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Don’t Overdo it When Taking Calcium Supplements

1/27/2016

If you are supplementing calcium with Vitamin D (and have good blood levels of around 50 ng/ml), I suggest taking no more than 500 mg of calcium daily. The best natural sources of calcium are dark green vegetables — if a good amount are eaten, you might not need calcium supplements at all. High calcium foods include broccoli, cabbage, kale, spring mix salad and Brussels sprouts. Yes, dairy products contain calcium but they also contain a lot of phosphorus, which can interfere with building bone. Milk is good for babies but not good for adults. Think about it --mother cows don’t drink milk to get calcium; they always eat grass. Calcium is needed for bone and nervous system health, but taking too much can cause kidney stones.

Here is why.

Adults get little cracks in their bones that need to be repaired. Repairing the bone requires calcium, Vitamin D, protein, estrogen, progesterone (for women), testosterone and DHEA. To maintain strong bones, it requires the entire holistic package. On a daily basis, we don’t use up very much calcium. If we take in more calcium than we need, the kidneys will send the excess calcium into the urine. Again, too much calcium in the urine can lead to kidney stones.

Chocolate calcium chews

There are companies who promote tasty chocolate calcium chews to middle aged and menopausal women. Some chews include Vitamin D (roughly 600 IU). Calcium comes from limestone and is cheap but Vitamin D is more expensive. I often recommend my patients to take 3,000 IU of Vitamin D daily and 500 mg (or less) of calcium. I would stay away from the chocolate candies. They contain an excess of calcium and not enough Vitamin D. Even if you had three to four chews, you will not reach the proper amount of Vitamin D and the chews will only produce higher levels of calcium.

A few years ago, Dr. Mehmet Oz brought the low Vitamin D levels of older Americans into popular focus. Many elderly women were advised to take 2,000 mg of calcium daily for bone health, but since they did not have enough Vitamin D, the extra calcium was ineffective. The intestine cannot absorb calcium very well without having adequate levels of Vitamin D (no matter how much calcium is taken). When women finally started supplementing with Vitamin D, they were successful in absorbing the higher levels of calcium.

I watched a urology doctor on television criticize Dr. Oz for pushing Vitamin D because kidney stone rates were going up in elderly women. The doctor was blaming the wrong problem. The extra Vitamin D is needed for many reasons. In addition to bone health, Vitamin D supports immune function, which protects against infections and cancer. The main issue was that women were taking too much calcium.

Very important general rule -- there isn’t anything that you can’t have too little or too much of. For healthy bones, everyone needs the whole package of vitamins, hormones, nutrients and minerals but do not take too much of anything, including calcium.

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Low Testosterone Levels in Men Need attention Too

1/18/2016

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In his book, Testosterone for Life, Abraham Morgentaler, M.D., an Associate Clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, talks about the general health of men and their testosterone levels. Generally, if a group of men of various ages had testosterone levels measured, the highest numbers would appear to be the best. Men would be healthier, leaner, more muscular, have increased energy, an increased libido and better sexual performance.

Low testosterone can contribute to depression and a low libido. Morgentaler proves that men with lower testosterone levels are MORE likely to get prostate cancer than men with higher testosterone. Since low testosterone reduces blood supply to the prostate gland, low PSA results can still harbor a hidden prostate cancer.

Men with low testosterone have less muscle mass and burn fewer calories. This leads to weight gain. Abdominal fat changes testosterone to estrogen and estrogen stimulates craving for carbohydrates. Men will eat more carbs, retain extra belly fat and have higher estrogen levels, which then circles back to eating more carbs. It is a vicious cycle. Additionally, high estrogen is thought to stimulate the growth of prostate cancer.

Commercial medical laboratories have determined that normal testosterone levels is relevant for anyone above the bottom 2 ½ % of the population. I feel that ⅓ % (the lowest 33%), would be helped by additional testosterone. Would you be happy if your child was getting D’s in school or would you want to raise those D’s to B’s?

There are several major male hormones. DHEA is also an important male hormone. Although it is much weaker than testosterone, blood levels of DHEA are ten thousand times as high as that of testosterone. DHEA is available as an over-the-counter (OTC) tablet or capsule and if needed, should be measured and supplemented. Few mainstream American doctors routinely measure DHEA in their patients. Dr. Morgentaler does not mention DHEA in his book, but since it is a natural OTC supplement, pharmaceutical companies can’t push it. Like most mainstream professors, Morgentaler doesn’t even consider it.

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Are we eating Roundup Pesticide in some of our foods (GMO)?

1/8/2016

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There has been a lot of conversation about GMO foods — from labeling discrepancies to just banning them altogether. Even with the holistic and functional medicine courses I have taken, there has been very little discussion about exactly what the genetic modification of food items actually are.

So, allow me to share what I have learned:

GMO sugar beets
About seven or eight years ago, Atlanta radio station (WABE 90.1 FM) ran a story about a farmer who grew sugar beets. Monsanto (an agrochemical and agricultural company) was pressuring the farmer to switch to buying their genetically engineered sugar beet seeds. I wondered why a company would even want to genetically modify a sugar beet. While researching the Farmers section of Monsanto’s website, I discovered a lot.

The word cultivation means to “pull up weeds” — this enables food crops to grow without competing simultaneously with weeds to grab its nutrients. Monsanto changed the genes in some of their sugar beets, making them resistant to Monsanto’s popular weed killer, Roundup. If the farmer grew Monsanto’s GMO sugar beets, he could spray the whole crop with Roundup and kill the weeds without forfeiting the growth of the sugar beets. Each company wins – the farmer doesn’t have to pull up weeds and Monsanto receives earnings from both the seeds and Roundup.

Monsanto sells Roundup to the general public — they publicize that Roundup can kill unsightly weeds growing inside driveway cracks because of its capability to destroy the entire weed down to its roots.

Beets are a root vegetable, right? Does this mean the chemicals contained in Roundup ends up in the sugar we eat? The short answer is, I don’t know. Currently, there are seven Roundup Ready crops: corn, soybeans, alfalfa, cotton, canola oil, sorghum and sugar beets. Most of these are fed to cows, chickens and pigs — foods that many of us eat. Sugar and canola oil are eaten directly while cottonseed oil is found in many processed foods (including most mayonnaise brands). This means that directly or indirectly, Americans could be “eating” Roundup and the other toxic chemicals (such as the main ingredient glyphosate) that it degrades into.

For more information, watch the video, The Health Dangers of Roundup (Glyphosate) Herbicide, by Jeffrey Smith & Stephanie Seneff

GMO wheat and potatoes
Monsanto also developed another major genetic modification — a bacterial gene called Bt Toxin. They are added to wheat and russet potatoes, and generally used for baking or making French Fries. I watched a promotional film by Monsanto that showed a beetle eating the leaves of a Bt potato plant — the beetle was shown later hanging upside down and dying from intestinal problems.

A number of my patients grew up in Germany, which bans all GMO foods. Many patients confessed to getting stomach cramps whenever they ate American bread, but never experienced problems when digesting German bread. Generally, American flour is higher in gluten (a natural wheat protein) than German wheat flour, but American GMO wheat also contains Bt Toxin. Whole Foods, a popular natural and organic food store, makes their own bread, attesting that all of their breads are organic. Their breads contain gluten (as all wheat does), but contains no Bt Toxin. Some patients have explained that they can tolerate organic bread but not GMO bread.

I think it is conceivable that many Americans who think they are gluten intolerant may actually be just GMO Bt Toxin intolerant. When possible, try to buy organic wheat bread that contains no added GMO Bt toxin. Avoiding wheat is another way to circumvent exposure to Bt toxin but even most non-organic russet potatoes still contain a lot of Bt Toxin.

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Don’t Overdo it When Taking Calcium Supplements

Low Testosterone Levels in Men Need attention Too

Are we eating Roundup Pesticide in some of our foods (GMO)?

Robert P. Goldman, M.D.

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