Digestive problems are probably the commonest problems I see in my practice. In addition, many of the patients who presented to me with other symptoms, from fatigue to allergies to arthritis, often the primary issue is faulty digestion. Most of these patients didn’t even realize that they had a faulty digestive system. They had become used to having mild indigestion or bloating or gas and thought it was a normal part of aging.

I believe that digestion is one of the most important functions for health. A well functioning digestive system will energize you, help your immune system and generally prevent all sorts of diseases. It will make you feel more vital.

So in almost all of my patients I always look to see if the digestive system is working well. It makes sense, because if you’re not digesting and or absorbing the food you eat, your nutritional needs will not be met.

I see many patients who are taking hundreds of dollars worth of supplements, which probably aren’t being absorbed properly because of a poorly functioning digestive system.

In Chinese medicine as well, the digestive function or the spleen function or earth element is at the center. When this is off balance, the whole system becomes imbalanced.

Here are 10 simple tips to help with digestion:

1. Chew your food well.
2. Sit down and relax while you eat. Eating in a rush and under stress is not healthy and may lead to digestive problems.
3. Make eating a mindful experience
4. Eat natural, whole, unrefined, unprocessed, high quality foods.
5. Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you are 80% full.
6. Eat organic and preferably local foods whenever possible.
7. Try resting your digestive system for at least 10 hours at night. eg if you eat breakfast a 7:00 am, try not to eat anything after 9:00 PM.
8. Try doing an Elimination diet for 1-2 weeks from time to time, where you eliminate all refined sugar, processed foods, alcohol, gluten and dairy. Notice how your digestion usually improves.
9. If possible have something bitter before your meal, it stimulates your body’s own digestive juices and therefore helps digestion. Eg arugula or dandelion root.
10. Try taking a good probiotic formula

Here is a great lecture from UCSF’s Robert Lustig who specializes in child obesity. He basically discusses/shows how fructose is just like alcohol with its toxicity. It is long but a brilliant explanation of why sugar and high fructose corn syrup is such a problem!

Despite the worldwide economic recession, one type of business seems to be profiting: candy shops.Most of us have our comfort foods. It may be chicken soup, a slice of pizza, or a chunk of chocolate. A recent article in the New York Times reported that business in candy shops is booming. Business is especially good for inexpensive sweets, such as Hershey Kisses, compared with more expensive indulgences.

Interestingly, this sweet-tooth trend coincides with another trend, a shift from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) back to old-fashion sugar (sucrose). Beginning in the 1980s, HFCS became the sweetener of choice in processed foods, soft drinks, and candies. It was sweeter than sucrose, had a longer shelf life, and less expensive. Consumption of HFCS skyrocketed, while sucrose consumption plummeted – though the average American’s consumption of all added sugars has continued to climb to about 160 pounds per year.

Sucrose is a chemical compound, whereas HFCS is a blend of fructose and glucose, which leads to different metabolic effects. HFCS does a better job of raising triglycerides (a marker of diabetes and heart disease risk), and is more likely to lead to weight gain (in comparison to sucrose).

A lot of people (including me) complained about HFCS, and the giant junk food companies apparently listened. They’ve started returning to sucrose as a sweetener in frozen dinners, tomato sauces, salad dressings, and other products. With incredible audacity, companies are now describing sucrose as natural and healthy.

Natural and healthy? While HFCS does appear worse than sucrose, that doesn’t make sucrose a healthy alternative. The ideal dietary solution is to emphasis fresh foods and to avoid packaged foods, especially those with any type of added sugar.

The questions surrounding supplements continue to grow and though knowledge and understanding have also grown, pharmaceutical companies continue to hamper this quest by spending more and more money on their own studies and funding lobbyists that try to hamper our pursuit of a more natural approach to health. There is no doubt that the drugs we have developed are saving lives but they could save many more lives if they were part of an integrative lifestyle combining a healthy balance of diet, exercise, necessary supplements, and when these fail, pharmaceutical medications.

In integrative medicine we speak about the “core” nutrients. These are the vitamins and minerals that we all require. I generally start people on a multivitamin and mineral complex first. There are many out there so selecting an appropriate combination is not that difficult. Some of the new age-targeted formulas combine most of a person’s needs into one formula for ease of use. So a women’s formula for women over forty will include more calcium, magnesium and trace minerals than a formula designed for younger women. This simplifies what a person needs and often taking fewer products increases compliance. The next core nutrient necessary is a good healthy source of essential fatty acids, also known as EFA’s. EFA’s are essential because we cannot make them. We need to ingest them so that our bodies can then use them as raw materials for other things we do make. These include cholesterol (much needed), hormones, prostaglandins (messengers that help us control all sorts of processes in the body, including inflammation). There are so many problems with the environment and this includes our water. Eating fish that is not contaminated has become a problem and there is nothing in the literature that leads me to believe that things will change any time soon. Keeping your “ toxic burden “ low is the only thing we can control in trying to prevent cancer and other autoimmune diseases that seem to be growing in numbers in spite of all the new “ scientific advances”. In order to get the omega 3’s that you can get from one or two capsules of oil a day, you would probably need to eat 4 to 6 servings of fish a week, and thereby risk exposure to elevated levels of mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and lead. If you ate farm raised fish, than you increase your risk of exposure to dioxins ( carcinogens ) and PCB’s ( also carcinogens ). The amount of fish oil a person should take also varies according to need.

The next core nutrient is a probiotic. This is what many people commonly refer to as “acidophilus” but in reality is a whole family of beneficial bacteria that is comprised of many different “friendly” bacteria that thrive throughout the gastrointestinal tract, starting in the mouth and ending in the rectum. For women without any serious or chronic gut issues, eating a good organic yogurt containing live cultures of friendly bacteria, on a regular basis, is adequate.

For women, the big question today is about calcium. While we have all become conscious of our need for calcium many people are unaware of the need for magnesium, adequate amounts of vitamin D and the need for other trace minerals that aid in absorption. The amount of minerals that are needed varies from person to person. Women after the age of forty should begin to get bone density studies done to assess their need for minerals. The average woman needs 1000mg of calcium a day, 400 to 800mg of magnesium a day, and at least 2000 units of vitamin D3 but we are finding more cases of severe deficiency and under medical guidance we use as much as 10,000 units a day. If the bone density test, also called a Dexa scan, shows osteopenia or the beginnings of osteoporosis than I increase the calcium to 1200 to 1500mgs a day and increase the magnesium accordingly. I often request that patients have their vitamin D levels measured because many people supplementing with calcium and magnesium are still showing signs of progression of their bone density issues. In our search for answers why, the question of the right amount of D has come to be a new insight into possible failures of other therapies. In osteopenia and osteoarthritis, weight resistance exercise is essential for stopping progression.

There are a million supplements on the market and I encourage all women to try and get as much of their nutrition from food and then target the remaining imbalances with the supplements that are necessary. I encourage all my patients to eat as organically as possible. We need to reduce our exposure to chemicals. As long term studies are limited, I assume that all chemicals are bad and try to reduce them every where possible. Animal protein like chicken, fish, beef, and pork, as well as all dairy carry a heavy burden of toxins with them. First they contain the herbicides and pesticides from the foods they are grown on, and second they are usually given hormones and antibiotics to maximize the yield. All of these are passed to us when we eat these things. I implore all people to buy as much of their foods organically but animal derived products especially. With ovarian and breast cancer on the rise, you have to question the “estrogen dominant “ nature of society due mostly from the consumption of xeno estrogens and phyto estrogens from the food supply. With vegetables and fruits I take an aggressive approach to washing them before I consume them.

As I discussed in my earlier post, I do not believe there is a good reason to drink milk. This is why I think it could be detrimental to your health.

1. Dairy cows are fed the wrong food, which not only changes the nature of the milk but causes health problems for the cows. They are fed soy, corn, cottonseed meal or other commercial feeds, which contain all sorts of things including chicken manure and citrus peel cake, laced with pesticides. These foods are not appropriate for cows, who are ruminants and should be feeding on green grass in the spring, summer and fall and on green feed, silage, hay and root vegetables in the winter. Unfortunately most dairy cows are kept in confinement, given antibiotics and hormones, and never see green grass their entire lives.
2. Then the milk is pasteurized. Pasteurization is the process of heating a liquid to a high enough temperature to kill certain bacteria and disable certain enzymes. It destroys enzymes, vitamins, denatures fragile milk proteins, kills beneficial bacteria and promotes pathogens. Even calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity. Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods. But times have changed and modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection.
3. In some cases, milk is ultra-pasteurized to get rid of heat-resistant bacteria and give it a longer shelf life. Ultra high temperature pasteurization is a process that takes milk from a chilled temperature to above the boiling point in less than two seconds. This process is utilized for the boxed milks that can be kept at room temperature
4. To make matters worse, milk is homogenized. Homogenization is a process that breaks down butterfat globules so they do not rise to the top. Homogenized milk is harder to digest, so proteins that would normally be digested in the stomach are not broken down and instead are absorbed into the bloodstream. Often the body reacts to these “foreign proteins” by triggering the immune system, causing inflammation. It can even trigger auto-immune problems. Homogenized milk has also been linked to heart disease probably because of the fat globules that are dispersed by the process.
5. In addition to being chemically altered into something that hard to digest and causes problems, today’s milk usually contains steroids, antibiotics, pesticides from treated grains, bacteria from infected animals, and genetically engineered growth hormones.

So if you do drink milk, I suggest you look for pure raw milk from grass fed cows (which is hard to get in most states unfortunately), because it may not be the milk per se, but how milk is chemically altered that causes the problems.