HealthBeat News

Category: Man Health

  • Which Test Is Better For Hormones – Urine Or Saliva?

    Many of you know already that one of Dr. Myatt’s areas of specialty is endocrine health and function: hormones and bio-identical hormone replacement. The human endocrine system is an exquisitely complicated and elegant chemical equivalent to the human nervous system – hormones are the chemical messengers for our bodily functions. Indeed, without healthy hormones, even the nervous system cannot function correctly!

    While at first glance hormone balance looks like a fairly simple task, it truth it is not – there are too many things that are inter-dependant, and the do-it-yourself approach to correcting and maintaining hormone balance can be like walking blindfolded through a minefield.

    We offer hormone testing, and we also offer a very special service where Dr. Myatt will provide an analysis and interpretation of the results of that testing. For this service, Dr. Myatt spends up to an hour (and sometimes more!) consulting with top experts at the testing lab and then provides a written interpretation, report, and recommendations. This allows those who wish to attempt to manage their own hormone health to do so with the benefit of as much knowledge and understanding as possible – to keep them from stepping on any of those "hormonal land-mines" that await the unwary.

    Another question we often hear is which is better – blood, saliva, or urine testing for hormone levels?

    Will recently wrote to ask:

    Dr. Myatt

    Why do you recommend urine over saliva for male hormone test?  Dr. John Lee recommends saliva but nothing said about urine. I am 44 and am do bikram yoga 5 times a week eat mostly raw etc. and want to establish a "baseline" marker today and maintain using the bioidentical hormone therapy mode (I think). LEF.ORG has a list of markers that they recommend and yours are somewhat different.  Please advise!  Thanks in advance for your time.

    Thank you
    Will

    It is clear that Will is trying to do things right with his health, and he is correct to be wary of the conflicting information that can be found on the internet. One advantage that we have here at the Wellness Club is that Dr. Myatt’s knowledge is cutting-edge and very up-to-date.

    Here is Dr. Myatt’s response to Will:

    Hi Will:

    Sex hormones are released in "bursts" throughout a 24-hour period. Obviously, a blood test will be the least accurate. Saliva is next best for a baseline, but hormones are not always consistently concentrated in saliva in a way the is truly representative of the 24-hour average. Urine is the most accurate, because it factors in the "bursts" and tells us the true 24-hour average.

    The urine test was not available back when Dr. Lee started making recommendations about testing. I have used all three tests over the years and believe solidly in the value of the 24-hour urine.

    The Comp Plus urine test also gives much more information than just the sex hormones because it tells us "intermediates" (as one thing is converted to another), plus HGH, adrenal hormones and ratios of sex hormones that are known to be markers (preventive) for hormone-related cancers. This information gives a much more complete picture than just the sex hormones alone.

    I recommend you spend the extra dollars and get the "state-of-the-art" 24 hour urine test. That way, you’ll have an excellent baseline to refer back to.

    In Health,
    Dr. Myatt

    P.S. Here’s the link to my medical test page so you can read more about these tests. I still offer saliva hormone testing but feel it if far inferior to urine. http://www.drmyattswellnessclub.com/medicaltests.htm#CompPlus

  • Got Belly Fat? Beat The Risk!

    The Surprisingly High Risk of Belly Fat

    by Dr. Dana Myatt

    Ever see a man or woman with normal-sized legs and lower body but with a belly that sticks out like they’re nine months pregnant with triplets? I call this a "carbo belly" (some call it a beer belly; beer-loving Nurse Mark calls it a "Miller Muscle" for one brand of beer that can contribute to it), and it is the type of fat distribution that puts a person at MUCH higher risk for heart disease. It is even possible to be a normal weight for one’s height yet still have a waist diameter that increases heart-risk. In fact, how much belly fat you carry is more important than how fat you are overall.

    In a study done at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, researchers measured and followed the abdominal diameter of 101,765 men and women for nearly 12 years. Their study found that men with the biggest bellies had 42 percent higher rates of heart disease than men with smaller waist diameters. Women with the biggest bellies were at 44 percent higher risk. This risk was seen even in normal weight subjects with big bellies.

    The take-home message: If you carry excess fat in your gut, you’re at higher risk of heart disease than if you have, say, a big butt. (No extra charge for the rhyme). Fortunately, the cure for belly fat is simple: cut down (WAY down) on simple carbohydrate foods, increase your intake of protein, Omega-3 fats and non-starchy veggies. A day or two per week of The Super Fast Diet will jump-start your belly fat weight loss program and get you out of the heart-disease danger zone fast. Learn more about The Super Fast Diet >>>

    References:

    1.) Value of the sagittal abdominal diameter in coronary heart disease risk assessment: cohort study in a large, multiethnic population. Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Dec 15;164(12):1150-9. Epub 2006 Oct 13. Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Oakland 94612, and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco General Hospital, CA, USA.
    2.) Carbohydrate restriction alters lipoprotein metabolism by modifying VLDL, LDL, and HDL subfraction distribution and size in overweight men. J Nutr. 2006 Feb;136(2):384-9. Summary: weight loss which resulted from reduced carbohydrate intake decreased risk for atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.

  • A Great New Wellness Club Service For You!

    New – Brief Medical Consultations by Telephone.

    Get Fast, Professional Answers To Your Most Pressing Health Questions

    Do you need a few medical questions answered but don’t want or need a full patient consultation – complete with in-depth case study, research, and written recommendations – at this time?

    A Brief Phone Consultation with Dr. Myatt may be all you need to get your questions answered.

    Dr. Myatt is now available for brief telephone consultations. Each 15-minute increment costs only $40, and many people find that a single 15-minute session with Dr. Myatt is sufficient to get their most pressing questions answered.

    • Struggling to understand hormone balance?
    • Wrestling with weight loss and wondering about the benefits and risks of the different diets?
    • Want the straight scoop on cancer treatments?
    • Wondering what the latest research is on diabetes treatments and how it affects you?
    • Need to know the truth about cholesterol or blood pressure?
    • Want to hear an honest opinion of the latest "miracle" juice or vitamin or supplement?

    The answers to these questions and many more are just an inexpensive phone call away.

    Knowledge is power. Knowledge is also your key to good health. Don’t deprive yourself of valuable knowledge any longer!

    Please visit our website here: Brief Medical Consultations  for more information on how this great new service works for you and to book your Brief Medical Consultation now!

  • The Dollars and Sense of Good Health in Bad Times

    The Dollars and Sense of Good Health in Bad Times

    Opinion by Nurse Mark

    Times are tough.

    Maybe your luck in that legalized gambling that is Wall Street has run out.

    Maybe you don’t dabble in stocks and bonds, but you are affected none-the-less by the rising costs – your employer or your business is taking a hit.

    Winter is upon us in most parts of our country, and that means heating season: fuel oil, natural gas, electricity, they are all costing more this year.

    A trip to the grocery store is more expensive this year than it was last year.

    Clothing, school supplies, utilities, services – all more expensive than ever.

    What’s a person to do? Cut back. Economize.

    Everyone is having to cut back – businesses, services, families, working folk, retirees, – everyone is economizing, making do with less, tightening their belts.

    Where do we look when we want to cut back? The extras. The luxuries. The non-essentials.

    We don’t cut the essentials:

    We don’t stop heating our homes; that would be foolish – the pipes might freeze and then we’d really have an expense.

    We don’t stop maintaining our cars; that would be a false economy – if the engine seizes for want of oil or the brakes fail for want of service then we lose our means of getting to work to earn our livings.

    We don’t stop buying groceries; doing without food is not an option!

    So where do many folks cut back?

    When times get tough many people look to the things that they consider to be non-essential, and unfortunately vitamins and supplements fall into that category in the minds of a lot of folks.

    After all, they reason, they eat a good diet, their health is OK right now, and right now, those vitamins and supplements seem expensive – but if they need a doctor visit or prescription drugs they have their "health insurance" plan to tap, and if they should get sick they have their sick days and other benefits from their employer… so, the insurance "pays".

    But let’s look at this line of reasoning for a moment.

    Sure, your "health insurance" plan (if you are "fortunate" enough to have someone "making book" on your continued health) will pay for you to see a doctor – it might even pay for your prescription drugs if it’s a fancy enough plan. But that presumes that you are already sick. So, who "pays" for your misery of being sick?

    Of course, you may have "sick days" accrued with your employer – some employers are positively generous with sick time. But again, you are sick, miserable, and not up to doing much of anything. And probably making everyone around you sick and miserable too.

    Even if you do get some continuation of your pay, in the form of paid sick leave, when you are sick, does it really give you a full paycheck?

    What if you are a waitress, working at minimum wage, but doing well from tips? Yep, you’ll get your base (minimum wage) pay – but what about those lost tips? Your employer isn’t going to cover that!

    What if you are, say, a realtor? Or a car salesman? Or an insurance salesman? Your income depends on commissions. If you are not showing homes and closing deals, you are not earning commissions. Sure, someone else can take over a deal-in-progress, but you’ll probably give up the lion’s share of the commission…

    Maybe you are an auto mechanic, working for a large dealership. Like the waitress, maybe you’ll get your base pay – but most mechanics now work on "flat rate" – a set amount of money paid for each "job". Get assigned a "brake job" and get paid $XX – get assigned a tune-up and get paid $X. If you are not there to be assigned the jobs? You lose.

    Maybe you are a highly-paid, valuable executive – a CEO even. You will undoubtedly have a great "health insurance" plan. But while you are home, or out of the office for your medical appointments, who is covering your responsibilities? Who is looking after the reports and papers piling up on your desk? Who is meeting with the important people? Who is making the important decisions? What will the Board or the shareholders decide to do if you are "out" too long or if they become concerned about your long-term health?

    So maybe you are self-employed – a plumber, lawyer, electrician, farmer, independent trucker, accountant, a flower shop owner, even a doctor – you know only too well that if you are sick and away from your work, there is no income. Sure, maybe the "hired help" can keep things going, but it just isn’t the same – things aren’t done right without your management, and overheads don’t stop just because you are sick. And what about the jobs or business that is lost while you are not there?

    Then there is the thought, what if that "cold" or "flu" develops into something more serious? What about a bronchitis, or even a pneumonia? And that pneumonia leads to, say, congestive heart failure? And that keeps you off work for longer – maybe even even permanently?

    Doesn’t it begin to make sense to do everything possible to give your health a fighting chance?

    We lead busy, even hectic lives. We are stressed, our food is not has healthy as it should be, and we grab junky meals- on-the-go. We are surrounded by hacking, coughing, sneezing, sniffling sick people. We don’t get enough sleep, we don’t get enough exercise, we work in offices breathing stale, "canned" air or in factories breathing who-knows-what.

    We need all the help we can get.

    Your vitamins, minerals, and dietary supplements are not a luxury. They help to protect you from the things that would make you have to use that "health insurance" plan (that is really a disease insurance plan) – with every illness really costing you money, and time, and misery.

    You say that times are tight, and you can’t afford those "expensive" vitamins and supplements.

    Can you really afford to not have them?

  • "Double Standards" and Natural, "Non-Conventional" Health Care

    I was discussing the subject of drugs and drug testing with a friend online the other day, and thought that the following might be of interest to HealthBeat readers:

     

    My friend wrote:

    The problem: pilots are human, and subject to all the normal problems everyone else goes through. When a pilot gets depressed, they cannot seek help, or they will be grounded for a period that can last for years.

    Why is it OK for police, judges, firemen, other jobs with great social responsibility, to be successfully treated with anti-depressants, but pilots are expected to be superhuman physically and mentally?

    And I replied:

    Hi,

    You are quite right – it is really NOT ok for there to be such a double-standard. No one is functioning at their best when filled with side-effect producing pharmaceuticals. Fortunately the FAA has the oversight and the clout to do something about it – most other professions do not, and you have judges making bad decisions that affect peoples lives, cops putting themselves, their partners, and the public at risk with dulled reflexes, crane operators making bad picks with dulled judgment, and so on.

    It is worth remembering however that depression is not caused by a Zoloft or Paxil or Effexor deficiency, anxiety is not caused by a Valium or Xanax deficiency, high blood pressure is not caused by a Norvasc deficiency, diabetes is not caused by a drug deficiency… and yet these are common problems that people use sense and reaction-time dulling drugs for.

    Fair enough perhaps if you get this stuff "covered" by some health care plan, and it doesn’t affect your employability, and you really don’t care that you are disabled to some degree by side effects…

    But in the case of a pilot, this is a big concern. Conventional treatment for many illnesses using conventional drugs will ground a pilot, resulting in a sudden and severe loss of income – no wonder many attempt to self-treat. While hypertension or arrhythmias or diabetes will be found on the FAA physical, depression can be hidden with varying degrees of success.

    But it need not be so. Given the financial incentive for a pilot to maintain the ability to fly, perhaps it might be worth stepping outside of the "corporate medical insurance plan" box and seeking some alternative, non-conventional health care.

    A visit with a naturopathic physician, while reportable to the FAA, could be legitimately reported simply as "Nutritional and Dietary Counseling" even though the desired effect of such counseling might be the correction of imbalances that may be manifesting as, say, neurotransmitter imbalances resulting in feelings of depression. Result: reporting legitimately accomplished with privacy maintained.

    As far as drugs go, a good Naturopathic Medical Doctor would perform neurotransmitter testing and make dietary and supplement changes to correct out-of-range neurotransmitters, without using reportable drugs. This is not fantasy or psychic woo-woo stuff – we do it successfully, every day here. Though we can prescribe drugs (Dr Myatt is an NMD – Naturopathic Medical Doctor – and is fully licensed and in possession of a DEA number which allows her to prescribe any FDA-approved drug) we very rarely do so – it just isn’t necessary. Drugs are more like Band-Aids – they treat the symptoms while the patient heals them self. We treat the causes, resulting in much faster and more complete healing.

    Further, dietary supplements like L-5HTP, SAMe, St. Johns Wort, bromelain, grape seed extract, niacin, etc. are NOT reportable to the FAA as "drugs"…

    We are constantly amazed at the medical "problems" that folks drug themselves for that we correct without drugs. Some examples; hypertension – easily correctable without Norvasc or other drugs, type 2 diabetes – not just correctable but curable without drugs, allergies – yep, drugless relief, high cholesterol – back to healthy ranges without drugs, GERD – a "slam-dunk" with Nexium NOT required, heart arrhythmias – most respond nicely to drugless treatment (we have a lawyer patient who was told after 3 successive ecg’s that he had a permanent and irreversible heart block – that he was "a ticking time-bomb" and would likely need a pacemaker. After a month of drugless treatment his cardiologist repeated the ecg and shook his head saying "If I were a lawyer I would not want to have to go into court to explain this – it is gone and your heart is fine – and that is not supposed to happen!") The list goes on and no, but you get the idea – mankind survived and thrived for millennia without the help of modern drugs – what the heck has changes so in the last century to make us any different?

    It also amazes me that folks insure their automobile but don’t expect the insurance company to pay for their tune-ups, oil changes, new tires, or new muffler – but when you suggest to someone that they might part with a few of their hard-earned dollars for a health care consultation or vitamins or supplements they react with horror, expecting that to either be "covered" by "the plan" or they just won’t do it. Yet in the case of a pilot, that refusal to take some personal responsibility for one’s own health could result in being grounded with the loss of income that would result.

    The analogy would be to knowingly drive on your bald tire, waiting for it to blow out on the road so that you can call road service to come out and put the spare on… and still not bothering to get new tires "because the insurance won’t cover it."

    So, if you have aviation buddies who are dancing around the FAA trying to avoid reporting ground-able stuff have them tap us – I’ll bet we can help keep ’em flying… and get them healthier than they’ve ever been…

    As an aside, I would love to have the opportunity to apply some simple dietary and vitamin techniques to a training class of aviators, with a parallel class as a control – I’m certain we could  demonstrate improvements in strength, stamina, endurance, coordination, alertness, resistance to fatigue and illness,  reaction times, and more… at little cost to Unka Sam.

    Cheers,
    Nurse Mark