Most Recent Health Tips, Health News, and Easy Healthy Recipes

If you chew gum on a regular basis, please consider the following:

1. Chewing gum causes unnecessary wear and tear of the cartilage that acts as a shock absorber in your jaw joints. Once damaged, this area can create pain and discomfort for a lifetime.
2. You use eight different facial muscles to chew. Unnecessary chewing can create chronic tightness in two of these muscles, located close to your temples. This can put pressure on the nerves that supply this area of your head, contributing to chronic, intermittent headaches.
   

Here are some facts that you won’t find advertised on most of the vitamin supplements at your local vitamin store:

• The majority of commercial vitamin supplements are made up of synthetic vitamins

Ingredients:

2 large stalks of broccoli
2 tablespoons of raw tahini
Spring water
Sea salt, to taste

Directions:

Steam broccoli until bright green and slightly tender. Combine steamed broccoli and raw tahini in a blender with spring water and blend until desired consistency is reached. Add sea salt, to taste.

Enjoy this rich and delicious dressing over other steamed vegetables or a whole grain dish. Read more »

Have you ever taken a careful look at the list of ingredients on your shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, lip balm, or make-up? I don't know about you, but I'm a bit nervous about putting anything on my skin or near my mouth that has a long list of ingredients that I don't recognize. Do you know that whatever you put on your skin or near your mouth has a real chance of getting absorbed into your blood stream? Considering that some of the chemicals used in commercial personal care products are highly toxic and can cause cancer, this is an extremely important issue to consider. Read more »

As my wife and I sanded the trim around our windows before painting this past summer, I was reminded of the potential danger of arsenic exposure around homes and playgrounds. For the past seven decades, a form of arsenic has been used as a pesticide in pressure treated wood used for playground sets, picnic tables, and wooden decks and porches. The concern is that arsenic – a known carcinogen – can rub off of treated wood and be ingested with hand to mouth contact. Considering that children touch their mouths sixteen times per hour when they are out playing, this is an important issue for all families to consider. Read more »

We recently had a guest visit our clinic with chronic eczema. Eczema, also known as dermatitis, is a condition of itchy and dry skin that can progress to a rash, sometimes cracking and bleeding. This particular guest had a severe rash with painful cracks on the palms of her hand, as well as on the soft, inside part of her elbows. Read more »

Throughout the history of the world, many cultures have used fish and fish broths to nourish their people. In the Chinese and Korean cultures, fish and fish broths have traditionally been used to properly nourish pregnant women and to promote a healthy supply of breast milk.

During his travels, renowned nutritionist and dentist, Dr. Weston A. Price found that populations that regularly consumed fish had thicker bones and better skeletal structure than those that consumed mainly red meat or mainly vegetables. Read more »

Ingredients:

1-2 tomatoes
Small bunch of basil
Juice of one slice of lemon
Spring or filtered water
Sea salt, to taste (optional)

Directions:

Blend all ingredients. Try this dressing with your favourite whole grains like brown rice and quinoa, as well as on your vegetable salads and steamed vegetable dishes. Read more »

Ingredients: 

2 small bananas
1 tablespoon of organic, all-natural peanut butter
1 cup of almond milk or spring water

Directions:

Blend all ingredients and enjoy.

Back in high school, I remember a student who did her science fair project on her sweaty hands. My memory is not good enough to remember the specifics of what she talked about that day, but I do remember her walking around the classroom, giving all of us a chance to see and feel the sweat that literally dripped off her hands. She said that it was a genetic problem, and that her hands sweated almost all of the time.

Today, I know much more about sweaty palms and excessive sweating, also known as hyperhidrosis, as I have had people consult with me to address this health challenge. You might be thinking that everyone gets sweaty palms once in a while, so what’s the big deal? People who suffer with hyperhidrosis can spend hours each day changing clothes, washing up, wiping their hands, and avoiding situations where they might have to shake a person’s hand. Worried about what others might think, it can cause them to lose friends or even pick a line of work that doesn’t require meeting people and shaking hands. The anxiety can be so bad that it can lead to depression and anxiety disorders, dramatically decreasing quality of life.

You can sweat from any of the two to four million sweat glands that are located in your skin. The most highly concentrated areas of sweat glands are found in the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, your armpits, your groin, and your face.

Sweating is a physiological mechanism that helps you cool off. When your body temperature rises, sweat comes out of your pores, which allows heat to escape from your body, evaporating into the air. Without the ability to sweat, you would suffer from serious health challenges from not being able to regulate your body temperature.

Excessive sweating in the absence of a high body temperature can certainly be caused by stress or emotional anxiety. It can also be caused by imbalances in your hormonal and nervous systems. But in general, the conventional medical view on hyperhidrosis is that there is no known cause or cure.

Some doctors will recommend using an anti-perspirant like drysol, which is an alcohol solution containing aluminum. Given the strong link between aluminum exposure and Alzheimer’s disease, I cannot recommend this approach.

Some doctors actually perform surgery to cut the nerves that supply your sweat glands. The reasoning is that if your sweat glands do not receive a signal to sweat from your brain, then your problem is solved. The problem with this approach is that the nerves that control your sweat glands also control a variety of other mechanisms in your body, the most important of which is your ability to control the size of your blood vessels. Your hands and armpits might stop sweating after this procedure, but the negative side effects are too numerous and serious to quantify.

I have found that there is a completely natural approach to dramatically improving hyperhidrosis, and sometimes, to completely cure it. Aside from emotional anxiety and stress, the biggest cause of hyperhidrosis is over activity of your nervous system. Specifically, the issue is over activity of a specific component of your nervous system, called your sympathetic nervous system.

Your sympathetic nervous system is in place to give you the capacity to deal with high-stress situations. In medical school, students are taught that the sympathetic nervous system controls “fight and flight”. When it is highly active, it sends most of your blood to your heart, lungs, and large muscles so that you can have the strength and endurance to fight or run away. It increases the size of your pupils so that you can take more light in through your eyes, an essential advantage if you are trying to run away from a grizzly bear. It also senses the increase in body temperature that comes with fight and flight situations, and sends a signal to your sweat glands to produce sweat to cool you down.

With hyperhidrosis, your sympathetic nervous system can be over active even when you are physically at rest. A significant and overlooked cause for this over activity is eating foods that your body cannot tolerate. For example, if your body cannot tolerate dairy products, whenever you eat some, your immune system must work hard to protect your tissues from the harmful effects of whichever components of dairy don’t agree with your body. If your immune system is constantly at work to deal with such food intolerances, your sympathetic nervous system detects this as stress, and activates the mechanisms that are in place to help you during stressful situations, including the production of sweat.

One young lady who consulted with me about her hyperhidrosis was delighted with the immediate improvement she experienced once she completely cut out all forms of dairy and a few other foods from her diet. Her success in conquering severe, chronic hyperhidrosis with dietary modification is not uncommon. Each person has unique dietary needs and food intolerances, so you will need to do some work to design a diet that works best for you. Read more »