Slow Down & CHEW!

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

You’ve probably heard many a parent telling their children to stop eating so fast, slow down and chew your food. I used to hear it all the time growing up. I think I could have been done with my plate of food before Mom and Dad even started! I was in a hurry to get back outside and play.

Have you ever noted how people around you eat when you are at a restaurant?  Some eat slow and talk their way through a meal, while others are all business, get it in and get it down! I’ve often heard it said you should chew each bite 25 times. Whoever came up with that, I have no idea, but it sounds a bit like over kill to me. At that point why not just puree it?

Believe it or not, there really are physiological and psychological reasons to chew your food properly. What is properly chewing a bite of food? Well, I haven’t found anything to be too dogmatic about, and the amount each food needs masticated (chewed) obviously depends on what it is. It is not necessarily how many times you chew each bite, but how each morsel taken in ends up before you swallow it. Eating on the run or in front of the TV is not conducive to good food processing. Unfortunately, short school lunch periods and half hour lunches at work tend to force us into fast eating and a bad habit. You should eat purposefully, taking smaller bites, chewing slow and steady, and fully breaking down each bite until it has lost its basic texture. You need to finish chewing and swallow completely, prior to taking another bite. Do not wash your food down with liquid. That is not to say don’t drink with your meal, just don’t chew half way and wash it down with drink.

Fish Oil & Prostate Cancer

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

On July 10^th, the headline read, “Men Might Want to Shun Fish oils, Study Shows.” This new study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center supposedly shows a link between increased EPA/DHA levels in the blood and prostate cancer risk. Given all the positive health effects linked to fish oil intake, this study definitely seems out of step with previously shown benefits.

As I have said before, always try to find out more about who did the study, how it was performed and if it has been repeated by others. I am no expert in these activities, but I have found a great article written by an expert, Dr. Michael Murray. He is a leading authority on natural medicine, and has written over 30 books on health and nutrition. Much of the following information is attributed to this article: “How a SELECTed Bad Study Became Big News,” written on July 12, 2013, and published online at GreenMedinfo.com.

Dr. Murray says the pedigree of this study is impressive. It was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and was conducted by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, WA. Yet, the data used is from the much maligned Selenium and Vitamin # Cancer Prevention Trial, or SELECT. That is the problem.

Colloidal Silver

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

For thousands of years health care practitioners and health minded people have been using the health benefits of silver to treat a myriad of human ailments. The ancient Phoenicians understood that keeping water, wine and vinegar in silver lined vessels maintained the freshness of each. Silver is a germicide and a disinfectant. It is a natural antibiotic, anti-viral and anti-fungal agent. The only problem is that our wonderful government agency, the FDA, does not agree. They decided in 1999 that all colloidal silver products sold over the counter are unsafe and mislabeled. They state they are unaware of any evidence to support its use for any serious disease. [www.FDA.gov/ohrms/dockets/98f/081799a.txt]

Recent research out of Boston University shows silver may be even more powerful than ever thought. They did studies which added silver to current antibiotics for the recent onset of resistant super bugs. What they found was that silver boosted the effectiveness of these antibiotics against super bugs by up to 1000 percent! This study was published in the “Science Translational Medicine Journal” in June 2013. Silver laced antibiotics proved particularly effective against those bugs that caused urinary tract and stomach conditions. Wow, this is great news, right? It would seem so, but when I think about it, I have just one more question. If silver is the reason these antibiotics work again, why not just use silver in the first place? Why do we need to add silver to some manmade chemical as a conduit,  just so big Pharma can patent it and make billions?

Genetically Modified Organisms

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) food is a hot topic in today’s world. GMO refers to any food product that has been altered at the gene level. GMO foods are often described with terms such as “genetically engineered”, “genetically altered”, or “genetically manipulated.”

The big corporate giants who engineer these seeds and foods say they are exactly like regular seeds and food. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They rationalize that hybridization of plants has been going on for centuries. They say they are just using higher technology to achieve the same thing faster. That argument is completely flawed, as the two techniques are vastly different and do not produce the same results.

Supplements - Part 2

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

In the last article, we saw that our food supply just isn’t what it used to be. Our soils are depleted of vital nutrients, and so is our food. We concluded that proper supplementation is necessary, even vital, to our good health.

Let’s start by looking at the major categories of supplements: synthetic, natural inorganic, natural organic and natural carbon based organic.

Synthetic vitamins: This type is manufactured in the laboratory and appears the same as natural vitamins in their atomic structure. However, they can be differentiated in the laboratory. Most Americans are taking this type of vitamin. Go to Wal-Mart and CVS, they are cheap! But, they are less bioavailable and the synthetic elements can actually end up being deposited and stored in extra cellular spaces, fatty tissue and interstitial fluids; where they reside, potentially causing toxicity and chronic disease.

Supplements - Part 1

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

If you think there is no difference between one vitamin supplement and the next, think again.

There is nothing more valuable than your health, just ask a sick person. No matter how much you love your house, your car or your hobbies, you won’t enjoy any of it without your health.

So, why do so many people simply buy whatever vitamin is the cheapest, easiest or fastest to get a hold of? If your health is a top priority, why would you settle for that? Do you buy the cheapest oil and old gas for a beautiful new car, just because you can save a buck? Then why buy a multivitamin with unknown effectiveness and inert ingredients?

Simply eating right isn’t enough anymore. Even the best diet falls short of adequate nutrition. Minerals are responsible for over 300 biochemical, life-sustaining reactions in the human body. The problem is, minerals are not found in the same abundance today as they used to be.

Back Pain

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

It is estimated that 80% of Americans will have chronic back pain (BP) at some point in their lives. At any point in time, over 30% of the population of adults will have back pain. Then why is it that only 7 to 10% of the population goes to the chiropractor?

People struggling with BP take many different paths to find relief, many of which have been proven ineffective. Debilitating symptoms cause some to resign themselves to a lifetime of prescription pain killers, steroid shots and even multiple surgeries. All of these have been proven less effective than alternative treatments such as spinal manipulation, exercises and massage.

In days of old, osteopathic doctors actually performed some spinal manipulation with adequate results. Today, there are very few osteopaths who even choose to learn it. Most have chosen the allopathic model of conventional medicine, and couldn’t care less about the roots of their profession. They have been absorbed by medicine.