Natural Treatment for Hayfever, Sinusitis or Seasonal Allergies

The arrival of spring normally indicates the end of the miserable cold winter weather and the beginning of warmer days and more outdoor activities.  But, for some people, spring is a time of misery as the increase of flowering plants sets off their hayfever, sinusitis and other allergy reactions. During spring, pollen can be the major trigger for the allergic response that causes hayfever; other triggers or allergens may include grass, dust and animal dander.  These allergens irritate the nasal passages causing inflammation, increased mucus production and symptoms such as itchiness, watery eyes, sneezing, runny nose and congestion.

Besides hayfever, some people can also suffer from sinusitis during spring.  Sinusitis is a painful condition involving inflammation of the paranasal sinuses (hollow spaces around the cheeks and eyes).  It may be an infection and is commonly accompanied by headaches, pain and mucus congestion.  Sinusitis if left unresolved, may lead to chronic infections lasting weeks or even months.

In allergic conditions like hayfever and sinusitis, one aspect of the immune system becomes overactive and leads to excessive immune activity causing all the signs and symptoms experienced by allergy sufferers.  Standard treatments for allergies, hayfever and sinusitis include steroids, antihistamines and decongestants.  All of these can provide symptomatic relief, but unfortunately, do little to address the underlying immune imbalance.

Natural treatment for hayfever, sinusitis or seasonal allergies involves reducing inflammation, restoring balance to the immune system and supporting long term immune health.

Here are what you can do naturally to manage your body’s response to allergens and reduce the allergic reactions or symptoms:

·              Use natural herbs and nutrients that can help manage the symptoms of sinusitis, hayfever and seasonal allergies, as well as restoring balance to the immune system.  These herbs and nutrients include Quercetin (vitamin-like compound which calms the immune system down), Albizzia (traditional Ayurvedic herb for the relief of the symptoms of allergies), Atractolodyes (a herb used in traditional Chinese medicine to support healthy immune function) and Perilla (a herb for maintaining healthy immune balance).

·              Almost 80% of your body’s total immune system is present in your digestive system.  Improve the health of your digestive system by reinoculating your digestive system with “good” bacteria.  These beneficial bacteria or probiotics such as Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bifidobacterium lactics send calming messages to the immune system and help reduce the allergic responses that have been generated. 

·              Keep yourself well by making healthy lifestyle changes.  Eat a healthy diet, high in nutrients and essential fatty acids.  Minimise intake of red meat, refined starches and sugars.  Have fish as your primary source of protein.  Consume a diet high in fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds.  Drink appropriate amount of pure water (ideally 6-8 classes a day), and most importantly, exercise regularly and have fun.  

Your Painkiller can put you at Higher Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

NZ Herald July 10, 2013 – “Heart attack, stroke link to pain killer”

The NZ Herald has reported at least a couple of times this year about diclofenac, sold as Voltaren, and its link to increased cardiovascular risks.  This drug is prescribed to 400,000 New Zealanders a year. 

Earlier in February 2013, researchers from the UK and Canada say Voltaren should be pulled off the market because it raises the risk of heart attack and stroke. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10865535

Diclofenac is the active ingredient used in Voltaren which belongs to a bigger group of drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS). Painkillers are commonly used in higher doses and for longer periods of time in arthritis sufferers and people who constantly suffer from headaches and migraines.

Pain, redness, swelling and heat are all signs of inflammation.  In some areas of our body, we can only “feel” the inflammation, i.e. pain.  Our diet, lifestyle and nutrition, or lack of, are major contributors to inflammation. Fortunately, there are many things that we have naturally that are natural anti-inflammatories.  Having adequate sleep to allow our bodies to repair is anti-inflammatory.  Eating a diet high in fresh food and low in processed food loaded with additives and sugar can reduce inflammation.  For each person who is in pain, you need to remove the trigger, and using diclofenac to kill or mask the pain is not a solution.  It is a bandaid to simply remove signs or feeling of the pain.  You don't feel the pain but the pain is actually still there as you have not addressed the cause of the pain.

To enjoy better health, you always need to address the cause of your health imbalance, not put a bandaid over it, especially if the bandaid increases your cardiovascular risk!

How to prevent Heart Disease and maintain a Healthy Cardiovascular System

How healthy is your heart? 

•         Do you smoke?
•         Are you overweight?
•         Do you have high blood pressure?
•         Do you have high cholesterol?
•         Are you on cholesterol or blood pressure medication and don’t like the side effects?
•         Does your family have a history of cardiovascular disease?
•         Do you do very little exercise?

If you have answered ‘yes’ to any of the questions above, you should look at how you can help your heart and blood vessels be as healthy as possible naturally.

Keeping your cardiovascular system healthy is vital.  Your heart and blood vessels make up your cardiovascular system. Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death in the world today, especially in the developed countries.

Here are five steps you can follow to optimise your heart health:

1.      Follow a healthy eating plan:

·        Eat a minimum of 3 cups of vegetables and 2 pieces of fruit every day.

·        Eat a handful of nuts and seeds and up to 2 tablespoons of “good” fat from foods such as fish, nuts, seeds and cold pressed vegetable oils (eg. Olive oil). 

·        Include protein-rich foods in each meal or snack.  Make sure you choose lean protein sources.  Reduce fatty meats high in saturated fat such as bacon.

·        Drink a minimum of 8 glasses of pure water daily.

2.      Exercise regularly.  For a healthy heart you need to do a minimum of 30 minutes of light to moderate exercise at least 5 times in a week.  Gentle to brisk walking is recommended.  Consider having a friend to join you for the exercise so you can keep each other motivated.

3.       Relax and have fun.  Stress can have a major effect on your body, especially your heart! You need to manage stress to ensure balance and health.  Take 30 minutes of each day to enjoy some relaxing and fun activities.

4.      Commit to some key lifestyle changes such as getting regular wellness checkups, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol consumption and quitting smoking if you smoke.

5.      Take natural supplements beneficial to your heart and cardiovascular system such as Bonito Peptides, Policosanols, DHA, Taurine and Magnesium, Krill Oil and Coenzyme Q10 (if you have elevated cholesterol and are taking medication for this from your doctor, then Coenzyme Q10 is even more important to take.  A class of cholesterol medications called “Statins” have an unfortunate side effect of reducing the body’s ability to manufacture Q10, which may lead to side effects such as fatigue.)

Don’t wait until it is too late to look after your heart.  Commit to improving your cardiovascular health now by making the dietary and lifestyle changes.  You can improve your heart health and maintain a healthy cardiovascular system naturally using natural herbal medicines and supplements without the side effects of drugs.

Does Fish Oil Cause Prostate Cancer?

The media has been putting up headlines like:

Fish Oils may increase prostate cancer risk – CNBC July 11 2013

Link to Prostate Cancer brings more bad news for fish oil story – Forbes July 11 2013

But, does fish oil really increase prostate cancer risk? We have been asked by our clients what our views are regarding this piece of news.  The study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute entitled “Plasma Phospholipid Fatty Acids and Prostate Cancer Risk in the SELECT trial” and has generated lots of recent media interest and inquiries from the public.

After reviewing all the information we could get on this study and in consultation with our scientific advisors, we believe that the precautions against omega-3 consumption in this study are largely without merit.  You should be confident that fish oil is still a beneficial supplement.

This study and the conclusions drawn contain many flaws, including:

• This is not an intervention study where the participants were given fish oil to evaluate their prostate cancer risk.  It was merely an observational study to look at the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) where the levels of plasma phospholipids were measured.  Observation does NOT mean causation.  There can be other confounding factors in the study that have caused that observation.
• Plasma phospholipids is a measure that can vary significantly depending on when your last meal of omega-3 or fish or fish oil is. These levels can increase or decrease, based on a single meal within a 48-hour period. 
• The researchers base their conclusions on very small differences in mean omega-3 blood plasma phospholipid levels. The increased prostate cancer risks they ascribe to men who consume large amounts of omega-3 is based on a level of 4.66% in the cancer group, versus a level of 4.48% in the control group.
• If high levels of omega-3 indeed increases the risk of prostate cancer, then countries with high consumption of omega 3 like Japan and Scandinavia should have high rates of prostate cancer.  However, the reverse is true.  It is the countries with low consumption of omega-3 and high consumption of trans and saturated fats that have high incidence of prostate cancer.
• This is a small study and the conclusions are not keeping up with the rest of the literature on cancer risk and omega-3 fish oil consumption.  8 other major studies involving 78,000 participants have found NO increase in cancer risk.

The researchers have ignored many studies collated over many decades of studies of Omega-3 and its health benefits to publicise conclusions that contradict other better designed research.  However, we do advise our patients to be careful about the source of fish oil purchased.  Since the publicity of the health benefits of Omega-3, many companies have jumped onto the bandwagon and there is no shortage of brands of Omega-3 in the market, from grocery lines to properly tested therapeutically designed Omega-3 we dispense in our clinic.  You get what you pay for, not all Omega-3 fish oils are the same.

Should women have preventive double mastectomy like Angelina Jolie for fear of breast cancer?

The recent news that Angelina Jolie had preventive double mastectomy even without cancer because of her carrying the BRCA genes has sparked a lot of conversation amongst women whether that is the best way to avoid breast cancer.

When my clients speak to me about this subject in clinic, I ask them if they want to also avoid ovarian cancer and remove their ovaries, hence go through premature menopause, or avoid bowel cancer and remove their bowels.  My heart reaches out to people who think that removing organs can “prevent” cancer.  I wish Angelina was better informed than she was when she made that decision.

Breast cancer has been shown to be less prevalent in certain communities. In her book “Your life in your hands”, Professor Jane Plan, who was a breast cancer patient herself, studied how rural Chinese women did not get breast cancer.  What Prof Jane Plan found was that only one in 10,000 women in China will die from it, compared to that terrible figure of one in 12 in Britain and the even grimmer average of one in 10 across most Western countries. In highly urbanized Hong Kong , the rate rises to 34 women in every 10,000 but still puts the West to shame. The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have similar rates. Plan found that breast cancer in China was considered a “Rich Woman’s Disease” as these people could afford the likes of dairy chocolate, ice-cream, and spaghetti and feta cheese.

Carrying a gene does not automatically make a person get cancer.  The genes need the right environment for the mutation of cells to occur to turn cancerous.  Our body, mindset, nutrition, lifestyle, exercise and food we eat make up the environment. 

There are many things a woman can do to make her environment unfriendly to cancer.  Here are some of them:

1. Get adequate sunshine – Vitamin D deficiency has been closely linked to breast cancer. 
2. Get moving, get active and reduce excess weight (fat) – excess visceral fat (around the abdomen) is inflammatory.
3. Have lots of cruciferous vegetables – these have been proven to help with estrogen metabolism pathways, an excess of “bad estrogen” in the right environment will turn into breast or ovarian cancer.
4. Eat 2-3 brazil nuts a day – brazils are a good source of selenium and this mineral is important for iodine absorption.  A lack of iodine has been seen in many pathologies of the breast.
5. Have adequate good fats from oily fish, seeds and nuts.
6. Reduce intake of fried foods which are a source of carcinogenic acrylamides.
7. Drink green tea.
8. Take a resveratrol, tumeric and acai antioxidant daily, like ResAcai.
9. Do not use underarm deodorant that has propylene glycol, aluminium or artificial deodorants which act as xenoestrogens.
10. Avoid plastic containers, especially microwaving in a plastic container.
11. Use environmentally friendly home cleaning products, avoid excessive exposure to sodium lauryl sulphate.
12. Avoid processed meats that contain sodium nitrite.
13. Live with a purpose, think positive thoughts and be involved in the community.
14. Practice meditation, yoga or prayers daily to achieve spiritual calmness.

And there are many different natural health therapies and supplements that can help to keep your estrogen detoxification pathways open and help you along.  Consult your natural healthcare practitioner for assistance.

Because Angelina is a well-known celebrity, what she says and does will have a big impact on women around the globe and I hope for women to be better informed.  We are not a victim of our genes.  We can take proactive action for our health and wellbeing (yes, but not proactively removing our breasts!)

I hope Angelina is adopting a good diet, lifestyle and nutrition with her carrying the BRCA genes.  Sure she has no more breasts to develop breast cancer, but are her ovaries free from cancer risk?

Are you overweight and malnourished?

Today we see the largest obesity epidemic that the world has never seen before. In the last two decades, we saw a steady increase of caloric intake by children, men and women and at the same time an increase in malnutrition of children. The problem is being overfed and undernourished!

Obesity is a key predictor of diabetes and cardiovascular risk and even some cancers which is avoidable. The intake of high fructose corn syrup in most packaged foods, white sugar, white flour, shortening and trans fat are making us fatter than ever before! At the same time, the intake of nutritionally dense whole food, fresh fruits and vegetables, beans, seeds, nuts and good fats are getting lower, being replaced by these highly processed junk food.

The problem partially lies in the flawed food pyramid that we were taught in school, where at the base of the pyramid we are told, we could have 6-11 servings of bread, pasta, and other grains. And at the tip of the pyramid, we are told that we are allowed little fats. The last generation has seen the rate of obesity double! This pyramid has to be flawed!

Low fat diets have been the trend of the last generation. The number of perceived healthy food advertised on television are usually high in sugar and carbohydrates. In their efforts to keep fats low, many food manufacturers have to compensate for the lack of mouthfeel from low fats with higher levels of taste from salt or sugar or artificial sweeteners. Many of these advertisements target children as their audience, hence the rise in childhood obesity.

Are you overweight or obese? Is your child overweight or obese? Do you suffer from fatigue, headaches, digestive problems like bloating, flatulence or heartburn, poor concentration, insomnia, sinusitis or postnasal drips? If so, look at what you are eating. If you fuel an aeroplane with diesel, you don't expect the aeroplane to fly, do you?

Healthcare or is it really just disease care?

There has been much confusion on what nutritional supplements and natural therapies do and what drugs do. Many people think that nutritional supplements are a natural substitute to the drug they have been prescribed and work as quickly in suppressing the symptoms. They expect the pain or illness to go away in a few hours or a day when they take the “natural pill”. This is how well the media has brainwashed the public, that if you don’t feel well, pop a pill to take away the symptoms, and you’ll feel good again. But, are you and your body really well by suppressing the symptoms with presciption drugs?

I would like to highlight a few distinctions here, between nutritional supplements and drugs and between health care and disease care. First of all, health is about wellness, a state of equilibrium, feeling full of life, energetic, and good about yourself. Health is not defined as the absence of disease. Therefore, healthcare is a proactive approach to your wellbeing, looking at your food choices, lifestyle and social connectedness. Health affects our quality of life immensely.

Dis-ease, on the other hand, is a state of disequilibrium, where a problem large enough has arisen and the scale has been tipped. In our culture here, we go to the doctor when we are not in a state of health, i.e. to treat a certain disease. It is uncommon to go to the doctor if you are not sick and just want to feel better. A friend of mine told me once that her sister-in-law who is a doctor told her she spent only 3 days in her entire time at medical school studying nutrition. So in short, what we always think as healthcare, really, is disease care.

Also, there is a vast difference between natural healing through nutrition and a treatment using drugs. Drugs have a place in our lives, especially in times of emergency and in some acute conditions. However, for many conditions, especially chronic conditions where drugs only work by suppressing the symptoms, healing through nutrition in many cases are better solutions, dealing with the root of the problem rather than suppressing the symptoms.

So, we always have choices, we can choose the state of health we want like everything else that we do. There are only 2 things we can’t choose (or 2 persons rather), our parents!