Do you ever wonder if all the anti-aging resveratrol mania is out of hand? Well, it is. Here are some red flags to watch out for.

If you have about 10 minutes right now, watch this video to prep yourself for my comments on this topic. It is a phenomenal video about resveratrol research. Just don’t believe any of it.

RESVERATROL! ABC News!

Resveratrol is a Great Antioxidant

Just to keep the record straight, I am all for the benefits of plant natural products for human health. My professional background has been in plant natural products chemistry for more than 35 years, so I am automatically biased in favor of them. However, the hysteria over different substances makes my whole field look bad.

The Problem with Reductionist Thinking

The video above, and all the commentary about resveratrol for that matter, comes from looking at small, single variable explanations for scientific results. This is called reductionist thinking. The long-running joke about reductionist scientists is that they (we!) study smaller and smaller details until we finally know everything about nothing. The whole field of molecular genetics is built around reductionist thinking. That is the nature of the beast.

Goals of Resveratrol Research

If you watched the video you may have noticed that resveratrol was repeatedly referred to as a drug. This is great news in some ways. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that this non-patentable natural product will not be the final product of this research.

What we have here is a high-powered Harvard research lab with financial backing by a high-powered vulture capitalist, er, venture capitalist. The primary goal of this team is to develop something that will be profitable, pay the investment back, and make a lot more money to boot.

These are the very same goals of pharmaceutical drug research. Notice that human health is just a side issue here. The purpose of drug research is to make money, not to make people healthier. Ditto for resveratrol research.

Leap of Faith

When I was doing research with brain cancer, one of my colleagues once said, “Applying results from studies of laboratory animals to humans is like taking a leap of faith the size of the Grand Canyon.” Virtually all of the research on resveratrol that has generated so much excitement is based on lab animals and yeast. Equivalent studies on humans would take a lifetime. Let’s get real real!

By the way, humans have about 30,000 or so genes. The impact of one substance on one gene does not possibly explain how anything works in a whole person.

A complete critique of resveratrol mania could occupy a whole book. I hope my brief comments at least get you started thinking a little more clearly on this issue. It will serve you well for judging all kinds of wild science in the headlines.

My Recommendations

I see nothing wrong with taking resveratrol supplements. Indeed, I encourage it. I encourage you to take antioxidant supplements in general, even including red wine itself. However, if the issue that you want to address is anti-aging or any other health-related concern, I suggest that you find out what the whole-person scientific research says about getting healthy, staying healthy, and living a full and long life.

Sorry to say that I don’t have any recommendations that I can make any money on. Well, I could make some fake recommendations for the purpose of selling you my book, if I had one, or of selling you some supplements. However, I think it is much more important to tell you something that will truly benefit your health. It is this:

Get and read the following two books (cheap used copies at Amazon, I am sure):

“Healthy at 100″ by John Robbins

“The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell

Better yet, if you are looking for instant information on these books, you can visit the following two websites:

Healthy at 100

T. Colin Campbell Foundation

All the best in natural health,
Dr. D

Cellulite is, for no apparent reason, much more common in men than in women. Good overview information has been published at Cellulite on Wikipedia, although the treatments described are poorly supported according to the weak references cited there.

I’ve decided to launch an information page on cellulite so women can find out where to find good information and which, if any, of the highly touted cellulite remedies have any scientific support.

It turns out that European scientists are much more serious about cellulite research than are American  scientists. I’ve found a small set of good research articles so  far.

The example that I cite at Cellulite Remedies – Any Real Science? is one study that offers hope. I recommend that you take a quick look at what I wrote in that post. Much more will follow there within the next couple of weeks or so. I will notify you here about the science-based approaches to cellulite remedies that I find, as well as about the scams that I uncover, too (this won’t be difficult).

All the best in natural health,

Dr. D

Nothing is as good for communication as an in-person presentation with Q&A. Nevertheless, my recorded radio show is a good second choice.

The latest installment of my online show came at the behest of several ladies who could not attend my presentation on April 18. Even though the actual presentation was a full hour and was followed by a spirited set of questions afterward, the show here will give you an overview of the basic topic material:

This is my third online broadcast. All of them are listed and linked on the Online Radio Shows page linked at the toolbar above. Links to all new shows will be appearing there as I record them.

All the best in natural health,

Dr. D

The greatest fears that women have expressed to me revolves around osteoporosis and cancer. The greatest annoyance, for lack of a better word, is the hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, and many other outward symptoms that ruin their daily lives. Let me repeat: None of this is normal!

The Medicalization of Menopause and Its Solution

Menopause is not a disorder and should never have been thought of as such. Nevertheless, it has been medicalized to the point where getting relief is a roll of the dice. In reality, getting back to normal is the key. Diet can help. Exercise can help. Stress management can help. Nutritional and herbal supplements can help. Weight management can help. Direct hormone balancing can help. All of these have important roles, and all must be incorporated into a lifestyle that leads to normal health.

This is a huge topic that has yielded thousands of research studies and tens of thousands of books – at the moment the list includes 32,187 books on Amazon alone. Jeez!

Rest assured that most  women worldwide do, indeed,  have normal transitions to menopause and live through normal menopause for the rest of their lives. And the bugaboos of bone loss and cancers of reproductive organs are far, far less common than they are in our society. There is plenty of great information on what you can do to achieve this kind of health. I will be guiding you to the best of that information here. You can start, if you haven’t already, by getting my report, “Brief Guide to Menopause Hormone Balance,” when you subscribe to Natural Health News.

Get a quick peak of  the some of the most important topics by taking a look at the outline that I handed out in my presentation, at this link: Menopause Remedies Presentation Outline. This is a good starting point. It takes a continuing effort for becoming informed about and taking the right action on how to get and stay healthy and feel better. This is more than a hobby. It is your life.

All the best,

Dr. D

Gut Bacteria and Estrogen Dominance

A common scenario occurs when you use prescription drugs, especially antibiotics and antacids, and/or have a poor diet. The initial effect is the destruction of your friendly gut bacteria, whose many roles include aiding digestion, strengthening the immune system, and enhancing the excretion of steroid hormones.

Hormone excretion becomes important when, for example, estrogen has done its work as a chemical messenger and is ready to be deactivated. How is that related to digestion? An indirect indication for this link appeared in a recently released study at the Imperial College of London. This study confirmed that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is likely caused by a gut bacterial imbalance. The importance of this result is that it points to the role of your friendly bacteria in liver health.

Now think about the role of the liver in deactivating hormones. The liver is the main detoxifying organ, and one of its roles is to detoxify hormones so they can be excreted from your body. Now we know that your liver depends on a healthy population of friendly gut bacteria. It can do a better job in detoxifying and excreting hormones when the gut bacteria are healthy. If your liver isn’t functioning properly because your gut bacteria are damaged, unexcreted estrogen can then circulate back into your bloodstream and promote estrogen dominance.

Estrogen dominance is now known as the cause of many health problems for women as well as for men. It is, therefore, an important hormone for keeping in balance with other steroid hormones.

Probiotics and Hormone Balance

Probiotics are dietary bacteria that promote the health of your friendly gut bacteria. The significance of probiotics as one of nature’s menopause remedies is that this type of dietary supplement helps in maintaining hormone balance by enhancing liver health. The role of probiotics in achieving hormone balance, however, is often overlooked.

Research on probiotics shows them to be helpful with at least 100 different health disorders. The keys to getting the best results with probiotic supplements include: 1) the number and variety of bacterial strains in one dose; and, 2) the number of colony forming units (CFU) per dose (equivalent to number of live cells). When you are evaluating products using these two criteria, look for those that have at least 10-15 different strains and at least 15 billion CFU per dose. The best brand that I have found in my research, which fits these criteria, is the iFlora Multi-Probiotic Formula by SedonaLabs.

All the best in natural health,

Dr. D