Thursday, June 30, 2011

20,000 visitors

www.theasiandiet.com just passed 20,000 unique visitors from 141 different countries.  The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.  If you have read The Asian Diet and liked it, please tell everyone.  If you have not yet read it, what are you waiting for? 

Diet soda linked causes weight gain and diabetes

This is something I presented in my book, The Asian Diet: Simple secrets for eating right and being well

We have evolved with sugar.  The body knows how to handle it (in the proper proportion).  Our biochemistry has never seen aspartame, sucralose, nutrasweet, saccharine, spenda, equal, etc.  The body does not know what to do with them.  The following article is from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/diet-soda-weight-gain_n_886409.html

Diet soda might not help you stay trim after all, new research suggests.
A study presented at a American Diabetes Association meeting this week shows that drinking diet soda is associated with a wider waist in humans. And a second study shows that aspartame -- an artificial sweetener in diet soda -- actually raises blood sugar in mice prone to diabetes.
"Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised," study researcher Helen P. Hazuda, Ph.D., a professor and chief of clinical epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio's School of Medicine, said in a statement. "They may be free of calories but not of consequences."
In the first study, researchers collected height, weight, waist circumference and diet soda intake data from 474 elderly people who participated in the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging. They were followed up an average of 9.5 years later, according to the research.
Researchers found that the diet soda drinkers had waist circumference increases of 70 percent greater than those who non-diet soda drinkers. And people who drank diet soda the most frequently -- at least two diet sodas a day -- had waist circumference increases that were 500 percent greater than people who didn't drink any diet soda, the study said.
Artificial sugar didn't produce any better results in the second study in mice. Researchers for this study found that diabetes-prone mice that were fed a diet that included aspartame for three months, had higher blood glucose levels than mice not given aspartame.
This isn't the first news illuminating diet soda's health risks. A study published earlier this year found people who drink the beverage every day have a higher stroke and heart attack risks. And UK researchers found earlier this month that sugary drinks can dull taste buds, leading consumers to crave the sweet stuff even more.

You love your children so you give them milk right? Wrong!

The dairy industry has spent a ton of money and done a fantastic job of “educating” us to why we need to buy their product.  The National Dairy Council sounds like a government agency, but it of course a professional trade group that is made up of the people who produce and distribute milk.  So they have a vested interest in us believing that it is good for us.  Their information is therefore suspect.

They tell us in the commercials they buy that “if you don’t get your three servings a day, then your bones will become brittle and break.”  I would like to ask these people ,”Why do horses have strong bones?”  They don’t eat yogurt, they eat green leaves (which are one of the best sources of calcium).  Actually, every other animal on the planet goes dairy-free after infancy and their bones are just fine.  

Humans are the only animal that have dairy after infancy; and it’s not all humans.  It is mostly consumed in America and Europe.  They don’t use much dairy in Asia nor in Africa.  And by and large, they have stronger bones in Asia and Africa.  But wait,  that’s not what the commercials tell us.

Commercials tell us that dairy has calcium and that calcium is necessary for bone health.  That is true.   You know what other foods have calcium?  All of them!  Every fruit, vegetable, nut, bean, legume, root, leaf, meat, etc.  Every food has calcium; dairy is the only one that bought commercial time to tell you.  Dairy is also one of the few foods that takes more calcium away from you than it gives you.

The commercials tell you about the calcium, but it does not tell you about the casein.  Casein is a milk protein that is highly acidic.  Every acid that you pour into your body has to be neutralized, and the body’s natural base is Calcium Carbonate.  Some of this is flowing in the blood; but after that gets exhausted, the body steals it from the bones.  So dairy gives you one calcium and then takes two away.  The parts of the world with the highest rates of milk and milk-product consumption have the highest rates of osteoporosis and hip fractures.   

Over the past 70 years, there has been a concerted campaign to get people to drink more milk in the name of preventing osteoporosis.  And it has been very successful.  There are more people drinking more milk into later in life.  But we have not seen osteoporosis rates fall at all.  In fact, they have skyrocketed.   Milk is not the only factor in this, but if it is supposed to be protecting u, it is not working.  

The other problem with dairy is that it is a food designed by nature to GROW TISSUE.  This is appropriate for infants as they A) need to grow a lot of tissue in a hurry and B) have the digestive enzymes necessary to turn this rich and viscous material into usable tissue.  By the time we have our teeth, we don’t need it anymore.  Most mothers who breastfed long enough will agree that teeth are nature’s way of telling us that it’s time to wean.   In a non-infant, the tissue that dairy turns into is phlegm; which can manifest many different ways.  It can show up as:  Sinus congestion; post-nasal drip; wheezing and asthma; and mental fog  It can lodge between the skin and muscles as fat.  Kids get a lot of dairy these days and that could be a contributing factor in the explosion of childhood obesity.  This is true with normal, unadulterated milk; but is likely much worse when juiced with growth hormones.  Phlegm can also congeal to form cysts, fibroids, and tumors.  The Chinese understand cancer and these other types of abnormal growths as being basically phlegm-balls and noticed more in the populations that consumed dairy.  Recent research is showing that casein is carcinogenic and is implicated in a whole host of auto-immune diseases.  For more on this, read “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell, a PhD nutritional biochemist.   You would think that evidence that dairy causes health problems would be on the front page of newspapers, but the billions of dollars at stake have prevented most of us from ever hearing about it.  

I advocate the Asian Diet, which states that most things are fine in moderation.  This is true for dairy as well.  You can eat and drink all the things you like.  You just need to keep them in the proper proportion.  And the best proportion for you and your children (except infants) is to have in rarely. 

Thursday, June 23, 2011

The doctors can't believe it

Another wonderful story of the power and utility of acupuncture.

I had a patient with throat cancer.  He just finished a course of radiation and had acupuncture throughout the 8-week course.  I saw him today for a follow-up and he reported to me the sentiments of his cancer team of physicians.

Firstly, they were very impressed that his mouth still has as much saliva as it does.  Often the radiation kills salivary glands and patients are never able to salivate again.  They were also impressed that he did not completely lose his voice; which is a very common but temporary side-effect.

They could not believe that he was able to eat food throughout the treatment.  Most patients require a feeding tube after a few weeks.  They also said it was very remarkable that four weeks after his treatment, his burns had completely healed.  And they commented that while he had lost weight, the typical patient loses a lot more weight and continues to after the end of treatment.  In all, the doctors and the patient were very impressed at how acupuncture twice a week could protect him so well.

Cancer is my passion.  If you know people who are battling it, please let them know that acupuncture can reduce all the side-effects and improve clinical outcomes (better survival rates and survival times).  It should be a part of everyone's comprehensive cancer care.

In the Chicagoland area, patients can see me at A Center for Oriental Medicine in Wilmette and the Tiffani Kim Institute in Chicago's River North neighborhood. 

-Jason Bussell

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Coca Cola is now "educating" dieticians

The American Dietetics Society has endorsed a continuing education about nutrition that has been created by the Coca Cola Company.  This program seeks to eliminate "urban myths" about sugar, fluoride, artificial colors, and non-nutritive sweeteners.  According to them (and their well-paid experts), there is no evidence that any of these ingredients are anything but wonderful for developing children.  Apparently, all the science that has shown otherwise was just hype and hysteria.  But the people who stand to gain the most from the continued sale of these products assure us that they are safe, so we are just supposed to believe them.  Actually, they know that we would never believe them, so they are targeting nutritionists and dieticians to spread their propaganda. 

First it was the dairy industry "educating" doctors about why every human needs to drink milk throughout their entire lives (even though no other species has any dairy after infancy).  Now it is the sugary, crap-filled beverage industry that is trying to take over our nutritional advisors.  Beware of the influence of big money.  All they want is more money; and they don't care if your kids get hurt in the process.

You can read all about this "nutritional education" and the conflicts of interest involved at the Alliance for Natural Health.  http://www.anh-usa.org/dietitians-are-buying-cokes-line/

Foods with the most pesticides

The Environmental Working Group just released its list of the top 12 pesticide-laden foods.   This is what they call the Dirty Dozen.  Remember, pesticides are toxic.  We don't want them in our food.  If we got away from the huge factory farms that specialize in only one or two crops, we would not need to use so much pesticide.  We would also not need as much fertilizer, as we would not deplete the soil as badly.  But here is the list

  1. Apples
  2. Celery
  3. Strawberries
  4. Peaches
  5. Spinach
  6. Nectarines
  7. Imported Grapes
  8. Sweet Bell Peppers
  9. Potatoes
  10. Domestic Blueberries
  11. Lettuce
  12. Kale and Collard Greens
It is best to eat all your food organic and locally grown.  If that is not possible, at least try to avoid these 12 conventional produce items.  

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

more amazing stories from the acupuncture clinic

A few days ago, a patient brought in his father.  Father was a life-long sheet metal worker who had developed a cyst on the palmar aspect of his hand.  Several of his fellow workers developed the same thing so it seems to be an occupational hazard.  This cyst prevented him from being able to completely flex two of his fingers.  I put three needles into his foor, and instantly he was able to fully close his fist again.  After the treatment he flexed his hand as he said to his son, "this is amazing.  Look at this.  I haven't been able to do this for over a year."

Then yesterday I had a young man with a strained piriformis muscle.  Piriformis syndrome can present a little like sciatic pain, but it is more constant and achy vs the sudden and electric nature of sciatica.  Lying face up on the table, when I raised his leg up he felt pain at about 20 degrees of hip flexion.  I put four needles into his shoulder and tried the leg again.  Although only 15 seconds had passed, I could raise his leg to about 70 degrees before he felt any discomfort.  And the discomfort he describes as "it just feels like a normal stretch, not anything like an injury". 


I've been doing acupuncture for 12 years no and it still impresses me almost every day.  I feel like I learned how to do magic.  If you have any health issues that you would like to address (physical, mental, or spiritual), visit me in Wilmette at A Center for Oriental Medicine or downtown Chicago at the Tiffani Kim Institute.

Be well.