category : Dr. Mixon's Longevity Journal

Most of you know that I’m on the radio several times each month, taking calls from listeners with health concerns. I’ve noticed that one of the most frequent worries among female radio listeners seems to be osteoporosis – the loss of bone density often associated with age.  Here at Longevity Medical Clinic, the approach we always prefer to beat osteoporosis is to rebuild a patient’s natural bone density by restoring the level of endocrine support typically found in younger women. This is a much different and more far-reaching solution than the one preferred by the pharmaceutical industry, which favors using prescription drugs such as Fosamax. 

But here’s some interesting news. A study published a few months ago in the British Journal of Nutrition offers a simple, cheap, and tasty method of helping a woman to protect her bones.  Researchers found that consuming

When a diabetic no longer needs medication and has normal blood sugars – do we call it remission or do we call it a cure?

Assume for a moment that you're a diabetic.  Your fasting blood sugar is 214.  Your hemoglobin A1c – the component of hemoglobin to which glucose is bound – is an unhealthy 7.9.  You are taking nine pills per day in an effort to control your blood sugar, but it does not seem to be working.  This means you are a poorly controlled type 2 diabetic, and your risk of experiencing the deadly effects of unchecked diabetes – heart attacks, strokes, dementia, blindness, kidney failure, loss of sensation in your extremities and amputations – is significantly elevated.

Now, let's consider a different scenario.

Most of us take for granted that the water flowing from our tap is clean and pure. We compare our tap water with the standards of much of the world and we reassure ourselves that the water in our drinking glass is safe. But we should be asking an important question: “safe” and “pure” compared to what?

The practice of purifying our drinking water with chlorine was pioneered by the military a century ago. It began to be commonplace in the U.S. in the 1930’s and was widespread by World War II. Chlorination has been a major boon to human health: the spread of water-borne diseases that still claims millions of lives around the world soon became a thing of the past in the developed world. That, as they say, is the good news.

But remember Dr. Mixon's first rule:  “Anything strong enough to help is strong enough to hurt!” That applies to chlorination of water in a surprising way. Chlorination very effectively kills bacteria, parasites, and viruses.

We human beings seem to like to label things – the simpler, the better! This urge to put everything into simple categories definitely applies to drugs and supplements – we like to think that Drug A always has one particular effect, and Supplement B has a different one. Just take this pill or use this crème and, voila, you always get one simple outcome.

That may be tidy, but it’s seldom accurate. In the real world, the drugs and supplements we take usually refuse to cooperate with this fantasy. Instead, one compound can have many effects – and many compounds can have similar effects. Often none of these interactions seem to correlate very well to the labels we put on them.

Do you remember how you felt and thought when you were 17 or 18? No, I’m not just talking about your adolescent obsession with your sexuality – I mean the feeling that the world was yours to conquer! Don't you remember that drive and ambition you had, that feeling that you could do just about anything? We all felt invincible and immortal at that age.

Your youthful optimism was not born merely out of naiveté and inexperience. In fact, that energetic, optimistic drive to conquer the world was largely a product of hormones – yes, those same raging hormones that drove your newly discovered sexuality. Most of the important hormones in our bodies were at their peak in our late teens: Testosterone, DHEA, Estrogen, Progesterone, Pregnenolone, Dopamine, Vasopressin, Oxytocin, Growth Hormone and Thyroid. High levels of these hormones were responsible for much of the passion as well as the emotional and physical energy of our youth.