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Children's Health
Unfortunately, children’s health concerns have become a very popular issue these days. More and more parents are becoming increasingly concerned with their children’s health or lack thereof. Younger kids are being placed on adult medication for diseases that have only been thought of as adult diseases, such as Type-II diabetes otherwise known as ADULT onset diabetes.
Obesity among children is now an epidemic as well as heart disease and high blood pressure, and even depression. The odds of learning disabilities are now 1 in 6; Autism is 1 in 150 and getting worse, ADD and ADHD seem to be everywhere; and childhood cancers are rapidly rising and some are being diagnosed within the first years of life. Fifty years ago none of these diseases were imaginable or even heard of in children. So what is going on and what can we do about it?
First of all we need to understand that each individual has a unique body structure and chemistry and that “one size dose not fit all”. What may be good for one person may be extremely bad for another. For example, you may have heard of a baby who has extreme colic while drinking milk, but when taken off the particular milk, the bay is completely fine, while others may thrive on that exact milk. Secondly, we have to understand that the more we change our environment, like our food supply, from its original state the more stress we place upon our body which ultimately lays the foundation for disease.
So what parents can start to do is get their children off all processed and preserved foods which is (anything that can sit in your fridge or cabinets for more than three to four weeks without spoiling). A child’s diet should not include sodas or juices made from concentrate, and anything with high fructose corn syrup which is a major contributor to insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. High fructose corn syrup has recently been discovered to contain mercury that can cause brain damage among other things. Buy as much organic free-range chicken, fish and meat as possible.
As a doctor, I find it ironic that traditional medicine is worried about pro athletes being on steroids and that it sends the wrong message, but they don’t realize that the meat, chicken and/or pork products that kids eat today has been injected with steroids, hormones and antibiotics. In my opinion, this is the reason girls are starting their menstrual cycle at an earlier age or why younger boys have the bodies of grown men. Also, the antibiotics in the food supply are transferred to us, which cause severe problems for our digestive tract. To counteract antibiotics, a good idea is to get a good source of probiotics. I recommend a dairy-free source in case you have intolerance to dairy that is unknown.
Another reason we have such a problem with childhood obesity is that most kids have a poor diet that includes fast food, sodas, and frequent snacking. Although kids eat all the time they are malnourished. The same thing applies to a lot of children who eat a more balanced diet but because it is non-organic, the food is NOT nutrient dense which also causes malnourishment too.
It is imperative that your kids do saliva testing to determine if they have a food intolerance of any kind. We offer this testing in our office it is easy and inexpensive and worth it. I encourage you and your children to eat as much raw organic fruits and vegetables as possible. Inorganic fruits and vegetables contain Herbacides and pesticides that are extremely toxic and decrease the nutritional value of food.
It is also a good idea to see a chiropractor to ensure proper movement and muscle balance which is essential for a healthy body. Kids that are more physically active are in better health than those that are not active. Imagine how much more health benefits these active kids would have if their joints and muscles were more in balance.
To set up an appointment with Dr. Ozzie, please contact him at:
Functional Medicine & Wellness Center
2653 Sagebrush Drive, Suite 230
Flower Mound, Texas 75028
CITYPLACE FITNESS
2711 N. Haskell Avenue, 3rd Floor
Dallas, TX 75204
214.395.7264 ● 972.899.8146
Any type of joint problem is caused by muscle dysfunction. Muscles move bones not the other way around. It is most important to diagnose the weak or inhibited muscle as opposed to the painful muscle if we want to fix the actual problem. All too often doctors like to chase the pain rather than look for the cause and fix the problem. In the majority of cases the painful muscle or joint is not the problem, it is a result of the problem. How many of you have seen a medical doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist or massage therapist only to have the pain disappear for a few days or weeks and then come right back. This is because they focused on the pain and not the cause.
Applied Kinesiology (AK), an advanced technique in chiropractic, focuses on the weak or inhibited muscle, finds the cause and removes it when possible and repairs the damage. The AK process works towards taking the pain and discomfort away permanently with less trips to your doctor.
Specifically, with the low back and Sciatica, I always find an imbalance with the psoas muscle that attaches to certain disks of the spine. With this imbalance these disks are the most often herniated. What pulls them from correct position is the imbalance in the psoas muscle. Adjust the psoas muscle correctly and you fix the herniated disc and sciatica.
Another major problem that most people don’t consider is constipation that leads to toxicity and inflammation. In fact, anything that causes toxicity or inflammation can lead to low back pain or sciatica. The disc mainly consists of water and has limited room to expand. Too much inflammation caused by toxicity will eventually cause pain and push on something it shouldn’t, like the sciatic nerve. Constipation in my definition is if you don’t move your bowls at least once to twice a day without straining, everyday.
To set up an appointment with Dr. Ozzie, please contact him at:
Functional Medicine & Wellness Center
2653 Sagebrush Drive, Suite 230
Flower Mound, Texas 75028
CITYPLACE FITNESS
2711 N. Haskell Avenue, 3rd Floor
Dallas, TX 75204
214.395.7264 ● 972.899.8146
Nineteen percent of men report that they are tired and 30 percent of women report that they are tired. The mitochondria is the part of the cell that produces ATP (the bodies chemical form of energy). It produces ATP approximately 1000 times per day. Ninety-five percent of energy production is done by the mitochondria. There is an average of 2500 mitochondria per cell, except the red blood cells, which have none. The energy produced is used for nutrient uptake, cellular repair, and toxin elimination. Death occurs in an organism when it can no longer produce energy. The mitochondria has its own DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is circular like bacterial DNA. It is very susceptible to damage from oxidative stress, because it is not protected by specific proteins and therefore doesn’t repair very efficiently. Mitochondrial DNA is 20 times more susceptible to damage then cellular DNA. The damage caused by oxidation stress will decrease energy production. Oxidation can be measured by the BTA. One of the best ways to increase energy is by exercise. When you exercise the number of mitochondria you have doubles, and they produce three times the amount of enzymes, therefore giving you six times the amount of energy than if you didn’t exercise. If you have dysbiosis, the toxins excreted by the unfriendly organisms will poison the mitochondria and therefore lower energy production. Essential fatty acids in the form of omega-3′s are very important for the mitochondrial membrane. Antioxidants are very important for protecting from oxidation stress.
What exactly is stress? Stress can come in many forms, it could be emotional stress, chemical stress (toxicity), electromagnetic stress, physical stress, or anything else that elicits a stress response in the body. It doesn’t matter what kind of stress you have, your body perceives them as all the same. Stress has many effects on the body. It can lower your immune system, increase your cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. It can cause sexual dysfunctions, arthritis, heart disease, weight gain, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, cancer, as well as lower thyroid function and metabolism.
When you’re under stress your body switches into a fight or flight mode. When this takes place there are several physiological responses. You have a decrease of all noncritical processes. Your energy will be mobilized to your muscle. Digestion will be turned off (50 percent of people have digestive complaints), detoxification will be impaired, you have a decrease in cellular repair, and you will be placed in a catabolic (breaking down) state. This catabolic state will weaken all your systems.
Looking at the diagram you can see that there are three different states one can be in. You can be in a sick state. This is when your stress levels are higher then your resistance levels. You can be in an average state of health. This is when your stress levels and resistance levels are about equal. These are the people who feel good until something stressful happens, then they get symptoms. The last is a state of good health. This is when your resistance is much higher than your stress levels. This leaves you two choices; reduce stress, or increase resistance. The easiest one to do is to decrease stress. Unfortunately some of us are unable to do this, therefore we must increase resistance. This means you need to support your hypothalamic — pituitary — adrenal axis.
Methlylation is what occurs when your body takes one substance and turns it into another, so it is detoxified and can be excreted from the body.
Methylation is a process that occurs one billion times per second, it takes place in the liver during phase two detoxification. A methyl group is a carbon atom with three hydrogen atoms attached to it. Methylation occurs when SAMe (S-adenosine methionine) donates a methyl group, which is then attached to the molecule that is being detoxified. SAMe then becomes homocysteine. Vitamin B6, B12, and folic acid are necessary to reduce homocysteine and keep the methylation process occurring.
Faulty methylation has been linked to heart disease, stroke, neural tube defects, Alzheimer’s disease, colon cancer, reproductive cancers, kidney infarct, cervical dysplasia, faulty detoxification and impaired DNA repair. When you have poor methylation your body’s levels of homocysteine will elevate. Homocysteine is a amino acid that is toxic to the body. Dr. Kilmer McCulley (author of “The Homocysteine Revolution”), discovered that high levels of homocysteine caused heart disease and stroke in animal studies. He then found that B vitamins decreased the homocysteine levels, and therefore stopped the heart disease process. Our society has the mindframe that cholesterol is the biggest factor to heart disease, but only 40% of people who have heart attacks have any of the standard risk factors. Could the cause be homocysteine?
According to the “Lancet” 1980 poor methylation will cause neural tube defects. It was found that mothers who had children with neural tube defects from a previous birth, who took a multivitamin had a 1:178 incident of repeated neural tube defects, where the control group with no multivitamin had a 5:260 incident of neural tube defects. In 1991 the “Lancet” reported that folic acid was the nutrient that prevented neural tube defects. In the “Journal of the American Medical Association” 1992 it was found that low folic acid levels increased the incidence of cervical dysplasia. It was also discovered that folic acid supplementation could stop the process and even reverse it. The “Journal of Nutrition” year 2000, reported that the lower the levels of folic acid and vitamin B12 the more severe the cervical dysplasia. In 1988, the “New England Journal of Medicine” stated that lower levels of folic acid and vitamin B12 increased the incidence of Alzheimer’s. This is because folic acid and vitamin B12 are needed for phospholipid synthesis in the brain.
Methylation is also used in DNA. Every cell in your body has the DNA for every other cell, but your liver cell doesn’t make a heart cell. This is because methyl groups turn off the DNA we don’t want our bodies to read. If you have poor methylation your body will start to take the methyl groups off of your genes to use for other purposes. Now if that methyl group was removed from a cancer gene, it may begin to express cancer. This is how methylation turns off your oncogenes and your metastatic promoter genes. The “Journal of Nutrition and Cancer” year 2000, stated that cancer cells have lower levels of folic acid and vitamin B12 and therefore lower levels of methylation. “Journal of Carcinogenesis” year 2000, states that methylation is needed to mask DNA as well as repair DNA.
Approximately one trillion molecules of oxygen passes through every single cell in our body in a 24-hour period. This equals approximately 100,000 free radical hits on our cellular DNA. 99 to 99.9 percent is repaired by methylation. Approximately one-third of people have the 677 C to T polymorphism (which can be tested through genomics). This doesn’t allow them to convert folic acid to the activated form of 5 methyl tetrahydrofolate, which is needed to make the enzyme 5 methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. This is the enzyme that is needed to remove homocysteine. Individuals who have this genetic polymorphism will have an increased risk of the above mentioned diseases.
Chronic inflammation can be seen in many common diseases such as chronic pain conditions, arthritis, autoimmune disorders to name a few.
There are three primary causes of inflammation: trauma to the tissues, toxicity causing damage to tissues, and nutrient insufficiencies that create weaker tissues, and therefore cause tissue breakdown. When tissues breakdown many chemicals are released, such as prostaglandin, leukotrienes, substance P, prostocycliens, and histamine. These chemicals trigger nociceptors, which are the nerves that cause pain.
When cell membranes are damaged, the lipids in the cell membrane are released, creating the arachidonic acid cascade or the creation of series 2 prostaglandins. This causes the release of white blood cells to sterilize the area, and macrophages to clean up the debris. The pro-inflammatory effects of prostaglandin 2 can be balanced and neutralized by the anti-inflammatory effects of prostaglandins 1 and 3. The balance of the prostagladins depends on the content of the cell membrane damaged. If the cell membranes are high in arachidonic acid, trans fats and omega 6 fats, the balance will be towards prostaglandin 2 and therefore inflammation. Arachidonic acid is found in red meat dairy and shellfish. Trans fats, which are biological poisons, can be found in fried foods, and omega 6 fats which can be pro or anti inflammatory can be found in vegetable oils. The omega-3 fats are purely anti-inflammatory and are found in cold water fish and seeds. The average American currently ingests 97 percent Omega 6 fats and only three percent omega-3 fats.
The process of chronic inflammation occurs as follows: when a cell membrane becomes damaged, the phospholipids of the cell membrane are released, the macrophages and the white blood cells are called in. The macrophages will eat up the debris, the white blood cells will release hypochlorite to sterilize the area. This chemical will further damage adjacent cell membranes causing the release of more membrane phospholipids causing a feed forward process. This continues until series 1 and 3 prostagladins counteract the series 2 prostaglandins. Therefore it is very important to have cell membranes that have a high content of prostaglandins 1 and 3, which come from Omega 3 fats. This is the reason why 100 million Americans experience pain every day, and 34 million suffer from chronic pain.
Inflammation creates pain and produces nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a mitochondrial poison. It poisons the mitochondria by blocking the cis-aconitase enzyme & the conversion of citric acid to cis-aconitinic acid and therefore causing fatigue. Pain and fatigue are the number one reasons people seek medical care.
Today’s pain control practices cause 16,500 people to die from nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs per year and more than 100,000 are hospitalized at cost of more then $22,000 per hospitalization.
According to the Journal of Clinical Chemistry 1996, the seven symptoms of chronic poisoning are fatigue, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal distress, headaches, allergy symptoms, confusion, and anxiety. You might wonder what the poison is? It’s toxicity. Every chemical reaction in your body produces toxins in the form of acid, which we measure with the BTA. Your detoxifying organs (liver, kidneys, lungs, large intestine and skin) are able to handle this burden. When you add to the equation that every year we release 550,000,000 lbs. of industrial chemicals into public sewage, 1,000,000,000 lbs. of chemicals released into the ground, 188,000,000 lbs. of chemicals into surface waters, 2,400,000,000 lbs. of air emissions, that adds up to 4,138,000,000 lbs. of toxins per year. We ingest this through our food, water, and air. There are over 10,000 chemical additives in our food supply. The average American ingests 14 pounds of additives, 158 pounds of sugar, and 8 pounds of salt per year. This is way more than your organs were designed to handle.
If you have dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of the intestinal tract, you can greatly increase your toxic burden. Dysbiosis is an overgrowth of yeast, bacteria, and parasites. These are all living organisms, and living organisms eat, and when they eat, they go to the bathroom. Their bowel movements are very toxic to you.
We are constantly ingesting heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic and many more everyday. This ingestion comes from the food we eat the water we drink and the air we breath.
All these chemicals, metals and toxins can be stored in your body, usually in body fat and in the extracellular space. This can cause cellular fluid shifts that are measurable with the BIA and the toxicity levels can be measured by the BTA, and blood microscopy.
Poor blood sugar management, also known as dysglycemia or insulin resistance, is an epidemic problem in our society today. It is estimated that 25% (60 million Americans). of the non obese, non diabetic population have some degree of insulin resistance (hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia).
The biggest contributing factor to dysglycemia is the amount of refined carbohydrates eaten. In 1999 Each American ate an average of 158 pounds of sugar. Below is a description of how insulin resistance progresses to diabetes.
Referring to the diagrams, you should have optimal blood sugar (glucose) and optimal insulin.
As you begin to have dysglycemia your insulin levels rise to keep your glucose levels within optimal. Insulin is a storage hormone, therefore the person usually stores body fat. Blood sugar weight gain is found in the stomach area (apple body shape). The next thing that usually happens is an increase in cholesterol or triglycerides, which is measured by a lipid panel. In time your insulin doesn’t work as well and your glucose level begins to rise.
The progression continues, insulin levels continue to rise trying to keep your glucose levels under control, but glucose levels continue to creep higher. During this time, if you get high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or high triglycerides this is called Syndrome X.
The final stage is that insulin no longer has any effect on the body, glucose levels rise and you are diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. In time your pancreas cannot keep up with the demands for insulin, and production decreases, leading to Type 1 Diabetes as well.
Insulin resistance can cause high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high LDL, low HDL, heart disease, depression, inflammation, pain, obesity, polycystic ovary syndrome, thyroid problems, hormonal imbalances to name a few. If you would like to know more about dysglycemia click here.
