 From David Edelberg, MD
The three-week cure I describe in The Triple Whammy Cure really does work, and I wanted to share a story. As we were writing the book, some of our friends at Free Press/Simon & Schuster (our publisher) started using the program. Here's what one of them had to say: "I've been following the Triple Whammy Cure since February, 2005. In the months that I've been on the plan, I've noticed that not only do I physically feel better, but I look better and feel more emotionally balanced. For the other working mothers out there who are tired of feeling low in energy, irritable, and generally not well for most of their days, I recommend The Triple Whammy Cure to all of them. It is easy to follow and you'll feel the results in a very short amount of time." In addition to Carisa, we've already begun to hear from women who have started the plan and found it can work very quickly. We hope you'll tell us your Triple Whammy success stories here so we can share them in future newsletters.
Dr. Edelberg's January Message I'm certain this is because most of us attempt too much, making promises that are just too difficult to keep—and this during an already stressful time of year. Big sweeping goals like "I'm going to lose weight" or "I'm going to go to the gym to exercise (or wake up at 5 a.m. for t'ai chi) at least four days a week” are just too demanding. After a few weeks of best efforts, your resolve wobbles, you get hungry and discouraged, find that 5 a.m. is too darned early to be doing anything, and then do your best to forget about it altogether. I’m going to offer an alternative to whatever remains of your New Year’s resolutions: right now, make some smaller and extraordinarily easy ones. Here's a list of ten steps you can take in 2006 that will make you healthier and are likely to prolong your life: 1. Have one small square of dark chocolate each day. Obviously, some of these are easier than others. For example, #1 is a whole lot more fun than #8. But good clinical studies have been performed on the health benefits gained from each of these. Here’s the skivvy: Chocolate, garlic, red wine, and green tea are all very powerful antioxidants—molecules that block the damage caused by altered oxygen molecules called free radicals. The current theory of just why we age is that our bodies are damaged by a lifetime of exposure to these free radicals. The reason smokers often look several years older than the rest of us is that cigarette smoke is an extraordinary concentration of free radicals. Organic fruits and vegetables have greater nutritional content than those that are conventionally grown. They’re also free of pesticides and herbicides that probably cause more damage than the government is telling us. A relatively modest amount of walking has been repeatedly shown to provide great benefits for your heart, blood pressure, muscles, and bones—and also your mood. The benefits of laughter, stress reduction, and vacations are self-evident if you’ve read The Triple Whammy Cure. Laughter, for example, boosts levels of stress-protecting feel-good serotonin (so does doing something nice for others—isn’t that lovely?). And you know how I feel about stress reduction: it’s Job 1, as they say. And breakfast? When a large group of 100-years-olds was questioned about their lifestyles, the one factor common to them all was eating this most vital meal of the day.
Work with Your Whammies Remember, stress causes Triple Whammy symptoms and triggers Triple Whammy disorders. One of the very simplest ways to work off stress is by walking briskly. Walking is, after all, how we got around before the wheel was invented, and most of us do it every day. That’s one of the reasons daily brisk walking (outside, without sunglasses) is part of the three-week cure. Now a recently published study—and a very good study I assure you—confirms that walking every day can add years to your life and keep your heart healthy in the process. The study researchers looked at data collected in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been analyzing the health of Boston-area residents for more than 40 years. They organized people into three groups based on their physical activity—high, moderate, and low—and the estimated amount of oxygen they used. The most active group gained three and a half years of life expectancy, and largely without any heart disease. The middle group gained a year and half more than the low activity group. Studies like this are being published all the time, and if you ponder them, they make simple sense. Your heart is a muscle that needs working out, just like the rest of your body. What the researchers weren’t looking at is how daily brisk walking increases serotonin and other feel-good brain chemicals and how it reduces overall stress. But other studies have shown this to be true. So put on your walking shoes and go for it. And, by the way, if you have trouble with your feet or knees and find it difficult to walk, you can get the same results using a stationary bike or by swimming. GO TO THE SOURCE Whammy 2: SEROTONIN You’ve probably also heard for years that fish is “brain food,” but for one reason or another you skip the fish department at your grocery store. Possibly you don’t like the looks of the fish, you don’t like to prepare it, or you’ve been reading about pollutants in fish. So you head for the chicken instead. Although the study is limited to men and women over 65, I recommend you begin taking fish oil (which is largely free of contaminants) at whatever age you happen to be right now. And there are bonus points: fish oil has other positive effects—it’s good for your heart and it’s an anti-inflammatory. GO TO THE SOURCE What a recent study from Canada confirmed is that whole foods/good fat eating, when combined with regular exercise, can cause even bad cholesterol levels to plummet. When supplemented with fish oil, oat bran, and plant sterols, cholesterol dropped even further. (Plant sterols are substances that exist naturally in vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, and other plant foods. They’re added to some margarines and are also available as nutritional supplements.) Keep in mind that cholesterol plaques can clog up all arteries, from your brain to your toes, so keeping your bad cholesterol down and your arteries open will very definitely increase your chances for a healthy longevity. And in case you’re wondering why we’re discussing cholesterol under the “Hormones” heading, it’s because this same diet—with an emphasis on fruits, vegetables, and good fats such as olive oil, avocado, and flaxseed oil--supports hormone balance. You can read more about that in The Triple Whammy Cure Food Plan. For some delicious whole-food eating, be sure to check this month’s recipe below. GO TO THE SOURCE
Acquired Wisdom Women are the glue that holds our day-to-day world together. In these days, half our diseases come from neglect of the body and overwork of the brain. We live longer than our forefathers but we suffer more from a thousand anxieties and cares. You can tell whether a person is healthy by what she takes two at a time—pills or stairs.
Eating the Triple Whammy Way We've teamed up with the World's Healthiest Foods website to bring you an easy, healthful whole-foods based recipe each month. Click on the photo to see the recipe for Zesty Mexican Soup and, while you're at the World's Healthiest Foods website, be sure to have a look around.
Nature's Apothecary: Chasteberry for PMS How chasteberry works What is it used for? What should I buy? How do I take it? Are there side effects? Reasons not to take
I have lots of recommendations you’re unlikely to hear from your regular doctor, including how managing your whammies and using herbal supplements (yes, they really work!) and other non-traditional methods can help you start feeling better fast. Triple Whammy disorders are:
Contact us
Who is David Edelberg, MD? About 15 years ago, I had this amazing realization: many of my patients suffering from conditions that conventional medicine has trouble treating well (like back pain, headaches, and just plain tiredness) were getting better using a variety of alternative healers and healing techniques. I had one of those mid-life career changes you read about. But instead of doing something like opening a school for skydiving, I opened instead Chicago's first center for integrative medicine, combining conventional and alternative medicine under one roof. Today, my practice includes me, the MD, surrounded by professionals from many healing traditions—acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, massage therapy, Reiki, and others. Looking back on my medical school training, I can assure you I never learned about what some people call “alternative” therapies. Even today, most medical schools barely acknowledge the existence of anything remotely unconventional. This is not to denigrate Western medicine: we do some things extraordinarily well, like surgery and emergency medicine, but when it comes to chronic symptoms of any sort, especially those where diagnostic tests are negative, the alternative practitioners have conventional docs beat hands down. What you'll find in our book and newsletter is a source of health tips and information from all healing traditions. We'll cover the Whammies and the latest updates in treatment of the Triple Whammy disorders, like fibro and chronic fatigue. Prevention is super-important, so we'll also discuss healthy eating, stress reduction, hormone replacement, and new anti-aging therapies. I hope you'll stick around. |
|
Welcome to our inaugural newsletter and thanks for signing up. Each month I hope you'll find a few nuggets of information that will support your good health. 
Just about this time of year you might be thinking about your New Year's resolutions and wishing you'd been more realistic when you made yours. Unless you've got a will of iron, your best intentions might be starting to peter out already. This is not an example of my personal pessimism or disrespect for human nature. It's just the facts, based on all sorts of surveys.
