So I’ve been thinking about attitudes. And I’ve come to believe that attitudes are not only important, but can be chosen. Consider this: The 1913 children’s book “Pollyanna” has become a cultural icon (a.k.a. cliché) because of the eponymous character’s insistence upon looking on the bright side, finding the silver lining in every cloud, always looking for something to be glad about. To call someone “a Pollyanna” nowadays is considered insulting, a reference to naïvete and being out of touch with reality. And yet… I don’t see anything wrong with these two quotes from Pollyanna: “I found something to be glad about!” and “If you look for the bad in people you’re sure to find it, so look for the good in them instead.”  Are those just the words of a naïve child quoting her missionary father? Or are these ideas the stuff of wisdom? Who’s right, the sophisticated pessimist or the childlike optimist?

To me, here’s the bottom line: Optimists live longer and have a measurably higher quality of life. In fact, I wrote a chapter in my medical school thesis about optimism, and here’s what I found: The scale of Optimism-Pessimism, as measured by the MMPI psychological test, is an accurate predictor for overall health and quality of life!  Pessimism is a predictor for depression, poorer physical health, and lower levels of achievement. 

Pessimism, and its bosom buddy cynicism, are fashionable these days.  We all know that disaster-mongering is a key to success for the news media.  Pessimists are comfortable with their “never wrong and rarely disappointed” attitudes, always fretting, expecting the worst from other people, even anticipating disappointment from life itself. If you expect the worst, then you can’t be disappointed, right?

But consider this: If it’s true that we can’t control what happens to us, only how we respond to it, then maybe it’s worth choosing the point of view that is associated with greater happiness and better health. Some lucky people are born with a sunny disposition. For the rest of us, it’s something we can learn.  In fact, “learned optimism” is just as powerful as innate optimism, as explained in a best-selling book 20 years ago by Martin Seligman, PhD: Learned Optimism: Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. Many people are led into depression by their own thought patterns, what Dr. Daniel Amen calls the ANTS, Automatic Negative Thoughts. Choosing to interrupt negative thought patterns by substituting calmer, more uplifting thoughts can be done – and it has tangible benefits.

Psychologists describe this as a person’s “explanatory style” – the habitual outlook of either making the worst of things (“People are no good… Other drivers always cut me off… There’s never enough money/time/whatever… Why bother trying, I’ll just make a mess of it anyway…”), as compared with the habit of looking on the bright side (“Several people did me favors today… I think this is a normal bump in the road… There’s always enough money/time/whatever to do what must be done… I can take pride in doing my personal best…”) These habitual internal dialogs are powerful! They shape people’s lives, for better or for worse.  And I’m happy to report that internal dialogs can and do improve, sometimes rapidly, in the face of overwhelming circumstances.

Overwhelming circumstances bring out the inner mystic in most people. I’ve heard that faith is based on experience. And if your everyday experience, even during trying times, is that there are sufficient resources for that day’s needs… then why worry? Why not just be grateful for it all?

Lately I’ve been told that I’m a Pollyanna – often in response to my attitude that I’m actually rather grateful for the difficulties of this past year. I wish this “Pollyanna” remark would be delivered with the humble gratitude that I feel in my heart, rather than the typical patronizing snub.  Within the past year I’ve experienced pain, cancer, financial setbacks, loss of loved ones, surgical menopause, chemotherapy, loss of faith, the nearness of death – and I know I’ve had the company of thousands of other brave souls enduring similar or worse ordeals. 

As a result of this series of setbacks, life has more clarity for me now than before: What I love, I really love! As for the rest, I don’t have time for it any more. I’m on borrowed time now, and I need to make it count. Most people are unaware of being on borrowed time; but in fact, each of us is born with a death sentence – doesn’t that mean we are all on borrowed time, all the time, anyway? So why waste precious time with negativity?

Recently the kindness and unexpected generosity of oh-so-many people and circumstances have piled up to a mountain of overwhelming gratitude for me. While I would not wish such a series of setbacks on anyone, the payback has been tremendous.  Clarity of purpose, and clarity of gratitude, are precious gifts in this life.

So call me a sap. I’m a happy sap who is glad to be alive.

-Deborah McKay, ND 

Dr. McKay is a weight-loss specialist, a cancer survivor, a wife and mother. This essay was written in 2010 as she was recovering from her ordeal with uterine cancer and a death in the family. 

Laughter induces a wonderful set of hormones called endorphins, our own natural painkillers, some of them ten times stronger than morphine, and all of them able to modulate the immune system. Endorphins not only relieve pain (both emotional and physical), they also wake up our own natural defenses against infections, cancer, even auto-immune disease (modulation means bringing levels to the optimal mid-range). What a gift! I want more of this, for myself and for my dear patients!

That’s why I searched so hard to find a laughter yoga class nearby. I wanted to feel that good, and I wanted that boost of healing energy, as often as possible. But laughter yoga is not easy to find these days, so in the end I had to create the class myself. I recruited the finest Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher in Beaverton, Ms. Kelly Hobson, a petite lady with a contagious, booming belly laugh. Together we are offering a monthly series of participatory workshops. I don’t know how long we’ll keep it up; as long as it’s fun, I suppose. Goodness knows it’s not profitable, it’s just a labor of love. But oh, the joy we all feel during our 60 minutes of giggles, silliness, ho-ho-ho’s, and yoga-style breathing exercises.

And then there’s the goofy grin that’s still stuck on my face when I wake up the next morning. I could get used to feeling this good!

Our local newspaper, the Southwest Community Connection, got wind of our workshops, and featured us in the Oct. 2011 issue, here: Providing ‘the best medicine’

And the New York TImes explained what’s going on with all those wonderful endorphins, here: Laughter Produces Endorphins, NYTimes

Robin McGraw, Dr. Phil’s wife and a BHRT patient, and Dr. Christiane Northrup, renowned author and speaker, started the conversation a couple weeks earlier when they joined Oprah to talk about BHRT. Women across the country wrote in to “The Oprah Show” wanting more information on how to take control of their menopause symptoms.

Somers shared her experience being treated by her physician with BHRT to alleviate her menopause symptoms. She also demonstrated her daily regimen of compounded medications and dietary supplements. “By replacing my hormones with bioidentical hormones, I got my life back. I got my health back, I got my figure back, I got my happiness back,” Somers said.

Oprah stressed that women “have the right to demand a better quality of life” and they should all do their research.

However, positive praise of BHRT was also met with harsh criticism when Dr. Lauren Streicher, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University and a practicing ob-gyn at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital, expressed her dislike for compounding pharmacies.

To be certain, Dr. Streicher’s commentary was the most grievous offense contained in the episode on compounding pharmacies. She mis-stated facts and presented a distorted picture of pharmacy compounding and how the profession is regulated. Today IACP sent a formal letter to the producers of “The Oprah Show” to dispel the untruths presented by Dr. Streicher.

Hoping to clear up the confusion about compounding pharmacies, Dr. Mehmet Oz visited Central Pharmacy in Santa Monica, Calif., where he interviewed Sharon Steen, owner of the compounding pharmacy. Steen estimated that 90 percent of the medications her pharmacy compounds are BHRT. A pharmacist and technician demonstrated how a hormone cream is prepared.

At the end of the show, a taped segment featured a woman who shared her struggles with menopause on part one of the BHRT debate that aired Jan. 15. Robin McGraw escorted the woman to have her hormone levels checked. It was determine that she needed BHRT, and only nine days later she was noticing the difference. “The side effect from the bioidentical hormones is a big dose of joy. It’s fantastic,” she told Oprah via webcam.

To view segments and read about what was discussed on the show, click here.

IACP Responds to Oprah
The International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP) responded to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with a formal letter correcting the misstatements made by Dr. Lauren Streicher on the show.

Click here to read IACP’s letter to Oprah Winfrey and her show producers.

We will keep you updated on further developments.

Sincerely,
P2C2

I just learned that the #1 most effective chlorine neutralizer is also the #1 cheapest, the #1 most readily available, and the #1 all-around healthiest. Other fans of Linus Pauling will not be surprised to hear that this miracle substance is … VITAMIN C!

Here is a link to a chlorine-removing shower filter, $50, that lasts about 6 months for 2 people. It is not a carbon filter (they get plugged up) nor does it use a sulfur compound as most others do. It uses pure Vitamin C — which is known to be great for the skin, the immune system, and the environment!

For removing chlorine after swimming or hot-tubbing, I have had success two ways: (1) a spray bottle filled with water + vitamin C crystals (very cheap from Trader Joe’s) works quickly on skin and hair. Just spray yourself all over, wait a sec (rub it in with bare hands), then rinse off or bathe as usual. Or (2) the fancy version is to add vitamin C to your favorite moisturizing soap and to your favorite conditioning shampoo. Just be sure to completely cover your hair and skin with your preferred vitamin C emulsion; it can’t work where it doesn’t reach.

You’ll know right away how well this works or not by how your skin and hair smell.

Dosage: So far I have had success with one teaspoon (5 grams) of vitamin C crystals dissolved in a large pint-size spray bottle of water. It’s a little harder to be sure the vitamin C is fully dissolved in soap or shampoo, but it seems to work with about one teaspoon (5 grams) vitamin C crystals in a normal-size bottle of liquid soap or shampoo.

The price is almost incalculably cheap: a one-pound bottle of vitamin C crystals (454 grams) at Trader Joe’s sells for $9.99 last time I checked. One teaspoon (5 grams) represents about 1% of a bottle, or 10 cents.

**Please let me know your experience with this!**

BTW, this spray solution would also be a great anti-burn solution. Vitamin C in water acts to instantly stop the pain and injury of a thermal burn on the skin or inside the mouth, even a bad burn with oozing blisters. It would probably be of great help with a sunburn as well, although it works best when applied immediately after the burn occurs (which is difficult with a sunburn because it is not an instantaneous injury like a kitchen burn). Again, I am eager to hear the experience of others who try this — please let me know!

The downside to chocolate of any description is that same energized feeling, which is actually a marker for adrenal stimulation. Coffee, black tea, yerba mate, chocolate, guarana, green tea, white tea, over-the-counter decongestants, and many other popular substances all act as adrenal gland stimulants. In light of the fact that we are a nation of adrenal-fatigued people who tend to ask too much of our bodies and typically don’t recover from stress as quickly or as well as we should, doesn’t it make more sense to be kind to our adrenal glands, instead of jolting them with stimulants?

Dr. McKay finds that addressing adrenal gland fatigue (or outright adrenal gland exhaustion) is a rewarding aspect of medical practice. This condition is common, although it is dismissed by mainstream medicine. It responds beautifully to natural approaches, but several modalities must be used at once — there is no silver bullet or single pill.

Dr. McKay’s favorite book on this topic is Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome, by James Wilson, ND, DC, PhD. Having recovered from her own adrenal fatigue twice (once from medical school, once from cancer treatment), Dr. McKay has great insight and empathy on the subject.

Fat Factors By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

In the 30-plus years that Richard Atkinson has been studying obesity, he has always maintained that overeating doesn’t really explain it all. His epiphany came early in his career, when he was a medical fellow at U.C.L.A. engaged in a study of people who weighed more than 300 pounds and had come in for obesity surgery. “The general thought at the time was that fat people ate too much,” Atkinson, now at Virginia Commonwealth University, told me recently. “And we documented that fat people do eat too much – our subjects ate an average of 6,700 calories a day. But what was so impressive to me was the fact that not all fat people eat too much…”

Read the complete “Fat Factors” Article Here

Some wildly popular water bottles are made of polycarbonate.

Recent news articles have pointed out public health concerns regarding exposure to a known estrogen-mimicking plastic called bisphenol A, or BPA. In fact, in April 2008, the Canadian Government took strong measures to prevent exposure of infants and the environment to BPA.

While Bisphenol A was first synthesized in 1891, the first evidence of its estrogenicity came from experiments in the 1930′s feeding BPA to ovariectomised rats (Dodds and Lawson 1936, 1938). Another compound invented during that era, diethylstilbestrol, turned out to be more powerful as an estrogen, so bisphenol A was shelved… until polymer chemists discovered that it could be polymerized to form polycarbonate plastic. Unfortunately, the ester bond that links BPA monomers to one another to form a polymer is not stable and hence the polymer decays with time, releasing BPA into materials with which it comes into contact, for example food or water.

Minimizing Exposure to BPA

Bisphenol A migrates into foods and liquids most readily at high temperatures; so keep plastic containers at room temperature or colder. Most plastics also migrate more readily under acidic conditions; so never use plastic to store acidic foods or drinks (soft drinks, coffee, citrus of any kind, vinegar-containing foods, tomatoes, pickles, etc.) All plastics are subject to degradation in the presence of oils and fats; so never use plastic to store fatty foods or drinks (milk, salad dressing, meats, oils, nut butters, shortening, etc.) Plastics degrade with time and become less stable, so throw away your water bottles and plastic food containers after six months. Of course, that just moves the problem out of your kitchen and into the landfill — best to not buy plastic containers in the first place!