By many accounts, conventional medicine is based on a set of ingrained and misleading beliefs that continue to be practiced by thousands of doctors that, rather than preventing disease or preserving good health, often actually promote illness or disease.

Here are five such health myths that could be negatively impacting your health.

1. Drink Milk for Strong Bones

For decades, physicians and government agencies have drilled into our heads that calcium is the key to strong, healthy bones—and that milk is the best dietary source of this all-important mineral. And how can we not truly believe that milk and other dairy products are the be-all and end-all for good bones? Along with medical professionals touting dairy’s supreme benefits, the dairy corporation has embarked on a campaign advertising the powers of cow’s milk for bone health for almost 20 years—with great success.

Various minerals and other nutrients make up bone, with calcium being a main player. However, if our bones were made strictly of calcium, they would not provide nearly the support necessary to get us through life’s everyday tasks. Bones are made of a variety of substances—including magnesium, vitamins A, D and K, and substances like chondroitin sulfate—that work together synergistically to provide strength, flexibility and resilience.

Not only that, but when it comes to calcium sources, dairy is not your only—or even your best—option. In fact, dairy could have the opposite of its intended effect and actually deplete your bones of important minerals.

Like all animal protein, milk has an acidic effect on your body and lowers the pH of your blood. To get back to a healthier, slightly alkaline state, your body pulls calcium from your bones. Why? Because calcium and other minerals happen to have a great acid-neutralizing effect, and the majority of these alkalinizing minerals reside in your bones.

Once calcium is pulled out of the bones, it leaves the body through the urine, so the net result of consuming dairy is actually a depletion of calcium from the body, despite milk’s high calcium content. In fact, research confirms that long-term consumption of milk and dairy products does not reduce the risk of osteoporotic fractures.

Rather than dairy, get your calcium from leafy green vegetables (kale, spinach, broccoli, Swiss chard and collard greens), raw seeds (particularly sesame and flax) and raw nuts (especially almonds and Brazil nuts). In addition, choose almond or rice milk, which provides calcium without acidifying effects. Finally, for extra assurance that you’re getting enough bone-building calcium, take a calcium supplement every day.

Does this mean no dairy in your diet? No, some dairy in a well balanced diet may be beneficial, however look for a variety of foods to obtain your calcium

2. Save Your Skin By Avoiding the Sun

Yes, excessive exposure to the sun can cause age spots, wrinkles and skin cancer. No one disputes that fact. But avoiding the sun altogether is a mistake, as well.

When you expose your skin to ultraviolet radiation from the sun for mere minutes a day, your body produces vitamin D—one of the most underrated, yet incredibly important nutrients.

Unfortunately, the prolific use of sunscreen to protect against skin cancer has interfered with the body’s ability to absorb ultraviolet rays. This, along with the mistaken medical advice to avoid the sun whenever possible, means that almost 50 percent of the worldwide population is deficient in D—an estimated one billion people!

Research has only just begun to uncover the many benefits of adequate vitamin D in the body. It is necessary for the absorption of calcium, but also for the prevention of certain types of cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, depression and cognitive impairment.

It is nearly impossible to get enough vitamin D strictly through diet. You can take a D supplement, which is effective, but sun exposure is the most reliable and certainly the cheapest way to ensure you have sufficient amounts of this nutrient in your system.

If you’re fair skinned, going outside for just 20 minutes in the midday sun and exposing as much skin as possible can produce up to 10,000 IU of vitamin D! (Darker-skinned individuals may need up to 30 minutes of exposure.)

And don’t worry—your body self-regulates and produces only the D that it needs. So you can’t “overdose” on vitamin D that’s synthesized through sun exposure.

3. You Need Fluoride for Healthy Teeth

Research into fluoride began in 1901, but it wasn’t until 1944 that the first large-scale study of fluoridated water and its effect on tooth decay began in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During that 15-year study, researchers found that the cavities among children born after the city added fluoride to the water supply dropped by more than 60 percent.

Even today, fluoride continues to be dental medicine’s main weapon in the battle against tooth decay. Almost every toothpaste on the market contains fluoride, and most of our water supply now has added fluoride.

However, the safety of fluoride remains hotly debated, mainly because, in addition to preventing cavities, it also potentially causes a whole slew of negative problems. In fact, further research even challenges the notion that fluoride prevents tooth decay, and links it to oral, bone, liver and thyroid cancers, as well as infertility.

There are a range of fluoride free toothpastes readily available

4. Mammograms Prevents Death from Breast Cancer

Medical professionals advocate for yearly mammograms, claiming they can prevent breast cancer deaths. But, the research simply doesn’t pan out.

For one, mammograms not only give false positives, which spur additional testing (exposing the patient to more radiation) and biopsies (which often show no cancer is present), but new research finds that mammograms lead to overdiagnosis and hence overtreatment of breast cancer.

Researchers looked at data from 1976 through 2008 to track how many breast cancers were found early (still confined to the breast) using mammogram, versus those cancers found later, after the cancer had spread.

They discovered that while the use of mammograms did more than double the number of early-stage cancers detected, it didn’t fare so well when it came to late-stage cancer. In fact, late-stage cancer detections dropped by just eight percent.

The researchers concluded: “Despite substantial increases in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer detected, screening mammography has only marginally reduced the rate at which women present with advanced cancer. Although it is not certain which women have been affected, the imbalance suggests that there is substantial overdiagnosis, accounting for nearly a third of all newly diagnosed breast cancers, and that screening is having, at best, only a small effect on the rate of death from breast cancer.”

A healthy lifestyle—eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, avoiding tobacco and reducing your exposure to environmental toxins and estrogen mimics—really is the best way to prevent disease. Of course, if you are in the high-risk category for breast cancer (i.e. you have a strong family or personal history of cancer), screenings are critical. However, if you are healthy and lower risk, discuss your personal need for mammograms with your physician and make an informed decision with him or her.

5. Avoid “Fattening” Coconut

Coconut has an unfortunate reputation. Because it contains so much fat (90 percent saturated fat, in fact), most people think it’s on the list of “no-no” foods. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, coconut is a great source of many amino acids, vitamins and minerals, including potassium magnesium, phosphorus, vitamin C and riboflavin.

There is a big difference between animal-based saturated fats and the saturated fats found in coconuts. Animal fats are made of short-chain triglycerides, while the fat in coconut is actually a medium-chain triglyceride. This type of fat gets transported directly to your liver, where it is converted into energy ready to be used immediately.

Also, 45 percent of the saturated fat found in coconut is lauric acid, which gets converted in your body to monolaurin. This compound, found in breast milk, strengthens a baby’s immune system, helps promote normal brain development and keeps bones healthy. Better yet, coconut has anti-inflammatory and anti-fungal properties.

There are many ways to enjoy coconut’s benefits. There’s the meat, water and milk (made from the meat and water puréed together), as well as the oil, which is great for sautéing and baking. Just be sure to choose organic, unrefined, virgin coconut oil to avoid unwanted heat processing or chemicals.

References: On Request

Sleep is one of our most precious health resources. Without it, our quality of life declines sharply, and we are more prone to a long list of negative health outcomes. Both acute and chronic sleep deprivation cause such drastic declines in performance that a 24-hour period of no sleep, or a week of four to five hours per night is equivalent to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1 percent. It’s no wonder that 20 percent of car accidents are related to sleep deprivation.

Insomnia includes problems falling asleep, frequent awakening, difficulty falling back asleep or waking too early in the morning. It may be classified as transient (lasting a few days to weeks), intermittent (clusters of transient insomnia occurring periodically) or chronic (occurs nightly for longer than a month).

Insomnia can also be classified as either primary—in which it has no known cause and the symptoms can’t be attributed to any typical causes, such as medical, psychiatric or environmental—or secondary, in which the insomnia is the symptom of some other problem such as a physical condition or psychological problem.

The Costs of Insomnia

The average amount of sleep a healthy adult needs is seven to eight hours per night. Inadequate sleep can cause increased heart rate and blood pressure, increased inflammation as measured by C-reactive protein, impaired glucose tolerance, increased appetite (and weight gain) and decreased immune function. Most shockingly, people who reported getting substantially less than seven hours a night had a greater risk of dying than those who didn’t.

Sleep Hygiene

One of the first things to address in people with insomnia is the concept of “sleep hygiene.” Sleep hygiene entails modifying all environmental and behavioral factors that may interfere with sleep. Examples of this include:

• Establishing regular sleep and wake patterns. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Ideal sleep hours for many people are from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
• Utilize your bed for sleep only—don’t watch TV or use a computer in bed.
• Create a relaxing bedroom environment. Make your bed comfortable, keep the bedroom temperature cool and remove all sources of light, including blocking the windows and removing glowing objects such as alarm clocks and phones.
• Clear your mind. Avoid emotionally upsetting situations right before bed, such as arguments, news programs, etc. Try not to bring your problems to bed with you.

Women and Insomnia

Regular physiologic changes in women (puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause) are associated with sleep issues. These tend to worsen in comparison to men over time. More specifically, women are 1.4 times more likely to have insomnia than men, while 35 to 40 percent of postmenopausal women have sleep problems.

Researchers don’t fully understand why this happens. However, the differences are clearly related to the hormonal fluctuations that women undergo. A complex subject in and of itself, postmenopausal hormone balance has many benefits beyond sleep issues and should be addressed.

Common Causes of Insomnia

Cultural

The average amount of sleep reported by adults has decreased by an average of one hour per night between 1959 and 1992, while a study published in 2010 showed a significant increase in the number of people who slept less than six hours a night. These findings are most likely explained by a societal trend toward longer work and family hours that accompany modern lifestyles.

Australian culture is such that it’s common for both adults in a household to work, raise children (and involve them in multiple activities that further detract from rest time) and still attend to all of the duties of running a household.

It would seem the Australian work ethic has created mile-long “to do” lists and responsibilities that leave little time for sleep. In fact, sleep is often looked down upon and even perceived as a weakness. For example, many of my patients view sleep as something that wastes time and impedes their full task-driven potentials.

Diet

Many people claim that eating late in the evening, or eating sugary foods late, will prevent them from falling asleep. This occurs as the body is winding down and preparing to rest, but is then jolted back into working on digesting a meal, not to mention the hormonal rollercoaster that blood sugar variations cause.

Elevated blood sugar and insulin may interfere with sleep, as will the resulting low blood sugar after a high sugar meal, as the body fights to regulate hormones associated with eating rather than sleeping.

Common advice says not to eat within three hours of going to bed. Additionally, having a full stomach and lying down to bed is a common cause of acid reflux, as the stomach contents are more easily able to flow up the esophagus when a person is lying down. This discomfort can further exacerbate sleep issues.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a well-known stimulant that hangs around in your body longer than you may think. The half-life of caffeine is approximately five to seven hours, which means that, in that time, only half of the caffeine you ingested is out of your body.

Seventy-five percent of caffeine will be gone at 8 to 10 hours. In other words, drinking caffeine later in the day means that it will still be in your body at bedtime, albeit in smaller amounts. If you have sleep problems, a good rule of thumb is to avoid all caffeine consumption after 12 p.m.

Alcohol

Alcohol is well known for its sedative properties. While drinking before bed can bring on sleep, it often causes many problems with sleep quality. A study published in December 1996 showed that moderate alcohol consumption six hours before bedtime resulted in reduced sleep efficiency, total sleep time, REM sleep and stage-1 sleep. During the latter half of sleep, subjects woke up twice as often as subjects who consumed no alcohol. Because of the latent effects of alcohol on sleep, it should be avoided entirely by people with insomnia.

Exercise

Vigorous exercise later in the evening causes the body to churn out cortisol and other stimulatory hormones that are responsible for the exerciser’s “high” and can keep you awake. If you prefer vigorous exercise, get it in earlier in the day. Relaxing exercises such as yoga or stretching are better suited later in the evening, as they can help you de-stress and relax your mind in preparation for sleep.

Physical Problems

Medical conditions like an enlarged prostate or gynecologic issues may cause a person to wake up frequently to urinate. Anxiety and depression are notorious for worsening sleep, and elevated cortisol from chronic stress can disrupt sleep patterns. Insulin resistance can also contribute to poor sleep. Getting these problems addressed by your health professional can go a long way toward improving sleep.

Natural Sleep Aids

In addition to addressing the previously mentioned issues, natural sleep aids can help bring the brain into a deeper, more restorative sleep. Natural sleep aids are quite safe (when used alone and as directed) and without the serious side effects of prescription medications.

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain and is readily manufactured in supplemental form as well. Melatonin secretion is influenced by light; that is, decreasing light stimulates melatonin release, signaling our body that it’s time to sleep. Because melatonin helps regulate the sleep-wake rhythm and induces sleep, it is a popular and useful remedy for sleep disturbances. Aim for 3-10 mg before bedtime as needed.

5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) is an immediate precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. Serotonin regulates many brain functions, one of which is sleep. Taking supplemental 5-HTP will influence the production of more serotonin in the brain, which in turn can help with sleep onset. Take 50 to 100 mg as needed.

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is one of the most abundant neurotransmitters in the brain. It functions primarily to slow down brain function, and provide a balance from over stimulation. A study published in November 2008 showed that people with insomnia have 30 percent less GABA in their brains than those without insomnia; low levels were also correlated to more waking after the onset of sleep.GABA is especially helpful in those who “can’t turn their brains off” at night.

There are a range of herbs that directly influence GABA.

Get Your ZZZs

Insomnia is a common condition, with many different causes, most of which can be addressed by addressing lifestyle factors. More stubborn cases of insomnia warrant a complete checkup by your Health Professional, while natural supplements can safely promote better sleep.

The Low-Down On Cholesterol

It seems that everyone is talking about cholesterol these days, but do you really know what it is? What can you do to maintain  healthy cholesterol levels? Cholesterol is a type of fat that is carried around in the blood.  It performs useful functions in the body and is a major building  block for cells and many of your hormones, including oestrogen, testosterone and cortisol. Cholesterol is also important for the synthesis of vitamin D, as well as bile acids which aid in the digestion of fats. Our bodies manufacture cholesterol but it can also be found in foods containing saturated fats. It is important to check your cholesterol levels regularly. Even though our bodies need some cholesterol, having high cholesterol can be bad for your health and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

By now, most of us have heard of bisphenol-A, otherwise known as BPA. This common chemical compound found in hard plastics and in the linings of food and drink cans has been under a great deal of scrutiny over the past decade due to its link to several serious health problems. The list is actually quite extensive and alarming, and includes erectile dysfunction, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, problems with brain function and memory, breast cancer and asthma.

And as if this chemical could not get any more dangerous, new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that long-term exposure to BPA in children can greatly increase the risk of one of the biggest epidemics we’re facing as a nation—obesity.

It’s no secret that children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of BPA. This is why the Food and Drug Administration recently banned its use in the production of plastic baby bottles and toddler cups. But, even so, BPA exposure is nearly impossible to completely avoid. In fact, 92.6 percent of people ages six and over have detectable levels in their urine!

The Obesity Link

In their study, researchers examined the link between body mass index and BPA concentrations in the urine of 2,838 children aged six to 19 years.

They divided the results into four groups (quartiles). After taking into account various factors such as race, age, caloric intake and television watching, researchers discovered that the first quartile—the children with the lowest urinary output of BPA—also had the lowest incidence of obesity (10.3 percent). Those in the second and third quartiles had a 20.1 percent and 19 percent rate of obesity, respectively. The fourth quartile, which included the children with the highest levels of BPA in their urine, had a 22.3 percent rate of obesity.

To put this in perspective, the kids in the third quartile had twice the odds for obesity, and those in the fourth quartile had 2.6 times higher odds for obesity, as compared to the kids in the first quartile.

After further analysis, researchers found this association to be most significant in white children and adolescents.

Reducing Your Exposure to BPA

Since BPA is so widespread, it’s close to impossible to avoid it completely. It may have been banned in baby products, but it still exists in many other plastic products and in the linings of canned goods and aluminum soda cans. Even so, there are a few steps you can take to limit your exposure to this harmful chemical:

• Choose BPA-free or non-plastic alternatives. When buying plastic products such as reusable water bottles and storage containers, make sure the product is labeled BPA-free. Or, better yet, opt for glass food storage containers, and stainless steel water bottles. (One caveat though—stainless steel water bottles sometimes contain plastic liners, so be sure the bottle you choose does not.)
• Avoid #7 plastics. Polycarbonate plastics with the #7 recycling code often contain BPA. The recycling codes with the numbers 1, 2 and 4 are your safest options if you do use plastic products.
• Don’t heat plastic in the microwave. Doing so could cause chemicals to leach into foods or beverages. Place your food on a plate or in a ceramic or glass bowl prior to heating.
• Avoid or limit your consumption of canned food and beverages. The BPA that lines these containers often leaches into the food. If you do eat canned food, you should rinse the contents, if possible, prior to eating it to lessen the amount of BPA you ingest. Probably most disturbing is that ready-to-feed liquid infant formula that gets housed in metal cans appears to have high concentrations of BPA. If you use infant formula, choose a powdered variety that comes in #1 or #2 plastic containers. If you do need to use liquid formula, find types sold in glass or #1/#2 plastic containers.