Glutamine is one of the most important supplements you can take for digestive problems. While it plays a significant role in the functioning of the entire digestive system from mouth to anus, it is especially important for the “enterocytes” which are cells of the small intestine. Enterocytes use glutamine as a preferred fuel for producing the large quantities of energy they require for food absorption.
Glutamine supplementation has a well-deserved reputation for helping heal small intestinal health issues. In 1990, research published in the Archives of Surgery showed that oral glutamine accelerated the healing of the small intestine after abdominal stress. Anyone suffering for Crohn’s or Irritable Bowel disease would be well-advised to begin supplementing with at least 1 or 2 grams of glutamine daily.
Enterocytes, or intestinal absorptive cells, are simple columnar epithelial cells found in the small intestines and colon. A glycocalyx surface coat contains digestive enzymes. Microvilli on the apical surface increase surface area for the digestion and transport of molecules from the intestinal lumen. The cells also have a secretory role. [Wikipedia]
One of the latest red herring boogie men of the medical world is inflammation, which many doctors will tell you is the cause of accelerated aging and disease.
Well, of course inflammation is related to all illness including cancer and diabetes and digestive distress and adrenal ailment and every other symptom known to man. Inflammation is immune system manifestation. It’s the way immune system activation shows up. And inflammation completely changes the health milieu of the body’s chemistry. Disease cannot help but result. The biggest shock is how long it sometimes takes.
Inflammation/immunity typically means one thing and that is that there is a breach in the body’s defenses. Historically battles sites would forts or city walls. The objective of an enemy invader was to breach the fort or the walls. And typically the site of the battle, at the direct juncture or connection between the enemy invader and the city wall would be a horrific scene. There’d be all kinds of dead bodies and blood and guts and body parts. If the battle had been raging for days or weeks eventually there would be all kinds of rotting and putrefying flesh. The smell would be hideous. Can you imagine the horror?
Now, in your imagination, take our walls and cities and dead bodies and replace them with your digestive wall and the rest of the body and dead, rotting cells and pus. You see where I’m going here folks. Of course symptomology will result. Blood sugar changes would be inevitable. Pancreatic and Liver function challenges likewise cannot help but result. And from there it’s a short hop to the adrenal glands which must provide emergency energy to fuel the chronic distress response. And then? Everything from diabetes to heart disease to depression, mental fog and emotional disorders. Everything, really, including the Emperor of All Maladies, cancer, which is the title of a new book on the subject. The study which focused ON INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE AND WAS published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences didn’t really reveal anything that hadn’t previously been suspected although it did highlight a specific molecular mechanism, connecting inflammatory chemistry to tumors. My point is who cares about the specifics of the molecular mechanism. You see, that what scientists do when they perform these investigations. They look for specific molecular markers so they can create drugs that manipulate the specific molecules. That’s the wrong approach. It creates the illusion, that whatever you’re doing you can keep on doing and we can sell you a drug at a ridiculous cost – and keep in mind the cost of these drugs both creating them and selling is borne by everybody in the form of higher insurance costs and other ways too- keep in mind if a patient is interacting with an inflammatory trigger and then takes a drug that masks the symptoms, but doesn’t do anything for the inflammation, we, all pay for that patient!
There is no need folks to find the specific molecule, we just need to do simple things, maybe not easy, but simple! Stop activating the immune/inflammation system. And where is the largest percentage of immune attack’? The digestive system. What we’re talking about here folks is the digestive link to all disease. Yes its inflammation and there is no disease that can possibly occur without inflammation. But the inflammation is not the problem. It is a sign of the problem It is secondary to the problem. And what’s more significant it is the body’s way of healing and resolving the problem. The inflammatory process should never be suppressed except as a last resort. There’s a reason why drugs like Vioxx and prednisone and even Motrin are associate d with significant side effect and toxicities including death. The inflammation is not the problem, and more studies that highlight specific molecules that are related to the inflammatory process aren’t needed to take care of the problem. All we need to do is begin to incorporate lifestyle changes. I talked to a good friend of mine yesterday. He’s a diabetic and has a history of kidney problems. Now keep in mind diabetics’ often have problems with their kidneys and have to take special care of these important organs. Blood sugar explosions, remember we talked about glycation in the past and how small blood vessels are especially prone to damage. Well the kidneys are made up of tiny blood vessels that are easily damaged by high blood sugar and my friend has all the signs of kidney problems. When I told him that he better thinking about changing his diet, well let’s just say that didn’t go over so well. But that’s really the choice we’re left with folks. Whether it’s diabetes or kidney disease or inflammation of any kind. The medical model that targets this molecule or that enzyme flat out doesn’t work. That’s why I say ambulatory medicine is an abject failure. The responsibility for health and wellness is not the doctors or the drugs companies. It’s ours.
So what’s the solution? Eat your veggies, among other strategies, and eat more protein, essential fatty acids and get yourself on a well-rounded supplement program that feature digestive support and blood sugar control. And, don’t forget to breathe deeply in for oxygen and to move lymph and exhale deeply out to move out acid and toxins. Is it simple? Very! Is it easy? Maybe not so but definitely worth it.
Some time ago, scientists from King’s College in London proudly proclaimed success at finding an obesity-causing gene. It’s linked to diabetes and functions as a “master switch” in controlling other genes that are involved in obesity and obesity related disease. While some may feel like congratulations are in order, others, including myself, are taking the approach that the obesity epidemic that is currently raging across the planet (100 million obese or overweight in America and 500 million worldwide) would be more appropriately treated as a biochemical breakdown due to poor lifestyle choices than as a genetic malady.
It can be instructive to recall that research requires funding and drug companies are always on the lookout for data that can support and lead to profitable pharmaceutical treatments. Scientific manipulation of DNA can provide a cornucopia of potential drug treatments and pharmaceutical companies love research that studies the genetic links to disease. Even in today’s unfavorable economic climate, there are lots of dollars available to researchers who are willing to participate in the genetics-causes-disease hypothesis.
Clearly, weight and obesity issues are significant health problems. However, while obesity-related diseases account for nearly 10% of medical spending in the United States, what are needed are not more pharmaceutical remedies. For most people, weight loss can be easily and simply accomplished through effective nutritional strategies.
The most important of these involves taking advantage of the glycemic index (GI), which measures how much carbohydrates affect blood sugar levels. Foods with a high GI value cause a surge of the hormone insulin and this is one of the most significant causes of weight gain issues. The so-called fat-insulin axis has been regarded as a key component of the body’s obesity-inducing mechanism for over a decade. In fact, it is now recognized that fat tissue actually secretes hormones that have an impact sugar metabolism.
Nutritional supplements that improve blood sugar control can and should also be included in a nutritional weight loss-based program. Chromium and vanadium are two such mineral supplements.
Chromium is a component of the glucose tolerance factor, which is a dietary agent that is involved in sugar control. Taking 200 mcg with every meal is probably a good idea.
Vanadium is an insulin-supporting mineral. Some research suggests it may even act to replace insulin in some cells. There is a a lot of research currently being conducted on vanadium’s use as a blood sugar control agent. I’d suggest at least 200-400 mcg a day.
The B-complex of vitamins, especially thiamin and niacin, play an important role in sugar metabolism. You can take as much of these as you want and err on the side of extra. The B’s are non-toxic and because of their important role in helping the body process all food material including sugars, you want to take these around mealtime.
Magnesium, the fourth most abundant mineral in the human body, helps improve blood sugar control. Take at least 1000 mg a day. The mineral zinc is involved in several hundred chemical reactions in the body. Some of these involve sugar control and 50 mg a day is a standard daily dose.
The genetic connection to disease is a red herring that serves to distract us from the real issues confronting us in the fattening of America (the title of an interesting book by health economist Eric Finkelstein). As always, good nutritional behaviors should be the first place we look to improve our health.
The obesity crisis we’re confronting can be corrected without genetics, medicine or academic posturing. It’s simply a question of the lifestyle choices we make. The correct application of dietary and nutritional strategies are a healthy, non-medical route to blood sugar control, and weight loss that can play an important non-pharmaceutical role in alleviating the obesity epidemic.
Did you know that HDL and LDL are NOT cholesterol? Did you know that there are no biochemical entities called good cholesterol or bad cholesterol? And, did you know that cholesterol is an incredibly important biological chemical, maybe the most important in the body and to this day, there has been no definitive link established between cholesterol in the blood and heart disease?
Given that there were 174 million prescriptions written for statin drugs in 2010 and tens of millions of Americans are currently on or have been on these cholesterol-lowering medications, it may be important to delve into some of these ideas a bit further. HDL and LDL are abbreviations for High Density Lipoprotein and Low Density Lipoprotein. They are transport molecules that carry cholesterol (among other substances) throughout the body. Although the cholesterol contained in both of these substances is exactly the same, HDL is said to be “good” because it delivers cholesterol to the liver and LDL is said to be “bad” because it carries cholesterol from the liver to the arteries where it is used as a precursor to dozens of critical biochemical substances including cortisol, Vitamin D, DHEA, pregnenolone, progesterone, estrogen, testosterone and many other reproductive hormones.
It also serves as a parent compound to numerous skin moisture factors. And it is a critical component of the membrane that surrounds each of the estimated 100 trillion cells in the body.
Given the utter lack of evidence that cholesterol in its non-oxidized form has any causal link to heart disease and that the guidelines for supposedly healthy blood cholesterol levels are determined to a large degree by the drug companies that make billions of dollars by selling cholesterol-lowering medications, it may make sense to think long and hard before filling or refilling your next statin drug prescription.
One of the most important supportive digestive aids you can ever take is betaine HCL, which while well recognized as a source HCl (hydrochloride) for improving the food dissolving acid activity of digestive juices is less recognized as a source of betaine, which is one of the least appreciated supplemental substances. The technical name for betaine is trimethylglycine (TMG) and there are lots of neat things about it that don’t get a lot of attention.
Beets via Wikimedia Commons
As implied by its nomenclature trimethyl glycine is a two section molecule, one part called “trimethyl” the other is called “glycine”. The glycine component is one of the most important of all the amino acids. It’s not considered to be essential, your body can make a small amount, but when you’re taking supplemental betaine HCL you’re going to beef up your body’s glycine stores. Glycine is key element of the of the detoxification machinery. By adding a little TMG to your daily supplement program you’re going to be helping your liver eliminate and process of toxins. You want more detox benefits? Well, glycine is one third of the body’s most important detox substance, the tripeptide glutathione.
Glycine is also important for the digestive system too. It’s a component of bile so it’s got a role to play in fat absorption too and it helps improve stomach acid secretion. Glycine is one of the active ingredients in bone soup, and it’s one of the reasons I’m always talking about using bone soup for improving the health of the digestive tract.
Glycine also has some important relaxation properties. It can be used as anti-stress supplement, it’s been used to minimize the impact seizure disorders, it’s can balance out the effect of excitotoxins, and it can help balance out the stress promoting properties of estrogen. It’s brain- calming properties are why scientist call glycine an inhibitory neurotransmitter, it’s very similar to another relaxing brain chemical GAMA, and both chemicals can be used as sleep aids.
Muscle building? Glycine can help you make creatine, which is not only important for athletes and body builders, but also a supports the vitality and vigor for the most important of muscles the heart. Older folks and cardiac patients take note!
And that’s not all! Glycine is a keep component of bone building collagen, the most important and multi-functional protein in the body. Collagen is the key chemical entity in bone and it’s the most important protein in the skin too. Every year American women spend billions of dollars for anti-aging cosmetics, but no matter how fancy or expensive you’re skin care product is you aren’t going to making any collagen or doing your skin or wrinkles any good if you don’t have enough glycine. But there’s even more! Glycine via upregulation of collagen can help strengthen the circulatory system, veins and arteries which like bone and skin contain large amounts of the versatile protein.
Glycine can help with sugar metabolism too, and it can be an important biochemical for diabetics; to counteract insulin resistance, which is one of the most significant of all health challenges. In an article that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2002, it was shown that glycine can potentize insulin allowing for lower section and it can facilitate glucose removal from the blood. An added benefit to using to using the ultimate enzymes after meals
Can you see I love betaine HCl so much? And we haven’t even talked about the trimethyl part yet!
Trimethyl means three methyls and methyls are involved in one of the most important of all biochemical reactions, something called methylation. Methylation is a keep chemical for genetic health. Methyls basically activate DNA and in fact it is the reason why pregnant women are pretty much universally told to use folic acid to prevent birth defects. Folic acid is a key methylating supplement. Methyls or methyl groups as they’re called by biochemists can have important anti-cancer properties and methylation plays a role in activating numerous biochemical processes, especially for the heart and liver and brain.
TMG can help lower heart toxic homocysteine and it can help the body make a key brain chemical called DMAE which is important for learning and memory. If you want to improve brain health or you have a parent or grandparent dealing with Alzheimer’s disease the trimethyl glycine via its conversion to DMAE and choline can be very, very helpful.
Detox, relaxation, muscle building, brain boosting and heart health, cancer fighting too; all of these benefits are a bonus and this exemplifies one of the coolest about nutritional supplementation. When you supplement with betaine HCL for your digestive system, you’ll improve liver functioning, build muscle, reduce your risk of heart disease, garner protection from excitotoxins and get a good night’s sleep to boot. You take a drug and you have to deal with toxic side effects and you take a nutritional supplement and you get so many extra beneficial effects it’s hard to keep track of them all. Beneficial effects that have nothing to do with your original reason for taking the supplement in the first place!
You’ll find some betaine HCL in many quality digestive enzyme supplements, usually around a100mg or so. Or, you can just straight betaine HCl, which is available for many suppliers as 600 to 650 mg capsules. It’s best taken with meals and a little apple cider vinegar to enhance its stomach acid supporting properties.
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Truth Nourishment: Extracts, Supplements, Shakes and more
Truth Nourishment: Extracts, Supplements, Shakes and more Products to Benefit Health. Nourish: noun
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Pharmacist Ben Fuchs and Alex discuss breast cancer, and Angelina Jolie’s recent double mastectomy. The brilliant German biochemist Dr. Otto Warburg discovered that deficiencies in oxygen make cells cancerous. (See: What Really Causes Cancer) In this video interview, Alex makes the observation “If you have brain cancer, why not have your brain removed?” Predisposed to ovarian cancer? Take out your ovaries! Predisposed to breast cancer? Let’s hack them off. When you have surgery to remove your breasts, your body goes through the same trauma as if a wild animal were eating you. This whole thing with Angelina Jolie is like a poster child for the utter insanity of the modern medical model. The BRCA gene mutations occur secondary to maternal malnutrition, when the baby is in the womb. A double mastectomy is one of the most severe and traumatic surgical procedures a human being can undergo, all in response to a mutation in her genetics that is secondary to lifestyle issues. Epigenetics is all about nutritional and lifestyle factors that are transcendent to genetics. It’s the environment that the genes are in! Watch the video for more information and details.
Ben Fuchs’ “8 Chapters of Good Nutrition” presentation on video is full of pearls of wisdom. Pharmacist Ben is a well informed and dynamic speaker. He teaches nutrition in a way anyone can comprehend. Easy going, and easy to listen to, Ben can hold your attention while dishing out eye opening insights into foods for the human body and soul. It’s worth tearing yourself away from the daily duties for a few minutes. It might improve the quality of your life while adding a few years to it as well. What are the 8 Chapters? 1) Proteins 2) Fats 3) Carbohydrates 4) Fiber 5) Water 6) Vitamins 7) Minerals 8) Trace Nutrients The human body is amazing. We have the potential to be strong and healthy, given the knowledge and raw materials to do so. Ben has been doing a lot of the hard work for us, and packaged it for your consumption. Lot’s of invaluable information at no cost. Topics & Notes Don’t get your health and nutrition information form mainstream sources. Get it from alternative information sources like the Townsend Letters. Pharmaceutical drugs are a leading cause of death. Ben and the Blistex lab. The benefits of supplements for skin. The skin is your digestive system inside out. The dumbest thing you can use for dry skin is moisturizer. The day Ben started his own pharmacy. A nutritional compounding pharmacy that specializes in skin. The code of life. Spiritual, mental, emotional, physical. 125,000,000 miles of DNA in your body. Protein. From the Greek, “of primary importance”. The gears that run the machinery. Fatty cucumbers and oil on your salad. The medicine is bitter. Eat the peel. Look for pigments. Beer and your hair. If you are missing these 2 minerals, you are now deficient in 500 different chemical reactions in your body. Some of the other topics covered are: Whey protein, Eggs, Essential Fatty Acids, Fat, Hormones, Master Hormones, Receptors, Thyroid, Diabetes, Hot Flashes, Menopausal Symptoms, Arthritis, Prednisone, Cholesterol, Cravings, Carbohydrates, Sugars, Fiber, Flax Xenoestrogens, Water, Electricity, B Vitamins, Vitamin D, Sun, Zinc, Copper, Magnesium, Iodine, and Breast Cancer. Curious yet? Book Description Product Description Get the skinny on fats! “Fats that Heal-Fats that Kill” brings you the most current research on common and less well-known oils with therapeutic potential, including flaxseed oil, olive oil, fish oil, evening primrose oil and more. Author Udo Erasmus also exposes the manufacturing processes that turn healing fats into killing fats, explains the effects of these damaging fats on human health, and furnishes information that enables you to choose health-promoting oils. 456 pages. Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill: The Complete Guide to Fats, Oils, Cholesterol and Human Health
Pharmacist Ben Fuchs interviews Dr. Joel Wallach in this 5 part series, covering topics about Amazing Discoveries In Health, Essential Life Minerals, Statin Drugs, & The Best Diet. In the first video you will get to know a little about both Doctor Wallach and Pharmacist Ben and how they became involved in health and nutrition. Ben mentions getting a tape in the mail titled “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”, in the 1990s! In part 2, they go into epigenetics[1], how it relates to nutrition and genetics. Thiamine[2] deficiency and the heart. Part 3 covers one of Ben’s favorite minerals, selenium. How selenium is involved with the thyroid, and diabetes. All the different benefits of this incredible mineral. They talk about many related topics from AIDS to MS, to the common cold. Dr. Wallach shares enlightening information about Colloidal[3] Minerals. Dr. Wallach discusses new information about Statin drugs in part 4. He also talks about the incredible edible egg. Is it the perfect food? What about grains and gluten? Watch part 4 and learn the answer to these questions. The US spends more money for healthcare than any other nation, yet has the most obesity. What’s going on? Pharmacist Ben and Dr. Wallach discuss diet and nutrition in Part 5 of this 5 part series. Pharmacist and Doctor Speak Out Part I of V Doctor’s Amazing Discoveries In Health Part II of V Doctor Shares The Secret of Essential Life Minerals Part III of V Doctor Unloads on Statin Drugs Part IV of V Doctor and Pharmacist Break Down The Best Diet Part V of V Dr. Joel Wallach B.S., DVM, N.D. Dr. Joel Wallach is sometimes referred to as the godfather of liquid supplementation. He is considered a true pioneer in the fields of biomedical research and nutrition. Doctor Wallach’s 40 years of work in the field of Veterinary Medicine forms the basis to his deep understanding of nutritional health. Some of his ground breaking research includes the discovery of the effects of selenium on cancer and the essential fatty acids on heart disease. He has written more than 70 scientific papers and six books including the famous textbook, “Diseases of Exotic Animals”, still being used today by leading veterinary schools, and can also be found on display at the Smithsonian Institute where it is stored as a national treasure. Following an extensive career in Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Wallach went on to become a primary care physician of Naturopathic medicine. He has worked tirelessly as an advocate of the dietary supplement industry and has successfully lobbied the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on a number of occasions. Dr. Wallach’s forward-thinking ideas on nutritional health are clearly spelled out in his most famous lecture, “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” which currently has more than 150 million copies worldwide, making it the most widely distributed health lecture on record. [1] Epigenetics There exist several definitions of epigenetics, and as a result, there are disagreements as to what epigenetics should mean. Epigenetics (as in “epigenetic landscape”) was coined by C. H. Waddington in 1942 as a portmanteau of the words epigenesis and genetics. Epigenesis is an old word that has more recently been used (see preformationism for historical background) to describe the differentiation of cells from their initial totipotent state in embryonic development. When Waddington coined the term the physical nature of genes and their role in heredity was not known; he used it as a conceptual model of how genes might interact with their surroundings to produce a phenotype. Robin Holliday defined epigenetics as “the study of the mechanisms of temporal and spatial control of gene activity during the development of complex organisms.” Thus epigenetic can be used to describe anything other than DNA sequence that influences the development of an organism. The more recent usage of the word in science has a stricter definition. It is, as defined by Arthur Riggs and colleagues, “the study of mitotically and/or meiotically heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence.” The Greek prefix epi- in epigenetics implies features that are “on top of” or “in addition to” genetics; thus epigenetic traits exist on top of or in addition to the traditional molecular basis for inheritance. The term “epigenetics”, however, has been used to describe processes which haven’t been demonstrated to be heritable such as histone modification, there are therefore attempts to redefine it in broader terms that would avoid the constraints of requiring heritability. For example, Adrian Bird defined epigenetics as “the structural adaptation of chromosomal regions so as to register, signal or perpetuate altered activity states.” This definition would be inclusive of transient modifications associated with DNA repair or cell-cycle phases as well as stable changes maintained across multiple cell generations, but exclude others such as templating of membrane architecture and prions unless they impinge on chromosome function. Such redefinitions however are not universally accepted and are still subject to dispute. In 2008, a consensus definition of the epigenetic trait, “stably heritable phenotype resulting from changes in a chromosome without alterations in the DNA sequence”, was made at a Cold Spring Harbor meeting. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [2] Thiamine Thiamine or thiamin or vitamin B1 (pron.: /ˈθaɪ.əmɨn/ THY-ə-min), named as the “thio-vitamine” (“sulfur-containing vitamin”) is a water-soluble vitamin of the B complex. First named aneurin for the detrimental neurological effects if not present in the diet, it was eventually assigned the generic descriptor name vitamin B1. Its phosphate derivatives are involved in many cellular processes. The best-characterized form is thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP), a coenzyme in the catabolism of sugars and amino acids. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [3] Colloidal A colloid is a particle substance that retains its identity and remains in liquid suspension. Colloids are very small in size and therefore easily absorbed by the cells of the body. Plants convert metallic minerals into this form. Dr. Carey Reams, a well known biophysicist and biochemist, discovered that colloids can get so small they can go […]