KirstenMortensen.com

I am now drinking distilled water, and I just had to share this: when I finish distilling a gallon of water, there are a few teaspoons left in the bottom of the distiller tank, and I kid you not, it’s the color of weak tea.

Bleh! What is that stuff? I have no idea. Mind you, I’m starting with water that has already run through a decent countertop filter.

Here’s a pic of my distiller. I bought it from EcoPure. It cost $100 plus shipping, distills a gallon at a time. Distilling into a plastic container isn’t ideal but they say they’re working to develop a glass one; I’ll upgrade to it when they do. The water comes out tepid; I decant into glass jugs and refrigerate as soon as it’s done.

The water, incidentally, tastes fantastic. I always assumed distilled water would taste flat, but this sure doesn’t. It tastes marvelous.

This topic is almost too upsetting for me to blog about, but I need to put my opinion out there in the hopes that somehow it might help influence peoples’ thinking on this topic.

As you know if you’ve been anywhere near a mainstream media outlet this week, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a recommendation that children as young as two be screened for cholesterol and, even more heinous, children as young as eight should be put on cholesterol-lowering drugs.

We need to wake up. Cholesterol is NOT the problem.

Trying to lower cholesterol via prescription drugs, OTOH, is a HUGE problem.

I’ve blogged before about cholesterol. We’ve managed to collectively demonize the stuff: a textbook example of the phenomenon of “mistaken consensus.”

Here’s the reality of the situation. We NEED cholesterol. Our brains need it, our bodies need it. It’s an essential component of dozens of critical cellular structures, such as the myelin sheaths that surround our nerve cells (can’t lay down new neural pathways in the brain without myelin, folks); it’s a component of the bile salts we use to digest fats; it’s a building block of our sex hormones (yes, that’s estrogen, testosterone, & friends).

So why is cholesterol the bad guy? Because it’s also a well-known component of arterial plaque.

But we’ve made a crucial error. We’ve assumed that since plaque is made of cholesterol, lowering cholesterol levels will help prevent heart disease.

Well, I say “we.” People have been questioning the role of cholesterol for years, now. This is from 1987:

In considering 1,400 patients whose blocked arteries were replaced with veins taken from other parts of their bodies, Dr. [Michael E.] DeBakey found again that cholesterol levels did not predict which of these bypass patients would redevelop blockage and require further surgery. He said patients with ”low” cholesterol levels, below 200 micrograms per milliliter of blood, did not fare better as a group than patients with high levels, about 240.

That’s over 20 years ago!

Since then, the thinking has evolved considerably; research now points more toward inflammation than cholesterol levels as the critical risk factor for heart disease. Google “inflammation heart disease” and you find plenty of stuff to mull, much of it along the lines of this bit from Andrew Weil’s website:

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a substance found in blood that is a marker for inflammation in the body. High levels of this protein are associated with an increased risk of heart disease and low levels with a low risk. The notion that inflammation plays a central role in heart disease is relatively new, although we’ve long known that CRP levels go up to signal any type of inflammation . . .

[T]he link between elevated CRP levels and heart disease has been demonstrated repeatedly, and there is some evidence that CRP may be a more important indicator of heart disease risk than high LDL (”bad”) cholesterol. In an eight-year study involving 27,939 women led by Paul Ridker, MD, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, more than half of the women who eventually developed heart disease had high CRP levels even though their LDL levels were not considered high. Dr. Ridker has estimated that the same may be true for 25 percent of the U.S. population. The study results were published in the November 14, 2002, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. More recently, a Cleveland Clinic study found ultrasound evidence that clogged coronary arteries had not gotten worse among 502 patients who were most successful at lowering their CRP levels. The study was published in the Jan. 6, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

It gets crazier. Courtesy of this piece published by the Weston Price Foundation: cholesterol seems to protect against infection. Since infection causes inflammation (low grade bacterial infection might be the true heart disease culprit), high cholesterol levels might actually PROTECT against heart disease.

Yes, there is a subset of the population for which high levels of so-called “bad” cholesterol is correlated with increased risk of heart disease. But it’s only a small subset. And it doesn’t include kids!

So why would ANYONE even CONSIDER drugging kids to lower their cholesterol levels?

I’m no conspiracy theorist. But I do think the American Academy of Pediatrics has betrayed its role as an advocate for our children. It’s shown itself to be too cozy to the “drugs are the answer” model of health care–and that’s not a positive thing.

Put on your thinking caps, guys, for crying out loud.

We need to feed our kids better. Childhood obesity IS an issue.

But drugging our kids to artificially lower levels of an essential molecule is NOT going to solve the problem.

What is will do, count on it, is put them at risk for a world of hurt. Starting with the known side effects of these drugs. And ending with who-knows-what other horrors. Messed up brain development? Hormonal imbalances during crucial stages of puberty? We just don’t know.

It makes me sick to my stomach . . .

US Representative Ted Poe reads us a bedtime story.

Part 1 is the text of the law Congress has passed that mandates we replace incandescent lightbulbs for compact fluorescents by 2014.

For Part 2, he reads from the EPA requirements for disposing of CFLs — including how to handle broken bulbs.

Oh, and Poe mentions that the U.S. doesn’t manufacture these bulbs. China does. “We import every one of these things.”

So Congress has mandated that, four years from now, we will all be completely dependent on an overseas source for our home lighting.

Jim Nugent, Water Quality Laboratory Manager at our Monroe County Water Authority, graciously answered the questions I emailed about our municipal fluoride policy.

So allow me to share :-)

First, the more factual bits.

The county spends $88,000 on fluoridation annually.

None of the fluoride we use here comes from China. Nugent writes that “We require that all source material used for all of our treatment chemicals originate from the USA or Canada. This requirement was approved by the Board of Directors in wake of 9-11.”

As far as purity, he says that the MCWA specifies, as part of its procurement process, that our fluoride be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation or Underwriter’s Laboratory. So if there’s, ya know, dog hair in our fluoride that’s who to blame.

When we get to the stickier questions — why do we do it, and is anyone rethinking it in light of recent science — Nugent toes the pro-fluoride line (not surprising) and suggests that if I’m looking for an agency to pester, it’s not the MCWA but the NYS Department of Health:

MCWA looks to the NYSDOH, the U.S. EPA, the Centers for Disease Control, and the medical and dental communities for their information and research on medical and dental health. The NYSDOH strongly recommends the use of fluoride as evidenced by their new series of fluoride information bulletins (attached). Fluoride addition is currently part of our NYDOH approved treatment process (since 1966) which can not be modified without NYDOH permission.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the USEPA is required to set drinking water standards for the protection of human health. The EPA is required to review and re-evaluate theses standards on a six year cycle or at any time if warranted by new information. The NRC study you reference was part of this ongoing evaluation process. Your interpretation of the results of this study are not consistent with the USEPA’s.

Drinking water utilities are highly regulated entities in the US. These rules and regulations are established by NYDOH and USEPA and it is to them you should address your concerns. The USEPA has been very conservative, i.e., protective of human health, in it approach to fluoridation. It should also be noted that California, one of the most aggressive environmental states, just recently began requiring all water systems to fluoridate.

I appreciate your interest in this matter. I believe the USEPA has looked at fluoridation as hard as any compound it regulates and it, as well as NYDOH, CDC, and the dental community, still support the practice and its safety.

Am I persuaded by this?

No.

As just one point, I don’t agree that the USEPA has been “conservative” in its approach to fluoridation. A truly conservative approach would have been to leave the water alone with respect to fluoridation.

It’s that approach which is warranted, IMO. For starters, the assertion that fluoridated water leads to reduction in tooth decay doesn’t stand to scrutiny. It’s another correlation-but-not-necessarily-causation error that people so commonly make when they try to interpret health trends. See this round-up, for example, which includes bits like this:

“Graphs of tooth decay trends for 12 year olds in 24 countries, prepared using the most recent World Health Organization data, show that the decline in dental decay in recent decades has been comparable in 16 nonfluoridated countries and 8 fluoridated countries which met the inclusion criteria of having (i) a mean annual per capita income in the year 2000 of US$10,000 or more, (ii) a population in the year 2000 of greater than 3 million, and (iii) suitable WHO caries data available. The WHO data do not support fluoridation as being a reason for the decline in dental decay in 12 year olds that has been occurring in recent decades.”
SOURCE: Neurath C. (2005). Tooth decay trends for 12 year olds in nonfluoridated and fluoridated countries. Fluoride 38:324-325.

There’s more at the link.

To summarize my thinking at this point: on the one hand the value of fluoridation for its stated purpose (prevention of tooth decay) is questionable. On the other hand there are valid questions about whether consuming fluoridated water might cause health issues for some people (and maybe all of us, if fluoride concentrates in the pineal gland, like some researchers suspect — suppressed melatonin/serotonin production, anyone?).

I’ve read enough. I’m going to be conservative ;-)

I’m going to buy a distiller.

In case you haven’t checked lately, I’ve got the inside scoop, fellow Rochesterarians: Monroe County adds fluoride to our water.

Here’s what they say on their website. It’s not much.

Water provided by the MCWA contains about 1 ppm (part per million) fluoride, the level recommended by the EPA.

Also this, on their page about water treatment — next to a pic of a little girl brushing her teeth, presumably with fluoridated toothpaste:

Before the clean, pure water is pumped to your house, fluoride is added to it to help keep your teeth healthy and cavity-free.

Controversy about fluoridating water isn’t new, of course. But lately the debate has been heating up as more research suggests we really shouldn’t be drinking the stuff — even at the low levels set by our good friends at the EPA.

Consider for example this news piece, describing the National Research Council’s (NRC) “first-ever published review of the fluoride/thyroid literature:”

Fluoride, in the form of silicofluorides, injected into 2/3 of U.S. public water supplies, ostensibly to reduce tooth decay, was never safety-tested.

“Many Americans are exposed to fluoride in the ranges associated with thyroid effects, especially for people with iodine deficiency,” says Kathleen Thiessen, PhD, co-author of the government-sponsored NRC report. “The recent decline in iodine intake in the U.S could contribute to increased toxicity of fluoride for some individuals,” says Thiessen.

“A low level of thyroid hormone can increase the risk of cardiac disease, high cholesterol, depression and, in pregnant woman, decreased intelligence of offspring,” said Thiessen.

Common thyroid symptoms include fatigue, weight gain, constipation, fuzzy thinking, low blood pressure, fluid retention, depression, body pain, slow reflexes, and more. It’s estimated that 59 million
Americans have thyroid conditions.

Robert Carton, PhD, an environmental scientist who worked for over 30 years for the U.S. government including managing risk assessments on high priority toxic chemicals, says “fluoride has detrimental effects on the thyroid gland of healthy males at 3.5 mg a day. With iodine deficiency, the effect level drops to 0.7 milligrams/day for an average male.” (1.0 mg/L fluoride is in most water supplies)

Add that to the growing list. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences called on the EPA to reevaluate its fluoridation recommendations, in part because we may be overexposing infants to fluoride:

(WASHINGTON, March 21) — A new report from the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concludes that the current allowable level of fluoride in tap water is not protective of the public health and should be lowered, citing serious concerns about bone fractures and dental fluorosis, a discoloration and weakening of the enamel of the teeth that the committee noted is associated with other adverse health impacts.

The NAS report puts concerns about the safety of fluoride in tap water squarely in the mainstream of scientific thought. The committee called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reevaluate and tighten current safety standards in light of these concerns.

In just one example of the potential health risks from water fluoridation, the committee cited concerns about the potential of fluoride to lower IQ, noting on page six of the report that the “consistency of study results appears significant enough to warrant additional research on the effects of fluoride on intelligence.” IQ deficits, the committee noted, have been strongly associated with dental fluorosis, a condition caused by fluoride in tap water (NAS pg 175).

The committee’s findings support Environmental Working Group’s (EWG’s) recommendation that fluoride exposure should be limited to toothpaste, where it provides the greatest dental benefit and presents the lowest overall health risk.

Being conservative on matters like this, it seems to me it’s a no-brainer. Stop fluoridating the water now.

Make that “yesterday.”

We don’t understand it enough. We don’t understand how it accumulates and the effects of long-term exposure. We don’t understand how individuals react to given doses.

It’s not worth risking our babies’ brains.

But that’s just me. I decided to email the Monroe County Water Authority to ask them some questions about their fluoridation program and give them a chance to present their well-thought-out justification for fluoridating:

1. What is the MCWA’s position on fluoridation today given the current science?

2. What cost-benefit analysis have you done, and has it been updated to compare the presumed positive impact of fluoridated water on dental health vs. the potential public health impact of over-exposing infants and adults with thyroid issues?

3. How much does the county spend on fluoridation annually?

4. Considering how ubiquitous fluoridated toothpaste and rinses are today, does spending money to fluoridate people en masse really make for good public policy any more?

I’ll post again when I get a response.

A question I didn’t ask, but probably should have, is where they get their fluoride and whether they test it for purity. See this, for instance:

The fluoride added to public drinking water is actually fluorosilic acid. It is described by critics as an industrial waste product. Supporters prefer to call it an industry byproduct. Most of it has come from Florida’s phosphate fertilizer industry.

Florida’s phosphate rock is about 3.5 percent fluorine. To make phosphoric acid for fertilizer, the rock is mixed with sulfuric acid. The mixture produces a gas called silicon tetrafluoride. The gas is sent through ductwork and a water scrubber to create fluorosilic acid, a clear liquid that in high concentrations is toxic. The acid is what fertilizer companies sell as a fluoride additive.

However, one of the little-known effects of Hurricane Katrina was to cripple the production of fluoride. Since then, more of America’s supply of the controversial chemical is coming from China – a country not always known for the highest safety standards on exports.

Yeah, now, there’s an understatement . . . and you thought a little lead paint on your kid’s Thomas the Tank Engine toy was worrisome . . .

Don’t count on it.

The story, if you’ve missed it, began in 2003 when a construction worker was admitted to the ER at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital with a gash on his head.

He got stitches.

Then he was told he needed a rectal exam to determine if he had a spinal injury.

He didn’t want a rectal exam. A scuffle ensued. The “patient” ended up sedated & restrained.

Leave aside who’s lying and who isn’t (the hospital claimed he never got the exam; Brian Persaud says he did; the hospital says Persaud got violent, he says he slapped a doc by accident).

It seems to me it never should have gotten that far.

It seems to me that even if I, the patient, will die if I refuse a particular procedure, I should still be allowed to refuse it.

It’s my body.

Isn’t it?

Now you can’t buy raw cider in New York State.

When are people going to wake up and put a stop to this?

Is there no end to how much control over our bodies we’re willing to cede to the state?

Technorati Tags: cider, pasteurization

Ready for a doozy?

It turns out there’s research showing that for seniors, the lower your serum cholesterol, the higher the risk for cognitive decline.

Here’s an abstract of a Neurobiology of Aging research paper on the topic.

Here’s a translation of the study findings in lay language:

A group of researchers in the Netherlands did a study looking at cholesterol levels and cognitive decline and found that the elderly with the highest cholesterol levels were able to think better than their counterparts with low levels of cholesterol . . .

The researchers divided a group of 1181 elderly people (ave age 75) into groups of high cholesterol, medium cholesterol and low cholesterol levels. They administered reliable tests designed to determine general cognitive function, memory and information processing speed. Across the board subjects with the highest cholesterol levels performed the best, followed by those with medium cholesterol levels. The group with the lowest cholesterol levels performed the worst.

The scientists followed these groups of people for about six years and found that all groups followed about the same trajectory of mental decline, but the group with the highest cholesterol levels ended up with better function than the other two groups simply because they started from a better position at the beginning.

The research team also studied members of the group of subjects who were carriers of a certain genetic marker that is associated with greater rates of Alzheimer’s disease. The folks in this group that had the lowest cholesterol levels had a more precipitous decline in mental function over the six years than did those who had the same genetic marker but were in the high cholesterol group.

This is not the only study that has shown the cholesterol is protective against cognitive decline - it’s only the most recent.

Yes, but high cholesterol raises your risk for heart disease, right?

Actually, if you Google “cholesterol myth” you’ll be deluged by folks who argue otherwise.

At the very least, anyone who is either A.) a woman or B.) a man over 50 needs to ask some serious questions. See this, for instance–an article on Spiked Online by Malcolm Kendrick:

Perhaps the largest single analysis of cholesterol levels, and death from cardiovascular disease (and other diseases), was published in 1992. This review included over 100,000 women, aggregated from a number of different studies and countries.

To quote from the study: ‘The pooled estimated risk for total cardiovascular death in women showed no trend across TC (total cholesterol) levels.’ In short, for more than 50 percent of the world’s population - women - raised cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease.

Moving to men, it is true that under the age of 50 there does seem to be an association between raised cholesterol levels and heart disease. But after the age of 50, when more than 90 percent of heart attacks happen, the association disappears.

That’s not all. Not only is high cholesterol not associated with increased risk for heart disease — low cholesterol is linked with increased risk of . . . dying.

As Kendrick states: once you’ve crossed 50, “the lower your cholesterol level is, the lower your life expectancy.”

His assertion is supported by the two major studies regularly cited as supporting the notion that high serum cholesterol is dangerous — one conducted in Honolulu, one in Framingham, Mass. Kenrick writes:

. . . a falling cholesterol level sharply increases the risk of dying of anything, including heart disease.

The dangers of a low cholesterol level were highlighted by a major long-term study of men living in Honolulu: ‘Our data accord with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, and show that long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases the risk of death.’

Somewhat ironically, the danger of a falling cholesterol level was first discovered in the Framingham study: ‘There is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years [of the study] and mortality over the following 18 years.’

It seems almost unbelievable that warnings about the dangers of a high cholesterol level rain down every day, when the reality is that a low cholesterol level is much more dangerous than a high level. Given this, why would anyone want to lower the cholesterol level? On the face of it, it would make more sense to take cholesterol-raising drugs. Especially after the age of 50.

Add to that the fact that statins — cholesterol-lowering drugs, Lipitor being one well-known brand — subject people to the risk of serious side effects.

So what’s going on?

Some people think it’s a vast pharmaceutical company conspiracy. After all, statins are a multi-billion dollar business.

A less malevolent but equally plausible explanation is that we’re in the grip of the cascade effect, as described in this NY Times article linked by Instapundit the other day:

We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.

If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.

Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.

The NY Times piece focuses on the belief — increasingly discredited — that low fat diets are good for you. But it seems to me you could argue much the same about serum cholesterol levels.

It isn’t easy to go against the advice of our doctors. I know of one senior who refuses to take statins. He’s harangued every time he goes to the doctor.

It isn’t easy to go against consensus opinion. But hey. It’s character-building!

Me, I’m planning for my cholesterol levels to be off the scale ;-)

Technorati Tags: cholesterol

The FDA, for a long time, has been tinkering with the idea that it ought to be protecting you — from the horrors of using, say, supplements to treat medical symptoms.

Here’s a draft “Guidance” document here that outlines the agency’s “current thinking” on the matter. It boils down to something like this: We, the FDA, say we’re in charge of a whole bunch of things you guys are running around with more or less on your own right now.

They aren’t proposing regulatory changes. They’re just claiming turf; the document outlines their reasoning in the turf claim (this is stuff you eat; this is stuff you use to address certain medical conditions).

Here’s the comment that I’ve submitted:

Hi. Given that resources are limited, I think it’s a poor use of the FDA’s time to expand its mandate to cover relative innocuous substances like probiotics. You have more important things to do, such as preventing the contamination of produce with feces, as one example, or figuring out how to trace cows that die of mad cow disease.

I am also concerned that expanding your mandate as outlined by this document strays dangerously close to suggesting that you should be regulating the use of foodstuffs, if they’re ingested to promote health or address medical symptoms. So, if I eat carrots and that improves my night vision, have I suddenly rendered myself subject to FDA oversight? How about if I switch to whole wheat bread for constipation? It’s a gray area; the functional line between drugs and foodstuffs is bound to become more & more blurred as science increasingly links diet and health, and I believe strongly that the FDA should exercise extreme discretion in formulating any wording that might serve to pervert an individual’s right to modify his diet for health reasons, or that might make it more onerous for healthcare providers to advise individuals on these issues.

I object to your suggestion that probiotics should be listed as “biological agents.” Does this give you the right to regulate the critters that occur naturally in the gut? How about in breast milk? Are you staking out territory that may one day mean I can’t culture yogurt, unless I promise I’m eating it just for the taste?

Last but not least, alternative health care is in many cases much more affordable than mainstream health care, and I’m concerned in general at the potential for overregulation to make it less affordable. The relative affordability of alternative HC is, in my opinion, an incentive for people to use it; insofar as it helps some people adopt healthier lifestyles and address symptoms before they’ve reached a more critical stage, it helps reduce the overall societal cost of healthcare in the US. If you make it more expensive, this benefit will be blunted, if not lost completely.

Please leave “CAM” alone. You’ve got better things to do, and the alternative healthcare industry is managing quite well without you getting more involved than you already are.

If you want to get in on the conversation, here’s where you can submit your comment. Deadline is April 30.

Technorati Tags: FDA Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products

I first became interested in alternative health in the early 1980s, and it’s since become so much a part of my life that I hardly give it any thought. At the same time, I’m actually quite conservative in my participation in the alt health scene. I’ve seen so many fads come and go that I hardly ever jump on some “new” palliative, because in nearly every case today’s fad turns out to be tomorrow’s false lead. I’ve also experienced the placebo effect first hand lots & lots of times — a sobering experience when you recognize how deceptive it can be. Because it wears off. Darn it all :-)

What else. I view most Internet alt health advice with extreme suspicion, if for no other reason than that the human body is mind-bogglingly complex and individual biochemistry is extremely variable, two factors that often render casual health advice at best worthless, and at worst dangerous. The Internet is a good start for research, a terrible substitute for professional diagnostics. If something’s wrong with your body, find a medical doctor sympathetic to alt health who can diagnose you, and take your Internet print-outs along to your exam. /end sermon

I rarely use herbal supplements. I don’t trust them to contain what they say they’re going to contain, and if perchance they do, taking them amounts to self-medicating, and I don’t believe that as a lay person I have adequate information to do that cavalierly. Although I fully support other peoples’ right to use them.

My main alt health strategy is to put into my body foodstuffs that are as close as possible to what I imagine humans were evolved to eat. Yeah, I know there is a lot of arguing going on about that, too. But some of it is quite simple nonetheless. Avoid too much processed food, eat a lot of fruits and vegetables (I try for at least 7-9 servings a day), go for the nutrient-dense stuff.

The funny thing is, that rule has steered me toward choices that tend to preshadow trends. I started avoiding trans fats, for instance, in the 1980s. Switched to whole grains about that same time. Never quit eating eggs. Etc.

So, on that thin basis, I claim adequate authority to compose this post :-)

Anyway, we’ll know in time whether my authority pans out, since I’m doing this publicly. So here it is: alt health trends I predict will be getting major mainstream attention within the next five to ten years:

1. Seed oils bad, bad, bad. Categorize this as a trend we should have dodged: I predict that soon the worm will turn and we’ll be demonizing seed oils — corn and canola oils, in particular — with the same vigor we now demonize trans fats. See The Weston Price Foundation articles on fats or read Ray Peat’s article on unsaturated oil if you want the background on this one. In place of seed oils, recommendations will be coconut, palm, and olive oils, plus butter and lard, of course. Mmmmm, lard.

2. Probiotics for oral health. Speaking of mmmmmm, we’ll soon be seeing mouthwashes designed to innoculate the mouth with “good bacteria.” Health claims will start with controlling breath odor, preventing gum disease, preventing tooth decay, and perhaps even strengthening enamel. At least one dentist is already on it. Probiotics packagers will be next. Additional claims may play on the link between oral health and other health issues, such as heart disease and maybe even cancer.

3. Probiotics for skin health. Because, yanno, why not. The skin is a microorganism habitat, too.

4. The body’s glandular system will be cast in a starring alt health role. Thyroid function in particular will emerge as fundamental to a new model of alt health treatment. The result will be near madness as journalists pump out the usual “this may save your life and also avoid it, it’s too new and scary” trends articles and every supplement manufacturer and would-be health guru in this country and the next scramble to sell you their books and supplements.

5. Bioidentical hormones will be enlisted for period suppression and possibly even birth control. Now that the “no period pill” has its own marketing campaign, alt health-savvy women will start asking whether their compounding pharmacists can’t do the same with bioidentical hormones. Off-off label use of hormone therapy will ensue.

6. Natural vision therapy will address presbyopia. Natural vision therapy is a fairly mature subgenre within the alt health canon, but it’s failed so far to penetrate mainstream awareness the way, for example, vitamins have. Too bad, because our eyesight situation is a mess. Anyway. Today natural vision mostly deals with myopia (nearsightedness) and hyperopia (non age-related farsightedness). I predict that the aging boomers are, even now, working on applying vision therapy to presbyopia — the difficulty with near vision associated with aging — and in the very near future we’ll start seeing self-help books on the subject begin to crop up. (I blogged here about my experience with using vision therapy for myopia.)

There, those are the Big Ones that I can think of right now. I’ll add to the list if any more come to mind.

There are others that aren’t quite as risky to make or I’d list them, too. Vitamin D will be the next Vitamin Darling. Full spectrum lighting will move over to make room for lighting that projects specific colors, including regimens that incorporate blue light to help people sleep better. Official recommendations on number of servings/day of fruits and vegetables will be revised upwards. (Beat the crowd, buy a juicer.)

Oh, one other thing. If you read this and find yourself inspired with a business plan that eventually makes you a zillionnaire you owe me a very nice dinner. Or at least an antioxidant-laden glass of most excellent red wine :-)

Technorati Tags: alternative health trends