Why is High Blood Pressure So Dangerous?

High blood pressure tends to be dangerous because of the way blood is supposed to flow through your vascular system. In a healthy artery, blood flows in a streamline fashion, meaning it flows without interruption. In an artery that has been affected by high blood pressure, the flow of blood through the artery becomes turbulant.

Now, to understand the difference between streamline and turbulence, one just has to understand how water comes out of a hose on a nice hot summer day. We have all been there as kids playing with the hose with no spray nozzle on it. If the water is coming out of the end of the hose in a streamline fashion, we can take a drink out of it because it just flows so nice and gently out of the end. But, when your friend comes walking by you put your thumb over the end of the hose and it sprays harder and in all kinds of directions…this is essentially turbulence…the loss of a smooth and uninterrupted flow.

Now, imagine your heart. In a good healthy heart of a fit individual, the stroke volume is large and the pulse is slow…possibly in the 50’s and even lower in elite athletes…40’s. Normal pulse rate is 72 beats per minute in the average adult. Having a slower pulse rate and a larger stroke volume is easier on the heart. In an unhealthy individual, the pulse rate tends to go above 72 and their stroke volume is decreased.

To understand how the heart beats we have to think of pumping and relaxing. Pumping is considered systole, and resting is considered diastole. How much our heart gets to rest and the subsequent volume it pumps out is our stroke volume. It is very important that our heart gets adequate time to rest and fill. After the heart pumps, blood enters into the left ventricle to be pumped again. The more blood allowed to go into the ventricle to be pumped out to the body, the larger the stroke volume.

We can’t talk about blood pressure without including the arteries. Believe it or not, but arteries are muscles. They are constructed of what is called smooth muscle. The interesting fact about arteries is that they do contract. Why you ask? Arteries use a series of contractions to propel the blood to where it needs to go. Now, you can imagine what happens if your arteries are “out of shape” due to lack of exercise or calcium deposits. The arteries don’t push the blood as long as good as they used to so your blood pressure has to go up! This puts more stress on your heart, and more stress on your arteries.

The problem with turbulence in an artery is that it breaks down the inner layer of the artery overtime. The artery is composed of three layers, the inner layer, the middle layer, and the outside layer. When blood pressure increases, it damages the inner layer of the artery because of the turbulent nature of the blood flow. We can liken this to a water pipe in a home. When calcium builds up on the inside of the pipe, water passes over this bumpy area and becomes turbulent instead of streamline. Eventually, the water will make a hole in the copper pipe and the pipe will start to leak!

Now, your artery is just about the same. When the blood pressure increases, the blood in the artery starts to bounce off of the walls and break the inner layer down. When it damages the inner layer of the artery enough, it eventually creates a “hole” in the inner layer. When this hole appears, the body reacts by either patching it with LDL cholesterol or HDL cholesterol depending on how high or low your good and bad cholesterol levels are. The problem with LDL making a plaster over the hole is that it is easily oxidized. When the fatty cholesterol plaque closes off the hole, the plaque will oxidize and turn into what is called a foam cell. The problem with oxidation is that the foam cell begins to grow. When it grows, it starts to narrow the lumen of the artery because it cannot expand the middle layer due the muscle being to strong. So, it has no where to go but to bulge inwards!

Here in lies the problem. We already have turbulent blood flow and now we have a bump in the middle of the road! The problem with turbulence and with the bump is that platelets in our blood stream bounce off each other and activate an enzyme system called complement. When this happens, platelets become “sticky.” Sticky platelets create a problem downstream from the bump in the form of a thrombus. Eventually the thrombus grows and either breaks free or completely closes off the artery resulting in tissue death!

Tissue death will occur in the area where the blood can’t get to because your blood carries oxygen in the form of red blood cells. If the red blood cells cannot provide oxygen we end up with an infarction. If it happens in your brain, it is called a stroke, if it happens in your heart it is called a heart attack.

The really cool thing about all of this is that your body is constantly in a state of adapting. Your heart will actually show signs or arteriogenesis when it is under this state of tissue oxygen lack. Tissue oxygen lack in patients with heart trouble is known as angina. If the heart is stressed and starving for oxygen, it will actually create a new artery to supply blood to that area! Pretty cool, huh? It is the bodies very own version of “bypass surgery.” Here in lies the problem though, some people will not do anything about their diet or their exercise after they feel any kind of chest discomfort or the doctor tells them they have to start changing their ways. Essentially, you cause problems so fast your body is not able to adapt and start the arteriogenesis process.

Your best bet to break free from high blood pressure and its sequelae of tissue oxygen lack to a vital organ is to start eating right and exercising. Really, it is simple when you think about it. Stay away from all the processed sugars, and grains and eat from the “garden of life” again. Like I say, if it wasn’t here 200 years ago…don’t eat it!

Trust me, there is no miracle exercise plan. Do whatever you want to do to increase your heart rate higher than getting up from the couch to go to the fridgerator. Thirty minutes per day is sufficient exercise. Do you get it? Just do something, anything to get your heart rate up. Even if you want to start jogging, it does not mean you have to jog for one half hour straight. You jog 3 minutes and rest 3 minutes up until 30 minutes. This is perfect for you to start off with! IT IS OK! Trust me, your heart rate will stay elevated during those three minutes of rest if you are not used to exercising. Then, it is simple when you get more in shape, you just manipulate the numbers…run 2 minutes, rest 2 minutes…run 1 minute, rest one minute…run 2 minutes, rest one minute…run 3 minutes rest one minute…run 5 minutes, rest one minute…and so on…you get it! Exercise is not a one month thing, two month thing, or three month thing…it is a lifestyle…FOR LIFE…so you have to have fun with this and mix it up. It is not about killing yourself with the latest exercise technique!!!

Put all of this together, exercise, diet, and stress control methods and your blood pressure will drop dramatically. It will drop so much in fact that you have to watch out for you blood pressure going too low if you are on blood pressure medication. If you plan to start an exercise regimen, make sure you tell your doctor. He will want to monitor your strength of your medication because if your blood pressure drops too low you will fell dizziness, possible tunnel vision, fainting, fatigue…etc.

The best thing about all of this is that your heart will get stronger, your arteries will heal, and your strength of contractions in your arteries will become greater to push the blood along! This will result in lower blood pressure because your muscles are stronger…your heart and the smooth muscles in your arteries. Do you get it? The older we get the less pumping contraction our heart and arteries have which does result in lowered blood pressure. Also, you will increase your HDL, or good cholesterol levels, which will help to take the sludge out of your blood stream resulting in lower blood pressure. On top of that, your muscles will once again become more sensitive to insulin! That is awesome because you won’t have as much sugar storing as fat or floating in the artery itself. When you think about it, your artery is simply a pipe. If you fill it up with a bunch of cholesterol and sugar, it is a thicker substance, which means it needs more of a force to pump it along! So, medical doctors use a blood thinner to help in this situation because it thins the blood! What a concept! It decreases the solutes in the blood stream essentially lowering blood pressure by requiring less force to move the fluid through the artery!

The best thing you can do today to prevent these adverse reactions is to make sure first of all that your blood pressure is right for your size. You see, not all of us should be 120 over 80. Some of us are a little bit older so there is an adjustment for age. Also, if you have a really small frame, your blood pressure tends to run a bit lower. So, check with your doctor and if it is looking like it is high, you need to start your life change that day! High blood pressure is the silent killer, so chances are you have been having high blood pressure for some period of time that has already caused damage that you may not even know about. This is why high blood pressure is so scary.

We need to start taking control of our health and take responsibility for our bodies. Trust me, if we take away your high blood pressure medicine and you are not eating right or exercising, you will still have high blood pressure! So, my question to you is this…DID THE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICINE DO ANYTHING TO IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH? It did not reverse a condition, it just silenced it. Don’t be fooled by this and give into temptation. Medicine is there to buy you time…maybe three months to give your body a bit of help to get started on an exercise program without further damage occurring. This is the ONLY and I repeat ONLY thing high blood pressure meds can do…buy you time!

Time and time again we have worked with people with high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels in our clinic. It really is simple, take the sugars out and trust me, one month your blood pressure will drop massively! Stay on the plan long enough and you can actually reverse heart disease! Now, doesn’t this sound better than taking some sort of pill? And for all of you men out there, uncontrolled high blood pressure is the leading cause of impotence! That should be enough to get your butt off of the couch and get out there.

Spring is a time for new beginnings. Get out into the sun and nature and start exercising. Take it one day at a time, have fun with it, and most importantly remember this is for life…not just a fad your going to start and do for a few months. As soon as you form a habit and get passed your head…our biggest obstacle…you will have the health you have always wanted and always deserved!

Your health and wellness advocate,

Dr. James R. Haakenson

The Truth About Diabetes and Why Drugs Don’t Work

I thought all of you who read my blog may enjoy this excerpt written by Dr. Mercola (the italicized part of this blog) on a study that just came out where they actually had to stop it due to it causing too many deaths. The study was on type 2 diabetes and lowering blood sugar to an extremely low level to see if this would manage the diabetic situation better. Guess what? Lowering blood sugar to an extremely low level causes problems! Read on to see why and remember to visit Dr.Mercola’s website at www.mercola.com and research any health related topic you can find!

One concept that I strive to make well-known, which has the potential to save hundreds of thousands and even millions of lives, is that diabetes is not a disease of blood sugar.

Rather, it is a disease of insulin – of insulin resistance — and perhaps more importantly, of faulty leptin signaling.

Until that concept becomes well-known in both the medical community and by the public at large, this misconception will continue to be promoted in studies such as the one above, revealing the inadequacy of current conventional medical treatment for chronic diseases such as diabetes, and their erroneous advice about nutrition.

Typically, conventional treatment is focused on fixing a symptom, in this case elevated blood sugar, rather than the underlying disease. Symptoms are generally the way that nature has taught our bodies to deal with a disease – the real underlying biological or physiological problem.

Similarly, treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar for diabetes while raising insulin levels, can actually worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolicmiscommunication. It just trades one evil for another.

Why the Result of This Study is NOT Surprising

Since most treatments for type 2 diabetes utilize drugs that either raise insulin or lower blood sugar, the tragic result is that the typical, conventional medical treatment for diabetes contributes to the side effects and the shortened lifespan that diabetics experience.

This is what happened in this study as well. Their press release states:

“Most participants in the intensive treatment group achieved their lower blood sugar goals with combinations of Food and Drug Administration-approved diabetes medications. For both the intensive and standard treatment groups, study clinicians could use all major classes of diabetes medications available: metformin, thiazolidinediones (TZDs, primarily rosiglitazone), insulins, sulfonylureas, exanatide, and acarbose.”

Now, why don’t drugs like Actos and Avandia work? Actually, let me rephrase: why do they work so well at lowering blood sugar, yet lead to dramatically reduced health?

It’s because these drugs are what is called “PPAR-gamma agonists.” That means they activate PPAR-gamma receptors, which induces a particular response. PPAR-gamma is a nuclear receptor designed to multiply fat cells. So, the way these drugs work to lower your blood sugar is by multiplying your fat cells at a faster rate – hence making you gain weight at a more rapid pace.

Have you ever had too much junk in your garage and decided to rent a storage space rather than get rid of the excess?

That’s what you’re doing when you take these drugs. You’re consuming too much sugar – which turns into fat, and needs to be stored somewhere — but instead of reducing your consumption, you’re simply adding storage space.

Sooner or later, those fat cells become resistant to insulin as well, and you’re back to where you started – your sugars start rising again because your body has once again run out of storage space. The conventional answer is to increase your dosages, and voila! – you’re well on your way to even more serious health problems, courtesy of your excess weight and continued metabolic malfunction.

Do You REALLY Know What Insulin Does?

Contrary to what you may have been told, insulin’s main role is not to “control” blood sugar.

When blood sugar becomes elevated it is a signal for insulin to be released to direct the extra energy into storage. A small amount is stored as a starch called glycogen in our body, but the majority is stored as your main energy supply — fat. Thus, in this regard insulin’s major role is not to lower sugar, but to take the extra energy and store it for future times of need.

Insulin lowers glucose as a side effect of directing the extra energy into storage.

But, Wait… Insulin is Not the MOST Important Player in Diabetes

That honor actually goes to leptin, because the hormone leptin is largely responsible for the accuracy of insulin signaling, and whether you become insulin resistant or not.

Leptin is produced by fat, and tells your body:

• how much energy it has; whether it needs more (signaling you to “be hungry”)
• whether it should get rid of some (saying “stop being hungry”)
• and most importantly, what to do with the energy already there (reproduce cells or focus on cellular repair)

There is compelling research indicating that the two most important organs that determine whether you become diabetic or not are your liver and your brain. And, it is their ability to listen to leptin that will determine this.

So, how do you make sure your brain and liver can hear the signals emanating from your leptin hormone, and don’t start to tune them out?

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try Reading the Directions

This fast age seem more concerned about speed than direction, with devastating results. By some estimates, diabetes has increased more than 700 percent in the last 50 years. What does this tell us about the direction we’ve been following?

• First, diabetes cannot be primarily a genetic disease, since the prior statistic has taken place within the same generation, and presumably contains essentially the same genetics, and
• Secondly, something that we have been doing is obviously wrong and needs to be changed.

That “something” is diet.

It is difficult, or perhaps even impossible, to actually prove that something is true. However, it is not difficult to prove that something is false. For the last 50 years or so, Americans have followed the dietary recommendations of a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet.

As an example, WebMD; one of the most visited medical information sites on the web, states that people with diabetes, who also have abnormal cholesterol levels, would be well advised to follow a diet that calls for 50 to 60 percent of your daily total calories to be in the form of carbohydrates.

They also state that table sugar is okay, as long as you readjust your medications to compensate appropriately (i.e. take more drugs to increase your fat cell storage capacity). Using artificial sweeteners in lieu of sugar also gets the green light, but I won’t rant about that here.

While much of their advice is fine, and tries to remain well-balanced, the problem with these conventional recommendations lies in the details. Concomitant with that standard recommendation the incidence of diabetes and obesity has skyrocketed, and has become one of the worst epidemics the world has ever seen.

Eating a high “complex” carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet for health and longevity has been shown to be wrong. Minimal common sense would say to try something else.

What’s the Missing Dietary Link?

That would be an eating plan that emphasizes good fats and reduced non-fiber carbohydrates and starches as outlined in my Total Health Program. Doing so will greatly improve and even reverse type 2 “insulin resistant” diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, many other chronic diseases of aging, all without the use of potentially dangerous drugs.

This article competely explains diabetes in a nut shell. At our office, we use specific supplements from Standard Process with exercise and dietary guidance to produce outstanding results! By increasing exercise, maintaining a healthy diet, and giving the pancreas proper support we can reverse type 2 diabetes without the meds. It really is simple if the patient is willing to change their ways to live a healthier life.

As I reported in a previous article, type 2 diabetes will age you one and a half times more than the average person. This means that you will develop all chronic problems that go along with diabetes one and half times faster. So, when you are 50 with type 2 diabetes, your body is really dealing with the degenerative diseases of a 75 year old!

Your health and wellness advocate,

Dr. James R. Haakenson

Light Your Money on Fire, Or Eat Grass Fed Meat!

It is in the news again! The horrible treatment of animals for human consumption is downright disgusting. There is no dignity in living or in death for these animals. They are treated unfairly and live a miserable life caged up, beat up, filled with sickness and disease, and housed in unsanitary conditions.

Whatever happened to treating animals with respect. Well, there is such a case of respect for animals when a farmer decides to let his animals go cage free and live off of the pasture. Yes, it is still cruel to kill another animal for our palate, but at least if we are going to continue this practice we need to let these animals live a healthy life. In fact, if they are being abused and are eating poorly, you are taking in what they were. You are eating a very unhealthy piece of meat even though it looks great. The statement could not be more true…you are what you eat!

Believe it or not, cows are designed to only eat grass! This is why a cow has four chambers. They ferment the food they eat. Their chambers of the “stomach” are designed to make every protein they need to sustain a healthy life! Pretty simple isn’t it?

The problem is that the farmer learned that a cow could gain more weight by having them pasture less and eat more grain, soy, and corn. When a cow eats these items, they gain weight very fast in the form of unhealthy fats because of their inability to process all the sugar. They are just like us! We may love to eat our cereal everymorning, but our pancreas hates us! The more sugar we take in, the heavier we get. We are proving it right now with our kids. They take in sugar ladened substances full of high fructose corn syrup and their weight increases dramatically. This very same thing happens to the cow.

To save the day we do have cows, chickens, pigs and other animals that are allowed to live a great life roaming the farm. Cows allowed to roam and graze, chickens allowed to roam and peck, and pigs allowed to run around and use their nose to find food do exist.

In this article, my focus is on grass feed beef and the health advantages of including them in our diet. The most important reason to eat grass fed beef is because of its ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fats. In a grass fed cow that is free to roam the pasture…(gets exercise)…the balance of omega 3’s to 6’s are on a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio. On the other hand, a cow that does not get exercise and eats grain, corn, soy, and sileage has

Why is this important? In the most basic understanding of these fats, omega 6’s are pro-inflammatory (creates inflammation) and omega 3’s are anti-inflammatory. In America today, we consume and abundance of omega 6 fatty acids. In fact, our ratio of omega 6 fats to omega 3 fats stands at about 20:1 to 50:1. Folks, this ratio is supposed to be 1:1 to live a healthy life!

In fact, DHA which comes from omega 3 fats, makes up 60% of the fat in our brains. When we disturb this omega 3 to 6 ratio, the omega 6’s become the cell membranes in our brain which greatly affects cell to cell communication! Do you think that improving this ratio can help with things like depression, ADD/ADHD, Parkinsons, M.S., and other various brain lesions? Studies are underway right now on many of these subjects, and some have already been done with very positive results. The simple fact is that our brain is affected by a heavy intake of omega 6 fats without an appropriate balance of omega 3 fats.

Since our ratios are so imbalanced between omega 6’s and 3’s, we live in a pro-inflammatory state. This pro-inflammatory state can lead to further degeneration and diseases like cardiovascular disease, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, kidney disease, diabetes, eye problems, intestinal diseases, etc. Science has linked most of our degenerative diseases to inflammation as the start. This means that virtually any disease you name can be affected by improving your ratio of omega 3 fats to omega 6 fats!

By improving your ratio of omega 3 fats to omega 6 fats, you are reducing your rate of degenerative diseases! Omega 6 fats are very prevelant in most of our processed foods, not to mention the beef that is full of these fatty acids due to the overwhelming amount of feed they consume.

For those of us who do choose to eat meat because we are the top of the food chain (trust me, if we weren’t, we would be running from tigers, lions, etc…they would eat us just like we eat them…it is the balance of the world), we can improve our health by looking for grass fed meats, or we can continue to lead our bodies down the path of inflammatory changes and resultant disease.

If you are spending your money on typical grocery store beef, you might as well go back home to your house and put a $100 bill in the fire! Really, a $100 bill for that $15 steak, because you are inflaming your body with every bite! Inflammation is the path we take towards destroying our health, so that “great” $15 steak will produce health care costs at some point in time. All those “great” rib eyes and sirloins will bring about thousands of dollars of medical costs. Do you want to spend your money on quality meat now, or medical care later…it is your choice! Of course you have to fix other things in your diet too, not just the meat, but this is one step closer to living a healthy life. Pay now for abundance in health, or pay later for our incredible sick care system we live in today!

A quality purveyor of grass fed beef is www.grasslandbeef.com. On their website you can order online and have it shipped to your door. What a perfect way to enjoy meat the way nature intended us to eat it. There are various other internet sites for grass fed beef, but make sure there cows truly only roam the pasture and eat grass. A cows diet does not need to be supplemented in any other way! Enjoy eating your grass fed beef and your amazing health.

Your health and wellness advocate,

Dr. James R. Haakenson

Why Stress Ruins Your Health and Packs on the Pounds!

When we are born, we encounter stress with our first big breath. It is stress on our body for oxygen that actually makes us take a breath and open up those lungs for the first time. It is an amazing and beautiful moment as we here those first wonderful cries.Some stress is required for us in order to live. We need the stress of oxygen to make us breathe. We need the stress in the form of exercise to make our bodies stay healthy. The problem comes into play when we are exposed to stress day in and day out with no ability to relax.

Stress can present itself in many ways like physical, chemical, and emotional stress. First, lets talk about a more common type of physical stress.

Repeated physical stress causes microtraumas to the area most stressed. Let’s take the back for example. When we have repeated stress to our back we become prone to a back problem such as a disc bulge or herniaton due to microtears in the structure of the disc over time. When an individual develops a disc bulge or herniation, it is not an overnight thing. It is the result of repeated microtraumas. Microtraumas cause degeneration of the disc material causing it to bulge or herniate. Bulges and herniations occur with trivial traumas. For example, a person bends over to pick up a pen or a piece of paper, and know they cannot stand back up due to tremendous pain. The individual did not lifting anything heavy, he simply bent over! This is typical of a disc problem and is what is known as a trivial trauma. It was the last straw that broke the camels back per se. It was going to happen any day, it just chose that Monday morning as the day for it to occur.

Chemical stress comes in all kinds of forms including food, medications, vaccinations, tap water, pools, air pollution, hair dyes, shampoos, dry cleaning, make-ups, etc. Chemical stress stresses out our bodies by making organs and glands overwork to try to get rid of the toxins. Case in point, if you don’t have enough magnesium in an area of your brain, aluminum will compete for that spot. The aluminum attaches instead of the magnesium, which changes cell to cell communication. With food, we are bombarded by the stress of trans fats, nitrates, msg, dyes, and other additives and preservatives. Trans fats make the cell wall more rigid causing a break down in cell to cell communication. Nitrates turn into nitrites and nitrosamines which are cancer causing. MSG has been linked to changes in brainchemistry, and food dyes have been linked to perpetuating ADD and ADHD.

Emotional stress comes from many forms. Financial, marital, job, and relationship stress all produce emotional stress. Basically, most parts of our life stress us out at one time or another. We worry about this or that, even though we can’t control this or that, to the point that it begins to take over our body and our mind.

The problem with emotional stress is that it usually causes us to be hungry! The reason it causes us to be hungry is because of the release of a steroidal hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is released from a gland on top of our kidneys called an adrenal gland. In the days of the saber tooth tiger, cortisol was released to put sugar into our blood as a survival mechanism in times of increased stress from fear or famine. It is an ancient survival mechanism that goes against us in times of plenty that we have today.

Here is how it works, you get stressed so you grab your bag of doritos and some dip. You begin eating the chips one by one, and pretty soon without knowing it half the bag is gone! Just like that, in a measly half hour period of time, tons of calories, chemicals, carbohydrates, fat, and minimal protein hit the stomach and small intestine. Since we don’t have room for all this excess, the body takes all of it and converts it to be stored as belly fat! We start to see our belly increasing in size and hop on the scale only to see that week to week we put on a few pounds. Our clothes begin not to fit as well, our face begins to show a second chin. I think we all know the rest of the story.

The reason we do this is because when we can’t use the sugar immediately from any type of food, it is converted to fat. The body converts sugar to fat because this is stored energy for later. Instead of just getting rid of it, our body holds on to it in case a tragedy hits us and we are faced with a limited food supply. Not likely to happen today in our world, but did happen 1000’s of years ago.

When we store our fat in our belly, we begin to create insulin resistance. Cells actually do not respond to insulin like it used to. Insulin is supposed to shuttle sugar into a cell from the bloodstream. Since the cells already have enough sugar, they turn off their receptors, and the sugar stays in the blood stream. So, the pancreas begins to think maybe it just hasn’t secreted enough insulin. More insulin gets secreted, and the sugar still stays in the blood stream causing high blood sugar. The pancreas keeps working harder and harder because it thinks if it secretes more somehow the sugar will go into the muscle cells. After a period of time, the pancreas wears out because of the cells being less sensitive to it. Now, at this point you are TYPE 2 Diabetic! Not a good thing at all, and something that was preventable through a simple lifestyle change.

Type 2 diabetes puts us at an increased rate of developing cardiovascular disease, stroke, and obesity. Obesity puts us at risk for increased cancer, sleep apnea, gastric reflux disease, osteoarthritis in the knees, hip, and back, various gastrointestinal issues, infertility, and impotence…just to name a few! Type 2 diabletes makes us age one and a half times as much compared to someone without the problem. Instead of aging 20 years, we age 30 in that same time limit! Not something any one wants to have happen to them in the age of beauty and glamourous looks.

As if increased blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides were not enough, our arteries become inflamed from tears and nicks in the lining of the artery. These little damages take place to the arterial wall ultimately leading to areas of scarring called plaques. These plaques lead to a “scarring” or the arterial wall. The scarring creates a bump due to inflammation of the arterial wall, which causes a narrowing of the artery.

When the artery narrows enough due to plaque formation it is called atherosclerosis or ateriosclerosis depending on the location. When this happens, blood can no longer flow through and it becomes blocked with a clot. When the artery becomes blocked, the tissue fed by that artery starts to die because of lack of oxygen. If this happens in your heart, it is called a heart attack, if it happens in your brain it is called a stroke.

The moral of the story is simple stress can end up creating a ton of health expenses and decreased quality of life. We need stress reduction techniques now more than ever. Take five minutes for yourself everyday to meditate or sit in a quiet room without worrying about anything! I know it is tough to do, but it can go a long ways to improve your health. Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, and Pilates are very good stress reducing techniques. Also, progressive relaxation can help you adapt to stress better so your body does not “tighten” up so much.

Now you know how emotional stress can lead to bad eating habits and fat deposition ultimately leading to blood sugar problems and the impending doom of stroke or heart attack. Is it worth it to you to spend a few dollars on yourself every year in the name of organic food, a healthy diet, good water, exercise, stress reduction, and health education?

I will let you decide your very own future, but don’t ever let me tell you I told you so! If you need help because you are suffering with anything that I mentioned above, we can help you. Please feel free to email me at thedoctorjames@gmail.com with any questions. We can help you with your dieting, supplementing, and exercising needs.

Your health and wellness advocate,

Dr. James R. Haakenson

P.S. Remember that what you eat your children do too! We are in a childhood obesity epidemic. Please think about your children’s health and not if they will like this or that. Introduce fruits in vegetables by making it fun through the presentation…shapes, designs, etc. It will go a long way to improve their health!

Synthetic Vitamins vs. Whole Food Supplements

Many people come into our office taking a whole ray of “stuff.” They sometimes don’t even really know why they are taking it. Maybe their neighbor is taking it, or another family member, so they begin to take it. In fact, they are taking it in such huge doses that their energy has actually increased! Sounds good…right??? I will get to that, but first lets separate fact from fiction…

Synthetic vitamins are man made. They are concentrated chemical ingredients. You heard it, chemical ingredients. Most companies get their “vitamins” or chemicals (what I like to call them) from a left over process of some other companies manufacturing process. Essentially, they are buying the byproduct of what would have went to waste, but the company found a buyer for it, instead of having to pay for it to go to the dump! This happens with flouride that is found in our tap water…it is a waste product that they would have to pay dearly to get rid of…instead, municipalities started buying it up from these companies even though it is in the wrong form for us to receive any benefit from it!

The whole Flouride concept was introduced because of some people in Texas having better teeth. They studied the land and found it was high in certain things, and one of them being Flouride! So, what happens, we jump to conclusions and begin putting it in everything. The problem is we are not using it in the form that it was found in when it was in the ground. They are two different compounds! Why we do this…I don’t know, but it does cause serious problems in those sensitive to it.

Getting back to synthetic, man made, or isolated vitamins that are supposedly supposed to be so good for us. When man thinks he is smart enough to reproduce nature, we always run into problems. This is why we can overdose on Vitamin A in its synthetic form. It actually becomes poisonous. The reason synthetic vitamins become toxic is because they are not “alive” so to speak. They are not composed of everything they should be. If it were found in nature, it wouldn’t be just ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). It would be Vitamin C. This vitamin is jam packed full of minerals, enzymes, and co-factors that make it what it is. You see, man has figured out yet another way to fool us. Strip vitamin C of all its parts and it no longer works like it is supposed to! Take a watch for example…if you take out parts of the watch that are essential for its function, the watch won’t work…even though you put the most expensive battery you could find in it! It doesn’t have function and that is what is important…so quit buying the vitamins that don’t function! Would you really buy a watch that looks nice but doesn’t keep time?

I am sure you have all met the person that starts taking this or that and says their energy has already increased! And you think, WOW!!! Maybe I should try it. You try it, maybe you get energy, maybe you don’t, but here is the big slap in the face…sooner or later it wears off!!! Now, what are you to do with those vitamins you paid for a six month supply for and spent hundreds of dollars on? This is the crux of synthetic vitamins. They are all about quantity because companies can market that. As Americans, we love numbers and we buy things because of numbers! We always buy the one that has the most “stuff” in it. And that isn’t even enough. Instead of taking 2 like it recommends, we take 4, 6, or 8 a day! Most all of us are guilty of this! Wouldn’t you agree?

Here is what you have to understand. RDA’s are only their as a guide to determine what we need only to prevent a condition. Take the RDA for vitamin C for example. It is the number it is because that is the number that prevents scurvy! In fact, when scurvy was rampant they found they could treat this with a very minimal amount of lime zest or juice…not even the whole lime! I guarantee you there is not much milligrams or grams of vitamin C in a lime or an orange for that matter. You see, when it is in whole form it is about quality, not quantity! It has everything in that lime to make it function…like the watch…it actually can do something with a minimal amount. In fact, some of the hormones in our body are used on one part per million or billion…a infinitely small amount! So, do we really need to worry about milligrams of this or that? If you are worried, they have marketed correctly to you! I am here to tell you that these synthetic “vitamins” are not health producing. They actually cause what is known as a rebound effect. They go into the body and act like a vacuum because they don’t have everything they need to perform their function. So, when ascorbic acid goes in, it needs to rob and steal other parts from your body to make it function again. When you keep putting this into your body, eventually you deplete it of necessary minerals, enzymes and co-factors and you feel worse than when you started on the vitamins!

Now, don’t you think that the RDA number is flawed and means absolutely nothing in our world. Sure, for kids in third world countries, it means everything, but living in the world of plenty, it means absolutely nothing for us. They are based on minimal amounts to not get this or that.

Whole food vitamins are different. They are actually food bound up into a pill form. They do not have much for quantity in them, but they do have the most important part…THE FUNCTION! They are composed of everything they need to function in the body. They build the body up instead of vacuuming it or depleting it. People on whole food vitamins just get more and more healthy without a rebound effect! Take carrot root for example, which is in most of the supplements I carry, it is composed of over 200 nutrients! That is more than what is usually printed on the side of any vitamin container, but they don’t take time to print everyone of these chemicals that make up carrot root on the side of the container. On top of that, they discover new molecules in carrot root all the time that they didn’t know existed before. This will continue to happen because we are not intelligent enough to find everything yet. We have barely scratched the surface!

My point is that in whole food form, supplements contain millions if not billions of molecules that go a long way to improve our health. This is by far better than some multi-vitamin at some store that has 40 man made chemicals in it! What would you rather have, a product with 40 highly potent chemicals, or a product with millions and billions of “stuff” in it…known and unknown…??? I would choose the latter.

We will never know all the molecules in a fruit, vegetable, leaf, plant, bark, stem, root, etc. The important thing to understand is that we don’t need to know! We know they are good for us and that is all that matters! You read the hype everyday…blueberries are good for this, spinach is good for this, yogurt is good for this, acai is good for this, walnuts are good for this…YES…I AGREE, but we shouldn’t use food like a prescription drug. We should just be eating it because it is good for us…and an abundant amount of it. You can get all kinds of fruits and vegetables in everyday by making a smoothie or juicing.  This will go along way to improve your health without worrying if I need this or that to treat this or that. Chances are it contains what your body needs because it is in whole food form! You can get a great smoothie maker at www.vitamix.com and a great juicer at www.mercola.com by typing in juicer in the search box. In fact, I make a smoothie at least once a day…for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!

The moral of the story is don’t settle for any vitamin unless it is in its whole form. A vitamin is a synthetically derived chemical whereas a supplement is a whole food nutrient. Two very different things. Don’t ever confuse vitamin with supplement. An easy rule of thumb to remember is that a vitamin will deplete you whereas a supplement will build you up because the supplement is composed of the whole molecule, not just bits and pieces. By the way, antioxidants are found in every fruit and vegetable, so if you are worried about getting those, as long as you are making a smoothie or juicing, I can guarantee you are getting loads and loads of antioxidants.

What needs to really happen is a lifestyle change where we begin to eat whole foods again! Good old raw, whole foods. I am sure some of you remember gardening as youngsters and eating pea pods, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes straight from the garden only pausing to wipe them off with your shirt! This is what we need to get back to. The truth is once the diet is undercontrol, most of us don’t even need a whole food supplement! It is good to take on for maintenance, but isn’t really necessary. This is where I want to take all of you! Let the food be the way to health! As Thomas Edison once said, “The Doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” He knew it way back then! Why did we go away from this?

I will leave you with that to ponder till next time…and know you know the truth about synthetic vitamins vs. whole food supplements! And all of you know…knowledge is power!

Your health and wellness advocate,

Dr. James R. Haakenson

P.S. Remember all of your friends and family members can read any of these emails on my blog site at doctorjames.wordpress.com. We are here to help you expose the sick care system of today.