Hi Folks: Whenever I travel to other communities I usually buy their local newspaper to kind of get a feel for what’s going on in the area. Some newspapers still run the “Ask Dr. So and So” column and I always read that. Recently, I came across an article written by a prominent physician that discussed postpartum depression. I’ve gotta share this with you.

After the initial description of the problem Dr. So and So had this to say. Postpartum depression is serious and it can make you feel sad, worthless, and guilty; there is no known medical cause for the problem: and hormonal fluctuations or the stress of having a new baby may be the culprit. Really? That’s what the good doctor thinks. Folks, that’s still the prevailing wisdom regarding this debilitating condition. Well here’s what the best and brightest suggest for treatment of this malady of unknown origin.

Since medicine primarily treats symptoms of disease there are lots of treatments available, usually starting with the most popular treatment which is medicine. Most often anti-depressants are prescribed. They say it’s okay to take these while you’re breastfeeding. If that doesn’t work, next you can try some psychotherapy. And folks if the psychotherapy doesn’t work you can always try electroconvulsive therapy (shock treatments). Remember these treatments are recommended for a condition of no known cause.

Okay folks; the truth is postpartum depression for most women is caused by deficiency of the B complex vitamins which is brought about by poor diet and the developing fetus drawing off of mom’s B vitamin stores. You simply cannot produce a seven pound ten ounce bundle of joy and do well by eating McDonald’s and HoHo’s. And washin it all down with a pop. And don’t forget, the more babies you produce with a diet like that, the problem gets worse with each additional baby.

If the problem is B vitamin deficiency it’s easy to see why the drugs, psychotherapy, and shock therapy would be ineffective. They ignore the underlying cause of the problem. As always, to resolve serious health problems, you can’t concentrate on symptoms. Instead, you must look for the cause and treat accordingly.

If you, your friends, or family members are suffering with postpartum depression try taking some good quality B vitamins regularly. You’ll see improvement quickly but it could take up to a year to repair a long standing B vitamin deficiency. I recommend Bio 3BG’s from Biotics Research at three tablets taken three times daily. Remember, you’ve also got to clean up that diet and eat better stuff.

Yours in Health

Dr. Grondin

Hi folks: This month I want to tell you about my recent visit with Dr. Mark Franzen who practices chiropractic in northern Kentucky. We went to chiropractic college together and have been friends ever since. The other day he was describing to me how he explains chiropractic philosophy to new patients coming into his practice and his explanation was so eloquent and the logical that I was inspired to share it with you, so here goes.

There are four main scientific principles in which chiropractic builds its solid foundation.

1.      The human body is a self-healing and self regulating organism. For example, if you cut yourself, you don’t  have to think about the wound healing, the body’s innate intelligence does this on its own.

2.      The nervous system is the master system of the body.

Every experience and expression is processed through your nervous system. The central nervous system consists of your brain and the spinal cord. What calls your immune system to action? What controls and regulates the healing process? What signals your gland to secrete hormones and enzymes? What tells your muscle to contract? Your nervous system.

3. Any interference and stress within or on the nervous system will negatively impact the body’s ability to self-regulate and self-heal.

     These interferences do indeed take place and they’re called subluxations. If lifestyle stress and interference is not addressed and your body continues to experience daily abuse and neglect… then disease and illness is inevitable. How do these subluxations occur? Lifestyle stress like injuries, poor diet, other chemical stressors and even emotional stress usually cause subluxations. In many cases, subluxations don’t exhibit any symptoms yet they still cause inflammation and interference to the nervous system. This is why it’s so important for everyone including children to get their nervous system checked. The lines of communication between your nervous system and the body are interfered with and disease results. Sometimes without you knowing there’s a problem.

4. Chiropractors are trained experts in locating and removing interference in the nervous system through              

    adjustments.

     Chiropractors spend the same amount of hours studying anatomy and physiology as medical doctors but where the training differs is that when MD’s start studying drugs and surgery techniques, chiropractors focus on subluxation analysis and chiropractic adjusting techniques. It’s an entirely different approach to healing. Chiropractors spend hundreds of hours learning how to find subluxations that cause interference to the nervous system and then learning techniques for removing the interference.

Chiropractic is a beautiful system of healing based on sound scientific principles.

Principles we can all live better with. Get your nervous system checked!

Yours in health

Dr. Grondin

Sally Field could sell snow to an Eskimo. Every night she’s on the tube
selling Boneva, the osteoporosis drug. She so reassuring I just wanna get up
and take a pill....... Any  pill. Make my bones stronger. She’s goooooood.
Oscar good.  But I hope you keep in mind that she’s a paid actress, Right?
Before you buy the pitch, you might want to know a little more.

The National Institute of Health defines Osteoporosis as a skeletal disorder
characterized by decreased bone density which makes you susceptible to
fractures. This is a narrow definition for a very complex disorder and most
doctors who work with the condition know it to be an incomplete definition
and bone density is a tiny piece of the puzzle. But if you listen to Sally
and big pharma and the big medical organizations, they give you the
impression that  all menopausal women and most older men are at risk of
getting osteoporosis. Why? Because we now have equipment to measure bone
density! Doctors love it because it’s suppose to predict your risk of
fracture. But wait, the equipment called Dual X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA)
which was developed in the eighties, is flawed.

Did you know ladies that when you go get your bone mineral density (BMD)
tested, the equipment measures you against white women in there 20’s? That’s
right, your T score is your bone density compared to the average white women
in their twenties. When the equipment was being developed, it was decided
that a woman in her twenties would be used as the norm. Does it make any
sense at all to measure a woman in her 40’s, 50’s or 60’s against a woman in
her 20’s. Naturally you’re going to see lower bone density in older women
because it’s normal to lose density as you age. The truth is , nobody knows
what normal is for women in different age groups. So really, how important
is that T-score now? It’s important to big pharma.......... They love it
because now we’ve got a bunch of women, (and some men) with the disease
osteoporosis, (remember, the new definition of osteoporosis is low bone
density). And what do we do for disease? We give drugs!

Many authorities in the field have discredited BMD testing as a predictor of
fracture risk which is really what the equipment was designed to do. But you
don’t hear that from Sally or the media. The marketing of this nonsense is
based on fear. Fear of aging and the associated notion that an aging female
body is a diseased one. Fear that the osteoporosis will lead to a hip
fracture and possibly death. Look folks, the vast majority, and I mean vast,
will not get osteoporosis or a hip fracture.

So you’re going to take a drug because of the fear programming? Because of
an abnormal T-score? You might want to rethink that. There are much better
ways to improve your bone health, but lets look at the drugs.

The class of drugs used to increase bone density are called Bisphosphonates.
You guys know them as Fosomax, Boneva, Zometa, Actonel and Didronel. Do they
work? Do they increase bone density? Yes, they  increase bone density, but
they don’t make your bones healthier, just thicker. Now thicker sounds
stronger but the truth is we really don’t know if that’s true. Why? Because
there’s no test to measure bone strength.

The real question is do the drugs reduce the risk of fracture? I mean that’s
the point of taking them. There are experts on both sides claiming that they
do or don’t reduce fracture risk. It’s far from conclusive either way but
I’ll tell you this. The data being used to support the use of the drugs is
thin at best so far. In one study of Fosomax the actual reduction in
fracture was only 1 %.

Given the rather severe side effects of these drugs, a 1% reduction in risk
ain’t enough to recommend it to my momma! Sorry Sally, no sale.

For a more through evaluation of this issue I’d like to recommend Dr. David
Brownstein’s book: Drugs that don’t work and natural therapies that do. You
can get it by calling 1-888-647-5616.


Yours in health
Dr. Grondin  

More and more studies are coming to light showing that the use of anti
depressants for mild to moderate depression is of questionable value. It’s
my opinion that the reason for this is that the cause of depression has been
oversimplified.

There are a lot of things that can trigger depression but the overwhelming
opinion for the last thirty years is that stress causes depression. And the
simple fact of the matter is that antidepressants are used to treat stress!
If you’re stressed out than the drugs might help you.

Well what if you don’t feel stressed out? What if you’re depressed but not
stressed? It’s unlikely the drugs are going to work for you. More than
likely you’ll just feel doped up and tired. So what do you do if you’ve
tried a course of antidepressants and they didn’t really help? Or the side
effects weren’t worth the benefit of taking the drug. Or you’d rather avoid
the drugs all together. Well, you’ve got options.

Look to the field of clinical nutrition for possible solutions. It’s been my
longstanding opinion that the majority of health problems in the world are
caused by poor nutrition. It’s just one man’s opinion but I’ve had thirty
years of experience taking care of people and I can tell you, those people
who eat right are much better off than those who don’t.

Here are a few helpful tips that I’ve seen work many times over the years.

Start by cleaning up your diet. There are strong links between high sugar
consumption and depression. Sugar lowers an important hormone called BDNF.
It affects your nervous system. All patients with depression have low BDNF.
Also, high sugar intake causes inflammation throughout the body and
inflammation is linked to depression.

Now folks, you know what I mean when I say eat right. But I’ll spell it out.
Eat lots of veggies and good quality animal proteins if you’re not a
vegetarian. Not hamburger! Chicken and fish are quality animal proteins. A
little beef once in awhile.

A group of researchers found that when EPA and DHA rose in the diet
depressive symptoms dropped! These omega 3 fats in your diet will actually
elevate your serotonin and dopamine levels in the blood. (These are
your “feel good” hormones). Eat more fish and supplement your diet with
omega 3’s.

Food additives, colorants, and preservatives can also affect behavior in a
negative way. Eat a lot less food from a box.

A few other considerations that I’ve seen help others include fixing a low
thyroid condition that went undiagnosed because the lab work came back
normal. Fixing a chronic B vitamin deficiency, especially in teenagers. And
simply encouraging exercise. Correcting one or more of these conditions will
almost always make you feel better.

Hope this Helps


Yours in health
Dr. Grondin 

Hi Folks: This month’s article is a brief synopsis of the book “Eat right
For Your Type.” It’s an amazing book and a fascinating read about how the
various blood types developed in humanity over time and how this has a
direct implication for your health and well being today.

The primary point of the book is this; many foods contain proteins called
lectins which can interact with the surface of your body’s cells, causing
them to agglutinate or “clump together. This triggers an immune system
response and all the subsequent problems that go along with that. What’s
interesting about this is that many lectins in foods are blood type
specific. So let’s review the four blood types and what Dr. D’Adamo the
author has to say about them.

Type O blood is the oldest blood type, the original if you will and when we
first roamed the earth humans were hunters so type O people then and now do
best on a high protein diet. These folks should be meat eaters with
vegetables and fruits in the diet as well. Type O people aren’t genetically
designed to digest grains, beans or legumes so they should be limited in the
diet. Also Type O people benefit from intense physical exercise such as
aerobics, martial arts, contact sports, or running. Failure to follow theses
guidelines makes Type O people susceptible to developing blood clotting
disorders, arthritis, ulcers or even allergies.

Type A blood developed next as civilization reached the point where we
became farmers and cultivated plants which lead to the development of towns
and cities. We ate a lot more grains and so a new blood type developed in
response to this. So blood Type A is best suited to a vegetarian diet or
extremely close to it. Meat and dairy products generally make trouble for
blood Type A folks. Also, stress reduction activities that have a calming
effect on the body like Yoga or Tai-chi help blood Type A folks. Failure to
employ these lifestyle strategies makes blood Type A people susceptible to
heart disease, cancer, anemia and Type 1 diabetes.

The next blood type to develop over time was blood Type B, The “Nomad” as
Dr. D’Adamo calls them. The most balanced and flexible of the blood types
which allows for the most balanced type of diet and exercise patterns. Blood
type B people handle most meats except chicken, most grains except wheat and
most fruit and vegetables. Their exercise should be done in moderation.
Failure to follow these guidelines makes blood Type B folks susceptible to
increased risk of diabetes, chronic fatigue and autoimmune disorders like
multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrigs disease.

The most recent blood type, AB is less than a thousand years old and it’s
the hardest to get a handle on. This rarest of blood types seems to respond
best to moderation of just about everything. Most things in the diet that
are bad for Type A and Type B blood are also a problem for AB Types. These
folks respond best to calming activities like Yoga etc.

So there you have it, a very brief summary of Dr. D’Adam’s book which might
prove extremely helpful to you if you’re suffering from some health
condition that isn’t responding to what you’re currently trying. I intend to
incorporate many of the principles of the book into my private practice.
Hope it helps you too.

Yours in health

Dr. Grondin 

Hi folks: this month’s article will focus on the recently reported news that
older women taking supplements have a slightly increased risk of death
compared to older women who don’t supplement their diet.

All the major media outlets reported this story with scary headlines
like “vitamins linked with death in older women”. Now these types of
headlines are designed to instill fear in an attempt to get your attention.
The networks would say this is important news and we’re providing a public
service by making people aware. But frankly I think it’s disingenuous, self
serving and honestly, in some situations could present a health risk to some
people. How? Well what if you’re an “older woman” and you see or hear that
headline? Some would conclude that taking a supplement is a bad idea and
decide to quit taking something that’s beneficial to them. I’ve seen it
happen many times over the years of practice.

So let’s look at why this type of reporting, and in particular, this report
is so messed up. First, the study they reported on was a survey, (a
questionnaire) sent out to 39,000 women in Finland over a period of twenty
years. The average age of the women was 62. Now it’s a big survey but size
is really the only thing going for it. Now in technical terms a survey is
called an observational study. This observational study was published in the
Archives of Internal Medicine and even though it was a relatively lengthy
questionnaire, many important questions went un-asked. Like what diseases do
you have or how long have you had them? What medications are you taking?
When did you start taking the vitamins?  Etc. Important issues related to
health and well being weren’t addressed. So you see, with this type of
survey that focused only on a few vitamin questions you’re really getting
limited information and  it’s really next to impossible to show a direct
cause and effect relationship like “older women taking vitamins increase
their risk of death”. Yet the headlines clearly make that association and I
have to wonder why the media resorts to these types of reporting tactics and
why would they bother to report on this survey that is essentially of little
value to the average Joe and Jane who’s trying to figure out whether they
need vitamins or not.

Well here’s one opinion. It’s just the latest attack on the supplement
industry that’s grown big enough to be perceived as a threat to the
Pharmaceutical industry. Yes I know how it sounds. Every year more and more
people are choosing to supplement their diet and Big Pharma see’s this
billion dollar industry as a threat to their own bottom line. Think they
don’t have any clout with the media outlets? Listen, if they want a message
put out there they simply suggest to the editors and publishers that if they
don’t get their wish they’ll take their advertising dollars elsewhere. We’re
talking about many millions of dollars here. And so news like this gets
reported because it paints vitamins in a bad light.

Is there risk in taking vitamins? Of course. There’s risk in everything. But
a report in 2009 by the United States poison control center shows that since
1983 when they first started keeping data on this stuff, not a single death
has occurred from taking a vitamin. Not one! And yet we hear about surveys
of limited value warning older women that taking vitamins might cause death.
On the other hand JAMA the Journal of the American Medical Association
reported a decade ago that Johns Hopkins found that there were 7000 deaths
per year from medication errors in hospitals. Over 106,000 people die each
year from non-error adverse reactions to medicine. Where’s the risk?

All I’m saying here folks is be suspicious of dubious reporting and don’t
fall prey to fearful headlines. Do your own homework and decide for yourself
what if any vitamins are right for you.

Yours in health
Dr. Grondin