Parsteiner Blog

Archive for April, 2010

There are many digestive diseases that can harm the body, anything from gastrointestinal disorders to colonic cancer. Probiotics like water kefir can combat these diseases by introducing “good bacteria” into the stomach lining to fight off infections and assist with restoring the natural balance of your internal ecosystem long before heavy doses of antibiotics or surgery is needed. Unlike another probiotic, yogurt, Kefir contains, among other properties, around thirty strains of bacteria and yeast that include lactobacillus bacteria, a soluble gel containing polysaccharide, organic acids, yeasts and bacteria which contain kefiran. This has been shown to have anti-tumor properties.

Though they don’t always completely cure digestive diseases, which in the advanced stages may require antibiotics and/or surgery, they help with digestive diseases by fighting off infections, flushing toxins out of the bloodstream and cleaning out the system as they combat harmful bacteria. They also introduce acidophilus and bifidobacteria as well as billions of other “friendly bacteria” collectively known as intestinal microflora. Because they help with digestion, kefir grains can help prevent diseases of the intestines and restore the natural balance even during and after severe cases of disease.

One of the many benefits of kefir grains and other probiotics is that they adhere to cells in the digestive tract and resist digestion, which means they are hard at work in the body. They are protective to the digestive tract and keep toxins at bay by lining the gut wall. They are also anti-inflammatory, assisting the immune system to increase anti-inflammatory cytokines.

Intestines are the natural environment for probiotic bacteria, which populate the gastrointestinal tract, helping to reduce or even prevent procarcinogenic cells in the colon. Kefir has been shown to kill H-Pylori, the bacteria known to cause stomach ulcers. It reduces gram-positive organisms such as E. Coli, Listeria and salmonella bacterias, as well as pathogens such as clostridia acetic acid produced during fermentation. Kefir restores the normal flora lactose to lactic acid, thereby helping people who have trouble digesting dairy products, and helps the development of a healthy digestive tract in babies.

Consuming kefir, such as drinking water kefir grains, controls candida, a condition where there is an excessive growth in yeast cells, and stimulates peristalsis and digestive juices in the intestinal tract. Because it has very low curd tension it is able to break curd up very easy into small particles, aiding in digestion of foods containing these elements and also can break up other foods with increased enzymes, digesting them easier than it would be without them. It’s been shown to relieve blockage of the intestines and also contains mild laxative properties, as well as reducing bloating and flatulence.

There are many ways that drinking water kefir can help with digestive diseases, the main reason being kefir aids with what is already in the intestinal microflora to break down food and clean out the digestive tract, assisting the natural bacteria already at work in the intestines and digesting foods that people have a difficult time with such as dairy products and yeasts. Though the benefits of kefir are numerous, help with digestive diseases is one of the main uses of kefir grains.

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Irritable bowel syndrome is the most common gastrointestinal diagnosis yet it is not really a disease nor does it have confirmatory diagnostic tests. Rather, it is diagnosed based on a constellation of symptoms and the absence of other diagnoses. Common symptoms attributed to IBS are abdominal pain, cramping, diarrhea, bloating and excess gas. Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity is a common but frequently missed gastrointestinal diagnosis. Ingestion of gluten containing foods in affected individuals commonly causes symptoms attributed to IBS that are relieved with gluten-free diet in at least 10-20% of people misdiagnosed with IBS. Other food intolerances are also a likely a cause of IBS symptoms that may improve with avoidance of certain foods.

IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. Other causes of symptoms of abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, or alternating constipation and diarrhea should be excluded by doctor’s review of medical history, a physical exam and some screening laboratory tests and arguably a colonoscopy. The other conditions that traditionally doctors are most concerned about excluding include inflammatory bowel diseases (ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease) and cancer. Less worrisome but treatable conditions that need to be excluded include lactose intolerance, intestinal infections especially parasites like giardia, and food intolerance. Celiac disease though now known to be very common, affecting approximately one percent of the U.S. population, has been largely ignored as a possible cause of IBS symptoms. Most primary care physicians are aware that diarrhea is a common symptom of Celiac disease but not that it may present in adults and be associated with constipation. Most doctors are unaware that the prevalence of Celiac disease in IBS patients may be as high as 20%.

Typical lab tests ordered by doctors screening for more serious intestinal diseases that may mimick IBS include a complete blood count (CBC) looking for signs of blood loss or anemia (low hemoglobin or hematocrit), signs of inflammation or infection (high white blood cell count and/or platelet count) and stool tests for blood (fecal occult blood test or FOBT) or white blood cells (WBCs or fecal leukocytes). The stool tests are looking for signs of bleeding, infection or inflammation of the intestine. IBS does not cause bleeding or intestinal inflammation whereas inflammatory bowel disease, infection or cancer may. Normal tests are reassurring though do not exclude more serious disease. Most gastroenterologists believe a colonoscopy should be performed.

However, most doctors, even many gastroenterologists, fail to test for Celiac disease though it is common and screening blood tests exist. The reasons for this are many and are more fully explained elsewhere. However, the common incidence, presence of screening tests, and available treatment should make screening for Celiac disease part of the standard evaluation of all patients presenting with symptoms suggestive of IBS before that diagnosis is established.

More recently, food intolerance other than gluten or wheat have been suggested as a treatable cause of IBS. Blood tests for a type of antibody known as IgG have been advocated by several researchers as being helpful for advising people about eliminating or avoiding certain foods as a treatment of IBS. Recent evidence suggests that a significant reduction of IBS symptoms can be achieved in people who avoid foods based on elevated IgG antibodies to foods. Atkinson et. al 2004 reported 10-26% improvement in symptoms in patients compared with controls. Deterioration was noted in those who relaxed their dietary restriction of foods they had avoided because of elevated antibody levels. These findings require further validation and are facing significant resistance to acceptance by many in the medical community, especially in the U.S. However, elimination diets have long been reported effective by many people. The possibility of food intolerance as a reversible cause of symptoms attributed to a syndrome with little other effective treatments (except mostly ineffective treatments in the past and very new medications with limited efficacy and unproven long term safety) should prompt further studies and an openness to dietary trials.

If you have been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome I recommend you confirm that Celiac disease has been excluded. Food intolerance should also be considered though testing may not be covered by your insurance and/or accepted by your doctor as valid. Elimination of common foods and their proteins causing intolerance, wheat, barley and rye (gluten); cow’s milk protein (casein); soy; and peanuts is worth a try. Be sure to keep a food-symptom diary and re-introduce one food or food protein back into your diet at a time. One diet that effectively eliminates all the major food proteins causing intolerances but may be difficult to follow is the paleo diet (www.thepaleodiet.com).

1. Hoey. “Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Could it be Celiac Disease?” Can Med J. 2002; 166:479-80

2. Sander et al, “Association of Adult Coeliac Disease with Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Case-Control Study in Patients Fulfilling Rome II Criteria Referred to Secondary Care.” Lancet. 2001; 358:1504-8

2. Atkinson W; Sheldon TA; Shaath N; Wharwell PJ. “Food elimination bsed on IgG antibodies in irritable bowel syndrome; a randomised controlled trial.” Gut 2004; 53:1459-1464.

3. Isolauri E; Rautava S; Kalliamaki M. “Food allergy in irritable bowel syndrome: new facts and old fallacies.” Gut 2004; 53:1391-3.

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It is strange how putting a number on something makes it seem either so much better or so much worse. The presence of a chemical causing cancer in food is scary even though only in a few parts per million. Just the thought of the risk is enough to frighten people away. So what should we make of the newly released figure showing doctors wrote more than 56 million prescriptions for sleeping pills in 2008? Keeping this in a historical context, this is 70% more prescriptions than were written in 2002. And if you are worried about the cost of the drugs to the insurance industry and your own pockets through co-payments, that is $4.5 billion. Remember, this is only talking about prescriptions and not the number of tablets. Further, remember you do not need a prescription to buy sleeping pills online so there could be millions more pills used. You just have to ask whether the use of this volume of drugs by the current population of the US is a good thing.

We need to start at the beginning. In theory, the majority of pills are distributed on the basis they should only be for short-term use. The reality is rather different. These drugs are the most heavily advertized and the most profitable to the pharmaceutical industry. As a result of this promotional effort, most sleeping pills are taken for an average of five years, i.e. there is a high degree of dependence. But, you will say, all these drugs do is help us to get a good night’s sleep. This must be a good thing. Well, sadly, the pills do not induce natural sleep. All they do is knock you out for a few hours. The argument then runs on. Insomnia is a bad thing. It has to be treated. Well, there is no clinical evidence that lack of sleep is bad for you or changes life expectancy. People sleep when they are tired and natural sleep heals the body and mind. But there is excellent medical evidence that people who use sleeping pills over any length of time are twice as likely to become depressed, to experience memory problems and to die younger. It used to be argued that many people who had cancer also smoked. Now we understand the cause and effect. People who are depressed are more likely to suffer insomnia, commit suicide or have heart attacks.

All the best medical evidence confirms you should only take ambien for short periods of time. Even though the ads for ambien cr may suggest it is safe to take it for longer periods of time, this is not supported by the evidence. Any use of sleeping pills over time is not recommended. If you find insomnia is genuinely affecting the quality of your life, the best form of treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy. This teaches you how to fall asleep naturally. In other words, you get all the advantages of taking the pills, but without exposing yourself to the risk of all the adverse side effects. So, finally, to answer the question posed in the article’s title, the nation’s health is being put at risk. While capitalism and the free market can be good for some markets, this market is actually damaging the health of the nation and government should do something to reduce the level of dependence.

Over the last ten years, there’s been a dramatic shift in the diet of television programs. In the good old days, there were the usual gameshows, dramas and comedies. For the most part, they were all scripted and carefully rehearsed. For producers unsure of audience reaction, there was always canned laughter to tell us when something was supposed to be funny. Life was predictable and boring quite a lot of the time. Then the studio executives woke up to a threat. If programming really was getting not a little boring, advertizers would not pay so much for their slots. Profits would fade away. They would be out of work. But how to cut costs? Hey, those writer people – they sit around not doing much and pulling big pay checks. Let’s go for reality tv. No more scripts, just ordinary people making jackasses of themselves in their search for fame and fortune. This was a revolution and nowhere more so in the weight loss shows. Gone were the worthy programs giving cooking demonstrations and advice on exercise routines. Now we had “The Biggest Loser” with hours of footage showing sweating bodies in the search for prizes. In the midst of all this grunting and groaning, new stars were born. These were the personal trainers, the tough-talking drill sergeants of the jogging machines whose job is to bully the contestants into ever greater efforts to lose an extra pound or so. Leading from the front has been Jillian Michaels. She is inspirational, always getting her contestants to go the extra mile (or two). She sells all this pain with the message that, through personal effort and self-discipline, you can change your eating habits, rebuild your body and regain lost quality of life. It’s therefore all the more surprising to see her name linked with a product like Fat Burner.

Fat Burner is the kind of product Ms Michaels should be going out of her way to run down. It’s marketed using the traditional claim: just pop two of our pills before a meal and you will lose weight. No matter how much you eat, no matter how little you exercise, you will lose weight. Yes, it’s another of those magic pills. Worse, the pills actually contain citrus aurantium which is on the list of suspect substances put out by the FDA because its use is associated with a rise in blood pressure. Indeed, for the last five years, there has been litigation between the FDA and the two companies that manufacture and market these pills, Basic Research and Thin Care International, a company owned by Ms Michaels. To this litigation is not added two new actions alleging false claims about Fat Burner.

When a celebrity whose reputation relies on saying and doing one thing is actively involved in the sale and marketing of a product that does the opposite, this is an example of hypocrisy and it raises doubts about the honesty of the celebrity. Fortunately, this is never an issue when it comes to phentermine hcl. This is a real medication and its reputation does not rely on celebrity endorsements but on clinical trials. Better still, this drug has been the market leader in appetite suppressants for five decades. Nothing survives in a free market for fifty years unless it works. So, through this site, you can buy phentermine without prescription at prices that will give you enough spare change to afford the occasional piece of chocolate cake when the temptation gets too much for you.

Over the last eighteen months of the recession, a new term has emerged from the pages of academic textbooks and into the public consciousness. This is “moral hazard”. As applied to banks, large insurance companies and other financial institutions, the debate runs along the following lines. If the free market applies, businesses that fail go through bankruptcy. The market does not forgive bad decision making. So when the state proposes to bail out failing businesses, it distorts the market. Worse, if decision makers believe the state will bail them out, it changes the way in which they take decisions. They can be completely reckless, gamble with the investors’ money, and still have the government rescue them. The morality of their behavior is changed by the belief they will be saved no matter what they do. So now let’s apply this to children and teenagers. The First Lady is leading a campaign to tackle obesity in the young. The figures from 2004 do not make encouraging reading. About 5 million adolescents were then obese. There is every reason to believe this number will be significantly higher today.

Despite the absence of evidence showing bariatric surgery to be safe and effective in adults, there is increasing pressure to allow adolescents to go through the procedures, i.e. between the ages of 14 and 17 years. Not unnaturally, some of this pressure is coming from the for-profit hospitals and clinics that perform the surgery and from the device manufacturers who, amongst other things, make the Lap Bands used to restrict food intake. The adolescents themselves have bad body images and, thanks to peer pressure, also feel driven to “do something” to reduce weight. Parents understand their children’s health is at risk because they are overweight. Many will fall seriously ill before reaching thirty. They feel pressured to spend their money for the surgery – health insurance plans do not usually cover these operations because of the lack of medical evidence confirming safety and effectiveness. This is beginning to form a perfect storm. Except we have this moral hazard. Why are these young people eating so much? Who pays for all this excessive and unhealthy food? Why can they not diet, exercise and lose weight? Put another way: if you were a teen and knew your parents would pay for surgery, would you put any effort into dieting and weight loss?

Weight loss is a billion dollar industry and it is, frankly, depressing we should be even discussing the possibility of surgery for our children. It is bad enough when adults risk their health by going through surgical procedures not justified by scientific research. That we should be proposing the same unproven surgery for our children is morally indefensible. Parents should control their children from young and teach them good food habits. Schools should reinforce these habits and government should regulate the quality of food for children. If all fails, the children can take responsibility for their own health when they become adults. That means they diet, buy phentermine online and lose weight the hard way. Unfortunately, phentermine hcl is not suitable for children and adolescents, otherwise its power as an appetite suppressant could help children to eat less. The drug helps people when their own self-discipline is low. As it stands, the promotion of bariatric surgery is the latest bailout scandal and is introducing moral hazard into the behavior of our young. Government should step in and stop this.

You’re home from work and have the house to yourself. You’ve been very disciplined during the day. Just plenty of water to drink and a few biscuits. The scales show those pounds yielding to the diet. And then you find yourself opening the kitchen door. There’s a tub of icecream in the freezer that’s got your name on it. When that’s gone, there’s that piece of cheesecake and a peanut butter sandwich or two to round things off. By the time you’ve finished, the good work of the day has been undone with an intake of calories sufficient to keep a small army going for a week. But, and here comes the sad truth, you have to support being overweight with your lifestyle. If you have a little self-discipline, there’s no reason to carry all that extra weight around. It’s the boom and bust approach to dieting that does the most harm, with binge eating one of the most common of the eating disorders. Why do we do it?

Binge eating is evidence of emotional problems. It says something fundamental about how we see ourselves, how much we really care about our bodies. In these modern times, everyone knows how dangerous it is to be overweight, let alone obese. Every article like this everywhere on the web tells the same story of the risks of diabetes, cancers and heart disease. So to take the decision not to lose weight is making a statement about our lives. Put the other way round – if we cared about the risks, we would find the motivation to diet. Defeatism means giving up. We believe we are beaten. Sometimes, it’s like there’s no point in even trying even if we are literally shortening our lives.

Of course, there are therapies and treatments for all the eating disorders but, without coverage under a health plan, this is an expensive exercise. For most people, it comes down to self-help. So you need to untangle the cause and effect. Answer this simple question: what triggers a binge? If there’s a consistent reason for suddenly wanting to empty your fridge, this gives you a starting point. You might find it useful to keep a diary. It’s easier to see a pattern when you read back through a month or so of entries. Then you have to confront those situations and devise a way of getting through them without the need to eat. Recognize this desire for food has nothing to do with physical hunger. If that was the case, using a drug like meridia would be the answer, suppressing your appetite.

You have to break the habit of eating as a response to your emotions. Be your own therapist. Apply common sense and approach the exercise with an open mind. With honesty, you should overcome the problem. Of course, a sensible diet will help. Eating a good breakfast sets you up for the day. Avoid snacking and keep to regular times for lunch and an evening meal. If hunger does become a problem, you can buy meridia and it will see you through difficult times until your stomach gets used to smaller quantities of food. The aim should be to improve the general quality of your life. You will not become happy overnight, but at least aim for a more positive outlook.