The Inconvenient Stones

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Bladder stones, kidney stones, gall stones, gout—all can present quite a challenge if you happen to produce them. Imagine being scared to eat because you may end up writhing on the floor with gall stones. Or how about feeling a twinge in your lower back and having that fleeting thought, “Oh, no, I hope I don’t have another kidney stone!”

In my case, it was a bladder stone: a 1.5 cm bladder stone rolling around my bladder; the photo on the right shows what it looked like after my doctor blasted it into pieces and removed it. Without getting too graphic, attempting to urinate was always an unknown experience, depending on exactly where the stone was positioned at any given time and whether it was blocking the urethra. Painful? Not always. Inconvenient? If you can’t evacuate your bladder completely, you feel the need to go more often. So yes, you bet it was inconvenient.

Not anymore. I had the stone blasted and removed last Friday. It was not a comfortable 24 hours, but my body is working as it should again. Once you’ve had a stone, any type of stone, that’s the greatest risk factor for getting another one. Is it preventable? Most likely not, but I’ll happily take a few stone-free years. Are there things that we can do to reduce the risk? Yes, and I’ll cover those on Saturday.

Insider Conference Call

The next Insider Conference Call is tomorrow night. This call will include an Aging with a Vengeance topic related to muscle mass. Also, I’ll answer Insider questions. This year is dedicated to helping you become the best version of yourself, so it’s time to consider whether you’d benefit from an Insider membership. Sign up by 8 p.m. ET and you can participate.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Why You Need Taurine

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Two years ago, I wrote about an episode of food poisoning that Paula and I both had. It was gut wrenching, literally, but it may have been a good thing. How is that possible? Believe it or not, it might have been a training session for our microbiomes.

Scientists have been examining ways to reduce our dependence on antibiotics, and that includes studying the way the microbiome responds to bacterial infections. They have exposed rodents to specific bacterial pathogens and then studied how the animal’s gut responds. When they later expose the animals to the same or similar pathogenic bacteria, the response is significantly reduced. How?

The second exposure caused an increase in the probiotics that release hydrogen sulfide; this chemical interferes with the pathogenic bacteria’s ability to produce energy, thus reducing the negative effects of the invader. The microbiome “remembered” the invader and responded with the correct defense. They further explored how taurine supplementation would impact the response; because taurine contains a sulfonyl group, it supports the production of hydrogen sulfide. They found taurine was effective to increase production and reduce the impact of the pathogens.

Taurine is found only in animal sources; seafood leads the list. However, the body can make taurine from cysteine; that may help as long as a person, carnivore or vegan, gets all the amino acids. Taurine is also found in energy drinks and assorted sports products. We’re not at the point where a specific quantity of taurine can be recommended for suspected food poisoning, but it’s good to know that our microbiome may be trained against some food-poisoning pathogens.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References: Call. 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.12.011

Planning Your Infrastructure Upgrade

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In order to give you some ideas to help you focus on your body’s infrastructure, I’m going to share my list. I’ll give you my issues and why I feel they’re problems for me; I hope that will stimulate your thinking so you can determine your infrastructure upgrades for 2021. I don’t know that I can accomplish all of them in a single year, but I do know I can make a good start, and that’s what I’m hoping you will do as well.

Increase Muscle Mass

If there’s one getting-older issue that I completely underestimated, it’s the loss of muscle mass. It just sort of crept up on me and while I can’t quantify it in terms of pounds or percentage, I know I’ve lost strength in my upper body, and my legs seem to be a shadow of their former selves. Part of the reason that my legs lost so much mass, I believe, is directly tied to my inability to run consistently. I have no idea when I’ll be able to run freely again, if ever, so strength training is going to be critical to increase strength if not mass.

Improve Skin Quality

I have to confess that I never examine my skin. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my face in the mirror, and I ignore my arms completely. But lately I’ve noticed that my skin is thinner and a slight scrape against the door frame that doesn’t even hurt can leave a huge purple spot. I’m not trying to recreate the quality of skin I had in my 20s, but I know it can be better than it is. (Has anyone in my household been nagging me about this for years? Um, maybe.)

Decrease Body Fat

The one that drives me crazy is the increase in body fat around my waist. I weigh 45 pounds less than my highest body weight ever, yet my waist circumference is greater now than it was then. The reasons are complicated, from the loss of muscle mass reducing metabolic rate to the gradual reduction in hormones as I get older. I know that there’s no such thing as spot reduction, and I don’t know if the general rule “you lose it first from where you put it on last” applies as you get older. But aside from increasing muscle mass, this one is just not acceptable and is a priority for me.

Increase Bone Mass

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have osteopenia. In fact, I’m one-tenth of a Z-score from having osteoporosis. I have improved my vitamin D and calcium intake since my last bone-density test. I’ll find out in April whether that has resulted in any change. I’m not interested in continuing to be the amazing shrinking man, so this is an internal infrastructure change that must happen in 2021.

Improve Posture and Balance

This one seems a lot less obvious, but it’s still critical to overall health. Why? Because working on improving posture now, which means resetting the resting “tone” of the postural muscles will help with balance as we get older, and balance is critical if we hope to make it to an advanced age. The inner ear is part of it, but our ability to be able to move and do the things that we want to do can be dramatically impacted by poor balance. The modifications in muscle mass and fat mass, as well as bone mass, will have an impact, but it’s also critical to specifically work on posture and balance movements as well.

The Bottom Line

There you have it: my infrastructure plan for 2021. I’ve begun working on some, but there’s still research to read to find better solutions. That will include different approaches to exercise, whether weight training, stretching, or aerobic exercise. There could be specific dietary approaches that apply rather than just cutting calories. Supplementing with nutrient isolates and specific dietary supplements may also be part of the solution.

How about you? You may have cholesterol and HbA1c that needs to get lowered, cardiac output that needs to increase, and a microbiome overhaul; maybe you need to build strength in specific areas to compensate for arthritis and loss of cartilage.

Identify your three to five areas and write them down. As the year progresses, I’ll share the solutions I’ve found with you because my goal hasn’t changed: to help you become the best version of yourself. Specify where you want to go and let’s get started.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Improving Your Body’s Infrastructure

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We need to plant our trees before we want the shade and fix our systems before they break.

I read that quote from Seth Godin in his daily blog last week, and it spoke to me. I immediately emailed him and explained it embodied what I want to teach you, my readers, on how to approach health; I wanted to use it giving him the attribution. He said no need and good luck.

My goal is to focus on lifestyle changes to make us the best version of ourselves. It’s much easier to prevent disease than treat it. It’s critical to make all our bodily systems as strong as they can be to prevent them from breaking down. It’s amazing that we will change the oil and filter in our car and replace furnace filters to make sure our car and home systems work well, but we don’t think of the food we eat as critical to making sure every system in our body works correctly and we don’t prioritize our annual check-ups.

What systems of yours need repair, tune-up, or preventive maintenance? I’ve given a lot of thought on that for my body, and I’ll share those thoughts with you Saturday. Feel free to share yours with me by replying to this memo; maybe you’ve thought of something I haven’t. It’s time to get our body’s infrastructure prepared for the health challenges we most assuredly will face.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Using Melatonin to Treat COVID-19

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Today’s research paper is a type of study that uses large datasets to examine the relationship between successful treatments for people with COVID-19 and related viral infections. Let’s take a look.

Network-Based Drug Repurposing

To say that this is complicated is a tremendous understatement, but let’s give it a go. Researchers identified specific targets for the many different strains of COVID and SARS viruses, including all of the research on the receptor targets in the body for every COVID-related virus, such as the ACE2 receptor. Then they examined each drug that has been used to treat people with the virus to see how effective it was, along with drugs that had specific receptor targets when used for other reasons. Researchers weren’t looking for a cure; they wanted to determine whether specific symptoms in various parts of the body improved such as the lungs, the heart, fatigue, etc.

They started with dozens of receptors and over 2,000 FDA-approved medications, and after running the initial analysis, they reduced the number of drugs to 135. They ultimately came up with three pairs of medications that could be effective in treating COVID-19: sirolimus plus dactinomycin, mercaptopurine plus melatonin, and toremifene plus emodin. I would wager that five of those are medications you’ve never heard of, but you’re probably acquainted with melatonin. That’s what caught my attention, so let’s take a look at why melatonin would be included in a potential treatment for COVID-19.

Melatonin as an Antiviral

In their explanation, researchers said melatonin has been reported to have a potential for treating antiviral infection because of its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. As suggested, melatonin can indirectly impact the ACE2 receptor, which is a key target of the COVID-19 virus. Mercaptopurine blocks specific papain-like proteases such as the ACE2 receptor; the hope is that the combination will block the ACE2 and other target receptors from the virus and reduce the inflammatory response.

The Bottom Line

The researchers say there’s a long way to go before this combination can be used to treat COVID-19—pre-clinical and clinical trials for sure to test whether this combination actually works to treat the virus.

When it comes to melatonin, it makes sense to add it to our immune-boosting regimen. Its mechanism of action is different from the zinc, vitamin D, and vitamin C we may already be taking. The question is how much? I don’t have a specific answer because there’s still so much research to review. But I’m going to begin with 6 mg. That’s not too much and even if it doesn’t work for immune boosting, the potential benefits for memory, etc., make it worth taking; take it at night, of course, because of its ability to help you sleep. When I’ve reviewed more research, I may be able to give you a more definitive answer. In the meantime, there’s no apparent downside to taking melatonin. If you feel you need the additional immune boosting—and who doesn’t—give it a try.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41421-020-0153-3

How Melatonin Affects Memory

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Most people understand that melatonin functions as a neurotransmitter and can help with sleep. What is now apparent is that melatonin also has powerful antioxidant capabilities, especially as it’s related to the mitochondria, as well as other neurological functions related to memory, according to new research papers.

Researchers used an interesting test of memory in this study. When mice are exposed to a new object, they spend a lot of time examining it on first exposure; when they’re familiar with objects, they have a tendency to ignore them. Researchers exposed young and older mice to new objects and then gave some of the mice a dose of melatonin and two of its metabolites. All the young mice treated the new object as something familiar the next day. The older mice that were not given melatonin said, “Huh? What’s that?” However, older mice that were given melatonin 15 minutes after exposure seemed to remember the new object up to four days later.

The conclusion was that this is a first step to see if melatonin can help with memory in people with cognitive decline, an initial stage related to Alzheimer’s disease. There’s not enough research to say it will work the same way in humans, but there seems to be no downside to taking melatonin on a regular basis with the exception that we don’t know the dosing. If you’ve been taking melatonin for sleep, you may be getting side benefits.

Insiders and Members
In the New Year’s Day memo, I talked about assessing your current health and fitness. I’ve just posted a new Straight Talk on Health that delves into the details of how to assess each category of health. When you log in at drchet.com, follow the Straight Talk on Health link and check it out.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References: J Biochem Mol Toxicol. 2020 Feb;34(2):e22430. doi: 10.1002/jbt.22430.

Happy New Year!

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Welcome to 2021! I’m looking forward to teaching you how to be healthier, leaner, and fitter this year—in other words, how to be the best version of yourself.

The first day of a new year is always exciting. What I’d recommend is that you use today as well as the rest of the weekend for reflection and analysis. If you want to change your diet, you have to know what you’re eating right now. If you want to improve your strength, you have to know how strong you are right now. We could go through every possible health goal, from managing type 2 diabetes to losing a significant amount of body fat, but it all starts with knowing where you are right now.

The way you end 2021 will not be the way that you begin it. Think of babies: they learn to hold their head up, how to roll over, and sit up. Then they learn to crawl and creep, then stand, take steps holding on to something, and finally those wobbly steps when they start the process of walking and then running. At each step of the process, they’re learning and building for the next step. One more thing: they fail. A lot.

Keep that in mind as you decide how you’re going to do what you need to do to make the best version of yourself in 2021. Approach it in a step-wise manner, and it starts with assessing where you are right now.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Updates as 2020 Finally Ends!

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2020 was one heck of a year for health news. Someone sent me an email with the hope that when 2020 turns 21, it doesn’t start drinking! I don’t know if we would survive it. All kidding aside, we’ve all been impacted whether we caught the virus or not, and it’s time to plan for the path we want our health to take in 2021. Here are my plans for DrChet.com in 2021.

Memos will still be free. They’re going to be coming twice a week in 2021 on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I’ve been taking one topic and splitting it into three Memos; now I’ll be splitting it into two Memos, which I think will be better for you and for me. I intend to do more teaching via video and audio, and I want to carve out time to prepare for those. I’m also going to cull my email list: if people haven’t opened a Memo for six months or more, I’ll remove them from my master email list. It’s inefficient to keep sending emails to people who may not want them anymore. I’ll continue to promote the emails on Facebook, so if you’re reading them there, no point cluttering up your inbox. If you get cut and you want to resubscribe, it’s easy at DrChet.com.

Memberships will remain the same price for 2021, but I’m adding more features. You’ll get more content that’s applicable to your health and that of your clients. If you’re in the health business, you can deduct the cost of membership at DrChet.com as a business expense—just one more reason to become an Insider or Member today.

Health Goals should be top of mind right now; this is the time to decide how you want your health to change in 2021. Take the time to think what you really want your health to be besides the typical goal of losing weight. Do you need to improve your nutritional health? What do you want to be able to do that you can’t? Do you need more strength, more stamina, or better flexibility? And if you had to prioritize one, which would it be? The choices are endless, but there are two questions you have to ask yourself:

  • What do you really want?
  • What are you prepared to do to get it?

That’s why our tagline remains the same: What are you prepared to do today?

Have a safe New Year’s Eve, and I’ll see you back here on January 1!

        Dr. Chet

Merry Christmas!

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It’s safe to say 2020 certainly has been challenging; many things have impacted our lives that we really had no control over. The one thing that we could control is how we responded to those challenges. Maybe you forgot that with all the noise from so many sources.

Here’s my gift to you. Stop. Take a deep breath, maybe a couple. Repeat these words: I am in charge of me. Repeat it until you mean it. Take another deep breath and get on with taking charge of your health.

You can complain about masks and no holiday get togethers and no traveling and on and on, or you can get about taking charge of you and start working toward the best health you’ve ever had. When this pandemic fizzles out, and it will fizzle out sometime in 2021, you’ll be ready to get back to living life with more gusto than ever before. In the meantime, follow the rules so we can all get back to living our lives sooner.

From my family to yours, here’s hoping for a wonderful 2021. And as always: What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

The Bottom Line on Omega-3s

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When you consider the research studies I reviewed last week and this week on omega-3 fatty acids, they may seem confusing. The reason is that in both of those studies, they were looking at very specific outcomes. In last Thursday’s memo, it was changes in the quantity of specific cytokines, chemicals that are inflammatory in nature. In the study from Tuesday, it was for reduction of cardiac events. There are other ways that omega-3s can contribute to health, and I thought a little review would be in order.

Cellular Membranes

Cells seem to work better when they contain omega-3 fatty acids. Remember, a cell has an exterior wall of a lipid bilayer. If the diet contains a high amount of saturated fat, a high amount of saturated fat becomes part of that lipid bilayer. If the diet contains more omega-3 fatty acids, whether by eating fish or by taking a dietary supplement, the cell membranes contain a higher proportion of omega-3 fatty acids. While the mechanisms are not known, the cells seem to function better when they contain more omega-3s.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Nerve tissue seems to function better when there’s a high amount of DHA in the bloodstream; DHA supplementation seems to be beneficial for nerve problems such as migraine headaches, depression, and Parkinson’s disease. It’s not a cure, but somehow the omega-3s become integrated into those nerve cells and they work better. The same holds true for the eyes; vision is dependent on the nervous system to operate properly, and high DHA appears to benefit eye health as well.

Hormone Control

The study I reviewed last Thursday focused on one type of inflammatory chemicals called the cytokines, but there are other pro-inflammatory hormones that may be better controlled with both high EPA and DHA supplementation. Cortisol is a known stress hormone. In times like we’re experiencing now and for those who are overweight or obese, cortisol levels are higher; that may be due to the increased presence of saturated fat. If omega-3s become part of triglycerides, the potential for inflammatory hormones such as cortisol can be decreased.

There’s also the possibility that persistent use of both EPA and DHA reduces atherosclerotic plaque, the hard layer of fat that builds up in arteries, or it may prevent cholesterol from being manufactured in the first place. While it’s too long of a process to explain in a Memo, our bodies make cholesterol two carbon molecules at a time. When there’s a higher amount of saturated fat, the process can speed along unabated; but when there’s a high percentage of omega-3 fatty acids present, the process gets interrupted. We don’t know the mechanisms; we just know omega-3s help.

The Bottom Line

Those are some of the possible ways omega-3 fatty acids are used for our health. Undoubtedly there are many more that haven’t been discovered or haven’t been examined in enough clinical trials at this point. The most important thing for you and me is to make sure that either we eat several servings of fatty fish per week or we take up to four grams of high EPA-DHA omega-3 supplements every day—let the science work it out later. Our job is to provide our body with nutrients that are beneficial.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet