Need to check your thyroid? Maybe not
As medical science advances, we have more tests and biomarkers available to help identify illnesses. Yet overdiagnosis and overtreatment that may occur following abnormal results can cause dangerous adverse effects and costly consequences. Hypothyroidism — a lower than normal range of thyroid hormones — may be the poster child for this problem because it is such a common condition.
What is hypothyroidism?
At the front of your neck lies the thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland that makes the hormone T4. When released into the bloodstream, T4 converts to T3, the most active form of thyroid hormone. Having sufficient levels ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 22, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Marcelo Campos, MD Tags: Autoimmune diseases Fatigue Tests and procedures Thyroid Disorders Source Type: blogs
Supporting your newborn ’s health: Intestinal colonization after elective cesarean section
This study confirms meta-analyses of smaller studies in the United States that suggest that cesarean section deliveries are risk factors for development of allergy and autoimmune disease. Elective cesarean section deliveries have increased from 5% in 1970 to 25% in 2010 in the US, while at the same time the incidence of autoimmune diseases has increased in Western society over the last several decades, and there may be a correlation.
Altered intestinal colonization in medically-indicated vs. elective cesarean sections
We have learned that major changes in intestinal colonization occur after elective cesarean sections (thos...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 5, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Allan Walker, MD Tags: Digestive Disorders Family Planning and Pregnancy Probiotics Women's Health Source Type: blogs
Plain and Simple Ocular Punctal Plug Removal: Part II
Ocular punctal plug removal is a straightforward procedure easily completed in the emergency department. Serious complications from punctal plug insertions are rare but sometimes seen.Left: A punctal plug in the upper lacrimal duct of the right eye, allowing for moisture balance from tear production. Right: The tiny punctal plug after it was removed. Photos by M. Roberts.Punctal plugs are placed in some or all of the lacrimal ducts by an ophthalmologist to treat chronic dry eye, and can be permanent or dissolvable. Plugs typically stay in place for three months or longer. (Am J Ophthalmol. 2007;144[3]:441.) ...
Source: The Procedural Pause - July 1, 2019 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Autoimmune Disease: Start With Wheat & Grain Elimination
If you or someone close to you have an autoimmune condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, along with about 195 others, there are a number of steps you can take that reduce, even eliminate the autoimmune inflammation damaging your organs. (Unfortunately, some forms of autoimmune damage cannot be reversed. Autoimmune loss of pancreatic beta cells that lead to type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis that damages the thyroid gland, or autoimmune hepatitis that can lead to cirrhosis. for example, cannot be reversed even if the autoimmune p...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 23, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Autoimmunity autoimmune casein Gliadin grain-free omega-3 undoctored vitamin D wheat belly Source Type: blogs
H2 Breath Detection: Game-Changer for Gastrointestinal Health
Anyone who remembers the days before finger stick blood glucose meters became available to people with diabetes will recall how awful life was for diabetics. All they had was urine dipsticks which were sloppy, yielded only crude non-quantitative feedback on blood sugars, and gave you a gauge of what blood sugars were in the recent past, not the present. It meant that dosing insulin or diabetes drugs was grotesquely imprecise and accounted for many episodes of hypoglycemic coma and acceleration of diabetic complications. It was not uncommon in those days, for instance, for a type 1 diabetic to be blind and experience kidney...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 20, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: SIBO bowel flora Inflammation probiotic undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Health Insurance 101 -- yet again
I just cannot understand why it is so difficult to get people to grasp what seems to me a simple idea. Let ' s try one more time.The purpose of insurance is to spread risk. That ' s the essence of the concept. Health insurance (or health care insurance as some prefer to say) is different from other kinds of insurance in some ways, so let ' s just talk about health insurance.Health care costs are unpredictable. It is true that there are risk factors associated with some conditions, most notably smoking tobacco. Nevertheless, no matter how healthful your lifestyle, you still just might need expensive health care. You might b...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 14, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The dangers of eating low-fat
So much time and energy have been wasted these past 40 or so years in trying to reduce dietary fat, including saturated fat. All you need do is look around you to see the result: the most unhealthy, fattest, most diabetic population in history, prescribed more drugs, more reliant on this (corrupt and unhelpful) thing called modern healthcare, with people in healthcare such as your doctor blaming YOU, rather than themselves and their misguided message. After all, doctors and dietitians are following the dictates of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the USDA food plate that carries the blessings of Big Food and a...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 14, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Low-fat diet grain-free low-carb undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Eight years of Wheat Belly successes
I was looking back over the last 8 years since the first Wheat Belly book was released. It’s been 8 years of astounding, truly breathtaking stories of success over weight issues, health, and physical transformations that skeptics even today claim are impossible. It’s been a virtual avalanche of wonderful stories. Although I’ve seen all of them, often more than once, I could not help but be overcome with satisfaction and pride for the many, many spectacular photos and stories people have shared.
So I thought it would be fun to re-post a small sample of some of these stories dating back from the start of th...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 6, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Success Stories grain-free Inflammation Source Type: blogs
Why is quinoa getting a free pass?
A day doesn’t pass that I don’t see some new “healthy” recipe for quinoa, or a dietitian or nutritionist gushing about the health benefits of this seed.
Many make the claim that quinoa is high in protein and is gluten-free. Clearly, the gluten-free movement is fueling some of this excitement over this seed. But how much truth are there in these claims? And just how healthy is quinoa as a replacement for grains?
Let’s tackle these claims one by one:
Quinoa is not a grain and is gluten-free
This is absolutely true. While all grains, or seeds of grasses, are members of the family Poaceae, quino...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - June 5, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle blood sugar carbohydrates carbs gluten-free quinoa Source Type: blogs
Best of Our Blogs: May 31, 2019
I know what it’s like when your world closes up. Anxiety can do that to you. Something happens like a traumatic event and you’re triggered. Maybe you get a panic attack or health scare. Your body will do anything not to go through that again. So you avoid situations. Maybe you don’t go to that same coffee shop or ride small airplanes anymore.
But soon you find yourself not wanting to go out with friends or travel. Staying at home seems to be the only way you can gain some sense of control. But it’s all an illusion.
The trick to getting through any scary experience is to gradually get yourself back u...
Source: World of Psychology - May 31, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Brandi-Ann Uyemura, M.A. Tags: Best of Our Blogs Source Type: blogs
“ What if I just ignore my SIBO? ”
By just engaging in the basic strategies in the Wheat Belly Total Health, Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox, or Undoctored programs, many mild cases of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO, reverse. These efforts thereby restore your ability to ingest prebiotic fibers without diarrhea, bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort, joint pain, and dark emotional feelings. Many people thereby are relieved of irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, fibromyalgia, or restless leg syndrome, or have greater power in reversing autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Unfortunately, not everybody enjoys reversal of SIBO with our b...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - May 27, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: SIBO grain-free probiotic undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Update: Wheat Belly safe flours and meals
So you kiss all things wheat and grains goodbye. And you’ve come to learn that gluten-free foods made with replacement flours like cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato flour, and rice starch are incredibly unhealthy, since they make visceral fat grow, send blood sugar through the roof, and contribute to diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
But perhaps you’d sure like a few muffins or cookies once in a while . . . without paying the health price that follows wheat and grain consumption such as high blood sugar, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, acid reflux, and inc...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - May 22, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates gluten-free grain-free low-carb wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Avoid toxic wheat re-exposures
We learned years ago that, once you are wheat- and grain-free, re-exposures to any wheat or grains can provoke some awful re-exposure reactions.
Here, I discuss the range of unpleasant consequences that develop with wheat and grain re-exposure. Among the consequences of re-exposure are:
Gastrointestinal distress—discofort/pain, diarrhea, bloating
Joint pain—especially of the fingers, hands, wrists, and elbows, occasionally large joints
Mental/emotional effects—most commonly anxiety, anger, depression, irritability
Reactivation of autoimmune diseases
Hunger—re-exposure to gliadin-derived opioid pept...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - May 16, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Re-exposure syndromes autoimmune Gliadin Inflammation wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Microbiome: The first 1,000 days
In the United States and other developed countries, we have seen a shift over the past several decades in the types of illness people struggle with. Public health campaigns around vaccination, sanitation, and judicious use of antibiotics have largely eradicated many infectious illnesses. As the nature of disease has shifted to inflammatory conditions, we’ve seen a striking increase in allergy and autoimmune conditions such as diabetes, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, and multiple sclerosis. The microbiome — the varied and teeming colonies of gut bacteria inside of us — may be helping to drive thi...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 15, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Allan Walker, MD Tags: Digestive Disorders Family Planning and Pregnancy Inflammation Probiotics Source Type: blogs
Intestine Chip to Study Human-Microbiome Interactions
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have developed a microfluidic chip that allows bacteria and human epithelial cells to be co-cultured. The device will allow researchers to study how the gut and bacteria interact, helping them to identify the role of the microbiome in health and disease.
With reported involvement in a huge array of diseases, including cancer, autoimmune diseases, infections and inflammatory diseases, the human microbiome is receiving increasing attention from researchers. However, one of the major hurdles in studying how the microbiome affects the body is the tendency of bacteria to quickly overwhe...
Source: Medgadget - May 14, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Genetics GI Materials Pathology Source Type: blogs
