Transcript from Webinar:

Howdy there. This is Dr. John, back with you again. I’m excited to be here. I’ve got quite a few things that I am interested in talking with you about the some of the time. Most of the time, up until this point, I have gone a little bit deeper into a few topics, spent 45 minutes to an hour, and I will continue to do that going forward. However, I’ll interspersed with the few sessions where I come in and talk about a bunch of things that are on my mind or research that I’ve seen recently.  I won’t go into to as much depth that I won’t do a PowerPoint, I’ll just talk about it.

This is one of those days. The good news about that is there has got to be something you’re going to be interested in because I’m going to hit so many different things. The bad news is I’m not going to go into as much depth. Now, before I go ahead and get started, Kathryn is going to come on and give you her health tips for this week.

01:00

Kathryn: Hello and happy summer solstice to everyone, the longest day of the year. Exciting. To celebrate summer, I wanted to talk about the herb, chrysanthemum. It’s a great summer herb to be able to enjoy in many different ways, especially in the summer.  I am going talk about the benefits of chrysanthemum. One of the biggest ones is that it’s a cooling herb, and that’s why it’s great for the summer.  It helps to cool down the body, especially if you’ve been in the sun too much for dealing with a sunburn. If you’re feeling like you’re having some heat stroke, take some chrysanthemum, and it will help you to cool things down. Other things it will do is it helps to relieve congestion. It does this by strengthening the lungs. So anyone who tends to be more prone to lung problems this is a great herb of helping with the lungs. Has some antihistamine properties, so great for allergies as well. This herb is specifically what is helps specifically with the heart which is also the heart is the main meridian in the summer is the one that’s abundant and big and so with the heart chrysanthemum helps to improve the blood flow, it reduces blood pressure and it also helps to treat blocked arteries and veins. Another thing that chrysanthemum does is it helps to improve liver function. It also boosts immune function. And so as it has antiviral and antibacterial properties. So just great all in all.

But one of the biggest benefits of chrysanthemum was best known in Chinese medicine is that of potentially helping the eyes. Chrysanthemum can help to improve eyesight in general. It also helps to reduce eyestrain, helps calm red eyes is great for when you’ve been on the computer for a long time. You can drink this when your vision becomes blurry or your eyes are tired and dry. You can also just soak some either a towel in Chrysanthemum tea or some cotton balls or something and put them topically on of your eyes to help to clean and relax them. You can also use chrysanthemum tea to help to calm down sunburns. If you have been out in the sun too much and you’re red, this helps to calm the skin. So many great things for chrysanthemum. Good to have in your medicine cabinet and just to sip on throughout the summer.

03:36

Dr Nieters: Thank you, Kathryn. Yeah. When I was in school, I remember during the winter, all of the doctors. So they had these double walled glass cups so you could see what was in it. And they would put herbs and then just pour hot water over it all day. And during the winter they would have the herbs. Dan Shen, or Salvia, which is kind of a magic blood clot destroyer and blood flow stimulator. And they would walk around all day sipping Dan Shen. And in the summer, they would walk around with chrysanthemum and there’s white and yellow and they chrysanthemum. They have slightly different uses, but it is the first go to for any form of eye problem as a topical. So it’s fabulous.

So let’s go ahead.

04:33 Pre-cancerous signs on the skin and things to watch for:

I’m going to talk about a few things and here we go. I want to talk a little bit about a study that came out recently last week actually looking at pre-cancerous signs on the skin and things to watch for. I just want to mention briefly, there are many types of skin cancers. Almost always they fall into one of three types. Melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma. There are others. I think I caught one two years ago that was the lymphoma caused skin problem, but they’re pretty rare. And so the one that we tend to think about the most that’s really gotten the most press is melanoma. And at one time, that was pretty much seen as a death sentence

05:25

In fact, I had a patient from 25 years ago who I saw every week for almost 15 years. And I said to her, you know, you probably don’t need to see me anymore. She said, “Everybody else in my melanoma group is dead and I’m going to come forever.” And so it had become really a little ritual for her, a little superstition. But that was the way people felt about melanoma, had a very high death rate. That is no longer the case. The death rate from melanoma has dropped considerably. In fact, if melanoma is caught while it’s still localized, just a local lesion, the five-year relative survival rate is 99%. That’s pretty darn good. Even if it’s spread regionally, it’s 68%. If it’s spread, you know, distantly to the brain, etc., then it drops down to 30%. And so the total of all of these stages combined is 93%. So once again, that’s a pretty high survival rate.

06:33

But clearly from those numbers, we see that the entire key to this is to find it early. Early recognition, early diagnosis of this. And melanomas are cancers that are taken out almost immediately. It’s primarily a disease that shows up in older people. One study I looked at of 83,000 plus cases, only 2000 of those were in people under 30 years old. Just a handful of children. Couple 250 adolescents, Couple thousand young adults. The rest were all 30 and older. Now melanoma can run in families. There is a genetic risk factor that can be passed. So, if you have a relative who had or has melanoma, be sure you get checked out even more often than other people. It’s been very clearly shown that a good body check, having someone look you over. In fact, the highest prevention was in people that checked themselves at least once a year and had a spouse who checked them and they did it in front of a mirror. So those are like the big high points. So you want to get checked regularly. Again, if you have someone you’re close to have them check you over. When I’m looking at new patients, one of the things that I will do almost always is look at the bottoms of their feet. That’s actually a moderately common site for melanomas. Behind the knees is also relatively common. So I’ll have people take their shoes off before I needle them and while I’m doing my exam. And so I will check the bottoms of their feet and their toes, etc..

Melanoma accounts for a little less than 2% of global cancer cases. It’s the fifth most common cancer in the United States. And while the number of cases has gone up a lot since 1975, about 300%, the mortality has fallen almost 30% over the last decade. So that shows you the difference in early diagnosis and the more current treatments, which are pretty good. It’s from exposure to light to sunlight to heat. I mean, not heat lamps, but tanning lamps, etc.. And the UV-B light is considered quite a bit more toxic than the UVA light, but there’s a lot more of the UVA light. And UVA will actually penetrate glass and windows where the UVB has very little penetrating power. So anyway, just get checked out pretty frequently.

09:31

Now, next one is basal cell carcinoma, and that’s the most common type of skin cancer. This almost, almost always develops in people with fair skin, although people of color can also get this cancer. It looks like the melanoma has a lot of different ways it can look, but frequently it’s just a little black spot. So if you suddenly have a mole pop up where you didn’t have one before, or if the mole changes color or gets larger or starts oozing, etc., then go get checked immediately. The basal cells look like a kind of a flesh colored round growth. Sometimes it looks like a little pearl, a little bump, or a little pinkish patch of skin. And this is usually from a lot of sun exposure. Often it affects the ears, the neck areas that have been exposed to a lot of sun. And again, these are very, very rarely fatal and pretty much never fatal if they’re caught early. So, again, check it out. You can now get skin mapping at some dermatology clinics where they do a scan of your body, a visual picture, and then they compare it. They do overlays and they have computer systems that can now do the overlays to see if things have changed from one year to the next, if that’s available to you at your dermatologist. I highly recommend it. It’s inexpensive and very effective.

11:03

Then the third type of carcinoma is squamous cell. Again, pretty much the same etiology as the basal cell carcinoma. Light skin. People are more likely, although people of color can develop squamous cell. Here is usually a red and firm bump, maybe a scaly patch or a sore that heals and then really opens. And that’s really common. Some of it, they’ll have a little sore. Maybe they’ll pick at it, it goes away and then it comes back and then it goes. They’ll pick at it. It goes away and it comes back. So it’s like this non-healing sore and that’s often a squamous cell. And again, this one is really it’s important to get early.  Early diagnosis and treatment for that.

Now, the study that came out that I was mentioning is a four-year risk of developing cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. So that’s squamous cell carcinoma of the skin. They were looking at actinic keratosis. Now, some of you will know very well what that means. I myself go into the dermatologist and they use liquid nitrogen, and they’ll burn these little, little hard spots, little bumps off of my skin. Looks just like old dead skin, but that’s called actinic keratosis. Some people will go in and they’ll get their face covered with a cream like floral uracil, and that again burns off the top layer of skin and takes the actinic keratosis with it. Well, what they found in this study in patients who had been treated fairly aggressively for actinic keratosis, about 3.7% went on to develop squamous cell carcinoma. So that’s a pretty big number, 3.7%. So if you go in and get keratosis burned off or if you do flurry yourself or one of those other things, it’s well worth getting checked out to make sure you don’t develop squamous cell carcinoma in the same location. All right. So that’s all I’m going to say.

And I’m bringing that up because today is a big day. As Kathryn said, it’s the longest day of the year where we are right now. It’s blazing hot. The sun is really hot. And it’s one of those days that you could easily develop some of these skin cancers. So, again, be very careful. Now, my rule of thumb is generally 10 minutes a day in the sun, and that’s actually very important. You know, when we think of it for vitamin D production. But being in the sun does so much more than that. It changes your cholesterol levels and affects your immune function. It affects your mood, certainly. So there are lots of other benefits. But, the point is, don’t overdo it. I’m very light skinned, so 10 to 15 minutes is really about all that’s appropriate for me.

14:12 COVID and Micro-clots:

Okay. Next thing I want to talk about is something that I’m seeing a great deal of. A tremendous number of patients coming into my clinic that have had are either diagnosed with recent COVID, long COVID or vaccine injuries. And the results are the same. Basically, I mentioned before I have a mother and her child. The 12-year-old child caught COVID and developed long COVID mom did not get COVID but was vaccinated. They have identical symptoms. The kids, we got cleaned up within about a month. Mom, we’ve been struggling a little bit longer, we’re still working on that. And there are many, many factors involved in long COVID. If you’re interested, check out Dr. Patterson at Stanford, who’s developed, it’s probably 12, different markers for inflammation and cytokines. So he’s created a long COVID index and it’s quite brilliant.  Then he’s created a treatment regime that is designed to get rid of the long COVID. Now, I only have one patient that’s going down there, and she’s been doing it for about three months and it hasn’t worked yet, but we’re still hopeful.

But the biggie that I treat successfully is micro clots tiny, tiny, tiny blood clots that are too small to be seen with normal diagnostic imaging. So it won’t show up on an ultrasound, won’t show up on an MRI generally because they’re so tiny. But we’re finding from pathologists all over the world and funeral home directors from all over the world that people are dying from and have, even if they die from something else, massive amount of clotting in their system. So what I have done since the beginning when I had patients fly in from New York, after New York was hit so hard and they developed long COVID is the first thing I look at, now of course, it’s Chinese medicine, so we’re doing pulses, we’re looking at their tongues or we’re looking at other issues. And then I order a lot of labs. So we’re really working to pin down exactly what the problem is in in in each case. Right. And it can be quite different. But the common denominator is micro clotting.  So I’ll have people come in with lung problems. They can barely walk up the stairs. I treated them for clotting. A month later, they’re fine. A week later, they’re fine. And so we see this across the board that that’s almost always one of the things that needs to be done. Now, there are some very good studies that have come out of New Zealand, and I don’t know why New Zealand specifically, but they seem to be doing a very, very good job of long term COVID treatment. So they’ve looked at many cases of long COVID excuse me, and people who were hospitalized with COVID and then released. And what they found was the same thing. I’m talking about a lot of micro clotting problems. And most of their patients were put on a triple blood thinning regimen, three different drugs to prevent or two drugs and a supplement, in some cases to get rid of those micro clots. One of my patients who developed COVID over a year ago just started seeing me and I gave him the studies and he actually contacted the doctors in New Zealand and got even more information from them than they published and then took it back to his doctor to get a blood thinning regimen started. And I’m sure he’s going to be great. Unfortunately, that’s not usually done in the U.S.. Someone’s in the hospital. They get to the point where they are deemed not to need hospitalization. They’re standing out on the streets, but their blood is still clotting. So with Chinese medicine, we also have, or at least I use a triple therapy for blood clotting. So I find that to be very important.

18:45 Thromboembolic Events

There was a study of hospitalized COVID patients that came out a couple of weeks ago by doctor Jeffrey I. Zwicker, MD , and they showed that patients who are hospitalized with COVID have been shown to have a high risk of thromboembolic events Post-discharge. So what that means is blood clots, thromboembolic are blood clot thrombus that’s lodged. And in this randomized study, they showed that in high risk patients who were hospitalized for COVID, the use of thromboprophylaxis (prevention of blood clots and a particular other drug) for 35 days after discharge improved their composite outcomes of symptoms of deep vein thrombosis, of superficial vein problems, and death. So that’s a pretty good list of things that were improved by going on this particular regimen. So you could find Doctor Wicker or Dr. Neal Majithia, were involved in this study. And so that’s pretty powerful stuff. Now, if they would just apply the same good sense to the patients that weren’t hospitalized like they need it also now.

20:18 Lab Test Recommendations

With my patients, there’s a series of tests that I recommend as you’d imagine we feel pulses, we look at the tongues, we can tell a tremendous amount from that and then the symptoms. But there’s a series of tests that I will run. So if you have had COVID and you don’t feel good or you think you’re going to be exposed. Some of the tests to run D-dimer, and that’s measuring clot breakdown products. So if you’re forming clots, some of them will break down. This is used by US doctors for deep vein thrombosis. It’s part of the diagnostic tree for deep vein thrombosis. But they aren’t using it for this. Now, in China, every patient that comes into a hospital with COVID is the one of the first things that it’s done is they’re given a d-dimer test first thing and then they’re quartile. If they’re in the bottom quartile, they’re generally sent at home with herbs and maybe drugs. If they’re the second quartile they are expected to be need stronger treatment, maybe hospitalization in the third level of d-dimer they know they’re going to need hospitalization and the highest level of d-dimer those people are much more likely to die. And so they use this test in every patient, and I think it should be used on every patient here also. It’s not a very expensive test. It’s a D-dimer.

21:54

Another test that goes along with that very well is fibrinogen. And fibrinogen is the factor that it will break down and form clots. So you get the fibrinogen, which is on the formation side and the D-dimer, which is on the destruction side. And you get a pretty good picture there. The other thing I would recommend is a high sensitivity, sometimes called cardiac, hs-CRP. Which is the C-reactive protein, which is a chemical given off if there is inflammation in the heart and or the arteries. So a high sensitivity CRP is very important. Another test that. I recommend, and this is a couple dollars more, 80 bucks I think is the cheapest I’ve seen it. Although if you have 23 and me and or ancestry or one of those genetic tests, you can run it through a company called StrataGene and they will check you out for these folates. They’re actually folate Snips or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) that are defective. One of those is C677T. So that’s the more common one, A1298C is another one, about 30 to 40% of the population as positive for C677T and about 15% of the population is positive for the A1298C.

23:38 Genetic SNPs

And so if you happen to have both and I’ve seen a lot of patients that have both because when I look at their symptoms, that tells me they probably have both. It’s a lot more common than one might think. And if they have all of those factors, they may be producing 10 to 20% of the active folate that they need.  Folate is needed for many dozens of functions in the body. It’s a very, very important vitamin, actually. Another extremely important gene we’re talking about is the MTRR gene which produces the enzyme methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, an essential part of the protein assembly line that we’re talking about here, and that’s what we’re looking at with these two genes.  These are extremely important. You’re now seeing most fertility centers running these routinely on their patients because they’re involved in a lot of processes. So they started giving moms, pregnant moms folate many years ago to prevent spina bifida where the spine doesn’t develop properly. Well, if someone has these MTHFR SNPs, then even if they’re given folate, it won’t help. In fact, it can make it worse. There’s not enough high-quality folate to prevent the spina bifida.  Then there are other studies showing that in women, given folic acid, straight folic acid, which is an artificial form of folate and that have these genetic SNPs, they have much higher autism rate, so their children have much higher autism rates. And the thought is that this builds up in the system. It doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, but it causes other problems. So anyway, anybody that’s pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant should get those checked.

And some of the and I will get patients that come in. And after taking their history, I will simply assume that they have this problem because there’s a series of signs and symptoms that show up here with low folate. Depression is classic. When you see a family that has had depression, depression, depression, particularly if there were some heart attacks and blood clotting disorders in there. The first thing I’m going to do is suspect depression. Psychiatrists now have a drug which, by the way, is just high quality methyltetrahydrofolate, if given with SSRIs, reduces depression by about 30 to 35%. Now, I suspect the SSRIs aren’t even helping in that case because the MTHF will reduce depression by about that much. The other place where it really plays a role is on the we don’t hear much about it anymore. You know, things come in into the news and then they get out of the news cycle and they disappear. But there are still a significant number of women who have strokes and or blood clotting disorders when they go on birth control pills. And most of those women, or at least many of them, have this folate problem and the pill exacerbates it.

27:07

But it’s been shown since the fifties that in people with folate deficiencies and typically with other B vitamin deficiency, it’s also there’s the higher rate of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Hoffer In the fifties was reducing the incidence of schizoaffective attacks by about 50% just by giving B vitamins. So, of course, that didn’t go over very well because there’s no money in giving people B vitamins. So basically that whole line of inquiry went down the tubes, But it’s still very effective.

27:53

Question: What are the polymorphisms again?

There are many, actually, with folate, there are five common ones, but the two most common are C677T and A1298C. Those are the two most common.

Thank you.

28:20

So anyway, anxiety, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc.. And the New Zealand study that I mentioned, the major study, the last paragraph of the paper, it was fascinating. They went through all of these great findings and how they were treating cold alert and long COVID. And the last paragraph said and we found that patients with the C677T polymorphism were dramatically more likely to have long COVID.

So I thought that was pretty interesting. So again, they’re more prone to blood clotting, just as in general. And so when you add on top of that the blood clotting from COVID, then you get this double whammy. So I would get that tested. And then while you’re at it, get a CBC, complete blood count. And one of the key factors I look for there are platelets. Doctors don’t pay a lot of attention to platelets unless they’re low. But in the normal range of platelets, which is usually in most labs, up to 450, at 400, there is four times the mortality. 400. 400, right. It’s huge, huge, huge. Four times 400% times the mortality and still being in the correct range. So definitely want to run that that CBC, which is like five bucks for the whole thing. It’s really cheap. I also would do a Chem 14 (CMP-14), which is less than $15. There are a lot of things I’d look for there, but a lot of it’s in the gallbladder and liver issues. I want to see liver enzymes and heart enzymes, etc., because that’s a secondary thing, but it can be important.

30:09

Now what do you do about it? You can go to your doctor. You can request a triple blood thinner treatment. Good luck. You know, I have not had great success with my patients, so we use Chinese formulas plus other supplements. So, number one are Chinese herbs, a fellow named Yan De-Xin wrote a brilliant book called Aging and Blood Stasis in his book he posited and proved that the primary cause of aging and death is blood that stasis. The blood being too thick, too high viscosity and not getting where it needs to go. So in diabetes, the blood gets very sticky. It can’t get through the small blood vessels in the kidneys, in the peripheral vascular system and in the eyes. So you get blindness, kidney disease and or kidney failure and neuropathy. So anyway, it’s a brilliant book. So using some of his formulas, but then using other formulas from the Chinese pharmacopoeia.  This is one of the things that I guess if I wanted to get frustrated about anything, it’s this: I’ll talk to doctors. I kind of expect it. But even the lay public, right. You’ve got to know. You got to do that. Chinese medical herbology is dramatically it ain’t even close, it’s dramatically better studied, better researched than Western drug treatments. The same people doing the research on the drugs are doing the research on the herbs, and they’re doing a lot more of it and they’re doing it a lot more extensively.

32:09

So I have here a paper on a formula that we use a lot of. It’s called Shen Tong Zhu Yu Decoction Inhibits Inflammatory Response. And then there are several more lines after that and it’s about 20 pages and it goes through this specific. It inhibits the expression of BCL-2, CDK4, cyclin B1 (CCNB1), MAPK & P-p38, and CTGF. This is not folk medicine. They’ve taken this apart. They’ve studied the cytokine levels. Now, this is on a formula that’s hundreds of years old, and they knew it worked. But over the last 50 years have been doing this incredibly in-depth research to see precisely why these things work. They’re much safer. Now, they’re not as strong frequently.  Like when someone comes in with a blood clot into a hospital. You want to hook them up with heparin? Heparin works almost instantly to break down blood clots. But if you’re going to send something home, this is a great formula to send home. And again, it goes through the entire inflammatory process. It has 53 research findings here. And this is not unusual. These are available on every Chinese formula because the Chinese are really clear. This is a big cash cow for them. They don’t want to have to buy Western medications if they have something else that works as well or better. Plus, they can sell these herbs to us. The price keeps going up and it’s going to go up a lot more pretty quickly with all the supply chain issues. So this is a huge thing.

33:56

Something you’ve got to understand that we’ve been brainwashed. The brainwashing started with Bernays, Edward Bernays, who was Sigmund Freud’s nephew. At some point I’ll do a whole show on him. He was an incredible piece of work. But he called himself the father of Spin. He wrote a book called Propaganda, where he laid down the entire propaganda machine. He set up the Rockefeller control of medicine. So when the trusts were busted in the early 1900s by Teddy Roosevelt, they broke up the steel trusts and the railroad trusts and all these big trusts. All these wealthy people were angry and they really wanted to get back at the government and Bernays said, You don’t have to do that. Let’s put all of your money into an industry that the government will never break up and will give you complete control of this and market it, advertise it. So everybody thinks it’s the only form of medicine that works, and that’s called the Rockefeller model. And Bernays set it up. He’s the guy who did the oh, gosh, talk torches for victory, I think. And so he got women to smoke on the Macy’s Day Parade floats, which women up until then did not smoke in public. It was not considered appropriate. And he said, hey, this is this is freedom for you. You start smoking out there. So we got them to smoke. He’s the one who got the surgeon general, to support smoking and to even advertise which types of cigarettes he thought were about. So this guy was brilliant, but it was through this work done that most of this country thinks that drugs are the way to treat illness.

They aren’t in almost all cases. Unless, sometimes they’re magic. If you have a raging bacterial infection. Antibiotics can change your life. You have a horrible autoimmune condition hit you, man there’s nothing like steroids. God bless them. They are so amazing. But most medications people are put on and never taken off. That tells you it’s a Band-Aid. It doesn’t fix, it doesn’t heal. You’re on blood pressure medication. Well, it doesn’t fix your high blood pressure. It suppresses your blood pressure where herbs are more likely to actually fix the problem and with a much higher safety Index. So when you think about these things like supplements and food, you think, “Well, they’re not controlled by the FDA,” thank God. Right. Because the drugs are. And the FDA is bought and sold. The FDA is sponsored and funded by the pharmaceutical companies. So you want to talk about a case of the fox watching the henhouse? There is no better case than the FDA. That’s what they do. Right? So when you start thinking about remedies, really think long and hard about supplements, which are basically food and concentrated forms and herbs, which essentially are food in concentrated forms.

Now, the sophistication of this, for example, I mentioned that formula, Shen Tong Zhu Yu San, which is a systemic formula for blood status. We use it for spinal stenosis. It lowers the inflammation. We’ll use it for pain in anywhere in the body that comes from a formula called Xue Fu Zhu Yu San, which means “to clear stasis in the margin of blood”, which means the chest. So it has herbs that get Restasis, but specifically in the chest, the heart and the lungs. Then you change a couple of words in the formula that are called guiding herbs that make the activity stronger in one part of the body or another. And you get Ge Xia Zhu Yu San, which means the same basic formula to treat below the diaphragm. So the liver, the kidneys, this middle part of the body, and then brilliantly you change a couple more herbs and you treat what’s called the lower xiao. So this is the urinary area, the pelvic floor, the uterus, the ovaries, etc. It’s the same basic idea for all of them. But you just change one or two of the guiding herbs. Now, at this point, each of those formula has been dissected ad nauseum. To find out specifically what the biochemistry is that does this. And, you know, when you do the biochemistry, it makes perfect sense.

38:53

So do Chinese herbs. Find someone in your area that can do that for you. And then I recommend taking Nattokinase, which I’ve talked about before, so I won’t talk a lot, but it’s an amazing blood mover. Serrapeptase, which breaks down those nasty fibrin deposits and just explodes blood clots. Fish oil, which, you know, if you go in for surgery, your doctor will tell you to stay off fish oil because it thins the blood. Likewise, the vitamin E, they’ll say stay off of.  Gingko. Good old Gingko are very effective for blood stasis. Grape seed extract, not grapefruit seed that has other really powerful uses, but grape seed extract I often combine with Nattokinase and Serrapeptase for people that are flying, and that combination has been shown to reduce blood clots after flying by about 80%. Then there are dozens of other choices beyond that; Pterostilbene, which is from berries. But if you had just wanted to keep it at a minimum Nattokinase. Serrapeptase and fish oil would be where I would go first. Let’s see if I have any more on this.

40:12 Olive Oil Intake and Mortality

You know, that’s good for that. A couple of other little quickies. I wanted to talk today. I wanted to reinforce a couple of food ideas that most of you are already on board with. But there are some new specific articles that have come out based on research studies. And here’s one from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. And it sounds important and it’s titled Obesity, Metabolic Syndrome and Prediabetes. That’s the larger title. And then it’s all olive oil intake and total and cause specific mortality. Now, we’ve all been told that olive oil is good for us. It’s monounsaturated it has all these great qualities. But here they look at it, looked at the statistics from these studies. And this is a 2020 study that was published, as I mentioned, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. And it was a big study. They looked at 61,181 women, 31,797 men. So that’s about 93,000 people. That’s a good, healthy study. And people who consume seven grams or more seven grams is half a tablespoon of oil versus people who didn’t consume any after 24 years of follow up. So again, these are the studies you want to look for, 100,000 people, 24 years of follow up.

The olive oil group had 14% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and an 18% lower risk of coronary specific heart disease. And if people had the hypertension going in, it was even more impressive than that because it was helping to burn the blood, which is good for the hypertension. And so. The hazard ratio of 0.81. So again, that’s about a 19% reduction. And if the olive oil replaced bad fats, plant based oils, for example, dairy fat, there was an added 13 to 19% of mortality reduction. So you take out all the vegetable oils, the bad dairy fats. There are some good ones, but take out the bad dairy fats and you’re getting about a 40%, 35 to 40% risk reduction. So it reduces inflammation. It lowers blood pressure. It improves the endothelial function so that the lining of the blood vessels that are so critical, and it improves insulin sensitivity. So it’s going to control diabetes and it raises good cholesterol. Now, the key, of course, as with everything still called natural, is quality. You want to get really, really good extra virgin olive oil. And there are several organizations that will publish on an annual basis reviews on olive oils. And sometimes it’s surprising it’s not necessarily the most expensive that come out on top. Sometimes it’s less expensive brands that check out really, really well. Now, olive oil. I mean, I have a brother who every time he comes over will open my cabinet, pull out the olive oil and take a big jug. A lot of people will take olive oil straight. If you do it on an empty stomach in the morning. It has particularly, particularly good qualities for weight loss. For blood sugar controls. Lots and lots of good things. Because, again, it’s healthy and good quality monosaturated fat that’s loaded with antioxidants, strong anti-inflammatory action. It’s been shown to reduce stroke risk pretty considerably. You won’t gain weight or obesity even though it’s a fat. It does reduce type two diabetes risk. It’s helpful for rheumatoid arthritis and joint pain. So, again, just get the best quality you can get and have fun.

44:38 Avocado Benefits

Okay. Next thing I’m going to talk about is our old friend, the avocado, which, like so many foods, have gone through this. What do you call the pendulum? You know, it’s the best food on the market. “Oh, my God. It’s evil, don’t eat it!” back and forth. Well, now it’s swung back to. “Oh, my God, this is a great food!” right? We’re back to that. Here’s a study that was done recently or reported recently and again from the Nurses Health Study and the health professionals follow up study, a very large study, 24 years worth again. And the individuals who ate avocado frequently had a 16% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a whopping 21% lower risk of coronary heart disease. So, again, we’re seeing protective effects against cardiovascular disease, against stroke. It’s good for weight loss, but it’s just pretty amazing the great things that does. In fact, after I I’m lazy when it comes to food. I admit it. I admit it. And so the problem that I have with avocados is I’ll buy them. And then I always missed the ideal date, you know, when they’re really ready, either they’re too hard or they’ve spoiled. So I’ve actually now I went to Costco and bought 12 little cups of guacamole.

Right now, fresh is better, but I at least do a couple of that guacamole everyday, which I love. It’s just fabulous. And again, I’m not I’m not saying go to Costco. I’m just saying that’s where I went because it was inexpensive and boy, I love, but I got a good healthy cracker. So I’m now getting away from my potato chips and onto really healthy crackers and avocado. So anyway, I want to take advantage of that 21% reduced risk. And this was actually even a little more robust than the last study here. It was 110,000 people that they watched. And yeah, so very, very, very effective. And it seems as though the more you eat, the better it is. There didn’t seem to be an upper limit and here it was greater than two servings a week. So that’s not much greater than two servings a week had a 16% lower risk of cardiovascular disease. So there’s nothing you know, you go out and look at cholesterol studies. Statins don’t even come anywhere near that, not even close. And of course, statins have many of them have very negative side effects. I’m not I’m not speaking for or against statins. I’m speaking for avocado. It’s like if you can lower your risk by much more than you would lower with the statins and you have something that’s good to eat and good for you, you know, I’d say jump on it. This is this is the opportunity.

48:06 Cholesterol Benefits

Speaking of cholesterol, I do want to mention one thing. I got a couple more minutes here. Another study looked at 68,000 adults over 60 years of age, and that’s an important number here over 60 years of age. And it was published in the British Medical Journal, and they found that people over 60. Lived longer, were healthier, had a better chance of dealing with the disease. If their cholesterol was higher, even their so-called bad cholesterol, if LDL, which they consider bad, was elevated, you had a better chance of leaving the hospital alive.  If you went in with some illness or needed surgery. So don’t freak out about cholesterol. Now, when I see a 30-year-old guy come in and he’s got so-called high cholesterol, I’m concerned about that more because the cholesterol is a sign. It’s a symptom that there’s something bad happening in the body, more so than the cholesterol itself. I mean, and the cholesterol can be a problem once it is oxidized. That’s the problem. And there are many natural supplements that you can take to help keep the cholesterol from oxidizing.  We carry several things. I have a formula called Cholisma.

I had a patient come in. One of my favorites. Her husband’s an M.D. and so I had helped her get off her anxiety medications. Helped her get off her depression medications over the years. Just doing great. Just bright woman doing fabulously.

One day she comes in and seen her in months and she just was practically hysterical running into my office. You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to help me. Okay. What’s going on? My cholesterol is 350, and my doctor and my husband are both totally freaked out. I said, okay, well, let’s look at that. So we put her on a couple of things. Cholisma was one of them, and we got her total cholesterol from 350 to 220 and six weeks. Now, in a woman her age, menopausal, “…I don’t really want it less than 220, I said, But we’ll keep it here. And that keeps your husband and your doctor happy.” And she’s been fine ever since. So that was the herbal formula. Cholisma for cholesterol itself.

Aged black garlic, you can do it yourself or you can buy it, will help keep the soft plaque from forming in the arteries. The new stuff that goes in there and it’s soft and it builds up. 

Vitamin K2 actually works on GLA matrix proteins to pull the calcium out of your soft tissues and then through a couple of processes stimulates osteocalcin to put calcium into your bones and your teeth. I mean, what more perfect vitamin supplement is there for someone that’s over 40? You take the calcium out of your arteries, you take the calcium out of your heart, and you put them into your bones and teeth.

51:27 Vitamin D and Calcium

Now, very important to remember that women who are menopausal, take Vitamin D and calcium supplements have over a 30% increased cardiovascular risk. The vitamin D stimulates the calcium, moves the calcium, activates the calcium, but it doesn’t direct it. Vitamin K2 is the director. It says you don’t go in the arteries. You go in the teeth. Yeah. You don’t go into the soft tissues. You go into the bones. So it’s the vitamin K that guides everything. So if you think or know that you have a plaque problem or a cholesterol problem, vitamin K2 and the Aged Black Garlic is probably the way for you to go. We carry a supplement called Lipotrol, which is very, very effective at dealing with cholesterol.

52:36

The question is. Anything about avocado oil?

Yeah, Avocado oil is one of those oils that’s tricky. One of the reasons that avocado oil is great because it has a high smoke point. It has a good oil blend. But many people think it oxidizes faster or easier than olive oil. And you get some disagreement there. It’s a fabulous oil, but I would get it either in a very dark glass container or often it’ll come in a metal container and keep it in your refrigerator. And if you do that, it should be great. Maybe better than all that olive oil even. But I don’t know, because there have been dozens and dozens of studies, hundreds on olive oil and only a handful on avocado oil. So I say either one should be fine, but again, be very, very careful with any plant based oil. You want to keep them dark and refrigerated.

Yeah. Okay. Well, hey, it’s 3:55 on my clock. I don’t have time to get another topic in before four, so I’m going to shelve a couple of these till later. I’ve got a few that I think you’re going to love. I’m going to do one on dementia prevention. I hope you all love that. And it’s really there’s a lot more information on prevention and even reversal than most people are aware of. I’m going to look at some specific tests in detail that you might want to think about, and I’m going to take another run at water and fluoridation. There were just two studies published since I spoke last, which was only a few weeks ago, about dramatic new problems they’re finding with tap water. And so there’s a whole new group of things that we need to be careful of. All right. So I’m going to talk about those things over the next few weeks. Please send us your questions. I love your questions. So until next time. Be happy, be healthy, and I’ll see you soon. Bye. Bye.

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REFERNCES:

Lifesaving Vitamin Slashes Heart Disease Risk by 57%: https://refp.cohlife.org/_vitamin_k/Mercola%20-%20Vitamin%20K%20Lifesaving%20Vitamin%20Slashes%20Heart%20Disease%20Risk%20by%2057%25.r.pdf

What is the MTHFR Gene?: https://www.healthline.com/health/mthfr-gene#_noHeaderPrefixedContent

Association between low density lipoprotein and all cause and cause specific mortality in Denmark: prospective cohort study: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4266/rr-0

Avocado Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in US Adults: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.121.024014

11 Proven Benefits of Olive Oil: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/11-proven-benefits-of-olive-oil

Consumption of Olive Oil and Risk of Total and Cause-Specific Mortality Among U.S. Adults: https://www.jacc.org/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jacc.2021.10.041

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Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM, is an acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, functional medicine, writer, teacher, and leader in the community. In this episode, John talks about his experience with the importance of finding your vision and purpose in life, in order to create the right goals for you.

Disclaimer: Dr. John Nieters received his Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture degree from Five Branches. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Nieters is a licensed acupuncturist in California. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, and prescription or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Nieters and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. TheBalancingPoint.net, Alameda Acupuncture, and Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM are not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this video or site.