The Power
October 11, 2010 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Rhonda Byrne’s follow-up to her smash hit, The Secret, is even more powerful in my opinion. The Power is in short LOVE. When we express love in everything and in every moment of our lives we are able to truly emit the highest state of positivity that exists. As Byrne argues, without love we would have nothing, no humans, no phones, no world. We are a product of love. It is reminiscent of what Wayne Dyer has said: there are only two emotions in life, love and fear. When you have one of them you do not have the other. When we fear, we cannot love. When we love, we cannot fear.
I believe that love is the most powerful emotion we can share with one another and we can harness that power every day in small but profound ways. Whether you believe in the law of attraction or you do not, you can believe that there is a difference when you approach a situation with love or without it. Any relationship, any desire, any thought, etc., can be influenced by love or by an alternative, lesser emotion. When our enemies hate us and offer us their bitter enmity, we can go beyond that hatred by returning love.
There was the famous Japanese scientist who showed that water crystals can be influenced when someone felt love or felt anger in proximity to the water. Byrne contends that if we are 99% water, how do you think your love or your anger you feel influences your cellular make up? When we are angry all the time, it soaks into our cells and changes and mutates our bodies with cancer, heart disease, aging, sickness, and other infirmities. If we give our body a deep love, we allow our bodies to stay in complete healing or to return to it. I have now finished The Power twice and have felt moved by its ringingly clear message that I wanted to share with you today and hopefully you can pass that message on to someone this week.
Change Your Brain, Change Your Body
September 27, 2010 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
As part of Dr. Daniel Amen’s series on “Change Your Brain…”, his book Change Your Brain, Change Your Body is particularly fascinating in exploring the connection of mind and matter, i.e., how one’s mental health can affect one’s physical health. Dr. Amen is well known for his clinics that focus on using SPECT scans to determine physiological functioning of the brain and how the activity (or lack thereof) in certain anatomic subregions of the brain can be signs of function and disease in the brain. After reading this book, I am convinced that SPECT scans can serve as an invaluable source of information for a skilled and knowledgeable practitioner who knows how to use and interpret them.
He starts with the premise that we cannot change our body without first changing our mind. If we want to lose weight, it does not begin with our body but with how we perceive our body, how we desire that weight loss and what we do to be committed to those changes. If we adopt a fad diet for a week then decide to stop, it is not the fad diet’s fault it is our brain’s fault that caused us to attempt a fad diet and then subsequently to abandon it.
By losing 35 pounds over the past 2 years, I did so not by using fad diets but by realigning my relationship to food. In the past, I enjoyed eating processed food quickly and mindlessly and also in having guilty pleasure in eating fatty foods. I also liked stuffing myself with food. Until I changed my brain in a fundamental way not to like eating that stuff and not wanting to eat until I was gorged like a pig, I could not lose weight and keep it off. I find that people who want to lose weight are using food as a crutch (as much as I did) and cycling their energy around this activity in a love-hate relationship. Until we end the brain struggle, we cannot end the physical one.
Similarly, as I started to enjoy eating healthier and working out regularly, I started to change my perception of my own body and my relationship to it. I started to enjoy my new body and enjoy my healthy lifestyle. When I was in Belgium a week ago, I ate fries, chocolate, and waffles but I could “cheat” because I knew that they were part of my enjoyment for the time that I was in a country famed for those foods but I actually started to crave my morning concoction of raw vegetables and other healthy comestibles.
Another fascinating part of the book centered on how the lack of sleep can actually cause us to gain weight. He argues that as adults over the age of twenty we need at least 7 hours of sleep for our body to function well. Those who say that they can get by with 4 to 5 hours are doing a disservice to their body functioning since almost all of us require at least 7 hours no matter what we tell our bodies to the contrary. When we have a lack of sleep our body starts to create an imbalance of leptin to grelin. Grelin is what makes us hungry and leptin makes us full. Our grelin hormones (what Amen calls gremlins) surge making our bodies not only hungrier but hungrier for sugary, fried foods; and our leptins fall making us not as full when we eat. When we get our beauty rest we not only get beauty because we feel more rested but our eating habits can improve because of it too.
The other fascinating topic that this book discusses is how other people in our lives influence our eating habits, which Amen cites an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Amen, a Lebanese, recalls his confectioner heritage when his grandfather would tempt him with sugary snacks and how his family would encourage him to eat more because he was too thin. He argues the single most common reason for obesity is living with someone who is obese. That person reinforces bad habits and also encourages bad habits out of guilt for their own lack of will power or desire for gluttony. I just got back from Europe and I do not believe I saw one obese person except for the vacationing Americans. In France and in Spain when someone gains 5 pounds they do not allow themselves to move to 10 to 15 pounds but start to vigorously move downward back to their ideal. It is simply not in their culture to be overweight. It is in ours.
Sometimes when our body is out of our desired ideal it may not be our fault entirely. Dr. Amen talks about how his wife was hyper aggressive, agitated, and well, masculine. He consulted a gynecologist who suspected polycystic ovarian syndrome and found out that his wife’s condition was caused by hormonal imbalance. By treating her effectively with medicine, she changed. If we have a hard time changing our brain perhaps there is a functional brain problem that is causing us not to want to change or to be comfortable with our body at an unacceptably unhealthy state. That is where SPECT scanning and/or counseling with a professional may be of value but lies beyond my knowledge basis. Sometimes it is a question of the chicken or the egg: we may have a desire to eat badly and therefore we gain weight. Alternatively, a bad diet causes us not to stay full, to be more tired, and to be frankly addicted to more bad diet that causes us to eat more bad food. Amen talks about proper supplements that can help balance the brain and the body. For me daily vitamin D and fish oil are integral to my overall balance of my mind and body.
This book is so rich in content and advice that I cannot hope to cover all the details. I hope that these salient points that I derived from this book for my own personal gain is helpful for anyone out there interested in changing their body by a new method advocated as changing one’s brain first.
Younger Next Year
September 20, 2010 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Younger Next Year is written by a team of a patient (Chris Crowley) and his physician (Henry Lodge, M.D.), the latter of whom works at my alma mater Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (but whom I did not know when I was there as a resident). The two authors, patient and physician, take turns writing chapters with a colloquial and a scientific voice, respectively, regarding how to look and feel younger next year.
The principle, declared method to look younger next year advocated by the septuagenarian Chris and the 50-year-old Dr. Harry is routine, consistent exercise. They see this as more important than almost any other element, and they spend a good portion of the book explaining why. In short, they believe that our body is programmed to decay when we are sedentary since it goes against the nature of our epoch a millennium years ago when we did not sit at computer terminals with a large Coke beside us. We tell our bodies that we are dying when we do nothing. We start to store fat and decay, as we tell our bodies that we are in starvation mode (since that is what we did when we started to starve a thousand years ago and before) by breaking down muscle and storing fat. It was the most efficient way for us to avoid death by actually starting to rot. Crazy huh?
The authors advocate working out at least 6 days a week and to make 4 of those days cardio intensive. After having finished this book, I started a few weeks ago to change my work out regimen to fit the bill. Two years ago I was a weekend warrior, doing spin classes and a little lifting on the weekends. About 18 months ago, I started yoga and then within a couple of months I went to four days a week. I then progressed after a few months to perform yoga almost consistently 5 days a week. I have now returned to yoga 4 days a week and added an incredible workout known as crossfit (check out crossfit.com for more information) twice a week so that I now work out consistently 6 days a week (except for last week when I was in Europe in which case I walked almost 3 to 5 hours each day instead).
In their diet chapters, they also reflect on how a sugary diet of empty calories causes our bodies to think we are in starvation mode since in the history of man we have never gone from starvation to gluttony except when our body starts to try to horde calories during times of starvation. When you combine that with the empty calories we get from soft drinks, we have a ton of calories we are consuming each day but they are not nutritive so our body grabs all the calories we are getting but we start to become hungry again for two reasons. First, our body stored all the fat from the calories in preparation for possible starvation but then had no nutrition obtained from doing so. Second, the sugar spike that required an outpouring of insulin causes us to pour out more insulin making us even hungrier in a very short time.
The authors finally touch upon the need for love and connection in our lives. Sex being a great thing to have but not as critical as having touch and love in our lives to provide emotional health. As a retired attorney, Chris states that he did not take the time during his years as a lawyer to develop any personal hobbies so that when he retired he was left with a large vacuum and did not know what to do with that surplus time. He contends that we all should engage in fruitful avocations so that we can engage our brains and hearts in rewarding pastimes that can also carry over into our mature years.
Although this book was a bit redundant in its message (perhaps I have read too many books on a similar subject), I recommend it to anyone who finds what I have written above to be foreign sounding or have not really thought about exercise, diet, or relationships as sources of how to look and feel better now and a year from now. Although I am a plastic surgeon, I believe that Botox, fillers, and fat transfer are insufficient to make someone truly look and feel young: diet, exercise, and mental/emotional health must accompany your investment.
The Enzyme Factor
August 30, 2010 by dr. lam · 6 Comments
After reading The China Study I was alerted to a related, good read by my friend Marzia who is a fitness instructor. I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from The Enzyme Factor. Dr. Shinya’s book is part speculative, i.e., theoretical, and part undeniably empirical; and I really agree with his conclusions.
As a physician in his mid-70s, he argues that he has not been sick since he was 19 years old because of his healthy lifestyle and his diet. Being a pioneer in gastroenterologic endoscopy who practices half the time in Japan and half the time in America, he really knows the differences in colon and stomachs seen from the inside out. He notices that high meat diets in the West causes the colons to become thicker, inelastic and in short putrified. Vegetables on the other hand create an elastic, thinner, more pliable intestine that leads less to stagnation. Stagnation in the intestine from high meat diets leads to the build up of necrotic tissues that can lead to colon cancer.
He has found that his patients who maintain his enzyme-rich diet and lifestyle have never had a recurrence of colon cancer. He believes that cancer is a “lifestyle” disease that has less to do with genetics (although obviously it does) and more to do with dietary choices over a lifetime. He believes that healthy eating is critical.
We have 5,000 enzymes in our body to help us with cellular functioning. Dr. Shinya argues that there is a prototypical, or “miracle”, enzyme that produces all of our vital enzymes that we have in our body. This is obviously speculative but what he has observed (and I would agree based on what I see in my life) is that the healthier you are the less you get sick or have problems because the reserves that we have are very high. When we have almost no reserves left, our body will get sick and can get cancer more easily. When we are in good health, then have too much to eat or have too much alcohol, we repair our body much faster and we almost have no “hangover” or sickness. He argues that with this precursor enzyme that is stored in our body, when we need it to fight off a sickness in one area we have less of it to fight off other concurrent problems.
Unlike The China Study that roundly denounces meat of all kinds, Dr. Shinya says that our meat should be about 15% of our diet. He argues that carnivores out there like lions and tigers may be thought to be strong but they are actually quite weak. They run short distances and have flimsy muscles. Horses, which are herbivores, are strong and lean with big muscles. Carnivores typically eat herbivores for their nutrients and directly attack the intestines first where the plants are still in the process of digestion to gain the nutrients. Albeit teleological, he argues that if you look at the makeup of our 32 teeth, we can determine what percentage of food makeup we should have. Incisors (2) are used to tear at plants; canines (1) are used to tear flesh; and molars (5) are used to grind plants. So with a 7:1 ratio, we were meant primarily to have an 85:15% ratio of plant to meat in our diets.
Other tips he offers is to eat mainly raw, organic food, as food over 118 degrees can kill essential enzymes and so can heavily chemically treated food. I am eating about a 30 percent and sometimes more than that raw, plant-based diet. He says that alcohol and tobacco are lethal over time on the body and should be heavily moderated or eliminated. He says that seeing some of his colleagues he can see who leads a good lifestyle and who does not simply by looking at their face and skin. Eating tons of fruit (despite what people say about the risk of sugar unless you are diabetic) is another critical element. He also levels a heavy attack on dairy products like cheese and milk and says that they truly ruin one’s intestines over time and do not offer anything beneficial. Like Dr. Campbell’s conclusions in his book, The China Study, he sees that milk can also cause osteoporosis, which is fascinating since we believe the opposite is true. He sees that women who are predisposed toward breast cancer (minus family history) oftentimes share a common history of diet preferences, specifically heavy meat and dairy and minimal attention on vegetables. He argues that only infants have a robust supply of lactase, the enzyme to process milk. As we progress in age, lactase progressively diminishes, which he points to the idea that is why our bodies not only do not need milk but cannot handle or process it well.
Also interesting is that he argues green tea that has been espoused for its antioxidant properties is the principal reason for atrophic gastritis and possible precursor to stomach cancer in Japan, which has a 10 times higher likelihood than in the United States. Heavy consumption of non-herbal teas like green tea, Chinese tea, and English tea along with other caffeinated beverages like coffee over time erode the stomach and cause digestive problems. Because of the book, I am now giving up green tea, which I thought was originally good for you. I already gave up daily coffee one month ago.
Getting our body pH balanced toward a more alkaline environment can help with reducing cancer risks and promoting health. Meats are highly acidic and putrify the body. Water, which is more alkaline, can truly help with cleaning out the body and reducing the risk of bacterial build up in the body. Water should be drunk when waking 2 to 3 cups about 1 hour before eating food that can control appetite and burn off calories if drunk reasonably cold like 70 degrees but not ice cold. Drinking water at the time of eating a meal can reduce digestive enzymes and make digestion worse. He also argues not to eat or drink for 4 to 5 hours prior to sleeping, as this can cause reflux into the esophagus and also program our body to store fat. He believes that antacids used to help with reflux esophagitis eventually destroy the stomach, which needs the acid. Similarly he argues that laxatives are not a good way to clean the intestine. If someone needs a bowel cleansing, he argues in favor of a coffee enema. (I have never tried that, as my bowel health is exceptionally good because of my diet.)
Although fish is better than red meat for you, he does argue to limit fish intake, as too much of it is also bad for your intestinal health, especially red fish like tuna and bonito. The red color from the fish comes from the myoglobin in the muscle that is heavily oxidized and is not good for the body. White fish is better for the body if one makes that choice. He also warns against eating large fish like tuna and swordfish that have a much higher level of mercury in their system that can cause a host of problems in the body.
I finally understand why and how mercury poisons our bodies after watching a DVD extra feature in the documentary, The Cove, about terrible dolphin killing in Japan. Industrial pollutants enter the water system as acid rain containing mercury. Small fish imbibe the water and get the mercury embedded into their muscles. Then larger fish eat smaller fish and accumulate their mercury. This continues onward to very large fish that eat a ton of small fish and build that mercury level exponentially, especially if they are old fish. They simply cannot get rid of the mercury in their system. Unfortunately, the fish that affluent people like are big because they have no bones and minimal to no fishy taste.
Ultimately, he says that despite some of these rigorous rules he espouses that everyone should really enjoy food even stuff that may not be 100% healthy for you 5% of the time because the enjoyment of food is what leads to good health. Practicing love and gratitude can kill cancer and build one’s immunity. I like this attitude because it is something that I have learned in my yoga practice. I think when we are too dogmatic about something, are bodies become rigidly fixated and that is not healthy either. In any case I hope this blog was helpful in your quest for living a healthy life and lifestyle.
The China Study
August 16, 2010 by dr. lam · 6 Comments
I first heard about The China Study from a colleague of mine in the Entrepreneur’s Organization at a recent event. He said he had become a complete vegetarian because of it. Mentally, I sort of scoffed at it. A month later I did a hair transplant on a patient who had lost 137 pounds over the past 15 months and attributed his change of lifestyle to this book, The China Study. He underwent his hair transplant procedure on his birthday but instead of receiving a gift he gave me a gift of this book, which over the course of the past two months I have finally finished reading. It has changed my view on a ton of things in life.
For those who followed my blog last year realized that the book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan was a game changer for me. I have lost 35 pounds over the past year and a half owing a lot to Pollan’s writings. The China Study for me is the next phase in my journey, one that I have not entirely embraced because the message is utterly radical and difficult to digest, pun intended.
The author, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, was raised on a farm in which he drank a quart of milk each day and chowed down on steak or at least hearty meat almost daily. He has since over his life completely abandoned all animal proteins including dairy products (yes that means poultry and fish too) because of the findings he made in one of the largest if not the largest epidemiological study in history, the China Study.
I will not be able to summarize all of the findings in this book but encourage anyone and everyone to read this book even if you do not intend to be vegetarian. At least get the opinion of what is written so that you can make smart choices for yourself and for your family. What is interesting is that many people may assume that Campbell is a vegetarian because of animal rights. That is far from the truth. He got his PhD from Cornell University where he was studying how to maximize feeding of animals but he conducted animal studies to find out how to do so. He says that he had no way of getting around these animal studies to find his remarkable results that he did. Whether you agree or disagree with animal studies is not the point here.
What he found was that rats given a 20% animal-protein diet versus a 5% animal-protein diet and then exposed to a common mold fungus aflatoxin had 100% cancer rate in the former group and 0% in the latter. He argues that these were not extreme examples as you would find in the saccharine research done on lab rats where the equivalent in humans would be similar to ingesting pounds of saccharine every day for years, which would probably give anyone cancer. By the way, I have given up any artificial sweeteners last year because I think they are terrible for the body but that does not really matter for the purpose of this blog.
From this initial finding, he went on to evaluate the population in China, which he asserts is a relatively homogenous population, especially compared to the diverse genetic stock of the United States. He isolated out rural populations and standardized for multiple factors like sedentary lifestyle, job type, etc. He found that the populations that digested a higher proportion of animal proteins (which by the way is far lower than what we Americans eat) had a considerably higher incidence of cancer and heart disease than the sector that did not. In short, animal-protein digestion whether in dairy or in its native form is one of the principal causes of heart disease and cancer. So those on the Atkins Diet think twice. Campbell argues you can lose weight if you restrict your calorie intake even if you are eating cardboard and worms but that does not mean that it is healthy for you, i.e., the Atkins Diet yields weight loss through calorie restriction eating terrible stuff for your body. That is how it works.
He argues against moderation stating that the American Heart Association advocates a blood cholesterol level of below 200. He asserts that 35% of heart attacks occur in those individuals whose cholesterol falls between 150 to 200. He says that most of America is beholden to special-interest food groups who have made it okay to eat bad food and to get away with it. He finds that cancer rates are caused almost entirely by diet and only reflects a genetic predisposition of 2 to 3%. Only 2 to 3% of cancers are genetically related??? Difficult to believe.
Heart disease begins early. He cites the examples of young GIs who were killed during the Korean War and whose hearts in their early twenties were opened up. They were already fully clotted with plaques and arterial disease. He says that cancers are not only caused by diet, they are greatly accelerated by it. Eating a whole foods, plant-based diet not only slows down cancer, it can reverse it. Eating an animal-rich, protein-heavy diet can cause and accelerate cancer.
He believes that a strict vegetarian diet can reverse many of the trends in heart disease and cancer that plague Americans today. He does state that unfortunately many vegetarians are not that healthy because they eat fried foods rather than a “whole foods”, plant-based diet, which he sternly warns should be the diet for everyone. Unfortunately, we physicians charge for pills and are beholden to major pharmaceutical companies for our education so we are “pill this” and “pill that” instead of seeing that the fundamental change lies in diet, diet, diet.
Another interesting finding in the book is that cow’s milk is dreadful for you, and I don’t care if you are taking unpasteurized, raw milk. He argues the casein protein is a major cause of problems for cancer and heart disease. In fact, he says that babies under the age of 2 who have a familial predisposition toward Type I diabetes should not be fed cow’s milk because there is a virus in it that attacks the pancreatic islet cells and can make a child permanently insulin dependent.
I honestly believe that the reason why men’s lifespans are shorter than women’s is that we simply do not care about diet as much as women do. I have certainly been a culprit of this. Am I a strict vegetarian? No, not at all. Not yet at least. I still eat meat, etc. I have changed almost all my breakfast and lunches though to vegetarian and half of my dinners. I think it is a good start. If you asked me a year ago if I would become a vegetarian I would have laughed violently. Now I am not that certain. I want to live a long, healthy life free of “diseases of affluence”. For those who do not buy these ideas, I encourage you to read this book. It might change your brain as much as it has mine. I realize how controversial this topic is for many of you out there, but I felt a burden to my readership to publish this information even if I am assailed for doing so.