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.

I’ve treated enough cases of rheumatoid arthritis over the years to know how desperate some people are for a cure.

The pain can be debilitating, even crippling, to the point where you just want to give up hope.

The good news is that there is a highly successful treatment, and it’s a lot simpler than many people want you to believe. That’s because no one stands to get rich off it. I’ll get to that in a moment.

But first, let me show you just how hard they’re trying to turn this into an expensive and unnecessarily complicated procedure.

According to a Harvard Medical School news release, a team of American and German researchers say they have been successful in treating two cases of rheumatoid arthritis using gene therapy, an expensive and highly experimental procedure.

The genes were injected into the infected joints, and several weeks later both women reported reduced pain and swelling in those joints. Implicit in their finding is that people with multiple infected joints, as is the case with some who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, would need gene therapy injections in each joint.

Not surprisingly, the study was funded by a German biotechnology company. I imagine they paid for this not out of idle curiosity, but because of the bundle they stand to make if people really turn to gene therapy to treat their rheumatoid arthritis.

But really now, even if it works, it’s completely unnecessary. It’s like buying a dairy farm because you ran out of milk and eggs – an expensive and complicated way of doing something that’s really quite simple, at least by comparison.

What most doctors fail to acknowledge or even realize is that rheumatoid arthritis is caused by a food allergy. And even those inclined to look don’t always find it because they look in the wrong place. Most of them will only test for allergens that cause a rise in IgE antibodies, instead of IgG, and as a result, they completely miss the target.

To make matters worse, Big Pharma’s approach to treating rheumatoid arthritis involves drugs that poison your immune system from making the IgG antibodies. So if you go looking for the cause of your suffering after taking these types of drugs, you might not detect it.

Beating this thing isn’t about gene therapy. It’s about combating these allergies, and I’ve got a great plan to help you do just that coming out in the June issue of Health Revelations, along with some simple steps you can take to rebuild your joints. (Click here to sign up for Health Revelations today!)

It’s a whole lot simpler than some mad scientist plan to use gene therapy. Better still, it requires no pricey drugs and causes no side effects, and you can buy just the milk and eggs – not the whole farm.