Pain Relief Chiropractic

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

This month, let’s talk about pain.  While no one therapy is 100 percent effective, there are effective ways to dial back and even prevent big pain. In fact, proven, non-drug therapies can slash your pain by 20 to 60 percent and let two-thirds of you with chronic pain slash pain-pill dosage too. Yes, the data are clear, chiropractic treatment is the least expensive and quickest way to return to normal function after back pain.

If you’ve got pain that won’t quit—headaches, nerve pain, digestive pain or aches in your joints—these eight tips can help you get the upper hand, brighten your mood, and improve your sleep:

#1: Quit smoking. A major cause of recurrent back pain (and all recurrent pain) is smoking and tobacco use! Tobacco users have a 300 percent greater rate of chronic lower back pain than nonsmokers. The cause of the back pain from tobacco is not known, but some research indicates that hydrocarbons from cigarette smoke increase inflammation and decrease blood flow. Researchers have also found that nicotine disrupts the flow of oxygen to the spine’s disks, and coupled with inflammation, can trigger disk degeneration (ouch!). Cigarette smoke (even secondhand smoke) also appears to kill off the cells that build bone, which affects bone density.  (So does smoking marijuana. One joint releases the inflammation from hydrocarbons of four cigarettes.)

So if you have chronic pain and you smoke, your best first step is to quit! (You’ll also reduce your risk for lung, esophageal, and many other cancers, COPD, stroke, and heart attack.) Need help?  Go to my.clevelandclinic.org and search for “smoking cessation.” Our email coaching program is 63 percent effective on the first try for at least seven months.

#2: Move gently. Exercise may be the last thing you want to do, but a gentle program like walking and yoga (ask your doc what’s best for you) can pay big dividends—like cutting your need for prescription pain pills and boosting the odds you’ll be back to work each by more than 50 percent.  Movement’s great for everything from that bum knee to headaches and pain associated with recovering from cardiac surgery.

#3: Watch your weight. Not only does an extra 10 pounds put 30 to 60 pounds of added force on your knees with every step, but added weight increases your odds for lower back pain, tension and migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, abdominal pain, and chronic widespread pain.  The good news? Losing weight takes that pressure off.

#4: De-stress daily. It’s not all in your head; tension makes pain feel worse. Progressive muscle relaxation by tightening, then releasing your muscles slowly from toes to head helps joint aches, headaches, rheumatoid arthritis pain, and inflammatory bowel disease. Massage and guided imagery also help you relax deeply and ease pain. There are at least eight more techniques you can try to see which works for you at ClevelandClinicWellness.com (look for StressFreeNow on the site).

#5: Meditate. Turning inward for a few minutes relaxes you—and helps you control your brain’s alpha rhythm, a brain wave that tunes out distractions like pain.  This also sharpens memory, which is good news because chronic pain can take a toll on your ability to remember names, dates, or where you left the car keys.  Try it: Close your eyes and breathe in and out at a natural pace, noticing how it feels. As thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations crop up, acknowledge them without judgment and return your attention to your breath, focusing on exhaling stress. After 10 minutes, start noticing your surroundings again, open your eyes, and go about your day refreshed!

#6: Make an appointment for more pain help. Therapies such as cognitive behavior therapy, acupuncture, and biofeedback, provided by trained practitioners, can also take the edge off pain. Ask your doctor for a referral.

#7: Use topical pain relievers. These halt pain signals before they reach your brain.

#8: Get a second opinion about your pain meds. Using strong pain relievers long-term may be a smart choice if you’ve got cancer pain or are suffering from pain at the end of life.  After major surgery, taking them while well-supervised by a pain management specialist may be essential, too.  But remember meditating or yoga learned beforehand decreases need for pain meds even after cardiac surgery by 50%.

But for the rest of you, whether you’re stuck on pain meds or just started taking them, it’s the right time to see your chiropractic pain management specialist to learn about your options. Intercepting pain fast can stop it from becoming chronic. Finding new options can, at any time in your journey to control pain, put you back on the road to living the life you love.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer)

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice.

This article is of the opinion of its author.

Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week).  The YOU docs have tow newly revised books: The patron saint “book” of this column YOU Staying Young—revised and YOU: The Owner’s Manual…revised —yes a revision of the book that started Dr Oz to being Dr Oz.  These makes great gifts—so do YOU: ON a Diet and YOU: The Owner’s Manual for teens.  And, the new book by Dr Mike Roizen: This is YOUR Do-Over

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.radioMD.com Saturdays from 5-7 p.m. He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including: YOU Staying Young.

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

This month, we’re talking about data from an exciting new study published in The BMJ (formerly, the British Medical Journal) that shows just how important physical activity is for building up your defenses against serious disease and how it can make your RealAge younger. We’re bragging here, but it almost exactly confirms data, action steps, and recommendations we had in the RealAge program when it was first released in December 1998 and the same conclusions about the minimum activity you have to do for maximum health benefit in the first RealAge: Are You As Young As You Can Be? book published in 1999! (Yes, I am proud; the book was a #1 NY Times Bestseller!).

After examining 174 studies that looked at the effect of physical activity on breast cancer, colon cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, researchers  from the University of Washington discovered that the minimum activity for maximum health benefits comes from about 4,200 MET minutes a week, or translated to our terms, from just 10,000 steps a day, 30 minutes of resistance training (moving weights against gravity—moving your weight against gravity counts), and 20 minutes three times a week of sweating activity (cardio).  With that you get about 4,200 MET activity minutes a week (see below for understanding MET minutes)—making those cancers, heart disease, and stroke 25 percent less likely. Those benefits are in addition to how effective consistent physical activity (with a touch of sweat please!) is in protecting your brain, enhancing your sex life, and reducing your risk for obesity and all its related woes.

If you have gotten the message, “Stand up, move, walk, play, get active,” congratulations! Back in 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that only about 20 percent of you met the minimal guidelines for physical activity that decreases risk for these chronic diseases by about 5 percent—barely more than 20 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a day. And we may have gotten worse, the recent NHAENS data from over 50,000 Americans show that less than 60% are getting even 100 MET minutes a week or less than 10 minutes of walking 7 days a week.

Measuring Your Activity Level: Meet MET

The activity gauge the researchers used to evaluate the benefits of kickin’ up your heels is called MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task), an approximate measure of how many calories are burned during any given activity. The World Health Organization recommends that adults get in a minimum of 600 MET minutes weekly—or about 30 minutes of moderate activity daily. Walking at a pace of two-and-a-half mph has a designated MET of 3. If you walk for 30 minutes, multiply 30 by 3—your MET minutes equal 90.  If you jog a 12-minute-mile, your MET is 8 for each minute. Do that for 15 minutes and you’ve racked up 120 MET minutes.

But More…and More…Is Even Better

The researchers also discovered that increasing your MET minutes from 600 to 3,600 a week reduces the risk of diabetes by an additional 19 percent, breast cancer by 14 percent, colon cancer by 21 percent, heart disease by 25 percent, and stroke by 26 percent. And you don’t have to spend six times as much time working out to hit 3,600 METS—you just have to get smart about it by choosing activities that have higher MET values and adding a bit more time.

We’re particularly fond of a walking routine that incorporates interval training. We recommend puff-hard-can’t-talk effort with periods of recovery: Step up your walking pace for four minutes, then take it easy, walking more slowly for three minutes. During your 30 to 60 minute walk, you can repeat this sequence at least two to three times.

But while that’s substantial, we know you can do even more—and get even more life-improving results! You see, in the study, the disease-risk-reducing benefits of increased activity really reached it’s maximum benefit near 4,200 MET minutes a week—or about the RealAge ideal of 10,000 steps (including 20 min of cardio activity that you can get with interval walking) and 40 jumps a day, plus 30 min or more of resistance training, using light hand weights or stretch bands, every week.  Beyond 8,000 MET minutes a week, you get no further health benefit (though you will get fitter), but 8,000 MET minutes gives you only 2% more benefit than 4,200!

So how can you start?  We recommend you write yourself a prescription with the following action steps:

• Buy two pedometers (so you’ll always have one),
• Some great walking shoes, and
• Find a walking buddy. Just start walking.  You can do it.
• Start scheduling physical activity into your daily calendar—Do It, and keep doing it!
• Start seeing if you are hitting the 10K a day minimum for maximum health. If not, increase walking by 10K more each week (each day of the week should be 10 minutes or 5% more than the previous week’s average) till you get to 10K.
• Buy a jump rope and start learning how to do 20 jumps every morning before you start your car.
• Get up from your desk and walk for two minutes every hour.

And how can you step it up? Do start measuring all your activities including walking, stair climbing, vacuuming, gardening, running, and cycling. Then do the math. You can get a complete MET chart if you google “NCI MET chart” (NCI is the National Cancer Institute). Add up your achievements (it may surprise you how much you do already). By the end of the week, you’ll see just how great you feel when you meet the RealAge ideal of 4,200 MET minutes or even more every seven days!

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer)

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice. This article is of the opinion of its author. Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week).  The YOU docs have tow newly revised books: The patron saint “book” of this column YOU Staying Young—revised and YOU: The Owner’s Manual…revised —yes a revision of the book that started Dr Oz to being Dr Oz.  These makes great gifts—so do YOU: ON a Diet and YOU: The Owner’s Manual for teens.  And, the new book by Dr Mike Roizen: This is YOUR Do-Over

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.radioMD.com Saturdays from 5-7 p.m. He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including: YOU Staying Young.

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

If you’ve ever dropped some pounds only to pick every single one back up, then you know firsthand how tough it is to keep weight off once you’ve shed it. Just one in six overweight or obese people who slim down manage to stay that way!   Now, two reports reveal why—and what might help you convince Mother Nature (and your metabolism) to protect your weight loss.

First, there was the headline-grabbing study that tracked 14 Biggest Loser contestants for six years after their season on that wildly popular TV reality show. The contestants lost about 127 pounds apiece (yes, each lost about that) through strict diets and relentless exercise regimens. They radically reshaped their bodies. Some lost more than 200 pounds! And their health improved in countless ways.

Fast-forward six years. Most contestants regained much of the weight they’d lost—on average, about 90 pounds each (although many remained at least 10% slimmer than when they started the show, reducing their risk for diabetes, heart disease, joint pain, and other major health problems ).

A few contestants weighed more than they had before the show.  Why was weight maintenance so difficult?

The answer jumped out when researchers measured the contestants’ resting metabolic rate—the number of calories burned by the body ‘round the clock. The results were shocking. Before their participation in the show began, their metabolic rates were normal. Right after their appearance on the show ended, their metabolic rate had dipped. That was to be expected as it normally occurs following weight loss. But here’s the kicker…

Six years later, the contestants’ bodies were burning about 500 fewer calories every day than expected based on their age and body composition. Their post-weight-loss metabolic dip had never reversed itself. In some cases, a contestant’s metabolism slowed even more as the years went by. And as they gained weight back, their metabolism stayed sluggish. Mother Nature, it seems, was doing everything possible to make their bodies regain weight—a survival tool in prehistoric times of severe famine, a big challenge for 21st-century dieters!

This info coupled with other recent studies on metabolism and weight loss can help you succeed at a task that’s even tougher than losing weight: keeping it off.

Here’s what to do… You must build more muscle mass, especially as you age. Your muscles drive your metabolism, whether you’re sleeping or sweatin’ along to a YouTube exercise video.  The more muscle mass you have (usually), the higher your calorie burn rate. So the smart move is to lose weight slowly, preserving more muscle mass than extreme weight-loss programs allow.

Feed your muscles—then make ‘em work: During your weight-loss phase and afterward, be sure you’re building muscle as you lose fat and are eating enough protein (my favorites are nuts, beans, quinoa, egg whites, and salmon) to feed lean, sexy muscle. Build and maintain muscles with strength-training two to three times a week while losing and after.  Then, boost your metabolism further by adding short bursts of faster, higher-intensity aerobic activity to some of your cardio work-outs, going for 10,000 steps a day.

Try interval walking: Walk faster for 30 seconds, then back to your usual pace for a minute, repeat a couple of times.

And most importantly, keep the weight down for a year. That’s right, give yourself a year to let your new weight become your “new normal.” A recent University of Copenhagen study found that levels of the “feed me!” hormone ghrelin rise during weight loss, urging you to eat and making it tough to maintain a lower weight. But if you stick to your healthy eating and exercise plan it’ll get easier—we promise! The researchers found that ghrelin levels drop to normal about a year after weight loss.

Slash stress. Stress boosts your levels of the appetite-stimulating hormones.  Turn to exercise, progressive muscle relaxation (breathe calmly as you tense and relax muscle groups from your toes to your head), yoga, time with friends, and your favorite hobby to soothe stress instead of reaching for sweets and snacks.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer)

 NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice. This article is of the opinion of its author. Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week).  The YOU docs have tow newly revised books: The patron saint “book” of this column YOU Staying Young—revised and YOU: The Owner’s Manual…revised —yes a revision of the book that started Dr Oz to being Dr Oz.  These makes great gifts—so do YOU: ON a Diet and YOU: The Owner’s Manual for teens.  And, the new book by Dr Mike Roizen: This is YOUR Do-Over

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.radioMD.com Saturdays from 5-7 p.m. He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including: YOU Staying Young.

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

One of everyone’s big hopes is to find ways for your body to use its own stem cells to repair itself. Your body naturally already uses its own stem cells to make you stronger, healthier, and more resistant to the conditions that have the potential to slug away at you day after day and year after year. The problem is, you lose stem cells as you age, whether by using them to repair damaged organs or because they’re destroyed by such toxins as chemotherapy or radiation or oxygen free radicals—leaving you vulnerable to many problems.

A key to slowing aging or reversing it is repairing damage with brand new cells. When you smoke, stem cells are sent to the lungs to respond to the damage that results from each drag of a cigarette. Or when your skin burns from the sun, stem cells go there to make repairs. But— and this is a big but—there are two unfortunate consequences of that repair, and it’s another example of how a valuable process has the power to flip you up-side your head.

First, the more stem cells you send in for repair (say, the more times you burn your skin from lying out by the pool unprotected), the more stem cell reproduction occurs. The more reproduction, the higher the chance that something will go wrong during cell division—meaning that your stem cells have a higher chance of differentiating into a tumor cell. Stem cells know how to replicate quickly, so, boom, you’ve got cancer. (That’s why repeated damage to an organ—via smoking, sunburn, alcohol abuse, or inflammation from saturated fat or just being fat—predisposes you to cancer.) Second, if your stem cells are constantly repairing sunburn, then there won’t be enough of them available to aid in maintaining your other organs.

Stem cells come in two varieties: Blastocysts (often mistakenly called embryonic, a charged word that has created a political and moral brouhaha) and Progenitor cells (also called adult stem cells): These adult stem cells retain the ability to grow into other kinds of cells. Why is this so exciting from a medical and scientific perspective? If your own stem cells—the cells you currently have—can be used to regenerate new tissue to replace broken-down or diseased tissue and fix your own organs, then you have the opportunity to punch frailty right in the face.

One of the goals of stem cell research is to harvest some of these universal cells, grow them in laboratories, and then use them to undo the damage done by such things as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many other diseases associated with aging. How do we know that this process has potential? Well, just look at the work that’s been done on the heart.

Cardiology was one of the specialties most resistant to the potential power of stem cells, and the damaged heart was considered to be a representative of the key organs that could not regenerate themselves. In research involving heart transplant, scientists studied groups of men who received a female heart (in heart transplantation, the sex of the heart doesn’t matter, but, rather, the size). In theory, the cells of a female heart, when transplanted into a man, should have only their original double- X chromosomes, with no male Y chromosomes in them at all. But when researchers examined the hearts only a few months after transplantation, they actually found Y chromosomes in the heart—meaning that the male stem cells were migrating from the bone marrow to the heart to make periodic repairs. Similar reinvigoration of almost all of your organs continually occurs with your own full- time stem cell repairmen.

In a recent story that you may have seen in the non-medical press, researchers found people who had lost some mobility following a stroke could recover substantial motor and brain function when their own adult stem cells (increased in numbers when grown in culture) were injected into the parts of the brain damaged by the stroke.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer)

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

This month, we want to discuss My Feeling About the DHA-Omega-3 Jackpot. (By the way, check out my new book, This is YOUR Do-Over: The Seven Secrets to Losing Weight, Living Longer, And Getting A Second Chance at the Life You Want (shameless plug—you can order it here) .  You can send us questions anytime to youdocs@gmail.com, just put the phrase “Question for Dr Mike Roizen to answer” in the subject line, and I’ll try to get to it.)

In October 2015, a group of eleven women working together at the Canada Post won a nine million dollar lotto jackpot.  And when your author learned that 900 mg of DHA a day can make one’s memory six years younger and maybe even protect you from sugar binges, all of us won a jackpot without even buying a ticket. If you read my articles even occasionally, you probably know my feeling about sugar being a trigger for brain dysfunction.

Sugar for the slightly and very diseased brain is like cocaine—short-term increases in sugar levels in blood and in the brain improve brain function (more sugar in damaged cells temporarily improves function—as sugar or insulin through the upper plate in the nose do for Alzheimer’s patients, and even substances that decrease the blood brain barrier like saturated fats help this temporarily). But chronically (even over a two-week period in humans) slightly raised sugar levels—even if you don’t have diabetes or prediabetes—will decrease your memory. That excess blood glucose you get from a sugar donut (made worse by the saturated fat in it)—you can substitute any sugar laden food here—damages brain cells.

In one study, people had their sugar levels tested and were asked to memorize 15 words, then repeat them a half-hour later. Those with higher levels of blood sugar (chronically elevated) remembered, on average, two fewer words. Higher blood sugar is linked to a smaller hippocampus, which means poorer ability to form and store new memories. The same thing (or at least its rat equivalent) occurs when rodents were fed the equivalent of a liter of sugared soda a day.

The rats that got the sugar in their diet took twice as long to run mazes and learned them much slower. But there is some good news here (don’t skip ahead). These decreases in learning new memories were associated with a large number of changes in gene function as sugar changed the “C” function (cytosol) of the DNA making it less visible to protein manufacturing.

No matter if that is the cause, the decrease in ability to learn and store memories and the gene changes were prevented if the rats were given the equivalent of 900mg of DHA-omega-3 a day (conflict of interest note: I did chair the scientific advisory board of a company that made DHA-Omega-3 from algae; I no longer do so. Algae are where the fish get DHA-Omega-3 from, as like us, fish generally do not make it themselves).

Now we do not know if these gene effects are why sugar is bad, or DHA-Omega-3 fat is beneficial for memory because of its gene effects (that specific part of fish oil that reversed the effect). But we have known for several years from randomized studies in individuals who were 55 to 75 years of age and had started to lose their memory that 900mg of DHA a day made their memory forming and brain speed about six years younger. Additionally, a recent study also showed that consuming a little fish each week can lower one’s risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. So, take 900 mg of DHA-Omega-3 a day from either supplements or by consuming 18 ounces of salmon or ocean trout a week (the only fish with predictable amounts of DHA in the USA) to protect your brain and keep it young.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer)

 NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice. This article is of the opinion of its author. Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing. You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do. In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

1. Q) “My husband read in one of your books—either the new YOU: Staying Young, or This Is YOUR Do-Over, we bought both, and he can’t find the reference now—that a way to prevent or reverse heart disease was to avoid antibacterial or alcohol-containing mouth washes. He started to follow that, and within 3 weeks his heart pain—angina his doc said—went away. Why did that work?” Joan, Alameda, Calif.

A: Most of us have a pretty limited view of what’s swirling around inside our bodies. We’ve got our organs, our bones, our blood and water, our chemicals, and some muscle and fat all jumbled together to form a miraculous being that has the ability to toss a ball, solve complex math equations, or do both at the same time. Essentially, we think our bodies are biologically constant. Besides what we put inside our bodies (and then, obviously, what comes out later), it might seem like we’re made with a set amount of chemicals, nerves, and gook that forever coexist in our bodies. Either we have a lot or a little of chemical A or neurotransmitter B, so to speak.

But that’s hardly the case, especially when it comes to one of the biological explanations of chest pain and aging. Over a few weeks, or even days, we can modify these precious molecules to tune up our bodies. And avoiding some things that harm us in weird ways, like avoiding antibacterial or alcohol mouth wash, is one strategy. Now before I go further on the benefits of avoiding these, let me state that these have a benefit too—so if your dentist has said you have to use one after a dental procedure or because it is the only way for you to prevent periodontal disease (flossing and seeing a dental pro every six months are two of the many others), do not drop them—talk to your dental pro first about alternatives. Now back to our story about how you can quickly change your chemicals…

Inside your body, you have a short-lived gas that tremendously affects your body’s function. This gas—called nitric oxide—has a half-life that’s just a few seconds long. Like a wind that comes in and blows away pollution, nitric oxide (NO for short) is fleeting and exhilarating. You have nitric oxide, then you don’t. (Before you start winking with sweet remembrances, nitric oxide isn’t the same thing as nitrous oxide, the laughing gas used as an anesthetic and at some parties.)

So what? We’ve all got gas from time to time.

But we’re not talking about gas that clears dinner parties; we’re talking about the kind that’s important enough to have generated a Nobel Prize in Medicine, and important enough to influence whether your hubby has a heart attack. Nitric oxide plays a fundamental role in keeping a body healthy, and the reverse is also true. In many diseases, the production of nitric oxide is impaired, and that leads to (or contributes to) cell injury or the dysfunction of organs.

Despite its short-lived existence, nitric oxide affects many organs. In the brain, NO acts as a neurotransmitter to rapidly transmit messages. Much like the way that the brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine promote don’t-worry-be-happy emotions, NO has a calming effect. Why? Nitric oxide turns on a chain reaction in our cells that allows our blood vessels to relax and dilate. Let me repeat that: nitric oxide turns on a chain reaction in our cells that allows our blood vessels to relax and dilate so more blood flows. People with atherosclerosis (clogging and hardening of the arteries) commonly don’t make enough nitric oxide to keep their arteries open. The lack of NO helps to explain the detrimental effects we feel during times of high stress as well as periods of low sleep. The common angina treatment nitroglycerine increases NO, dilating blood vessels and thus decreasing heart pain.

Now that is the preamble to the real answer to your question, Joan (hope the preamble wasn’t too long):

• You want NO in your blood vessels, especially in your heart’s arteries.
• You (and your hubby) make less in your cells as you get older, so you need to get the precursors from foods.
• Leafy greens & beets have nitrates that after you eat and swallow, continue on to your intestines, and then go into your blood. These nitrates then accumulate in your salivary glands and then are converted into nitrite by the bacteria in your mouth. (I know this sounds weird, but it happens.)
• That nitrite is absorbed & becomes NO in your blood vessels.
• The key to the process are those bacteria in your mouth that convert nitrates to nitrities.
• People who use antibacterial or alcohol mouth wash do not (in the few studies that have been done) have enough of those bacteria for this process to work as described (at least not as well).

So the action step in that book was: Eat Leafy Greens & Beets, & Avoid Antibiotic & Alcohol Mouth Wash.

We are glad you hubby did follow that Action Step, and that you and he think it contributed to his angina (heart pain) going away. Maybe it did. As he knows, the This Is YOUR Do-Over book has many other Action Steps to prevent and reverse many chronic diseases including heart disease, stroke, and many forms of cancer — including breast, colon, and prostate cancers. And while he is pain free, ask him which of the other Action Steps he is doing so he can reverse the heart disease and pull the fatty plaques out as described in that book, so he and you may never have to worry about heart disease or stroke.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to youdocs@gmail.com, and some of them we may know enough to answer (we’ll try to get answers for you if we do not know).

Young Dr Mike Roizen (aka, The Enforcer) 

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice. This article is of the opinion of its author. Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week). The YOU docs have tow newly revised books: The patron saint “book” of this column YOU Staying Young—revised and YOU: The Owner’s Manual…revised —yes a revision of the book that started Dr Oz to being Dr Oz. These makes great gifts—so do YOU: ON a Diet and YOU: The Owner’s Manual for teens. And, the new book by Dr Mike Roizen: This is YOUR Do-Over

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.radioMD.com Saturdays from 5-7 p.m. He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including: YOU Staying Young.