Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. KRILL OIL, OR FISH OIL. PICK ON AND TAKE IT- PART 3. INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 626 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. KRILL OIL, OR FISH OIL. PICK ON AND TAKE IT- PART 2. INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 625 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the …
Subscribe Today!
Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the Invite Health podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started.† [00:00:34]
*Intro Music*
Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] What age you could become frail? And that’s not inevitable. That’s something you can really put off or avoid possibly altogether, because frailty is dangerous. For one thing, frailty really increases the risk of falling and falling could be quite dangerous in older people. So welcome to my episode. Don’t Get Frail, fight Back. Hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist, the senior scientific officer over here at Invite Health. You can find all of the Invite Health podcasts for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find an invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health. Now, all of the information about this episode is listed in the description on the website or wherever you’re listening. So let’s get into this frailty issue, and frailty has different definitions from different regions, but generally frail people, they lose a lot of muscle. Of course, they lose a great deal of strength. This is not uncommon in people over 70 or 75. They tend to shrink. Their bones, of course, can weaken. I mean, that could be part and parcel of the whole thing. They become less communicative, maybe incommunicative, and they’re not socializing. They’re kind of just sitting in a chair. And the problem is that’s opening the door to all those diseases of aging, cancer, diabetes, broken bones, you know, brittle bones, you name it. So let’s get into this whole falling issue. And of course, you know, you can learn leg exercise that will really decrease your risk of falling by strengthening your legs. Supplements can help, too, and of course, the correct foods. You can also learn balance exercises like when I took Tai chi, there’s a whole bunch of balance exercises that become part and parcel of working out with Tai chi. So sadly, this is the American family physician. So this is older data. It’s a bigger scale now of what I’m going to tell you, because this goes back to American family physician, the year 2000.† [00:02:49]
[00:02:52] Falling is the number one cause of accidental deaths and people over the age of 65. Now, that’s according to a great deal of data. 90% of hip fractures occur as a result of falling. They’re related to falling. Well, most of these hip fractures occurring in people greater than the age of 70. Now, community dwelling means you’re living at home, you’re not institutionalized, you’re not in a nursing home or anything. You don’t need help to get around, for the most part, a third of community dwelling elderly people, a third and 60% of those in a nursing home fall each year. And of course, the major cause of falling is frailty. Now, you don’t want to get frail, now other than frailty. Poor, poor eyesight contributes to falling in the elderly, poor eyesight, especially if you don’t have great lighting like, on somebody’s stairs going down the basement. The lighting can always can frequently, not always can frequently be inadequate. Maybe getting up at night there’s not enough light and you trip over something, a trip over to your terrier dog, you trip over a piece of furniture. And by the way, there was a study very interesting about ten years ago, a huge review of millions of people that if people simply took lutein, a supplement, lutein, which is great for your brain and great for your eyes, it would cut down the incidence of falling dramatically. But there’s other things that contribute to falling in the elderly besides frailty and vision issues. A lot of prescription drugs, they cause ooziness, they cause drowsiness. That’s drugs for anxiety, drugs for depression. I mean, it’s just some of the high blood pressure drugs or it is just a lot of drugs that make you sleepy. And of course, antihistamines for allergies and colds, all those things can make you sleepy. So, you know, you should discuss that with your pharmacist. Am I taking a drug that’s going to make me oozy, it’s important to know.† [00:04:54]
[00:04:55] Cognitive impairment, of course, is a big contributor. So once again, this is an older statistic. There’s a lot more elderly people now. So the incidence is higher than what I’m about to tell you, so about 10,000 elderly people die each year as a direct result of falling. So once again, that’s an older figure. But these people who fall, even if they survive, they experience significant morbidity. In other words, it’s causing other problems, like maybe a broken shoulder or a broken ankle, you know, something horrible and their stay in the hospital. Older people who fall, their stay in the hospital is twice the length, of hospital stays of elderly people who went to the hospital for other reasons. So comparatively speaking, people go into a hospital with an infection or for surgery, etc. They stay in the hospital half the time as people who are in the hospital as a result of a fall. So it really is a big issue. And of course, once you have these co-morbidities, these other issues that come out of a fall, there’s a decline in function. So you’re, you know, your activities of daily living are harder, like vacuuming the house, walking the dog, taking up recyclables, going shopping. There’s a decrease in physical activity. So, you know, taking your walks, playing pickleball, going to the gym. And of course, there’s a decrease in socialization, social activities, dropping out, going out to play poker, you’re not going out to brunch, you’re not going out to dinner as frequently because you’re in pain or it’s just hard. Your mobility has been damaged. Now, I said before that quite a few people who live at home, some of the stats are up to 50%, by the way, of people over the age of 70,75. Some of the stats are up to 50%. Other stats are between 15 to 50%. Now, once again, 60% of people in nursing homes fall each year. But some of these people are called Fallers. They’re like they’re serial fallers. I mean, they fall multiple times each year and they suffer with major injuries. Like they can have head trauma, they hit their head or they can have fractures or dislocations. Now, fractures take a lot longer to heal in older people. I once went to an orthopedic doctor who was a friend of mine, and he told me, Jerry, for every decade you add a week onto the healing process. Maybe not with your stitches, maybe not externally, but internally it takes a week longer for each decade, so people fall in their 70s. It takes a long, a long time to heal. Now, as far as hip fractures, this is really dangerous, 25% of people who suffer with a hip fracture die within months. You know, there’s complications like maybe blood clots or infections in the bone or a stroke. And approximately 50% over 50% are discharged to nursing homes where they have to convalesce. Now 15 to 20% of those people who are discharged from a hospital with a hip fracture and they’re discharged to a nursing home, a year later, they’re still in there. So it’s not so easy to get out of. This actually happened to my mother. My mother’s 92, she insists on living alone. She won’t let me get her aides, etc. She will not let me get her someone to live with. She will not come with and live with any of her three sons. We’re all willing to take her in, she won’t do it. She’s very independent, but she’s 92. She still exercises, she paints, she still does volunteer work. So she’s into volunteerism. She’s pretty cool, actually, she’s 92. She cracks jokes. In fact, when I go to see her, she’s over in Pennsylvania, I’m in New York and when I go to see her, she wants to go out to a microbrewery and have a beer. I mean, that’s just crazy. But what can I tell you? She lives, but she fell and she broke her thigh bone, which is kind of like a hip fracture. And she had to go to a place to really have a great deal of physical therapy. And she worked very hard to get out of there. She was out of there in several months. But that’s I don’t know if that’s how common that story is, man. So once again, a frailty is different from different countries and different regions, and it opens the door for those diseases that occur with aging because you’re not eating right, you’re not motivated, you’re not using your brain, you’re not communicating, you’re not social, you’re not exercising. So it’s just easier for these things to get into your your life.† [00:09:45]
[00:09:47] So what can you do to prevent frailty? Well, first of all, exercise. You want to prevent frailty. I mean, once you’re frail, I mean, that’s I don’t know if is getting back from being frail. So you want to exercise. So I told people take certain supplements before and after you exercise. So before you exercise, take like a green tea capsule. Green tea in a number of studies has been shown to improve the effects of exercise on burning fat, on building muscle, on building strength and on building bone tissue, on thickening and strengthening your bone. So before exercise, I tell people, you know, maybe a half an hour before with a snack, take a green tea capsule. Now, after exercise, the following a scoop of creatine monohydrate and always, of course, check with your doctor and nutritionist, your pharmacist before you do these things, your nurse practitioner, whoever is advising you. A scoop of creatine monohydrate, which is fine for most people. Creatine monohydrate recycles energy in your muscles so your muscles recuperate faster, but it also improves strength. A scoop of high quality whey protein powder get the American Whey. Sadly, sometimes the Chinese whey is subpar. It doesn’t have enough of the way peptides, and it’s perhaps not as clean as many of the American Wheys to get American Whey, have a scoop of that, now 15 to 20 grams of protein.† [00:11:30]
AN ANTI-AGING SUPPLEMENT, QUERCETIN – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 567>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:11:32] Have beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate, beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate. I’ll say it again beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate. One of the reasons people take certain amino acids like l-arginine is because or the brand chain amino acids is because they will eventually help create beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate. The branched chain amino acids are leucine, isoleucine, valine, and these have real benefits for your muscles. For instance, they help with muscle growth and muscle strength. They help decrease muscle soreness after exercise post-exercise, and like the next day, the day after that, they help prevent exercise, fatigue, muscle fatigue. They definitely help prevent you from becoming weakened. They they help prevent fragility syndrome. They really are important. So they get into the muscle and they help nourish the muscle and a thing they are getting mostly converted to like the leucine is the most important of the three brand chain amino acids, but they work better together, is they they create this stuff, they create the beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate. And this stuff really, really. I mean, studies from the military, from the armed forces, they do great research on fitness. It shows the stuff really works for muscle and you need about 3000 milligrams and mix that in water. So you want a scoop of whey protein, a scoop of, three grams of beta hydroxy beta, methyl, butyrate and a scoop of creatine monohydrate after you exercise and as soon after exercise as possible, take this and water with a little carbohydrate because your muscles are open, the muscle fibers are opened up after exercise. It’s easier to get these things into the muscle and you can you’ll exercise more effectively and efficiently with less pain if you do these things. Another thing to take after exercise is calcium with vitamin D, one of the reasons your muscles become fatigued and spasm after exercise, is the calcium and vitamin D are pumped out of them and you want to get this back into them. Another thing to take on a daily basis is something called Ubiquinol, which is the active version of coenzyme Q10. Ubiquinol is needed for physical activity, it’s needed for strength and endurance, and it’s the active form of CoQ10. And I say that because the regular CoQ10 when you get older, it’s hard to convert that into the active form. Your body has to convert it to make it useful for your muscles and endurance and to counter fatigue. So if you get the already active form, A, it’s absorbed better and B it’s already working. It’s the way to go for older people, get the Ubiquinol version of Coenzyme Q10.† [00:14:43]
[00:14:44] The last thing is fish oil. Fish oils are very important for muscle. Vitamin D is important for muscle, fish oils are very important for muscle. So there’s a new study, so before I go into the study, let me explain two terms. There’s an additive effect. Not everything added to something equals a better outcome. You know, sometimes you can take different things that are actually together and they’re no good at using either one alone. So there’s an additive effect where one and one comes up to two. But then there’s a synergistic effect where adding things together is more like it’s three times better, four times better, even ten times better. That’s called a synergism. So this new study looks at a synergism between fish oils and vitamin D for exercise. It’s called the Do Health Healthy Aging Study. Now it’s European adults they’re from Switzerland and Germany, France, Portugal and Austria. They’re over 70. They’re 70 or older. It’s a three year double blind placebo controlled randomized clinical trial. So it’s a gold standard state of the art human clinical trial. So it’s 1137 people, 70 years of age or older in these countries in Europe, it’s from the University of Zurich. They ran the study, they were at a major academic research center involved with the study. They gave them 1000 milligrams of EPA, DHA every day. This is the active ingredients in fish oil. So that would be two of my fish oil capsules. And they gave them 2000 units of Vitamin D3 every day. That’s a better form of vitamin D than D2. And they did a simple home exercise program. So some of them got the supplements plus the exercise, some of them got the placebo plus the exercise for three years and taking the vitamin D and taking the fish oil with simple home exercise, did not even go to the gym, really help prevent frailty. It helped prevent what we call pre frailty. Now, surprisingly, neither vitamin D3 nor fish oils nor exercise were that powerful in preventing pre frailty. Were you losing a lot of muscle and strength. But the three together really work pretty powerfully, reducing the risk of pre frailty, pre frailty by almost half. That’s a robust finding. This is, if you prevent pre frailty obviously you’re preventing frailty and frailty is horrible. So this is a true effect on reducing your risk of suffering with like early stages of frailty. So I would do it. I listen, I get vitamin D every day, I get fish oils every day, I take a slew of supplements. Maybe my next podcast episode, I’ll do supplements, I really, truly believe older people should be taking and I’ll use my self as an example. And I’m not going to go into the supplements for conditions like diabetes or kidney disease because that would be a more unique situation. I’m talking about across the board for general health for the general population. So I’ll do that in my next podcast episode.† [00:18:07]
[00:18:09] So combining mild exercise of Vitamin D and fish oils, you can achieve the following. According to the study, this is a good study. It’s a gold standard study and there’s plenty of people. This is a well powered study. Plenty of people, plenty of time. Plenty of researchers were involved. Combining the mild exercise with vitamin D and fish oils improved muscle function, improved muscle strength, reduced chronic low grade inflammation. Chronic low grade inflammation eats away at your bones, your muscle, your mind. It was good for the heart, it was good for circulation in general. It was improving the effects of the immune system in aging people. By the way, it’s the Journal of Frailty and Aging, that’s the journal it’s in. You know, just just to throw this out that there, there are other things that kind of help with aging in different ways. And of course, you know, eat your vegetables, eating your fruit, getting enough good quality protein like an egg or a chicken and beans and stuff, red meat. If you eat red meat, treat it like dessert. Don’t have it every day. Have it, you know, once a week, twice a week. So great food, whole grains, fish, vegetables, fruits, especially apples and berries and citrus fruits. Look at the mind diet, by the way. The mind diet shows you things that are good for the brain. It’s from Russia, the Russia Institute, I believe they’re with the University of Chicago in Illinois. You have to get enough sleep. You have to get your exercise. Let me tell you a couple of interesting supplements that affect the aging process in like more unique ways. Quercetin. Quercetin is a flavonoid, it’s found in really healthy foods like like red grapes and blueberries and broccoli and spinach and apples and garlic and onions, green tea. But you only get a little even a good diet, you get like 25, 50 milligrams a day if you could get more. It’s a senolytic. What does that mean? With age, you kind of develop zombie cells. Well, all your life you’re, you’re creating zombie cells. But when you’re younger, you’re plucking them out. You’re getting rid of them because these cells are toxic to the other cells. Quercetin restores that ability to pluck out like a tweezers these zombie like cells before they turn into rather healthy cells. So that’s one way you can slow down the aging process with with the supplement taking Quercetin and Sulforaphane. This is really interesting. Sulforaphane is found in like broccoli sprouts and broccoli. That’s like the major source of it. There is a protein in the body called progerin and progerin builds up in our body with age and it it accelerates aging dramatically. I’ll give you an I’ll give you an example. There’s something called Hutchinson Gilford Syndrome. You’ve seen kids with Steady, kids with the Make-A-Wish Foundation that are taken to, you know, they want to go to Disney World. They they’re like ten, 11, 12 years old and they look like they’re 85, they really are. It’s called progeria. That’s the common name for it. You get a buildup of this protein called progeria that they can’t get rid of. And the life expectancy for these kids is very sad. It’s like 13 years and at a very young age, they’re already losing. At the age of one, they’re already starting to lose their hair. But like, you know, ten years old, they already have diabetes. They already have heart failure, They already have arthritis. So that obviously is a much more severe scenario. And I don’t know if Sulforaphane would help at all with that, but for you and me, progeria is one of the things that builds up in us with age and it’s toxic to our other cells. So the sulforaphane helps block out the progerin. There’s also a drug called rapamycin. You ever hear of Rapanui Easter Island, where they have those monolithic heads, those big heads? They found a kind of like mold over there, rapamycin. And this stuff can inhibit the aging process. But, you know, it’s really something that they use just experimentally. They use it for research, but Sulforaphane will do the same thing. So Quercetin, sulforaphane and resveratrol. I take these things every day. Resveratrol restores the health of the blood brain barrier, keep toxic things out of your brain. But it’s also really vasoactive, it helps restore circulation to your brain and your heart, your legs and everything. It helps restore sirtuin one. Sirtuin one is a protein that’s related to a gene that regulates cellular and cellular, cellular, senescence and multiple aging processes. So those things quercetin, sulforaphane, resveratrol, they help stopping the aging process.† [00:23:15]
[00:23:15] Hey, listen, thanks for listening. Exercise, sleep, good food, and also your vitamin D, your fish oils, and that’ll help keep you strong. Thanks for listening. You can find all of the podcast episodes from Invite Health anywhere where you listen to podcasts, all those different podcast platforms, or you can just go to invitehealth.com for latest podcast and of course they’re free. You can also find it on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook at Invite Health. And I want to thank you for listening today and I hope you join me next time on our next episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Jerry Hickey signing off. Have a great day.† [00:23:15]
*Exit Music*
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. LOWERING THE RISK OF CARDIAC ARREST, PART 2- INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 616 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro:[00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where our …
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. LOWERING THE RISK OF CARDIAC ARREST, PART 1- INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 612 Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph. *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast where …
Subscribe Today!
Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InVite Health podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InVite Health has to offer at, www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started.† [00:00:34]
Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:41] Hi, Jerry Hickey here. Welcome to part two of our episode Choline, the brain boosting nutrient 90% of us lack, we’re just not getting it in our diet. And I started the first part of this episode, this broadcast and that it’s rather amazing that this nutrient which is needed for your memory to function, for your muscles to function, for your nerves to function, for learning, for problem solving, for paying attention. Most of us are lacking, a recent review by the National Institutes of Health, 90% of all American adults and children fail to consume enough choline, so 10% of us get enough Choline, so in any event, today we’ll review very quickly where Choline is and the first part of this episode, I discussed how much you need and food sources, etc., and I said, Krill is a dependable source. It’s a very good source of Choline, because it gives it in a favorite form, which is phosphatidylcholine, which is absorbed very well into the liver and into your brain and into your nerves and heart, and everything is very healthy thing because most of our cell, all of our cells require Choline, all of our cells require phosphatidylcholine, so Krill is your phosphatidylcholine. So even though you can get Choline from the diet, a lot of the foods that contain Choline, people are not consuming like organ meats, you know, like liver, egg yolks, etc. So if you do two krill a day, it’s a high quality krill, you’re getting phosphatidylcholine, the preferred form of Choline.† [00:02:13]
[00:02:15] So welcome to my episode, Choline, the brain boosting nutrient, 90% of us are lacking. My name is Jerry Hickey, I’m a nutritional pharmacist. By the way, it’s always an honor and a privilege to be speaking with you. You can find all of the Invite podcast episodes wherever you listen to podcast for free or just go to Invitehealth.com/podcast or please subscribe and leave a review. That’s very helpful for us. We know where we’re going with that. Also, you can find Invite on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter at InVite Health. All of the information on this episode is linked at the description and the website or wherever you’re listening. So let’s get going. Choline is an essential, important, incredibly important nutrient, incredibly important nutrient. It’s not only connected with B vitamins, if you lack Choline, your brain doesn’t work well. If you lack Choline, your liver is going to be really a problem. You’re really going to have liver problems. And that’s what we’re going to focus on in this, in this episode. But first, let’s, let’s just discuss quickly, Choline in the brain. I describe the study in part one of the episode, but a quick review. Not everybody listens to both episodes, which is a shame for me. It’s part of the Copeo of Finland Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. So it’s a large study, it’s an ongoing study. And they’re looking at almost 2500 men between the age of 42 to 60 that were enrolled in the study starting in 1984. These men were brain healthy. They didn’t have strokes. They didn’t have dementia. Now, four years after they were enrolled in the study, they were given a battery of five cognitive tests. This was administered to a portion of them, a slice of them, almost 500 of them, and men with higher Choline intake for their food or maybe supplements. They had superior linguistic abilities. They’re not reaching for words and better memory. So they followed these men for approximately 22 years. And sadly, after 22 years of the initiation of the study, 337 of the initial men were diagnosed with different dementias. That’s about 14%. And what they found increased intake in Choline, especially as phosphatidylcholine reduced the risk of dementia by 28%. Now, if you add that to fish oil, just a side bar here. Fish oils also reduced the risk of dementia. So if you’re adding the phosphatidylcholine and fish oils, which you get in krill, that’s really important because they found this even in people who had a problem with the Apo E4 variant of the cholesterol carrying gene of the fatty carrying gene.† [00:05:13]
[00:05:16] So why is Phosphatidylcholine important in the brain? Well, first of all, it is very important in the housing of the brain, the cellular membrane. All, all cells have a large content of phosphatidylcholine, whether they’re muscle cells or heart cells or any kind of cell. But this is really important in the brain, because you need the right fats in the brain. And phosphatidylcholine is a fatty type substance that does really wonderful things in your brain. It makes it work properly. It protects you from inflammation and protection from damage, and helps protect you from memory loss. It creates the phosphatidylcholine, creates acetylcholine. Phosphatidylcholine creates acetylcholine, and you need acetylcholine for memory. In fact, one of the reasons why we get a little sketchy with our memory, we get that kind of a little bit of absent mindedness when we grow older is because our acetylcholine levels naturally normally drop. In fact, in people with dementia, there’s practically no acetylcholine, and they use drugs to try to bring acetylcholine back, and these people will do better temporarily. So acetylcholine is needed for your memory, it’s needed to learn, to learn something new. You know, you can have a memory of things that happened in the past and not be able to retain something new. So it helps you learn, your mood, stabilizes your mood. It’s needed for problem solving, acetylcholine, creating new memory cells. When you go to sleep at night, you got a deep sleep, you create new memory cells. You need phosphatidylcholine. You need acetylcholine, I should say as part of that and phosphatidylcholine is a precursor to acetylcholine, you need it for proper nerve function, you need it for decoding of the nerve so they function the myelin sheath that allows the nerves to transfer information very quickly into your brain, it creates sphingomyelin, which is important for your brain cells, it creates plasmalogens, now, I didn’t even discuss that probably in the first part of this episode. Plasmalogens are kind of like a bulletproof vest for your nerve cells, in your brain, you’re thinking cells, all your cells in your brain.† [00:07:18]
[00:07:18] As we grow older and we have a lower level of antioxidants, a lower level of the pool of antioxidants in our brain, this naturally occurs. Plasmalogens will step in and be an alternate form of protection for our brain cells. So in krill you get the phosphatidylcholine, the phosphatidylinositol, the phosphatidylethanolamine, the phosphatidylserine and the fish oils all needed to create plasmalogens. It’s a great source for creating plasmalogens, which protects the brain of older people. Now, you need the phosphatidylcholine to create acetylcholine, and this increases the viability of what we call alpha seven nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites in your brain. Alpha seven nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites in your brain, increase in number and are more impervious to damage when you have enough phosphatidylcholine. Because these are receptor sites you need for all those brain functions, the executive function, all those cognitive functions including attention span, working memory, executive function. When you wake these cells, these receptor sites up, when you activate these receptor sites, you actually support cognitive function. You actually improve cognitive function. It’s a very important supplement for everybody at any stage, but especially older people. Now there’s a number of things that happen when you lack Choline. You have DNA damage, which, of course, if it goes in the wrong direction, can lead to cancer. You have poor lymphocyte function, your white blood cells that fight disease and infection and cancer, they’re not working well. You have poor brain function, have an increased risk of memory loss, but you also definitely have a problem with your liver. You definitely can have a problem with your liver, which can lead to different things, including primary liver cancer, cancer that pops up in your liver. So we’re really going to focus on Choline and the liver now. First, let me tell you why lacking choline leads to liver disease. When you swallow Choline from any source, whether it’s a supplement or krill oil, which is my favorite source, foods, because swallowing krill is to me, it assures you’re going to get some Choline in a preferred form which is phosphatidylcholine. When you swallow any source of choline, one of the first places it builds up is in your liver. And it does a lot of things in your liver, a lot of good things.† [00:10:13]
[00:10:14] First of all, it’s a methylator. A methyl group is a carbon with three hydrogens, a very dominant group in biochemistry. And your genes have to be properly methylated. That’s why certain vitamins are so essential, like folate, the active form of folate, methyltetrahydrofolate or B12, because they properly will methylate your genes. And when you do this, you protect your genes. For instance, things that improperly methylate your genes would be alcohol, certain viruses, radiation, cigarette smoke, any smoke and these improper methylations damaged genes and open up possibilities of mutation which of course can start the cancer process. If you were unlucky, it will lead to the cancer process. So one thing Choline does everywhere in the body is, it’s a source of methylation. It supplies that methyl group to protect your genes, but it also is converted besides acetylcholine, which is so important for your nerves and your muscles and your brain. Choline creates something called betaine. Betaine is an incredibly important nutrient in the human body. They’re not doing enough research in it, but time will tell you. And one of the things that betaine does and it it assures proper function of the kidneys, proper glomerular filtration rate, the ability of kidneys to get rid of toxins and byproducts of metabolism. Otherwise these things build up and they become toxic to the brain and the pancreas, etc.. Now, a second thing, Choline is good for your genes. Choline is a methyl donor that supplies that carbon hydrogen combination. And this makes the genes and your liver work properly. It’s important for a lot of genes in your liver, but also the phosphatidylcholine that you would find in krill, you would find in beans, you would find a little bit in egg yolks that makes 40 to 50% of the membrane of each of our cells. The housing of each cell. It’s converted into bile to help you dissolve and absorb fats. But Choline also prevents the accumulation of fat in our liver. And that’s exactly where we’re going with this. When you swallow Choline, one of the places it starts to accumulate and right away, is the liver. And that’s really important because it helps create very low density lipoprotein. You’ve heard of LDL, bad cholesterol, you’ve heard of HDL, purportedly good cholesterol, but there’s more to that story. I’ve done a podcast episode on that, but it’s very interesting thing. HDL and the chemical structure is incredibly good for protecting you from heart disease, that’s a great anti-inflammatory, but phosphatidylcholine goes into the liver and it helps create the LDL, very low density lipoprotein. So what does that do? It carries triglycerides out of the liver. The VLDL, which is made from phosphatidylcholine, that’s one of the key ingredients carries a fat full of triglycerides out of your liver. And triglycerides could be quite dangerous if they build up in the body. High triglycerides lead to fatty liver, pancreatitis, strokes, heart disease. They infiltrate possibly your lungs, your kidneys, potentially your heart, your liver. So they’re dangerous. She normally when you eat food, a lot of sugar, etc., is converted to triglycerides. And then you use that when you’re doing something physical. So if you’re eating like a lumberjack and you are working like a lumberjack, that’s okay. You’ll burn to triglycerides, which physical activity. But a lot of us eat like a lumberjack, and then we sit behind our computer like I’m doing right now, or we’re playing a video game or whatever we’re doing. We’re not active, so the triglycerides are too high. You’ll see this frequently in diabetics and pre-diabetic. You’ll see it in people who are overweight. You’ll see it in people who are obese, you’ll see it in people who eat a lot of sugar, people who drink a lot of alcohol, people eat a lot of fats, certain kinds of fats. So the triglycerides build up when you eat food and the VLDL carries them away from the liver, when you lack choline, there’s no way to get them out of liver and they build up in the liver. And this is highly toxic. It leads to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. When I was in pharmacy school back in the 1970s, we had this brilliant lecturer pharmacologist, Dr. David Lynch, and he would, he would tell us about alcohol and what it does to the liver and how so many alcoholics had fatty liver disease. And it was a major cause of death in alcoholics. But we never spoke about nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which is common now. It’s more common than disease of the liver caused by alcohol, apparently, because all you have to do is be really overweight and not get clean and you develop nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, disease of the liver because the fats building up and this can lead to NASH, Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis you’ve heard of hepatitis. Most people think that hepatitis only occurs when you have a virus, but that’s not true. Hepatitis means inflammation of the liver, so anything that inflames the liver will form hepatitis, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis meaning you’re not drinking alcohol. It’s the fats in your food that are building up in your liver and causing liver disease. Or it’s the sugar in your food that’s creating these fats that’s causing the liver disease. That’s probably the more common cause. But it leads to the hepatic carcinoma, primary liver cancer. You don’t need any other cancer to get into the liver. Just having fat build up in the liver can lead to liver cancer and cirrhosis, liver failure where you know you’re in trouble.† [00:16:32]
[00:16:32] Well, let me tell you about the Zucker rat study that I read about 20 years ago. It was from Italy. It was, Zucker rats are genetically modified rats, and they’re incredibly fat. I mean, they’re so fat, they are fat in places where you’d never think you could have fat, like between their ears and like between their toes. I mean, they’re incredibly fat. So they commonly study Zucker Rats for things like diabetes and heart disease, etc.. So they did a study in Italy. They saw the Zucker rats, by in large had liver disease. They had fatty infiltration, they had fatty liver. They gave them fish oils, the fish oils did lower the fatty liver a little bit. Fish oils do help with fatty liver. So does grapeseed extract a little bit. So does exercise a little bit. So does a good diet a little bit. But when they gave them Choline, it was just flushing the fat out of their liver. And what was the source of Choline? It was the phosphatidylcholine in krill oil. So fish oils did get some of the fat to the liver and some of the fat out of the heart, too, because these same fats build up in the heart like they do in liver. So that should tell you something. But when I gave him the krill, it was really doing a job on getting the fat out of their liver. Now, here’s some stats on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. This is the National Institutes of Health. It’s present and up to 65% of people who are overweight. So just having a big belly can lead to fatty liver. And 90% of people who are, you know, morbidly obese. What does morbidly obese mean? They have so much fat on their body that it’s causing other diseases, it’s causing other conditions. So nonalcoholic fatty liver disease can be benign. Like maybe just fatigued or have aches and pains, etc., you know, all these weird, vague symptoms. But it can also lead to the hepatitis, STEATOHEPATITIS, fatty hepatitis, fibrosis, this is common, like there’s a number of studies in postmenopausal women who are overweight where they show that they had fibrosis of the liver. Was that mean? When you get the fat building up in your liver, it’s killing the liver cells and scar tissue is coming in and replacing the healthy liver cells and stiffening the liver. In other words, it’s leading to liver failure, cirrhosis and also, like I said, primary liver cancer. You don’t need anything else to cause the liver cancer. Simply having all that fat and lacking choline, having all that fat in your liver and lacking Choline is a clear source of liver cancer. So phosphatidylcholine especially, clears the fat out of your liver, even better than choline. So that’s why I like Krill. So here is a study, it’s over 56,000 Chinese adults between the age of 40 to 75 and having more, this is on the National Institutes of Health website. Having more phosphatidylcholine or even choline really reduced the risk of developing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, at reduced risk, 25 to 32%. Now, don’t forget, a lot of these people can have risk factors for fatty liver. They could be diabetic, they could be overweight. So here’s a study of 664 people, these are postmenopausal women and they have nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. So they have more advanced fatty liver disease where it’s causing inflammation of the liver. Steatohepatitis. The lower the choline intake, the worst of fibrosis, the worse the scar tissue build up in the liver, the worse the symptoms, the further on towards cirrhosis or liver failure they were. And in a study of 57 adults, they were placed on a low choline diet, less less than 10% of the amount you would normally need. This was up to six weeks, within just six weeks of being low in choline, they were developing problems with their liver, like liver dysfunction. So they added Choline back into their diet and the liver was restored to normal function.† [00:20:41]
[00:20:42] So, the National Institute of Health talks about another study. These are patients on total parenteral nutrition, so they’re getting tube fed. So, you know, these people are not going into the refrigerator or into the grocery store and choosing their food. They’re on specific foods. Now, all of these people on total parenteral nutrition, they had fatty liver disease, they had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. So they’re on tube feeding, they have liver disease. They added a lot of Choline to their tube feeding, 2,000 milligrams of Choline a day, which is almost four times the recommended amount. And Choline is extremely safe, by the way. It’s very safe. I mean, what’s the side effect of Choline? You have a huge amount of Choline, you might get like a fishy smell, a fishy odor, huge amounts. But that’s a lot better than having liver disease. So and 2000 milligrams will not cause a fishy odor, probably. Normally they want you to have about 550 milligrams a day, but only 10% of Americans get 550 milligrams a day. And by the way, that’s really important when you’re pregnant, lacking Choline can lead to serious birth defects. So it’s a really important nutrient. Sadly, it’s not in a lot of prenatal vitamins. Can you imagine? I don’t understand it. So let’s get back to this. So group of adults, they’re are on tube feeding. They had fatty liver. They gave them Choline and it completely ameliorated, it completely resolved the fatty liver. But those not given the 2000 milligrams of Choline, they went on going just the way it was. They retained their fatty liver. Now, I mentioned that 90% of people who are morbidly obese have a fatty liver and 65% of people who are overweight. This is very common in diabetics also. And I can’t give you the exact number, because the problem is a lot of diabetics are really overweight. But if you look at normal weight, diabetics, 20% of them have fatty liver, 20% of normal weight diabetics have fatty liver. So really important, you need to get Choline into your life. You need it for your memory. You need it for your immune system. You need it for your heart. You need it for your muscles. You needed to help prevent cancer because it methylate your genes. You need it for your liver. I mean, you really need it for your liver. You really need it for your liver. So I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode. Oh, and by the way, Krill will ensure that you’re getting choline, especially in the best form. That’s really good for your liver and really good for your brain called phosphatidylcholine, so Krill, a great source, get a good krill, get a nice, fresh, clean krill. I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode. You can find all of our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts and this is for free or just go to Invitehealth.com/podcast and please subscribe or leave a review. You can also follow InVite on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at InVite Health. I hope to see you next time on another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. This is Jerry Hickey signing off and thank you so much for listening today.† [00:20:42]