Did you know that a product found in many common fruits and vegetables can actually kill your cells? It’s true. Even organic produce contains this deadly ingredient. But if you think you’re finally about to find an excuse to avoid fruits and vegetables, think again. It turns out that some of your cells actually need to die. And this product can help make that happen.

You may think I’m about to talk about cancer cells. And cancer cells do need to die. This product can help with that too. But believe it or not, they’re not the only cells in your body that you might want to kill. Let me tell you about senescent cells.

Senescent and senile share the same root. So, as you may have guessed, senescent cells are older cells that aren’t functioning properly. These cells are still metabolically active. So they’re still taking up resources. But they usually aren’t able to divide anymore. That means they can’t help the body repair and renew itself. Or they might be able to split a few more times – but that just passes along the problems to a new generation of cells.

Senescent cells have typically sustained some sort of damage. So they don’t work properly. When they reach a certain point of dysfunction, they start sending out inflammatory signals. This tells the immune system that it’s time to get rid of the cell. After all, we don’t want cells with damaged DNA reproducing. That’s a recipe for cancer.

As we age, however, our immune systems can have trouble keeping up. More cells are becoming senescent. And the immune system doesn’t work as efficiently as it used to. This can cause those inflammatory signals to start building up. Plus, the dying cells release enzymes that can harm surrounding tissue.

It’s not surprising that senescent cells are associated with a number of age-related diseases. But they can affect even young people. Excess inflammation is bad for your well-being no matter how old you are. Still, it’s particularly challenging when the demands of clearing these cells exceed the capacity of an aging immune system.

To deal with this problem, the immune system needs reinforcements. Clearing away the backlog of senescent cells can help decrease inflammation throughout the body. And this can improve overall health.

Researchers have known about the problem of senescent cells for some time. But it’s hard to figure out how to deal with them. You don’t want to kill healthy cells in the process of clearing damaged ones. And when you’re working on a cellular level, it’s hard to tell which cells are dying.

As you can imagine, this makes developing a drug to deal with senescence pretty challenging. But then researchers found that they don’t have to. Nature has already supplied an antioxidant that can do the job for us.

This antioxidant’s name is fisetin. You’ll find it in foods like strawberries, apples, persimmons, onions, and cucumbers. And fisetin can help clear out damaged cells.

Researchers have been testing fisetin by giving it to aging mice. They’ve found that fisetin helps the mice live longer. In fact, it extended their lives by up to 10%. And it extended their “health span” too, not just their lifespan. So they didn’t just add a few more days of misery to the mice.

Using a new technology called mass cytometry, researchers have been able to confirm that fisetin attacks and removes damaged cells but leaves healthy ones alone. This is key to its effectiveness. Now that this technology exists, researchers have been able to evaluate the senolytic (senescent cell-killing) activity of several flavonoids. But fisetin continues to stand out as the most powerful.

Fisetin helps kill and clear out the damaged cells. Plus, it helps keep the ones that are still alive from sending out inflammatory signals and harmful enzymes as its working. This protects your tissues and decreases your overall inflammation load.

It’s true that you likely won’t be able to get the amount of fisetin used in the mouse study from food alone. You’d have to eat 37 strawberries a day to do that. So unless you really, really love strawberries, dietary fisetin isn’t likely to increase your lifespan by a full 10%.

Still, we know that dietary antioxidants like fisetin are great for our health. And fisetin’s ability to clear out senescent cells helps to explain why. If you eat strawberries daily, you can easily consume 37 in a week and get plenty of benefits!

Plus, fisetin can kill more than senescent cells. Research is also finding that it can play a role in killing cancer cells. So far, studies have linked it to cell death in cervical, lung, prostate, and colon cancers. It even helps inhibit melanoma and pancreatic cancer cell growth, fighting two notoriously deadly diseases.
This research is particularly interesting as it relates to colon cancer. We know that diet can help decrease risk of this disease. Researchers have identified a number of dietary flavonoids that can help kill cancer cells and keep them from growing in the first place.

Fisetin seems to be one of these beneficial flavonoids. It helps stop the cell cycle and prevent cell growth. It even induces apoptosis in certain colon cancer cells. As a high-fiber diet in general can help reduce colon cancer risk, making sure that you’re getting some of that fiber from fisetin-rich foods may lower your risk even further.

Fisetin also does more than just kill cells. You may have heard of the harm that AGEs can do to your health. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) form when sugar molecules bond to proteins and fats in the body. This process, called glycation, can damage cells and tissues, particularly collagen.

You know that collagen is important to keeping your skin firm and youthful. But it also helps keep your bones strong. AGEs can break down collagen, weakening your bones and contributing to osteoporosis. Fisetin works with the proteins in your body to help stop glycation. This keeps your bones (and your face) safer.

Plus, fisein supports your levels of glutathione. This is a vital intracellular antioxidant. Antioxidants work by “giving” electrons to free radicals. This neutralizes them, preventing them from causing damage. Of all the antioxidants, glutathione has the most electrons. It’s a great weapon against oxidative stress.

Fisetin is an antioxidant in its own right. So it can also neutralize free radicals. But by supporting glutathione, fisetin helps protect your body from oxidative stress as efficiently as possible.

Fisetin can even help protect you from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Many antioxidants are unable to cross the blood-brain barrier. But fisetin can. So it can help activate neuroprotective pathways. Another mouse study found that giving fisetin to mice ranging in age from 3 to 12 months supported learning and memory.

And, by reducing oxidative stress, fisetin helps prevent stroke. Oxidative stress is a significant contributor to arteriosclerosis. This in turn is a main cause of stroke. Fisetin also helps support neurite outgrowth. This means that the neurons are growing and developing properly.

A study in rabbits found that fisetin treatment could help reduce the effects of stroke on behavior. Mice studies found that it could reduce the inflammatory response following a stroke. It also helped protect brain tissues when given before and after a stroke. Animal studies have even found it can help slow Huntington’s disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disorder.

Fisetin helps decrease the impact of Huntington’s disease by working with resveratrol to activate particular protein signaling pathways. You know that resveratrol is a powerful antioxidant, and fisetin helps protect it. Fisetin slows the process by which resveratrol breaks down in the liver. This increases its availability throughout the body.

Clearly, fisetin can be beneficial in a number of diseases. Researchers are continuing to test its effects and determine the proper dosage. Like resveratrol, fisetin may be particularly effective in supplement form. But that doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from having it in your diet as well.

Strawberries are the best natural source of fisetin that we know of. I recommend eating berries regularly. But make sure you choose organic. Conventional producers typically spray berries with harmful pesticides. You’ll waste all the good antioxidants you get from the berries just dealing with the toxins the pesticides introduce if you go this route.

f fresh organic berries seem too expensive, consider choosing frozen. Frozen organic berries typically aren’t too expensive. And they’re great in smoothies, baked goods, and on top of a bowl of oatmeal.

Apples, onions, persimmons, grapes, kiwi, peaches, and cucumber also supply some fisetin. Make sure you eat the edible skins, such as those on apples and cucumbers. That’s where the fisetin is typically concentrated.

As we age, it becomes more and more important to support our natural immune function. Antioxidants in general are a great way to do this. And fisetin in particular helps by clearing senescent cells, reducing your inflammatory burden. You may never have realized that even non-cancerous cells need to go at times. But having the old go out makes room for the new. Fisetin can help that process go smoothly while providing vital antioxidant support against other diseases throughout the body.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002114024.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3689181/

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/10/15/fisetin-health-benefits.aspx

Need to Lose Weight? When You Eat Is Just as Important as What You Eat

You’ve probably heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And new research has found that people who eat breakfast tend to be healthier than those who skip it. But it seems that when you eat your first meal of the day matters too. If you don’t like to eat first thing in the morning, you may be in luck – as long as you don’t skip this meal altogether. Here’s how to maximize your morning meal.

First, let’s talk about the negative consequences of skipping breakfast. Researchers surveyed 4,052 participants regarding their total energy intake. They evaluated their breakfast patterns as well as heart health markers like atherosclerosis.

The researchers divided the participants into three groups: no breakfast, low-energy breakfast (between 5 and 20% of total energy intake at breakfast), and breakfast consumers. Only 2.9% of the participants fell into the no breakfast group.

That’s probably a good thing, as these participants were the unhealthiest of the three groups. They had the largest waists. Their body mass indexes were the greatest. And they had the highest blood pressure, blood lipids, and fasting glucose levels. They were also the most likely to be obese and eat poorly overall.

It is certainly possible that there was a reverse causation effect happening. These participants may have been skipping breakfast in an effort to lose weight. Clearly, this effort was backfiring. Here’s what they should have been doing instead:

They should start by actually eating breakfast. And they could even make it a big meal. Research is showing that eating a high-energy breakfast actually helps people struggling with obesity and type-2 diabetes lose weight.

Our metabolisms change throughout the day. And believe it or not, this means that food you eat in the morning can actually be less fattening than food you eat in the evening. For example, you’ll have a lower glucose response to a slice of bread if you eat it in the morning than if you wait until evening to enjoy that same slice.

Researchers confirmed that timing food carefully could help people lose weight. They studied 29 people struggling with obesity and type-2 diabetes. They were all using insulin.

The researchers divided the participants into two groups. They had them eat the same number of calories every day, but they followed different patterns. One group, the Bdiet group, had a large breakfast, followed by a medium-sized lunch. Dinner was even smaller. The other group, named the 6Mdiet group, ate six small meals spread out evenly throughout the day.

The researchers evaluated the participants’ glucose levels for two weeks prior to the study, during the participants’ first two weeks on the diet, and then every two weeks as the participants followed their diets for three months.

Despite eating the same number of calories, the two groups fared quite differently. At the end of three months, the Bdiet group had lost 11 pounds. In contrast, the 6Mdiet group actually gained three pounds. The Bdiet group also experienced greater improvements in fasting and mean glucose levels. Only the Bdiet group experienced improvements in mean glucose levels during sleep.

Especially significantly, the Bdiet group was able to cut back on insulin use by 20.5 units per day. The 6Mdiet group actually needed 2.2 more units by the end of the study. These are important results for people with diabetes. But other research suggests you can get even better results by following this plan within a specific window of time. Just delaying when you eat that large breakfast can supercharge your results.

In one study, researchers split participants into two groups. They asked one group to move their breakfast time back by 90 minutes and move dinner up by 90 minutes. The other group ate meals like normal. Everyone followed this plan for 10 weeks, eating their normal foods.

The participants who shortened the window of time in which they ate lost twice as much body fat (on average) as the participants in the control group. Losing body fat obviously reduces one’s chances of becoming obese, which is associated with a number of diseases. The findings of this study align with those of a mouse study indicating that restricting eating to a 10-hour window can greatly reduce risk of obesity and metabolic diseases.

For this study, researchers divided mice genetically predisposed to obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and high blood cholesterol into two groups. The researchers gave all of the mice access to the same number of calories. But one group could only eat within a 10-hour window.

As you might expect, the group that could eat around the clock got fat and sick. But not the other group. They became healthy and lean. And remember, these weren’t regular mice. They were genetically predisposed to get sick. But restricting calories to a 10-hour window overrode all of that.

Even if you believe you’re genetically predisposed to diabetes, obesity, or other metabolic issues, you too can overcome them. Start by eating breakfast every day. Make it a healthy and substantial one. Choose high-quality protein, produce, and whole grains, not a doughnut. And consider eating a bit later in the morning. Then make sure you cut yourself off after dinner too. If a 10-hour window is too extreme for you, start with 12 hours. For example, try not to have breakfast before 7 a.m., and make sure you wrap up dinner by 7 p.m. No snacking after that!

If you need to lose weight, restricting when you eat your calories may matter just as much as restricting the number of calories. Don’t skip breakfast in an attempt to lose weight. A hearty breakfast can keep your heart – and the rest of you – healthy.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171002145635.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180318144831.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180830084826.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180831130131.htm.

Surprising Connection Between the Lungs, Large Intestine, and Your Skin

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is known for drawing connections between seemingly unrelated parts of the body. For example, TCM links the health of the skin to the health of both the lungs and the large intestine.

These connections might seem weak at first glance, but we all know how much healthy diet and exercise habits affect our appearance. I often find that patients suffering from acne or other skin disorders notice significant improvements when they begin to clean up their diets and improve their lung health through an exercise routine.

But even if you already have good foundational habits, there are likely some changes you can make that will have both internal and external benefits. This is thanks to the links that really do exist between these systems and the skin.

In particular, eating fermented foods can be great for both your gut and your skin, especially when you choose raw fermented foods made from cultured vegetables like cabbage. The fermentation process encourages the proliferation of probiotics and enzymes that help protect the gut and allow the body to flush out toxins rather than letting them leach through the intestinal wall. Eliminating these toxins properly helps keep them from affecting the skin, making it look dull and lifeless.

An additional benefit of fermented foods is that they contribute to satiety. This can lead to weight loss and can help you avoid snacking on junk food, particularly sugary sweets. I’ve written before about the detrimental effects sugar can have on the skin, so anything that helps you cut back on sugar-laden foods is an automatic skin win.

You can purchase fermented vegetables in grocery stores, but if you do, look for products that aren’t full of salt or other preservatives. You can also find recipes for making your own sauerkraut or kimchee online. It’s easier than you might think, and going the DIY route means that you’ll know exactly what’s in your fermented foods.

Also consider looking beyond fermented vegetables and trying fermented dairy products as well, including yogurt and kefir. These products are good sources of probiotics too, so they’ll benefit your gut. And research recently published in the journal Foods indicates that they can also have beneficial effects on your cardiovascular system. A healthier cardiovascular system will increase your ability to exercise, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits the lungs and skin as well. While dairy products often get a bad rap, especially when it comes to the skin, full-fat and fermented products can provide important nutrients and have anti-inflammatory properties. And you don’t need me to tell you that inflammation is a major enemy of smooth, glowing skin!

The connections TCM makes are often surprising, but that’s exactly why they’re so fascinating. The many benefits of the traditional process of fermenting foods helps confirm that just because an idea is centuries old, like the ideas of TCM, doesn’t mean it isn’t of high value to us today. Add some yogurt or kimchee to your regular rotation and see for yourself how much the intestines, lungs, and skin really do work together in harmony.

http://www.youngandraw.com/fermented-foods-can-heal-your-gut-and-make-your-skin-glow/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29494487

Nutrition Detective

Vitamin Improves Memory So You Can Recall Dreams

Have you ever tried to tell someone about a dream you had only to realize halfway through that you don’t know how it ended? Or have you woken up knowing you’d been having a great dream, but you can’t remember what it was about? If so, I have good news. New research has found a way to help you remember your dreams. Here’s what you need – and why it’s important.

Researchers from Australia conducted a study with 100 people. This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The participants who weren’t in the placebo group took 240 mg of vitamin B6 right before bed for five days.

The placebo group didn’t notice any changes. But those taking the B6 did. They reported that they remembered their dreams more easily. Their memories of the dreams were also clearer.

The B6 didn’t seem to affect the content of the dreams. Participants didn’t report dreams becoming stranger or more colorful. Their sleep patterns didn’t change either. They simply were better able to recall their dreams.

The researchers are interested in harnessing the power of lucid dreaming. They believe that remembering dreams is the first step. And they think lucid dreaming could help people overcome phobias, solve problems, or even recover from trauma.

The jury’s still out on the potential lucid dreaming has to help people. But I think this study provides evidence that B6 is good for your memory. And I certainly find a good memory to be helpful.

You’ll find B6 in a variety of foods, such as whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, milk, cheese, eggs, red meat, liver, and fish. Bananas, avocados, spinach, and potatoes are particularly good sources.

The researchers didn’t evaluate how much B6 the participants were getting from their diets. The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for B6 is only 1.7 mg for people over 50. But that’s not nearly enough. The best daily dose is closer to 25-50 mg daily.

LETTERS

Q: The other night my family and I were having the argument of: “How long is one contagious when they have the flu or a cold?” Can you help us settle this argument? – Josephine A., Yonkers, NY

Dear Josephine,

As long as you have symptoms, you’re contagious. Your ability to spread the flu virus remains until the last sniffle is gone. Bill Schaffner, MD, a well-known infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt Medical Center, has written a paper saying exactly this. And you’re also contagious 24 hours before you ever show any symptoms. So you could be around someone who is contagious who doesn’t even know they are.

That’s why it’s so important to take preventive measures. All of the nutrients I’ve discussed in these pages can help. There’s also a great new supplement called Resistol (800-791-3395) you can take to help avoid getting a cold or the flu. This formula contains Andrographis extract, which is fabulous for boosting your immune system and helping you fight off these bugs.

Q. Recently, I purchased Resistol from the Advanced Bionutritionals website. I began using one capsule twice daily and I am happy to report that two members of my family have come down with a cold and I’m symptom free. I’m wondering if I do develop symptoms, is it okay to take two capsules twice a day? – Camille, Topeka, KS

Dear Camille,

Yes, most certainly! You can use two capsules of Resistol twice daily for five to seven days until you feel your symptoms or vulnerability have passed. The same nutrients that will boost your immune system to help you avoid these bugs will also help you fight them off once you have them.

Q. This time of year, my grandchildren will sometimes develop a fever on my watch. I never know when it’s serious. Could you please give
me some insight? – Alexis, Lake Oswego, OR

Dear Alexis,

This is a good question. And the answer doesn’t just apply to children. Here’s what I suggest:

If the child also has stomach pain, vomiting and or nausea – it could be appendicitis. GO to the emergency room if these are present. If the child has neck stiffness, severe headache, vomiting, and light sensitivity – this could possibly be meningitis. GO to the emergency room.

If it’s hot outdoors and the child feels faint and weak – this could be heat exhaustion, heatstroke, or a more serious dehydration. GO to the emergency room.

If the child has a fever over 101 degrees, phone the doctor immediately. If the doctor prescribes over-the-counter NSAIDs, use it for 24 hours. If there’s no change to the fever – go visit the doctor in person and let them evaluate what’s going on.

If the child is vomiting excessively, it’s easy for them to get dehydrated. In this case, you’ll need to get them to the doctor or emergency room to have an IV inserted. If they can’t keep liquids down at all, even ice shavings, this is the only way to avoid severe dehydration.