When my mother turned 90, she noticed her mind was not as clear as it had been. Fuzzy thinking, she called it. Names and thoughts were just slightly out of reach. This disturbed her more than any other aspect of aging. She had always prided herself on having a sharp mind.
It was also difficult for her to wake up in the morning and get moving. Mother had long stopped drinking coffee. It was too acidic and kept her awake at night. And it made her jittery.
I suggested she drink a cup of green tea each morning, and it helped her fatigue. But it didn't wipe the cobwebs from her mind.
I wish I had known more then about a popular South American herb tea. It's even more nutritious than green tea, and even though it contains some caffeine, it lets most people sleep at night. What's more, it clears the mind and helps people think more clearly. And I'll bet as you get older, you want to keep a clear, sharp mind as long as possible, just like I do.
This tea, made from the leaves of an evergreen tree native to South America, is packed with valuable nutrients as well.
It contains anti-cancer antioxidants called polyphenols and saponins, chemicals that strengthen the immune system. No wonder it's more popular in many South American countries than coffee or tea. The beverage I'm talking about is yerba maté. You can find it in health food stores, but it may not be in your supermarket yet. Hopefully, it will be eventually.
Here's how I compare the effects of coffee, green tea, and yerba mate. Coffee wakes me up and gives me a little energy buzz. I used to like this buzz. Now I'd just as soon feel more alert without it. Green tea takes away my fatigue without any buzz. This feels more natural to me. Yerba maté has a similar effect with one addition: It sharpens my mind. I like that extra mental clarity a lot! I also like some of the health benefits associated with maté.
Maté, cancer, and heart disease
Antioxidants protect against heart disease and cancer. Yerba maté is high in antioxidants. In fact, it has as much free-radical activity as green tea. And its antioxidants are even more potent that those in ascorbic acid (vitamin C). That's what the studies say.
Maté can significantly lower cholesterol and triglycerides, which makes it an excellent addition to a low-saturated fat, healthy heart diet. I've explained before that high cholesterol itself isn't as much of a problem as oxidized (spoiled) cholesterol. Well, maté slows down LDL oxidation.
A cup of maté contains about 100 mg of caffeine — half the amount as a cup of coffee, and less than a cup of black tea. Some of its beneficial effects, like weight loss and a diuretic action can be attributed to the caffeine. But maté is considered to be good for the heart and lungs because it contains small amounts of theophylline, a chemical that's used medically for asthma and chronic lung problems. Because theophylline has a slight stimulating effect on the heart, maté is considered to be a heart tonic. It could also help you lose weight. When maté was compared to 12 other plant preparations, it helped burn more fat than any of the other herbs tested.
Poor studies gave maté bad press
A few years ago, some studies found that people who drank maté were at an increased risk for getting esophageal cancer. What they really found was that people who drank at least a liter per day of very, very hot maté through a metal straw (commonly used in South America) had an increased risk for getting cancer of the esophagus over those who drank smaller amounts of warm or normally hot tea. Repeatedly scalding of the esophagus was not even considered to be a factor.
Other studies found that people who drank maté along with large quantities of alcohol, and who smoked cigarettes, had an increased risk for esophageal cancer. A previous study of this same population found an association between eating barbecued meat every day and a higher incidence of cancer. I mean, come on! If you ate barbecued meat every day, drank a lot of alcohol, smoked cigarettes, and scalded your throat with exceptionally hot maté, you would increase your risk for esophageal cancer too!
So is maté safe?
Let me tell you how safe maté is — it's safe enough for pregnant women to drink. You can't get much safer than this. A study of over 5,000 Brazilian women found no harmful effects on the size or weight of their babies, or any other negative side effects.
I like maté's taste and its effects. I find it a perfect pick-me-up drink, especially for those times when I want to think more clearly. Like many beneficial substances, it shouldn't be abused. But a cup or two a day appears to be completely safe.
Give it a try. You'll find plain yerba maté tea, as well as maté combined with other flavorings from ginger to peppermint and even organic chocolate. You can find it in the tea and bottled drink sections of your natural food stores.
Fabiana, L., et al. "Vascular responses to extractable fractions of Ilex paraguariensis in rats fed standard and high-cholesterol diets," Biol Res for Nursing, 2005.
Gugliucci, A., and A.J. Stahl. "Low density lipoprotein oxidation is inhibited by extracts of Ilex paraguariensis," Biochem Mol Biol Int, 35, 1995.
Martinet, A., et al. "Thermogenic effects of commercially available plant preparations aimed at treating human obesity," Phytomedicine, 1999.
Santos, I.S., et al. "Maté drinking during pregnancy and risk of preterm and small for gestational age birth," Journ Nutr, vol. 135, 2005.
Sewram, V., et al. "Maté consumption and the risk of squamous cell esophageal cancer in Uruguay," Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prevention, 2003.
An Overlooked Cause of Headaches, Heartburn, and Hair Loss —
Do you eat nourishing foods and still suffer from sore, tight muscles, bloating, constipation, and skin problems? Have you tried everything you can think of and still have headaches? Does heartburn plague you no matter which foods you eat? Are you losing your hair and you don't know why? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then I have good news for you.
I've found a solution.
It's not another supplement, although you can find some expensive (and in my opinion, unnecessary) products on the market. It's not a hard-to-find medical procedure or a complicated series of steps to take. In fact, it is extremely simple and doesn't cost anything. What's more, it's safe to try.
Interested? Keep reading.
Did you know that everything you eat leaves a residue (something like soot) in your body? This residue is either acidic or alkaline. And which one your body has can determine how healthy you are. An alkaline residue is protective and good for you. An acidic residue, on the other hand, can cause all sorts of problems.
When you have too much of the acidic residue, your body has to jump through a lot of hoops to achieve and maintain a balance. It pulls alkalinizing minerals like calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium out of your tissues, organs, and bones to maintain balance in your blood. This is why a diet that causes too much acid residue eventually can lead to osteoporosis, kidney stones, and many of the other health problems I mentioned earlier.
What causes the acidic residue?
Stress and some medications contribute to acidity, increasing your need for an alkalizing diet. But food is the primary cause of acidity. Let's see which foods leave an alkaline residue and which an acidic residue.
Alkalinizing foods: Most vegetables, but especially green leafy vegetables and asparagus, lentils and beans, yams, barley grass and other powdered green supplements, fruits, millet, oats, green tea, and pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Surprisingly, acidic foods like tomatoes, oranges, and grapefruit actually leave an alkaline residue and help maintain an acid-alkaline balance.
Acidifying foods: Meats, fish, soy, most grains and nuts, cranberries, sugar, dairy, coffee, soft drinks, and alcoholic beverages.
Test your pH
Before you make any significant changes in your diet, though, test your pH. You might not need to make any changes. Your pH (potential of hydrogen) level is an indicator of the acidity in your body fluids, including blood, urine, or saliva.
It's quick and simple to measure your pH. Here's how. You'll find pH test strips in any drugstore to test either your urine or saliva. An accurate urine test requires you to test the first void of the morning. That's easy. But the test must be done after you've been in bed for at least six hours without urinating. This isn't easy for everyone, but it's necessary.
If you can't do the urine test properly, test your saliva in the morning before you brush your teeth or eat anything. First rinse your mouth thoroughly, then put fresh saliva on the test strip.
The lower the number, the more acidic you are and the more prone to health problems. A pH of 7 indicates a balanced acid-alkaline residue. Your pH should be somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5. Less than 6.5 is too acidic. The more acidic you are, the more alkalinizing your diet needs to be.
Don't be surprised if your pH reading is low. This is common. Our diets and lifestyles make an acid-forming diet easy to choose. Fortunately, a few adjustments can turn an acid-forming diet into one that's alkalinizing.
Adjust your diet
It's actually very simple to change your diet from one that's acid forming to one that's more alkaline. Let me give you an example.
I used to eat fruit-juice sweetened granola with protein powder, nuts, and soymilk every morning. That's acid forming. It's also a breakfast I happen to like. Now I add a good portion of berries or other fruit to my cereal and mix in a teaspoon of barley grass powder. My breakfast is now more neutral than acidic.
Look at your meals and find ways to modify them. Add a small salad to a meal of grains and protein. Eat two pieces of fruit a day instead of one or none. Reduce your portions of acid-forming foods.
Check your pH periodically — like once a week — and notice whether or not a more balanced pH results in fewer headaches, heartburn, or other health problems. It will take time before you can see its effect on hair loss. But you may be pleasantly surprised at the improvements you notice from a more alkalinizing diet.
If you'd like additional help, pick up a copy of the book The Acid Alkaline Food Guide (Brown and Trivieri, Square One, 2006). It's particularly helpful in making these changes. It contains 60 pages of foods and grades them as high, medium, or low in acidity or alkalinity.
Brown, Susan E. and Trivieri Jr., Larry. The Acid Alkaline Food Guide, Square One, 2006.
Ossipinsky, J. Warning: An Undetected Acid-Alkaline Imbalance, C.S. Lewis, 2006.
If You Eat Dairy, This Can Save Your Health
I'm not a big fan of eating a lot of dairy. Dairy products are too high in calcium and too low in magnesium for good calcium absorption. Unabsorbed calcium leads to heart disease and atherosclerosis.
Another reason is that millions of people worldwide are lactose-intolerant — unable to digest milk sugars. When they eat dairy, they suffer from cramps, bloating, and diarrhea.
But there's another reason to be careful about the dairy products you eat. And it's much more important than either calcium absorption or intestinal discomfort. Most dairy contains a substance that contributes to serious health problems.
The FDA knows all about this, but they maintain these foods are safe. Meanwhile, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan, and 28 European countries have banned the import of all dairy products from the U.S. that contain this questionable substance. Why would they do this if the products were safe?
The problem is not with pesticides, as you might think. It's much more insidious. It concerns a genetically engineered version of bovine growth hormone called recumbent bovine growth hormone, or rBGH. Traces of this hormone are in most dairy products. And a growing number of cancer specialists are worried that it increases the risk for breast, colon, and prostate cancers. Unless the dairy products you're eating are clearly marked "organic" or "rBGH free," they contain a genetically engineered hormone.
rBGH is different from the growth hormone that is made naturally in animals' pituitary glands. And the differences make it dangerous both to you and to dairy cows. Remember when man-made estrogens and progestins came on the market? We were told they were safe, also. Then women in a large trial came down with cancer and strokes, the study was stopped, and we were told they were not safe. Well, this is an early warning about rBGH. I hope you'll take it seriously. It could mean the difference between being healthy and getting sick.
Synthetic growth hormone makes cows sick
We're seeing side effects in cows injected with rBGH, and side effects in humans who ingest dairy products from cows given this hormone. So why give rBGH to dairy cows? There's only one reason: to increase their production of milk. But rBGH increases milk production by only 10%. That's all. Meanwhile, we have a glut of milk. This is a situation where no one wins. Well, no one but big businesses such as Monsanto that manufacture and sell synthetic hormones to dairy farmers.
The side effects from rBGH have been known for decades. Just read the label of Monsanto's rBGH hormone, Posilac, and you'll see a list of 20 toxic effects to cows. They include mastitis, which is an inflammation of the udders. Cows with mastitis are given antibiotics to reduce their inflammation. Traces of these antibiotics remain in the milk and other dairy products, and contribute to antibiotic resistance — both in cows and in the people who consume dairy. What's more important, rBGH increases levels of IGF-1, Insulin-like Growth Factor.
The dangers of IGF-1
Synthetic rBGH contains higher levels of IGF-1 than the naturally occurring hormone. Pasteurization increases IGF-1 levels even more. And IGF-1 happens to be readily absorbed into the blood. All of these set the stage for a huge problem: an increased risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancers.
As you may know, we all have some cancer cells floating around in our bodies. Fortunately, nature has provided us with a program that causes these cancer cells to self-destruct. It's called apoptosis, or "self suicide." The problem is that IGF-1 reduces apoptosis, allowing small cancers that might never have appeared to grow into larger masses.
A study published in The Lancet in 1998 reported that premenopausal women with slightly elevated levels of IGF-1 were up to seven times more likely to get breast cancer than women with low levels. Although the authors found a stronger correlation between breast cancer and IGF-1 levels in premenopausal women, they said they couldn't rule out an effect of this synthetic hormone on postmenopausal women.
IGF-1 also increases cancer cells' resistance to chemotherapy, making cancer treatments less effective. An Israeli study published back in 1995 showed that IGF-1 inhibited the effectiveness of five different and unrelated common chemotherapy drugs!
You would think the FDA would warn people about these problems. But it's not. And Monsanto, the company that makes Posilac, is waging a war against anyone who tries to inform the public of hormones' possible harmful effects. Monsanto has warned newspapers to stop talking about this subject. As a result, many reporters have lost their jobs. And Dr. Samuel Epstein, a medical doctor who has written about rBGH, has been the victim of vigorous attacks. You can read his well-documented research on the subject, and follow this lengthy feud, in a fascinating book, What's In Your Milk? (Trafford Publishing, 2006, 888-232-4444). I heartily recommend it.
Clearly, there's a great deal of controversy surrounding the safety of dairy products. It may be years before we have the final word on rBGH and IGF-1. Until then, I suggest you join me and take the safe road. Switch to dairy products that are either clearly marked organic or rBGH-free.
Epstein, Samuel S., MD. What's In Your Milk?, Trafford Publishing, 2006.
Geier, A., et al. "Insulin-like growth factor-1 inhibits cell death induced by anticancer drugs in the MCF-7 cells: involvement of growth factors in drug resistance," Cancer Invest, 1995.
Hankinson, S.E., et al. "Circulating concentrations of insulin-like growth factor 1 and risk of breast cancer," The Lancet, May 8, 1998.
Health Detective
Calcium Works … But Only If You Take It With This
Doctors keep telling us to get plenty of calcium to prevent osteoporosis. But while bones contain the highest amount of calcium anywhere in the body, taking calcium pills or eating a lot of dairy products won't prevent thin, brittle bones.
That's right! Calcium supplements and eating a lot of dairy are not the answer to building strong bones.
If you've been subscribing to my newsletter, you've probably heard this before. Three years ago, in my article, "4 Major Myths About Osteoporosis" (December 2003), I explained how a review of almost 60 studies found there wasn't enough proof that dairy prevents osteoporosis at all. Other studies have found that taking calcium pills is not the answer, either.
If dairy and calcium tablets won't protect your bones, what will?
A recent study published in the British Medical Journal points to another nutrient altogether. Researchers took over 100 postmenopausal women and divided them into three groups. The researchers gave the first group dairy products fortified with 1,200 mg of calcium a day, along with 300 IU of vitamin D3. The second group took a calcium supplement of 600 mg. The third, the control group, took neither.
At the end of a year, the only group that had built bone density was the group given vitamin D. Calcium with vitamin D3, but not calcium supplementation alone, increased bone density in these postmenopausal women. I'm not surprised. The sunshine vitamin is getting a lot of press lately. Expect to see more bone-saving nutrient formulas containing vitamin D on the market. When you do, be sure that the only form you take is D3, the natural form. Vitamin D2 is synthetic and doesn't work as well.
Ask Dr. Nan
Q: I already take an iodine/iodide supplement because my iodine levels tested low. I also take PectaSol Chelation Complex (PCC) which contains sodium alginate. Am I taking too much iodine? — T.G., Santa Monica, CA
A: When alginate is extracted from seaweed, most of the iodine either remains in the seaweed or is lost during processing. So purified alginate is not a significant source of iodine. In fact, most alginate products have less than 10 parts per million — not enough to affect your thyroid function. It's also not enough to interfere with any thyroid medications. Since PCC contains both sodium alginate and modified citrus pectin, it has less alginate — and less iodine — than an alginate supplement.
Q: Can you tell me why I get warts and how I can get rid of them? — E.K.,Yoder, IN
A: Warts are caused by an infection from the human papilloma virus (HPV). If you keep getting warts, it's a sign that you probably have an immune system that needs a boost. This means anything from getting more sleep to reducing stress to taking supplements that strengthen immunity.
My favorite supplement for the immune system is MycoPhyto Complex (800-728-2288). Other medicinal mushroom formulas also can work well. A maintenance dose would be one capsule twice a day; a loading dose would be from two to six capsules twice a day. I'd suggest a loading dose for six months or more. After all, your immune system protects you from cancer and other diseases, not just warts.
If you want the warts removed, doctors can freeze them periodically. This is a simple and effective in-office procedure, but it won't prevent other warts from appearing. Or you can use a liquid or patch made with salicylic acid (this is an ingredient in willow bark). This treatment can take three months for the warts to disappear, but this can be an effective over-the-counter treatment. Be sure to also improve your immune system so the warts won't reappear.
Q: In the past, you have maintained that we should take twice as much magnesium as calcium. Recently, you said to take equal amounts of each (500-700 mg). I truly believe that you do a great deal of research. Please help me understand what caused you to change your mind. — S.B.G, via e-mail
A: I haven't changed my mind, but the different amounts do call for an explanation. For women who have been taking massive amounts of calcium supplements and eating a lot of dairy for years – like 1,500 mg of calcium supplements along with dairy each day — taking twice as much magnesium to calcium helps them swing from an extreme to balance. Then it's time to look at the amount of minerals needed to maintain this new balance.
After taking fewer calcium supplements and adding magnesium-rich foods (beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, dark green leafy vegetables), taking equal amounts of these two minerals seems to be sufficient. Our bodies use extra magnesium when we're under stress. For a number of years, I took twice as much magnesium as calcium. Now I take a multivitamin with 500 mg of each (Vitality Plus, 800-728-2288), limit my dairy to once a day or less, and eat plenty of high-magnesium foods. For more information, get my small book, User's Guide to Calcium and Magnesium ($5.95, 800-728-2288).