Natural Way to Health

Achieving & Maintaining Your Optimal Health

May 2008 Vol. 1, Issue 1

Dr. David Brownsteins

Lets Begin Our Journey to Your Good Health Together!

elcome to my newsletter, Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health. I am so excited to be able to share with you my passion for holistic medicine. In my view, holistic medicine is best understood as a combination of alternative and conventional medicine. In this newsletter, I will talk a lot about natural therapies, but I will also talk a lot about drugs. We will continually discuss how to achieve and maintain your optimal health. If a drug is the best way, you will hear it from me. If a natural therapy is superior, you will read it here. There is no alternative biochemistry or physiology. We are searching for the safest and most effective ways to optimize the functioning of your body and, of course, optimizing your health. In future newsletters, we will learn about safe, natural therapies that I have found effective in my practice of medicine. I will also point out to you many of the commonly prescribed drugs that are simply sham therapies. Thats because too many times these drugs do nothing to treat the underlying cause of illness, nor do they promote health. Instead, we will look at the actual mechanism of how these drugs work in the body and determine if they are the most appropriate treatment. I do not wish to imply that there is no place for drugs. Instead, I will provide you with my opinion on when their use is appropriate. As well, I will share with you actual case histories of my patients and show you how these patients have optimized their own health. The

overall aim of this newsletter is to provide you with the information you need to make the best health decisions. My goal is to provide the information you need to not only improve your health but improve your familys health as well. Besides case histories, each month I will answer your questions and give my opinion on medical industry and drug news. We will learn so much together! So, who am I? Let me start off by introducing myself. I am a boardcertified family practitioner from the American Academy of Family Physicians. I have a very busy medical practice in West Bloomfield, Michigan. I have a wonderful wife, Allison, and two children, Hailey and Jessica. We have a busy family life trying to raise teenagers and keep up with all their activities. I have written eight books about natural therapies that I have found effective in my practice, including detailed guides to iodine, thyroid disorders, the healthy aspects of salt consumption, combating arthritis naturally, and

In This Issue . . .
4 Heart Disease, the Misunderstood Killer 4 How Modern Medicines Fail You, the Patient 4 The Eye-Opening Miracle of Natural Therapies 4 Dr. Bs Case History of the Month 4 Hypothyroidisms Secret History 4 Our Unacceptable Record on Heart Disease 4 Learn About Your Own Thyroid Function 4 Ask Dr. Brownstein

2 3 3 4 6 6 7 8

May 2008

books on healthy eating. In addition, I have published papers on clinical research performed in my practice and lectured internationally to doctors and laypeople about my successes using natural therapies. But lets get into a big topic for me, personally and professionally the heart.

My father was very ill. He had a long history of heart disease. In fact, he had his first heart attack at age 40 and a second heart attack shortly thereafter. My father had two bypass surgeries and a couple of coronary angioplasties over the next 25 years. During this time, he suffered continual chest pain, known as angina. By the time I entered medical school, his condition was worsening. He had a pale, pasty color to his face. A little history on my father: He was overweight, ate the wrong food, did not exercise and smoked cigarettes, all much to my consternation. When I had finished my residency, he was on a host of medications to control his cholesterol level, blood pressure and heart rhythm. I remember my dad taking a whole handful of drugs each day. As I learned more and more about these drugs in medical school, I thought he was on the best, most up-to-date therapy medicine could offer. However, he was not doing well. He looked older and was becoming more feeble on a daily basis. As my training went on, his condition worsened. I was sure he was not going to live much longer.

Heart Disease, the Misunderstood Killer

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States. More than 700,000 people die every year from it. Nearly a third of all deaths in the U.S. result from heart disease. We have spent trillions of dollars trying to stem the tide of this insidious killer. What do we have to show for it? Not much. Yes, if you have a heart attack, your chances of surviving are much better now than they were 30 years ago. However, we have not made any progress in preventing the onset of heart disease.

Nearly a third of all deaths in the U.S. stem from heart disease

To understand how heart disease has become the leading killer in the U.S., let me tell you a story about my father, Ellis. As it happens, this is also my story, about how as a young boy, struck by my own fathers suffering, I decided to become a doctor and how my experiences with him led me to turn my back on years of traditional medical training.

Soon after finishing medical school, I was in a very busy family practice in suburban Detroit, practicing medicine as I was trained to do by diagnosing disease and prescribing drugs. The turning point for me, and my father, came about six months later.

Meanwhile, all of six months into my conventional medical practice, I started to have second thoughts. I began to realize that the drugs I prescribed to my own patients were not really treating the underlying causes of the illnesses I saw. Soon enough, I found myself treating the side effects of one drug by prescribing another drug. I realized then that the therapies I prescribed which were perfectly in line with my medical training were not helping my patients become healthier. In

Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health is a publication of Newsmax Media, Inc., and Newsmax.com. It is published monthly at a charge of $49.00 per year and is offered online and in print through Newsmax.com. Our editorial ofces are located at 560 Village Boulevard, Ste. 120, West Palm Beach, Florida 33409. The owner, publisher and editor are not responsible for errors and omissions. Rights of reproduction and distribution of this newsletter are reserved. Any authorized reproduction or distribution of information contained herein, including storage and retrieval system posted on the Internet, is expressly forbidden without the consent of Newsmax Media. For permission, contact the publisher at : PO Box 20989, West Palm Beach, Florida 33416. CEO Christopher Ruddy Publisher Nicholas Moccia Author David Brownstein, M.D. Contributing Editor Greg Brown Production/Art Director Elizabeth Dole To contact Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health send e-mail to: askdrdavid@newsmax.com. Subscription/Customer Service contact 1-800-485-4350 or naturalway@newsmax. com. Send e-mail address changes to naturalway@newsmax.com 2008 Newsmax Media, all rights reserved. Please note that this advice is generic and not specic to any individual. You should consult with your doctor before undertaking any medical or nutritional course of action. Please note all information presented in Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health is for informational purposes only. It is not specic medical advice for any individual. All answers to reader questions are provided for informational purposes only. All information presented in Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health should not be construed as medical consultation or instruction. You should take no action solely on the basis of this publications contents. Readers are advised to consult a health professional about any issue regarding their health and well-being. While the information found in Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health is believed to be sensible and accurate based on the authors best judgment, readers who fail to seek counsel from appropriate health professionals assume risk of any potential ill effects. The opinions expressed in Dr. David Brownsteins Natural Way to Health do not necessarily reect those of Newsmax Media.

May 2008

fact, many of them were making my patients worse. This was a surprise to me. I had wanted to be a doctor since childhood. In fact, I modeled myself after my own family doctor. I grew up with a severe case of asthma and allergies and saw my family doctor frequently. Motivated as a child, I later went to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate student and then earned a medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine. My residency, in a traditional family practice, was in Southfield, Michigan. Now ready to start my career, I began in a conventional, busy family medical practice. Now, at this time in my medical career, I was in no way interested in anything alternative or holistic. Like many doctors, I discouraged my patients from using natural therapies because I felt there was no scientific basis behind them. I would tell my patients that natural therapies had not been properly studied and that I practiced evidence-based medicine. In fact, that is what I had been trained to do.

Sure, his doctors told him how to be healthy, to stop smoking and lose weight. But they also told him he needed to take a statin drug to lower his cholesterol level in order to treat his heart disease. This was pretty standard advice 15 years ago and it is still the mainstream message today. Now, I have no problem with the smoking and weight-loss advice, but I do take exception to the cholesterol advice. I did not think my father had elevated cholesterol levels because he had a statin-deficiency syndrome. In fact, I do not think anybody has a statin-deficiency syndrome. I kept thinking about my dad and his illness, and looking at my patients, and I became uncomfortable with what I was doing in medicine. I started having trouble sleeping at night. After years of preparation and expectation, it was not fun to go to work. One day, out of the blue, I woke up, sat up in bed and blurted out to my wife, Allison, I dont want to be a doctor anymore. Her first response to that idea, well, I cant reprint it here. But her second, more reasoned comment was, You have got to be kidding! This is all that you have ever wanted to do.

At no time does current

You see, medical school training is primarily about disease. Doctors learn how to recognize illnesses and how to diagnose them. Seven years of training to be a proficient doctor had prepared me to look at the world in terms of pathology simply put, I looked for illness first, not health.

medical training teach doctors to think about what health is and how to maintain it

After she calmed down, and reminded me that we had over $80,000 in student loans to pay off, she asked, What are you going to do about it? I had no idea.

How Modern Medicines Fail You, the Patient

Modern medical education means you order the appropriate laboratory or imaging tests, then consult with specialists to confirm the findings. Once verified, the doctor prescribes the treatment for that diagnosis. Normally, treatment is in the form of a single drug therapy to treat the diagnosis for that patient. At no time does current medical training teach doctors to think about what health is and how to maintain it. Instead, doctors learn this disease-and-treatment model and nothing else. That traditional, mistaken approach was hurting my father. I could plainly see it.
May 2008

The Eye-Opening Miracle of Natural Therapies

Around that same, sleep-deprived time, I had a patient who was seeing a chiropractor. He claimed, in the face of my skepticism, that this chiropractor had helped him with his back pain. And he insisted that I meet the man. Now, being a traditional doctor, I was trained not to use chiropractors. We were taught that their therapies were dangerous. I had never met one before, nor did I know exactly what their therapies actually were. But, it was clear from my training that I was to avoid their way of treating patients.

Dr. Bs Case History of the Month

In each issue, I will share with you the story of one of my patients and how sometimes simple alternative approaches to their problems can solve major health problems. Names and some details have been changed for privacys sake, but the problems and their resolutions are real. Dr. David Brownstein
Anna, 88, was admitted to the hospital for chest pains. She was complaining of shortness of breath and chest pain, which was aggravated by coughing or bending over. Now, I have seen Anna for approximately 10 years. She is in great shape and does not look her age. The chest pain began on the weekend and she went to the local emergency room. At the emergency room, the doctors performed all the tests to rule out a heart attack. Those tests included a stress test, an echocardiogram and a cardiac catheterization, where they inject her coronary arteries with a dye to check for blockage. Anna passed all these tests with ying colors. She was in the hospital for four days. Her bill, paid by Medicare, came to just over $45,000. Yet Anna left the hospital with the same chest pain that she went in with. I saw her in the ofce a week later and she was miserable. I am having difculty sleeping because the pain will sometimes wake me up at night. I also dont feel I am breathing right. It is like I cant get a deep breath without pain, she told me. When I saw Anna in the ofce, she looked distressed. I just need to know what is wrong. I was in the hospital for four days, and they cannot tell me what is causing my chest pain, she said. Annas lungs were clear. Her heart rate was normal and her blood pressure was normal. I felt along her front breast bone to nd out where the pain was. She was very tender at the second and third costochondral junctions, on the front of the chest where the second and third meet the breast bone, just below the clavicle. I pushed on that area. Ouch! That is right where the pain is, she said. Whats more, my pushing caused the same kind pain she had been experiencing. Costochondral pain is a common problem. It is a strain of the ligaments that tie the ribs to the breast bone. Just as other ligaments can become strained, like in common sports injuries, so too can this part of your rib cage. The rst sign of such a strain is chest pain. It can come and go, but the pain will be sharp. It is aggravated by reaching for objects, coughing or breathing deep. And this kind of pain is frequently confused

with heart pain. After locating the tender junction on Annas ribs, I examined her spine as well. Frequently, costochondral pain is caused by a misalignment of the vertebra, called a subluxation. If the spine is misaligned, it no longer supports normal alignment of the rib cage. Chiropractors have been talking about subluxation causing problems in the body for more than a century. Yet, in medical school, I heard not one word about spinal misalignment causing any problems. In fact, I was discouraged from seeking answers from chiropractors, and from referring my patients to them. However, today I believe that a good chiropractor can offer a very good service to a patient, just as a good physician can provide good care. I have taken courses taught by chiropractors and I have learned that if there is a subluxation in the spinal column, the nervous system will not function well, and that correcting this misalignment can have many positive effects for patients. In fact, I have a referral list of chiropractors and I frequently use them in my practice. I have found their care invaluable. Back to Anna. She was tender on the second and third spinous processes on her spine, the point where the ligaments attach exactly where she was tender on the front. Perhaps, I reasoned, her chest pain was caused by the misalignment of her spine, which was disturbing the normal movement of her rib cage.

I Can Breathe Now

Curious, I performed a one-minute technique to release the subluxation in her spinal cord at that same spot. Within seconds, Anna proclaimed, I cant believe it. I can breathe now. I feel like a new person. It is wonderful to be able to breathe again. Anna was so excited she stopped all my nurses down the hall and lled them in about how she was doing. If you have chest pain, it is best to play it safe. If you are not sure what it is, and even if you think you know, go straight to the emergency room and make sure. Conventional medicine has made wonderful advances, for instance, in helping people overcome an acute heart attack. However, I am convinced that a closer examination of Anna might have provided better clues to her diagnosis, rather than just letting her go home in pain with no answers. Costochondritis is a common problem and occurs more frequently in women. It is more common on the left side of the chest and can be suspected if the patient is tender just to the side of the breast bone. Seeing a good chiropractor can help you not only overcome illness but help you achieve your optimal health. In a future newsletter, I will discuss the powerful connection between the structure of the body and the bodys own healing capacity.

May 2008

In my sleep-deprived state, I set up a dinner meeting with my patients chiropractor, Dr. Robert Radtke, who practices in Birmingham, Michigan. I remember on the day of the meeting telling Allison that I was going to cancel because it would be a waste of my time. Thankfully, she told me that canceling would be rude and that it was too late anyway. During my dinner with Dr. Radtke, I was pleasantly surprised. He was very smart, and he told me how he successfully treated his patients with chiropractic care, known as manipulation, along with vitamins, minerals and herbs. Of course, I was not taught about any of these approaches in medical school or in residency. It seemed to me that either Dr. Radtke was lying or, possibly, there were other therapies out there besides prescription drugs, treatments about which I had not been educated. At the conclusion of the meeting Dr. Radtke gave me a book, Healing with Nutrition, by Jonathan Wright, M.D.

testosterone therapy, including shots and cream applied to the skin, and put him on natural, desiccated thyroid hormone, a brand called Armour Thyroid. I could not have predicted the results. Within seven days, his 25-year history of angina melted away, never to return. My father used to carry nitroglycerin with him everywhere and any activity would cause him to use the pills to treat angina. I dont believe he used the nitroglycerin from that point on. His cholesterol level, stuck in the 300s despite his taking cholesterol-lowering medication, fell below 200 mg/dl without changing his habits (although of course I was trying to help him to change that). He lost the pasty, pale color, lost weight, got his energy back and felt significantly better. My parents friends began asking them, What is Ellis doing? They wanted to do the same things.

The relationship between thyroid problems and heart disease was first described more than a century ago!

I took that book home and read late into the night. Dr. Wrights book illustrated his success using natural therapies to treat illness. In one section, it described how cardiovascular disease is caused, in part, by nutritional and hormonal imbalances. I really started to think hard about my father. He was seeing the best physicians around and dutifully taking his medications and getting worse by the day. The next morning, I called my dad into my office and drew some blood. I found his testosterone level was very low, in fact below detectable limits, and that he had thyroid function on the low end of whats considered normal. Dr. Wrights book had shown me the strong link between heart disease and low testosterone and hypothyroidism, that is, a thyroid that produces too little of the correct hormone. Of all the doctors seeing my father, amazingly, none had checked his testosterone levels. He had his thyroid levels checked just once and that doctor had ordered the wrong tests! That same week, I placed my dad on a regimen of

Once I saw the changes in my father, I knew this was the type of medicine I wanted to pursue. Since that time, nearly 15 years ago, I have devoted my time and energy to researching and studying natural therapies that treat the underlying causes of illness and actually promote health. Remember, nowhere in my medical training was I taught about health and how to maintain it. It became clear to me that many of the commonly used drug therapies do not promote health and actually cause more problems than they are worth. In future newsletters, we will discuss these therapies and why you should try and minimize the use of drug therapies whenever possible. Back to my dad. With the addition of natural testosterone and Armour Thyroid, he started looking and feeling better and became much more active. He was able to decrease his medications, including stopping his cholesterol-lowering medication, and lowered the amount of blood-pressure medication by half. His cardiologist, a friend of mine, asked him what he was doing. After my father explained it to him, his

May 2008

comment was, Well, I dont know much about those natural therapies, but you do look much better. Tell David to keep on doing it.

Hypothyroidisms Secret History

Thats what I did. My father lived nine more years. I have many stories to tell about my dad and we will discuss those over time. Meanwhile, I began to read everything I could find on the relationship between hormone imbalances and the development of cardiovascular disease. What I read astounded me. The relationship between thyroid problems and heart disease was first described more than a century ago! Since that time, a voluminous amount of medical literature has pointed out the relationship between hypothyroidism an under-functioning thyroid and the development of heart disease. Similarly, the relationship between low testosterone levels and heart disease has been written about for more than 70 years. In medical school, I heard some mention of hypothyroidism causing heart disease, but not much. I do not recall any mention of low testosterone levels causing heart disease. On the contrary, there was lots of discussion about statins and heart disease. One of the main causes of elevated cholesterol levels, reported in the medical literature for nearly 70 years, is hypothyroidism. Remember, once my fathers hormone system was balanced, it made a dramatic change in his heart condition. I treated him with two natural hormones, thyroid and testosterone, but lets focus first on the thyroid. To understand the relationship between hypothyroidism and the development of heart disease, I have to introduce you to a physician who spent his life researching and reporting on thyroid disorders. His name is Broda Barnes, M.D. Hes a pioneer in the treatment of thyroid disorders who throughout his career maintained that thyroid blood tests do not tell the whole story. He published more than 100 research papers and authored four books about thyroid and other endocrine disorders. One book that he wrote had a profound effect on my practice of medicine is Hypothyroidism, the Unsuspected Illness.
6

Dr. Barnes found that thyroid hormone exerts its influence on every cell in the body but only inside the cells themselves. Yet thyroid blood tests only measure the thyroid hormone levels circulating outside cells. Thirty years later, Dr. Barnes comments about thyroid hormone tests remain valid. More than 35 years ago, Dr. Barnes wrote, Forty percent of the American people four of every ten children and adults today are suffering needlessly and many are dying for lack of an ingredient vital for health. Dr. Barnes continued: Is the ingredient unknown? No. Is it hard to get? No. For years, medicine has recognized the role of the deficiency in some areas of health and disease and has had clues to its great importance in many other areas. But the knowledge too often has not been used and still is not being used because of the unreliability of laboratory tests. [These laboratory tests] have failed to show the deficiency even when doctors could see its manifestations clearly enough in patients before them. And while laboratory tests have erred and have misled both doctors and patients, patients have suffered, Dr. Barnes concluded. The ingredient to which Dr. Barnes refers is thyroid hormone. I believe that Dr. Barnes ideas, expressed decades ago, are still true today. In the next newsletter, I will discuss the inadequacy of relying solely on the thyroid laboratory tests.

Our Unacceptable Record on Heart Disease

Coronary artery disease heart disease remains the No. 1 killer in this country. It has been the No. 1 killer since antibiotics were introduced after World War II. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent studying why coronary artery disease affects such a wide range of the population. High cholesterol levels have been implicated as the cause. When patients see their doctors today it is customary to have their cholesterol level checked. If the cholesterol level is high, the physician is quick to prescribe a cholesterol-lowering drug. Yet perhaps elevated cholesterol is only a symptom of another problem: hypothyroidism.
May 2008

It has been known for more than 70 years that hypothyroidism predisposes one to high cholesterol levels. If a diagnosis of high cholesterol is made, then a proper search for an underlying cause of cholesterol should be conducted.

stimulating the metabolism and producing heat. My dad had his TSH checked and that was it. When I checked his T4 and T3 levels, however, both were on the lower range of normal. One further test I had my dad do was a basal body temperature test. The basal body temperature is the first morning temperature you have, before you get up in the morning essentially a resting temperature.

I have treated many patients with high cholesterol levels diagnosed by other physicians. What has become clear to me is that these patients are not suffering from a statin-deficiency syndrome. In fact, a large percentage The body tries to tightly control the temperature of individuals with high range between 97.8 and cholesterol have thyroid and How to Measure 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit (as other hormonal imbalances. Basal Body Temperature measured under your armpit). Correcting these hormonal imbalances often corrects the cholesterol problem without drugs. As you can guess, I have my doubts about statin drugs. That will be the subject of a future newsletter. I mentioned that my father was checked by his doctor for a thyroid condition. However, the doctor did the standard thyroid blood test. When that test came back normal, he told my dad that he did not have a thyroid problem. This is where conventional medicine gets thyroid testing wrong.
1. Shake down a basal thermometer the night before and place at your bedside or use a digital basal thermometer. Ask your druggist or doctor where to buy this kind of inexpensive thermometer. 2. Upon awakening, place the thermometer snugly in your armpit for a period of 10 minutes and record your temperature for 5 days in a row. You must not get out of bed before checking your temperature or you will have an altered reading. 3. For women who are menstruating, the temperature should be taken starting on the second day of menstruation. This is the best time in a womans menstrual cycle to get an accurate basal temperature. For men and postmenopausal women, it makes no difference when the temperatures are taken. 4. If your thyroid function is normal, your temperature should be in the range of 97.8 to 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit. A temperature below this may indicate a hypothyroid state. 5. You can also check oral or rectal temperatures. Normal oral or rectal temperatures should be in the range of 98.8 to 99.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

If the temperature of the body is too high or too low, many systems and enzymes do not function optimally. Hypothyroid people are often cold all of the time due to the lack of thyroid hormone production. People with the condition usually have a basal body temperature below 97.0 degrees Fahrenheit. (See the box for instructions on how to check your basal body temperature.) It is very important to check your basal body temperature and to keep an accurate log of what they are. My dads basal temperature was 96.5 degrees Fahrenheit over one degree lower than it should be.

Learn About Your Own Thyroid Function

In order to understand how the thyroid gland works, you have to learn what the thyroid gland does in the body.

The pituitary gland secretes a hormone called thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH, which in turn stimulates the thyroid gland to release a relatively inactive form of thyroid hormone known as thyroxine, or T4. T4 is converted to the more active thyroid hormone T3 in the periphery of the body, which is responsible for all positive effects of thyroid hormone, including

As a result of the test result, I made the life-altering choice to put my father on a trial of natural, desiccated thyroid hormone (sold as Armour Thyroid). Thats when he began a dramatic turnaround. In the next newsletter, I will provide you with much more information and actual case histories of my own patients, and show you how you can overcome thyroid disorders. I look forward to speaking with you soon, and be in good health.

May 2008

Ask Dr. Brownstein

Dear Readers, I will try to answer as many questions as I can. However, due to the volume of questions, I cannot answer each letter personally. Please include your full name, city and state when submitting. If you have a question for me, please e-mail it to: askdrdavid@ newsmax.com. I am so confused about hormone replacement therapy. I hear it is good for us, then I hear it is bad for us. What should I do? For more than 25 years, conventional medicine told female patients that hormone replacement therapy was good for women. They claimed every woman should take the commonly prescribed drugs to prevent osteoporosis and heart disease as well as to stave off the effects of the aging process. Problem is, they were recommended the wrong hormones. The only doctors yelling from the sidelines to stop this at the time were the holistic doctors. Conventional medicine recommended the wrong hormones for more than 25 years. The most commonly prescribed hormones were Premarin and Provera. These are both synthetic versions of estrogen and progesterone. Premarin is pregnant mares hormone. Yep, thats right, the most commonly prescribed estrogen in the U.S. is from a pregnant horse! Provera is a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone. Provera has been shown to cause increased rates of breast cancer (by a shocking 800%), blood clots, irreversible weakening of the bones (osteoporosis), swelling of the lungs that can lead to respiratory failure (pulmonary edema) and many other adverse effects. It is hard to believe that these items are still
David Brownstein, M.D., is a board-certied family physician and one of the foremost practitioners of holistic medicine. Dr. Brownstein has lectured internationally to physicians and others about his success with natural hormones and nutritional therapies in his practice. His books include Drugs That Dont Work and Natural Therapies That Do!, Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Cant Live Without It, Salt Your Way To Health, The Miracle of Natural Hormones, Overcoming Arthritis, Overcoming Thyroid Disorders, The Guide to a Gluten-Free Diet, and The Guide to Healthy Eating. He is the medical director of the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomeld, Mich., where he lives with his wife, Allison and their teenage daughters Hailey and Jessica.

prescribed today, but unfortunately they are. I believe that when there are natural, bioidentical versions of our own hormones available, synthetic versions should never be prescribed and they should be pulled from the market. Unfortunately, that wont happen anytime soon. You see, Big Pharma wants to use only patentable substances because they will hold the rights to these products and make a lot of money from them. So, what can you do? If you need a hormone for any condition, use a natural, bioidentical version. Even though the FDA does not want you to know about these substances, they are available.

Dr. Brownstein, how come I get tired every winter? During the winter we get less of the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D. In fact, our levels of vitamin D can fall by more than 50% in the northern climates. Even in the south, the sun is not as strong in the winter time and vitamin D levels can fall. I recommend checking your vitamin D levels and if levels are below 50 nanograms per decilitre (ng/dl), supplementing with vitamin D is a must. My experience is that 2,000 to 5,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D a day are safe and effective for most people. You can periodically check your levels (known as the 25-hydroxy D3 levels) to ensure you are not taking too much. Adequate levels of vitamin D range from 70 to 100 ng/dl. A good source of vitamin D is Carlsons cod liver oil (1.5 teaspoons per day) or Bio-D-Mulsion Forte available from Viotron at 1 (800) 437-1298. To your good health,

May 2008