Breathe Easier

Defend yourself naturally against pollen,

seasonal allergies & other immune stresses.

Specialized cells of the immune system release histamine when challenged by substances such as pollen, dust, dander, etc. – things we can breathe, eat, or touch.

But histamine is not the root of the body’s response.  Histamine may cause the outward responses you see and feel – but the problem stems from a shift in the body’s defense systems.  Building up these defenses helps keep histamine at acceptable levels.

Histamine’s effects on the Body

Many body systems are affected when histamine levels go unchecked.  These include the immune and respiratory systems, liver, and adrenal glands.

Immune System – When the body comes in contact with an intruder, it begins to manufacture antibodies (IgE).  After these antibodies encounter the invader, a large amount of histamine is released.  This causes the surrounding blood vessels to dilate, which allows fluid and cells to migrate to the site of the insult.  The body can overreact to these intruders, causing stress on the immune system.

Allerplex – with the help of vitamin A and C complexes, supports the body’s immune response to seasonal, environmental, and dietary stressors. Also formulated to maintain healthy liver function – the body’s natural cleansing system.

Cal-Amo – provides chlorides (calcium and ammonium) for maintaining proper pH balance, which helps support immune system efficiency and enhance respiratory function.

Respiratory System – Histamine causes muscle constriction in the lung’s bronchial tubes, which may affect normal breathing.

Fen-Gre – maintains the body’s natural function of supporting healthy levels of mucous and phlegm in the lungs and bronchial tubes.

Liver – When bombarded with histamine, the liver becomes weakened and its ability to remove toxins is compromised, which slows down the release of invaders from the body.

Antronex – supports the liver and the body’s natural antihistamine function.  Can be combined with Cal-Amo for more immediate support.

Adrenal Glands – If the body is under stress, these glands secrete cortisol to regulate histamine levels and assist with the body’s natural anti-inflammatory response – helping to combat the symptoms experienced with pollen, seasonal, and other stresses.

                Drenamin – helps body maintain its natural anti-inflammatory response. 

Plan ahead for Seasonal Challenges – the earlier you start preparing your body, the better.

Ask us how these natural whole food products can build your body’s defenses and help you breath easier to return you to an active lifestyle indoors and out.

Glenn Nicholas, D.C. (208)743-4567 

www.WholeBasics.com   www.wholebasics.blogspot.com  

Not Just the Quarterback!

Who are the players that make your favorite Super Bowl quarterback great?

Does it matter?  History remembers football’s big name quarterbacks- like Joe Montana and Tom Brady- but the rest of the players on the team get little press or remembrance.   But where would the big name players be without the blockers to protect them and someone to catch their passes or run with the ball they hand to them to score touch downs.  Or, what about the defense that keeps the other team from scoring more points than the QB’s team?  Obviously, if it weren’t for the rest of the team skillfully executing their duties the QB would be a loser.  Did you know the same is true in the nutrition world?  It is!  You have heard of the big name highly paid popular vitamins- A, B, C, D, E, and K.  The big name vitamins are the ones found listed on the nutritional products you buy at the store with names like beta-carotene, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, ascorbic acid, alpha tocopherol, etc.  The typical store bought product typically has the quarterback in doses much larger than needed or that is safe for the body and there are no team members present to assure the success of the vitamin team.  So who are the other team mates?  Can you name one or even name the positions they play?  They are called vitamers and they are similar molecules each having their own specific shape and role to play just like the other players on a football team.  Without them the team(body) is not equipped to win and keep the body in optimum health.  This is why taking the quarterback type vitamins often don’t seem to make much difference in your health.

Let’s look at one of the whole vitamin complexes as an example.  This will help you understand how things really work and why whole food complex vitamins are the only right way to go.  Let’s use Vitamin D.  Its vitamers include Vitamin D2 (Ergocalciferol), Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol), Dihydrotachysterol, 25-0H-Cholecalciferol, 1,25 (OH)2-Cholecalciferol, and 1alpha-OH-Cholecalciferol.  Typical store-bought supplements usually include Vitamin D2 or D3, but our bodies need all of them and not just the QB.  You won’t find all of them in a typical vitamin product, nor will you find all of them added back into your favorite processed or fortified food.  You will find all of them in many animal and dairy food products.  The point is real whole foods are the only source for all complete vitamin complexes needed for normal good health.

In our office we sell nutritional supplements made from whole food complexes like carrots, pea vine juice, Brussels sprouts, kale, mushroom, oats, etc. raised on the Standard Process organic farm in Wisconsin. The reason for this is straight forward.  Only in nature’s foods do we find nutrients in the right amounts and combinations perfectly provided for the health of our bodies.  Obviously, there are no vitamin A, B, or C bushes or trees to be found anywhere on earth.  So these quarterback vitamin parts without the whole team complement have been synthesized or isolated into their single molecular parts in a lab and then sold by the barrel-full to vitamin manufacturers (really).  It may say natural on the bottle but does that sound natural to you?  I heartily recommend you put the whole vitamin team on your nutritional playing field for your best health.   Our choice as the premier whole food multi-vitamin product is called Catalyn.  It also contains the RDA for Vitamin D!  Give your body Whole Team Support - Call us today!

Click Here to learn more about nutrient rich Catalyn.       

Meanwhile, go Packers, er… Steelers!

Yours in Health,                                                              

Dr. Glenn Nicholas

www.WholeBasics.com

http://www.wholebasics.blogspot.com

Healthy Holiday Eating Tips

Don’t let eating at social events, parties and restaurants side-track your health.

 Social events can put you in situations that can compromise your health goals by offering few items to eat that are good for your health.  High sugar and salty foods, dips ladened with trans-fats and who know what else can be the normal fare when socializing.     

But here are a few tips to help preserve your good health:

• Eat an apple before the affair
• Pick the healthy snacks such as nuts and the vegetable tray- avoid the rest. 
• Eat something healthy (vegetables) before and after the chocolate or cake.  When you consume refined sugars and carbohydrates, potassium is lost, raising sodium.  Wherever sodium goes, water goes.  To counter the loss of potassium, you should consume high-potassium foods – leafy greens.
• When you eat the junk food, don’t stuff yourself - overeating refined carbohydrates severely increases insulin.  Choose a small taste of the junk food and fill up on healthier foods.

The worst restaurants to go to on this program are Chinese restaurants because most have hidden sources of monosodium glutamate (MSG).  MSG causes water retention and swelling because of massive amounts of sodium.  Even if they tell you they add no extra MSG, it’s still in the pre-made sauces.

Italian restaurants have lots of pasta and breaded foods.  Skip the bread on the table and order some fish or steak and salad.  Often the steaks come in 12 and 16 ounces, which is too much to digest comfortably.  Eat only 5 to 6 ounces and take the rest home or share it with your dinner companion.

At Mexican restaurants, order a burrito bowl (which is chicken, salsa, lettuce, cheese and sour cream) without the tortilla, refried beans or taco shell.

When eating a potato, add more real butter or sour cream to buffer the insulin response.  If you eat some popcorn, add more butter to slow the insulin response.  Adding fat helps slow the process.  Don’t overdo the butter and sour cream, though.

Tell the server to bring you a burger without the bun or French fries.  Add a salad instead, and in place of ketchup use mayonnaise and mustard.  Ketchup contains high-fructose corn syrup.

Realize when eating out you are consuming many different chemicals in the sauces, breading, gravy, dips, etc.  Try to eat whole foods, such as fish and vegetables, meat and salad.  Skip the dessert; especially if you are eating meat, as together they affect stress hormones negatively. 

Adding a sugary dessert or alcohol to the meal puts a strain on digestion, which severely affects insulin.  You don’t have to be a social outcast when eating smart, plus you’ll feel better several hours later and your friends and family will wish they had done the same.  Keep focused on the consequences (your future!). 

Check out our previous blog post "Eating When Stressed".

We are here to help you have a healthier future.   

Contact our office to begin today.

Dr. Glenn Nicholas - www.WholeBasics.com

Eating When Stressed

When you are stressed, the adrenal glands overproduce adrenalin and it becomes difficult to think clearly.  You might look for comfort in food.  This means you should eat certain things to support your adrenals.  These are primarily fats, such as butter, cream cheese, Brie cheese with apples, chicken noodle soup, coconut butter and avocados.  These foods greatly stabilize your blood sugar.  The worst thing to do is skip a meal and not eat.  Hunger is stress to the body.  Overeating and stuffing yourself also stress the body.  Eating sugar puts stress on the body.

 The other thing to do is take calming minerals – potassium, magnesium and calcium.  Make sure you do not take the calcium carbonate version, since limestone is not absorbed too well.

When you or your kids consume refined sugar, large quantities of lactic acid builds up, which is a byproduct of the sugar.  Lactic acid makes people restless because it lowers oxygen in the tissues.  This is behind restless leg syndrome and hyperactivity in children.  Various B vitamins also get depleted when refined sugars and refined grains are eaten.  That is why food manufacturing companies enrich grain products with synthetic B vitamins.  However, this doesn’t work because of the type of vitamin – synthetic made from petroleum material.  One of the best sources of B vitamins is nutritional yeast.  Put a little in some plain yogurt each day to supply your B vitamins, as lots of mental stress depletes B vitamins.

Also, organize your life so you have healthy foods available.  Don’t keep sweets at home or at work, since they will always be a temptation.  You’ll need to purchase some Tupperware and a cooler so you can prepare foods and snacks for the day.  Make sure you always have raw nuts, celery, apples, carrots and low-fat plain yogurt in the cooler as well.  By keeping your blood sugars level, it will be easier.

We are here to help you have a healthier future.   

Contact our office to begin today.

Dr. Glenn Nicholas - www.WholeBasics.com

~Nutrients~

It's all about nutrients!

Optimal health and vitality demands daily intake of  the natural nutrients that only real food provides.  Each meal provides the opportunity to take in the nutrients the body needs for a healthy life and to feel great.  But that is not as easy as it sounds.  Data compiled by our government during the past decades show that today's farm grown foods are seriously depleted. This includes  vegetables, fruits, and grains grown in our farm land soils. They are lacking the natural occurring nutrients including vitamins, minerals, and trace minerals as compared to those grown only a few decades ago.

Nutrient Stats:  UK and US government statistics indicate that levels of trace minerals in fruit and vegetables fell by up to 76% between 1940 and 1991.  (This means 4 times as many vegetables need to be eaten each today in order to have as the same amount of vital dietary trace minerals that people had for to support good health 60 years ago.)

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Plants do not make minerals; they draw them up out of the soil. Less minerals in the soils means less minerals in the plants which results in less minerals, etc. in the daily diet.  Can you see why daily nutrient supplementation is recommended by natural health doctors?  But there is another problem... 

Synthetic vitamins: Unfortunately most vitamins sold in stores are made synthetically. This means they do not come from actual food, but are made from chemicals and petroleum products. In nature, vitamins are in chemical complexes composed of many parts, never as isolated high potency parts of vitamins (eg. 1,000 mg Vit. C., 400 IU of vitamin E).

The above picture shows an actual photograph of the difference between complete and natural vitamin C vs. an isolated Ascorbic Acid typically referred to vitamin C. Which one looks more life giving to you?  If you choose the Natural Vitamin C you are correct.  It contains the natural life giving co-factors in proper proportions to safely nourish your body.  The isolated ascorbic acid (made in a lab from a chemical that isn't vitamin C to begin with) does not.  The body is designed to recognize and utilize nutrients in their whole form.  If you eat incomplete foods (or high potency vitamin fractions) all the factors that are missing have to be scavenged from body tissue reserves in order to make the partial food usable.  Sooner or later, depending on your health and past eating habits, there will be a deficiency of those nutrients, causing what's referred to as a "reversal of symptoms."  This means there is a recurrence of the same symptoms, which were causing the problem in the first place, often to a more serious degree. So high potency vitamins can cause the masking of deficiency symptoms, which will eventually create worse future  problems.  Dr. Lee used to say that using high potency vitamins was like whipping a tired horse; he would be stimulated to run faster but sooner or later he collapses because you never fed him.

In our office, for our family and ourselves we utilize   Standard Process whole food nutritional supplements.  Established by Dr. Royal Lee in 1929, it has formulated nutritional supplements from plants grown on their organic Wisconsin farm. 

 

Contact our office today for your nutrient review –

We want you feeling your best!

Dr. Glenn Nicholas ~ www.WholeBasics.com ~ (208)743-4567

Information Tidbit:

The Standard Process Heritage

The history of Standard Process is not as simple as you may expect the history of a supplement manufacturer to be. The company was started during the Great Depression, the "worst" economic downfall in the history of the United States, and endured seven decades of hardship, tribulation, and growth. No matter what has happened since 1929, producing high-quality products has always remained top priority.

Dr. Royal Lee dedicated his life to finding solutions for all sorts of challenges, but his greatest passion was improving the nation's health by providing high-quality, whole food supplements and educating others about them. He devoted the majority of his life to spreading the truth about nutrition.

~Food Cravings~

Do you have food cravings?

Craving sweets, chocolate, bread, and ice are often indicators warning that your body has a specific nutrient deficiency. 

Sweet/sugar cravings are potassium deficiencies, chocolate is magnesium, bread is vitamin B1 and continual ice chewing is iron. Making sure your daily diet includes all the nutrients your body needs to be healthy will keep you  from cravings. 

If increasing foods containing the nutrients indicated by your cravings does not alleviate your craving symptoms within a few weeks contact me and I will see that you get the right whole food supplement product to get you back in healthy balance.  
FYI- Most multi-vitamin products are not complete even if they claim otherwise.  Nutrients come from real foods and most multi-vitamin products are made from synthesized crystalline vitamin fractions. We will discuss this in more depth in our next blog.  

Here is a short list of foods to eat for each deficiency.

Potassium Rich Foods: RDA for Potassium is 4700mg/day
Honeydew Melon 1/2 = 1881mg, Avocado 1 = 1097mg
Banana 1 = 440mg, Broccoli 1cup = 868mg, Cucumber 1lg = 481
Magnesium Rich Foods:
Artichoke = 101mg, Almonds 20z=156mg, Black Beans 1C=120mg
Spinach 1C=157mg, Pumpkin Seeds 1oz=151
Vitamin B1 Rich Foods:
Brewers Yeast, Legumes (beans, lentils), Peanuts, Oatmeal, Cabbage

Iron Rich Foods: 

Clams, Pork Liver, Oysters, Chicken Liver, Mussels, Beef Liver

Beans & Lentils, Pumpkin Seeds, Blackstrap Molasses 

  

Look for our next blog message where we will discuss more about the importance of nutrients. Until then we remain

Yours in Health!

Bones Of Extinction

Laurel & I had the recent pleasure of taking our 'kid friendly' motorhome (for sale by the way) on it's first outing of the season to the John Day Fossil Beds National Park in Oregon.  They have a fine visitor center packed with fossils they have found in the area "dating back millions of years". 

We thought you might enjoy a few of the trip photos.

Here we are at the Fossil visitor center.  Glenn has determined a possible reason for the dinosaur extinction... "They Failed To Adjust!"   Make sure you don't make their mistake.  Correct spinal alignment is your best Strategy for Survival!