Year: 2012

“Black” Tea, or what we think of here in the Southern part of the U.S. as “regular tea,” appears to help your heart! Tea can help reduce Blood Pressure, and lower overall heart rate. So, drinking tea (sweetened by Stevia, for me!) is a great way to improve your heart health! Stevia has the added benefit of of strengthening the heart muscle! Not to mention NOT using sugar, which can play havoc with your metabolism, or nasty artificial sweeteners!

Doctors Health Press reports on study: black tea good for the heart

“November 7, 2012 — Doctors Health Press, a division of Lombardi Publishing Corporation, and a publisher of various natural health newsletters, books, and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is reporting on a recent study at the School of Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Western Australia, which proved that regular ingestion of polyphenol-rich black tea can lower blood pressure, supporting vascular health.

As noted in Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, black tea is now proving itself to be a heart-healthy food. Black tea has long been a staple drink for many people, and has also been a ‘kinder and gentler’ drink for those who want to avoid the extra jolt that comes with a cup of coffee.

As reported in the article ‘Fight High Blood Pressure with This Tea,’ the research team was able to prove, in fact, that regular ingestion of polyphenol-rich black tea over six months results in lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. However, what they hadn’t been able to show was how long or when these effects were most likely to occur. So, they set out to determine if the short-term effects of tea on blood pressure could contribute to longer-term benefits of regular tea consumption on blood pressure.

As Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin outlines, researchers recruited men and women for a randomized placebo-controlled trial. During a four-week lead-up, all participants consumed three cups of black tea per day. Participants then consumed three cups over one day of either powdered black tea solids, containing 429 milligrams of polyphenols (tea), or a control product matched in flavor and caffeine content, but containing no tea solids.

The researchers then measured blood pressure and heart rate over the 24-hour period. They found that the 24-hour daytime and night-time blood pressure rates were not significantly different between tea users and control subjects. However, heart rate was significantly lower for tea drinkers compared to control subjects during the nighttime and early morning periods, respectively.

As the article concludes, researchers noted that these results suggest that the longer-term benefits of black tea on blood pressure are unlikely to be due to short-term changes.”

There is a lot of “buzz” around Raspberry Ketones for Weight Loss. Here’s a good article explaining the “whys and wherefores” of this natural nutrient!

Raspberry Ketones Help Fat Cells Shrink

“We all have a fat-burning hormone in our body called adiponectin. When this hormone is working correctly, and we’re eating a healthy diet and healthy amount of food for our needs, we metabolize calories properly and don’t store them as fat reserves around our stomachs, hips and thighs. Adiponectin also enhances insulin sensitivity so we decrease blood sugar levels and use calories more completely. Adiponectin also helps to lower blood pressure, and prevent atherogenesis – hardening of arteries.

When we start overeating and not exercising enough, our adiponectin hormones become overwhelmed with the amount of calories to metabolize and become sluggish at burning them. That’s when the love handles and the belly fat and the cellulite start showing up – and that’s when my patients begin asking me how they can get rid of it fast!

Raspberry ketones are the primary ‘aroma’ compound of raspberries – it’s what gives raspberries their distinctive smell. Research has shown that high doses of these ketones in mice on high fat diets have resulted in preventing weight gain, both subcutaneously – beneath the skin, and viscerally – around organs. It also helped prevent fatty liver from developing. The ketones apparently stimulate adiponectin release, thereby increasing insulin release, decreasing blood sugar, boosting metabolism, increasing good, brown adipose tissue that turns metabolism heat up and burns the bad, stored white fat cells. In the same research, though, there was no effect on mouse body weight at 200 times the estimated amount of human intake. To date, there is no clinical evidence that raspberry ketones have the same effect on humans.

However, stories of people losing significant amounts of weight, some up to 5 lbs a week, while using daily raspberry ketones, has been noted, and endorsed, on popular television shows as well as the internet. As I tell my patients, since there are no reported side effects with raspberry ketones, they may help you get back on track with your weight loss efforts, or help you get off a weight loss plateau.

How To Take Raspberry Ketones

Taking 200-250 mg of pure raspberry ketones (one, 100-125 mg tablet in the morning and one at night) in a formula without added ingredients like caffeine, etc, is what to look for when buying this product. Be sure that ‘raspberry ketone’ is listed first, or very near first, in the list of ingredients. You may find cheaper products, but a pure raspberry ketone product, without added ingredients may cost about $30.

Now, of course, you want to resume healthy eating habits along with using raspberry ketones and resume getting the proper amount of exercise. These supplements are not a magic bullet and you shouldn’t rely on them to counter poor eating habits. Continuing to take in more calories, sugar and fat than your body can use at meals can lead to other problems with cholesterol and insulin levels, perhaps, leading to the development of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.”

I have said before that have been consequences to the media’s “war on the sun” – trying to keep everyone out of the sun is leading to Vitamin D deficiency! Here’s another great reason to increase Vitamin D in your system! (I would argue that a natural source of lowering hypertension is BETTER than a drug… not “as good as” one!)

Vitamin D ‘as good as drugs’ at reducing high blood pressure

“The once a day tablets, available from chemists, produced reductions in high blood pressure ‘as powerful’ as medicines, a Danish study has found.

A group to 112 patients with high blood pressure were given the supplements for 20 weeks and showed significant improvements in their condition.

The findings were presented at the European Society of Hypertension conference in London.
High blood pressure affects 16m adults in Britain and accounts for 62,000 deaths mostly by causing strokes and heart attacks.

Vitamin D can be obtained from food but most is made in the skin from sunlight, however in Britain this can only happen in stronger light in the summer months.

They were treated at Holstebro Hospital in Denmark which is on a similar latitude to Glasgow and Moscow.

Of the 112 participants 92 were found to have low levels of vitamin D at the start of the study.

The researchers found that those patients taking the vitamin D supplement showed a significant reduction in central systolic blood pressure, measured at the aorta, near the heart, when compared to the placebo group.”

The herb thyme is shown to be a tremendous benefit in fighting bacteria caused acne!

Thyme may be a good treatment for acne

“Acne as defined by PubMed Health is a skin condition that causes pimples or ‘zits.’ This encompasses whiteheads, blackheads, and red, inflammed patches of skin such as cysts. Although acne is most common in teenagers, anyone can get acne. Many acne sufferers in Syracuse share a desire for natural treatments for this condition instead of drugs with their potential side effects. Thyme has surfaced as a natural remedy with promise for the treatment of acne.

A news release from the Society for General Microbiology states that ‘Thyme may be better for acne than prescription creams.’ According to new research herbal preparations of thyme could be more effective at treating skin acne than prescription creams. Researchers from Leeds Metropolitan University tested the effect of thyme, marigold and myrrh tinctures on Propionibacterium acnes, which is the bacterium that causes acne.

The researchers found that while all the preparations were able to kill the bacterium after five minutes exposure, thyme was the most effective of the three. They also discovered that thyme tincture had a greater antibacterial effect than standard concentrations of benzoyl peroxide, which is the active ingredient in most anti-acne creams or washes.

Dr Margarita Gomez-Escalada, the lead researcher, has said ‘While thyme, marigold and myrrh are common herbal alternatives to standard antibacterial skin washes, this is the first study to demonstrate the effect they have on the bacterium that causes the infection leading to acne.’ These initial findings open the way for more research into the use of tinctures as a treatment for acne.

Dr Gomez-Escalada has said ‘We now need to carry out further tests in conditions that mimic more closely the skin environment and work out at the molecular level how these tinctures are working. If thyme tincture is proven to be as clinically effective as our findings suggest, it may be a natural alternative to current treatments.’ An herbal treatment for acne would be great news for people suffering from acne, particularly those who have skin sensitivity to drug treatments.”

Statin Drugs are dangerous… and now there is a NEW warning to consider!

FDA Demands New Warning Label on Statins

“One in four Americans aged 45 and older take statin drugs to lower cholesterol and supposedly “prevent heart disease.”

That amounts to 32 million Americans or, as Peter Wehrwein pointed out in the Harvard Health Letter, the equivalent of the entire populations of Florida and Illinois combined.i

If you’re one of these millions, or if you’re considering starting a statin prescription anytime soon, you should know that there are serious risks involved with taking these drugs, a fact that even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now acknowledging.

Evidence includes diaries, court records, medical books and literature, in which these two sleep cycles are referred to in such a way as to make it clear that it was common knowledge at the time.

Following an internal meeting between the FDA’s Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology and Office of New Drugs, the Agency announced it would be requiring additional warning labels for statin drugs.

Among them are warnings that statins may increase the risk of:

• Liver damage
• Memory loss and confusion
• Type 2 diabetes
• Muscle weakness (for certain statins)

According to Dr. Amy Egan, the FDA’s deputy director of safety in the division of metabolism drug products, the new warnings, particularly the one for memory loss, came as the result of anecdotal reports compiled over the past year. In short, with well over 30 million Americans now taking statin drugs, we’re witnessing a massive ongoing ‘live’ experiment, and many are putting their health on the line for drugs that offer little in the way of heart protection. In fact, they may actually make your heart health worse.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring additional warning labels for the cholesterol-lowering drug class known as statins, warning that the drugs may increase your risk of liver damage, memory loss and confusion, type 2 diabetes and muscle weakness.

The FDA has removed a long-standing warning advising routine monitoring of liver enzymes in people taking statins, even though the drugs are linked to serious liver damage.

One in four Americans aged 45 and older take statin drugs to lower cholesterol, and many are unaware of the serious risks associated with the drugs.

The majority of people taking statin drugs do not need them, and in fact are risking their health unnecessarily by doing so.

Over 60,000 people EVERY year in the US will develop diabetes solely as a result of taking statin drugs.”