Day: 12/26/2022

9 Ways to Hack Your HGH (Human Growth Hormone) —  And Put the Brakes on Aging

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The idea of the Fountain of Youth has been around for thousands of years, with writings on the subject going as far back as the 5th century or so. Throughout history, explorers have gone in search of it and some have even died trying. You, however, don’t have to. Instead, you can tap into one of the best anti-aging ‘fountains’ out there that doesn’t require any travel at all. Best of all, it’s actually inside you – HGH, or Human Growth Hormone. Here’s a quick look and this powerful anti-ager and how to put it to work for a more youthful you: 

Anti-aging from the inside.

Secreted by the pituitary gland, HGH (also referred to simply as GH) is pumped throughout the body abundantly throughout childhood and adolescence, helping to spur muscle growth and cellular repair. It also plays an essential role in bone, cartilage, and organ growth, and helps regulate important aspects of metabolism including insulin and blood sugar levels. Stepping back from the biochemistry, it’s a key ally in aiding athletic performance and recovery.

But as you enter the 30-something zone, HGH production slowly starts to taper off. As levels slide, risk for disease increases as does the speed with which aging really starts to take off. HGH helps increase the synthesis of proteins, our body’s essential building blocks, so these lower hormone levels make themselves known inside and out with all-too-familiar aging signs like increased body fat and wrinkles, and decreased muscle mass, energy and immunity. 

To combat the downturn and capitalize on the powerful anti-aging effects of HGH, some people will even go so far as to take injections of it! While I have significant concerns about the safety and wisdom of artificially supplementing HGH – and strenuously do not recommend injections – I am completely in favor of promoting your body’s natural production. Why pay for an expensive jab and risk dangerous side effects when you can power up the youth fountain naturally, simply by cultivating a few healthy habits? 

Harmonize your hormones – including your HGH.

There’s a reason why we in the integrative health world are always banging the ‘heathy habit’ drum. In short, it’s because at every moment of the day, every cell in your body works in concert – interacting, exchanging information and, generally, getting stuff done. Their mission? To keep you healthy and well for as long as possible. So, not surprisingly, the more healthy habits you’ve got, the better that plan is going to work out. 

While every cell and system has its role to play, you really want to pay attention to your hormones if you want slow down the aging clock. But first, it helps to understand how a few of the key hormonal players – insulin, cortisol and HGH – interact on the daily:

1. Cortisol: Early in the morning, your levels begin to rise, helping you to wake you up and letting your liver know it’s time to fuel up your muscles by releasing more glucose into the bloodstream. Your adrenals release another shot of cortisol as you roll out of bed, keeping your energy up until those levels tail off in the afternoon and evening. When life stressors kick in, so does more cortisol. If the stressor is a momentary challenge, that extra cortisol will help you rise to the challenge. 

However, cortisol has a considerably less appealing side when it comes to unrelieved stress. Chronic stress keeps cortisol levels high (think, constant drip), aided and abetted by fight-or-flight adrenal hormones like epinephrine (or, adrenaline as it’s sometimes still known). The result? You’re left feeling low, exhausted and wrung-out. Making matters worse, that stress-triggered cortisol sends even more glucose into the bloodstream, which, if not quickly burned off with exercise, winds up getting stored as fat. (Any wonder why chronic stress and fat gain go hand-in-hand?) 

2. Insulin: In the morning, when cortisol pushes glucose into the bloodstream, your pancreas gets into gear. It secretes the hormone insulin which guides the glucose into your cells, especially your muscle cells, burned for energy to keep you moving through the day. All good, that is, unless you’re over-doing it with fast-acting carb bombs – like pasta, bread bagels and beyond — which drown your bloodstream in sugar and puts your pancreas in overdrive, as it tries to clear the sugar out of the bloodstream and into your cells. Over the long haul, a diet heavy in carbs will eventually turn on just about everyone (yes, even you) and push you into insulin resistance and, all too often, type 2 diabetes – a must to avoid.

3. HGH (Human Growth Hormone): Here’s where HGH fits into the hormonal balancing act. Cortisol and insulin have a yin-yang relationship with “androgen” hormones like HGH, DHEA and, especially in men, testosterone. Those hormones do their valuable thing when you’re asleep, maintaining or building muscle and encouraging fat breakdown — move your body during the day and build it up at night! That is, unless high stress and high carbs have pushed up your nighttime cortisol and insulin levels, tamping down HGH and the other build-you-up hormones. The result? You get sluggish and flabby, in other words, you’ve speeded up the aging process. Consider, that as we head into our 30s, HGH starts to decline at about 1% with each passing birthday and, typically, cortisol and insulin levels start to spike higher, more often and for longer – making early middle age a highly advisable time to get very serious about cutting carbs and getting moving. (The sooner the better!)

Banish the bad (habit) apples.

If you want to keep HGH pumping, banish the bad apples, as in the crappy lifestyle habits that take a big bite out of your body’s natural production (not to mention screwing up your cortisol and insulin levels). Among the lifestyle baddies to jettison:

1. Poor sleep – which messes with the timing and release of the hormones you need to keep you on a healthy, balanced hormonal track. Here are 9 sleep-well-tonight tips.

2. Unrelieved stress – again, it ramps up cortisol and insulin, which has a negative impact on HGH levels, suppressing those very necessary, sleepy-time secretions. Here’s how to bust stress fast.

3. Excess body fat –  which is, unfortunately, closely correlated with lower levels of HGH. Lose the fat and your HGH can return to healthy levels.

4. Sugar – the stuff is a killer, and a wicked insulin-booster. You have to lose it, no excuses. Here’s how to ditch the sweet stuff.

5. Alcohol – it’s just sugar in liquid form. The occasional glass with dinner is one thing, but ditch the half a bottle a night habit which will have you aging much quicker than your tea-totaling buddies.

Cultivate the good apples.

To turn up the volume on your HGH production, and keep the dreaded signs of aging away from your door for as long as possible, I recommend adding a few of these body-loving behaviors to your heathy habit mix:

1. Time Restricted Eating (TRE) or Intermittent Fasting (IF) – They might just be the express train to increased HGH, with a number of studies showing that eating within a limited number hours during the day can have a major impact, even raising levels in one study by an astonishing 1250%. Another reason to try TRE/IF? Both are great for keeping insulin and cortisol levels on an even keel, which helps combat the baddies of poor sleep, excess stress and body fat. Start here to more about TRE and IF.

2. Move it – ideally, multiple times a day – With all those gyms to fill and cycling studios to spin in, the fitness industry has fostered an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to moving the body. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with a regular fitness routine – I encourage everyone to get into a consistent movement groove. But you still must move throughout the day, ideally as much and as often as possible, particularly if your work is sedentary. Maximizing moments of daily movement, be it a quick walk to the corner and back on your lunch break; a sprint or two up and down the stairs in your house; or a few planks between Zoom calls – it all counts, and will help nudge HGH levels up. Here’s how to work more exercise in to your day.

3. Go hard and fast – To make your HGH really sing, add HIIT, or high-intensity interval training, as well as strength training. That will directly stimulate HGH production. (Count us in!) Here’s how to get started on a HIIT routine.

4. Eat healthy, whole foods – They’ll help balance all your hormones, keep insulin and body fat under control – and will never steer you wrong! Among the foods commonly associated with increased levels of HGH are items like: preferably organic, or farmer’s market beef, chicken and eggs from healthy animals; spinach; full-fat, unsweetened yoghurt; nuts and seeds. Dig in!

11 Life-Changing Effects of Berberine

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Berberine

A diet packed with healthy, whole foods puts your body in the express lane to wellness. But for a lot of us, adding a few supportive supplements to the mix can help boost the power of all the good things we’re already doing, fill in nutritional gaps and protect against the occasional dietary slip-up. While needs vary somewhat from person to person, I do have a few favorites and topping the list is the slightly under-the-radar supplement called berberine. What can it do for you? Plenty! Here’s a quick 411 on this helpful health multi-tasker:

What is Berberine?

For thousands of years, berberine, a bioactive compound found in select plants, has been used to enhance health throughout Asia, especially in Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine. Shrubs from the berberis genus – namely goldenseal, Oregon grape, barberry, amur corktree, Chinese goldthread and corktree plants – are among the most common sources. Extracted from the roots, stems, leaves and bark of these berberis plants, the harvested berberine, bright yellow in color, is still commonly used in India and elsewhere as a natural fabric dye, in addition to its medicinal applications. 

What’s berberine good for?

In traditional medicines, berberis species have been used to treat an enormous range of conditions, including eye, mouth and ear infections; skin irritations; wound healing; fever; microbial pathogens; digestive and respiratory diseases to name a few. Today, berberine gets high marks for its natural pharmacological properties, including its health-supportive effects on the immune system, metabolism, heart and gut health, blood and kidneys as well as for its antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory powers.

Why does berberine matter now?

Berberine matters because thousands of years of use in traditional medicine have shown it to be a medicinal multi-tasker, kind of a good-for-what-ails-you compound and, very possibly, an effective natural alternative to certain pharmaceuticals. It’s so useful for the treatment of so many conditions, it just makes sense to explore using berberine as a simple way to keep health on track without automatically defaulting to Big Pharma options. 

For example, berberine behaves similarly to the common diabetes drug metformin. Like metformin, berberine lowers blood sugar and may have anti-aging benefits. Though berberine’s benefits are more subtle, there are few if any concerning side effects, so it’s a promising option for those with blood sugar issues. However, if you are currently taking metformin, discuss berberine with your doctor first, as taking the herbal can interact with the drug to prevent blood sugar from dropping dangerously low. 

How does berberine work?

While berberine offers significant effects across a wide range of the body’s systems – including positive antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, and supporting a healthy gut microbiome – among its most exciting properties is its ability to stimulate activity inside the cells, in particular, the enzyme adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase or ‘AMPK.’ What makes AMPK so important is that it regulates metabolism, especially how energy is produced and used. When AMPK activity is stimulated, it boosts fat-burning, glucose uptake and energy production and may provide disease-prevention benefits similar to those that diet, exercise and healthy weight management yield. Berberine is one of the few compounds that can flip that all-important AMPK switch – so, it’s a great one to be able to tap into naturally.

What is berberine good for?

Berberine’s list of upsides is quite impressive. It’s been the focus of numerous studies, the majority of which show its therapeutic potential for a range of common health problems and diseases. Among the possible benefits:

  • Tames the inflammatory response  – which is key in the prevention of numerous health conditions, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes and certain cancers.
  • Supports cardiac health – by protecting against heart failure, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and arrhythmias. Research has shown that for some people it acts as a PCSK9 Inhibitor, thus lowering “bad” cholesterol.
  • Promotes a healthy weight and weight loss – with its positive effect on gut microbiota, as well as on the regulation of genes that regulate the absorption of cholesterol, making it a potential game changer in obesity prevention and treatment.
  • Supports a healthy gut– potentially, by strengthening the beneficial bacteria and reducing the harmful ones in the gut microbiome — helping the body fight the inflammation that gives rise to so many diseases and conditions. It’s also thought to be helpful as a potential treatment for candida, S.I.B.O., IBS and ulcerative colitis as well as many inflammatory bowel conditions.
  • Supports a healthy blood sugar level – with effects comparable to prescription meds (making it extra important to check with your doc first!).
  • Supports tumor suppression— believed to have inhibitory effects on tumor growth, due to its ability to act inside individual cells, providing potential cancer-killing effects.
  • Potential cancer treatment — in a 2020 study, researchers determined that berberine (and its derivatives) has the potential to be used in cancer therapy drugs, offering improved clinical efficacy and safety for treatment of ovarian, cervical, lung, prostate, liver and colorectal cancers.
  • Fights infections – helping to combat many types of pathogens, including bacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal organisms. For those who suffer from frequent bouts of cystitis and UTIs, berberine may help prevent painful symptoms and bladder inflammation.
  • Supports mental health – some studies show berberine to be effective in the treatment of mood disorders, in part by helping to modulate neurotransmitters and their receptor systems within the central nervous system. 
  • Slows neurological decline– berberine has shown promise as a potential treatment for slowing the development of Alzheimer’s and dementia by reducing oxidative stress, inflammation and cell death. 

Should I try berberine?

Generally speaking, yes. But while berberine supplements are very well-tolerated by most people, they may not be suitable for everyone. It’s not recommended for children, those who are who are pregnant or nursing, or people with certain plant allergies. It can interact with common blood pressure and diabetes drugs – causing potentially dangerous drops in blood sugar and blood pressure – so it’s essential to first clear berberine use with your doc to prevent problems. If your doc gives you the OK, for most people, a 500 mg dose taken 3 times a day should suffice. A small percentage of people may experience mild digestive upset, nausea, constipation or diarrhea, so if you fall into that camp, reduce your dose or just discontinue if the reactions is too severe. 

What’s the best berberine to buy?

Got your doc’s OK? Good. Then, it’s time to go shopping. When in the market for a berberine supplement, always look for the organic, non-GMO and Fair Trade seals, and check the ingredients list, as some berberine may be blended with other herbals that you may or may not want. Next, look for third-party certification, for example from regulatory groups like these recommended by Consumer Reports: non-profits NSF International and U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP); or for-profits like ConsumerLab.com or UL.

My take: When used strategically, in tandem with a clean and healthy plant-rich, low sugar diet, berberine may be an important ally in slowing down the development of lifestyle-related diseases.

5 Easy and Essential Ways to Stop Your Aging Clock

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You’ve probably noticed that there are boatloads of creams, lotions and potions that bill themselves as “anti-aging” therapies. Clearly, the marketers have tapped into a deep human desire to escape the ravages of physical aging. And if someone wants to spend a hundred dollars on a jar of skin cream, well, that’s their business. What I care about, and what I try to educate all my patients about, are the every-day habits and behaviors that can slow down aging at the most basic cellular level. They don’t cost much, or in most cases, anything, and they can, and should, last a lifetime — in other words, a lot longer than a jar of skin cream. It’s true that absolute lifespan, for instance whether your grandmother lived to 80 or 95, is very much influenced by genetics. But healthspan – how long you live well, is very much up to you.

Here’s my run-down on the most essential lifestyle strategies, my healthspan rules of the road to slow, or even stop, the aging clock, and increase the health in your years:

1) Respect Sleep.

Your body has its own renewal system. We call it sleep, and the more you learn to respect it, by giving it 7-8 hours to do its thing every night, the slower your aging clock will tick, both physically and mentally. With the proper amount of sleep, the body is able to cycle in and out of the two most restorative phases of the night, deep sleep, and REM sleep, when we dream. During these two phases, our minds process the experiences of the day, locking only the important stuff into readily accessible memory. (That allows us to get older and wiser.) At a physical level, the body cleans out the cellular debris that accumulates during the day when the mind is working at full throttle. Of course, all this is happening below the level of conscious awareness. But when you wake up after too little sleep, or lousy sleep of the tossing and turning variety, and you feel sluggish, sleepy, grumpy, that’s what’s going on “under the hood.” And poor sleep habits, over the long haul, put you at higher risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s – and that’s one of the many reasons I am adamant that my patients take sleep very, very seriously.

2) Don’t just sit there, get moving!

Sure, you probably know physical activity is good for you, but we don’t always appreciate that moving your body is about the most effective anti-aging therapy going. Why? It boils down to metabolism, how efficiently our bodies  use the energy we consume in the food eat. Nothing ages the body more comprehensively than high blood sugar and extra weight around the midsection. There’s a reason doctors often call diabetes “accelerated aging.”

When we move the body our muscles are burning the glucose fuel that circulates in the bloodstream. The more we use (or ‘burn’) the less gets stored as fat, and the more efficiently we make use of the hormone insulin which delivers the glucose to the cells. End result: a leaner, cleaner metabolism and less fat build-up.

The mistake that a lot of health-conscious people make is thinking that only a gut-busting exercise class or 10 mile run or long distance swim counts as exercise. It’ s just not so. In fact, working out to near-exhaustion every day, or even every other day, can be positively counter-productive. It can over-stress your immune system leaving you feeling washed-out and leave you so tired that you turn into a couch potato (or more likely, screen potato) the rest of the week. In total, you may actually burn less energy over the course of the week! However, it training for the next New York Marathon is your thing, well, godspeed. But if health and boosting your healthspan is your first priority, it’s a much better idea to build small doses of movement into your day: walking instead of driving; stairs instead of elevators; and taking regular mini-breaks away from the desk to do some stretches or yoga poses, or some quick strength boosters, like push-ups or planks. With that as your base, feel free to add a couple of breaking-a-sweat work-out into the weekly mix, as you see fit. It all counts and it all adds up, and all that movement helps keep muscles supple and joints lubricated, which in turn makes moving through life much easier now and for years down the road.

The old conventional wisdom was that our metabolism declined steadily after age 30, no matter what we did, on the order of 1-2% a year. But the latest research has shown that the body’s energy-burning furnace doesn’t cool down until we hit our sixties and yes, that includes women in peri-menopause or menopause. That means, all the “slowing down with age” that people think is inevitable in their middle years isn’t! It’s the result of conscious choices we make every day, especially about how we move and how we eat – two very pleasurable activities, which when done right, will also go a long way towards to maintaining the best parts of youth.

3) Eating your way young.

Bound up with metabolic health is inflammation. In fact, researchers see inflammation, the chronic over-activation of the immune system, as so central to the aging process, especially “bad” aging, they coined the term, “inflammaging.” Inflammation is at the root of most of the chronic diseases that too often are the bane of our middle and senior years: heart disease, diabetes, dementia, even cancer. And the best way to slow down that inflammaging, besides moving more, is to eat more skillfully. If you know me at all, you know I can’t say enough good things about a diet that’s long on non-starchy veggies (greens especially), healthy fats and healthy fat, from (preferably) organic meat and wild fish and plant sources like nuts and legumes. But just as important as the health-supportive nutrients these foods deliver to the system are their inflammation-fighting properties. The fiber-rich veggies especially feed the bacteria in your gut, the microbiome, which in turns help build up the lining of the gut wall. That means that toxins don’t escape into the bloodstream, triggering inflammation throughout the system (brain fog, arthritic joints, skin eruptions, you name it). Not only that, the well-fed microbiome acts in concert with the human gut nervous system to recognize non-toxic  visitors passing through the gut, like gluten or dairy, which otherwise might trigger an immune system inflammatory over-reaction. Common and very unpleasant conditions like IBS are signs that your inflamed gut that needs a dietary re-think (or even an overhaul).

4) Tune in to your mind.

An unsettled mind can age you as reliably as an out-of-sorts body. As with most things in the health universe, mind and body are deeply connected. If you’re chronically stressed out, the levels of your primary energy hormone, cortisol, will be stuck on “high,” pushing up the production of insulin, promoting fat storage, messing with your sleep and just generally making you feel old before your time.

My tried-and-very-true remedy for a stressed out head is to carve out some time every day to escape the demands and pressures of the day and simply quiet the mind. Research has shown that these mind-body breaks can actually slow the aging of the brain, by lowering blood pressure and lengthening your telomeres (the ends of your chromosomes which regulate cellular aging). A regular sitting meditation practice is great. Find a quiet place, tune into a smooth, regular breathing pattern and follow the breath for as long as practicable or comfortable. Ten or fifteen minutes a day is enough to calm down the stress hormones. But with practice, you may find that a 30 or even 45-minute sit can take you beyond relaxation to a deeper, life-affirming kind of contemplation. If you’re new to this world, check out some apps like Headspace, Oak, Meditation, Breathe and Brightmind. And keep in mind, there’s no one size fits all. Another way to meditate with out meditating in the traditional sense is to spend time doing a super-soothing activity like knitting or playing a musical instrument, or simply being in nature. Those meditative activities are exactly your sympathetic nervous system ordered.

5) Tap into autophagy hacks.

It turns out that one important way that healthy habits keep you young and support a better healthspan is by promoting autophagy, that is, upgrading the garbage collection system in your cells, getting rid of old and damaged cells and stripping them for parts to make new robust ones. In practice, they all stress the cells of the body in mild, healthy ways, sort of like doing push-ups for your metabolism. The fancy terms for this is “hormesis.” How to turbocharge the process? Here’s a handy, start-doing-now list of autophagy “hacks,” to put you on the road to a better healthspan:

  • Cold comfort — No need to avail yourself of expensive hi-tech cryo-therapy sessions. Simply get in the habit of alternating warm and cold water in the shower (or finishing off a warm shower with a rousing cold blast). Or take a short outside walk deliberately underdressed (no blue lips or hypothermia please!). The cold will rev up the metabolism.
  • Spice up the system – Spices like turmeric, garlic and ginger boost autophagy, ditto polyphenol-rich foods like berries, nuts, beans, artichokes, green tea, coffee and dark chocolate.
  • Time restricted eating – Spacing out your meals, as little as ten hours and for a bigger effect, 16 hours between meals, is another booster, stimulating your metabolism to do more with less insulin, and upgrading the metabolic garbage pick-up.
  • Low-carb eating — is yet another healthy dietary stressor. A keto diet is the most aggressive form, weaning the body away from burning glucose to burning fat.
  • High Intensity Internal Training – HIIT-type exercise, be it running, cycling, swimming, hill walking or what have you, pushes the body harder, and the heart rate higher, for a relatively shorter time. And yes, it does promote autophagy, but don’t overdo it. For most people, two sessions a week, 20-30 minutes a week, is a sensible maximum.

Seasonality and uncertainty in COVID-19 growth rates.

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Millions of lives are at risk due to the rapid global spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) virus. It is yet unknown whether the summertime slows down its spread, thereby alleviating strains on hospitals and giving time for vaccine development. Laboratory findings on related coronaviruses presumed that COVID-19 would decline with increased temperatures, humidity, and ultraviolet (UV) light. A model explaining variation in early growth rates prior to the intervention, based on weather or demography and country-specific effects, was developed using fine-scaled weather data and global reports of infection.

  • According to the study, the rate of COVID-19 growth accelerated with higher temperatures and reduced relative humidity and UV radiation. 
  • Based on seasonal variations in UV radiation and temperature, the study predicted that COVID-19 would oscillate between the northern and southern hemispheres without ongoing interventions like social distancing. 
  • In the absence of intervention, despite a potential but extremely uncertain brief summer respite in the north, COVID-19 is more likely to recur by autumn and peak next winter, which threatens further outbreaks. The north should use this opportunity to build resilience against future outbreaks while assisting countries in the tropics and southern hemisphere. 
  • Caution should be maintained while making decisions like eliminating societal interventions before long-term pharmaceutical solution implementation.