Month: August 2018

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How Gut Bacteria Protect The Brain

Brain_Bacteria
The blood-brain barrier (BBB) acts as a gatekeeper, protecting the brain from various toxic elements while allowing the entrance of various life-sustaining nutrients like water, glucose, amino acids, and gases that are essential for the function of the brain. It is formed by cells that line the capillaries and are connected by what are called “tight junctions,” quite similar to the tight junctions in the cells that line the gut.
Any number of brain disorders is associated with breakdown of the BBB including infections, and even cancer. And as such, scientists have aggressively studied the BBB to determine specifically what leads to increased permeability and, perhaps most importantly, what can be done to reduce permeability in other words what can be done to reestablish the barrier, and protect the brain.
In a stunning new research report appearing in the journal, Science Translational Medicine, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied the blood brain barrier in mice that were “germ free.” That means, that the mice used in this experiment did not have bacteria living within their intestines. Using highly sophisticated brain scanning technology, the researchers demonstrated that the blood brain barrier in these mice was significantly compromised, basically a situation of what we may call a “leaky brain,” and this leakiness of the barrier persisted into adulthood.
Even more compelling was their finding that when these mice received a fecal transfer, meaning that their intestines were inoculated with the fecal material including bacteria from a healthy mouse, the permeability of the blood brain barrier was markedly improved.
First, this research is groundbreaking. The implications of being able to manipulate the health of the blood brain barrier by making changes in the gut bacteria offers up for the first time a powerful therapeutic tool that may have incredibly wide application in brain disorders. Professor Sven Pettersson, the principal investigator involved in the study was quoted in Science Daily as stating:
Given that the microbiome composition and diversity change over time, it is tempting to speculate that the blood-brain barrier integrity also may fluctuate depending on the microbiome. This knowledge may be used to develop new ways for opening the blood-brain-barrier to increase the efficacy of the brain cancer drugs and for the design of treatment regimes that strengthens the integrity of the blood-brain barrier.
Second, this research adds further evidence to the notion that a wide array of human health issues may well depend upon the diversity and complexity of the array of bacteria that lives within the gut, known as our microbiome.
It is very humbling to consider that what seems to be emerging as our most powerful leverage point in terms of treating a variety of disease states may well rest in the hands of the hundred trillion bacteria that consider our bodies to be their home. These are the fundamentals of a new horizon in medicine that are explored in my new book, Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life.
Finally, in closing, let me state that I fully appreciate that conceptually, my blog postings are clearly becoming a bit more complex in terms of the subjects I am exploring. My mission is to do my very best to make this information understandable, and bring to your attention the health-related relevance of these new scientific discoveries.
https://www.drperlmutter.com/gut-bacteria-protects-brain/
The above data further reinforces the validity of me including probiotics in my top bars and powders. If you are not taking my powder or eating my bars regularly (which I would obviously recommend as they contain a LOT more ingredients beneficial to the body than just he probiotics) you may purchase the probiotics I use at the bottom of this page: http://www.healthelicious.com.au/PriceList.html

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Cancer Loves Sugar

PET_CT_Scan
If you are not 100% convinced that consuming sweet, sugary (simple carbohydrate) foods is a bad idea for anyone with cancer (FYI-we ALL have cancer in our body) take one look at this. As far as I’m concerned there is absolutely no better image to really drive this point home and make it stick in your mind.

What you are looking at is a PET/CT scan, the best radiology imaging tool available for helping us find cancer hiding in the body. I order these almost every day in my practice.

The reason I show this to you is that PET/CT’s use sugar (“18F-fluorodeoxyglucose” or “18F-FDG”, a radiolabelled glucose molecule) to highlight the location of cancer in the body.

If there was anything better than sugar to help us identify hidden cancer in the body we would be using it.

How PET/CTs Work:
The PET/CT study involves having the patient fast before their scan and then get an injection of this radioactive sugar. They are then asked to sit in the waiting room for about an hour, giving time for the sugar to circulate around the body and be gobbled up by hungry cancer cells. Sugar is the #1 food cancer cells prefer to eat, so they load up on this 18-FDG like a kid in a candy store. Then the patient is brought back to the PET/CT scanner and are scanned from head to toe. Anywhere the sugar accumulates (i.e. cancerous tumors) shows up like a lightbulb on the scan. This is what you are looking at in the rotating image above.

If You Didn’t Know How Bad Sugar Was Before You Aren’t Alone:
Unfortunately, most conventionally trained medical doctors receive very little if any nutritional education in medical school or in resident training. As a result, it is hardly a surprise that the only snacks and drinks available to patients in most oncology offices are chips, crackers, surgery drinks and juices. To make matters worse, the ‘nutritional’ supplement drink recommended most often for cancer patients is loaded with sugar.

https://integrativeoncology-essentials.com/2014/01/cancer-loves-sugar/

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Reduce The Gap

Again this week I was thinking about how to more effectively commnicate the benefits of spectacular nutrition so more of my readers can enjoy better energy levels, mental clarity and great health for longer. I know from the feedback I receive how much better many people do on my products.
I looked at the fact that I have for myself an ideal scene at which I work diligently to obtain. This is as follows:
Physical: To have enough energy, flexibility, strength and agility to be physically capable of doing what I need and want to do all throughout the day
Mental: To wake alert and refreshed and to have the mental focus and clarity to communicate effectively, set goals, solve problems, learn and teach
The distance between where I am – my existing scene – and the above stated ideal scene is my “gap”. And I work to “reduce the gap”.
Then I got to thinking about where others are at. How I could help you “reduce the gap” betweem where you are and where you want to be?
Thinking this over I realised that there is a scale of existing scenes. It has inumerable points on it but there are broad groupings into one of which each of us falls:
1. Optimum health – flourishing, powerfully good health
2. Below optimum health – surviving OK, not sick but not flourishing
3. Unwell – sick (colds, flu, infections etc.)
4. Disease management – chronic ill health (diabetes, high blood pressure, autoimmune diseases etc.)
5. Palliative care – dying
6. Dead
If you are reading this you are at one of the top 5 levels and because as we go through life most of us progress from Optimum health down through these levels they could also be called stages.
The ideal is obviously to spend as big a percentage as possible of our life in stage 1 then as much time as possible in stage 2 after which as little a percentage of our life as possible in stages 3 and below before we say goodbye.
After much reading, from observing the state of this civilisation and from talking to thousands of people, my conclusion is that the only way to accomplish the ideal is to continually and very actively, even aggressively work at either maintaining oneself at Optimum or closing the gap between where you are and Optimum. I observe that most people do not do this.
Unless one continually and very actively works at it, the multitude of hidden or unobtrusive survival suppressors wreak their progressively destructive havoc on the mind and body which takes one down the levels.
As you will read in the articles below, from the simplest, sweetest delight, suger, to the toxins in vaccines and in the poisons sprayed on our foods, survival suppressors are insidious, pervasive and almost ubiquitous.
So unless you consciously, deliberately and with malice aforethought do all you can to increase your nourishment and minimise your toxic intake and reduce the burden of your body’s existing toxic load, you will spend more time than you want to being sick and unhappy. Of course as I detail in my book, there are more than a dozen factors involved in optimum health, the above two, nutrition and toxins, are but two of them.
How Stem Cells Help Reduce The Gap
Now, to the punchline. I was sharing some data on Stem Cells with someone recently. How they are vital in replacing damaged cells and maintaining health and our body makes less of them as we age. She asked if I had a specific formula that would increase the release of stem cells from the bones. From past reading I had identified that my products had seven ingredients that boosted the release of stell cells but I wondered if there were more I could combine into a specific Stem Cell boosting version of NutriBlast. So I went reading.
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Here is some data I found here: https://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2017/3/Nutrients-Boost-Stem-Cell-Function/Page-01
In one study, a supplement containing green tea, astragalus, goji berry extracts, ellagic acid, and vitamin D fermented with a probiotic Lactobacillus species, was given to human volunteers twice daily for 2 weeks. Within a day, and continuing for the rest of the study, researchers detected significant increases in circulating bone marrow stem cells. They believe this was caused by stimulation of the body’s natural repair mechanisms (stem cells) by the nutraceutical combination.
And from: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100407192446.htm
A nutritional supplement could stimulate the production of stem cells integral for repairing the body. Research published in BioMed Central’s open access Journal of Translational Medicine suggests that a commercially-available supplement can increase the blood circulation of hematopoietic stem cells, which can give rise to all blood cells, and endothelial progenitor cells, which repair damage to blood vessels.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating profound mobilization effect with possible clinical significance by a food supplement-based approach,” say the authors.
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So in an attempt to create a formula that was as effective as possible in increasing circulating stem cells what I did was to create a new NutriBlast that has 36 ingredients in it. “Why 36?” I can hear someone ask, “Other stem cell boosting formulations on the market have only 3-5 ingredients in them.”
Well, those who have been on my mailing list for a while or have read much of my site or my book recall that nature is very synergistic. Many things have their effectiveness remarkably increased by taking them together. For instance chicken and broccoli both have anti-cancer properties but when eaten toether you get 13 times the anti-cancer benefit of eating each individually.
Similarly I have read that the cordyceps muchroom and blue green algae work together to boost the release of stem cells. So I included the ingredients in the formula you see on the ingredients tab.
Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)
Astragalus*
Blackberry
Blueberry
Broccoli*
Chaga Mushroom Powder
Chlorella*
Colostrum
Cordyceps Mushroom Powder
Dulse*
Goji Berry
Gotu Kola
Green Tea Ext
He Shou Wu*
Irish Moss
Kelp*
Klamath Blue Green Algae*
Lion’s Mane Mushroom Powder
Maitake Mushroom Powder
Mesima Sang-huang Mushroom Powder
Modifilan
Nigella*
Pomegranate
Raspberry
Reishi Mushroom Powder
Shiitake Mushroom Powder
Spirulina*
Turkey Tail Mushroom Powder
Turmeric
Wakame
Probiotics*
Fulvic Minerals*
Ginger
Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol)
Pepper-Black*
Vitamin B3 (Niacin)
If you would like to “reduce the gap” between where you are and optimal health and would like to try the new NutriBlast Stem Cell blend, message me or pick up the phone (02 9552 3311) now I am back in town.
I have yet to make a batch so it would be useful to know what size you would prefer. The average cost of ingredients is much higher for this formula so the cost per tub will be as follows:
Size Bulk Retail
200 gram tub $56 $90
400 gram tub $100 $160