My Worst Thanksgiving Ever

I am taking a break from writing about health issues here to promote my new book My Worst Thanksgiving Ever which is an account of the abduction of my son Benjamin by the U.S. embassy in Nicaragua over the Thanksgiving weekend of 2013. Even worse, I was subsequently blamed for "abandoning" him despite being mugged 5 times in two nights trying to find him. That just confirms one of my sayings: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

So please do me a favor and download the book. It will be available for free for the next three days. You can download a free Kindle Reader here. There are also free versions for your iPhone or Android device.

Download, read, relate, and pass on the news. I really appreciate it.

Wheat Belly

This is a re-post from 2014. The advice is timeless.

Anyone who has followed my dietary advice knows that my first recommendation is to ditch the wheat and all other products that contain gluten. When I talk about "diet" I don't mean losing weight necessarily (although that will follow) but rather your nutritional lifestyle. My revelation about going wheat-free came about with a talk one day at a Starbucks with the author of the book Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, William Davis, MD. In my own experience, I lost 30 pounds in six weeks when I first started the diet then another 10 after I incorporated a "cheat day" once a week. A cheat day is the one day a week (I chose Friday) when I would eat what I wanted and as much as I wanted. Despite the fact that I never got hungry following Dr. Davis' advice, my metabolism did eventually slow down and I revved it back up by pigging out one meal a week.


But the "diet" part is actually two-fold: avoid gluten AND avoid sugars and simple starches. While "Wheat Belly" measures the effects of carbohydrates on a person's insulin response, I found it easier to stick with the standard Glycemic Index, avoiding "fast carbs" and consuming only "slow carbs." Those phrases were popularized by Timothy Ferriss in his book The 4-Hour Body . Warning: not for the faint-hearted. He also gave me the idea of the cheat day. The thing I like best about Ferris is that he tries his ideas on himself first. This just supports Dr. Mangold's Rules for Good Living No. 2: Never Trust a Fat Dietitian.


Search for "Glycemic Index" and you will find no lack of sites that not only explain what the term means, but also give you lists of foods that are low and high GI. Sugars and simple starches are highest, while more complex veggies are low. Simply put, I did fine with cabbage, asparagus, kale, spinach, nuts, and legumes. Dr. Davis narrows the choices down even more but I still lost weight eating non-recommended foods. He also has a Wheat Belly Cookbook. As I said, I never went hungry nor should you.
Here's to your start of healthy eating!

A MESSAGE FROM THE HEART

I had a heart attack (acute myocardial infarction or AMI in doc-speak) in February 2015. The pain was atypical. Most AMI victims describe their pain as in the center of the chest (substernal), “crushing” or “tight,” and with radiation of the pain to the left shoulder and/or arm. My pain was sharp, very much like the pain I had when blood clots in my right leg broke off and went to my right lung (pulmonary emboli). It was right-sided, and did not radiate anywhere. Because it did not look like a regular heart attack, I took two aspirin and went to bed to “sleep through it.” The aspirin was a good idea; not seeking medical attention was stupid..

I finally went to a physician a month later. An EKG showed that I had heart damage to the lower lateral part of the left ventricle (inferolateral). A cardiac catheterization showed I have a 30% blockage of my left anterior descending artery (The “Widow Maker”) and an echocardiogram showed damage to a portion of my heart downstream (distal) to the block.

Because the blockage was only 30%, I didn’t need a stent or bypass surgery. My cardiologist started me on the “ASA protocol" for heart attack victims: a baby aspirin a day, a statin drug, and an ACE inhibitor. ASA is also the medical abbreviation for aspirin which is acetylsalicylic acid. Statin drugs like atorvastatin are cholesterol medications that have been found to decrease the likelihood of subsequent heart attacks. Angiotensin Converting Enzyme inhibitors lower blood pressure, relax arterial smooth muscle tone, and treat congestive heart failure, a common complication of AMI’s. Most patients are also started on a beta-blocker. I was already taking metoprolol for high blood pressure and a heart arrhythmia so the cardiologist doubled my dose. I feel like a walking pharmacy but when you consider the alternative…

A similar event recently happened to a friend of mine who was smart enough to get medical attention immediately. According to his facebook reports, he was actually undergoing angioplasty when a big thrombus broke off and occluded a distal artery completely. The cardiac team was able to minimize damage immediately though. His take home message: don’t take chest pain lightly. Better to look silly if it is nothing than to be dead. I heartily agree.

I’ve reconsidered my supplements since the heart attack. If you follow my regimen, please note that these are what I take, and that even supplements have side-effects. For example, I now take 1,000 International Units of fish oil daily. You can substitute with krill oil if you think that squeezing oil out of a fish’s body is disgusting. Fish oil has amazing benefits, including positive effects on cholesterol, skin, neurons, and arterial smooth muscle. But it can “thin” your blood so there is a slightly increased risk of bleeding events. As for me, I will take that risk.

Antioxidants are important for cardiac health, too. I now take 500mg of Vitamin C twice a day as well as 400 IU’s of Vitamin E twice a day. More than 800 IU of E provides no added benefits so don’t waste your money. Take all vitamins with meals. Fat soluble supplements like fish oil and E are better absorbed with meals that contain the greatest amount of fat of the day.

Other supplements I take include Vitamin D (a blood test showed I was low), probiotics, B-complex, and enzymes. I am taking a look at another enzyme, serrapeptase, to see if it will help resolve my clot. Briefly, serrapeptase (Serratio Peptidase) is a proteolytic enzyme, which means that it digests protein. It is produced by bacteria in the gut of silkworms and is used to digest their cocoons. Preliminary research indicates that Serrapeptase may even help inhibit plaque buildup in arteries, thereby preventing atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and a resulting heart attack or stroke. So far, the research does seem to be preliminary but I am going to be my own guinea pig. You can order serrapeptase from Amazon.com. I haven’t found it in a health food store yet. I don’t plan on taking more than one capsule a day since more than 40,000 IU daily is not indicated.

No matter what the cardiac cath shows next year, I also plan on continuing the ASA/beta-blocker protocol. It is a life saver.