Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (44 page)

We now know that people with vitamin D deficiencies have higher risks of cancer, such as breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colon cancer, because immune cells in the body also have vitamin D receptors. The current daily recommendation for 400 IU of vitamin D per day is about the minimum amount to prevent rickets, a bone disease widespread in children about a hundred years ago. However, we are really not worried about that disease in aging people. People require more vitamin D than the minimum amount.

SS:
What should a person take daily?

RG:
First of all, they should supplement with a version known as vitamin D3, which is more effective than another type known as D2. As they get older, people need a higher dose—at least 1,000 IU daily. This level not only strengthens bones, but makes people feel they have more energy, are less fatigued and less dizzy. Replenishing vitamin D also improves overall health by reducing cancer risk.

SS:
In addition to treating your elderly patients, what do you do about your overweight patients?

RG:
The average person in the United States is very insulin-resistant.
These people need more human growth hormone. The main function of HGH is to offset the action of insulin, making it easier to manage blood sugar.

There is more to it than lowering sugar intake, however. An article in the
Journal of Urology
(volume 174) shows that testosterone has tremendous potential to treat insulin resistance. Physicians used to think testosterone aggravated insulin resistance; this new information proves otherwise. Testosterone doesn’t make it worse; it makes it a whole lot better.

SS:
Medicine is changing so rapidly. Those doctors who don’t keep up are doing a disservice to their patients. Do you see hope?

RG:
If doctors pay attention. But look at the way we now report health. The World Health Organization no longer talks about life expectancy; it talks about “disability-adjusted life expectancy,” meaning how many years you will continue to breathe on the planet or, rather, how many years you will be awake and vibrant on the planet. What’s scary is that in this country the disability life expectancy for the average woman is about eight years of disability before she dies. What we are trying to do with our new approach to medicine is to keep people healthier right up to their last day on the planet.

SS:
Give me Dr. Greene’s protocol for being healthy up to the last day.

RG:
Most important, it requires being tuned in to your body and your body’s senses. As a brain-related scientist, I always tell people, “Symptoms matter.” To ignore symptoms is like ignoring a fire alarm.

Then make good choices, from eating organic foods to exercising. When people say to me, “I don’t have time to exercise,” my answer is, “You don’t have time not to.” Once you realize that you are so much less effective if you are not fit, the excuse dies away very, very quickly. Also, keep a journal, which is another form of meditation. Studies have shown that journal writing lowers cortisol by destressing your body. Anything that eliminates stress and slows us down in this high-stress environment will keep us healthier and happier. When you manage stress, eat properly, get proper rest, do yoga or
exercise in some form, and still have symptoms, then I know it’s time to fill in the gap with bioidentical hormones and supplements.

SS:
Thank you, Dr. Greene.

DR. GREENE’S TOP FIVE ANTIAGING RECOMMENDATIONS

1. There is nothing our body makes in the way of a hormone that makes us feel better and at the same time does not harm us. There are a lot of drugs that can make you feel great, but all the while they are killing you. Bioidentical hormones are the safer route. Plus, they can be protective against cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The brain functions better at higher levels of estradiol.

2. As we age, we need more vitamin D than the minimum amount—at least 1,000 IU daily of D3.

3. The average person in the United States is very insulin-resistant. These people need more human growth hormone. The main function of HGH is to offset the action of insulin, making it easier to manage blood sugar.

4. Make good choices, from eating organic foods to exercising. When people say to me, “I don’t have time to exercise,” my answer is, “You don’t have time not to.”

5. Get stress under control. Keep a journal, which is another form of meditation, for example. Studies have shown that journal writing lowers cortisol by destressing your body. Anything that eliminates stress and slows us down in this high-stress environment will keep us healthier and happier.

CHAPTER 23
D
R
. L
ARRY
W
EBSTER:
I
NFLAMMATION AND
THE
E
NVIRONMENT

I first met Dr. Webster on a medical radio show in North Carolina and was impressed and moved by his dedication and compassion. His mind is brilliant, and at times I have to slow him down so I can comprehend. His passion for healing and his ability to move forward in understanding the environmental assault on our health as a nation is mind-boggling. Dr. Webster practices in Greensboro, North Carolina. He has been practicing medicine for thirty years, attended Stanford University as an undergraduate, and interned in Oakland, California, at Oakland Alameda Hospital. He spent twenty-five years working in emergency medicine, which prepared him to handle just about anything put before him. He has a lot to teach to all of us
.

SS:
When we first met on the radio, you were so passionate and savvy about bioidentical hormone replacement, and I was thinking: Emergency room to bioidenticals is a circuitous route. How did you make this leap?

LW:
It goes back to my time in the emergency room when I started observing that treating patients with drugs was working short-term, because we were saving lives. But for chronic patients, the methods we were using didn’t seem to be effective. These patients kept coming back again and again, so I started looking into the cause of illness.
Why are people sick? rather than, What drug would treat this symptom? What can I really do to help this person? That’s how I got started into natural medicine.

Then I moved into the treatment of heart disease by eliminating heavy metals from the system. From there, I moved into the allergy realm, using homeopathic medicine. That is when I really started seeing changes in people’s health. Because of these experiences, I started to analyze the body from a metabolic standpoint. I looked at: What does the body need in terms of nutrients? What is causing toxicity? Can the body be detoxified?

All of this led me naturally into the hormone realm. I knew that pharmaceutical drugs altered hormones. There were side effects, too, and I believed there had to be a better way, so I started using the natural approach to hormones. So it
was
a circuitous path.

Because I treat the whole person, hormones are an important aspect of my healing. But I also treat everything from fibromyalgia to chronic fatigue to heart disease, and I use different modalities to do this. It is clear that the environment is having a dramatic effect on people’s health. Even the American Cancer Society says that 90 percent of all cancer is environmental because there are so many aspects of the environment affecting all of our different bodily processes.

SS:
There has been much talk about inflammation, drugs, and disease. The issue seems to be that using drugs to prevent inflammation is counterproductive. It keeps inflammation from doing its normal work of healing and, thus, pushes inflammation deeper into the body. Inflammation then becomes chronic.

LW:
You bring up a valid point. People suffer from so many chronic illnesses, including chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, heart disease, hormone problems, polycystic ovarian disease (a health problem in which the body may make too much insulin, thus affecting numerous bodily systems), and breast cancer, all of which may result from treating misunderstood conditions with drugs that only masquerade as Band-Aids.
Time
magazine once had a cover story calling inflammation “the secret killer,” meaning that it underlies all disease processes from Alzheimer’s to heart disease to cancer. The problems at the cellular level in these conditions or diseases are related to inflammatory
processes, which are coming from the environment, whether it be pesticides, herbicides, heavy metal toxins, stress, or electromagnetic fields. We’re being bombarded at the cellular level, and our cells are inflamed with the production of proteins called cytokines, which inhibit the growth and activity of various immune cells. As a result, our cellular mechanisms just don’t work as well.

If you look at the country of Gambia, Africa, the incidence of breast cancer is three in one hundred thousand, whereas in the United States it’s one in six. In that country people are not overweight, and polycystic ovarian disease is not a factor. These people live longer than any other population on earth. I spoke with the minister of education for that country about the differences in the health of the people of our two countries. He told me, “We’ve got 80 percent unemployment, so we can’t afford your chemicals.”

SS:
That’s quite a statement!

LW:
They don’t eat processed food like we do, either. They may not have as much, but they eat better food. In developing countries, menopause is a much softer process than in this country. One reason is that these countries don’t have the estrogen stimulation from the environment that we do. We have thirty times the incidence of breast cancer in this country. You can’t ignore that fact.

SS:
Clearly, something is not working with the way we are being treated medically in this country. What do you think it is?

LW:
Let me tell you a story: In North Carolina, a young doctor was verbally attacked by the Medical Board for using vitamin B
₁₂
and other natural modalities. At the time, I was treating one of the state legislators who was quite ill and diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I discovered that he had large red blood cells, which is very significant for early pernicious anemia—in other words, a B
₁₂
deficiency.

After giving him regular vitamin B
₁₂
injections for a short time, this legislator was up and jogging. Prior to that treatment, he was falling on his face. As a lobbying move, we produced a testimonial videotape in which the legislator said, “Leave these natural doctors alone.” We sent that video to every legislator in the state of North Carolina in both the Senate and the House, and the bill that would allow physicians to practice natural medicine without being regulated
by the state passed 116–8 in both houses. The passage of that bill allows me to treat people naturally in the way I want without being evaluated by outside parties who have no understanding for what I’m doing.

SS:
But there is a fear in general about alternative medicine, that somehow it’s harmful. Yet look at the problems people are experiencing from mainstream medicine and prescription drug dependency and their side effects.

LW:
As I said, I no longer wanted to treat the symptom of a patient’s problem; I wanted to treat the
cause
. If that’s considered “alternative,” I’m sorry. I just want to do what is best for my patients, and a prescription for a symptom is not always the best way to go.

SS:
Do men have fewer health problems, or is it hard for men to wrap their arms around antiaging and testosterone replacement?

LW:
Men look at these issues as though they are all about erections, and most men have an ego to protect. But they need to understand that there are more testosterone receptors in the heart than anyplace else in the body. Testosterone protects the heart. For that reason alone, testosterone levels are important to check. But testosterone is about vitality and clear thinking. It also builds bone and muscle, so for a man who wants to get great results from his workout, replacement would help tremendously.

SS:
If you were treating former president Clinton for his heart condition, would testosterone be a part of his treatment?

LW:
Absolutely. He might not have a deficiency, but with his stressful life, it would make sense that he would. Just living in a polluted planet with tremendous amounts of pesticides and herbicides that have a major estrogenic effect—that alone will reduce a man’s testosterone levels, and that has been proven. For example, some children are being born “hermaphroditic,” meaning they have both sexual organs. This is environmental in origin. The environmental effect makes men’s estrogen rise, thus telling the pituitary not to produce as much testosterone, so men are being adversely affected.

I have many men who come to me with much higher estrogen levels than women. This is not a good place for a man to be, because it makes balancing hormones very tricky. Environmentally, the major
problem here is that we are swimming in a sea of abnormal estrogens that are confusing the body. This abnormal estrogen is coming from plastic drinking bottles, Styrofoam trays in which we buy our meats, and other sources of plastics.

SS:
With regard to balancing hormones and heart disease, why are heart doctors not suggesting testosterone as therapy for a heart patient?

LW:
All physicians seem to care about is cholesterol, which is really an indicator of low thyroid more than anything else. Generally, they don’t look at cardioprotective compounds such as CoQ10 or L-carnitine. But men are being given Lipitor, Mevacor, and other statin drugs, which basically displaces CoQ10 from the body. CoQ10 provides energy and increases cardiac efficiency. So what happens when you take statins is that the body can run out of energy, and ironically, the heart may be affected. So instead of treating high cholesterol with a statin, a doctor should be looking at the thyroid levels first. In fact, this connection is well accepted in the textbook of endocrinology, where it explains hypercholesterolemia is related to hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid). So when a man comes in with high cholesterol, I first check thyroid TSH, T4, and T3. But more than blood results, you have to go on symptoms such as cold hands and feet, tiredness, high cholesterol, hair loss, weight gain, all symptoms you see in both men and women with underactive thyroid.