Alternative Medicine Acupuncture

03/25/2025

Most people now days think, running and going to gym will give them longevity, but secrets are in maintaining low heart rate throughout life and getting at least 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day, eating whole grain preferably Einkorn flour, at least one cup per day- beans, having face to face conversations (not Facebook conversations), having a goals in life at all the time, having belief system-best through religion, and of course environment plays a big role.
Now days physicians are afraid to talk about patient's weight, worrying not to offend patients. Hopefully will change as we see many healthcare professions are opening doors for holistic health and alternative treatment methods. Hopefully trend will continue and will see longevity increase in most developed countries.

03/14/2025

05/31/2023

Chinese wisdom

The wisdom of the ancient philosophers is valuable information that humanity especially needs now. It is good to know that some of these lessons will really change one's life for the better or lead to deep reflection.

05/31/2023

When pain knocks, don't wait to become chronic, address it with acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Alternative medicine should be your first choice of treatment; acupuncture has anti-inflammatory, analgesic, calming and sedative effects, while simultaneously changing tissue morphology and increasing blood perfusion in the affected area

04/29/2023

Chinese medicine health and longevity

Researchers have found that Astragalus contains a compound which outperforms current medications for heart attack sufferers.

03/30/2023

In addition to acupuncture, CHF very well treated with Chinese medicine; the combo provides excellent outcome for the patients

Acupuncture chronic heart failure treatment success is found in modern research.

02/05/2023

This highly pungent Japanese condiment contains compounds that strike to the very core of pancreatic cancer malignancy.

12/24/2022

Keto for Glycogen Storage Disease

In addition to the well-known role of ketogenic diets for facilitating weight loss and improving type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, this very-low-carbohydrate way of eating is also recognized for being useful for a number of conditions for which there few or even no other treatments. One such condition is glycogen storage disease.
There are several different types of glycogen storage diseases (GSD), each one caused by a defect or deficiency in a different enzyme in the synthesis, storage, or breakdown of glycogen. As a result, individuals affected by these may have difficulty using carbohydrate (glucose) to fuel not just exercise and other physical activity.

Examples of GSD include GSD 0, which is characterized by a deficiency of glycogen synthase, resulting in a reduced capacity to form glycogen in either the muscles or the liver. Some of the other GSDs are related to accessing or breaking down glycogen. GSD III is caused by reduced activity of a glycogen debranching enzyme; GSD IX results from deficiency of phosphorylase kinase, a key regulatory enzyme for glycogenolysis. Research suggests that ketogenic diets may be helpful for various forms of GSD. McArdle disease (GSD V) is one for which there’s the most supportive data so far—thanks in part to patients who were looking for their own solution.

McArdle disease is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder based in mutations to the PYGM gene, which cause impaired synthesis of skeletal muscle glycogen phosphorylase. (Individuals heterozygous for the mutation are asymptomatic.) This deficiency of muscle glycogen phosphorylase manifests as a “complete inability to use muscle glycogen stores.” The signs and symptoms are what one might expect in someone whose muscles cannot used stored carbohydrate for fuel: rapid muscle fatigue, myalgia, exercise intolerance, and cramps in exercising muscles. A clinical feature of this condition is dramatically elevated creatine kinase (CK), likely due to skeletal muscle damage as muscle tissue is broken down in an effort to create a local glucose supply.

A common phenomenon of a “second wind” may give these individuals more energy and the ability to resume activity. In the second wind, resting for a few minutes relieves fatigue and myalgia and the affected person can exercise again. This increased or restored stamina “is attributable to an enhanced sympathoadrenal response and to an improved delivery of extramuscular energy substrates, free fatty acids, and glucose to working muscles, which partially compensates for the impaired glycogen breakdown.”

Owing to the impaired breakdown of stored glycogen, the local glucose supply to working muscles is limited, which subsequently limits the availability of pyruvate (which would have been the end product of glycolysis). The limited supply of pyruvate then impairs oxidative phosphorylation, leading to an inadequate supply of substrate for energy generation via the Krebs cycle. This reduced capacity of muscle cells to produce ATP would obviously result in rapid muscle fatigue and exercise intolerance, as McArdle patients experience. Oxygen consumption in McArdle patients is just 35-40% of that in people without the condition, and they also experience a disproportionate increase in heart rate and ventilation during submaximal exercise. (These are both improved during the second wind.)

Clinical trials in which various compounds were supplemented in patients with McArdle disease have been disappointing. Researchers have said, “It is not yet possible to recommend any specific treatment for the condition. However, recent research looking at ketogenic diets for this condition—coupled with a growing number of patient anecdotes—suggest otherwise and offer hope that there may be something to help these patients, and it might be as simple as changing what they eat.

If the debilitating symptoms of McArdle disease result from impaired ability to break down glycogen and use glucose to fuel working muscles, then it makes sense to try and provide muscle cells with alternative fuels, namely, fatty acids and ketones. Glucose is the primary fuel for muscles during high intensity exercise but fat predominates during normal activity at lower intensity. A very-low-carb diet is a sharp contrast to the conventional recommendation for this condition, which is a high-carbohydrate diet with frequent feedings of sugar in order to ensure the muscles have an adequate energy supply. However, researchers increasingly recognize the long-term complications that may arise from excessive simple sugar use and acknowledge the potential efficacy of a low-glycemic index diet, increased dietary fat and very limited simple sugar intake, and propose that medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) oil or exogenous ketones may be beneficial for some.

There are only a few clinical trials studying ketogenic diets for McArdle disease but the results are encouraging. One case report involves a 55-year-old man with the condition. Following a ketogenic diet resulted in elevated blood levels of the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate (2-6 mmol/L), and exercise tolerance as much as 10-fold depending on the endurance level. Notably, the subject’s CK decreased from 5,300 to 890 U/L on the ketogenic diet. Before the diet, the subject’s exercise tolerance was just 200m of moderate-exertion walking, 20 steps at medium-exertion on a stepper, and 3km of high-exertion cycling. These improved markedly within just one month on the diet, improved even further at 6 months, and at the one-year mark, he could achieve 12km of walking, 300 steps, and 60km of cycling.

Rather than waiting and hoping for a breakthrough in clinical research, patients with McArdle disease took matters into their own hands and adopted ketogenic diets for self-management of their condition. Members of the Ketosis in McArdle’s Facebook group presented the results of a group survey at a conference at Columbia Medical Center in 2015.

Among those who adhered to keto, results were impressive:

76% reported improvement in exercise tolerance; 18% slight improvement; 6% no change
73% reported feeling as though they were living in a permanent second wind
85% reported improvement of everyday symptoms; 12% slight improvement, and just 3% with no change
One respondent was the mother of an 11-year-old girl who was wheelchair-bound prior to the keto diet and who no longer needs the assistance. Her CK averaged ~8000 U/L before keto (approx. 40 times the normal level) and averages ~3000 U/L on the diet, including once being measured at 300 U/L. A different subject was a man who was able to participate in rigorous mountain climbing while on a keto diet. Other subjects reported similarly impressive results, with most of them noting a recurrence of fatigue and myalgia while experimenting with higher carbohydrate intakes.

The side-effects reported were not unusual for people on keto diets (e.g., fatigue, headaches, constipation, dizziness). The most common causes for these are electrolyte imbalances, and they are easily remedied by increasing sodium intake. (Some individuals may also benefit from magnesium or potassium supplementation.)

These data are anecdotal, but such evidence shouldn’t be dismissed, especially when results are so striking in a condition for which there are no other known interventions. More recent clinical trials lend increased evidence for keto diets improving subjective symptom relief. Research is expanding into the potential for medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil and exogenous ketones to be beneficial in a range of applications, particularly when subjects are unable to adhere to a ketogenic diet. It will be interesting to see if these will be helpful for people with McArdle disease or other glycogen storage diseases.

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BIO-MCT

12/04/2022

Nutrient Intake & Healthy Aging

An interesting analysis of nutrition and aging was recently published in BMC Biology, in which the authors used a multi-dimensional modeling technique termed the Geometric Framework for Nutrition (GFN) to assess how the balance of nutrient intakes is associated with the aging process, specifically with age-associated dysregulation. In contrast to what they refer to as the “one variable at a time” approach, here they attempt to more holistically model the complexity of dietary intake with a variety of aging and physiologically-based assessments, potentially providing deeper insight than may be extracted from studies primarily concerned with only one macro or micronutrient at a time.
For this analysis, the authors used data from the Quebec Longitudinal Study on Nutrition and Successful Aging (NuAge), providing data collected over 4 years on over 1,500 men and women in generally good health, who were over age 67 at the study onset. Multiple analyses of this cohort have previously been published, including associations between higher serum omega-3 fatty acids and greater cognitive function, as well as between an even mealtime distribution of protein and muscle strength. Thirty biomarkers were used to calculate scores indicative of global dysregulation, as well as dysregulation within 5 specific systems, such as oxygen transport, liver/kidney function, etc. These biomarkers were comprised of fairly traditional laboratory analytes, with the majority included on a standard CBC or metabolic panel, and did not include any of the “epigenetic clocks” which are gaining traction in aging research. Several measures of “biological aging” were included in the assessment, however, including the Phenotypic Age and Klemera-Doubal methods. The GFN has been described previously; it is an attempt to map out the intersection and interactions of multiple nutrients and other variables, providing insights into the dietary associations with chronic diseases such as obesity as well as aging itself. In this analysis, the focus was on dietary protein, and how it interacts with other nutrients to influence markers of aging.

Among the takeaways from this analysis was that a greater than-average intake of alpha-tocopherol was associated with lower levels of physiological dysregulation. Consuming alpha-tocopherol at 2 standard deviations above the mean (corresponding to just over 10 mg per day) had the greatest benefit for multiple scores, including global physiological dysregulation. Consistent with previous association studies, however, detrimental effects were suggested at very high intakes of alpha-tocopherol (>4 standard deviations above the mean). They also found a relationship between alpha-tocopherol and vitamin C which supports previous findings, i.e., that in isolation, a higher intake of vitamin E may not be as beneficial at low vitamin C intakes, most likely because of the recycling of vitamin E by vitamin C. It’s also worth noting a small double-blind crossover trial which found an increased requirement for alpha-tocopherol among participants with the metabolic syndrome. Given the prevalence of this condition, it’s worth speculating if a benefit to a higher alpha-tocopherol intake may be partly mediated through this mechanism.

Other takeaways were primarily related to macronutrient intake. For example, there was a general improvement in dysregulation scores with a higher-than-average protein intake. In this population, the mean protein intake was 1241 kJ/day (approximately 74 grams per day), and in an unadjusted model, 2000 kJ/day (120 g/d) was associated with the least dysregulation in several scores. This is consistent with previously published recommendations, which suggest that in an older population a somewhat higher than average protein intake may be more beneficial, particularly as it may help to ward off the growing problem of sarcopenia. Indeed, results of a recently published randomized trial found that a higher protein diet had benefits in an older population not only limited to muscle strength, but also included positive changes to innate immune system function, lipid transport, and the blood coagulation system, all of which may help reduce the risk of chronic disease. This does not necessarily apply to a younger population, in which a higher intake of protein, specifically animal protein, has been associated with a greater risk for cardiovascular mortality (though plant protein was inversely associated). In the GFN analysis, very low or very high carbohydrate and very high lipid intake were associated with higher dysregulation scores.

There are many limitations and potentially contradictory findings within this analysis, yet the authors suggest a unique advantage of such an approach. They did not find a “one size fits all” level of macro or micronutrient intake for optimal physiological function, and different dietary patterns were associated with both specific benefits and specific drawbacks. Another way to think about this finding is to recognize that a substantial range of intakes was associated with similar outcomes, i.e., there was a fair bit of room for dietary diversity, outside of extremes. But the advantage of this type of analysis may be to focus more on the individual than on a population basis. For example, identifying specific systems that appear to have more dysregulation/dysfunction in an individual, and then optimizing intakes to address those deficits (while maintaining the overall context of global aging/dysfunction) has significant promise for personalized nutrition. It will be interesting to see future GFN analyses, and application to more aging-specific datasets.

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Dr. Ivo Gueorguiev is the owner of Alternative Medicine Acupuncture LLC. He is DOM, AP and Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture Physician.

12/04/2022

Impact of Diet on Baby’s Microbiome

Whether you’re a would-be parent or your newborn is already safely in your arms, the joy and wonder of having a new member in your family can be truly exhilarating. But what most parents may not take the time to think about is the impact a baby’s diet has on their microbiome.

The importance of developing a healthy gut flora from early life stages cannot be overemphasized. Among other things, a healthy microbiome helps to boost immune functioning, aids digestion and improves nutrient absorption. These, of course, lead to overall health. However, babies aren’t born with a fully-developed microbial colony, but if properly developed, the microbiome can lay a valuable foundation for a healthy life.

Diet During Pregnancy and Lactation

Contrary to what was previously believed, microbiome formation actually starts as far back as during pregnancy and is strongly influenced by the maternal diet. According to a study by UNSW Sydney researchers, mothers who indulge in unhealthy eating during pregnancy can negatively impact their child’s gut health. The changes to a mother’s microbiome incited by a high-fat diet (or by being obese) during pregnancy can find its way to her offspring’s microbiome. By feeding pregnant rats with fatty diets, the researchers observed that the diversity of the gut bacteria was reduced. And what makes this worrying is that changes in the early infant gut microbiome are linked with the development of childhood obesity and autoimmune conditions, including asthma, allergies and type 1 diabetes.

In a similar study published in Microbiome – where authors examined the link between maternal diet during gestation and the infant’s gut microbiome structure 6 weeks post-delivery – the researchers concluded that a mother’s choice of diet during gestation and lactation may have a significant effect on the gut microbiome of her infant. However, this effect may vary depending on the mode of delivery.

After adjusting for maternal body mass index, infant feeding method, batch and parity, the researchers observed that maternal fruit consumption was directly related to the infant stool microbiome and this effect persisted in vaginally-born babies who were exclusively breastfed. The researchers also observed a positive correlation between maternal fish consumption and Streptococcus in the infant’s gut microbiome. Fish consumption also led to a decrease in the population of Clostridium neonatalein, a bacterium considered to be helpful to the infant’s microbiome.

What Happens to the Microbiome After Birth?

The developmental process of the infant’s microbiome is quite dynamic. A sizeable amount of bacteria are already present in the infant’s gut at birth, however, the composition of this microbiota soon begins to change, largely depending on the baby’s diet, although other factors such as mode of feeding, hygiene, pets, probiotics etc., also play some part.

In a recent study published in Nature Medicine, researchers revealed that the gut microbiome undergoes three different phases: “a developmental phase (3–14 months), a transitional phase (15–30 months), and a stable phase (31–46 months).” In the TEDDY study which analyzed 12,500 stool samples from 900+ children, aged 3-46 months, the researchers revealed that breastfeeding was the most important factor influencing the infant’s microbiome. Higher breastfeeding rate was associated with increased levels of Bifidobacterium, but once the infants were weaned, there was a rapid loss of the Bifidobacterium spp., and a quick turnover occurred in the microbiome, which featured a higher population of bacteria within the Firmicutes phyla. Although this shift from Bifidobacterium to Firmicutes (more characteristic of an adult microbiome) is expected, what surprised experts was how rapidly the change occurred after breastfeeding was stopped. Thus, it might be helpful to provide infants with probiotic powders rich in Bifidobacterium – and other good bacteria – when breastmilk is unavailable.

Post-weaning diet also plays a significant role in initiating compositional changes and microbiome diversity, as dietary patterns change over the first three years. According to a 2011 study, the introduction of table foods to breastfed infants caused an increase in amount of enterococci and enterobacteria, followed by a steady colonization by Clostridium, Bacteroidetes spp., and anaerobic Streptococcus.

Different food types and dietary habits also play a role in influencing the gut microbiome. For instance, according to a 2010 study that assessed the impact of diet on the microbiodata of children from Europe and rural Africa, it was observed that the African children who ate predominantly low-fat, vegetarian diets had more Bacteroides and less Firmicutes, in stark contrast to the EU children who had a higher Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio (a common feature of obese humans). It is, therefore, believed that this increased ratio in the EU children was due to easy accessibility to high-calorie diets.

However, as earlier stated, although diet is critical to the development of the infant microbiome, environmental factors can also play a significant role. Exposing children to diverse microbes early in life can help set the stage for a stronger immune system. The more children are exposed to, the more information their bodies have and the better off their immune systems will be in the long run. For this reason, books like “Let Them Eat Dirt” have gained popularity.

Overall, fostering diversity and the growth of health-benefitting bacteria in the microbiota be it through the environment or the maternal diet is key to long-lasting gut health in children.

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NutriClear Plus
Nutrigreens
Liver DTX

Dr. Ivo Gueorguiev is the owner of Alternative Medicine Acupuncture LLC. He is DOM, AP and Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture Physician.

12/04/2022

Magnesium & Vitamin D Activation

A compelling article in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association highlighted the important role of magnesium in vitamin D activation and function.
The intestinal absorption and metabolism of nutrients often depend on the availability of other nutrients. Yet the supplementation of many nutrients, including magnesium and vitamin D, is usually provided separately.

An article from BMC Medicine provided a thorough overview of the relationship between magnesium and vitamin D and how magnesium could be used for the optimization of vitamin D status. After its discovery in 1913, vitamin D’s role in health was better understood. Vitamin D deficiency is a pressing health concern because it is considered an independent risk factor for mortality. Yet studies on rickets have shown that hypovitaminosis D-associated risk of mortality could be modified by the consumption of magnesium.

Magnesium assists in the activation of vitamin D, helping regulate calcium and phosphate homeostasis to ensure the growth and maintenance of bone. Every one of the enzymes that metabolize vitamin D seems to require magnesium, which acts as a cofactor in the enzymatic reactions in the kidneys and liver. The authors of the study urge that it is therefore crucial to ensure that the recommended amount of magnesium is brought into the body if all the optimum benefits of vitamin D intake is the goal.