September 2009 PDF

Who says you can’t cure multiple sclerosis?
Learn about the breakthrough therapy that can reverse symptoms of deadly neurodegenerative diseases.

Many people I meet who suffer from multiple sclerosis use the same word to describe how they feel about their condition—despair. They’ve been told that they suffer from an incurable disease—a disease that one day may rob them of their vision, mobility, and their independence.

It’s no wonder so many of these folks remember the exact day when they were diagnosed. There’s something life-changing about being told you can’t be healed.

Well, if you or a loved one is suffering from this cruel disease, I hope you’ll remember this day, too. Because I’m about to share with you…

The medical breakthrough that is reversing the symptoms of M.S.

This isn’t something that’s 20 years off, and it’s not something that has only been tried on rats. I’m talking about a safe, proven process that I have used repeatedly to help patients start to re­verse years of nerve damage from M.S.

Before I can share this breakthrough therapy, you’re going to have to do something for me first—you’re going to need to forget much of what you’ve been told about the cause of M.S. Because I guarantee you that the real cause of this cruel disease is something you’ve never heard before—and it may even shock you.

But once you understand what’s really causing your condition, there are some simple steps you and your doctor can take to finally turn the tide on this debilitating neurodegenerative disease.

When it comes to healing, a picture is worth a thousand words

Six years ago I was sitting in a lecture by Mayo Clinic-trained neurologist Catherine Willner, when she presented some MRIs that had a profound effect on my medical career.

Dr. Willner showed MRIs of the lesions on her M.S. patients’ brains be­fore they started avoiding wheat; after they had avoided it for three months; and after they were re-exposed to wheat. The evidence was crystal clear…

The lesions on their brains were being caused by a food allergy

I would say that a light bulb went off in my head, but it was really much more than that—it was like a flashing neon sign that was directing me to new, simple truths I could use to help patients.

You see, as doctors we are trained that M.S. is an autoimmune disease, where our bodies release large amounts of antibodies in response to a threat—and those antibodies can actually harm body tissue. In fact, when we’re looking for evidence of M.S., we check for elevated levels of IgG antibodies in your cerebral spinal fluid.

But most doctors don’t understand that these IgG antibodies can be released in response to a food allergy—instead, their allergy testing tends to focus on IgE antibodies. The end result is that your allergy goes undiagnosed, and your body keeps on attacking itself.

And here’s the worst part—doctors know these IgG antibodies are doing you harm. That’s why, when treating neurodegenerative diseases like M.S., they prescribe medicines that suppress the manufacture of IgG antibodies. They know enough to try to stop these antibodies—they just don’t know what’s causing them.

Interesting enough, I have found that the part of your brain that gets attacked by the IgG antibodies determines which disease you develop.

For example, if the IgG antibodies attack your myelin sheath, a type of insulation on your neurons, they cause M.S. If these antibodies react with your motor end plates, which are located at the ends of your motor neurons, you may develop myasthenia gravis, which causes severe muscle weakness. If your hearing and balance centers are affected, it’s Ménière’s disease.

The symptoms of these neurodegenerative diseases may be different, but their cause is not—a food allergy that is producing a destructive autoimmune response. And because the cause of these diseases is the same, I can employ the same two-step process to help my patients finally start to heal from these debilitating diseases.

Step 1: Finding your destructive food allergy

If you suffer from M.S. or another neurodegenerative disease your first step is to stop harming yourself. If you continue to eat the food you are allergic to, you will only cause additional damage to your neurons.

When treating my patients for one of these diseases, my first step is to conduct thorough allergy testing, looking for increases in IgG antibodies. Here’s where that can get tricky—as I told you, some patients with neurodegenerative diseases are already on medications to suppress their IgG antibodies. If you’re taking an immune suppressant, tell your doctor before he begins any testing.

At any rate, once I can discover the allergen that is causing your autoimmune response, I can work with you to completely eliminate it from your life. In fact, I have found that…

The most common allergens for my M.S. patients are gluten protein, dairy and eggs

Of course, it doesn’t matter what you’re allergic to—as long as we find it. Then, once you stop ingesting the allergen, the rate of injury to your neurons can finally decrease—or even stop completely.

It may take months of avoiding a food before you notice the difference—so stick with it. Some of my patients have found that even the tiniest slip-up can bring back symptoms.

You have to be committed to swearing off the foods you are allergic to for life. Some of my patients can’t do it—but most of them find it’s a small price to pay for finally restoring their good health.

Step 2: Healing the damage caused by your disease

Healing from M.S. and other neurodegenerative diseases is not as simple as diagnosing your allergy. That will stop the damage, but we still need to repair years of harm to your neurons.

And that starts with normalizing your levels of key hormones that are in charge of repairing your cells.

Years ago, while researching my first book, I came across entries in old medical textbooks that talked about how progesterone helped keep your myelin sheath healthy. And remember—your myelin sheath sustains damage when you suffer from M.S.

I was confused at first, because, as I studied the 24-hour urine test results for my M.S. patients, I saw that some of them had normal or high progesterone levels. But this was only a temporary setback—because I quickly realized that M.S. patients with high progesterone levels were faring best with the disease. Their progesterone was fixing much of the neuron damage caused by their food allergens.

I looked into this more and came across some groundbreaking research by Dr. Donald Stein that found that certain female rats—but never a male rat—could recover from a neurological injury he was inflicting. The female rats who were pregnant had very high levels of progesterone.

This was when I started to realize that progesterone probably offers a healing benefit for people with M.S., and I understand that there are some large, clinical trials currently underway that are researching this further.

Because hormones such as progesterone are so important to repairing damage to your body, I came to appreciate that other repair hormones such as thyroid hormones and DHEA also may play a role in reversing neuron damage. And here’s why most physicians haven’t discovered this yet—thyroid results for M.S. patients often come back deceptively normal. In other words…

Your thyroid is playing tricks on you—and your doctor

The fact is, thyroid levels that may be barely low or even in the “low normal” range contribute to neurodegenerative diseases. European doctors, who are trained to think beyond lab results, are catching on to this much faster than doctors in the U.S.

There’s a huge difference in quality of life between patients in the “low normal” range and patients who have completely normal levels of thyroid hormones. Our goal should be to get you into a higher normal range, without bringing your thyroid levels excessively high or suppressing your thyroid gland’s function. Once you enjoy higher levels of thyroid hormones, your nerve cells function more efficiently and you almost always enjoy increased production of growth hormones.

Of course, progesterone and thyroid hormones aren’t the only two hormones that can facilitate the repair of damage caused by years of disease. You also need to boost your levels of anabolic steroids.

Anabolic steroids build up protein levels in your body, allowing you to repair and build stronger, healthier nerve cells. (With the help of growth hormone they promote positive nitrogen balance.) The two most well-known anabolic steroids are testosterone and dihydro-testosterone (DHT)—and I understand why these hormones make female patients nervous. No woman wants excess levels of these hormones because they cause masculine side effects, such as facial and chest hair.

But here’s the good news. Women have a special process for making anabolic steroids that usually don’t produce these side effects. You ladies secrete weaker androgens—such as DHEA and androstenedione—that only convert to anabolic steroids once they reach your target bone, muscle, organ, and nerve cells. Once there, these hormones do their repair work and then become inactive before secreting back into your bloodstream and exiting in your urine. It’s an amazing—and safe—process.

Now let me ask you this—doesn’t it make more sense to provide women with adequate doses of DHEA, which they can convert to anabolic steroids, instead of bombarding them with sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen? I predict in the coming years this will become the new standard—but most doctors haven’t accepted it yet.

The payoff: Start healing from M.S. in a matter of months

I understand that the science behind healing M.S. is a little complex. Don’t feel bad—it took me years to figure it out myself. Just keep this simple analogy in mind—if your house was on fire, your first step would be to put out the fire, and your second step would be to repair the damage.

When helping my patients heal from M.S., I first diagnose their food allergy so we can stop causing additional damage. We put out the fire.

Then we start to repair the damage. I’ll conduct a 24-hour urine test—the most thorough test of hormone activity available—to look at levels of progesterone, thyroid hormones, anabolic steroids, their metabolites and their precursors, to see where you’re low.

These hormones are designed to “talk” to your cells and tell them to repair themselves. They do this effectively when we’re younger, but we produce less of these key hormones as we age.

I can use bioidentical hormone therapy, which exactly mimics the hormones produced by your body, to restore your levels of these key repair hormones and start repairing your nerve cells.

You see, our nerve cells are no different from our other body cells. They can’t repair themselves until a hormone directs them to do it.

In the case of M.S., you have suffered damage to the myelin sheath of your neurons, and that damage can’t be fixed without adequate hormones to direct the job.

By working with my patients to address their food allergies and build up their hormone levels, we have achieved results that these patients had been told were impossible. I have one patient who could barely climb the couple steps to my office at his first visit who is now playing tennis again. In general, brain M.S. heals in about four months while spinal cord M.S. takes longer.

For example, I have been treating another one of my patients for two years for her spinal cord M.S. At her one-year MRI, we could already see the lesions on her spinal cord beginning to heal. At her recent, two-year MRI, that healing had continued—and there were no signs of new lesions.

I have M.S. patients who are now traveling from across the country to be treated by me. (If there were more Dr. Willners out there, that would be ideal.) And they’ve all been told the same thing you’ve probably been told—their disease is incurable.

Don’t believe it, and don’t give up. We’re making progress against this disease, and I have witnessed it repeatedly with my own eyes.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen. I’m convinced M.S. does not have to be a life sentence—work with your doctor to implement the process I’ve outlined here, and you could feel a difference in months. If you suffer from M.S., you’ve probably given too many good years of your life to this disease—it’s time to start turning the tide.

The 4 lies that are making you fat…And the simple truths that can conquer obesity

Obesity is the single-greatest health crisis facing America today, and there’s been plenty of speculation on what exactly is causing it. I’m sure you’ve heard all the so-called experts blame our addiction to fast food, our super-sized portions, and our apathy toward exercise—and each of these factors have, indeed, played a role.

But there’s a hidden truth about the obesity epidemic that is seldom discussed, and you’re not likely to hear about it at your local doctor’s office or from some Big Pharma television commercial.

The medical community has played a huge role in making Americans fat

Most doctors would rather remove their tongues than admit such a thing—after all, we’re supposed to be the people who solve health problems. But the truth is, mainstream medicine is just as guilty of spreading the obesity epidemic as Ronald McDonald and Pizza Hut.

To this day, the mainstream medical community continues to spread four lies that are making us sicker and fatter than ever. In fact, we’re facing risks of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes like never before in our nation’s history.

Well, as Ernest Hemingway once said, the best ammunition against lies is the truth. This month, I’m going to expose four more of mainstream medicine’s deadliest lies, and show you how to overcome them so you can finally lose weight and enjoy the healthy life you deserve.

Lie #1: Eating fat makes you fat

At one point in my career, I fell for this lie hook, line, and sinker. As pioneering doctors like Diana Schwarzbein, Robert Atkins, and Richard Bernstein started uncovering the health benefits of a higher-fat diet—and were called crackpots by the mainstream medical community—I didn’t exactly rush to their defense.

In fact, I was certain I could prove them wrong. Overweight patients would come to me begging to try a high-fat, low-carb diet, and the thought that they’d somehow lose weight by eating less bread and more steak, cheese, and bacon horrified me. Reluctantly, I told them they could try it at their own risk—but they had to have their cholesterol checked before beginning the diet and then 30 days later.

I was shocked when patient after patient returned a month later with drastic reductions in their levels of harmful cholesterol and triglycerides. In fact, these folks were faring far better than the patients who I had placed on restrictive, low-fat diets.

I became convinced that I had been misinformed about the body’s fat-making mechanisms, and I spent years re-educating myself, poring over the latest science and studies that had been ignored for years. That’s when I came across a simple truth that has forever changed how I treat obesity…

It’s not dietary fat that makes you obese—it’s fat produced by your liver

When your blood sugar spikes from ingesting too many carbs, your liver stores most of that excess sugar as fat (I’ll explain why in a moment). Fifty years ago, doctors were taught that the fat manufactured by your liver was hard (like the consistency of butter), in contrast to the softer dietary fats that move easily through your bloodstream. This hard fat accumulates around our waistlines and in our blood vessels as fatty streaks, which eventually oxidize into plaque. That’s why, half a century ago, medical textbooks warned doctors of the danger of eating too many carbs. And remember—50 years ago, Americans weren’t nearly as overweight as we are today.

Through bad science and political correctness, the truth about dietary fat and carbs has been banned from today’s medical textbooks—and we’re all less healthy as a result.

Well, once I uncovered the real truth about what makes us obese, I wondered how else I had been misinformed by my medical education. And it wasn’t long before I uncovered the second mainstream medical lie that is making us obese.

Lie #2: High insulin levels are sometimes necessary to prevent diabetes

Many obese patients have excessively high insulin levels, and their doctors don’t take this seriously enough. After all, doctors have been taught that insulin is the preferred “nozzle” for delivering nutrition to your cells. They even use it to treat diabetes.

But if there’s one thing I hope I teach you about insulin, it’s this…

Insulin makes you fat

You see, most of the insulin you produce gets trapped in your liver, which has 200,000 pure insulin receptors on every one of its cells. Once there, insulin mostly directs your liver to store excess blood sugar as fat, instead of delivering that sugar to your body’s cells where it can be used later for fuel. When you produce too much insulin, your liver becomes a fat-making machine.

But, wait—it gets worse. At the same time insulin is directing your liver to create fat, it’s also unleashing at least four other health disasters.

Disaster #1: Much of the fat your liver produces is being stored as LDL cholesterol, the deadly kind, which spill into your blood vessels. The reason is a little complicated, but it has to do with balancing the pH of your body.

Disaster #2: If you require excessive insulin to maintain your blood sugar all your other cells are starving and may start wasting, because insulin is routing blood sugar through your liver, instead of delivering it to the rest of your body’s cells.

Disaster #3: Because insulin is insufficient at removing blood sugar, you’re constantly suffering from blood-sugar spikes that damage your blood vessels.

Disaster #4: High insulin levels even make it harder for you to burn off body fat. No wonder so many diets we try don’t work!

As I came to understand that high insulin was a major contributor to obesity, I began to have serious doubts about whether it really was the preferred nozzle for delivering nutrition to your body’s cells. That would be like admitting we are supposed to be obese and suffering from blood vessel damage. So I dug around a bit more, and that’s when I uncovered…

Lie #3: IGF-1 is not important to preventing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome

Most doctors are so in the dark about the important role that the hormone IGF-1 plays in good health that they don’t even test for it. What an enormous disservice.

The truth is, IGF-1 is the preferred hormone for removing carbs from your bloodstream (outside of your liver and fat cells). In fact, if you are healthy, it is the nozzle for delivering sugar to 93 percent of your cellular fuel tanks (muscles, organs, and bones)—instead of to your liver, where it will be stored as fat. In fact…

The more IGF-1 you have, the less insulin you need

You see, when your body isn’t producing enough IGF-1, it needs to make more insulin to pick up the slack of fuel nozzle deficits for processing a sugar load. As I discussed, much of that excess insulin gets stuck in your liver, and the fat-making cycle begins. In contrast, when you have enough IGF-1 (and I’ll tell you how to make more in a moment), your cells are better nourished and you make less fat.

In fact, if you have enough IGF-1, you need almost no insulin when you’re fasting, exercising, or between meals. Once you understand the important role of IGF-1, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble understanding the fallacy of…

Lie #4: There is no hormonal solution to obesity

Most doctors downplay—or outright dismiss—the critical role that adequate hormone levels play in helping you conquer obesity. But now that you understand the tug of war that occurs between insulin and IGF-1, you can appreciate that hormones play a critical role in expanding your waistline.

And insulin and IGF-1 aren’t the only two hormones playing this game. As we discussed last month (see the archives at www.healthrevelations.com and log in using the password on page 8), your imbalance between anabolic and catabolic steroids can encourage obesity.

For example, anabolic steroids like testosterone preserve your body’s protein, stimulate your liver to produce IGF-1, and encourage the development of lean muscle mass. In contrast, catabolic steroids like cortisol break down your body’s proteins into sugar that can be used as fuel. This was useful in prehistoric times for giving our ancestors the energy they needed to fight off a predator—but we don’t wrestle tigers too much these days.

Instead, excessive cortisol is just causing our blood sugar to spike, and we end up producing excess levels of insulin to get rid of the sugar. Next thing you know, that sugar ends up as body fat.

That’s why its critical to have your anabolic and catabolic steroid metabolite levels checked by a doctor who is skilled in hormone therapy. Insist on a 24-hour urine test, which gives a much more complete picture of your hormonal metabolite levels. Your doctor may put you on a hormone regimen (insist on bioidentical hormones), or even start you on an exercise routine that will stimulate growth hormone.

Growth hormone levels are critical because it determines the stimulus to release IGF-1 from your liver. However, if you suffer from metabolic syndrome because your blood sugars are always spiking, you can sabotage your ability to release growth hormone. Growth hormone release requires a falling blood sugar. It does little good to make IGF-1 if you lack the stimulus to release it.

The thing to remember here is that, in the tug of war between growth hormone and cortisol, you need to make sure growth hormone prevails. That’s the key to being leaner, stronger and less dependent on insulin—and I bet you’ll find some inches melting off your waist, too.

I’ve met too many overweight patients who had just about given up trying to lose weight. Many of these folks feel like they’ve tried everything, and they’ve been disheartened as diet after diet failed.

The bad news is that you’ve probably been getting bad—or just plain wrong—advice on weight loss from the health “experts” you trust the most. The good news is that you now know the truth, and you can use the information in this article to lose weight, restore your health and feel better than you have in years.

Do me—and yourself—a favor. Give it one more try.

Slash your insulin need in 5 steps

By now you understand the sinister role insulin plays in contributing to obesity. If your insulin levels are high, there are five simple things you can do to bring them under control.

Step 1: Build up your levels of IGF-1. Fasting between meals (which lowers your blood sugar) and getting enough sleep will both stimulate IGF-1 production.

Step 2: Get enough potassium. You should be ingesting more potassium than sodium, but most processed foods are loaded with sodium, which acts as a preservative. Stay away from this junk and load up on potassium-rich foods such as unprocessed low-carb foods.

Step 3: Stop loading up on carbs. Base your diet on healthy fats (such as chicken, beef and fish) and fresh fruits and vegetables. If carbs are the cornerstone of your diet, you’re on the expressway to elevated insulin and obesity.

Step 4: Decrease your mental stress. I’ve had patients who have found success with drug-free methods such as yoga and breathing exercises. Find something that works for you and stick with it.

Step 5: Get more exercise. You don’t need to complete a triathlon, but a regular program of walking, light jogging, or other moderate exercise is key. Exercise stimulates the production of growth hormone and consequently the release of IGF-1. You’re far more likely to stick with exercise if it’s something you enjoy or if you can find friends to exercise with you.

For more tips on lowering your insulin levels and producing more IGF-1, you also can consult my book The Body Heals, 2nd Edition, which is available at www.thebodyheals.com.

The “diabetes test” that could unlock the cure to your chronic fatigue

When I mention blood sugar testing to my patients, they all think of the same thing— diabetes. If you’re not subjecting yourself to regular blood sugar testing—sometimes in the form of several finger pricks a day—I bet you at least know someone who is.

But you may be surprised to learn that blood sugar testing can be useful for far more than treating diabetes. In fact…

This simple test could help you cure your chronic fatigue

I spend a great deal of time talking about and treating chronic fatigue, because it’s one of the most misunderstood illnesses we face as we age. As I’ve told you in previous issues, chronic fatigue can be caused by potassium deficiencies or low levels of key hormones your body needs to keep your hungry cells well nourished. But there’s another type of chronic fatigue that most doctors know very little about—and it all starts with your adrenal glands.

If you suffer from this type of fatigue, you may experience some or all of the following symptoms:

* anxiety

* hypoglycemia, requiring frequent feeding

* low blood pressure

* frequent infections

* a thin waistline if you have normal thyroid function

* constant feelings of discontent

And, believe it or not, many of the people afflicted with this type of fatigue have blue or green eyes and red or blonde hair. Talk about a unique genetic twist!

If you’re suffering from this adrenal-caused fatigue, I have some great news. I’m about to share with you why a simple blood sugar test may help you finally understand what’s causing your debilitating condition. You may be just weeks from curing your chronic fatigue for good—but first you need to know about…

The medical breakthrough that was ignored for 50 years

It was literally half a century ago when medical pioneer Dr. John Tintera discovered that a key indicator of adrenal-caused fatigue is whether you can maintain your blood sugar between meals—and that’s something that can be determined through simple blood sugar testing. Patients who can not maintain their blood sugar may suffer from what Dr. Tintera called “diminished adrenal reserve.”

I’ll explain all of this in a moment—but first let me get on my soapbox. This science has been around for so long that today’s doctors ought to know it by heart. It should be taught at every medical school in America.

But it’s not. In fact, doctors today are taught not to bother considering your adrenals as a cause of your fatigue until the condition becomes so severe that you develop Addison’s disease—a severe adrenal malfunction that can be fatal if left untreated.

It’s outrageous, because Tintera’s science on the role of adrenals in fatigue isn’t what I’d call controversial—in fact, it’s common sense. Let me explain what I mean.

Your adrenal glands make a hormone called cortisol that helps regulate your blood sugar between meals. The process can be a bit scientific, but I’ll explain it as simply as I can.

When you eat a meal, you’re probably ingesting far more sugar fuel than your body needs at the moment. Your liver basically stores some of this sugar as glycogen, and slowly releases the sugar between meals to keep your blood sugar from crashing to dangerously low levels. This constant supply of sugar keeps your cells nourished and is especially critical to your brain function.

Your brain’s cells can only burn sugar as fuel, and they need a constant supply. If your liver can’t keep your brain supplied with sugar between meals, you’re in big trouble. Aside from that, as your blood sugar drops, you’re likely to experience the weak, tired feeling that comes with chronic fatigue.

So, in other words, you need your blood sugar to hold steady. And this is where cortisol comes into the picture. Your cortisol levels determine how much of an enzyme called glycogen synthase is made by your body. That enzyme allows your liver to store sugar—without it, you can’t maintain your blood sugar between meals.

If you’re suffering from this condition, there’s a good chance that you crave carbohydrates, particularly between meals. Your body is trying to tell you to correct your low blood sugar levels.

As you can see, when you don’t make enough cortisol, it starts a chain reaction that leads to low blood sugar, fatigue, and hungry, malnourished cells throughout your body. And it doesn’t stop there.

If your blood sugar continues to crash, you will die. So your adrenals respond by releasing excessive amounts of adrenaline. All of this adrenaline can cause you to experience the following five symptoms:

* anxiety

* rapid heart rate

* profuse sweating

* tremors

* paranoia

So why are your glands going haywire?

So you’ve had your blood sugar tested and found you can’t maintain your levels between meals. You might not be making enough cortisol, but you’ll never know for sure until you to have a 24-hour urine test.

The 24-hour urine test gives your doctor a much more accurate picture of your hormone and their metabolite levels, and allows him to prescribe the correct levels of bioidentical hormones to correct your deficiencies (yes, insist on bioidentical hormones—they are the safest and most effective hormones available).

But why is all of this showing up now? What exactly has caused your adrenals to go haywire and stop producing enough cortisol? In many cases, your adrenal glands may be malfunctioning because you suffer from an undiagnosed autoimmune disease, where your body is essentially attacking itself. When you were younger, your body produced enough “repair hormones” to fix the damage to your glands before you noticed the ill effects. But as we age, we produce less of these key repair hormones, and chronic conditions develop.

There is a growing body of medical literature that shows a food allergy—particularly an allergy to wheat—may be causing an autoimmune response that can damage your adrenals, thyroid, pancreas and ovaries. In fact, several of my patients have seen their fatigue diminish simply by avoiding wheat.

Now, I can’t guarantee wheat is the allergen that is causing your fatigue—it could be anything. That’s why you need to have your doctor conduct allergy testing that screens for IgG antibodies.

Your body often produces these antibodies in response to a food allergy, but many doctors only screen for IgE antibodies. That’s why so many allergies go undiagnosed.

Once you’ve had your 24-hour urine test and IgG antibody screening, you are on your way to healing. You can work with your doctor to correct hormonal deficiencies and to eliminate the food allergen that may be damaging your glands.

You’ll finally have two things that many people with fatigue lack—a proper diagnosis and a plan for true, permanent healing. In a matter of weeks you can experience a dramatic boost in energy, and a new zest for life.

These were supposed to be our golden years—let’s start enjoying them again.

Cortisol: The good, the bad and the ugly

People tend to have a negative association with cortisol—and for good reason. As I’ve told you in previous newsletters, excess cortisol can cause obesity and the wasting of your body’s cells. That’s because your body releases large amounts of cortisol (metabolic syndrome) in response to stress, and the cortisol breaks down your body’s proteins (including the protein in your muscles) into sugar that gives you energy to fight off the threat.

Because most of our stress is mental and doesn’t require this energy boost, that extra sugar created when you endure a robust adrenal secretion eventually gets stored as fat. As a result, your protein-rich muscles are broken down and you develop a spare tire instead. This is exactly what occurs with people who suffer from metabolic syndrome.

But, as I’ve explained in this article, on the other extreme when you are deficient in cortisol, your body has great difficulty maintaining your blood sugar, and you can develop crippling fatigue as a result. You might keep your thin waistline, but you’ll be suffering from a host of other health problems.

The lesson here is that cortisol is like any other hormone—you need the right amount of it, but not too much. Your goal should be to work with your doctor to develop normal levels of cortisol and other key hormones.

A small gift for your doctor could become a big gift for you

No matter how many M.S. patients I and my alternative health colleagues treat, it’s still a challenge to get mainstream doctors to take this safe, proven healing regimen seriously. While they keep adopting a wait-and-see approach, their patients suffer.

If your doctor is resistant to my method, do him a favor—buy him a copy of my book, The Body Heals, 2nd Edition, at www.thebodyheals.com. See if he can argue with my science—I’m betting he can’t. I’ve seen many mainstream doctors have their eyes opened by the truths in this book—here’s hoping your doctor is next.

August 2009

Banish bowel misery forever—in as little as 10 days
Discover the drug-free cure that can wipe away Crohn’s disease, colitis, IBS and more

You don’t set foot in public unless there’s a bathroom close by. Your abdominal pain can be so severe that it doubles you over—and even wakes you up at night. Each time you sit down to enjoy a meal, you wonder if hours of misery will follow.

You’re in the grips of a serious bowel disorder—and it’s taking over your life.

I’ll bet at some point, when you were been sweating, doubled over in pain, or running to the toilet for the umpteenth time, some friend offered the seemingly useless observation that it “must have been something you ate.”

Turns out, there is more wisdom—and truth—to those words than you may have ever imagined. After years of research, I have discovered that today’s most stubborn bowel disorders—diverticulitis/diverticulosis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome—are all being caused by the same thing.

And it is, indeed, something you ate.

In the next few minutes, I’m going to unlock for you the secret cause of (and cure for) these gut-shredding diseases, and show you the exact method I’ve used to help my patients enjoy permanent relief in a matter of days.

But first you need to understand how mainstream medicine is mis-educating doctors about the real cause of bowel disorders, and how a lot of research—along with a little luck—has led me to the cure.

Stomach pain cured—at 30,000 feet

At some point in your life, you’ve probably been given penicillin to help fight off an infection. But did you know that this world-famous antibiotic was discovered completely by accident? After a long day of bacteria research, Sir Arthur Fleming mistakenly left a petri dish out, and fungus grew on it. It was only later that he realized the bacteria he was studying couldn’t grow around the fungus. Penicillin was born.

I’m telling you this story to illustrate a point. As much as we’d like to believe that all the cures for today’s most serious diseases are discovered in labs, years of diligent research have convinced me that is just isn’t so. Sometimes, cures and breakthroughs are found through pure, dumb luck—simple as that. If you want more proof, wait until you hear how…

I accidentally discovered the hidden cure for diverticulitis/diverticulosis

A friend and I were on our way back to Montana after a short trip to Las Vegas—home to about 90 percent of medical conventions, as far as I can tell. He had been suffering for years from such a bad case of diverticulitis/diverticulosis (diverticulosis is when you get herniations in your bowels, and diverticulitis occurs when they become infected) that he was thinking of letting a surgeon remove part of his colon. In all his years of suffering, the only thing that ever helped him was a two-week course of antibiotics—but you can’t stay on antibiotics forever.

At any rate, on the flight home, my friend was doubled over in agonizing pain. I was struggling to find some way to help him, when I came to a realization so simple and powerful, that I was embarrassed it had never occurred to me before.

Painful bowels are being caused by a food allergy

Why would such a realization hit me out of the blue on a crowded airplane? After all, throughout my career, I (and pretty much every other doctor) had been taught that diverticulitis/diverticulosis is caused by constipation that puts pressure on the large intestine, forcing parts of it to become herniated.

But here I was, 30,000 feet over Idaho, and I was witnessing something very different. You see, Las Vegas was built on more than blackjack and keno—there are buffets, cheap steaks, and free drinks everywhere. If you’ve ever been there, you know that every meal is a feast. If my friend had eaten too much of a food he was allergic to, that would explain the unbearable pain he was experiencing.

It made sense, but I had to test it. When we got home, I put my friend on a course of prednisone after ordering a specific type of allergy test (more on that in a moment). If you’ve ever taken prednisone, you know that it suppresses the allergic response arm of your immune system. So, if my friend’s condition was truly being caused by an allergy, it should provide relief.

Bingo. Prednisone eased his pain dramatically, and when the allergy tests came back, it turned out he was allergic to barley and oysters. He had eaten a large helping of oysters and drank plenty of barley-based beer in Las Vegas. This was why that two-week course of antibiotics had helped him years ago—he couldn’t drink his favorite beer (which was loaded with barley) while he was on the medication.

Turns out, if you have diverticulitis/diverticulosis, allergies cause your immune system to attack and weaken your bowel walls. That’s when the pressure of constipation can easily cause herniation. My mainstream medical education on diverticulitis/diverti­culosis had only been half right—a phenomenon that has occurred more than once.

At any rate, I was able to cure this friend of the incredible pain of diverticulitis/diverticulosis by simply discovering what foods he was allergic to, cutting those foods out of his life, and relieving his constipation. I’ve had patients who suffered terribly for years, and visited every type of specialist you could imagine, who are now living completely pain-free. And here’s the best part…

Hidden allergies are also the cause of Crohn’s disease, colitis and IBS

It may have taken a crisis to help me stumble on the cure for diverticulitis/diverticulosis (I had been brainwashed—I admit it), but I was on to the link between allergies and other inflammatory bowel diseases years ago.

Of course, I didn’t learn this in my formal medical education. A lot of medical training focuses on teaching doctors how to tell bowel disorders apart, because their symptoms can be similar. A strong attack on the small intestine means Crohn’s disease, a less severe but chronic bowel disorder may be IBS, and a strong attack that occurs throughout the colon usually indicates ulcerative colitis.

Doctors are taught that Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis are autoimmune disorders, so many docs can begrudgingly accept that an allergy may be causing the heightened immune response (although most of them will never diagnose the allergy—more on this in a moment). I’ve had a harder time getting my colleagues to accept that IBS is also caused by an allergy, even though I’ve proven it with my patients time and time again.

The reason mainstream medicine has been so slow to pick up on the link between allergies and bowel disorders is both shocking and sad. The truth is…

Most doctors have never been taught how to conduct thorough allergy testing

Oh, they think they know how to conduct allergy testing. You see, when your immune system encounters an allergen, it responds by releasing antibodies to fight it. The IgE class of food-allergen-induced antibodies is the one doctors are most familiar with, so that’s what they test for. IgE antibodies tend to cause hay fever, hives, and other common allergic reactions.

But in the case of autoimmune disorders like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, IBS, and diverticulitis/diverticulosis, it’s often the IgG class of antibodies that is released—and most doctors never test for it.

You may have been suffering needlessly from bowel disorders for years because you’ve never had comprehensive allergy testing. I see it all the time. Fortunately, I started testing for IgG antibodies years ago, and it’s allowed me to cure patients who had just about given up hope.

I have consistently found that my patients afflicted with chronic bowel disorders are suffering from an undiagnosed food allergy that is forcing their bodies to attack their digestive systems. I help these patients discover their allergy through IgG testing, rid the food or foods from their lives, and they get better fast.

You may wonder why your bowel disorder showed up later in life—after all, in your younger years you probably had an “iron stomach” and could eat anything you wanted without repercussions. The reason for this is quite simple. Our bodies produce several “repair hormones” that fix the damage that occurs when our immune systems attack us.

When we’re younger, we have higher levels of these hormones, and the damage to our bowel walls is quickly repaired. As we age, our hormone levels taper off, and the repairs can’t keep up with the damage. That’s when the uncomfortable—and often painful—symptoms begin. (If you or your doctor wants to know more about these hormones, order my book, The Body Heals, 2nd Edition at www.thebodyheals.com.)

I should tell you that my cure rate for these digestive disorders is not 100 percent. I have some patients who continue to suffer because they refuse to give up a favorite food. It breaks my heart every time.

But for the vast majority of my patients, no food is worth the pain and discomfort of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, IBS, or diverticulitis/diverticulosis. We identify the food allergen, they swear it off for good, and many of them…

Experience relief in as little as 10 days

Ask your doctor to conduct a comprehensive allergy test, including screening for IgG antibodies. If he doesn’t know how to conduct one, find a doctor who does. That simple test could have you on your way to enjoying the symptom-free, healthy life you deserve.

I should point out, however, that if you are already taking mainstream prescription medications for your bowel disease, you and your doctor may have more work to do. Because these medications suppress your IgG antibodies, they can make testing a bit tricky. Whether mainstream doctors realize it or not, this is how these drugs help control your symptoms. Unfortunately, symptom control approaches always cause side effects.

For this reason, in order for you to become well enough to wean off your medication, I often need to take a trial-and-error approach to determine what you are allergic to. After that, you’ll need to begin adding those eliminated foods back into your diet before testing will show what food is causing your suffering. Unfortunately, this challenge will provoke a relapse, and you will need to briefly restart your medication while we wait for your test results.

For some patients, it takes up to 30 days for symptoms to disappear—but the relief does come. Their days of pills, pain, frustrating visits to specialists, and endless trips to the bathroom are behind them for good. They have their lives back—and it’s time you got your life back, too.

If you or your doctor desires more proof to support what I am saying, order my book, The Body Heals, 2nd Edition, at www.thebodyheals.com.

Conquer osteoporosis with this proven two-step plan

Some of the most confused patients I treat at my clinic in Montana are women suffering from—or trying to prevent—osteoporosis. And I can’t say I blame them.

Starting around middle age, most women are bombarded with information on this disfiguring, bone-wasting disease, and much of the advice out there is confusing, contradictory, half-true, or just plain wrong.

You’re told to get more calcium—but not too much. Maybe some doctor has informed you that your estrogen levels are to blame, or that your osteoporosis is the result of a decrease in the amount of oxygen your body uses (called VO2 max).

It’s no wonder so many women give up trying to cure their osteoporosis. If this sounds like you, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that you’ve probably never been told what’s most likely causing your osteoporosis—after all, most doctors don’t know. The good news is that, once I reveal it to you, you’ll understand that sometimes…

You can cure osteoporosis in just two steps

I’m confident that this simple plan can change your life for the better—just as it has for countless patients of mine. But first you need to understand what’s most likely causing your bones to degenerate, and how simple it can be to reverse the tide.

The REAL cause of most cases of osteoporosis

Let’s get the estrogen myth out of the way first. If low estrogen levels were really the main cause of osteoporosis, men (instead of women) would be disproportionately affected. After all, they make much less estrogen than women.

While men can and do develop osteoporosis, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that osteoporosis is four times as likely to affect women as men.

Hormones play a role—and I’ll give you all the details in a moment—but the notion that estrogen is some sort of silver bullet is just plain wrong.

The idea that calcium or oxygen deprivation is causing osteoporosis may be convenient, but they miss a much larger issue. When you have osteoporosis, your bone cells aren’t just missing one nutrient—they’re being deprived of just about everything. In fact…

If you have osteoporosis, it could mean your bone cells are literally starving

And that brings us to the true culprit of most cases of standard osteoporosis—low levels of the hormone IGF-1. You’ll recall that I discussed IGF-1 in last month’s article on metabolic syndrome (which you can read in the archives at www.healthrevelations.com) and showed you how IGF-1 deficiency can lead to wasting in your muscles.

Well, the same is true for your bones. When they don’t get enough nutrition, they develop what I call hungry cell syndrome. They begin to waste and, over time, you develop osteoporosis.

And here’s why. Your body has two hormones—IGF-1 and insulin—that are primarily responsible for delivering fuel to your cells. Your levels of IGF-1 fall off as you age, and your body compensates with more insulin. The problem is, although both IGF-1 and insulin basically serve as “fuel nozzles” for delivering nutrition to your cells, most of your body’s cells prefer IGF-1 as the nozzle of choice.

Even worse, much of the insulin your body produces never makes it beyond your liver because, anatomically, it always arrives there first. Each liver cell has 200,000 pure insulin receptors, so your liver ends up hogging much of the insulin you produce and hence becomes the nutritional hog of your body. Making matters worse, this insulin instructs your liver to convert the sugar you are consuming into fat (cholesterol and triglycerides) that accumulates in your arteries, around your midsection, and everywhere else.

So, picture with me what’s happening here. At the same time your levels of IGF-1—the preferred nozzle for delivering fuel to your bone cells—are falling off, the insulin that’s supposed to be picking up the slack for blood sugar control is getting trapped in your liver, building fat that puts even more stress on your skeleton (not to mention your heart!).

The nutrition your bones so desperately need is never delivered.

For most run-of-the-mill osteoporosis, IGF-1 deficiency is the culprit—and it’s not even close to optimal. My research has uncovered that healthy people should have 100 times more IGF-1 in their systems than insulin—and if your bones are degenerating, your ratios are probably nowhere near where they should be.

In fact, if you’re suffering from the pain, hunching and brittle bones that come with osteoporosis, I’d wager that most likely…

Your bones are crying out for more IGF-1

You’d think mainstream doctors would be screaming this fact from the tops of the tallest mountains. But they’re not—and the reasons why may surprise you.

Why your doctor has never been taught about IGF-1 and osteoporosis

Once you’ve read a few issues of my newsletter, you’re probably going to know more about IGF-1 than most doctors do. Considering that low IGF-1 is the culprit behind so many diseases, from diabetes to arthritis to osteoporosis, this is one of the greatest outrages in modern medicine.

There are four main reasons for this (although none of them is a great excuse):

Reason #1: Mainstream medical education inadequately covers IGF-1.

Reason #2: The “thought leaders” that control modern medicine keep changing IGF-1’s name.

Reason #3: The unit of measurement for IGF-1 is confusing.

Reason #4: Most of the labs that measure IGF-1 levels do a poor job.

Let’s start with Reason #1. With all the time today’s doctors spend in medical school and in internships and residencies, you’d think they’d leave the process armed with volumes of knowledge on every hormone the body produces. Well, I’m living proof that this just isn’t so.

Believe it or not, most doctors today are incorrectly taught that insulin is the preferred fuel nozzle for your cells, and they don’t fully understand the role it plays in fat formation. It was only several years ago, when I took a sabbatical from my medical practice after realizing my medical education had inadequately prepared me to truly heal patients, that I discovered the hidden truth about IGF-1.

I buried myself in old, discontinued medical textbooks and discovered that a generation ago, doctors were taught the real truth about IGF-1. The older textbooks informed doctors that IGF-1 was supposed to be responsible for 93 percent of the energy-delivering “fuel nozzle action” for your body and that in a healthy person IGF-1 levels are 100 times higher than insulin.

That knowledge has been buried—or has disappeared completely—from current medical education. I don’t know if this omission is the result of ignorance, conspiracy, or a bit of both, but it greatly disturbs me.

Even worse, IGF-1’s name keeps changing. Over the years it’s been called everything from sulfation factor to nonsuppressible insulin-like activity of the bloodstream, before IGF was settled on. Talk about confusing! Many doctors still don’t know IGF-1 by its current, proper name.

To make matters worse, the unit of measurement for IGF-1 is different from the unit of measurement for insulin, which makes a true, apples-to-apples comparison tricky. Insulin is measured in micro units and micromoles, while IGF-1 is measured in nanograms. That might seem like a minor point, until you realize that it’s keeping your doctor from understanding that your body should have much more IGF-1 than insulin.

Finally, I have found that most doctors use labs that do a poor job of measuring IGF. After some frustrating encounters with these labs, I have settled on Pathology Associates in Spokane, WA. Here’s their contact info, for you and your doctor:

110 West Cliff Dr.
Spokane, WA 99204
(509) 755-8600

Working with Pathology Associates, I have discovered that IGF-1 levels of less than 100 ng/dl indicate “run of the mill” osteoporosis. If your value comes back higher, you and your doctor have more detective work to do, and I will discuss some of this additional workup in future newsletters.

You might have given little or no consideration to which lab your doctor uses. “Let him use one he’s comfortable with,” you’ve probably reasoned. Well, it’s time to take this seriously, because…

If your doctor uses the wrong lab, you might never heal from osteoporosis

It’s that important. And that brings us to the first step of my two-step plan:

Step #1: Get an accurate reading of your IGF-1 levels by using a quality lab. If your levels are below 100 ng/dl, you’re ready for…

Step #2: Work with a doctor who understands IGF-1 to increase your levels of this bone-saving hormone. Once you restore your IGF-1 levels to normal, you’ll have struck a powerful blow against the hungry cell syndrome that is contributing to the bone wasting of osteoporosis.

Of course, as you can probably imagine, the fact that most doctors know little about IGF-1 keeps them from being overly skilled in raising your levels.

Raising your IGF-1 levels requires a strategy that also involves other key hormones. You’ll find a detailed plan in my article “Could this ‘muscle head’ hormone be a miracle cure?” on page 6. I devoted an entire article to raising your levels of these key hormones because, aside from defeating osteoporosis, they also hold the key to curing metabolic syndrome—a stubborn disease I’ve discussed in past newsletter issues.

Simply get your IGF-1 levels checked and work with your doctor, using the plan I’m about to spell out for you. That way, you can actually turn the tide against osteoporosis. I’ve used this plan countless times with patients to help them maintain strong bones well into their advanced years.

You too can stop living in fear of the health risks and disfigurement that can become part of living with osteoporosis. As I promised you at the beginning of this article, the simple solution is just two steps away. If you or your doctor desires more proof about these facts, order my book, The Body Heals, 2nd Edition at www.thebodyheals.com.

Could this “muscle head” hormone be a miracle cure?
Despite their reputation, anabolic steroids hold the key to defeating metabolic syndrome and more

Anabolic steroids have a reputation among the American public that hovers somewhere around cigarettes and asbestos. You can’t hear the words “anabolic steroids” without thinking of muscle-head athletes with violent tempers and no necks, who use dangerous levels of the stuff to improve their performance (all while sending a terrible message to our kids and grandkids).

But what these athletes inject into themselves is quite a bit different from the anabolic steroids I’m going to tell you about. Today’s baseball and football players and other star athletes are pumped full of lab-created steroids that are so unnatural they’re often designed for animals!

The good news is, your body actually makes its own anabolic steroids, and they hold the key to defeating metabolic syndrome (a disease where you are simultaneously overweight, pre-diabetic or diabetic, and are also suffering from elevated blood pressure and cholesterol) and more. In fact, when your body doesn’t produce enough anabolic steroids, it unleashes…

A chain reaction that leaves your health in ruins

You might be surprised to hear this—most of my patients are. Many doctors aren’t taught about the importance of anabolic steroids to overall health, so most folks end up in the dark.

Well, that ends today. I’m going to share with you the exact plan I’ve used to help my patients avoid the health-robbing chain reaction that occurs when their anabolic steroid levels are low. It’s a plan you can use to cure metabolic syndrome and lost lean body components (evidenced by hunching, sagging, and crunching) and start enjoying your best health in years.

But first you need to understand why these unfairly maligned hormones are so critical to your health. Below I will introduce you to why you desperately need anabolic steroids to keep old age at bay. (If you desire more evidence order my book, The Body Heals, 2nd Edition at www.thebodyheals.com.)

Getting to the truth about anabolic steroids

Your body makes two types of steroids—anabolic and catabolic. The easy way to remember the difference is that anabolic steroids (such as testosterone) build up our bodies, while catabolic steroids break them down. As you can imagine, there is a constant tug of war occurring in your body between these sets of steroids.

Anabolic steroids tell our genes when it’s time to begin the process of repairing our bones, muscles, organs, and tissue. So, as the ravages of age—or even disease—cause damage to our bodies, anabolic steroids like testosterone step in to help our genes repair it. By contrast, catabolic steroids break down our bodies’ protein to use as fuel. Your ability to hang on to this protein and keep it from being dismantled by catabolic steroids is critical to your good health.

As I mentioned, there is a daily tug of war occurring between anabolic and catabolic steroids. In the case of the muscle wasting that occurs with metabolic syndrome or the bone degeneration that occurs with osteoporosis, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble believing that the catabolic steroids are winning.

I’m going to explain in a moment how that situation has developed. But before we get to that, you’ll need to understand why…

Anabolic steroids determine if your cells get the fuel they crave

If you read last month’s article on metabolic syndrome or this month’s article on osteoporosis (if you haven’t, go ahead and read it now…I’ll wait), you know that a hormone called IGF-1 is critical to delivering fuel to your body’s cells.

There are two hormones that basically serve as “fuel nozzles” for delivering nutrition to your cells—IGF-1 and insulin. And, as I’ve told you before, IGF-1 is the preferred nozzle for your cells 93 percent of the time. Worse, much of the insulin you produce gets stuck in your liver (there are 200,000 pure insulin receptors on every liver cell), where it directs your liver to turn sugar into fat (cholesterol and triglycerides) that gunks up your arteries.

For this reason, when you’re short on IGF—and insulin tries to pick up the slack for blood sugar control—you end up obese and at risk for heart disease, while the rest of your cells are malnourished. They are malnourished because insufficient fuel nozzles are around beyond your liver.

And here’s the really important part: Anabolic steroids tell your liver how much IGF-1 to make. Without adequate levels of anabolic steroids, you will never make enough IGF-1 to deliver the nutrition your cells need. In addition, before you can release IGF-1, your pituitary gland needs to release Growth hormone (a protein hormone). So with either deficiency, the end result can be the muscle wasting common in metabolic syndrome, as well as the hunching, crunching, and sagging skin you see when you look in the mirror. (Next month, I’ll explain how to make sure you’re producing enough Growth hormone.)

One final insult

So, you may be thinking that as long as you normalize your anabolic steroid levels and produce enough IGF-1, everything will be fine, right? Not so fast.

Remember what I told you earlier—that there is a constant tug of war going on between your anabolic and catabolic steroids. Even if you’re making enough anabolic steroids…and even if those steroids have your liver making enough IGF-1…it may never get released into your bloodstream, where it’s needed.

And it’s all due to the most infamous of the catabolic steroids—cortisol. As I explained, catabolic steroids like cortisol break down your body’s protein, turning it into sugar that can be used for fuel. This was an ancient stress mechanism—in times of duress, cortisol gave our ancestors energy to fight off (or outrun) predators or other threats.

But today’s stresses are mostly psychological, so we never burn off all that excess energy. Our blood sugar stays chronically elevated—even when we’re not eating carbs—and this is a big problem if you are endowed with a robust adrenal secretion of cortisol.

You see, your blood sugar needs to fall to around 70 before your pituitary releases Growth hormone and in turn instructs your liver to release IGF-1. And if you’re dealing with chronic stress—or if you suffer from the overactive adrenals that often accompany metabolic syndrome—you might be making so much cortisol that you blood sugar never gets low enough. In other words…

You might be making IGF-1—but you can’t use it

And wait—it gets worse. You’re likely to become sensitive to carbs because of your chronically elevated blood sugar. And because you don’t have enough IGF-1, your body will try to bring down your blood sugar by producing more insulin. That means more fat (more cholesterol, more triglycerides) and more starving cells.

In some cases, you might even run out of cortisol, which will force your body to make more epinephrine (also known as adrenaline). The end result is that you’ll be anxious and jittery, and may suffer from a rapid heartbeat and paranoid thoughts. (I’ll discuss more on this other extreme of diminished adrenal function in future newsletters.)

But now it’s time for healing

To get your cells the nutrition they need—which will help you defeat metabolic syndrome and other wasting diseases—it’s imperative that you make and release enough IGF-1. In order for that to happen, you need your anabolic steroids to win the tug of war against catabolic steroids like cortisol.

Here are five steps you and your doctor can use to get you on the path to better health.

Step #1: Get your IGF-1 level checked. I use Pathology Associates in Spokane, WA (their contact information is on page 5), because I’ve found most other labs do a poor job of measuring IGF-1. You’ll learn pretty quickly whether you are producing and releasing the IGF-1 your body so desperately needs.

Step #2: Have your levels of cortisol and its metabolites checked using a 24-hour urine test. Many doctors don’t check for cortisol metabolites in the urine. Even fewer understand how to interpret what the metabolites mean. Because so many factors—such as stress or when you last ate—can affect your cortisol levels, you really need to analyze them over a period of time. A simple blood or saliva test is imprecise and just won’t cut it because it relies on inferior technology, ignores the very important steroid metabolites, and only measures an instant in time. For 24-hour urine testing, I use Meridian labs or Rhine labs.

Step #3: Get more exercise. Exercise can boost your levels of revitalizing hormones (especially growth hormone) and IGF-1. Don’t try to exercise yourself to death—just pick a moderate routine you can stick with.

Step #4: Fast between meals. That means no snacking. This should allow your blood sugar to fall enough to stimulate the release of IGF-1.

Step #5: Get a good night’s sleep. This also causes blood sugar to fall and stimulates the release of IGF-1 (since it is your longest fast during the day). Many of my patients with metabolic syndrome have a hard time sleeping, because you can’t sleep while producing cortisol (remember, it spikes your blood sugar levels). If you’re having trouble sleeping, talk to your doctor about some simple, drug-free strategies you can try. Simply preparing for sleep—going to bed early, keeping the room dark, turning off the TV, and not exercising or eating too close to bedtime—can often work wonders.

If your testing reveals any hormone deficiencies, you may need to work with a doctor who is competent in hormone replacement therapy. Insist on bioidentical hormones, which are designed to mimic exactly your body’s natural hormones. This is critical, because steroid hormones communicate with your genes—and you don’t want any message confusion occurring.

But steps 3, 4, and 5 are all simple things you can do on your own. I’ve seen many patients who followed these three steps and started seeing improvements in a matter of weeks. They lose weight, have more energy, and begin to turn the tide on the muscle and bone wasting that can run rampant with metabolic syndrome and osteoporosis.

The plan I’ve just laid out for you is simple and easy to follow—but you need to commit to it. Give it a shot, and see how you’re feeling by the time your next newsletter arrives. If you’re anything like the patients I have successfully treated over the years, you’re about to start feeling a whole lot better.

A quick note for the ladies…

When I tell my female patients that they need to boost their levels of anabolic steroids, some of them get nervous. They picture themselves becoming muscular, growing facial hair, and developing other masculine features.

Not to worry—the main anabolic steroid for women is DHEA, which is made by your adrenals. It’s a sex-neutral hormone, which means it usually doesn’t produce any of these side effects you may worry about. Its role is limited to helping your body regenerate and repair itself, so you can start living healthy and pain-free.

In addition, insist on pharmaceutical DHEA available at compounding pharmacies, and consult with a physician competent in bio-identical hormones, who will counsel you on the wisest route of administration.

July 2009 PDF

Erase four deadly diseases—with one secret cure
One little-known hormone may hold the key to wiping out obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, and lowering your risk for heart disease

You can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the news these days without hearing some discussion of the “obesity epidemic” that’s sweeping across America. Our bulging waistlines have become a favorite topic for every so-called health expert and cable TV talking head out there. And for all their jabbering, there’s one crucial point they all seem to miss…

Obesity is just the tip of a larger, deadlier iceberg

We’re being afflicted by obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and runaway cholesterol levels like never before—and, if you’re suffering from all four of these conditions, you may be dealing with a particularly nasty ailment called metabolic syndrome, which I told you about last month.

In my early years practicing medicine, I was always shocked that mainstream medicine had no real treatment for metabolic syndrome, and nothing but symptom-control pills (often of questionable effectiveness) to treat the four diseases that comprise this disorder. And that’s after spending BILLIONS on research.

If you think all that research must have missed something, well, I wondered the same thing. So I spent years poring through all the latest research, as well as old, discontinued medical textbooks, looking for lost knowledge.

And after years of study, I discovered three truths that changed forever how I look at—and treat—metabolic syndrome:

Truth #1: An out-of-control hormone cycle may be causing all the diseases that underlie metabolic syndrome—obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol and blood pressure.

Truth #2: If you have enough of a secret “antidote” hormone, this cycle can be brought under control and you can stop the obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol components of metabolic syndrome in their tracks.

Truth #3: As I discussed last month, by strictly limiting you sodium intake while enhancing your potassium and magnesium intake, you can often lower your blood pressure back to normal.

That’s right…

I’m not talking about treating metabolic syndrome—I’m talking about curing it

I’m not going to keep you in suspense. The antidote hormone… this amazing cure… is called IGF-1. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably never heard of it—but in a minute, I’m going to show you how it can save your life.

But before we talk about the cure, you need to understand how two hormones—insulin and cortisol—may be working together to undermine your good health and unleash the symptoms of metabolic syndrome on your body.

Fighting poison…with poison?

In the earlier days of medicine, doctors and pharmacists used those old, antique weight scales—you know, the ones where you need to balance both sides—to measure medications. Those days are long gone, but that antique weight scale still serves as a powerful illustration of how our bodies are designed to operate.

In a number of instances, our bodies will release a hormone to perform a task, and then release another hormone (or group of hormones) to neutralize the first hormone and keep it from doing more than the body needs.

That same antique weight scale relationship exists between the hormones insulin and cortisol. And if you’re suffering from metabolic syndrome, your body probably is making far too much of both. The end result can be obesity, high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease… and even muscle wasting.

Through my research, I’ve learned that as a result of today’s poor dietary choices and high-stress lifestyles, our bodies are being literally flooded with—and poisoned by—insulin. And in some of us with metabolic syndrome, our adrenal glands are responding to this toxic insulin by producing unhealthy levels of cortisol. In other words…

Your body is poisoning itself… TWICE

“Poison” might seem like a dramatic word for two hormones that are actually produced by your body. But for many people, especially those with metabolic syndrome, poison is the perfect word. After all, excessive insulin need is making you diabetic, obese, and is leading to cholesterol and arterial plaque buildup (among other problems it causes), while cortisol is wasting away your muscles by making sugar you really do not want. Making matters worse, the extra sugar requires extra insulin to normalize your blood sugar. Visualize with me the vicious cycle of response and counter response.

Let’s start with insulin. You’ll remember that last month I discussed how insulin draws sugar out of your blood—in ancient times, this was incredibly useful for those times when humans went long periods without food. But, today, we rarely go more than a few hours without eating, and many of us are producing levels of insulin that are not only harmful, but are also promoting the release of damaging levels of cortisol.

Let me explain how, using the simple example of what happens when you eat a sandwich. You see, the average-sized person (155 pounds) can only carry 6 grams of carbs in their entire blood under normal conditions. The problem is, even a slice of bread has 22 grams of carbs, so a sandwich has 44 grams. Simply eating that sandwich creates an overflow of sugar you need to remove from your bloodstream and store for future use—and removing sugar from your blood is insulin’s job.

But it’s how insulin removes this sugar that’s causing ill health for millions of Americans. You see, insulin has a deadly little secret that most of my patients—and many doctors, for that matter—have never before heard. And they’re always shocked when I reveal it.

Insulin’s deadly fan club

Think of insulin—and IGF, which I’ll be discussing more in a moment—as fuel nozzles. For some of the cells in your body, insulin is the preferred nozzle for delivering sugar that can be stored or consumed for energy. In other cases, IGF is the preferred nozzle for delivery.

And here’s the problem—the cells in your liver love insulin. Each liver cell has 200,000 pure insulin receptors, and it is always first in line for any insulin secreted by your pancreas because of body anatomy. For this reason, so much of the insulin your body produces never makes it past your liver. That insulin, when stuck in your liver, commands your liver to take the extra blood sugar and convert it to mostly fat. Even worse, fat ends up as cholesterol and triglycerides that spill into your blood vessels and accumulate along the walls.

You’re on your way to blocked arteries and heart disease

And now the second poison, cortisol, enters the picture. You see, if insulin had its way, it would pull all the blood sugar out of your system—and that would kill you in a hurry. So your body makes growth hormone, glucagon, epinephrine, and cortisol to counter the effects of insulin—and also to add sugar to your bloodstream when you need it. Remember, we talked last month about how our bodies also release cortisol during times of stress—a reaction that once helped our ancestors fight or outrun dangerous predators. Now, we often release this cortisol in response to emotional stress that requires no physical activity, like being stuck in traffic or fretting about bills.

So, to return to the antique scale analogy, if one side is weighed down with insulin, your body will make more cortisol to offset the effect—and vice-versa. The problem is, cortisol adds sugar to your bloodstream by breaking down your body’s proteins—to put it another way, it creates sugar by wearing down your protein-rich muscles.

Believe it or not, you see evidence of this every day. Think of someone you know who is significantly overweight. These people often have very poor muscle tone around the arms, legs, and everywhere else, for that matter. Much of that effect comes from cortisol breaking down muscles—and some of the effect comes from the fact that insulin released by your pancreas always gives the nutritional advantage to your liver instead of to other body cells, like muscle cells, which leaves those cells hungry. Because of this fact, even though you may be eating plenty, your cells are literally wasting from starvation. I see this condition every day, and have come to call it “hungry cell syndrome.” Your muscle cells will remain hungry until their preferred fuel nozzle, IGF-1, levels increase.

OK, Doc, so what do I do?

I get that question a lot, and you can probably guess the answer by now. You need to normalize your insulin and cortisol levels, but increase your IGF-1 levels. The good news is that, in many cases, your body doesn’t need—or want—to generate all the insulin it uses to regulate your blood sugar. In fact…

It’s like dousing a candle with a fire hose!

When your body generates excessive levels of insulin, much of it gets stuck in your liver. Making matters worse it’s not a preferred fuel nozzle for much of the rest of your body. For 93 percent of your bloodstream, IGF-1 is the preferred fuel nozzle for drawing sugar into your muscles, bones, and organs. Although woefully under appreciated, IGF-1 helps regulate your blood sugar, but, unlike insulin, it doesn’t make you fat. Instead, IGF-1 draws the sugar into your other cells, where it can be used to give you energy and promote lean muscle mass.

The fact is, when you’re making enough IGF-1, your body doesn’t need as much insulin. And when you’re making less insulin, you need less cortisol, too.

The bad news about IGF-1 is that you may have to educate your doctor a bit about it. It’s barely covered in medical school, and its name has changed several times (it used to be known as sulfation factor and the non-suppressible insulin-like activity of the blood stream to name a few).

The good news is that there are some things you can do to boost your IGF-1 levels and decrease your need for insulin.

Step 1: Free yourself from the torture chamber. The high-carb American diet, with its emphasis on processed, sugar-laden food, is so unhealthy that I’ve taken to calling it the “torture chamber diet.” It creates an endless cycle of insulin and cortisol that makes us fat, destroys our hearts and withers our muscles. You need to build your diet around quality proteins, such as beef, poultry and fish, and plenty of vegetables. And make sure you’re getting enough potassium—it should be seven times your sodium.

Step 2: Get moving! Exercise, whether it’s aerobic or weight training, has been proven to boost your body’s production of growth hormone. Growth hormone directs your liver to release IGF-1 into your blood stream. I’m not asking you to run a marathon—I’ve seen plenty of people who were middle-aged and older hurt themselves on some exercise program that would have been more appropriate in their 20s. I am asking you to start taking brisk, regular walks… maybe even dust off that old bicycle and some weights. Work with your doctor, physical therapist, or a personal trainer who specializes in folks like us who have a little gray around our temples.

Step 3: Ask your doc to give you a boost. Work with a hormonally-competent doctor who can measure your growth hormone levels using a 24-hour urine test and put you on a bio-identical hormone regimen, if needed. You’ll see some products advertised online that supposedly can boost your growth hormone levels—or maybe even claim to have growth hormone in them. Be careful—half of this stuff is junk, and some of it is dangerous. I’ve seen firsthand the wonders that hormone supplementation can perform—but this work is best performed by a trained physician. I will discuss more about the interrelated hormones that help versus hinder IGF-1 levels in your blood stream over the next two months.

I’m not just going to tell you this three-step plan works—I’m going to prove it to you. As soon as you’re finished reading this month’s Health Revelations, go step on the scale. It won’t hurt, I promise.

Now follow my three steps and when next month’s issue arrives, step on the scale again. I’ll bet my last dollar you’ll have lost weight, and there’s a good chance you’ll see improvements in all the other symptoms of metabolic syndrome, such as high cholesterol, diabetes, and elevated blood pressure (if you eat less salt and more potassium).

I’m telling you what I tell all my patients who are overweight and dealing with the symptoms of metabolic syndrome—your body is being poisoned, and I’m giving you the antidote. Do yourself the favor of a lifetime and use it.

Quit your hunching, crunching, and sagging
My breakthrough therapy starts reversing the physical signs of aging in a matter of months

Well, it’s been a month since I introduced you to a 90-day cure for chronic fatigue—and I hope you’re starting to feel better. Just correcting your mineral imbalances and getting more potassium in your diet can help you feel more energetic than you have in years.

But sometimes the problem goes deeper than just feeling “tired all the time.” I often treat patients who don’t just feel worn out—they look it. Their skin is sagging and wrinkled…they’re hunched over—it’s what we Montanans call the “rode hard and put away wet” look.

If you’re feeling—and looking—older than you are, I have some good news. You don’t have “bad genes” and your condition is substantially reversible. In fact…

If some doctor gave you the “bad genes” speech, all he really gave you was bad advice

Turns out, there are three very simple explanations for the wrinkling, sagging skin, and other physical signs of aging—and none of them have to do with some genetic craps game:

1) You can’t hold onto water (that’s why your skin is wrinkling)

2) Your cells are weakening (that’s why you lack energy)

3) Your body’s proteins are being destroyed (this keeps your body from repairing itself, and body parts start sagging)

And this month I’m going to introduce you to a breakthrough therapy you can use to reverse all three of these conditions. It’s the same approach I have taken with patients from across the country to help them look and feel years younger—and to start enjoying the vibrant, active lives they deserve. But first you need to understand that…

Your skin is wrinkling because it’s dying of thirst

I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of blowing up balloons for our children or grandchildren. And, as I’m sure you’ve seen a thousand times, the balloon starts to lose air over time and begins to look wrinkled and shriveled.

Believe it or not, that same phenomenon is leading you to develop sagging, wrinkled skin. The only difference is you’re not running out of air—you’re running out of water. It’s water that keeps your skin cells—and the rest of your cells, for that matter—inflated, and as we age we can’t hold onto it any more. Our cells become like half-filled balloons—and our skin starts to wrinkle and shrivel.

You can’t solve this problem by drinking more water—the issue is that your cells are losing the electrical charge they need to draw water into them. But there are two simple ways you can restore that charge.

Step 1: Add this key supplement for pennies a day. By supplementing with gelatin-containing MSM, you can boost your body’s sulfate content. And here’s why that’s important—sulfate attaches to the gelatin, and its sufficiency substantially determines the electrical charge in your joint cartilage and skin cells, and it lets you hold onto water. MSM is inexpensive and widely available through online and retail vitamin stores. It’s also a key player in reversing arthritis damage. (For more on this, see my article “Reverse arthritis damage and start living pain-free today,” in the May issue of Health Revelations.)

Step 2: Boost your potassium—and erase your wrinkles. I talked last month about how important potassium is to helping you overcome the “tired all the time” feeling that comes with chronic fatigue. But potassium also is critical to helping you look younger. You see, potassium resides in your cells, and one of its jobs is to pull water out of your bloodstream (where it doesn’t belong, and its deficiency can lead to high blood pressure), and into your cells, where it can help reverse the physical signs of aging. Start adding more potassium-rich foods to your diet (like avocados, fresh vegetables, meat, chicken, and fish) and cut out processed foods, which tend to be packed with unhealthy sodium. Also consider potassium-based salt substitutes.

I’d like to tell you that MSM and potassium alone are enough to help you eliminate the wrinkles, sagging skin, and hunched-over appearance many of us develop as we age. The good news is that, in some cases, they are enough. In other cases, they can’t work until you…

Stop your cells from falling apart

No matter what you ingest, whether it’s MSM, potassium, or a chicken sandwich, it needs a way to get into your cells. You have pumps lining the outside of your 70 trillion cells that are used to bring nutrients in and out of the cells.

But here’s the problem—these pumps, which are made out of protein, fall apart over time and need to be replaced. When you’re younger, that’s no problem. Your body has several key hormones that communicate with your genes, telling them when to make new proteins to replace the ones that are falling apart. The main repair hormones are estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol, thyroid hormones, and vitamin A.

But as we age, we make less and less of these hormones. When that happens, these critical messages don’t get through to your genes. Imagine trillions of genes sitting in your cells, eagerly waiting for the message that it’s time to kick into action and heal the parts of your body that are deteriorating—except, without adequate hormone levels, those messages never get through.

This sounds rather scientific, but you see evidence of it all the time. As we get older, many of us start eating better and trying to take care of ourselves—but often our health doesn’t really improve. If that hasn’t happened to you, I bet it’s happened to someone you know. Part of the reason may be that your body has not repaired your cell pumps, structural proteins, and metabolism-enhancing proteins. In addition, maybe you’re not absorbing all this great nutrition you’re working hard to put into your body.

For example, in order to get MSM, water, and other nutrients into your joints, you may need a hormone boost to start directing repair here. It’s not difficult to look around you and see who has sufficient repair hormones, and who could use a little boost. The “lucky ones” appear vibrant, are full of energy, have less wrinkles, and they even stand taller as they walk!

You have the ability to turn back the hands of time, to restore your energy, and to look and feel younger… simply by restoring your body’s diminishing hormones by using bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. First you need to start with…

The simple test that gives you a “report card” on your aging

Have your doctor conduct a 24-hour urine test, and you’ll know in short order whether you have enough repair hormones to keep you a step ahead of the aging process. Like most doctors, I used to rely on blood and saliva hormone tests, which only capture a moment in time and can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as stress, romance, and when you last ate.

The 24-hour urine test allows me to see how you’re producing hormones throughout the course of a day, and it will show rather clearly where you are deficient or excessive. In order to reverse the wrinkles, sagging, and hunching we experience as we age, you need your doctor to check your levels of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol, thyroid hormones, vitamin A, and even more importantly, their metabolites. Your levels of these hormones will produce what I call your aging “report card.” If your levels have been low for the last several years, chances are you’ve been struggling with many of the physical signs of aging, from sagging skin to aching joints.

The best resources nationally on 24-hour urine analysis are probably my clinic in Whitefish, Montana (visit www.thebodyheals.com and click on consultations) and Dr. Jonathan Wright’s clinic in Washington (www.tahoma-clinic.com).

Here’s the good news—your doctor can start you on a program of bio-identical hormone therapy to restore your levels of these key repair hormones. Now your body will be able to repair the pumps, structural proteins, and metabolism-enhancing proteins. In addition, as mentioned previously, if you enjoy the right hormones they allow MSM, potassium, and other nutrients into your cells.

And this is where the magic happens. Just by combining gelatin, MSM, potassium, and adequate hormone levels, your body will have—perhaps for the first time in years—the means to repair itself and reverse the aging process.

You’ll notice your skin feeling firmer and more radiant—some people may even ask if you’ve had cosmetic surgery! You’ll stand taller, have more energy, and feel better than you have in years—and you may even start to notice a difference in as little as a few months.

I always tell my patients to take a photo of themselves now and four months after they start my therapy. You’ll be amazed at how young your body can look and feel when you give it the right tools.

What puffy eyes tell me about your health
Those bags under your eyes may be hiding a deadly threat to your heart

It’s practically a right of aging—those puffy bags that start to appear under our eyes once we get a few years under our belts. And, if you’re like most of my patients, you probably just ignore them. “Bags and sags” are just a normal part of aging, right?

Well, I used to think so, too. But years of research have taught me that fluid accumulation under your eyes may be threatening more than your movie star good looks. In fact, your body may be trying to warn you of…

A serious—and growing—threat to your health

When fluid starts to collect in places where it doesn’t belong, it often indicates a serious dietary imbalance that can unleash a tidal wave of health problems. That “routine swelling” under the eyes may be the first step down a road that can lead to high blood pressure, obesity… even heart disease.

But once you understand what is causing your fluid accumulation, you may be able to correct it through a simple three-step plan. And, once you do, you won’t just start looking better—you’ll be adding years to your life, too.

Your eyes—a window to your health

You’ve probably heard the old expression that your eyes are the windows to your soul. Well, as I’ll explain in a moment, your eyes are also a window through which I can learn some things about your diet and overall health.

You’ll remember that last month we talked about metabolic syndrome—a condition caused by overactive adrenals that often leaves people obese, diabetic, and with elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels. One of the consequences of overactive adrenals is that they force your body to retain toxic levels of sodium.

Of course, your diet also can leave your body saturated with sodium. Either way, when your body has dangerously high levels of sodium, it causes fluid to build up in empty spaces throughout your body—such as underneath your eyes. In other words…

Those baggy eyes aren’t a cosmetic problem—they’re a warning sign

You see, if you have a robust adrenal secretion, you should be consuming much more potassium than sodium (about a 7-to-1 ratio) in your diet. That’s a tough trick, since Americans tend to live on processed food that’s packed with sodium to preserve shelf life.

But your potassium-to-sodium ratio is absolutely critical to your health. You see, both potassium and sodium act like magnets, attracting the water in your body. Potassium is primarily located inside your cells, and sodium is located outside them.

Without question, you’d rather have water drawn inside your cells than collecting outside them. Your cells need water to conduct basic life processes, to give you energy, and to help you fight off the signs of aging, from sagging skin to arthritis.

But when you have more sodium than potassium in your body, your cells don’t get the water they need. It just collects outside them. The problem can be even worse if you have metabolic syndrome, because your overactive adrenals don’t just tell your body to hold onto sodium—they tell it to get rid of potassium.

The end result of this mineral imbalance is too much water in your bloodstream. And here’s the really bad news…

More water in your bloodstream means higher blood pressure

It’s like trying to direct all the water from the Missouri River through a garden hose. Your blood vessels were never meant to carry that much water.

So what in the world does this have to do with those bags under your eyes? That area under your eyes represents one of the key areas outside your cells where water will accumulate if you have a mineral imbalance. If you’re developing bags under your eyes, it could be a sign that your potassium-to-sodium ratio is out of whack and that your cells aren’t getting the water they need.

Even worse, those puffy eyes may mean that you’re well on your way to high blood pressure, if you haven’t developed it already.

Lose your baggy eyes—and high blood pressure—in 3 easy steps

Getting rid of baggy eyes—and, in many cases, high blood pressure—requires you to correct the imbalance between potassium and sodium in your body. This imbalance is a threat to your cardiovascular health and also can contribute to your fatigue, wrinkles, and sagging skin.

Your first step, if you haven’t taken it already, is to get a 24-hour urine test. This test will let you know if you’re producing too much cortisol and its metabolites, which would indicate that overactive adrenals may be forcing you to retain excess sodium (metabolic syndrome).

Step 2 is to limit your sodium intake to 1,000 mg per day. I know that no one likes to check the labels on food—we like to swallow first and ask questions later. But knowing what you are putting into your body is critical to protecting your health. Once you start reading labels regularly, you’ll be amazed at how much better you’re eating and feeling. In fact, I had a patient last month with metabolic syndrome who lost over 35 pounds of water in just four weeks by reducing his sodium intake to less than 500mg/day.

The last step is to get 4,000 mg of potassium in your diet daily. Nabisco and Kraft aren’t going to make it easy on you, but you can do it. For starters, skip the salt and reach for a salt substitute with potassium chloride. Some deliver more than 500 mg of potassium per serving. (And, at the same time, you’re reducing your sodium intake.)

Also concentrate on loading up on potassium-rich foods, found in fresh foods that are not found in a box, bag, or can. (For a list of potassium-rich foods, see the June issue of Health Revelations.)

You might wonder how you’ll know when you’ve achieved a good balance between potassium and sodium in your body. Trust me—you’ll know. First, you should stop accumulating excess fluid around your eyes, around your waistline and even in your ankles. If you are in doubt, step on your scale because sodium loss means fluids loss. And, if your high blood pressure is being caused by excess sodium retention, you should see your blood pressure drop.

But, beyond that, there’s a good chance you’re going to look and feel better than you have in years. Expect more energy, improved stamina, and even less pain. Give my program a shot and see how you’re feeling a month from now. My guess is that you’ll be amazed at the results.

Caution: If you’re taking blood pressure medicine, it can cause you to abnormally retain potassium. So be sure to talk to your doctor before making any of these changes.

June 2009 PDF

Put a permanent end to your body’s energy crisis with…
The 90-day cure for chronic fatigue Part 1

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.

Chronic fatigue—or drugged?

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.

Tip: Get a thorough workup

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.

The fatigue-busting nutrients you won’t find in your multivitamin

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.

The “baked potato therapy” for chronic fatigue

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.

Turn off your body’s fat-making switch, and…Wipe away obesity, heart disease and even diabetes

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!

The deadly chain reaction that’s destroying your health

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

The shocking cause of rheumatoid arthritis—and how to fix it for good

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.

How rheumatoid arthritis hides in your body

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.