Question: I read tryptophan is now available as a dietary supplement. Is it helpful and safe for sleep issues? If so what dosage would you suggest?

Answer:(published 3/5/10) L-tryptophan, an amino acid, is the metabolic precursor of serotonin, one of the neurotransmitters used by the brain to carry information from one part of the nervous system to another. Serotonin has general sedative effects. In theory, raising the level of L-tryptophan in the brain will cause increased production of serotonin and natural sedation.

L-tryptophan supplements were once popular as sleep aids, but in 1991 the FDA banned their sale in the United States after a contaminated batch from a Japanese manufacturer was linked to at least 37 deaths from eosinophilia myalgia syndrome, a rare and painful disease. The supplement again became available here in 2002. Read the rest of this entry »

Question: I frequently use a fat-free spray that tastes like butter and has no calories. I spray it on bread, vegetables, popcorn, etc. Is this spray bad for me?

Answer:(published 2/22/10) You raise an interesting question. I did some research to find out about these products and what they actually contain. While the nutritional labels do state that they contain zero fat and zero calories, something more than just air comes out when you spray. A little checking produced some illuminating information about how manufacturers and marketers can legally claim that products have no fat or calories, when the opposite is true.

The FDA permits foods to be labeled "fat-free" if they contain less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. The labels of some products I checked said that a single serving is one spray providing 0.2 grams (2 tenths of a gram) of the product for cooking and five sprays when you're using it as a topping. I found calculations showing that to get a single 0.2 gram serving you would have to spritz for about one-third of a second, something that is almost impossible to time. If you spritz for five seconds, you'll be adding as many as 35 calories of fat to your food. Read the rest of this entry »

Patients who underwent brain surgery for tumor removal in the posterior parietal cortex experienced increased states of self-transcendence, which is identified as an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical world and sense of self and helps one to feel more at one with the universe as a whole.

The posterior parietal cortex is the part of the brain that maintains a sense of one's physical body and it's also been linked to meditation and prayer. Removal of tumors in this particular area of the brain caused patients to experience selective damage, which reduces activity and disrupts the sense of self, subsequently leading to increased feelings of transcendence from the reality of the here and now.

To investigate the neural basis of spirituality, Cosimo Urgesi, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Udine, and his colleagues turned to people with brain tumors to assess the feeling before and after surgery. Three to seven days after the removal of tumors from the posterior part of the brain, in the parietal cortex, patients reported feeling a greater sense of self-transcendence. This was not the case for patients with tumors removed from the frontal regions of the brain. [Nature] Urgesi also notes that electrically stimulating the temporoparietal junction — an area near the posterior parietal cortex — is known to induce out-of-body experiences, which also involve a breakdown in someone's representation of their physical self and their environment. [NewScientist]

"Self-transcendence used to be considered just by philosophers and crank new age people," says co-author Salvatore Aglioti, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Sapienza University of Rome. "This is the first really close-up study on spirituality. We're dealing with a complex phenomenon that's close to the essence of being human." [Nature]

Question: I recently heard that antidepressants only help people who are severely depressed. I figure that I'm one of the others – the "mildly" depressed – so I stopped taking the drug that didn't work. What supplements or dietary approaches should I try instead?

Answer: You're probably referring to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on January 6, 2010. It concluded that prescription anti-depressants may provide little benefit for patients with mild or moderate depression but do help patients with very severe depression. (The authors noted that patients and practitioners "may not be aware that the efficacy of medications largely has been established on the basis of studies that have included only those individuals with more severe forms of depression.")

It's never a good idea to stop taking a prescription drug without checking first with your physician – sometimes, you have to be weaned off medication slowly to prevent withdrawal symptoms. If you haven't already, be sure to let your doctor know that you're no longer taking the drug and be sure to notify him or her if you develop any symptoms that could be related to stopping the medication. That said, I recommend the following alternatives to medication for mild to moderate depression: Read the rest of this entry »

I recently brought home one of those free magazines you get at the health food store checkout because I usually find some tasty recipes. With January turning into the shed-the-holiday-pounds month, you can find weight-loss articles in just about any magazine lately, and the issue I picked up was no exception with a piece about how to lose weight — for good.

One of the sections of this piece talked about the importance of exercise with some suggested routines for weight loss:

If possible, get 60 to 90 minutes of moderate exercise every day to lose and keep weight off.

If you're the average non-athletically-inclined person reading that recommendation, you'll probably have the same thoughts I did. If I have to work out that much, I'd be killing myself and making myself miserable…so what's the use? And how could I fit 90 minutes into my schedule every day when I'm cramming so much into it already?

Not only is that much regular exercise for the average person a formidable and unrealistic goal, but more recently the benefit of exercise for weight loss has come into question.  Several controversial studies have been published, or are underway, that give us a fresh perspective of the role exercise plays in our quest to burn body fat: Read the rest of this entry »

Feeling rundown? Try laughing more. Some researchers think laughter just might be the best medicine, helping you feel better and putting that spring back in your step.

"I believe that if people can get more laughter in their lives, they are a lot better off," says Steve Wilson, MA, CSP, a psychologist and laugh therapist. "They might be healthier too."

Yet researchers aren't sure if it's actually the act of laughing that makes people feel better. A good sense of humor, a positive attitude, and the support of friends and family might play a role, too.

"The definitive research into the potential health benefits of laughter just hasn't been done yet," says Robert R. Provine, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and author of Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.

But while we don't know for sure that laughter helps people feel better, it certainly isn't hurting. Read the rest of this entry »

We're familiar with the typical ways in which modern medicine aggressively detects and treats malignant growths — invasive biopsies, multiple applications of radiation, long-term chemotherapy, and surgery, if the tumor is isolated and in an easily accessible area.

There is one cancer specialist, however, who believes treatment should move in the opposite direction — opting for fewer screenings and less invasive, aggressive treatments — since cancer today, he says, is overdiagnosed and overtreated. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, professor at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and a nationally recognized expert on early cancer detection, challenges commonly-held beliefs and explains the latest findings with respect to cancer biology in his book, Should I be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why. Read the rest of this entry »

Flaxseed is one of those superfoods you've only heard about in the past decade. Flax, aka linseed, is not only a food staple but it's used to manufacture everyday products such as paper, hair care products, and fabric.

Now research shows that in addition to all the other health benefits it affords, consumption of flaxseed reduces cholesterol.

Recent findings by Dr. Xu Lin at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai show that when participants underwent studies using flaxseed they experienced a reduction in their LDL — the "bad" cholesterol. The findings were compiled from 28 different past studies involving more than 1,500 participants. Post-menopausal women seemed to experience greater levels of reduction than men. The participants averaged one tablespoon of flaxseed per day. Read the rest of this entry »

Pharmaceutical giants are at a loss to understand why placebos increasingly outperform promising new drugs in clinical trials. To the consternation of these big pharma companies, the number of drugs approved by the FDA and put on the market has been steadily decreasing over the years due to their inability to surpass the effectiveness of placebos.

And some longstanding products, such as Prozac and other antidepressants that significantly bolstered the profits of pharmaceuticals in the '80s and '90s, are waning against placebos in routine followup testing. In fact, if these same drugs weren't on the market already, many of them wouldn't even be approved considering their performance against placebos. (In order to gain approval by the FDA, the product must twice beat the placebo in a minimum of two verified trials.)

Drug developers believe the reason for the slide in pharmaceutical market approval is that the placebo is somehow getting stronger. Read the rest of this entry »

Tohono O'odham Community Action Tackles Diabetes

Members of the Tohono O'odham Nation suffer from one of the highest type 2 diabetes rates ever recorded. The disease seemed inevitable in the community.

Now, the Tohono have turned to their traditional foods and recipes to combat diabetes and obesity, with striking results.

SLIDE SHOW: Harvesting the Wild Foods of the Sonoran Desert

Find out more at the Tohono O'odham Community Action (TOCA).