Thanks to the many of you who have written about The Triple Whammy Cure. Your comments have been overwhelmingly positive and professionally very gratifying. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve received:

I’d really like to hear about your personal Triple Whammy experience. If you don’t mind sharing yours with other women, please tell us your stories here and we’ll include them in future newsletters.

Dr. Edelberg's February Message
One Drawer at a Time
Here's a quick personal confession. Maybe I've got too much of the 1960s mentality ingrained in me, but I've always really bristled when authority figures tell me how to live my life. You might have noticed that The Triple Whammy Cure tries to avoid words like "must" and "under no circumstances."

Maybe it's for this reason that I'm put off by most of the books written on so-called healthful living—they’re just too overwhelming. Pages and pages of unnecessarily complicated dietary regimens, exercise programs, reprimands, and "avoids." You really don’t have to become a human counterpart of a military academy in order to start living a healthful life.

Let's keep it simple.

Here are two guiding principles I recommend when a patient asks me how she can lead a healthier life:

•  If you decide to clean house, start with one drawer at a time.
I don’t recommend that my patients change their diets, give up smoking, and start exercising all at once, but rather that they start with one area that strikes us as especially needing attention. You yourself can probably identify one "drawer" that could use some special attention. What is your body telling you about how much (and how well) you sleep? About your eating habits? About your ability to walk up a flight of stairs?

One of my patients, Lisa, told me she knew she needed to cut out a lot of the sugar from her diet. How did she know? She’d been listening to her body’s response when she ate sugar. Lisa craved sweets with her coffee in the morning and grabbed a candy bar almost every day to alleviate her 3 p.m. slump at work. But after she got the sudden sugar rush she felt worse. We worked together using the Triple Whammy Food Plan to find replacements that satisfied her and provided a steady source of energy.

Most important, the replacement foods left her feeling strong instead of strung out. By responding to her body’s message, Lisa felt the immediate and positive effects of making a single change in her life.

The big question for you is this: If I’m listening to my body, what’s the most important step it’s asking me to take?

•  Take a simple first step
Applying a complex program of must do’s to an already full life almost always ends in frustration. Instead, be like Lisa and listen to your body’s messages. Then respond to one of them.

If you’re uncertain where to begin and you want to initiate one health-improving task without buying any pills or signing any health club contracts, just go for a walk. This is a great place to start for anyone who wants a mood lift and a whole-body energizer. In fact, the brisk 20-minute outdoor walk in the light (no sunglasses) every day is my foundation for The Triple Whammy Cure.

Now read the next sentence carefully, aloud if you like: the immediate difference in how you feel at the end of just one week will trigger your psychological impetus to explore good health a bit further. Get it? It means that once you’ve cleaned up Drawer Number One and experience the good results first hand, you’ll actually be eager to explore Drawer Number Two.

Listen carefully to how good you feel and remember: one drawer at a time and keep it simple.

Acquired Wisdom
Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.
Maya Angelou

The best cure for hypochondria is to forget about your own body and get interested in someone else’s.
Goodman Ace

Q & A
Q. How do I know which supplements to buy? I seem to need them all.

A. The four most important supplements for the Triple Whammy Cure are:

Any additional supplements are really dependent on whether or not you have one of the Triple Whammy disorders, like PMS, migraines, or fibromyalgia. But remember that supplements are only part of the solution. Equally important are a healthful diet, stress reduction, and regular exercise. You can read more in the book. And while all the supplements I recommend are available at most drugstores, you can also buy them online here.

Q. I'm 58, very much post-menopausal, and answered “yes” to all the quiz questions. Is everything you've written still appropriate for post-menopausal women? Also, I've been told that St. John's wort is not appropriate for blood type O. Is this true?

A. The health of all women can be compromised by the Triple Whammy, so everything in the book can potentially apply to you, with the decided exception of PMS. I urge you to turn now to page 120 and read the Menopause Transition healing path I created for the book. It outlines the specific steps you can take to eliminate three different levels of menopause symptoms.

Regarding your second question, my patients have also asked me about St. John's wort and blood type O. All I can tell you is that among all the clinical studies performed on St. John's wort, none has ever shown any negative correlation among Type O patients, and none of my type O patients have had any difficulty with it.

Releasing Stress
Breathing Meditation
Practice this simple meditation for at least 15 minutes when you get up in the morning and again before you go to bed—or whenever you sense stress overtaking you. You want to empty your mind of everything, which is more difficult than it sounds. Before you start, remind yourself that all the to-do’s cluttering your mind will still be there when you finish. Or write them down before starting and promise yourself you’ll return to them.

Eating the Triple Whammy Way
Eating the Triple Whammy Way balances your hormones and increases your resistance to disease by boosting your immune system. Click on the picture of Mediterranean Spinach to see the recipe, and check out its nutrient content: literally off the charts! You can use pre-washed spinach to prepare this in minutes.

Nature's Apothecary: Black Cohosh for Menopause Symptoms
Sometimes conventional American medicine can be irritatingly short-sighted. Take for example black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa), an herb derived from the gnarled black root of a wildflower related to the buttercup. Here you have an herb native to the east coast of America, originally used medicinally by some Native American tribes for "female disorders" such as painful menstrual cramps. Then, during the 19th and much of the 20th century, through savvy American entrepreneurship, black cohosh achieved extraordinary success as an ingredient in one of the best selling patent medicines in history: Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound for Women.

But by the mid twentieth century, so-called scientific medicine has abandoned herbs en masse and, by 1986, when the FDA declared that black cohosh had no therapeutic value, conventional physicians in the US had pretty much forgotten the herb altogether. However, in the 1960s, black cohosh started undergoing rigorous clinical testing in Germany, passed with flying colors, and, to bring us current, black cohosh is now the largest selling herb for menopause in the world, with over ten million packages sold annually in Germany alone. American women purchase more than $60 million worth of products containing black cohosh every year.

How black cohosh works
Originally, animal studies seemed to show that black cohosh worked by acting in the body just like estrogen, only in a milder form. This would categorize black cohosh among the so-called phytoestrogens (meaning plant-based estrogens) like soy. To some extent, this may be true. Lack of estrogen is responsible for changes in vaginal tissue—like dryness and thinning—during the menopause transition. Estrogen replacement reverses these changes and since black cohosh can do this too, it was assumed to be a phytoestrogen.

However, in human studies, it's been shown that black cohosh has an additional mechanism of action. Its active ingredient, triterpene, attaches itself to points on the breast and uterus normally reserved for a woman's estrogen molecule. Then, her pituitary gland—the master gland in the body—sensing "no estrogen shortage in this woman" reduces its secretion of luteinizing hormone (LH). Since the rise in LH during menopause is considered to be one of the sources of hot flashes, when the LH drops, hot flashes improve. By the way, some researchers theorize that this "receptor site block" of estrogen by black cohosh may actually protect you from developing breast cancer by preventing your own estrogen from stimulating cancerous cells. Finally, black cohosh relieves painful spasms in the uterus, explaining its long-appreciated effect of relieving menstrual cramps.

What is it used for?
By far the most common use is to relieve hot flashes and night sweats. Studies from Germany have also confirmed black cohosh's effectiveness in relieving both vaginal dryness and mild depression. Because it acts by blocking estrogen rather than replacing it, black cohosh appears to be a safe therapy for hot flashes among women who have had estrogen-sensitive breast cancers or a predisposition to blood clots. Black cohosh may have some benefit in relieving PMS, although chasteberry is by far the superior herb for this condition. Some PMS herbal combinations combine the two. Herbalists also include black cohosh, along with cramp bark and black haw (also in Lydia Pinkham’s tonic), in formulations designed to treat menstrual cramps.

What should I buy?
I’ve been using two products in my practice for many years, both with excellent results. The first is the same as that used in Europe, a standardized extract containing 2.5% triterpene and marketed as Remifemin. The second is prepared by freeze drying the whole root immediately after harvest and encapsulating it. Freeze dried herbs are prepared by a small company called Eclectic Institute. Both are readily available in most health food stores and on the internet. Click here to view Triple Whammy Solution Menopause Transition with Black Cohosh.

How do I take it?
If using the standardized extract (in Remifemin or any other product) take 20 to 40 mg once or twice a day. The comparable dose of the freeze dried whole root is 550 mg once or twice a day. Take with meals.

Are there side effects?
Side effects are very rare. Some women experience mild upset stomach, which can be avoided by taking your dose with meals.

Reasons not to take
Black cohosh should not be used during pregnancy, if you’re breastfeeding, or with hormone replacement therapy.

Contact us
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