When I was in my 20s, I was in an automobile accident. I was lucky. I escaped with a whiplash that left me with only occasional mild low back pain. Over the years, I’ve learned to manage this intermittent pain with stretching exercises, chiropractic and osteopathic manipulation, and walking. I haven’t had to take painkillers or curtail my activities like many people. I’m just reasonably careful and don’t have hobbies like racing cars or going hang-gliding. I am one of many people who has had back pain in the past that’s either been resolved or is manageable.
But a good friend, Suzanne, hasn’t been as fortunate. When she was recovering from hip surgery, she experienced intense low back pain. Her pain was so searing that she had to take mind-numbing medications just to get through the day. Although her hip replacement was two years ago, her back pain continued until it became chronic. A chronic condition is one that persists for three months or more.
Suzanne continued to take pain meds. She wanted her brain back, but she wasn’t able to get through the day without them. Suzanne’s case is not unusual. Thousands of people suffer from back pain they can’t control.
There are dozens of reasons for chronic low back pain, including pressure on nerves in the spinal canal, arthritis and other inflammation, or just lifting something the wrong way. Suzanne’s doctors looked at various causes, but they couldn’t find the reason for her pain. There’s always a reason. Pain is a symptom of a problem — not a disease. But no one found the cause for her persistent pain.
Six months later, Suzanne was still in pain. Her doctor discussed surgery with her, but back surgery has only a 50% success rate and wasn’t a good option for her. So he treated her instead with cortisone injections, knowing the relief would not last, but at least it would give her a temporary reprieve.
Then her surgeon read a small study out of the University of Southern Denmark that suggested her pain may have been due to a swelling in some of her vertebrae caused by a bacterial overgrowth that masked inflammation.
You may not have heard about this before, but 35-40% of people with low back pain, including Suzanne, it turned out, have this condition. The source of her back pain was an infection in her hip that occurred during surgery and migrated to several of her discs causing the vertebrae to swell. That’s right. A bacterial infection with the accompanying inflammation was the cause of her back pain!
If you have chronic back pain and can’t find a reason why, speak with your doctor to see whether or not you could possibly have a bacterial infection. If an infection is a possibility, you can confirm it or rule it out with an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan. In fact, that’s the only way you can know for sure. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to identify and treat an infection. If you ignore it, you risk having your inflammation spread. You also will have continued pain.
Treatment choices
If you do have an infection, what can you do? There are a few treatment options.
In a double-blind, randomized, clinical controlled study — the best, most accurate, kind — antibiotics successfully reduced both pathogenic bacterial colonies and low back pain. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but in some cases for some people, it’s a good choice. In fact, this was true with Suzanne. She chose to go on a course of pharmaceutical antibiotics. After two months on amoxicillin-claculanate, 500mg/125mg – the amount used in this study, her pain gradually lessened. Follow-up MRIs also showed less swelling and inflammation in her vertebrae.
A strong three-month course of antibiotics may not be an option for you. You may be concerned about antibiotic resistance. Begin by realizing that antibiotics are only appropriate for one limited sub-group of back pain patients who have herniated discs. Don’t even consider antibiotics if you don’t have a bacterial overgrowth along with bone swelling. If you do, and if antibiotics are your best choice, you have another option. You may consider taking herbal antibiotics. They have a more complex chemistry than pharmaceuticals and, for this reason, they are less likely to cause antibiotic resistance. They also have fewer side effects. But they may take longer to work.
Herbal antibiotics
I’ve talked about a number of herbal antibiotics in past articles, and I’ve used them with patients numerous times when they had a bacterial overgrowth. Some of the plant-based antibiotics I’ve found to be particularly beneficial are eucalyptus essential oil, grapefruit seed extract, and garlic. Of all the herbal antibiotics I’ve used, grapefruit seed extract has given the best results. It’s available in just about all health food stores.
It is possible to know in advance which herbal antibiotic will work best against your particular bacterial overgrowth. A test is available through Doctor’s Data (www.doctorsdata.com) that can show just this. It must be ordered through a qualified health care practitioner. My suggestion is to use grapefruit seed extract. It has an excellent chance of working. And you don’t have to pay for the expensive test unless the extract doesn’t work.
Just be aware that plant-based antibiotics are often not as effective as a pharmaceutical drug. It’s a trade-off: using a safer substance with antibiotic properties that you need to take over a longer period of time, or taking a drug that works faster but may cause antibiotic resistance and have side effects.
This is why I recommend using any antibiotic substance under the direction of a qualified, knowledgeable integrative health care practitioner who can check your progress with an MRI and evaluate any symptomatic relief.
Probiotics
Whenever you use an antibiotic, you need to take probiotics. First you need to kill off as many pathogenic bacteria as you can. Then you need to boost your colonies of beneficial bacteria. It’s a delicate balance. I like a two-step approach that begins by reducing harmful bacteria like the ones causing your pain, and then taking a six-month course of strong probiotics to restore your bacterial balance.
I like to rotate several different probiotics like Culturelle, Dr. Ohhira’s, and Advanced Probiotic Formula to get exposure to a number of probiotic strains. Take double the recommended daily dose. You can find the first two in health food stores; the Advanced Probiotic Formula is available through Advanced Bionutritionals (800-791-3395).
“Antibiotics for Low Back Pain,” Harriet Hall, Clinical Trials, Pharmaceuticals
Albert, H.B., J.S. Sorensen, B.S. Christensen, and C. Manniche. “Antibiotic treatment in patients with chronic low back pain and vertebral bone edema (Modic type 1 changes): a double-blind randomized clinical controlled trial of efficacy,” Eur Spine J. 2013 April;22(4):697-707. doi: 10.1007/s00586-013-2675-y. Epub 2013 February 13.
Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Herbal Antibiotics, Storey Books, 1999.
One Often Overlooked Risk for Stroke and Several Simple Solutions
Worldwide, one person dies every six seconds due to a stroke. Your doctor might tell you that your risk for having one increases if you smoke, are inactive, or have diabetes. But it’s unlikely you’ll hear about the stroke-promoting risk I’m going to tell you about this month. Or some simple ways to lower your risk for this silent killer.
A stroke, or brain attack as it’s sometimes called, occurs when an artery to the brain bursts or gets clogged. The risk for this happening increases with age when arteries lose some of their integrity, or when there’s a buildup of debris that can cause a blockage. You’ve no doubt heard of the association between blood clots and stroke. But there are other factors you may not be aware of, like sleep apnea. Actually, anything that causes an interrupted blood flow increases your risk. I’ve also found several substances that you probably have in your home that can lower your risk for stroke.
Sleep apnea
Are you moody? Have you lost your drive? Do you wake up tired, rather than feeling refreshed? If you have any of these symptoms you may have a sleep disorder called Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). OSA is characterized by involuntary pauses in breathing that can last from 10 seconds to minutes. It occurs when the soft tissues in the back of the throat relax and block the airway. This particular type of sleep apnea frequently causes snoring.
But snoring and a lack of energy are only symptoms of an underlying problem. One danger of OSA is high blood pressure. And interrupted blood flow to your brain can cause heart failure and stroke. Still, many people with OSA have no idea that they have this condition.
From 30-40% of people with high blood pressure, and most people who don’t respond to blood pressure-lowering medications, have sleep apnea. If you have type-2 diabetes, you are likely to have OSA. In fact, around 90% of the 25.6 million Americans diagnosed with type-2 diabetes have OSA.
This is why, if you suspect you have any of these symptoms, you should get evaluated for OSA by having an overnight sleep study. Your doctor, or local hospital, can give you the names of local sleep centers you can go to for an evaluation. If you have OSA, the most often used treatment is sleeping with a machine that regulates air pressure. This therapy – continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP – means sleeping with a mask that regulates air flow. Many people find this is difficult to do. The mask can get in the way when they turn over in bed, and the machine is noisy for people sensitive to sounds. But it works and it can save lives.
Still, you may want to begin by making a few simple lifestyle changes. Note that I said “simple,” not “easy.” These two steps may make sleeping with a CPAP machine unnecessary. The first step is to lose weight, because around 70% of people who have this sleep disorder are overweight or obese.
If weight loss isn’t possible, or if it’s not an issue with you, train yourself to sleep on your side rather than on your back. This often reduces airway blockage in people with mild OSA. One trick is to put a tennis ball in a sock and pin it to the back of your pajamas.
Whatever you do, be aware that sleep apnea is nothing to ignore. If you suspect you may have it, check it out. OSA can change the quality of your life forever, or be a silent killer. But this isn’t all you can do to prevent a stroke.
Coffee and tea
Preventing a stroke may be as simple as having several cups of coffee or green tea a day. Drinking these popular beverages regularly can reduce your risk, according to a new study in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. This 13-year study followed over 80,000 Japanese adults and found an association between a high consumption of these drinks and a lower risk of stroke.
Study participants who drank at least four six-ounce cups of green tea a day were 20-30% less likely to have a stroke than those who didn’t. A different study conducted at UCLA found that the more green tea a person drank, the more preventive it was against stroke.
Coffee drinkers had similar results. One study showed a 20% lower risk of stroke. And another study that was gender-specific found that women who drank more than one cup of coffee a day had a 22-25% lower risk of having a stroke than those who didn’t.
Of course, you can mix the two of them. That’s what I do. Some days I begin having one cup of coffee, and then switch to green tea. One reason for this is that green tea contains l-theanine, a chemical that gives a little lift while it counteracts the stimulating effects of caffeine. Many people, like me, can have green tea in the evening and still fall asleep easily and quickly.
The reason drinking tea or coffee reduces strokes may be due to their ability to prevent blood clots. This explains the benefits of another stroke-lowering substance: aspirin.
Aspirin
Do you take an aspirin a day to protect yourself from heart disease and stroke? Are you healthy, or do you already have heart disease? Whether or not you should take aspirin – or any anti-inflammatory – depends on how you answer these questions.
Let’s look at the statistics. Over the past three to five years, all the studies have shown that taking aspirin for primary prevention of heart disease or stroke doesn’t reduce the number of deaths from these conditions. If, on the other hand, you already have heart disease, this is considered to be a secondary prevention, and aspirin may be appropriate for you.
Then there is also the question of what time of day you should take it. Strokes most often occur early in the morning when platelets clump together. If you take an aspirin in the morning before breakfast, as many doctors suggest, you’re not getting maximum protection. But if you take an aspirin late in the evening before you go to bed, the highest level of aspirin in your blood would be reached right before clotting occurs.
As you may know, I’m not a fan of aspirin. It frequently causes bleeding in the stomach. But you can get its benefits without irritating your stomach by taking an herbal anti-inflammatory formula like Reduloxin (800-791-3395). And, as inflammation is at the foundation of just about all major illnesses, it makes sense to take this type of formula morning and night on an empty stomach to cover all your bases.
Kokubo, Yoshihiro, MD, PhD, FAHA, et al, “The Impact of Green Tea and Coffee Consumption on the Reduced Risk of Stroke Incidence in Japanese Population,” Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, March 2013.
Kriszbacher, I. “Would it be more beneficial to take aspirin in the evening for prevention of cardiovascular diseases?” J Vasc Surg 2005; 41: 375.
University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry. “Who Is Taking Aspirin To Prevent Heart Attack Or Stroke? First Of Its Kind Study In Canada.” Medical News Today, 2013, March 21.
How to Get Rid of Your Negative Thoughts
Many years ago, a colleague of mine told me about an imaging technique that he claimed got rid of negative thoughts. First, he said, think of something negative, like believing you won’t get that job you applied for or be successful losing weight. Next, imagine you’re throwing that thought away. It was that simple, he insisted. Visualize it and throw it away and it would be gone.
The problem was that I never found it worked well either for me or for any of my patients. Now, thanks to a number of studies out of Ohio State University, I know why. You have to physically throw these thoughts away. Just imagining them gone doesn’t necessarily work.
Professor Richard Petty, co-author of these studies, examined this phenomenon. In the first study, he asked a group of high school students to write down their thoughts about their body image – both positive and negative. Then, half of them were asked to physically throw their papers away, while the other half just checked them for spelling errors. “When they threw their thoughts away, they didn’t consider them anymore, whether they were positive or negative,” Petty said.
For the second study, Petty asked nearly 300 students to write down either positive or negative thoughts about a diet plan that most people believe to be beneficial. Then some of them threw these thoughts away, some left them on their desk, and some put them in a pocket or purse to keep with them. All of the participants rated their attitudes toward this diet and their intentions to explore eating that way.
The students who wrote positive thoughts and then carried them with them rated the diet more favorably than those who left these thoughts behind on their desk. The students who wrote negative thoughts and kept them in their pocket or purse rated them more negatively than those who left them on their desk.
Petty found similar results when students wrote their thoughts on a computer word processing document and then dragged it into the trash versus saving them on a disk. Any way Petty evaluated them, positive or negative thoughts were influenced more when they were physically saved or discarded than when they were imagined.
It’s easy to get stuck in old patterns of negativity. One key to break this cycle may be as simple as putting pen to paper and then throwing your negative thoughts in the trash. At the very least, it’s worth exploring.
While you’re identifying your negative emotions, you may want to write down a few positive thoughts and tuck them away in your pocket or purse. You gotta accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative for great health. n
Ohio State University. “Make Negative, Unwanted Thoughts Disappear By Throwing Them Away.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 28 November 2012.
NUTRITION DETECTIVE
When Broccoli Doesn’t Stop Cancer
There’s a chemical in broccoli – and other cruciferous vegetables like arugula, cauliflower, and cabbage – that fights cancer if you eat enough of it often enough. But in some cases, the way people prepare it interferes with its protection. When does broccoli lose its ability to fight cancer? When the Food Industry messes with it.
In order to maintain its color, taste, and aroma, broccoli slated to be frozen is either blanched or heated to high temperatures. This inactivates enzymes that cause these undesirable changes. High heat destroys an enzyme called myrosinase. Myrosinase is needed to make a plant-based chemical called sulforaphane. And sulforaphane is the chemical that is protective against cancer.
In the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of Illinois found that while frozen broccoli may look and taste like the fresh vegetable, it contains little to no sulforaphane unless it has enough myrosinase.
The researchers tested three commercially frozen samples of broccoli both before and after cooking them. There was very little potential to form sulforaphane prior to cooking and none after they cooked it.
Next, they blanched broccoli at slightly lower temperatures than usual. They found that 82% of the myrosinase was preserved without lowering the quality of the vegetable.
Then the researchers had a bright idea. What would happen if they exposed frozen and blanched broccoli to tiny amounts of a related cruciferous vegetable like daikon radish? So they sprinkled 0.25% of daikon powder – so little that you can’t see or taste it – on the frozen broccoli. Daikon is high in myrosinase. When they combined the two vegetables, broccoli’s cancer-fighting capability returned.
So what can you do if you want to use frozen broccoli and you aren’t willing to wait until the food industry changes the way they prepare it? Cook your
broccoli with a little arugula or spicy mustard — vegetables that contain myrosinase. This minor adjustment will restore broccoli’s beneficial anti-cancer properties.
University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Co. “Scientists put cancer-fighting power back into frozen broccoli.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 8 August 2013. Web. 12 August 2013.
LETTERS
Q: We all know that we should wash vegetables before we eat them, but what is the best way to do this? When I wash my potatoes, I use dish soap and a vegetable brush. I wash tomatoes with just a paper towel and dish soap. Do you think I am getting chemicals off my vegetables? Everything I read says to wash veggies, but nobody gives us a hint as to how to do it properly. — C.G., Solon, OH
A: Using soap or detergent to clean vegetables has two problems: it often leaves an undesirable soapy residue, and it can reduce only bacteria. While reducing bacteria lowers your risk of getting foodborne illnesses like e. coli, many people are even more concerned with avoiding pesticides. That’s not easy. In fact, I’m not convinced that it’s possible.
You may want to spray your produce with SaniDate, which kills 99.9% of the bacteria that it comes into contact with, but it won’t remove pesticides. The product I located that claims to remove agricultural chemicals as well as bacteria is Veggie Wash. You can find it in the produce section of many grocery stores.
But the only way to truly lower contaminants in your food is to eat organic produce whenever possible. You’ll still absorb some. It’s in our air, water, and soil. In fact, DDT has been found in the urine of 99% of Americans even though the U.S. government banned it more than 40 years ago. That’s because we all eat some foods with pesticides that have been grown in other countries where they’re not banned.
While you can’t avoid toxins in your food, you can remove them from your tissues with PectaSol Detox Formula and Advanced Detox Formula (800-791-3395). The first product binds to contaminants circulating in your blood, while the second one pulls stored toxins out of tissues. I suggest taking the PectaSol for two weeks, then adding the Advanced formula. Take both for three to six months, and then just take one capsule of the PectaSol product morning and night on an empty stomach.
Q: I have been using Ultimate Bone Support and just read some negative reports on strontium. Now I’m skeptical. One report says that 3-5 mg is nothing, but 500 mg a day — the amount in the bone formula — is dangerous. Can you explain why you sell this supplement with such a high dose of strontium if it’s dangerous? — C.G., e-mail
A: The answer is simple. I would never support any supplement with dangerous amounts of any nutrient. I don’t know what reports you’ve seen, but I suspect they were written about a competing product and are using quasi-science to frighten you into buying theirs. It looks like they’ve done a good job.
A number of clinical trials related to bone health have used strontium ranelate, a safe form of strontium. The researchers haven’t reported any adverse effects in their sound scientific studies. And they have used amounts taken orally up to 680 mg for as long as 56 months. Higher amounts may be completely safe as well, but human data on strontium is limited. So if you’re concerned, I recommend that you take no more than 680 mg until we have more studies indicating that higher amounts are both safe and effective.