about nutrition for fertility & pregnancy · Myth #1: A low-fat diet is the best choice 8 Myth #2:...

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about nutrition fordangerous myths

fertility & pregnancy5

CHRIS KRESSER, M.S., L.AC

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Table of Contents

The importance of proper nutrition for fertility & pregnancy 4

Myth #1: A low-fat diet is the best choice 8

Myth #2: All women should take iron supplements during pregnancy 12

Myth #3: Pregnant women shouldn’t eat fish because of high levels of mercury 14

Myth #4: Soy is a healthy alternative to meat and dairy 16

Myth #5: women should take folic acid supplements 18

About the author 22


Chris Kresser L.Ac © 2011All Rights Reserved. No Unauthorized Copying, Editing or Distribution





Disclaimer

This program manual is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice and treatment from your personal physician. Readers are advised to consult their own doctors or other qualified health professionals regarding the treatment of medical conditions. The author shall not be held liable or responsible for any misunderstanding or misuse of the information contained in this program manual or for any loss, damage, or injury caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by any treatment, action, or application of any food or food source discussed in this program manual. The statements in this program manual have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.






The importance of proper nutrition for fertility & pregnancy

Before we explore 5 common myths about nutrition for fertility and pregnancy, let’s first take a moment to discuss the importance of proper nutrition during these periods.

Numerous factors determine whether our health as adults, including nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and genetics.

But recent research suggests another powerful influence on lifelong health: our mother’s nutritional status during (and even before) her pregnancy. In fact, some researchers now believe the 9 months of pregnancy are the most consequential period of our lives, permanently influencing the wiring of the brain

and the function of organs like the heart, liver and pancreas.

They also suggest that the conditions we encounter in utero shape everything from our susceptibility to disease, to our appetite and metabolism, to our intelligence and temperament.

We’re only as healthy as our mother’s womb

The idea that the nutritional environment we encounter in the womb affects not only our health at birth and during infancy, but throughout the rest of our adult lives, has come to be known as the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease theory, or DOHaD (gotta love that acronym!).

The theory was first proposed by British researcher David J. Barker in the 1980s to explain a seeming contradiction: as British prosperity increased, so did heart disease. Yet geographically, the highest rates of heart disease were found in the poorest places in Britain. Barker found that rather than smoking, dietary fat or some other lifestyle cause, the factor that was most predictive of whether an individual would develop premature heart disease (before the age of 65) was their weight at birth.1

Barker found that infants carried to full term with birth weights between 8.5 and 9.5 pounds had a 45 percent lower risk of developing heart disease later in life than infants






born at 5.5 pounds. (They also had a lower risk of stroke, a 70% lower risk of insulin resistance and a slightly lower risk of blood pressure later in life.) As the chart below demonstrates, the risk declined in a linear fashion between 5.5 and 9.5 pounds, but started to increase again as birth weight rose above 9.5 pounds.

How the first nine months shapes the rest of your life

Over the last 25 years, Barker’s original work has been reproduced and expanded. If you do a quick search on Pubmed.org for “developmental origins of disease”, you’ll find references to the fetal origins of cancer, heart disease, allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, diabetes, obesity, mental illness and degenerative conditions like arthritis, osteoporosis, dementia and Alzheimer’s.

The following list is just a small sampling of the literature on the subject:

• The metabolic syndrome. In a 2011 paper, Bruce et al showed that the onset of metabolic syndrome is “increasingly likely following exposure to suboptimal nutrition during critical periods of development”.2






• Heart disease & diabetes. In 2002, Barker, the father of the DOHaD hypothesis, published a paper suggesting that slow growth during fetal life and infancy – itself a consequence of poor maternal nutrition – predisposes individuals to coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and hypertension later in life.3

• Breast cancer. Hilakivi-Clarke, et al . “Thus, maternal diet and environmental exposure might increase the risk of breast cancer by inducing permanent epigenetic changes in the fetus that alter the susceptibility to factors that can initiate breast cancer.”4

• Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Dumesic et al 2007. This paper suggested that insulin resistance and resulting increases of testosterone during pregnancy promotes PCOS during adulthood.5

• Obesity. Kalliomaki et al 2008. These researchers found that simply by studying the composition of the maternal gut flora (influenced by nutrition, medications, stress, etc.) they could predict which children will be overweight by age 7!6

Why does Mom’s diet play such a crucial role in determining our future health?

The idea that the nutritional, hormonal and metabolic environment provided by the mother permanently programs the structure and physiology of her offspring was established by Barker back in the 80s.

Essentially, it works like this. Like all living beings in their early lives, humans are able to adapt to their environment. If we couldn’t, we would die. There is a critical period early in life where that adaptation happens, and once that period passes, we become less “plastic” and able to adapt. Our programming is set.

For humans, that critical period when a system is plastic and sensitive to its environment occurs in utero. This makes perfect sense in evolutionary terms. It enables the production of genetic phenotypes that make us better matched to the environment we are likely find ourselves in after we’re born.

For example, if the mother’s nutritional status is poor during pregnancy, the fetus might develop metabolic adaptations that would allow it to store more calories (the “thrifty phenotype” hypothesis). This would have been a protective mechanism that could increase the chances of survival if that fetus was born into an environment where calories were scarce. G






Gluckman et al extended this concept of developmental plasticity by showing that fetal programming operates across the range from undernutrition to overnutrition with a U-shaped curve.7 This means that the future health of the baby will be affected when Mom gets either too little of the right nutrients or too much of the wrong ones.

Roseboom et al found that undernutrition during pregnancy affects different organs of the body and increases the risk of disease independent of birth weight.8 Other researchers have theorized that maternal diet may regulate blood flow to developing organs (i.e. to the brain vs. the liver) which in turn causes changes in fetal programming that affect body composition at birth and even later in life.

The nutritional conditions in the womb start before conception

We’ve now established that the nutritional environment of a mother’s womb affects her baby’s health not only at birth and during early infancy, but for the rest of his or her life. This leads us to the obvious conclusion that proper maternal nutrition is crucial for the lifelong health of her offspring.

But what determines the mother’s nutritional status during pregnancy? Certainly, the obvious answer is her diet and lifestyle after she has conceived. But I hope it’s also obvious that the mother’s diet in the months and even years leading up to conception is also important.

This is why traditional cultures have sacred fertility foods they feed to mothers-to-be and even fathers-to-be. These include nutrient dense foods like fish eggs, liver, bone marrow, egg yolks and other animal fats. For example, the Masai tribe in Africa only allowed couples to marry and become pregnant after spending several months drinking milk in the wet season when the grass is lush and the nutrient content of the milk is especially high.






Unfortunately this traditional wisdom has been largely lost in the modern world. The role of nutrition during pre-conception is scarcely even mentioned in the media or conventional medical settings. Yet as we’ve seen in this article, a mother’s diet prior to conception and during pregnancy may be one of the most important factors in determining the lifelong health of her baby.

Another problem is that many women are (understandably) confused about what constitutes proper nutrition during the pre-conception and pregnancy period. There’s so much contradictory information out there, and it can be difficult for the layperson to know what to believe and who to trust.

With that in mind, let’s now look at 5 common myths about nutrition for fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Myth #1: A low-fat diet is the best choice

The so-called health authorities have been promoting a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet for decades now. Yet infertility rates are higher than they’ve ever been before - and still rising. 1 in 7 women already have trouble conceiving, and a recent study in the UK predicted that number could rise to 1 in 3 by the year 2020.

The following three arguments suggest that a high-fat - not a low-fat - diet is optimal for fertility and pregnancy.

Breast milk is the perfect food for infants

Human breast milk is undoubtedly the perfect food for human infants. The nutritional composition of human breast milk has evolved over 2.5 million years to supply the exact ratio of nutrients necessary for proper growth and development.

What is that ratio?

Human breast milk is 55% fat, 38% carbohydrate and 7% protein by calories. Breast milk, therefore, is high in fat,






moderate in carbohydrate and low in protein. Logic dictates that the ideal diet for women attempting to get pregnant and those that are already pregnant or breastfeeding would have a roughly similar macronutrient breakdown.

Fat is the preferred energy source of the body

The lean human body is 74% fat and 26% protein by calories. Fats are structural part of every human cell and the preferred fuel source of the mitochondria, the energy-burning units of each cell.

The human body stores energy from food for future use as saturated fat, which is a cleaner burning fuel source than glucose. Unlike glucose, saturated fat isn’t toxic to the body in high doses.

Contrary to popular belief, our bodies are designed to run on fat - primarily saturated. If we give it the right fuel, it functions well. If we give it the wrong fuel, it will still run, but not as well. And it will be far more likely to break down.

Omnivorous animals naturally prefer and thrive on a high-fat diet

Animals instinctively eat a mix of foods that is healthy. They don’t have diet gurus and the internet to confuse them. When scientists let mice (omnivorous animals) choose from an unlimited supply of fat, protein and carbohydrates, mice naturally choose to get 85% of calories from fat. Yet none of these mice get fat!

Keep in mind there’s a wide variety of macronutrient ratios in health populations around the world, and there’s plenty of room for individual variation too. Some people naturally need or tolerate more or less fat, carbohydrate and protein than others.

But the key in the context of fertility and pregnancy nutrition is to get a significant percentage of calories from fat.

Why is fat so important for fertility and pregnancy?

Saturated fat is especially beneficial for fertility. A study at Harvard found that women who ate two or more servings of low-fat or non-fat dairy per day, like skim milk or yogurt, had 85% higher risk of infertility than those that ate full-fat dairy products.9

Another study found that women who eat less saturated fat have a smaller chance of becoming pregnant. More specifically, the authors found that women with


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2170167






oligomenorrhea, a condition of light or infrequent menstruation associated with infertility, consume significantly less saturated fat and significantly more polyunsaturated fat than women with normal menstruation and fertility.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the #1 cause of infertility in women in the U.S.. PCOS is characterized by insulin resistance and testosterone dominance, a hormone imbalance that is often caused or made worse by a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Why? Because high-carb diets can promote insulin resistance, which in turn converts estrogen into testosterone.

Dr. Michael Fox, a reproductive endocrinologist in Florida, has had great success treating women with PCOS with a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. Before he switched to this approach, almost all of his patients needed drugs or IVF, or both, to become pregnant. Since he started using a low-carb diet with these patients, fewer have needed drugs and very few have needed IVF.

High-fat diets improve male fertility too

Eating too many refined carbohydrates like white flour or sugar can promote insulin resistance. In men, however, insulin resistance has the opposite effect than it has in women: it causes the conversion of testosterone into estrogen.

This is problematic because testosterone plays several important roles in male fertility. It’s essential to the development and maintenance of male sexual organs, and to the production, motility and volume of sperm.

But isn’t fat bad for me?

Contrary to popular belief, fat isn’t your enemy.

Over the last 50 years we’ve been brainwashed to believe fat is bad for us. We’ve been told it makes us fat, raises our cholesterol and gives us heart disease.






But both anthropological research and clinical studies have revealed this is false, and the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet promoted by groups like the American Heart Association has been a spectacular failure. Rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease are still skyrocketing higher each year.

This is a huge subject we could easily devote an entire book to. In fact, many books have been devoted to it! For more information, I’d recommend reading Eat Fat, Lose Fat, by Mary Enig & Sally Fallon, and Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It, by Gary Taubes.

In the meantime, I’ll cover the main points here.

First, eating fat doesn’t make you fat. If that were true, high-fat, low-carb diets like Atkins wouldn’t be superior to low-fat diets for weight loss - and they are - and traditional peoples like the Inuit (who get up to 90% of calories from fat) and the Masai (who get between 60-70% of calories from fat) would be fat - and they’re not.

Instead, it’s the over-consumption of processed and refined carbohydrates like breads, bagels, crackers, cookies, chips, etc. along with industrial seed oils that have made us fat and have contributed to ever-rising rates of obesity and diabetes.

Second, eating saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease. There are two parts to this hypothesis: A) that eating saturated fat raises cholesterol levels in the blood, and, B) that high cholesterol levels in the blood cause heart disease.

It turns out that both parts of this hypothesis are incorrect.

Recent reviews of the scientific literature show that eating saturated fat and cholesterol does not raise cholesterol levels in the blood in most cases, and even if it did, high cholesterol alone does not cause heart disease.

For more information on this topic, watch this video about cholesterol and saturated fat that I created called I Have High Cholesterol, and I Don’t Care.


http://thehealthyskeptic.org/i-have-high-cholesterol-and-i-dont-care

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/i-have-high-cholesterol-and-i-dont-care





Myth #2: All women should take iron supplements during pregnancy

Iron is a mineral that has long been known to be important during pregnancy. It’s essential to making hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen to the cells and tissues of the body. During pregnancy, blood volume increases by 30%, which means women need more iron to make more hemoglobin. This is especially true during the 2nd and 3rd trimester.

If a woman enters pregnancy without sufficient iron stores, she will become anemic during the later stages of pregnancy. This is why the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iron goes from 18 mg/d in non-pregnant women to 27 mg/d in pregnant women.

On this basis alone, we might suspect it’s essential for all women to supplement with iron during pregnancy. And that’s exactly what the mainstream health authorities recommend.

However, there are some problems with this approach.

First, it’s important to understand that it’s normal for hemoglobin levels to fall during pregnancy. As the chart below illustrates, normal levels of hemoglobin in non-pregnant women range from 12-16 g/dL. In a pregnant women @28 weeks, that range falls from 10-14 g/dL. This is a normal physiological change during pregnancy, and doesn’t indicate a problem.






Hemoglobin levels will return to the non-pregnant range in the weeks after birth. Furthermore, the best birth outcomes are associated with hemoglobin levels at the low-end of the 10-14 g/dL range.

This explains why studies show that routines supplementation of iron (without accompanying signs & symptoms of anemia) during pregnancy is not only not beneficial, but potentially harmful.

Iron supplementation does raise hemoglobin & iron levels in the blood, but it has no detectable effects on important clinical outcomes like pre-term labor, birth weight and APGAR at birth.

Iron supplementation can also be responsible for undesirable effects, such as reduced absorption of other minerals and gastrointestinal symptoms like gas, bloating and constipation.

Of course women who exhibit signs and symptoms of anemia (fatigue, shortness of breath, pale skin, cold hands & feet, etc.) should be evaluated by a physician and may need iron supplementation.






Myth #3: Pregnant women shouldn’t eat fish because of high levels of mercury

Over the last decade we’ve been told it’s no longer safe to eat fish because of the high levels of mercury they contain. These toxins, we’re told, can cause neurological problems and increase the risk of cancer. Pregnant women have been especially warned due to the potentially harmful effect these toxins could have on the developing fetus.

But when we examine the scientific evidence, a different story emerges.

While it’s true that the levels of mercury in fish are potentially harmful, that’s only true if the fish doesn’t have adequate levels of another mineral, selenium.

Selenium has a high binding affinity for mercury. When they’re found together in nature, they connect, forming an entirely new substance. This new substance is poorly absorbed by humans.

This explains why studies show that selenium protects against the adverse effects of mercury toxicity.10

To use an analogy, think of selenium as if it were your income, and mercury as if it were a bill you have to pay. Just as we all need a certain amount of money to cover our living expenses, we all need a certain amount of selenium for proper function.

And guess what foods are the highest in selenium? 16 of the 25 best sources are, in fact, ocean fish!

There’s only one major study showing harmful effects caused by mercury consumed in seafood, and in that study the seafood consumed was pilot whale meat. Pilot whale meat is unusual in that it contains more mercury than selenium. As researcher Dr. Nick Ralson explains:

When you eat pilot whale meat it’s like getting a bill for $400 and a check for less than $100. If that happens too much, you go bankrupt. On the other hand, if you eat ocean fish,






it’s like getting a check in the mail for $500 and getting a bill for $25. The more that

happens, the happier you are.

The good news is that most ocean and freshwater fish have more selenium than mercury. The exceptions, as the chart below illustrates, are pilot whale, marlin, swordfish, tarpon and certain species of shark.

So, as long as pregnant women avoid eating the species of fish listed above that contain more mercury than selenium, they (and their babies) will be protected against the harmful effects of mercury toxicity.

But why should a woman consume fish in the first place? Seafood contain a long-chain omega-3 fatty acid called DHA. As a matter of fact, DHA is exclusively found in seafood - you can’t get it anywhere else in the diet. DHA is the most important of the omega-3 fatty acids, and is primarily responsible for the benefit we get from consuming them.

DHA is preferentially incorporated into the rapidly developing brain during pregnancy and the first two years of infancy, concentrating in the grey matter and they eyes. It’s also crucial to the formation of neurons, which are the functional cells in the brain, and to protecting the brain from oxidative damage.






There’s a large body of evidence supporting the importance of DHA during pregnancy. In one meta-analysis of 14 different studies, DHA improved visual acuity in kids in a dose-dependent manner (i.e. the more DHA they consumed, the better their vision).11 And countless observational studies show positive associations between maternal DHA levels during pregnancy and behavioral-attention scores, visual recognition, memory and language comprehension in infancy.12

An FDA report in 2008 found that the nutrients in fish, including DHA, can boost a child’s IQ score by 10 points! This same report suggested that pregnant women eat at least 12 ounces of fish per week.13

Unfortunately, Americans on average consume only 5 ounces of fish per week, and up to 14 percent of women of childbearing age consume no fish at all - despite the fact that DHA is essential to proper brain development.

Myth #4: Soy is a healthy alternative to meat and dairy

Over the past two to three decades, we’ve been told that soy products like soy milk and tofu are healthy alternatives to meat and dairy.

But is that actually true?

Soy is now ubiquitous in the modern diet. You don’t have to be a tofu-loving hippie to consume a lot of soy. Why? Because soy is in just about all processed and refined food in the form of soybean oil, soy flour, soy lecithin and soy protein. Most people are unaware of how much soy they consume for this reason.

In fact, the average American - who is most definitely not a tofu-loving hippie - gets up to 9% of total calories from soybean oil alone!

In small amounts, traditional fermented soy products like miso, tempeh and natto are not harmful, and may even be

beneficial. This is how soy was traditionally consumed in Asian countries. But in high doses, or in processed form - which is how soy is predominantly consumed in the U.S. - it has a toxic effect.






More specifically, soy:

• contains trypsin inhibitors that inhibit protein digestion and impair pancreatic function (which in turn causes digestive distress);

• increases our requirement for vitamin D, which up to 50% of the population is already deficient in;

• contains high levels of phytic acid, which reduces absorption of minerals like zinc and iron and inhibits enzymes we need to properly digest food;

• contains phytoestrogens that disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women; and,

• contains vitamin B12 analogs that is not biologically active and actually increases the body's requirement for true B12.

Soy is particularly harmful for women and men trying to conceive, for women already pregnant or breastfeeding and for infants.

A study at the Harvard Public School of Health in 2008 found that men who consumed the equivalent of one cup of soy milk per day had a 50% lower sperm count than men who didn’t eat soy.14

In 1992, the Swiss Health Service estimated that women consuming the equivalent of two cups of soy milk per day provides the estrogenic equivalent of one birth control pill. That means women eating cereal with soy milk and drinking a soy latte each day are effectively getting the same estrogen effect as if they were taking a birth control pill.

This effect is even more dramatic in infants fed soy formula. The key ingredient in soy formula is soy protein isolate, a compound that is not even recognized as safe for human consumption by the FDA.

Infants fed soy receive 6.25 mg of soy isoflavones per kilogram of body weight per day. This is more than 10 times the amount of soy isoflavones that has been shown to cause problems in adults.

In a baby that weighs 13 pounds, 10 mg of soy provides the estrogenic equivalent of a birth control pill. The average amount of soy formula given to an infant in a day contains 40 mg of soy. This means that feeding soy formula to a baby is the equivalent of giving her 4 birth control pills.






This explains why babies fed soy-based formula have 13,000 to 22,000 times more estrogen compounds in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula. 15

The following chart summarizes 6 studies that have examined the effect of soy formula on infants. As you can see, the results clearly indicate that soy formula can not only cause problems during infancy, but can even predispose that baby to serious health problems later in life.

Myth #5: women should take folic acid supplements

Folate (commonly - but mistakenly - known as folic acid) is the vitamin most women know is essential during pregnancy.

It’s necessary for the production of new DNA, and new DNA is needed for all new cells. As a baby grows in the womb, constant cell division is taking place which requires the continual production of new cells. This in turn requires a large supply of folate.






Folate also promotes healthy neural tube formation, adequate birth weight and proper development of the face and heart.

This explains why the RDA for folate during pregnancy is 600 mcg/d, 50% higher than the non-pregnant RDA of 400 mcg/d.

However, the pregnancy RDA is based on the amount needed to prevent birth defects - not promote robust health. It also assumes that 50% of the folate consumed is absorbed. But studies show this is just an average, and the rate of absorption from food is dependent on many factors, including zinc status.

So we know that 1) folate plays a crucial role during pregnancy, and 2) many pregnant women are probably not getting enough folate.

By this reasoning, it makes sense that all pregnant women should take folic acid supplements, right?

Not so fast.

Folic acid is not the same as folate. Folic acid is a chemical not normally found in foods or the human body. Folic acid can be converted into usable forms of folate, but that conversion is limited in humans. And, folic acid does not cross the placenta like natural folate.

Studies show that consuming too much folic acid (from supplements) can lead to high levels of unmetabolized folic acid in the blood. In fact, doses as low as 400 mcg/d - the amount recommended by mainstream health authorities - can cause this to happen.16

Unmetabolized folic acid is associated with several health problems. It can mask vitamin B12 deficiency, enhance the development and progression of certain cancers, and depress immune function.






Unfortunately, most pregnancy multivitamins use folic acid instead of natural folate because it’s cheaper. While folic acid does prevent neural tube defects, it doesn’t have the other beneficial effects of natural folate. And as I just explained, excess folic acid can cause several health problems.

As always, it’s best to meet our nutrient requirements from food, since that’s how humans are adapted to absorbing them. The highest sources of naturally occurring folates are liver, legumes like lentils and dark leafy greens like kale and collards.

However, even when regularly consuming these foods it may be difficult for a pregnant woman to obtain the necessary amount of folate. While the RDA is 600 mcg/d, I recommend a total amount of between 800 - 900 mcg/d from food and supplements combined.

Just make sure you choose a supplement that contains naturally occuring folates instead of folic acid.

Since most common multivitamins contain folic acid and not folate, you may have to order folate from the internet. At the time of this writing, several companies sell naturally occurring folate supplements, including Solgar, Metagenics and KAL.

How do you know if it has folate instead of folic acid? Check the label. If it says “folic acid” anywhere in the ingredients, you don’t want it. If it says “folate”, “5-methyl-tetrahydrofolate”, “L-methylfolate” or “Metfolin”, it’s safe.






Tired of information overload on fertility and pregnancy nutrition?

Discover the essential steps you should take - before, during and after pregnancy - to promote

fertility and lifelong health for your baby.

If you’re like most patients in my practice, you’re busy. I know you care deeply about a healthy pregnancy and baby, but let’s face it, if doctors – whose full time job is to figure out what really promotes fertility and a healthy baby – can’t give you a clear answer, how are you supposed to unravel the confusion on your own?

• How can you figure out the most critical things to do or not do?

• How can you figure out the most essential foods to eat and not eat?

• How do you know which advice is right and whom to trust?

The problem with most of the advice out there is:

• Most advice discounts the importance of our genetic heritage - the recognition that there are certain foods our bodies are truly designed to eat for maximum health.

• It relies too heavily on modern products, chemicals, technology and drugs without fully considering natural, food-based solutions.

• It often takes a narrow western approach, ignoring the interconnectedness of the body and the importance of holistic solutions.

• It can’t keep up with cutting edge research that has not had time to enter the mainstream, even if it is reliable, proven, and documented.

I created The Healthy Baby Code Home Study Course to clear up the confusion and give you a step-by-step program to follow to promote fertility, a healthy pregnancy, and vibrant, lifelong health for you and your baby.

Click here to learn more about it and receive a free audio recording of me answering frequently asked questions about fertility and pregnancy nutrition.










About the author

My name is Chris Kresser, and I’m a licensed acupuncturist and the author of The Healthy Skeptic. I’ve been interested in health and wellness since I was a kid. My high school basketball coach had our whole team on a special diet, and while most of my teammates couldn’t stand it, I actually loved the way I felt when I ate healthy food.

I did my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley. There I was introduced to Eastern spirituality and a wide range of health modalities and practices, from nutrition to meditation to tai qi to kundalini yoga to massage.

In my early 20s I set out to see the world. A few months into that trip, while traveling in Indonesia, I contracted a mysterious tropical illness. I recovered relatively quickly from the acute phase, but as I continued to travel it became painfully clear that the illness had morphed into a chronic condition.

I returned to the U.S. to seek medical care. In the next few years I saw more than twenty doctors around the world and spent thousands of dollars in an effort to diagnose and treat my condition. No one could figure out why I felt the way I did or what to do about it.

It became increasingly clear over time that if anyone was going to figure it out, it would have to be me. After all, nobody was even half as motivated as I was to find the answer! So I educated myself thoroughly about any health condition that resembled my own, and I learned to gather and analyze medical research so I could stay abreast of the latest developments.

In doing this research I discovered that many of the ideas and beliefs we hold about health in this society are myths. I began to see that even the most prestigious medical journals have become nothing more than sales brochures for the pharmaceutical industry. I saw massive conflicts of interest between drug companies, doctors and researchers


http://thehealthyskeptic.org/

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138





everywhere I looked. I learned that errors in medical care are the third leading cause of death in this country each year.

I decided to do something about it. I considered medical school, with the intention of helping to reform the industry from the inside out. But while allopathic medicine excels at emergency and trauma care, it isn’t very good at fostering health. (In fact the subject of health rarely comes up at all in conventional medical textbooks, which are entirely focused on disease.)

I chose instead to study Chinese medicine, which has been successfully used for over 2,000 years to promote health and longevity in addition to treating disease. Whereas Western medicine uses powerful chemicals or invasive surgery to achieve its goals, acupuncture works by stimulating the body’s highly sophisticated self-healing mechanisms. This made so much more sense to me – especially as I learned more about the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and the impact of medical errors.

I have complemented my study of acupuncture and herbs with a thorough education in functional medicine. Functional medicine is a personalized approach to health care that recognizes the biological uniqueness of each patient. In contrast to conventional care, which is almost entirely focused on suppressing symptoms, functional medicine eliminates symptoms by addressing the underlying cause of a problem. It is an evidence-based field of health care that views the body as an interconnected whole, and recognizes the importance of these connections in health and disease. In functional medicine, the patient is empowered, educated and encouraged to play an active role in the healing process.

I graduated from the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley in April 2010. I passed the California Acupuncture Licensing Exam in August of 2010, and I have a private practice in Berkeley, CA. I also consult with patients nationally and internationally.


http://thehealthyskeptic.org/the-failure-of-us-healthcare/




http://www.functionalmedicine.org/about/whatis.asp

http://www.functionalmedicine.org/about/whatis.asp

http://www.aimc.edu/

http://www.aimc.edu/





Endnotes


1 Barker, D. J. P.. The origins of the developmental origins theory. Journal of Internal Medicine. 2007. http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Neumann_JIM_2007.pdf

2 Bruce, KD, Cagampang, FR. Epigenetic priming of the metabolic syndrome. Toxicol Mech Methods. 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21495873

3 Barker, DJ. Fetal programming of coronary heart disease. Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2002. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12367816

4 Hilakivi-Clarke L, de Assis S. Fetal origins of breast cancer. Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2006. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12367816

5 Dumesic DA, Abbott DH, Padmanabhan V. Polycystic ovary syndrome and its developmental origins. Rev Endocr Metab Discord. 2007. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17659447

6 Kalliomaki M et al. Early differences in fecal microbiota composition in children may predict overweight. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18326589/

7 Gluckman et al. Metabolic plasticity during mammalian development is directionally dependent on early nutritional status. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2007. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1937546/

8 Roseboom TJ et al. Effects of prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine on adult disease in later life: an overview. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2001. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11738798

9 Chavarro JE et al. A prospective study of dairy foods intake and anovulatory fertility. Hum Reprod. 2007. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17329264/

10 Ralston NV et al. Dietary and tissue selenium in relation to methylmercury toxicity. Neurotoxicology. 2008. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18761370

11 Uauy R et al. Term infant studies of DHA and ARA supplementation on neurodevelopment: results of randomized controlled trials. J Pediatr. 2003. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14597910

12 Mozaffarian D, Rimm EB. Fish intake, contaminants, and human health. JAMA. 2006. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17047219

13 Energy & Environmental Research Center, University of North Dakota (EERC). EERC Research Finds Mercury Levels in Freshwater and Ocean Fish Not as Harmful as Previously Thought. June 22, 2009. Accessed at http://www.undeerc.org/news/newsitem.aspx?id=343

14 Chavarro JE et al. Soy food and isoflavone intake in relation to semen quality parameters among men from an infertility clinic. Hum Reprod. 2008. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18650557

15 Setchell KD et al. Isoflavone content of infant formulas and the metabolic fate of those phytoestrogens in early life. Am J Clin Nutr. 1998. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9848516

16 Bailey SW, Ayling JE. The extremely slow and variable activity of dihydrofolate reductase in human liver and its implications for high folic acid intake. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2009. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19706381





http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/faculty/detels/PH150/Neumann_JIM_2007.pdf


















http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18326589/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18326589/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1937546/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1937546/









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