Ben Fuchs

Ben Fuchs is a nutritional pharmacist from Colorado. He specializes in using nutritional supplements when other healthcare practitioners use toxic pharmaceutical drugs.He is the founder and formulator of Truth Treatment Systems for skin care, host of The Bright Side syndicated radio show, a member of Youngevity's Scientific Advisory Board, health expert and frequent guest on Coast to Coast am with George Noory."The human body is a healing and regenerating system, designed divinely to heal & renew itself on a moment to moment basis." "Take charge of your biochemistry through foods and supplements, rather than allow toxic prescription drugs to take charge of you." ~Ben Fuchs

Jul

2013

Vitamin A Part 2

By Ben Fuchs | Pharmacist Ben

Athletes take note: Vitamin A can improve performance and provide tremendous benefits because it helps increase protein synthesis from muscle cells. This means Vitamin A is one of the most important nutritional supplements for weight lifters and body builder and anyone interested in improving athletic performance. And you don’t have to be pumping iron or running a marathon to benefit; the increased protein synthesis cans also improve vitality and energy and day to day strength for sedentary couch potatoes too.

By Martin Doege (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps the most well-known role for vitamin A involves vision. Some of the Vitamin A you ingest ends up in your eyes where it acts to turn light into our reality (!). In other words, if you think see the world through rose colored glasses think again. You actually observe the world through lenses made up of (partially, at least) of Vitamin A! From a historical perspective, the most significant sign of a lack of Vitamin A was night blindness, which can which can ultimately result in total blindness. This was noted as early as 3500 years ago by ancient Chinese and Egyptian physicians used Vitamin A-rich fish liver oil as a treatment and cure. The health of the cornea also depends on Vitamin A and deficiencies can lead to swelling, inflammation and ultimately ulceration and blindness.

It’s also important for the immune system. While most people think of Vitamin Cwhen it comes to warding off colds and supporting the body’s defenses, as it turns out Vitamin A plays even more significant anti-pathogenic, anti-toxin role. In addition to having an enhancing effect on specific antibodies, the workhorses of immunity, Vitamin A upregulates the body’s non-specific, general resistance to infection. Dr. Robert Atkins, of Atkins Diet fame recommended taking extremely high doses (up 100,000 i.u., 50 times RDA) to be taken (along with Vitamin C and Zinc) at the first sign of a cold.

Finally, no discussion on Vitamin A would be complete without mentioning its non-essential cosmetic properties. Topical Vitamin A is one of the most important and powerful anti-wrinkle ingredients you could every use. The same connective tissue and protein stimulating properties you can get from eating or supplementing with Vitamin A can be targeted to the skin by directly applying the stuff. It’s so effective at driving protein and collagen synthesis that it’s regulated by the FDA as a drug. The brand name for this prescription Vitamin A cream as most people know is Retin-A and it contains just .01 to 1 percent retinoic acid (the most potent form of Vitamin A) and that’s all you need to use just a few times a week to have noticeably smoother, healthier and younger looking skin.

Worldwide, Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is considered a serious problem by the World Health organization. Because of its growth stimulating properties, children are especially susceptible to the negative health impacts of VAD. According to the World Health Organization, deficiencies in Vitamin A affect nearly 250 million preschoolers; it’s the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and it increases the risk of disease and death from serious infections. In addition to visual problems some of the indicators of VAD include dry eyes, skin conditions including acne and dermatitis and decreased resistance to infections and chronic colds and respiratory conditions.

Luckily, while Vitamin A deficiency is relatively common in undeveloped countries, in the United States and Europe full blown deficiencies are rare. Yet, it’s safe to say, most people could benefit from extra Vitamin A taken as a nutritional supplement. This critical nutrient is important for bone and eye health, the immune and reproductive systems and it helps keep skin looking soft, supple, and blemish-free. It acts synergistically with thyroid hormone and helps the body use protein and iron more efficiently. If you’re deficient in Zinc or if you have problems absorbing fats, you’re probably not getting the benefits you need from this versatile and very important vitamin.

Vegetarians and vegans are especially at risk for Vitamin A deficiency which is only found in animal products. Eggs, beef organ meats and dairy are nature’s richest sources of Vitamin A and especially high concentrations are found in liver and kidney. Non-meat eaters (as well as carnivores that want make sure they’re getting enough) may want to consider supplementation with 20,000 international units a day. The RDA for Vitamin A is a paltry 5000 i.u., but daily doses as high as 50,000 iu have been used for short periods of time for treating acne and heavy menstrual bleeding. In one study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 1993,la whopping 300,000 iu daily dose was used to suppress the formation of tumors in lung cancer patients.

While Vitamin A is only found in animal products, many fruits and vegetables do produce a “phyto” version of this important nutritional molecule. It’s called beta carotene and can be obtained via dark green leafy vegetables as well as red and orange fruits veggies like cantaloupe, carrots, pumpkins and squash and sweet potatoes. Kale and turnip greens are particularly good source of beta carotene which is essentially 2 molecular chunks of Vitamin A stuck together to form what can be considered pre-vitamin A. Beta carotene conversion to Vitamin A requires enzymes and effective biochemistry and depending on the health of the individual this may or may not occur.

Last, but most certainly not least, Vitamin A absorption requires bile and that means you want your gall bladder, and hundreds of thousands of patients lose theirs every year. Liver disease, which affects 30 percent of Americans, can mess up the body’s ability to process Vitamin A too. Pretty much anything that impairs fat absorption, including pancreatic insufficiency, small intestine inflammation and lymphatic congestion, can have a negative impact on the body’s ability to process and utilize vitamin A from foods and even supplements. If you suspect any issues with fat malabsorbtion or you are sans gall bladder, you might want to think about taking a vitamin A supplement and eating vitamin A rich foods with fat absorption aids such as lecithin, digestive enzymes, pancreatic enzymes, bile salts, probiotics and apple cider vinegar.

Jul

2013

Omega-3 Supplements

By Ben Fuchs | Pharmacist Ben

A couple of weeks ago in a study that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and plastered all over the internet and the mainstream media, investigators found that that was correlation between prostate cancer and high levels of an essential fatty acid derivative called DHA.

Here’s my take:

Fats are like women, they’re complicated! Highly complicated! Thus, to make sense of the nonsense associated with the incendiary headlines like: “Fish oil supplements linked to prostate cancer” (Health News) and “Men who take omega-3 supplements at 71 percent higher risk of prostate cancer” (NY Daily News) or “Omega-3 supplements may trigger prostate cancer” (Nursing Times) we have to digress slightly and talk about fats and fatty acid supplements.

In the world of nutrition there’s different kinds fats (technically called “lipids”), classes of fats you might say. For example there are plant lipids like beta carotene and bioflavonoids, which are nutritional terms most people have heard of, and you’ll find fat soluble compounds like phytoestrogens and resins in vegetation as well as the fatty vitamins D, E,A and K.

Then there the fatty acids. There’s a bunch of them but two stand out in importance. And the reason they stand out is because they are “essential”. That means that along with amino acids and vitamins and minerals, these two very special types of acid made out of fat must be ingested on a regular basis at the risk of facing significant health challenges including the biggies: heart disease and cancer . They’re called essential fatty acids, we know them as Omega-3 and Omega-6 and by definition, they are absolute requirements in the human diet. You’re dead in the water without them and heading in the direction and degeneration and disease to the degree you’re deficient. Your brain is especially dependent on them as is the blood and circulatory system. Every single cell in the body contains appreciable amounts of EFAs, mostly omega-6s, except for the nervous system and the eyes which contain large amount of the omega-3 variety and their derivatives.

In the JAMA article what was noticed was a relationship between high blood levels of a specific breakdown product of Omega-3 called DHA and the incidence of prostate cancer. Now DHA is vital stuff. It’s an especially important part of the brain and eyes. In fact, right now, as you read this article, light from the page you’re looking at is hitting your eyes and activating the DHA embedded in the eye cell membranes, which in turn is causing chemical reactions that create the visual experience in your brain. The world we see is literally constructed out of DHA (at least partially) right now.

But here’s the catch: DHA is very active. What makes it so potent is its very activity. In the world of nutrition, activity is always associated with instability and from a health perspective instability is not necessarily a good thing. This is why oils are so problematic. They’re volatile and fragile. Remember we said fats are complicated. You need them but you have to be careful! This combination of instability and potency must be accounted for with balancing and protecting nutrients. In other words, you don’t want to ingest high levels of one fat with corresponding balancing FATS and balancing NUTRIENTS. For example you don’t want to be using Vitamin A without Vitamin D. And Vitamin E should to be stabilized with selenium, alpha lipoic acid Vitamin C. And when it comes to Omega 3 and omega 6 essential fatty acids EFAs, they need to be taken together and they need to be balanced with each other. Most nutritionists recommend 3 parts Omega-6 fatty acids for every one part Omega-3 fatty acids. And, all EFAs should always be taken with protective 400 i.u of Vitamin E. In the case of DHA, Omega-6s, Vitamin E and A and selenium all work together to shield this sensitive and vulnerable nutritional lipid. In the JAMA study, the only parameter that was measured was DHA levels. Were these patients using Vitamin E, selenium? We don’t know. How about Vitamin A and alpha lipoic acid? Again, we don’t know. How about balancing Omega 6’s and Omega 3’s? Once again, we don’t know. And, without this information, any causal conclusions drawn between this important fish oil component and development cancer must be considered dubious at best.

The most significant flaw the JAMA study was the fact that investigators examined patients who already had cancer! And, some of the men had a family history of prostate cancer, a known risk factor for carcinogenesis. This was a population of men who were prostate cancer cases waiting to happen. We don’t know if the existing cancer caused elevations in DHA or if it was that the DHA that resulted in the cancer. Or if there’s any correlation at all. In other words, the two factors (high plasma DHA and prostate cancer) may be completely UN-related.

Even worse, the tests were one-time-only each patient and measured only the blood plasma content of DHA. Plasma levels fluctuate and vary. A fish sandwich eaten an hour prior to a blood test would cause an elevated DHA score even if a patient had never eaten seafood or ingested fish oil before or since. That means that elevated DHA measurements merely provided a one-time picture of what was in the body, temporarily, at the moment the blood was drawn and in no way indicative of how much DHA a person was getting and storing! Of course, no one thought to check what these patients were eating, when they were eating it or what kind and how much DHA or fish oil supplements they were using. In fact, despite the alarming headlines no one knows if they were even using fish oil supplements at all!

Finally, a quick internet search will reveal numerous studies that associate fish oil and DHA with a decreased risk of cancer. In one for example, from Tuscia University in Italy, researchers concluded that: “DHA can exert antitumor activity” and can function as “an effective adjuvant in cancer chemotherapy”. In another study from the University of California at Davis researchers showed that “omega-3 dietary fatty acids (fish oil) reduce the risk of…cancers” although “the mechanisms by which these omega-3 lipids inhibit… (tumor formation)…are poorly understood”. And in yet another study, published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology in January of this year investigators found that “DHA inhibited (cancer) cell migration, a marker of metastasis and that stated that “DHA, a ω-3 fatty acid, could play a beneficial inhibition of the incidence and progress of a series of human including cancer (italics mine)”.

The bottom line and incontrovertible, undeniable fact remains that Omega-3 fatty acids are essential. That means they’re required for health and survival. There are NOT optional. And, while their instability and thus their potential for becoming degraded and perhaps unhealthy is equally undeniable, given their must-have nature, that simply means they must used with great care, with balancing nutrients and with as little heat and processing as possible. And any studies that suggest avoiding these vital substances need to be examined closely and in my opinion, with skepticism.

Jul

2013

Vitamin A

By Ben Fuchs | Pharmacist Ben

While all nutrients play important and unique roles, in the world of nutrition one vitamin stands out like a diamond among ordinary gemstones. In a nutritional world of betas this stuff is truly vitamin version of an alpha male. In fact, it’s actually called Vitamin Alpha or more simply, as most people refer to it, as Vitamin A.

Actually there’s really no such thing as Vitamin A. Instead, the term is an umbrella designation for a family of compounds called retinoids that are found through the plant and animal kingdoms. These ubiquitous chemical structures exist in a variety of forms and perform multiple functions in a healthy biological system.The three most common forms of retinoids are called retinyl palmitate, retinol and retinoic acid.

Perhaps the most important retinoid role involves the division of parent cells and the development of resultant offspring, so-called “daughter cells”. These processes, known as mitosis and differentiation are the most important of cellular events.Mitosis involves a cell splitting in two and forming a parent and an offspring. Via this process one cell, made up of the combined female egg cell and male sperm cell (it’s called a zygote from the Greek word for combined) turns into the 100 trillion cells or so of the human body. Obviously, the division is critical to formation of an animal body and this most fundamental of all biological phenomena is initiated and regulated by Vitamin A.

Differentiation is even more critical. Once a cell it divides it may need to shape up, so to speak. Daughter cells have to develop to become mature liver, muscle, bone, heart or “whatever”cells. They have to shape up and take on a certain form. Offspring lung cells have to mature to do the things that a parent lung cells can do and the same is true for heart cells or muscle or bone cells any other cells that divide. This maturation processes is what is called differentiation and it is a sophisticated affair that requires a tightly choreographed chemistry, and biological precision.And, much like the maturation of human being from baby to teenager to adult, the process is fraught with danger. Anytime a system is growing and maturing and developing it reaches critical points where its survival is threatened. These tumultuous juncture points can be a matter of life or death for any system including a cell. Fortunately nature has provided support to sustain the cell in its stressful differentiation periods…it’s called nutrition! In fact one of the most important roles for nutrients is to assure healthy differentiation and of the entire support nutrient the most important bar none, the most powerful maturation nutrient is none other than the biochemical family known as Vitamin A.

Under conditions of vitamin A deficiency cell division is accelerated and cell differentiation is suppressed. The net result is the production of lots of un-differentiated.,immature cells. This can show up as various health issues ranging from to asthma to cancer to birth defects to skin conditions like psoriasis and acne all of which involve the appearance of large numbers of rapidly dividing immature cells that can muck up ordinarily organized chemistry. In all these conditions relatively high doses of Vitamin A (we’ll get to those in a moment) can provide effective therapeutic treatment.

Vitamin A plays another important role in the biochemical play of life. It turns on the production of meat. Not the kind of meat you get at McDonalds, but rather the kind of meat of that makes up the mass of the body. Technically the meat is called collagen and connective tissue and muscle protein and it gets pumped out cells called fibroblasts when commanded to do so by the alpha vitamin, Vitamin A. Breakdowns in connective tissue are behind degenerative disease and that means Vitamin A can be used to help prevent diverse and distinct disorders including osteoporosis, heart disease, aneurysms and circulatory issues. It can accelerate the healing of tissue after surgery or burns or wounds or other physical trauma. It can reduce the development of fine lines and wrinkle saggy skin and plain old regular aging. And, it’s not just sick or old folks that benefit from the body building benefits Vitamin A. Kids need it too. The most important sign of Vitamin A deficiency in children which 100 million kids worldwide is suboptimal growth and development. Without enough Vitamin A children will stop growing and eventually die. [Vitamin A Part 2]

Jul

2013

DMSO

By Ben Fuchs | Pharmacist Ben

DMSO is the most powerful, effective and safe pain reliever you’ve never heard of. And that’s not all. According to Dr. Morton Walker writing in the book “DMSO, Nature’s Healer”, DMSO can effectively treat skin lesions ulcerations cataracts and reduce the painful symptoms of shingles too. It’s a cancer fighter, an anti-inflammatory and an FDA approved treatment for interstitial cystitis, a painful urinary tract condition. And, it’s been shown to pretty darn effective for treating tinea versicolor, a fungal infection of the skin. According to Lazaro Sehtman, M.D, DMSO was 100 percent effective in eliminating the unpleasant fungus in 42 separate cases.

By Rifleman 82 at en.wikipedia, from Wikimedia Commons

But by far the most interesting and unusual property of DMSO is its ability to deliver active material through the typically impermeable skin surface. This property to help “drive” substances through the skin and into the blood and internal milieu of the body is known as transdermal penetration and nothing does it better than non-toxic DMSO.

If you’re interested in using DMSO for its transdermal properties, here’s what you want to do. First, check with the doctor who prescribed your medication before you do this because you’re going to get a rapid effect and because you’re bypassing the liver’s protective effects, if you don’t adjust your dose downward you could end with side effects or toxicity. Also, you may want to check yourself for DMSO sensitivity by applying a small amount to your forearm and checking for rash or irritation.

Once you’ve gotten your doctor on board, mix your medication or whatever chemical you want to experiment with in a little DMSO. Once you’ve gotten your drugs dissolved in a solution, apply a specific amount with a syringe ideally to a cotton ball. Do the math so you know how much medication is in the solution and in the liquid that you’re applying on the cotton ball. That way if you end up with to a large or too small a dose you can correct more effectively. Or if you end up with just the right effects you’ll be able to keep your dose consistent.

After applying the solution the cotton ball, apply it to an area on the body. The thinner skin areas like your forearm or your neck or inner thigh will give you the moist rapid absorption. Thicker skin areas like the palm of your hand or the sole of your foot will give you slower absorption. If you really want rapid absorption, you can try exfoliating the area you’re applying your solution to with some apple cider vinegar or lemon or lime juice. Rubbing the solution in will help drive the material through the skin, and if you apply a bandage to the solution after you apply, again you can help accelerate the penetration process (patches always improve penetration). Be extremely careful of contaminating your solution because whatever is combined with the DMSO is going to penetrating just as effectively as your intended medication substance.

If you have an injured area you can try this with aspirin or MSM sulfur. If you live in an area like California or Colorado where marijuana is legal you can mix your DMSO with some pot and that way you won’t have to smoke it or eat it. Bodybuilders have been known to use DMSO with anabolic steroids (only with a doctor’s prescription, of course), some cancer patients have been known to use DMSO solution for their chemotherapy. And DMSO may have anti-cancer benefits on its own. It targets cancer cells and when it’s mixed with chemotherapy it’s likely that the medication will also target malignancies. If you have cancer read Chapter 11 in Morton Walker’s wonderful book where discusses the high affinity that DMSO has for tumor cells and the anti-cancer benefits of transdermal DMSO chemotherapy.

Jul

2013

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