Dr. Arturo M. Volpe

Aunque tal vez podamos vivir más años en estos tiempos modernos, también estamos enfrentando una epidemia sin precedentes de enfermedades crónicas que pueden ser manejadas, en el mejor de los casos, pero no corregidas, con el uso de medicina convencional. Tales enfermedades abarcan todos los grupos

de edad y se extienden desde alergias, trastornos digestivos y condiciones como ADHD y autismo hasta el síndrome de cansancio crónico, dolor crónico, alta presión arterial, diabetes y cáncer, tanto como una variedad de condiciones neurológicas, incluyendo las enfermedades de Parkinson y Alzheimer.

Hoy en día la toxicidad es un factor mayor con respecto a la salud, y se necesitan otras herramientas, ademas de la dieta y los suplementos, para lograr los mejores resultados posibles con la desintoxicación.

A menudo he escrito sobre el impacto que las toxinas tienen sobre la salud, y planeo continuar haciéndolo. Los lectores interesados pueden encontrar artículos anteriores sobre este tema en mis archivos de boletines informativos en mi sitio Web. Un buen ejemplo sobre ésto es un estudio que recientemente se hizo público, en el cual los investigadores identificaron un conjunto de lupus (SLE) y otras enfermedades reumáticas entre personas que vivían en una subdivisión construída cerca de un sitio de desechos de un campo petrolífero, donde los niveles del mercurio y otros contaminantes en el aire estaban mucho más altos que los niveles en los vecindarios de alrededor. (http://www.ehjournal.net/content/6/1/8).
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Tags: Autism, Autoimmune disease, Cancer, Chemicals & Environmental Issues, Detoxification
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Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes
Ingredients:
1 cup buckwheat flour
½ tsp stevia powder
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 egg replacement*
1 ½ to 2 cups coconut milk**
2 Tbsp melted ghee
1 tsp cinnamon
Blueberries to taste (fresh or frozen – I have also used the dehydrated organic bluberries from Just Tomatoes company, found at Whole Food Market or online)

Mix all ingredients and cook on hot griddle.

* Egg replacement:
1 Tbsp ground flax seed meal combined with 2 Tbsp warm water – mix and let stand until it thickens into a gel – 6 to 8 minutes.
or
Combine 1 Tbsp melted coconut oil with 1 Tbsp water and 1 tsp baking powder.

** Coconut milk:
I usually use Native Forest coconut milk and water it down until it is similar to the consistency of milk. Otherwise it’s a little too thick.

Mini Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups garbanzo bean flour
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ cup sunflower oil
¼ tsp stevia powder
1/3 cup honey (or ½ cup agave nectar)
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
2 egg substitutes
¾ cup mashed acorn squash, cooked**
1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium size bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the oil and honey until well blended. Add the applesauce and eggs alternately. When they are well blended add the acorn squash. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix on low speed until well blended. Fold in the blueberries. Pour into a lined mini muffin pans. Bake at 350 for about 15-20 minutes. Time can vary depending on oven, so start checking around 12 minutes. To check muffins for doneness, insert a toothpick into middle – if it comes out clean the muffins are done. Remove from the pan and continue cooling on wire rack.

** I cook and mash acorn squash in. I bake until soft, then mix in a little ghee and cinnamon and sometimes honey, to taste. Then I mash. You can make a big batch of this and freeze for future use.

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Ingredients:
2 cups garbanzo bean flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ cup sunflower oil
¼ tsp stevia powder
1/3 cup honey (or ½ cup agave nectar)
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
2 egg substitutes
¾ cup canned organic pumpkin
½ cup pecans (or walnuts), chopped
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium size bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the oil and honey until well blended. Add the applesauce and eggs alternately. When they are well blended add the pumpkin. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix on low speed until well blended. Fold in the nuts and raisins. Pour into a greased and floured bread pan. Bake at 350Ëš for about 1 hour. Time can vary depending on oven, so start checking around 40 minutes. To check bread for doneness, insert a toothpick into middle – if it comes out clean the bread is done. Cool on wire rack for about 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and continue cooling.

Variation:
I use cooked and mashed butternut squash in place of the pumpkin. I bake until soft, then mix in a little ghee and cinnamon and sometimes honey, to taste. Then I mash. You can make a big batch of this and freeze for future use.

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I always find it very rewarding when people I see share my passion for reading and learning about health and healing. Recently, I was asked to make a presentation at a conference on autism, and afterwards a number of people were asking me for names of books they should read. A mother even told me she had printed and read more than seventy pages from my newsletter archives! Clearly people have figured out they have to find their own answers.

With this piece I plan to start a series of short articles in which I will review a book or a couple of related books that have in some fashion influenced my thinking about diet or health in general.

The first one of these is more of a booklet than an actual book, but the information in it is fundamental to my way of looking at health. It is entitled “Pottenger’s Cats” and describes experiments carried out by Dr. Francis Pottenger on cats in the 1940’s.
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Tags: Allergies & Asthma, Books, Diet, Eczema
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I must admit that I have basically ignored this aspect of living healthy. Sure I buy the Whole Foods 365 brand or other health food brands when they are on sale, but what I didn’t realize is that many of the personal care products that are stocked on the shelves of health food stores are nothing more than chemical soup. The more research I did, the more I was convinced that I could find some good products that I could use on my hair and body, and still be willing to go out in public. I am happy to say that not only did I find some, but after an adjustment period of some really bad hair days, my hair is healthier and softer than it has been in a long time.

So lets get down to business. What is lurking in these products that give cause for alarm? The following list is not all-inclusive, I am not a chemist, and have to rely on others for my research, so if you know of another super scary ingredient, feel free to share those with me.

The following are some of the dirty ingredients in your soap and shampoo; they range in concern from skin and eye irritant, to allergen, to hormone disruptor, to carcinogen, to even damage of vital organs:

Cocamide DEA or MEA; lauramide DEA or MEA; phthalates; cocoamidopropyl betaine; olefin sulfonate; PVP copolymer; methyl, propyl or butyl parabens; diazolidinyl urea; triclosan;

D&C colors; synthetic fragrance; sodium myeth sulfate; formaldehyde; propylene glycol; and sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate (SLS)

SLS has had a lot of press, so I will explain it in more detail. It is a surfactant widely used in shampoos, toothpaste, and soaps to give it a good lathering or foaming quality; and that includes most health store brands. Labeling regulations allow “derived from coconut oil” which makes one think it is very natural. But in reality it is drying to skin and hair, irritating to eyes, and can cause damage like cracking, inflammation, and allergic reactions. This damage to the skin can also allow other chemicals to penetrate deep into the skin and reach the bloodstream easier. But the even bigger problem is that it has the potential to become contaminated with carcinogenic nitrosamines when manufacturers add chemicals to make the product less irritating so it won’t cause the problems listed above. So although sodium lauryl sulfate is not a recognized carcinogen by itself, the chemical is frequently combined with TEA (triethanolamine), DEA (diethanolamine), or MEA (monnoethanolamine), which can produce the formation of the carcinogenic substances known as nitrosamines).

There are so many more chemicals…way too many to list. And some chemicals go by multiple names. And if you rush to your shampoo and soap bottles, you will probably see
many of these as well as many others on the ingredient list, as I did. So I set out to find the cleanest soaps and shampoos and test them on my family. These were my results. (I
wish I could say that I was being paid by these companies to promote them, but sadly I am not)

Shampoo
Any truly natural shampoo is going to irritate the eyes. A no-tear formula shampoo has simply added multiple chemicals to neutralize and offset the burning sensation to the eyes; this doesn’t make the chemicals safer. So when using any of these natural shampoos, keep it out of little eyes (and yours for that matter) because it will sting.

For my son, who has a buzz cut and is also the one I want to have the safest products, I was able to use the extremely pure products from Terressentials (clay based – no
detergents), as well as Burt’s Bees Rosemary Mint Shampoo Bar and Tropical Traditions Shampoo Bar. I am thankful for these products because he also likes to sit in the bath water and play, and sometimes without me seeing, sip on the water. I finally feel comfortable that he is not poisoning himself. Although these are the best shampoos I have found, I am afraid they didn’t work so well for my hair and my daughter’s hair. I would definitely try them to see if they will work for you though.

So the next best option I found, and am very pleased with is Aubrey Organics Shampoos. The worst ingredient in this line of shampoos is hydrolyzed soy protein and carrageenan.

And although I wouldn’t eat these ingredients (although many people do), I feel okay with them on my scalp. With the natural shampoos, my daughter and I have found it necessary to use a conditioner, and Aubrey Organics conditioners are also very natural.

A few other brands are also worth mentioning. Although they contain a few skin irritants (cocamidopropyl betaine, olefin sulfonate) they are relatively clean and include Burt’s Bees liquid shampoos, Kiss My Face Organic Whenever Shampoo, and Desert Essence Organic Shampoos.

Soap
Your best bets are bar soaps. There are many brands that make a good clean bar soap. Check out Dr Bronner’s, Aubrey’s, Burt’s Bees, or check out local farmer’s markets, or do a
search on the Internet for natural soaps, just watch for added synthetic fragrances. For a shower gel try Dr. Bronner’s, these soaps are very pure and have very interesting reading material on the bottle. Aubrey Organics also makes an everyday herbal body soap gel.

If you are like me, you would prefer to have a pump dispenser of liquid hand soap at the sink. Liquid soaps are trickier when trying to avoid chemicals. Dr. Bronner’s liquid soaps are excellent, and I use them as a shower gel, but they have clogged up every hand dispenser I have. Tropical Tradition’s foaming hand soaps are great, and they don’t clog up nearly as bad. They are pretty pricey, but if you check their website periodically they will put them on sale often, and their tea tree oil hand soap is nice to have by the kitchen and bathroom sinks for killing germs.

The next best thing I have found for liquid hand soaps with only one or two chemical skin irritants are once again Burt’s Bees and Kiss My Face Organic Foaming Hand Soap (it has
to be this part of their product line, many of their other products have multiple chemical problems).

Remember, if you try these products and you are highly sensitive, some of the essential oils used in the natural soaps might be irritating to your skin. If that is the case try unscented varieties.

Now that I am done reducing chemicals in family’s personal cleaning, I am working on other ways to lighten my home’s chemical load, and have found some great alternatives to chemical home cleaners. Stay tuned next month.

Tags: Chemicals & Environmental Issues, Natural Medicine Cabinet, Personal Care Products
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Although we may live longer in these modern times, we are also facing an unprecedented epidemic of chronic illnesses that can be managed, at best, but not corrected using conventional medicine. Such illnesses span all age groups and range from allergies, digestive disorders, and conditions like ADHD and autism to chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer, as well as a variety of neurological conditions including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.

Toxicity is a major factor in health today and other tools, aside from diet and supplements, are needed to achieve the best possible results with detoxification.

I have often written about the impact of toxins on health and plan to continue doing so. Interested readers can find past articles on this topic in my newsletter archives on my website. A good example of this topic comes from a just-released study in which researchers identified a cluster of lupus (SLE) and other rheumatic diseases among people living in subdivisions built near an oil field waste site, where levels of air mercury and other pollutants were well higher that those in surrounding neighborhoods (http://www.ehjournal.net/content/6/1/8).

If, as I believe, cases like these are becoming the norm rather than the exception, then detoxification is clearly a key to maintaining or regaining health. This observation, combined with years of experience overseeing various forms of detoxification, led me to develop an in-office detox program.
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Tags: Autism, Chemicals & Environmental Issues, Detoxification
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When I decided to develop a detox program at my office I had no idea that “detox” centers would spring up all around town like wildfire!

All these centers only offer so-called “ionic footbaths” and claim that these are a way to remove toxins from the body and reestablish health. Basically these footbaths use salt water in a small tub in which a mild electric charge is run between two metal electrodes. People put their feet in the tub and over a period of approximately thirty minutes the water changes color to a rusty brown, which is supposedly unquestionable evidence of toxins leaving the body. These centers appear to charge around $50 for each thirty-minute session although they run special offers.

Two things seemed strange to me right off the bat. First, that the feet would be a good conduit to detoxify the entire body. We know that the liver and the kidneys have the primary role of detoxifying the body. The skin can also do so, as for example in a sauna, but feet offer relatively little skin and are quite remote to areas where toxins might be stored.

Second, why would toxins in the body have this rusty color? I would have thought they might be mostly colorless, but if they had a color, then wouldn’t it be different for every person?

I checked out the website of one of these local centers. Their literature says that the program is “science based”, so I immediately checked out their science pages. The first one of these offers a “study” showing bathwater analysis. However, there is no explanation of how the study was performed, who were the participants, or anything else for that matter, just a series of almost illegible bar charts with no suggestion as to what they mean. OK, so I thought that maybe the next science page might be more informative.

However, it was only downhill from there as the remaining pages only offered “studies” performed using muscle testing or bio-meridian analysis, two clearly subjective methods. It’s pretty much like someone doing a study, but then using intuition instead of a lab test to find the results. Besides, I am sure that people will recognize that intuition (or muscle testing) can be swayed easily with the right type of incentive!

Next I went to the site of a manufacturer of these ionic footbath machines. It’s not that I was so impressed I wanted to buy a unit; I just wanted to see what type of studies they might be offering. Find the site here: http://www.aquadetox-international.com/research.html.

It seems that the manufacturer has a bit more at stake and doesn’t want to be caught making blatantly false statements, so on this site there is no mention of toxins coming out of the body and into the water. The best study I could find on this page is one that used a “heart rate variability indicator” (whatever that is) and showed that after the footbath people had less variability in heart rates. I got it: the bath helped them relax!

However, the idea of the water changing color was still bothering me. After searching around a bit I found that it bothered other people as well. Apparently these baths originated in England, but let’s not blame the British too quickly. It appears that the inventor of this machine has a mail-order degree as doctor of naturopathy (ND) from a US institution!

I found that the London newspaper The Guardian has a “bad science” editor (as opposed to a bad “science-editor,” of which we have many outstanding examples right here at home). Apparently it didn’t take this “bad science” guy long to figure out the trick behind the color change. He ran the machine with no feet in it, and lo and behold the color changed all by itself! As it turns out the color change is a result of the metal electrodes reacting with salt water. Of course dirt and dead skin on people’s feet can add different tones to the water, which I understand is quite the topic of conversation at these “detox” centers. You can find the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,12980,1294819,00.html.

Here’s my bottom line: take the footbaths if you find them relaxing. Myself, I’d rather see a good movie and have a glass of wine!

Tags: Detoxification
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