Sleep Well. Be Healthy. Live Long.

I have to admit that I love to sleep. I often experience this little wave of delight after I have finished all of my nightly scrubbing, flossing, and brushing rituals knowing that sleep is near. ( A bit weird I know but still true.)  Sleep is a form of letting go, of trust.  An act of surrender perhaps, a simple recognition that we are a part of nature's cycles and processes . Sleeping is all about rhythms and balance.   Humans have developed over millions of years with our physiological rhythms synchronizing with the spinning of the earth on it's axis and it's rotation around the sun.  Sleeping is the most natural act.

Western medicine divides sleep into 5 phases that we cycle through every night.  In phase 2 our breath becomes regular, our body temperature drops, and our heart rate slows.  Phases 3 and 4 are known as deep sleep.  Blood pressure drops to it's lowest levels, and breathing and brain activity slows further still.  In Chinese medical speak,  sleep is the time when yang qi that propels our daily activities and metabolism  is embraced and enfolded by the coolness and quiet of the yin aspect of our nature.  

In a newly published book, Dr. Mark Lachs, director of geriatrics at the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System, discusses major influences on how well older people are able to function.  The first, called physiologic reserve, refers to excess capacity in organs and biological systems that we are given at birth, and  tends to decrease over time.  A secret of successful aging is to slow down the loss of physiologic reserve.  It is no surprise that along with diet and exercise one of the keys to maintaining physiological reserve is sleep.  Phase 4 sleep is seen as being very restorative, a time when our body conserves energy, the brain is biochemically replenished, the nervous system recuperates, bones and muscles are built, and tissues regenerated.  Simply put,  Phase 4 sleep helps to protect our physiological reserve. 

While using different language and viewing the body through a different  lens,  the ancient Chinese figured this out thousands of years ago.  Jing or essence is explained as being our deeper energetic reserves.   Prenatal essence is described as being innate at birth, finite in amount, and endowed to us from our parents.  This prenatal essence is then reinforced or supplemented by what is called postnatal essence or qi.  This essence is built through the food that we eat, air we breathe, and the exercise we engage in.  If our diet and lifestyle are appropriate and we produce more qi than we consume during the day, the excess is in effect banked and stored as a supplement to our deeper energies.   In the Chinese model, aging occurs when we are drawing down our essence or reserves at a faster rate than we are building them up.

There are many excellent resources available if you are chronically having a hard time sleeping well.  My personal and clinical experience says that proper diet, exercise, and lifestyle behaviors with a short term assist from Chinese herbs and possibly acupuncture is a far superior alternative to over the counter or prescription sleeping medications.  The earth is spinning.  Enjoy it.

Where I Work

My Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture clinic in DC overlooks a tributary of Rock Creek Park and provides a beautiful and welcoming environment.

Tennis Elbow. Doing It Right.

Western medicine has long treated tennis elbow with cortisone shots and the application of ice.  Surprise. Surprise.  It turns out that studies now show that cortisone shots are actually detrimental to long term healing.   Ice of course would prove to be of no value since tennis elbow is not an inflammatory condition..   I believe that the suggested therapy suggested by Chinese medicine of acupuncture and the application of heat makes much more clinic sense.

Cathy on Morning Edition

Here is the link to the audio of Cathy's appearance on NPR's Morning Edition. Enjoy.

Home Cooking

My wife Cathy, who is an accomplished home cook and food blogger, will be featured on National Public Radio's Morning Edition on Friday, August 27th. Cathy's blog is both entertaining and informative. The Morning Edition segment will be with Linda Wertheimer of NPR visiting Cathy in the kitchen while she cans some of her favorite recipes.

Recent Study on High Fructose Corn Syrup & Pancreatic Cancer

Aug 2 (Reuters) - Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

"They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. "Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different," Heaney's team wrote.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," Heaney said in a statement.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Anti-inflammaotory Drugs and Ovulation.

There is some evidence that taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) may interfere with the chemical signals which allow release of the egg at ovulation time, producing a syndrome known as LUFS or luteinised unruptured follicle syndrome. This phenomenon was noticed in women taking either the standard class of NSAIDs or the new generation COX-2 inhibitors. Stopping the medication reversed the effect, and ovulation was no longer delayed. (British Journal of Rheumatology35(5:458-462)

Is it all about the neurotransmitters ?

The compound adenosine is key to acupuncture's effectiveness, according to a study in Nature Neuroscience. Despite acupuncture's 4,000-year history, little is known about the biological pathways that enable carefully placed needles to relieve pain in many patients. Researchers mimicked acupuncture in mice by placing and gradually rotating a needle at a point just below the knee, for 30 minutes. Levels of adenosine, a neurotransmitter, rose 24-fold in the tissue fluid surrounding the needle. Mice injected with an inflammatory substance in their paws and given acupuncture displayed fewer pain symptoms than mice that didn't get acupuncture. But mice genetically engineered to lack a certain adenosine receptor didn't benefit from the acupuncture session at all—further evidence of adenosine's role. Blocking enzymes that break down adenosine made the acupuncture much more effective, tripling the level of adenosine near the needle and extending pain relief from about one hour to about three hours.

Mounting Evidence of Acupuncture Increasing IVF Success Rates

Most studies are quite small but they continually point to the positive effects that acupuncture can have on IVF success rates.

Preconception Strategies No. 4 - Control Your Weight

Approximately 12 percent of all infertility cases can be traced to weight problems. This is split almost evenly between those you weigh too much and those who weigh too little. Seriously obese women are infertile at almost double the rate of normal weight women. Seriously obese men are 50% more likely to be infertile.

In overweight women, one important contributing factor to infertility is the estrogen that is made in fat cells. The more fat cells results in more estrogen. Increased estrogen prevents ovulation (like in birth control pills). These estrogen producing fat cells also produce inflammatory substances and increase insulin levels, both contributing to infertility.

Underweight women, without adequate amounts of body fat, can't produce enough estrogen. Insufficient nourishment lowers FSH and LH levels, which creates too little estrogen, resulting in irregular cycles, poorly developed follicles, and a poor or nonexistent ovulation.

You can maximize your fertility by finding and maintaining a healthy weight.

Preconception Strategies # 3. Sleep

The benefit of good quality and a sufficient quantity of sleep is an overlooked and underrated aspect of a healthy lifestyle that influences reproductive health. Chinese medical theory states that the body's deepest energetic reserves, in the form of Kidney yin and Kidney yang, are rejuvenated and nourished during deep and restful sleep. Kidney yin and yang are the source of reproductive and sexual energies and should be protected, especially after the approximate age 35 for most women. Poor sleep will thus weaken Kidney yin and Kidney yang.

Inadequate sleep will have adverse health benefits including the weakening of the body's ability to metabolize food, manage stress, fight off infections, and maintain proper hormonal balance.

Chinese medicine never solely focuses of the treatment of symptoms (i.e. poor sleep/insomnia) but seeks to treat the underlying imbalances through the diagnostic methodology of pattern discrimination. There are several patterns (imbalances) that can lead to poor sleep. A properly trained TCM practitioner can suggest the appropriate lifestyle changes, Chinese herbal formulas or acupuncture protocols to help one achieve a restful and rejuvenating sleep.