Prescription Alternatives Read online

  Sugar Is Fat, Too

  As far as calories are concerned, sugar that isn’t burned off right away might as well be fat. All sugars are turned into fat when they can’t be used by your body fairly quickly. That’s why it’s wise to turn to fresh, raw vegetables when you want to munch on something. Vegetables are nature’s perfect source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Next time you get a snack attack, try some carrot or celery sticks. Also try jicama (hick-ah-ma) sticks, a starchy Mexican vegetable that looks like a big potato and has a mild, sweet taste. When you cook vegetables, lightly steam or stir-fry them. If you’ve been used to boiled vegetables, you’ll be amazed at how tasty and flavorful lightly cooked vegetables are.

  If you have a sweet tooth, switch to fruit. Grapes are especially sweet. Apples and pears make good afternoon snacks. Although the sugars in fruit are still sugar, they aren’t absorbed as quickly as refined white sugar, and unlike white sugar, a piece of fruit has vitamins, minerals, and fiber. (If you have a craving for chocolate, you may be deficient in magnesium—try munching on some figs or almonds.) Don’t overdo it with the dried fruit; when the water is removed, fruit becomes a highly concentrated source of sugar and calories. When you get an afternoon or evening craving for fat, try a handful of unsalted nuts such as almonds or cashews. If you have problems with fluctuating blood sugar, be sure to eat some protein with your snack. Try chicken or turkey jerky (without too many preservatives), yogurt, cottage cheese, nuts, and seeds.

  Make Your Carbs Complex

  Complex carbohydrates such as whole grains, brown rice, and legumes (beans) are metabolized much more slowly in your body than refined carbohydrates.

  When you eat refined grains such as white flour and white rice, your body treats them as if they’re sugar. If you don’t burn them off right away, they directly become fat. When you eat complex carbohydrates, your body tends to use them for energy more slowly, so you have a better chance of burning them off. Complex carbohydrates are also much higher in vitamins and minerals. The refining process strips the fiber and nutrients out of grains.

  And watch out: whole wheat on a label does not necessarily mean “whole grain.” Many whole wheat breads are not much better for you than the infamous Wonder Bread. It’s easy to find whole-grain cereals in the supermarket these days—just beware of high levels of salt and sugar.

  Potatoes and the new types of whole-wheat pasta and Jerusalem artichoke pasta count as complex carbohydrates, but they tend to be broken down into sugars faster than the others mentioned, so eat them in moderation.

  Double the Fiber and Absorb Fewer Fats

  You’ve probably heard a lot about how good fiber is for you. It’s true! The American Cancer Society recommends 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day, yet most people get only half of that. Aim for 30 to 35 grams, or approximately 1 ounce of fiber every day, and here’s why: fiber speeds up the movement of food through the intestinal tract. The faster the food moves through, the less time there is for your body to absorb fats. Fiber also acts as a whisk broom to sweep the small intestine clean, keeping it free of infection. In the large colon, it absorbs the toxins being removed from the body.

  The good news is that increasing your fiber is a piece of cake (so to speak). If you’re eating whole foods and plenty of fresh vegetables, it’s easy to get your fiber every day. If you’re over the age of 50 and need a little help, you can add anywhere from 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of psyllium seed or psyllium husk (pronounced silly-um) to your diet daily. You know this fiber as Metamucil, but unfortunately Metamucil contains sugar or artificial sweeteners and food colorings. Pure psyllium is better for you and it’s cheaper. You can buy psyllium in health food stores.

  Psyllium is easy to use. Just stir it into juice or water, and drink immediately. Then drink a glass of water immediately afterward. Start with a teaspoon of psyllium, and if necessary work your way up gradually to a tablespoon.

  If you have a bowel disorder, check with a doctor first before using psyllium or increasing the fiber in your diet. It’s important to add fiber to your diet gradually if you’re not used to it, or you could experience gas and bloating.

  Step 5: Get Acquainted with Natural Healing Remedies

  Over the past few decades, it has become clear that prescription and over-the-counter drugs are not the magic bullets we thought they would be. It’s true that these drugs have saved many lives, but it’s also increasingly true that they are taking a great many lives and ruining even more with debilitating side effects. One quarter of the elderly population, or 6.6 million people, are taking a drug they should never take. There’s a good chance that the side effects of prescription drugs cause many so-called symptoms of aging such as fatigue, forgetfulness, and impotence. Take as few prescription drugs as possible, and learn to treat common problems such as indigestion and allergies with common sense and practical, natural alternatives.

  You can avoid the vast majority of prescription drugs simply by following the Six Core Principles for Optimal Health. When you do need to treat a cold, allergy, illness, or symptom of aging, you can nearly always use simple, effective natural remedies and herbs. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, prostate troubles, meno-pause symptoms, allergies, arthritis, indigestion, and many of our other common illnesses can all be avoided with a healthy lifestyle or treated very safely and effectively with natural remedies.

  Make a list of all the over-the-counter and prescription medications you’re taking. Next to each one, write down the reason you’re taking it. Next time you visit your physician, bring the list with you and ask your physician to circle the medications that are really necessary and cross off the ones you could do without. You might be surprised at how many you can do without. When you get home, throw away any crossed off medications.

  Next, find the drugs you’re taking in this book and read that chapter, especially the section on the natural alternatives. If you decide to go off of a prescription drug and try the natural remedies, please work with a health care professional, especially if you want to stop a drug that could be dangerous to go off of suddenly, such as drugs for heart disease.

  If you’re not taking any prescription drugs, congratulate yourself. If your physician wants to put you on one, go on the defensive. Ask important questions such as, Exactly what will this drug do? How long will I need to take it? Are there any safe, effective ways to treat this problem without drugs? Is this the lowest dose I can take? What are the side effects?

  Step 6: Get on the Prescription Alternatives Vitamin and Mineral Plan

  The first five Core Principles lay the foundation for your optimal health. But optimal health is more than just not being sick. When you are radiantly healthy, your body becomes a finely tuned instrument beautifully designed to fight off just about anything that comes its way. Nutritional supplements such as vitamins and minerals are health insurance. You are making sure your body has everything it needs to stay balanced and tuned.

  A lot of people ask, “Why do I need to take vitamins if I eat well?” First, much of the soil our food is grown in is depleted of essential minerals. Second, by the time food gets on your table, sometimes weeks after it has been picked, it has lost many of its important vitamins, such as vitamin C. Third, our bodies are so assaulted these days by environmental pollutants and stress that we need extra vitamins and minerals to boost our immune systems. And realistically, very few of us eat a truly balanced diet.

  You would need to eat huge quantities of fresh, organic produce to get the vitamins and minerals present in a few vitamin supplements. For example, you’d have to drink eight glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice every day to get just 1,000 mg of vitamin C.

  The Basic Plan

  Here’s the basic program: a high-potency multiple vitamin with minerals (minerals also enable your body to use the vitamins). Be sure to read the label—with many multivitamins you would need to take up to 12 a day to get the amounts listed below. Here’s what your daily multivitamin intake should contai
n:

  Vitamins

  Vitamin A, 1,000 to 5,000 IU

  Beta-carotene as mixed carotenoids, 10,000 to 15,000 IU

  The B vitamins, including:

  B1 (thiamine), 25 to 100 mg

  B2 (riboflavin), 25 to 100 mg

  B3 (niacin), 25 to 100 mg

  B5 (pantothenic acid), 25 to 100 mg

  B6 (pyridoxine), 50 to 100 mg

  B12, 1,000 mcg

  Biotin, 100 to 300 mcg

  Choline, 25 to 100 mg

  Folic acid, 400 mcg

  Inositol, 100 to 300 mg

  Vitamin C, 100 to 300 mg

  Vitamin D, 1,000 to 2,000 IU

  Vitamin E as mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols, at least 400 IU

  Minerals

  Boron, 1 to 5 mg

  Calcium (citrate, lactate, or gluconate), 100 to 500 mg

  Chromium, 200 to 400 mcg

  Copper, 1 to 5 mg

  Magnesium (citrate or gluconate), 100 to 500 mg (women should take a total of 300 to 400 mg daily)

  Manganese (citrate or chelate), 10 mg

  Selenium, 200 mcg

  Vanadium (sulfate), 25 to 200 mcg

  Zinc, 10 to 15 mg

  Too Much of a Good Thing?

  While taking nutritional supplements is a great form of health insurance, there is such a thing as overdoing it. Nutritional supplements are very concentrated, and as such they put your liver to a lot of work to process them. In nature, nutrients are packaged with protein, starches, fiber, and thousands of phytochemicals, and our bodies have evolved over eons to process nutrients in this form. Taking handfuls of nutritional supplements every day may be counterproductive if it stresses your liver, which is already hard at work processing your food and cleaning toxins from your body. If you feel nauseous or tired after taking vitamins, there’s a good chance you’re overdoing it. Step back and reevaluate why you’re taking each supplement, and eliminate those that aren’t necessary. Contemplate how you might improve your diet with more wholesome foods and improve your health with better sleep and more exercise.

  Chapter 10

  Drugs for Heart Disease and Their Natural Alternatives

  Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and heart disease drugs are among the top-selling prescription drugs. Heart disease drugs are also among the most dangerous prescription drugs you can take and are undoubtedly responsible for many thousands of deaths each year.

  In spite of the dangers of heart drugs, American doctors continue to prescribe them routinely, without ever seriously addressing the issues of lifestyle and heart disease. Pick almost anyone in North America over the age of 50 off the street, and chances are he or she can tell you the major causes of heart disease: obesity, a high-fat diet, not enough exercise, stress, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. Right? Well, partially.

  There are many ways to measure risks for heart disease. Blood pressure numbers and cholesterol numbers are two ways to measure that risk, but they aren’t necessarily the most accurate or most important indicators of heart disease. These indicators are used in Western medicine because there are specific drugs the doctor can prescribe to make the numbers go down. When the numbers go down, does this mean the heart disease is gone? Not at all. If you have existing heart disease or diabetes, or you smoke, drugs that push blood pressure and cholesterol numbers down can reduce your risk of having a heart attack. But they do little to address the underlying causes of your ill health and in fact will bring their very own harmful side effects into the mix and increase your risk of having other health problems.

  We now know that other factors such as your homocysteine, C-reactive protein, and anti-oxidant levels are just as important as cholesterol and blood pressure, if not more so. However, the treatments for bringing down those numbers are available without a prescription and are very inexpensive.

  The American Heart Association estimates that the cost of cardiovascular disease in 2006 was $403.1 billion, up from $298 billion in 2001. This includes the cost of physicians and nursing services, hospital and nursing home services, medications, and loss of productivity. The personal cost of heart disease is the biggest loss of all. Yet heart disease is one of the easiest diseases of all to prevent. Even if your parents and grandparents had heart disease, you can still prevent it in yourself.

  If heart disease kills more people every year than anything else, why aren’t these simple cures being shouted from the rooftops? Why isn’t it the biggest topic of discussion on all the talk shows? First of all, it’s too simple, too inexpensive, and not nearly dramatic enough for a talk show. Heart disease treatment in the United States, consisting mainly of surgery and drugs, is a multibillion-dollar industry. Why would those with a vested financial interest in heart disease treatment give it up for simple, natural, inexpensive remedies? That means that preventing and treating your heart disease is in your hands. It’s your responsibility.

  Simple cures seem to be the hardest thing to follow for many people, because they involve a change in lifestyle and daily habits. The only way to cure heart disease is to work on its causes. If you take the initiative to make positive changes in your diet, get some exercise, lose some weight, and take some supplements, you will begin to see improvement in your health very rapidly.

  The single biggest factor contributing to heart disease in America is our poor diet. We eat too much unhealthy fat, too many processed foods, too many refined carbohydrates, and not enough fresh vegetables. In the 1950s, the Japanese diet was 16 percent fat, and they had almost no incidence of heart disease. Today their diet is 26 percent fat and includes many more Western foods and fast food, and heart disease is the second leading cause of death in Japan. Estimates are that Americans will spend in the neighborhood of $150 billion on fast food in 2008, up from $110 billion in 2001. The most popular vegetables are potatoes (in the form of French fries) and tomatoes (in the form of ketchup). Portion sizes continue to increase despite the widespread understanding that larger portions mean larger girths and higher risk of heart attack down the line. Although fast food chains have made some effort to offer some healthy meals, even these are overloaded with calories in the form of fat, refined carbohydrates, and sugar.

  There is no question that people who eat less meat and more fish, fruits, and vegetables and drink more wine have significantly lower rates of death from heart disease. Those countries with the highest intake of antioxidants and bioflavonoids have the lowest death rates from heart disease. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation between diets high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (vegetable oils prone to oxidation and rancidity) and a high rate of death from heart disease and correspondingly less death from heart disease in those cultures that eat more monoun-saturated fats such as olive oil. In fact, a study of 30 men with high cholesterol found that eating olive oil significantly reduced the tendency of their LDL cholesterol to oxidize. This is significant because oxidized LDL cholesterol creates inflammation, which causes plaque to accumulate in the arteries.

  Most people who have been diagnosed with heart disease get on a medical treadmill that doesn’t stop until the day they die. There are drugs for blood pressure and cholesterol control, all of which have their own uncomfortable side effects; there are the surgeries, including angioplasties and bypass operations; and there is the fear of the next heart attack, the next hospital stay, and, of course, of dying due to this disease.

  In this chapter we will primarily cover drugs related to high blood pressure and high cholesterol because they are by far the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States. There are drugs prescribed for other specific symptoms of heart disease such as angina (chest pain caused when not enough blood gets to the heart muscles) and arrhythmias (irregular heartbeat), and they tend to be poorly studied, uniquely dangerous, and apt to cause deadly side effects. If your doctor prescribes a heart drug that’s not listed here, be sure to carefully read the complete information sheet on it. If it’s a new drug, be aware that
many of the drug’s side effects and interactions with other drugs are likely unknown and that you are, in effect, a guinea pig.

  Should You Be Taking an Aspirin a Day?

  If you read the headlines and listen to conventional physicians, you’ll be convinced that aspirin is the miracle drug of the century. Not only does it banish pain and reduce inflammation and fever, it prevents heart disease. And now we’re hearing that it prevents colon cancer. Yes, aspirin is a wonder drug. For short-term use there’s nothing like a couple of aspirin to knock out a headache, to reduce the pain of a sprain, and even to quickly reduce heart disease risk while working on safer and more effective long-term solutions.

  Used long-term, aspirin often does more harm than good. It causes gastric bleeding and ulcers, suppresses the immune system, and promotes macular degeneration, an irreversible eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness in the United States. A study published in the British Medical Journal found that the risk of gastrointestinal hemorrhage (bleeding) with aspirin doesn’t change whether the dose is 50 mg or 1,500 mg. In other words, lowering your dose won’t decrease the risk of this adverse effect. Taking buffered aspirin slightly helps counteract these side effects, but not significantly enough to make it safe to take long-term. And while aspirin decreases the risk of some types of strokes, it increases the risk of other types. Research has shown that taking ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) with aspirin can negate the heart benefits of aspirin.

  Aspirin essentially works by blocking the production of hormonelike substances called prostaglandins, which constantly regulate every cell in the body in many of their complex interactions. Some prostaglandins, when made in the body in excess, play a role in promoting heart disease, inflammation, and pain. The fact that aspirin very effectively blocks these prostaglandins would be good news, except that it blocks the formation of both “good” and “bad” prostaglandins, and in the process of suppressing the good prostaglandins, it also suppresses the immune system. (A little aside: Some of aspirin’s benefits may also come from the use of magnesium in buffered aspirin, the form most often used in heart disease studies. A little magnesium every day could provide major benefits to the heart.)