surviving-disease

Using nutrition to survive disease

Author: Kathy Clark RN

Diet

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The Truth About the Ketogenic Diet

Let’s talk about ketosis first, so that people understand what it actually means.  According to all the sources, ketosis is a metabolic state that occurs when your body burns fat for energy instead of glucose. The keto diet has many possible benefits, including potential weight loss, increased energy, and treating chronic illnesses. I was not aware of how many people did not understand that carbohydrates (all vegetables, potatoes, beans, bread, rice, and pasta) are actually sugar, just disguised with a much better name. Typically, you get glucose in your diet by eating carbohydrates, such as starches and sugars. Your body breaks the carbohydrates down into glucose and then uses the glucose as fuel. Your liver stores what is not needed and releases it as needed. The body does not have to use a lot of energy to convert the carbs to glucose, so it gets the biggest bang for the...

autoimmune disease

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Autoimmune Diseases

The classic definition of autoimmune disease states that it is a disease in which the body’s immune system attacks healthy cells. It happens when your natural defense system can’t tell the difference between your cells and foreign cells. For thousands of years, our bodies have reacted to foreign substances and learned to better deal with future infections. This has been documented for years, from the time of the Athens plague to 1650. Many of these diseases were caused by viruses or bacterial infections. Two discoveries had been made in the last part of the 19th century. First are the phagocytic cells, which engulf and eat invading pathogens. The second was antibodies that neutralize microbial antigens (which neutralize the particles so they are no longer infectious and cannot cause disease). It was reported that Paul R. Ehrlich was the first to define autoimmune disease as an immune system reaction aimed at...

diabetes

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Surviving disease: Diabetes Type 2

According to the CDC, about 38 million Americans have diabetes (1 in 10 people), and approximately 90-95% of that number are type 2 diabetics. The average age is about 45 years old. They also say that childhood obesity rates are rising, and so are the rates of type 2 diabetes in youth. They have found that more than 75% of children with type 2 diabetes have a close relative who has it as well.   What is diabetes?  Insulin is a hormone created in the pancreas that is essential to help transport the sugar over the cell wall. It is the key that opens the door to the cell. There are two primary problems. The pancreas (which creates the hormone Insulin) does not produce enough insulin to move the sugar into the cells. The second issue is the cells do not respond to the insulin available, also known as Insulin Resistance....

Inflammation

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Inflammation and disease states

To begin, we have to understand what inflammation actually means.  The standard definition of inflammation is:  If your body encounters an offensive foreign body (chemicals which are toxic to your system, viruses, bacteria, food sensitivity) or you have an injury, the body responds via the immune system. The immune system initially sends out something called inflammatory cells and another thing called cytokines (cytokines are chemical messengers which cause the stimulation of more inflammatory cells). Often we recognize inflammation by pain, bruising, redness or swelling however inflammation can also affect body systems you are unable to see and not even be aware it is happening. Inflammation can be acute, subacute or chronic depending on the duration of the symptoms.  Acute inflammatory is commonly seen after some kind of injury, viral or bacterial infections or exposure to some environmental toxin. Usually onset is very fast and can last for several days. Then...

Cancer

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Part 2 – Weight loss, Exercise and Intermittent Fasting

In the last blog, I talked about fighting disease using diet and weight loss. In particular, I talked about fighting cancer. That was only two of the pieces to fighting cancer. It is also important to include exercise (especially when using a Keto diet as an adjunct for cancer treatment or weight loss) and intermittent fasting.  Exercise is linked to the immune system. Recent research suggests that cytotoxic T cells (white blood cells that specialize in killing cancer cells) are activated with exercise and improve their ability to attack cancer cells. Regular exercise has an important role in almost every disease.   In the Keto diet, it is really important to avoid saturated fats as much as possible and include things like fatty fish, olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oils. Lean proteins such as chicken and some cuts of pork are great choices. To offset the “bad cholesterol”, as when...

Cancer

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Surviving Disease – One Cancer Diet Option Along With Weight Loss

According to the CDC, just by being overweight or obese, you are at risk for 13 types of cancers which make up about 40% (684,000 people) of all cancers diagnosed in the US each year.  Being overweight or having obesity doesn’t mean that someone will definitely get cancer. But it does mean that they are more likely to get cancer than if they kept a healthy weight. In health care, we use a tool called the BMI (Body Mass Index) calculated by height and weight to determine if you are overweight (BMI of 25 to 29.9) or obese (BMI of > 30).  Being overweight and obese causes changes in the body including long-lasting inflammation, much higher than normal levels of insulin, insulin-like growth factor, insulin resistance and sex hormones. These changes may lead to cancer. The longer you are overweight and the more overweight you are, both increase your risk....

Cancer

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Surviving Cancer Part 2 – Cancer cells versus normal cells 

I promised that I would come back to tell you what I learned about cancer. Please remember to always work with your primary physician or specialist before doing anything independently.   Here we go! This is such a very technical area of cytology (how cells work). I will do my best to make it as simple as possible so that everyone will understand. I have to say that this is my most challenging post so far to explain. I want people to understand, at a very basic level, what is going on with cancerous cells.   To help you improve your understanding of a normal cell versus a cancer cell, I want to talk about how the body makes energy on a cellular level (both healthy and unhealthy cells) and where it gets its energy. There are many different types of cells in the body and different types of cancer, some are...

Congestive Heart Failure

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Surviving Disease – Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial Fibrillation. Many people have heard about Atrial Fibrillation. Even so, I hope you continue to read about this relatively common heart disease, which can be unpleasant. Moreover, if not treated, it can be life-threatening in some circumstances.  Causes are too many to mention (a thousand), but the big ones are: Congenital heart diseases and athletes with predisposition to heart disease. Wow, Athletes! I had a patient in his 20s who had something called Wolff Parkinson White syndrome which is a serious congenital defect with atrial fibrillation. I was glad he told his doctor how he was feeling and we did identify an abnormality on his ECG for something referred to as a delta wave. Something subtle that can be easily missed. If you remember, my father had heart disease, most likely due to smoking and being overweight. He had a heart attack, mitral valve disease, and congestive heart failure...

Cancer

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Surviving Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer

One of the worst days of my life was receiving a call from the ER physician telling me that my youngest sister has metastatic lung cancer. She went to the ER after she had developed a severe cough that would not resolve and had been recently diagnosed with Covid-19. The ER doctor had been worried about a possible blood clot in her lungs as her lab showed elevated D-dimer which is a blood test that detects a protein your body makes to break down blood clots. Her number was extremely high.  He mentioned seeing something concerning in her abdomen; however, due to the CT being done primarily for the lungs they could not exactly tell what it was but advised getting an abdominal CT as soon as possible.  Now the scrambling began. Her primary care doctor had left the practice, so she did not have anyone immediately available to order...

Congestive Heart Failure

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Surviving Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

I should start with a definition by the American Heart Association (AHA):  “Heart failure can progress, so researchers have identified four stages of the disease — A, B, C and D. Health care professionals also classify heart failure when it has progressed to stages C and D. This classification measures a patient’s overall heart function and severity of symptoms”. There are further definitions based on classes ( I- IV). I encourage people to go to the AHA website to get more information, I have added the website to my resource page.  I need to add that there is not just one kind of heart failure: As I mentioned in the previous post my father had a degree of heart failure after his heart attack. A portion of his heart was not contracting well from the damage to the muscle on the bottom left side of his heart and possibly some...