The shampoos, lotions, and deodorants you are using may be eroding the health of your children and of yourself.  Research continues to mount regarding the harmful effects of phthalates on male development. 

Phthalates have been shown to:

• Increase the incidence of cryptorchidism (failure of testicles to descend)
• Increase the incidence of hypospadias (an abnormal condition in males in which the urethra opens on the under surface of the penis)
• Increase the incidence of testicular cancer
• Decrease fertility

The effects of phthalates are most pronounced when exposure occurs to the fetus.  Phthalates are a group of chemicals used primarily as a preservative in personal care products such as deodorants, shampoos, lotions, and creams.  Most often, phthalates are listed in the ingredients of these products. 

Reducing your exposure is very simple—do not buy any products containing phthalates (if the word “phthalate” is in the ingredients section, do not buy it—the word will often contain a prefix such as ethyl or methyl).  By avoiding these products you protect yourself and future generations from the their harmful effects.  If you have trouble finding phthalate-free products at the grocery store, try your local co-op or health food store.

Here is a piece published by the National Institutes of Health on phthalates that contains the following statement:  "researchers conclude that, consistent with animal studies, these data provide support for a link between prenatal phthalate exposure and health effects in humans. The researchers suggest that commonly used phthalates may adversely affect male reproductive development.."

Here is a nice study and review on the many negative effects of phthalates.  Read more on my Environmental Pollutants News Page.

Memory is a skill that most of us would like to sharpen.  In addition to providing us with convenience and confidence, memory is a sign of our overall health.  Your brain is not separate from the rest of your body—it is totally integrated with each and every one of the ten thousand trillion cells that make up your body.
All of the same strategies that help to develop our memory develop the rest of our brain function as well; our ability to learn new skills, assimilate new information, and to make better decisions can all be improved with effort.

There are several crucial factors that result in excellent memory, here are the major ones:

Excellent Blood flow is essential for optimal memory.  Much of what we know to be “senile dementia”, or forgetfulness due to aging, is do to tiny obstructions in blood flow.  In fact, we now know that even in people over 50 with “normal” memory, nearly half have “silent brain infarcts”.  These are small areas of the brain that have actually died due to obstruction of blood flow in tiny blood vessels.  There are several simple strategies that can improve blood flow in the brain, here are some of the best:

Exercise:  Cardiovascular exercise creates a demand for more oxygen rich blood in your body.  Your heart rate increases, as does your blood pressure.  When you exercise on a regular basis, you keep your blood vessels, heart, and lungs in prime condition.  To learn more about how to include cardiovascular exercise in your life read my Cardio 101 article.  Strength Training has been the center of much research on improving brain function.  In particular, high-intensity weightlifting has proven very effective for improving your brain.  The increase in blood pressure associated with vigorous lifting in conjunction with the demand for blood is attributed for these beneficial effects.  To learn more about developing an effective weight training program read Strength Training 101.

Nutrition:  What’s good for the heart is good for the brain.  This is an important axiom.  Unfortunately, nutrition for a healthy heart is often disseminated more for the health of corporate bottom line than for the health of you!  My article on Cholesterol goes over in detail what types of foods to eat for a healthy heart—all of that information translates directly to a healthy brain.

Supplementation:  The single simplest thing you can do to improve your brain starting right now is to take a high quality purified fish oil.  People consuming the highest amount of fish oil have a 50-80% reduction in Alzheimer’s risk!  The omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil help your blood vessels to function smoothly.  They decrease inflammation, improve cholesterol levels, and normalized hormone profiles in your brain.  Be certain to use a high quality product where you can get 2-3 grams of omega-3 fatty acids that are mercury and PCB free.  My favorite omega-3 product is available at a discount in my store. For more information on omega-3’s, click here.

Oxidation is implicated in the decline of the brain.  Poor diet over the years, exposure to environmental pollutants, lack of rest, and stress all contribute to oxidation.  Oxidation results in cell death within the brain and is also implicated in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.  Read my article on Antioxidants for more information on this topic.  That article deals with nutrition and supplementation in detail.  The best-known brain antioxidant, Bacopa Monnieri, is discussed in that article as well as in these articles.

Happiness is not only a hallmark of a healthy brain; it is essential for its development.  More and more research is mounting regarding the devastating effects of stress and depression on the brain.  Taken to their extreme, these negative emotions lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  PTSD results when negative emotions either go on long enough, or surpass a threshold of intensity, after which the brain is physically changed and unable to shed the negative pattern.  Picture a bowling lane with a rut that crosses the center and heads toward the gutter—no matter how skillfully you role the ball it winds up in the gutter. This is the predicament of your brain when it is chronically stressed or depressed:  whatever experiences come into your life wind up being colored as stressful or depressing.

Stress and depression play out physically in many ways—some of which we are just beginning to understand.  We know that stress results in increases of norepinephrine and cortisol—both of which increase the oxidation of your brain when levels are too high.  These hormones actually kill brain cells!  We also know that when you experience these emotions with intensity you created neurological patterns in your brain that are very difficult to overcome.

If you struggle with these issues check out the stress reduction page on this website.  You will find several practical tools that you can use to create positive patterns in your brain.  Going back to our bowling analogy, you can create a groove in the bowling lane that gives you a strike every time.

Will Power/Supply and Demand.  There is a term used in neurophysiology (the study of the function of the nervous system and brain) that I like very much: plasticity.   The brain is plastic in its nature, that is to say that it is changeable, malleable, and not static.  When we are in-utero it is dark and sounds are muffled.  There is not much change in tastes that we are exposed to.  As a result there is little external stimulation, with the exception of movement.  As an infant grows inside the womb it is exposed to the various movements and changes in position of the mother, and the infant does a fair share of its own moving.  The results of this phenomenon are profound.  By the time a baby is born most of the neurons (nerves) associated with the largest portion of the brain (the cerebrum) have actually died due to lack of stimulation!  To the contrary, the neurons in a relatively tiny part of the brain called the cerebellum are kept alive.  The cerebellum is responsible for processing information having to do with movement.   Since the baby experiences a great deal of such information that part of the brain is stimulated, preserved, and developed.  As a result, this tiny, walnut-sized portion of your brain has as many neurons now as the rest of your brain and body combined!

Just as in the womb, the demand you place upon your brain today creates the brain that you will function with tomorrow.  Challenging activities will cause you to create new networks within your brain, and to use more of your brain.  To the contrary, activities that are mentally passive, such as television, do not place a demand on your brain, and as a result its powers weaken.  Following are some of the best activities for to challenge and stimulate your brain:

• Ping Pong.  This game is not only fun, it is excellent for your brain!  The game demands planning, speed, and coordination.  The spirit of competition and desire to perform better adds to the demand this game places on your brain.
• Play a musical instrument.  Playing music demands creativity, coordination, mathematics (if you’re dealing with music theory), new language skills (if reading music), and coordination between several parts of your body—piano demands both hands and a foot working in different ways, flute demands both hands and the breath, etc. 
• Chess and word games such as scrabble, suduko, and crossword puzzles all demand planning and mental reaching.  While these are excellent mental exercises, be certain games and puzzles of this type are not your only mental exercise—you’ll want to include other mental exercises such as those described above that demand physical coordination also.
• Rewarding, challenging work.  Retirement is an alien concept in the healthiest cultures.  For many, the idea of retirement is a sweet one due to the fact that our jobs don’t excite us.  Rather than stopping work, think of retirement as a chance to participate in meaningful service.  Research shows a definite correlation with retirement and cognitive decline.  In fact, most Americans begin watching a full 40 hours of television after retirement!  Television becomes a full time job!  Travel, learn, and seek out ways to make a difference in the world—it’ll keep you young!

Excellent, sound sleep is essential for optimal brain function.  The current theory on how memory works attributes a crucial role to sleep in the consolidation of memory.  It is thought that during sleep your brain is organizing memory of recent experiences for future recall.  We all have had times where deep sleep has not been possible for one reason or another (hopefully a fun reason).  When we try to recollect those times we often describe them as “foggy” or otherwise unclear.  To learn more about how to achieve sound sleep, click here.

In the end, it is our brain that integrates and processes the many functions of our bodies as well as our consciousness.  To the extent that our nervous systems are able to adapt to new information, to have empathy for others, and to view our experiences objectively and with compassion, we are able to function as human beings.  A healthy brain means not only remembering where you put your keys, it means being able to chart a course toward self-improvement and toward creating a better world.

If we do not take the time to understand how our own minds work we risk becoming a victim of outside influence.  As such we are susceptible to anger, hate, frustration, and stress—all of which are symptoms of a mind stuck in patterns of thought inflicted upon it.  When we realize that the mind is truly a blank canvass, one upon which we can consciously direct the paint-strokes of our intention, we create qualities of beauty and harmony: intelligence, compassion, joy, and love. 

              The Healthy Brain Checklist

• 20-30 minutes of vigorous activity on most days of the week.
• Eat a healthy diet as described in The Cholesterol Article
• Use your will power daily; learn a musical instrument, play ping-pong, or start a new project that demands you to learn new things.
• Begin taking 2-3 grams of omega-3’s per day.
• Practice some form of stress reduction—this not only makes you feel better, it creates positive changes in stress hormones.  These hormones can increase the rate of oxidation of your brain (that’s bad), and activities like meditation reverse this and may actually heal damage.
• Take a food-based antioxidant daily.
• If you have experienced a decline in your memory begin taking Bacopa Monnieri.

Investing in organic foods is a choice that benefits you, your children, and the planet.Setting aside the environmental and planetary reasons for choosing organic, consider the following:

1. Organic foods are higher in nutrients, far higher.  Putting theory aside and actually testing produce for its nutritional content is the only way to settle the question, “is organic food higher in nutrients?”  Over and over again researchers who perform such tests come up with the same answer; YES!  Consider the graph below[i]:

            Other research has confirmed these findings, and more recent findings demonstrate higher    
             levels of health-giving nutrients in addition to vitamins and minerals.

Total Phenolic (TP) content of food has demonstrated a beneficial role on human health.  Researchers recently reported “Statistically higher levels of TPs were  consistently found in organically and sustainably grown foods as compared to those produced by conventional agricultural practices.”[ii]

Other new research has confirmed the superiority of organic foods in antioxidant supply; “Ascorbic acid, alpha-, gamma-tocopherols, and beta-carotene were higher in organic plums grown on soil covered with natural meadow.”[iii], and “organic tomatoes had higher vitamin C, carotenoids, and polyphenol contents (except for chlorogenic acid) than conventional tomatoes.”[iv]Another study reported, “Our results clearly show that organic red oranges have a higher phytochemical content (i. e., phenolics, anthocyanins and ascorbic acid), total antioxidant activity and bioactivity than integrated red oranges.”[v]

Cleary one can no longer deny the superiority of organically grown foods in nutrient content.

2. Organic foods are lower in pesticides and herbicides known to be harmful to your health.  Research pitting organically grown produce against conventionally grown showed the following; “Conventionally grown samples were also far more likely to contain multiple pesticide residues than were organically grown samples. Comparison of specific residues on specific crops found that residue concentrations in organic samples were consistently lower...”[vi]

3. People who eat organic foods are healthier.  Pesticides and herbicide ingestion has been linked to a variety of disorders including cancer, liver damage, neurodegenerative disorders, and decreased fertility.

Fertility

  A great deal of research has linked exposures to pesticides and herbicides with both abnormal sperm and lower sperm counts in men.

One study found abnormal sperm in people not consuming organic foods; “The group of men without organic food intake had a significant lower proportion of morphologically normal spermatozoa…”[vii].   Another study found that men with the highest exposure to pesticides and herbicides had fully 60% fewer normal sperm!  These authors concluded, “The results are compatible with the hypothesis that male fecundity may be at risk from exposure to pesticides in the manual handling of cultures in greenhouses.”[viii]

 Cancer

Non-organic farming methods are linked to several types of cancer.  The one that is discussed the most in the literature is Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL).  Scientists looking specifically at the effects of organic or non-organic wheat consumption on lymphocytes (white blood cells) found the following; “In conclusion, these results indicate that the conventional wheat sample tested represented a higher risk for lymphocyte function than the wheat sample organically grown, at least in vulnerable conditions.”[ix]

Astonishingly, there is a 309% increase in the incidence of NHL among people with the highest exposure to pesticides![x]One of the chemicals implicated in increasing cancer rates is glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.[xi]

 Neurodegenerative Disease

Newer research is beginning to focus on the link between non-organic foods and neurodegenerative diseases.  A study published last year by the National Institutes of Health reported, "From the epidemiologic literature, there does appear to be a relatively consistent relationship between pesticide exposure and Parkinson's Disease. This relationship appears strongest for exposure to herbicides and insecticides, and after long durations of exposure." [xii]

Another study found a 5.63-fold increase in Parkinson’s disease and a 2.39-fold increase in Alzheimer’s disease among men with the highest exposure to pesticides.  They also found uniformly lower cognitive ability in people with chronic exposure to pesticides.[xiii]

In conclusion, organically grown foods have more good stuff in them, less bad stuff in them, and they build your health.  Non-organically grown foods generally have more bad stuff in them (pesticide and herbicide residues, aluminum, lead, mercury, and harmful bacteria like E. Coli 0157:H7), have been linked strongly to several disease processes, and rob you of your health.The choice is clear: Go Organic!

 
Poor Supplementation
It is true that eating a diet high in antioxidants reduces oxidative disease processes such as cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.[iii] [iv] [v] [vi]  It is not true, however, that taking isolated nutrients such as manufactured vitamin C, E, and A, do anything to reduce your risk!  Some studies actually show more heart disease and cancer in individuals supplementing with these products![vii] [viii] [ix] [x] [xi]  Please read that again—the vitamins that most people take either do nothing to reduce risk or actually increase risk!

1. Eat a healthful diet rich in organic fruits and vegetables of many colors.  These foods deliver antioxidants to your   body the way nature intended.  Use culinary herbs and spice liberally—many of these are antioxidant-packed.  Some excellent choices are clove, turmeric, ginger, oregano, basil, and cinnamon.
2.  Use a high quality, food-based antioxidant.  New Chapter makes an excellent one called Supercritical Antioxidants.  This product is certified organic and very potent.
3.  Avoid megadoses of single-molecule antioxidants such as vitamin C or E.  Taking large doses of these will shorten your life!  If you would like to increase your vitamin C, do it by taking Triphala, which contains a berry that is the richest known natural source of vitamin C.  Get your vitamin E from whole grains, and vitamin A from orange and yellow vegetables.
4. If you are an athlete or are otherwise very physically active, double your food based antioxidant.
5. Avoid vegetable oils, with the exception of olive oil.
6.  Practice some form of stress reduction.
7. Use a daily food-based multivitamin such as the Every Man's and  Every Woman's offered by New Chapter. 

• Daily green-berry smoothie.  Example:  handful of chard, handful of spinach, some basil, handful of raspberries, handful of blueberries, ¼ tsp cinnamon, ½ of a lemon, 1 orange.  Add about a cup of water and blend.  This tastes great and is full of antioxidants!

• Daily New Chapter Supercritical Antioxidants.
• Daily Triphala, ½ tsp 1-2 times per day or 500mg 2 times per day.
• Daily smoothie with Undenatured Whey Protein.

• Improved memory is desired
• Your memory isn’t what it used to be
• If you are regularly exposed to pollutants such as cigarette smoke
• If you suspect that you have had exposure to heavy metals such as aluminum or mercury
• If dementia and/or Alzheimer’s run in your family.

Recent research shows that curcumin, a component of turmeric, may benefit people who suffer from scleroderma.  Scleroderma is a disorder where the body produces excessive amounts of connective tissue called collagen.  This fibrous tissue builds up in the skin and other organs and can disrupt their function.  Researchers in South Carolina found that curcumin causes cell death in scleroderma lung fibroblasts--the cells that produce too much collagen in the lungs, but not in normal fibroblasts.  This means that the herb interferes with the "bad" fibroblasts, but not the normal ones.

The researchers concluded "curcumin may have therapeutic value in treating scleroderma".  This is especially appealing as a treatment modality because curcumin is extremely non-toxic and is beneficial for a host of other disorders including many cancers, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

Many people with scleroderma also suffer from Raynaud's syndrome, and can greatly benefit from taking a high quality omega-3 supplement--read more on Raynaud's and omega-3's here. 

Read the study here.   Read more from Craig Roberts, DC, here.