Dr. Erika's Blog | Balanced Hormones for Life!

Medicinal Plants

My latest article from WAG Mag

Long before the advent of modern medicine, the world of herbs was the main source of remedies for most ailments.

As contemporary medicine claimed its stake on the development and initial direction of western medicine, scientific proofs and so called evidence based medicine (which pretty much means pharma run research) took center stage and moved herbalist, ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medical practices onto the snake oil or “unproven” side of what we now describe as conventional medicine.

Our doctors, myself included, are not trained about herbal medical plants, the positive effects and the negative side-effects of herbal treatments. Our training is full of pharmaceutical drugs but totally devoid of historical information that might create a link between herbs that might be of use and modern practices in medicine that often are more harm then help.

Fact is that with just a little research into the evolution (?) of medicine, we find that the pharmaceutical industry started by using the active ingredients of plants to make drugs.  It is of great interest that conventional drugs start with plants.

That does not mean we just kind of chop up plants just like Chinese medicine does to create our modern drugs, but rather we use the active ingredients from the plants, those that have pharmaceutical properties to develop our most commonly used drugs.

A perfect example is the drug Digoxin which for decades has been the mainstay of heart failure therapy. Thus drug was the result of pharmaceutical processes of concentration and purification of the active ingredient in the foxglove plant that in fact does help significantly improve cardiac function. Before it was a drug is was a cardiac tonic. The toxicity of the drug albeit is also well known from medieval times when it was used to poison people by giving them a potion made of digitalis- the foxglove plant- in high doses promptly creating a deadly arrhythmia and sending the victim right to the morgue.

Another not to be ignored example of plants leading the way of drugs are the all too well known and overused opiates. We all know about the poppy plant, that beautiful red flower. Well, morphine comes from it and a whole slew of drugs of the opate family like Vicodin, oxycontin to just scratch the surface. And who hasn’t heard of white willow? I bet you didn’t know that it is where aspirin comes from the salicylic acid found in its bark.

Another very important example of the usage of herbals by the pharmaceutical industry is yams and soy oils to make hormones.

Both soy and yams oils contain the active ingredients called phytoestrogens, isoflavones and other plants that when used by the pharmaceutical industry via processes of concentration and purification become a fine powder of estrogen and progesterone we use as what many of us know as bioidentical hormones while their scientific names are 17-beta estradiol and micronized or natural progesterone.

 

But don’t try to eat or slather yam cream all over your body when looking to get more hormones. Don’t drink soy milk by the gallons, the active ingredients that can be transformed into hormones and used to treat symptoms of menopause, PMS, hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, weight gain, depression, loss of sex drive and prevent bone and heart disease won’t be found when eating yam or soy.

It is only with the help of pharmaceutical industry that these “natural”, “bioidentical” hormones can be made.

So don’t be afraid of plants or of what the pharmaceutical industry has done with them. They have used plants known for thousands of years to extract drugs that save lives and are standardized and cleaned of impurities as well as made them available to millions of people in a standardized, uniform fashion. They have used old knowledge to create modern medication.

Fact is, when you go to your acupuncturist or chiropractor and get the “special” herbal concoction guaranteed to heal what ails you with Chinese herbs, you don’t ask what’s in the concoction nor do you care to know since knowing names like cat’s claw, radish, radish root and many others would only serve to confuse rather than help.

You just take the concoction on faith and while sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.

So why fear the plant based pharmaceutical manufactured drugs? They are the best combination invented to help us fend off disease by combining the old and the new.

Just be smart when choosing and don’t be intimidated or scared.

Work with a doctor who knows and who is smart enough not to put down information he / she doesn’t have about the history of our medications and modern medicine.

Food That Keeps Us Young Vs Food That Makes Us Old

Some details about the segment I did for Extra TV that will air later this month...

It addresses foods that keep us young versus food that make us old.

So we compared cottage cheese to goat cheese. Dairy is aging. After the age of 30 your body is on overload of dairy and casein, a protein found in dairy wreaks havoc on our insides. So best to switch to less cheese and if you must, only goat or sheep.

Room temperature water versus ice water. After work-outs and in general room temperature water keeps us younger because cold water causes blood vessels to constrict and even has been known to cause heart attacks. 

Beer or wine. Beer ages us more because the oats in it ferment and bloat us. Wine in moderation contains resveratrol an antioxidant that protect the brain and gets rid of free radicals.

Whole whet bread versus rice crackers. Aging brings about gluten intolerance causing us to bloat and be unable to digest our food. Wheat is full of gluten and you don't need to get the diagnosis of gluten intolerance to thrive without it. De bloat with rice crackers which do not contain gluten and keep you younger.

Pretzels versus popcorn. Popcorn. Pretzels are full of junk and gluten and they bloat you as you get older Popcorn without butter or oil is just plain paper like and fills you up without causing any problems. Good for dieting but even better for anti aging.

Foods that improve hormone production. 

We looked at dark lettuce versus light lettuce. Dark leafy vegetables contain more antioxidants and digest easier thus allowing more hormone production time than iceberg lettuce. You stay young looking and your skin looks better when you eat dark leafy greens.

Broccoli or string beans? Broccoli contains minerals and iodine which help your thyroid make thyroid hormones that keep you young and healthy looking.
String beans are good but they don't have as much to offer hormonally.

Washcloth versus brush for showering. Use a brush to scrub your skin in the shower. The skin is the largest organ of the body and hormones are made there. If you scrub it, you stimulate blood circulation and you get fewer wrinkles and lessen the likelihood of undesirable growths on your skin.

Steak or pasta with red sauce for dinner. Steak is better. the same enzymes digest protein and starch and if you want to stay you and trim and not get a spare tire around your waist you better not eat starches at night and don't mix meat with starches either. Hormones are made at night and protein helps make hormones and helps you sleep better so you look a lot better in the morning then if you had pasta which makes you look bloated.

I will post the air date as soon as I know. I hope you get some good info from it. I had a blast doing it.

It Is Time For Some Defense! (And a special offer)

Spring is a great time of year but, unfortunately, too many people are coming to me with the worst colds! I can’t help rid the world of the common cold but I have found a great way to fight it off and make the duration as short as possible.

I developed my product, Defense, which is the perfect form of absorbable lactoferrin, for the past 10 years in our practice and our patients, staff and my family included all have not had a cold in ten years.  Lactoferrin is a multifunctional protein and frequently serves as the first line of immune defense in protection against pathogens.

Lactoferrin is found throughout the human body. It helps maintain the proper level of "good" bacteria in the intestinal tract, while controlling the number of "bad" bacteria.

It has been shown to have the ability to bind iron, it is a natural anti- bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral antioxidant.

Lactoferrin is a powerful immune booster with an uncanny ability to delay, shorten and even eliminate colds and flu from taking hold in your body.

We have been using Lactoferrin in our practice for more than 8 years with remarkable success.

Recommendations for use:
Take three capsules twice daily for five days when traveling or feeling under the weather. 

Special offer: Use discount code: springdefense at checkout and save 10%

Click here to learn more and purchase it in my store.

 

Is Teflon Safe For Cooking?

Convenient Teflon pans are a cook’s dream because the nonstick coating makes for easy clean-up. But some cooks question whether the pans are safe. In my latest post for NewsMax Health I talk about research from 2006 that showed the pans, when heated to a temperature over 500-F, release a polyvinyl chemical “that would actually be a potential carcinogen.”

So please watch the video below and let's discuss.  

Good Day NY: Hormone Replacement Therapy Study

Many women use hormone replacement therapy to ease the symptoms of menopause. But a new scientific review getting a lot of attention says long-term use of any kind of hormones can raise a woman's risk of breast cancer.

Researchers tracked 60,000 nurses and found taking any kind of hormones for a decade or more slightly raised their breast cancer risk. But might this unnecessarily alarm women and their doctors?

I joined Good Day NY this morning to talk about it. Here is the video:

 

Consider Alternatives to Statins for Lowering Cholesterol

The recent move by the Food and Drug Administration to issue warnings that cholesterol-lowering drugs may contribute to diabetes and memory loss shows the agency is re-evaluating “the most popular drug in America.”

The medications, known as statins, are pitched by the mainstream medical establishment as a panacea for heart disease and other ailments. However, the drugs can cause questionable side effects, and instead of popping a daily pill, patients can take other action to reduce their cholesterol, including changing their diet and exercising, Learn more from my latest Newsmax video:

 

 

Don’t Dismiss Resveratrol — There’s Clear Evidence it Fights Aging

For years, researchers have told us that moderate drinking of red wine, and an anti-inflammatory substance in it called resveratrol, combat aging and are good for heart health. But then a University of Connecticut red wine researcher was accused of fabricating his data. Should we still raise a glass of red wine to our health despite questions about his work?