to soy milk to combat this problem. The phytates in soy will also bind with minerals in other foods eaten at the same time, making them unavailable nutritionally.
Soy is a useful plant to make plastics, inks, industrial lubricants and some medicines. It is a good nitrogen-fixer. It is only a health food when fermented over a long period of time.
More information about the dangers of soy can be found (with ample footnotes) in The Whole Soy Story by Kaayla Daniel, PhD, CCN.
