June 2009
You’re tired all the time…you just can’t seem to concentrate…your muscles and joints ache like you just ran a marathon, but you’ve done little more then drag yourself from the couch to the bathroom.
You’re suffering from chronic fatigue, and the only thing worse than the debilitating symptoms is trying to get a doctor to take you seriously. Like many of my patients, you’ve probably had blood tests come back normal—maybe you even stopped seeking treatment and settled in for a life of weariness and pain.
Well, that all stops today. Because my research has uncovered three things you’ve probably been waiting years for someone to tell you:
1. Your chronic fatigue symptoms are very real.
2. They have a bona fide medical cause.
3. Your chronic fatigue is not “all in your head.”
In fact, sometimes it’s all in your cells. There’s a very good chance your cells are starving for the one nutrient that can melt away your fatigue and pain and have you bursting with energy from sunup to sundown.
And once you correct this simple nutritional deficiency, it may be possible to…
Permanently cure your chronic fatigue in just 90 days
I know—no one wants to wait 90 days to be cured. But I’m not one of those doctors who is going to promise you some 24-hour miracle treatment that’s only going to let you down. It takes time to reverse chronic fatigue, but my program is proven and effective.
Even better, it’s incredibly simple and cheap. Just think back to the last time you had an unexpected muscle cramp. There’s a good chance someone told you to go eat a banana. That’s because your muscle cells (and the rest of your body’s cells, for that matter) depend on potassium to keep them energized and pain-free.
You see, each of your body’s 70 trillion cells is like a small battery generating an electric charge. And potassium—or, more accurately, the ratio of potassium to sodium—determines the lion’s share of the strength of that charge. When you have the correct ratio of potassium to sodium, your cells have a high “voltage” and can produce the energy you need to feel great all day.
You need a high amount of potassium and a low amount of sodium inside your cells. In contrast, your bloodstream needs more sodium and less potassium. This differential creates your cells’ voltage.
But as you get older, you lose your ability to hold potassium within your cells. To make matters worse, you’re probably getting plenty of sodium and very little potassium in your diet. (I’ll explain more about that in a minute.)
In the end, your potassium-depleted cells become like drained, weakened batteries. They tire out from even the simplest chores, leaving you constantly fatigued and sore.
Most doctors will check your potassium levels when you exhibit the symptoms of chronic fatigue. The problem is, they’re relying on…
A medical test so flawed it’s practically useless
It seems doctors today are only interested in running blood tests and prescribing drugs. So, they order blood work to look for a potassium deficiency. But if they thought back to their medical education, they’d remember that only 2 percent of your body’s potassium content is found in your blood stream—the other 98 percent is in your cells and is used up first.
You could be severely deficient in potassium and have a perfectly normal blood test. The fact is, the blood test is often worthless for diagnosing potassium-induced chronic fatigue.
So how can I diagnose you with a potassium deficiency without some blood test to guide me? I can’t. Instead, if you’ve been suffering from the symptoms of chronic fatigue, I’m going to show you how to…
Diagnose yourself with a potassium deficiency—in the next 60 seconds
Here’s how it works…Go to your kitchen cabinets or fridge, and look at any and all food with a label on it. I don’t care if it’s your favorite breakfast cereal or a box of macaroni and cheese. See if you can find a single food with seven times more potassium than sodium…even better, see if you can locate any food that doesn’t have far more sodium than potassium.
No? Well, then unless you’re loading up on other potassium-rich foods (which I’ll tell you about in a moment), you can be almost certain your cells are deficient in potassium.
You see, typical Americans get as much as three times more sodium than potassium in their diets. That’s because food processing sucks out up to 90 percent of the important nutrients from raw foods. Then, manufacturers load up the food with sodium to extend shelf life and keep bacteria from growing.
You end up with food that has an unhealthy mineral balance that can lead to heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and, you guessed it, chronic fatigue.
You’d think younger people—who grew up watching a McDonald’s commercial every five minutes—would be most likely to load up on this disease-causing processed food. But I’m consistently shocked at how poorly many of us eat as we get a little gray around the temples. As we age, we may end up living alone or with just a spouse—we don’t cook as much as we used to, relying instead on processed, vitamin- and mineral-depleted foods, and other microwavable concoctions.
In order to boost your energy and shed the debilitating symptoms of chronic fatigue, you need to restore the potassium levels in your cells. But it’s not as simple as popping a supplement every day. In fact, people looking to correct their potassium levels are frequently stymied by…
Mainstream medicine’s smear campaign against potassium
Even though the USDA says you need over 4,000 mg of potassium per day, the FDA has made getting that much almost impossible. Believe it or not, they’ve made it illegal for a health food store to sell you a potassium pill containing more than 99 mg. At that dosage, you’d have to down 40 pills a day to reach your recommended daily allowance.
If you’re struck by the irony of the FDA, which routinely allows deadly drugs to remain on the market, cracking down on potassium, all I can say is…wait, it gets worse.
You see, the FDA and many folks in mainstream medicine have it in their heads that potassium supplements could be dangerous. Certain widely prescribed drugs, such as ACE inhibitors, raise potassium levels in your blood. This, of course, makes the Big Pharma lawyers nervous, so the drug companies have convinced most docs that potassium supplements, when combined with these drugs, could lead to dangerously high blood potassium levels. However, what they’re not telling you is that these drugs, in part, lower your blood pressure by raising your potassium levels.
Many docs won’t prescribe potassium supplements because Big Pharma has them scared to death. The makers of prescription potassium supplements have responded by changing the unit of measurement for their pills from 750 mg to 10mEq (milliequivalents). Of course, it’s the exact same amount of potassium—but doctors feel better prescribing something with a 10 as the dosage, instead of 750.
How’s that for scientific?
The fact is (barring the exception of taking potassium-raising drugs mentioned above), this foolish potassium scare is based on no hard science whatsoever. Most vegetarians have potassium intakes far above the recommended daily allowance—I’ve even had some vegetarian patients whose potassium intake exceeded 20,000 mg per day. And while I don’t encourage vegetarian diets in many of my patients, let’s face facts—these folks aren’t exactly dropping like flies from potassium overdoses. Even the medical textbooks say that there’s no upper limit to how much potassium healthy people can absorb from their diet as long as your kidney function is normal.
If you have a hard time getting your doc to prescribe you potassium supplements (and you probably will), there’s plenty you can do to raise potassium levels on your own. First, check out my sidebar, The “baked potato therapy” for chronic fatigue at the bottom of the page. You’ll find 10 foods you can easily add to any meal to boost your potassium intake by several thousand milligrams a day.
Even better, I have many patients who swear by…
The $3 cure for chronic fatigue
Just head for the spice section of your supermarket and look for a salt substitute with potassium chloride. These substitutes usually cost just a few dollars and, if you use them regularly, you can restore your potassium-to-sodium ratio in a matter of months. (Find me a drug that will do that!) Some of these salt substitutes deliver more than 500 mg of potassium in each serving.
Quick caveat here—don’t expect a salt substitute to taste like salt. You might need to try a few different brands before you find one that suits your taste. But once you do, you’ll be well on your way to boosting your potassium levels and giving your cells the charge they need to keep you feeling energetic and pain-free all day long.
While I have treated patients with prescription potassium supplements, I’ve had many who were able to correct their deficiencies just through diet and salt substitutes. It can take a few months to restore your potassium ratio (remember, you didn’t become deficient overnight), but many people start to feel more energy in a matter of days.
Start loading up on potassium, and by the end of the summer you could be rolling around on the floor with your grandkids or putting in a full day of shopping without the pain, stiffness or fatigue you’re feeling today. And here’s the best part—with proper nutrition, you can stay that way.
If you think you may be suffering from chronic fatigue, the first thing you should talk to your doctor about is the various medications you are taking. Believe it or not, more than one in every five people over the age of 65 takes 10 or more prescription medications a week.
Many of these medications have side effects—such as weariness and muscle soreness—that may seem like chronic fatigue. And once these prescriptions start to interact, they can cause lethargy, problems concentrating, and worse.
If you’re taking a proton pump inhibitor for heartburn, there’s a good chance it is causing (or at least contributing to) your chronic fatigue. These medications interfere with your body’s ability to digest and absorb protein—even a protein shake or other protein-rich foods cannot counteract this effect. They also interfere with your ability to absorb important minerals from your diet, like potassium, magnesium, and zinc.The best approach is to talk to your doctor about alternative methods for treating your heartburn.
When analyzing the cause of your fatigue, a competent doctor should check you for anemia, kidney failure, liver failure and malignancies. Don’t be alarmed—these illnesses need to be ruled out and, if caught in time, they are often treatable and reversible.
Over the next several months, I will continue to discuss even more causes of chronic fatigue. Remember, you can’t get better until you know what’s causing your symptoms.
When I tell my patients that a nutritional deficiency may be causing the symptoms of their chronic fatigue, such as muscle soreness, they are usually surprised. After all, many of them have been taking multivitamins for years.
Multivitamins are a good place to start—but many leave out key ingredients because the manufacturer wants to save some money. For example, you need the following five nutrients to convert carbohydrates into energy (they don’t teach this at medical school any more, but it was in my biochemistry textbook from the 1970s):
• Vitamin B1 (thiamin)
• Vitamin B2 (riboflavin)
• Vitamin B3 (niacin)
• Lipoic acid
• Pantothenic acid
If you’re missing any one of these nutrients, carbs don’t break down properly, and your body produces muscle-tightening lactic acid instead. Your cells also become crippled at generating energy from burning sugar. I am continually amazed at how many of my new patients suffer from fatigue because the processed foods they eat are depleted in these nutrients, and food fortification programs don’t contain lipoic acid and pantothenic acid.
To make matters worse, I’d bet money that your multivitamin doesn’t contain lipoic acid and pantothenic acid, either, because they’re expensive ingredients. So, you end up saving a few bucks, but you suffer muscle soreness as a result. Oddly enough, the multivitamins most likely to contain both lipoic acid and pantothenic acid are those designed for diabetics. Lipoic acid is well known for supporting glucose metabolism, so manufacturers reluctantly include it in these formulations.
Imagine the cure for your chronic fatigue being locked inside a delicious baked potato. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Below are 10 foods that are loaded with the potassium you need to boost your energy levels and lose your soreness and fatigue for good.
Just adding one, simple potato to your daily diet could give you an extra 1,000 mg of the potassium you’re cells are begging for. For even more potassium, try washing that potato down with some fresh orange juice.
Food Potassium (mg)
6 oz orange juice 1,436
1 cup beet greens 1,309
1 cup dates 1,168
1 cup raisins 1,086
Medium potato with skin 1,081
1 cup lima beans 955
1 cup cooked spinach 839
1 cup pinto beans 746
1 avocado 720
Banana 422
One more thing: If you suffer from metabolic syndrome (see page 5), getting enough potassium will take a little more work because you’re likely sensitive to carbs. I’ll discuss this in more detail next month.
Your blood pressure is elevated—and so is your cholesterol. You’re staring down a life of diabetes and, no matter what you do, you can’t seem to get your weight under control. And guess what else?
You’re suffering from a disease you’ve probably never even heard of!
It’s called metabolic syndrome—and millions of Americans who are simultaneously obese and diabetic while having elevated cholesterol and blood pressure are afflicted with it.
And here’s the worst part—no one is particularly interested in curing you. They’d rather sell you one drug for your blood pressure, another for your cholesterol, and so on.
But I’ve uncovered something that can help you break that cycle of prescription pills, shrug off your health problems, and add years to your life. I’ve learned that a single rogue gland may be causing all of your symptoms.
And over the next several issues I’m going to show you how bringing that rogue gland under control can let you…
Eliminate obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol for good
You see, even though metabolic syndrome is a real disease, most doctors tend to think of it as four separate conditions. I know I used to. I’d prescribe a drug for each symptom, and see my patients again when they needed refills.
But they weren’t getting any better—and it ate away at me.
So I tried a different approach. I wondered if metabolic syndrome, like any other disease, may have one, single cause. It was a longshot, but I had to try.
I began studying the results of my patients’ 24-hour urine tests, and I noticed an amazing pattern develop. Nearly all of them had incredibly overactive adrenal glands—in fact, their adrenals practically couldn’t shut themselves off! And as any good doctor knows, if your adrenals are over-secreting, you can develop obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol.
That’s when I realized that if I could bring my patients’ adrenal glands under control, I could cure their metabolic syndrome and all its deadly symptoms.
I was already practicing my Nobel Prize acceptance speech when I learned something that flat out shocked me. Scientists were onto this 50 years ago, when they discovered that obese people secrete excessive adrenal hormone metabolites. I don’t know why this research wasn’t pursued more aggressively, but I suspect the drug companies saw a lot more profit potential in treating metabolic syndrome as four distinct illnesses—and they left people like you to suffer.
If you’re suffering from metabolic syndrome, you’re probably wondering why your adrenals are going haywire. The answer is both disturbing and simple…
Your body thinks it’s under attack
Picture yourself living in the world as it was 10,000 years ago. What kinds of skills would you need to survive? You’d need to be able to outrun and outthink predators—maybe even survive long periods of time without food or water. Our bodies had defense mechanisms that made those things possible—and those same defense mechanisms are making us very sick today.
When you’re facing a threat, your body secretes adrenal hormones that have immediate and long-term effects. One of these hormones, cortisol, instantly converts protein to sugar, which gives you energy to face a crisis. But too much sugar can be dangerous, so your pancreas produces insulin to regulate how much sugar gets into your blood stream.
In prehistoric times, this was incredibly useful—especially when humans were facing winter, a long trek, or other situations where food would be scarce. Insulin stimulates a behavioral preoccupation with food, which focuses you on your next feeding. This is a survival tool—it keeps you hunting for food, even when things look great.
Insulin also instructs your liver to store sugar as fat. That’s a useful tool for surviving times when food is limited. But it wreaks havoc on you now.
You see, the things that cause you to feel threatened today (like an unexpected bill or relationship problems) are very different from the things that threatened our ancestors (such as hungry lions). Your adrenals may be giving you enough sugar to run or fight frantically—but you don’t need it.
So, all that sugar gets stored in our belly as an excess reserve of fat—and we’ll never need it, because we rarely go long without eating. Next thing you know, the fat that’s stored in your belly starts to spill over into your blood vessels, which raises your cholesterol levels. (I’ll talk more about that next month.) Your blood pressure chronically escalates, you become diabetic—and you now have full-blown metabolic syndrome.
When you realized all this was happening, your first response may have been to try a diet. Lose some weight, and maybe all the other problems will come back under control. That’s a good thought—in fact, it’s what the American Heart Association recommends for metabolic syndrome.
But, like many of my patients, I’ll bet you found that no diet gave you the results you wanted. That’s because of a nasty metabolic secret that groups like the AHA will never tell you…
Even the “perfect diet” can be ruined by stress
If you already have overactive adrenal glands, living in a constant state of stress is only going to make matters worse—no matter how well you eat.
You see, when you’re feeling stressed, your adrenal glands release cortisol to break down protein and turn it into sugar. Cortisol also directs the release of stored sugar, called glycogen, and fat. Now you’re more alert and have the energy to run from a bear, a tiger, or any of the other risks our prehistoric ancestors faced.
Except you’re not running from anything, are you? You’re stuck in traffic or at your desk, or lying awake at night worrying about something. And all that excess sugar is stored as fat.
So while you’re subsisting on some low-calorie diet, trying to get your health in order, stress is actually leading your body to create more and more fat. Even worse, when you’re feeling constantly stressed, your adrenals remain in this continual state of panic.
Stress can sabotage even the best diet, leaving you with a permanent spare tire. But let’s face it—most of us aren’t exactly following the perfect diet. Instead, we’re eating highly processed, sugar-loaded carbs that will be stored as fat. Plus, much of this processed food is packed with sodium but is lacking in potassium, which contributes to high blood pressure.
To make matters worse, when your adrenals are overactive, your body actually hangs on to all this sodium. Again, that’s a prehistoric response—sodium used to be rare in the human diet, and our bodies would conserve it to help maintain blood volume.
Once upon a time it was helpful—now, it’s causing millions of Americans to suffer from hypertension.
First some homework—then some healing
If you’re suffering from metabolic syndrome, and you suspect that you could have overactive adrenals, ask your doctor for a 24-hour urine test to monitor your hormone and metabolite levels.
I’m giving you one month to schedule the appointment and get the test done. If testing reveals overactive adrenals, you can use the information I’ll provide next month to begin reining in your adrenal glands and start bringing your weight, cholesterol, high blood pressure, and even diabetes back under control.
These are the same tools I’ve used to cure my patients of metabolic syndrome for good. You, too, could be just a month from getting your health back under control, so STAY TUNED!
Overactive adrenals
Turns protein to blood sugar
Excess blood sugar causes insulin to rise
Excess insulin tells the liver to store the excess sugar as fat
Each step feels like hot daggers are being jabbed into your knees. Turning a doorknob shoots waves of unbearable pain through your arm. Your rheumatoid arthritis feels like more than a disease—it feels like a life sentence for pain.
You may have been told that there’s not much, other than symptom relief, that can be done about rheumatoid arthritis. But that’s simply not true, because here’s something you may have never been told:
Your rheumatoid arthritis is being caused by a food allergy!
Think about it. You know that allergies kick your immune and hormonal systems into overdrive. (For a more detailed explanation, see How rheumatoid arthritis hides in your body on page 8.) But most doctors overlook the fact that before you develop a disease like rheumatoid arthritis, you first develop specific food allergies that start causing the damage.
Your immune system thinks it’s under attack, so it responds by releasing antibodies that bind to the ingested food. Problem is, these antibodies also can attack and break down certain parts of your body, such as your joints. This is called an autoimmune disease, which is caused when your immune system begins to attack you instead of some foreign substance.
I’m guessing no doctor ever told you that before. No one told me either—not even in med school. But I’ve been fortunate enough to benefit from the good instruction of alternative health pioneers like Dr. Jonathan Wright. And they’ve taught me secrets you can use to…
Stop feeding your rheumatoid arthritis—and start living pain-free
Your first step is to identify the food allergy that’s causing your rheumatoid arthritis. Unfortunately, the testing performed by most doctors is often of little use.
You see, when it comes to food allergies, most doctors only evaluate antibodies of the IgE class. These are the antibodies that are released shortly after you eat the food allergen, and they cause hives, hay fever, and other allergy symptoms I’m sure you’re familiar with. Problem is, these are not the only antibodies caused by food allergies.
If you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis (or any other autoimmune disease), you’ll never have a chance of becoming well unless your doctor tests for the class of antibodies that caused your disease in the first place. You see, an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis often involves the IgG antibody class.
Mainstream doctors understand all about IgG antibodies—they just don’t understand that sometimes they’re generated in response to a food allergy.
I’d like to be able to tell you that it’s as simple as identifying which food allergen causes which autoimmune disease, but that’s just not the way it works. The fact of the matter is that one allergen—dairy, for example—can cause any number of diseases. In fact, it’s often one of the main promoters of rheumatoid arthritis.
I began ordering a more complete form of food allergy testing for my patients several years ago. Since then, I’ve begun to see a general food allergen pattern for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases, like ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, asthma, neurodegenerative disease, and thyroiditis, to name a few.
And with proper testing, you can determine which food allergy is causing a rise in your IgG antibodies. Then all you have to do is completely eliminate that food from your diet. You can then focus on rebuilding your joints using the three steps I told you about in the May issue of Health Revelations, which I’ll remind you of in a moment. In fact, I predict…
10 years from now, every doctor in America will be treating rheumatoid arthritis this way!
You see, mainstream medicine is already treating autoimmune diseases (except for thyroiditis) by poisoning your body so it makes fewer IgG antibodies. You might be taking prednisone and methotrexate for your rheumatoid arthritis, and poisoning your body is exactly what these drugs do. A few doctors know that rheumatoid arthritis is caused by the rise of these IgG antibodies—but they just don’t understand that allergies are causing the rise.
Rather than accept a lifetime of prescription drugs—and the side effects that go with them—just find out what you’re allergic to and cut it out of your diet. You can work with a holistically competent doctor who will probably perform some blood tests that will check for your IgG antibody levels in relation to certain foods. Remember to tell your doctor if you’re taking any immunosuppressant drugs like prednisone or methotrexate, as they interfere with the production of IgG antibodies and could result in an inaccurate test.
But if you and your doctor can identify the food that’s causing your rheumatoid arthritis, all you have left to do is follow my…
3 steps for reversing joint damage
Stopping the pain of rheumatoid arthritis is one thing, but reversing the damage is a different story. Fortunately, your body is perfectly capable of healing itself if you give it the nutrients it needs. Last month, I shared with you three easy steps to reversing joint degeneration. I’ll review them briefly here. For the full story, see the May issue of Health Revelations, which you can access online at www.HealthRevelations.com. Your archive password is below.
Step 1: Turn on your joints’ “water magnet.” By taking MSM every day, you can boost your body’s sulfate content. This activates an electrical charge in your joints, which powerfully attracts water.
Step 2: Unleash the power of these key supplements. By supplementing with glucosamine and galactosamine, you give the MSM something to stick to in your joints. Many joint formulas have MSM and glucosamine, but not galactosamine. Your body can get galactosamine from chondroitin, another common ingredient in joint products, but chondroitin can be hard to digest. I recommend Knox NutraJoint Plus Glucosamine, Chondroitin, and MSM, which has partially digested chondroitin.
Step 3: Boost your supply of this key hormone. Have your doctor conduct a 24-hour urine test to see if you have adequate levels of IGF-1, as well as growth hormone, testosterone or DHEA, thyroid hormones, and vitamin A. IGF-1 in particular is responsible for repairing damaged joints. If your IGF-1 levels are low, your doctor should put you on a program of hormone therapy and regular exercise.
I’ve used this program to give rheumatoid arthritis patients something they haven’t had in a long time—hope. It’s one of my great pleasures as a doctor to watch their pain melt away and to watch them start enjoying the vibrant, active lives this terrible disease had stolen from them. Follow my program, and let’s see if we can make the same thing happen for you.
You may wonder why, if you’ve been allergic to a certain food all your life, your rheumatoid arthritis symptoms are only showing up now. The answer is pretty simple—your hormones have been masking the problem.
Hormones produced by your suboptimal adrenal, gonad (ovaries or testicles), and thyroid glands all play a role in repairing joint damage. You ingest a food allergen, your joints are damaged, and these hormones kick into repair mode. Meanwhile, you’re none the wiser.
The problem is, you make less of these hormones as you age. The repair can’t keep up with the damage anymore. Show me a person with rheumatoid arthritis, and I’ll show you a person with low levels of these key hormones.
Most doctors don’t catch this, because they test for hormones using saliva or serum hormone tests, which only capture one moment in time. Hunger, how recently you exercised, and even your state of mind can throw off these tests. They’re 20 percent accurate at best!
I use a 24-hour urine test, which provides a much better sense of what your glands are really producing. It also utilizes GC mass spec technology, which is far more accurate than anything you’ll see with a saliva or serum hormone test. So I’m able to determine which hormones are deficient, and correct the problem through targeted hormone therapy.
