There is a growing movement in the use of vibration plates in gyms, physical therapy offices, wellness centers and at home as a means of simulating exercise, to provide neurological and orthopedic rehabilitation and to prevent bone loss in osteopenia and osteoporosis patients. Additional benefits being advertised are increased blood flow, decreased muscle soreness, and increased fat burning and flexibility. After researching this topic, I came to some surprising conclusions that I did not expect, so if you have thought about buying a device like this or use one in the gym that you go to you might want to read this.
Vibration plates are a platform device that when standing on it delivers a mechanical oscillating vibration to all the cells in your body. As the machine vibrates it transmits energy which causes your tendons and muscles to contract and relax dozens of times per second. There are two types of vibration platforms. One is Whole Body Vibration (WBV), and another called Low Intensity Vibration (LiV). With WBV, there are settings on the platform for increasing vibration, so much so that most include a handrail so that you do not lose your balance while on it. This vibration can be intense and therefore is not recommended for someone who is pregnant, has any current or recent blood clots, has a pacemaker, has a risk for retinal detachment or suffers from advanced osteoporosis, dizziness, or any other inner ear problem. On the other hand, LiV, emits a vibration that is much less intense than a WBV while you stand on a platform, so no handrail is necessary. Additionally, there are no medical restrictions to use a LiV. With two such opposing “platforms” for how to effectively build bone and muscle for aging adults, how do you “shake out the truth” between the two? keep reading
In December of 2021, I wrote a newsletter named Questioning Science, which was about the ineffectiveness and potential dangers of the Covid 19 mRNA vaccines primarily in younger people. With a year passing, did I get it wrong and is it time for an apology on my part? Not at all. In October, the CDC added the Covid vaccine to the children’s vaccination schedule, so it is time to Question Science once again.
Edward Dowd
Is a former executive at Black Rock who tracks health statistics as it relates to insurance companies. These statistics drives his positions in his investment portfolio. In 2022 he was reading a federal government report about labor statistics in 2021 which includes a question “are you or is someone in your home disabled”. Prior to 2021 this number hovered around five million with each report. When he looked at the data for 2021 in early 2022, he was shocked to see the number was up to thirty-one million! Furthermore, when Dowd looked at insurance company data on deaths from all-cause mortality in the second half of 2021 there also a spike in deaths among working aged people that was not there in the first half of 2021. These spikes correlate well from when the Covid vaccines became more available and mandated. In January of 2022, the CEO of One America Insurance said there was a 40% rise in death beneficiary payouts among working aged adults. This is an alarming increase and cannot be solely attributed to a lack of cancer screenings or suicide from the stress of lockdowns or even from Covid infections themselves. Not in this age group. Dowd and his partner did a deeper analysis. They went over the CDC’s VAERS (vaccine adverse reporting system) and insurance industry data and broke down the mortalities by age group. What they found was that in 2020 all-cause mortality was higher in the elderly population, but in 2021 in what Dowd calls a “mixed shift” in all-cause mortality, it was higher in a younger population of people. In millennials, those aged 25-44, Dowd found an 84% increased mortality over the baseline of the previous five years. Specifically, he found 61,000 excess deaths in one year…more deaths than the 58,000 deaths that occurred during the Vietnam war over a ten-year period. In what Dowd describes as “the smoking gun” .... (click the headline to keep reading)
An article in The NY Times caught my eye two weeks ago. In it they discussed that cancer tumors are rife with bacteria and fungi in a rich ecosystem called the tumor microbiome. I have on past occasions written about the importance of having a vibrant microbiome of beneficial bacteria in our intestinal tract, how it functions in producing beneficial vitamins and helping detoxify chemicals in our environment that may be harmful to us. However, in 2020, several research teams have shown that tumors are home to various kinds of unfriendly bacteria and fungi and two studies published in the journal Cell specifically imply that we may one day be able to find early signs of hidden tumors by measuring the microbial DNA that they shed into the blood. There is also a possibility that this research may reveal why certain tumors are more aggressive or resistant to treatments.
Over the past six newsletters I have delved into the importance of mitochondrial health and how certain interventions like exercise, infrared light, and nutritional supplements can improve its function. But how do we know if we have a mitochondrial problem to begin with? Is there a test to see if the mitochondria are weak and is there a way of measuring if they are improving?
Indirect Calorimetry:
There is no perfect way to measure mitochondrial health, but if there were a best choice available it would be indirect calorimetry. Indirect calorimetry is a method that measures the respiratory gases oxygen and carbon dioxide to determine what someone’s metabolic rate is. More simply it measures resting metabolic rate (RMR) or resting energy expenditure (REE), which determines the number of calories needed by a person to live. RMR and REE can be used interchangeably. By analyzing these parameters of breath analysis and knowing the level of activity a person has during the day, you could tailor a diet specifically for that person. If you wanted someone to maintain their weight you would want to know the calories needed to perform their physical activity and the calories needed for their resting metabolic rate to equal the number of calories consumed. RMR is in large measure related to the health of the mitochondria because it represents the burn rate of your caloric needs
Mitochondrial Health Part 6: The Magic Bullet- Methylene Blue
In 1900, Paul Ehrlich coined the term “magic bullet” when he was referring to a chemical discovered in 1876 by Heinrich Caro a German chemist working for BASF called methylene blue. Methylene blue, a brilliant blue salt that was at first used as a blue dye for the textile industry. By the year 1890, microbiologist Robert Koch was using it to stain cells and tissues when looking at slides under a microscope. A Polish pathologist Czeslaw Checinski used it to stain the parasite causing malaria and to his surprise killed the parasite. In 1891, it was Paul Ehrlich who published a case study on two malaria patients who were cured of malaria with methylene blue making it the first synthetic drug. When antibiotics were discovered in the early part of the 20th century, these new drugs replaced methylene blue in the prevention and treatment of malaria.
Methylene blue, used today as an antiseptic in the blood supply to kill microbes to reduce risk of infection during an infusion of blood, also has FDA approval it to treat a condition called methemoglobinemia. This is a condition where the hemoglobin inside the red blood cells become oxidized and can no longer transport oxygen. Symptoms of methemoglobinemia are blue fingertips, shortness of breath, confusion, seizures, coma, and metabolic acidosis from low levels of oxygen in the blood. Methylene blue is in the emergency rooms of hospitals across the U.S. for the treatment of carbon monoxide poisoning and other chemical poisonings that would result in the condition of methemoglobinemia.
Apart from excess copper in a few conditions such as Wilson’s disease, Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma, or a genetic disease called Menke’s syndrome, copper is a forgotten mineral and seldom discussed as a deficiency in functional medicine. Before reading this book by Morley Robbins who cleverly used the chemical symbol Cu for copper, I was unfamiliar with the importance of this vital mineral, its role in the mitochondria, and its ability to control the oxidative effects of iron in our body.
Morley Robbins is a retired hospital administrator who wanted to be a physician as a young man. When he retired, an encounter with a Chiropractor who helped his frozen shoulder fostered a curiosity about why people get sick and spurred Robbins to dig into research articles for three or more hours every day for ten years. The result was finding research over the past one hundred years that developed into what he calls The Root Cause Protocol. Simply put, his focus in the book was to explain how the important balance of three minerals: magnesium, copper, iron, and ceruloplasmin (a protein) relate to most chronic degenerative diseases. For this newsletter, I will focus on fatigue and the effects of these four pieces have on the mitochondria.
Mitochondrial Health Part 4 – Supplemental Support
We have already discussed some important methods and supplements but since it is such a complex subject, in this newsletter I will try and give reasons why these additional supplements should be considered as important activators for improving mitochondrial health by increasing ATP and energy within our cells. These supplements have multiple benefits beyond helping the mitochondria, but for the sake of this newsletter I will keep it specific to mitochondrial health benefits.
D-Ribose
This is a sugar found within beef, eggs, and dairy. Aging, and exercise can reduce ATP, and D-Ribose will bring back energy from lowered ATP. Taken by capsule or powder in ranges from 3-5 grams is recommended. From what I have read on it, taking it for one month to see if it is helping. There was a study in 2015 from Ohio State that showed an improvement in congestive heart failure in 64% of the subjects when supplementation of D-Ribose was administered over six weeks. Cautions: Some people report gastrointestinal symptoms and lowered blood sugar when taking it, so anyone with hypoglycemia or even those who are on insulin need to be cautious.
Resveratrol
This is an antioxidant found in the seeds, and skins of grapes and berries. This study in 2017 showed improvement in mitochondrial respiratory dysfunction. There does not appear to be any cautions to be concerned about with resveratrol.
L-Carnitine
An amino acid that transports long-chain fatty acids into your mitochondria ... (keep reading)
In the world of anti-aging research, there has been a large focus on N.A.D. which is
a natural compound in all cells of our body. It is a critical molecule in that it helps
cells unlock energy from food and create ATP, a process that occurs in the mitochondria. It is also a signaling molecule to tell cells it needs repair and maintenance. N.A.D. is high when we are young, and declines throughout life by a factor of 50% every 20 years. If you could keep your N.A.D. levels elevated, you could theoretically pause or even reverse signs and symptoms of aging.
N.A.D. stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. It will be much easier to refer to it as NAD. Made from vitamin B3 (nicotinic acid or nicotinamide/niacinamide) and to a lesser extent from tryptophan. NAD exists as NAD+, NADH, NADP+, and NADPH. NAD is a redox couple where the NAD+ and NADP+ are the oxidized forms and NADH and NADPH are in the reduced form. When oxidized, it loses electrons and when reduced it is gaining electrons and NAD in these coenzyme forms are responsible for all metabolic transformations that take place within our bodies. Without them we would die within 30 seconds. This is how cyanide works. Cyanide shuts down the cytochrome c oxidase enzyme in the mitochondria which is the last step in the process of making ATP and oxygen. Cyanide makes oxygen unavailable.
Last month’s article was devoted to the importance of mitochondrial health in the production of energy for the body in the form of ATP. This currency of energy used by the body is important not only in movement of muscles, but also the movement of energy for clear thinking, the movement to activate immune system responses, and the energy for reducing pain. To summarize, it all happens with food we consume through the Krebs Cycle and combining NADH with oxygen as it passes through the Electron Transport Chain to form water and carbon dioxide. This happens in the 250 quadrillion mitochondria we have within all our cells. However, there is a missing piece to this process, which is the importance of red and infrared light on our mitochondria. Keep Reading>>
Mitochondria are organelles that apart from red blood cells, exist in mind boggling numbers throughout our bodies. Mitochondria, which are responsible for providing energy for the body, vary in number according to the different types of cells in the body. The largest concentration of mitochondria is in our brain, neurons, and heart where there could be thousands of mitochondria in each cell providing energy needed for cognition and movement. It is estimated that we have 250 quadrillion mitochondria in us and that mitochondria make up about 20% of our body weight. Additionally, our immune system depends on mitochondrial health to have the energy to defeat infections that arise from time to time. Persistent infections are a likely sign that the immune system lacks the energy to recover even when healing procedures are administered. There is abundant evidence that damaged or diminished mitochondrial functionality is a key reason for the onset of almost every degenerative disease we commonly hear about along with an accelerated or normal decline in aging.
Dr. Richard Johnson has spent the past twenty years researching why we get fat so easily, and how fructose and uric acid play an important role in contributing to most of the major health problems we see today including heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. In his third book titled Why Nature Wants Us to Be Fat, Johnson uses his unique background in Anthropology, as a kidney specialist, and research background to detail how human physiology and diet have influenced the epidemic of the most common health problems seen today.
If you were to play a word association game with any physician and said uric acid the response would probably be Gout in nearly 100% of the cases. Uric acid is a waste product from the breakdown of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA of the purines that are elevated in red meat, sardines, shrimp, and brewer’s yeast. If those purines crystalize in a joint such as the big toe, this is Gout, and it can be very painful.
What Dr. Johnson has discovered is that uric acid is also a downstream byproduct of the metabolism of fructose, and this is the key to what Dr. Johnson talked about in his second book called The Fat Switch...
