How Resveratrol Supports Healthy Lungs – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 540
Your lungs are at risk of damage on a daily basis due to pollution, aging and more. The good news is that the nutrient resveratrol can help them stay healthy.
Tag: vitamin C
Maintaining and Building Muscle – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 539
If you’re looking to build and maintain muscle health, it’s important to make sure you are getting the proper nutrients. Learn more about the nutrients you need from Melissa Bistricer, RDN.
Your Eye Doctor Needs To Know This Supplement – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 529
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Your Eye Doctor Needs To Know This Supplement – InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 529
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare 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!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MPH:
[00:00:40] The COVID-19 pandemic changed our society and especially in regards to work, that commonly people are working remotely, so their meetings, their conversations, exchanging info and ideas is often virtual, and this is leading to spending a great deal of time on computer and smartphone screens. So people of all age groups are becoming aware of vision health and are increasingly seeking info on eye health. So many nutrients stand out when it comes to vision and eye health, and possibly chief among them is lutein. We’ll explain what that is later on and the foods that can supply lutein. So your screens, all those screens from your computer, your cell phone, your high-definition TV, your video games and of course, outside the sunlight, it depletes your eyes of lutein, but it also depletes the brain of lutein. So in healthy young people and also middle aged people, this leads to eye fatigue and even brain fatigue. But in our elderly, me included, this actually contributes to vision loss and even some memory loss. So in my opinion, the health benefits of lutein are strongly underestimated, and it is important for ophthalmologists and optometrists to inform their patients about lutein that could be derived from foods, but as you get older, it becomes increasingly important to supplement with lutein. So hi, my name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a licensed pharmacist specializing in nutrition, which I’ve studied for many, many decades. Welcome to my episode, Doctors and Supplements, Episode Two: Eye Doctors Need to Know About This Supplement. You can find all our InViteⓇ episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @invitehealth, and please subscribe and leave us a review.† [00:02:48]
[00:02:50] So let me get into this. It’s hard to say enough about lutein. Several decades ago, researchers at Harvard Medical School found that older people who ate a great deal of green leafy vegetables generally had better vision than their peers. Soon after, it was discovered that the most prominent nutrients in the greens were pigments called lutein and zeaxanthin. Now, lutein is a, an amber-orangish pigment, zeaxanthin is yellowish, in fact, you find it in corn. Corn is called zea maize. They named zeaxanthin after zea maize. So these are in the carotenoid family. We know of many, many, many hundreds of carotenoids. Many are very important to the human body, such as astaxanthin, which is the pink carotenoid you see in cooked shellfish and in flamingos or beta carotene that you find commonly in plants and also lutein and zeaxanthin, they’re very important… Lycopene, the red one in tomatoes and other fruits. They’re very important for human health.† [00:04:02]
[00:04:04] Now, an early study was from the Moran Eye Health Center, that’s at the University of Utah. They took a pretty good sized population of elderly people, and it gave them either a placebo, which is an inactive substance, or a supplement of lutein and zeaxanthin every day for a year. And they found that eye health improved, vision was better, in the people taking the, the lutein. So why… So that’s just an example of some of the evidence behind it. But there’s many, many, many hundreds, perhaps thousands of studies on lutein at this point in our health.† [00:04:41]
[00:04:42] So why the issue with lutein and electronic screens? Electronic screens like your cell phone and your computer use LED, light emitting diode, background technology. This gives greater clarity. It enhances the colors. It’s more, more vibrant a picture. And part of that is it emits blue light. Now, blue light has a very short wavelength, so millions of rays of blue light are hitting your, your eyes when you’re on your computer or cell phone. And this creates a glare. These flashes create a glare, and lutein is meant to absorb and protect the eyes from blue light. That’s one of its outstanding benefits because blue light can really damage the eyes. So a young person on computer screens all day long, they’re using up their lutein, their eyes and their brain get fatigued and simply reestablishing lutein takes care of that. In fact, some of the younger people I’ve known in college and also a lot of IT people, I’ve recommended lutein to them who were studying, who are doing intensive studies. So what are some sources of lutein? Well, egg yolks are a good source. Green leafy vegetables like spinach and broccoli and Swiss chard. Pistachio nuts have a little. As far as supplements, the major source has been marigold flowers, and there’s a great deal of research on that. These supplements absolutely work.† [00:06:20]
[00:06:22] So what does lutein do in the eye? There’s this protective moat in the eye, a barrier called your macular pigment, and one of its activities is absorbing blue light. See, in the back of the eye where vision takes place, there’s a lot of little vulnerable organs that could be damaged by, by blue light. So the macular pigment, this kind of catcher’s mitt, blocks the blue light from getting into the back of the eye. It’s largely made out of lutein and zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin and there’s a lot of the mineral zinc in there, too. And inside the same macular pigment, there’s a little structure called a fovea, which looks like a broken egg yolk. That’s really important for core vision. When you’re looking at something, you’re really only clearly seeing something about the size of a breadbox in your vision. The rest of your vision is just kind of a little bit out of focus, right? That’s the full view. So if that gets damaged, if your macular tissue gets damaged, you develop basically a dark hole in the middle of your vision. It’s a form of blindness, in fact, it’s the most common form of blindness in elderly people. The most common form of blindness in young people, which happens in areas where there’s wars and famines is xeropthalmia, where they’re they’re lacking Vitamin A, A as is in apple. But in older people, it’s due to a lack of lutein and zeaxanthin, which are not Vitamin A, but they’re relatives of Vitamin A in their structure.† [00:07:52]
[00:07:53] But lutein is also important for brain power. So when you deplete lutein in the young, they develop eye fatigue and brain fatigue, but giving them a source of lutein refreshes the brain and the eyes, but… And this is true for middle aged people too. But in us elderly, when you deplete lutein consistently, it affects our memory as well as our vision. Now, here’s some interesting research on lutein and the brain. Studies, early studies from the United States showed that lutein is the prominent pigment in the brains of babies. 60% of the pigments in the brain of babies is lutein. But then people who are octogenarians and centenarians, the amount of lutein in the brain drops dramatically. In fact, it was this very interesting study done down south, I think it was done in Alabama, where they took a large population of centenarians people, 100 years or over 100 years of age, which is amazing, couldn’t have done that 20 or 30 years ago, right? Get such a good population. I think it was 100 elderly people. And when they checked their, their brain power, the ones with greater brain power had more lutein in their brain.† [00:09:18]
[00:09:20] So a systematic review is one researchers looked through evidence of something. It could be a drug, it could be a food, it could be a disease, whatever it is, something scientifically. They do a a screening of all the studies out there. And that’s easy to do today because we have all these electronic sources such as PubMed. That’s the Library of Congress website, where they collate all research on, on, on nutrients and medicine, etc. And there’s Embase and Ovid. There’s a whole bunch of these electronic websites where researchers can now go and very easily download studies on anything, basically anything to do with health, so in this case, it’s lutein, and then they do a meta analysis so they choose the study that are looking at exactly what they want. But the studies have to be high quality. They have to be well-designed, well-reported, lacking bias. That’s called a meta analysis. That’s important because when a meta analysis is done properly, it tells you of something either works or it doesn’t work. So there’s been many scientific reviews, meta analysis where they bunch these studies together and they find that lutein really does benefit older people’s eyes and also older people’s memory. In fact, throughout your age, throughout your life, your lifespan, whether you were an infant or an adult or elderly adult, lutein is important for your brain and vision.† [00:10:57]
[00:10:59] So this is the journal Nutrients, and this happens to be a meta analysis that was published May 2021. It’s the Department of Cognitive Health Sciences. That’s the University of Toshiko. It’s in their division where they also study memory, aging and cancer. And also researchers in England at the University of East Anglia in Cambridge. And they looked at nine studies in total. They found seven studies using brain scans using MRIs, functional MRIs, magnetic resonance imaging, and two studies where they used electroencephalograms of the brain. So nine studies in all, very high quality studies. They found that 10mg of lutein a day as a supplement, natural lutein… And always take lutein with food. It’s fatty-soluble. It’s absorbed better with food. It improved brain activity, but it also, well, it improved the structure of the brain, which was very exciting. And this is in healthy older adults. So it improved the function of their brain during resting or during cognitive tasks. So when the brain was challenged with a test or doing math, et cetera. But they also found that it directly affected the volume of the gray matter of the brain. So in the gray matter, which is many, many billions of cells as well different estimates, sometimes 80 billion, 100 billion, 50 billion, but it’s a lot of cells. In a gray matter, memory takes place for the most part, and it has to be rich in lutein. And they found that when they gave these people, elderly people lutein, not only did it improve the function of the brain and support memory structure and memory activities, but gray matter volume increased. It actually supported the volume of gray matter. I mean that’s some interesting… I’ve only seen two things do that. One is lutein, and the other thing is type one collagen. Apparently, the brain has a large volume of type one collagen.† [00:13:10]
NOT ALL COLLAGEN TYPES ARE THE SAME – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 370. Listen Now>>
[00:13:13] So my recommendation? For young people, you can easily absorb lutein from food, and these foods are good for the heart, they’re good for the eyes, the brain. Obviously, they’re good for your, your circulatory system. They have anti-cancer effects. There’s a lot of benefits from these green leafy vegetables. But older people have more difficulty absorbing lutein from their food for some reason. So they really should supplement their diet with a good lutein supplement. There is one called Lutein 2020, and that also has zeaxanthin and other forms of zeaxanthin that are good for vision. Now other nutrients that are good for the eye? I mean, obviously the eye is complex, just like the brain. And interestingly, the supplements that have value for the eyes have value for the brain. So why should that be? For the supplements, for nutrients to get to your eyeball, they have to go through the brain first, and the brain grabs all the nutrients it needs, and whatever’s left over, it gets to the eyes. So if you’re not absorbing enough from your food, not enough is going to be there possibly for the brain, but certainly not for the eyes. So fish oils, omega-3 fatty acids, which are longer chain omega-3 fatty acids and shorter chain ones from like vegetables like flaxseeds. A little bit of omega-6 fatty acids, which are found in vegetable oils. They’re also found in evening primrose oil. You don’t want to overdo the omega-6 fatty acids because that can lead to inflammation. But omega-6 fatty acids are needed by the eyes. In fact, they found that dry eye disease and dry eye syndrome you can really help treat it with omega-3 like fish oils and omega-6 vegetable fat helps with dry eyes caused by things like contact lenses. Zinc is very important for the eyes, and it’s very important for the brain. We’ve done a number of podcast episodes on zinc for the immune system, for vision, etc. Very important element. And zinc is another nutrient that you absorb less with age. So older people really should consider taking a zinc supplement, especially since it’s so important for the immune system. Vitamin C, you could get that, of course, from fruits and vegetables. A Vitamin E, natural Vitamin E is very important for the eyes. They protect your eyes just like lutein and zeaxanthin shield the eyes, so do Vitamin C and Vitamin E and zinc. They work as anti-inflammatory antioxidant nutrients in the eyes. Beta carotene found in vegetables, very important for the eyes. Really should be natural beta carotene, synthetic beta carotene doesn’t work well. Just like Vitamin E should be natural. The synthetic Vitamin E doesn’t work very well. Beta carotene is converted to a form of Vitamin A that creates rhodopsin. So you could see clearly and you could see well at night, etc. B-vitamins are important for energy for the eye. A B2 directly works in the eyes. You know it’s called riboflavin. Magnesium and taurine are important for the eyes. Magnesium’s an amazing supplement. In fact, I did a podcast episode last week looking at magnesium for cardiologists. Taurine, on the other hand, is a sulfydryl amino acid. It’s kind of like in a class of its own. It’s very important for the brain, is very important for the, for the gallbladder and the kidneys. It’s very important for the heart’s circulation. It’s also very important for your vision. You could get taurine from fish.† [00:16:39]
[00:16:41] So thank you for listening to today’s episode. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or go to invitehealth.com/podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a review if you can. You can also follow Insight on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @invitehealth. I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode. I hope you listen… I hope to see you again in future episodes. So this is sort of a continuing series on nutrients, key nutrients for specific doctors practices, but it’s important that you know these things. So thanks for listening and Jerry Hickey signing off.† [00:16:41]
TMJ vs Teeth Grinding – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 528
Are you grinding your teeth or do you have TMJ? Many people confuse these two issues. Find out how they are different and what you can do to help from Amanda Williams, MD, MPH.
Birth Control Pills and Vitamin Deficiencies – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 514
If you’re taking a birth control pill, you may be losing important nutrients that your body needs to function properly.
Impact of Moderate Alcohol Consumption – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 510
alcohol
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Impact of Moderate Alcohol Consumption – InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 510
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare 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!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MD, MPH: [00:00:40] We’ve all heard that you shouldn’t over consume alcohol. Today, I want to talk about the physiological impact that alcohol consumption actually has on the body and the different nutrients that can be impacted or influenced by the consumption of alcohol. And then obviously, if you’re going to be consuming alcohol, what nutrients would certainly be advisable to to have on board to help your little cells recover from that. I’m Amanda Williams, MD, MPH, and this is an important topic, and I have a lot of people who will ask me this question, “You know, I… Oh, I, you know, have social drinks once or twice a week. And you know, what concerns should I have?” Obviously, we always want to focus on the liver, but we have to look at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is, is that we know certainly when it comes to alcohol consumption in the United States, it’s pretty high. You know, according to surveys and statistics, we know that it’s probably about 86% of people over the age of 18 have, you know, at some point in time their life consumed alcohol and then you’re going to have, you know, different periods in people’s lives where perhaps alcohol consumption is greater or less. And there’s always concern when it comes to binge drinking or, you know, heavy alcohol use at one given time like they used to always have, you know, Blackout Wednesdays, which was the the Wednesday before Thanksgiving where all college, you know, kids were back in their hometowns and hitting up the local bars. And so you could see these trends that occur and we we can even see just based off of alcohol sales, you know, New Year’s obviously is going to be the biggest, but we just, you know, have to look at the the impact of social drinking, as we shall say, because we know what happens when we have chronic abuse of alcohol, so alcoholism itself. But when we’re just looking at, say, social drinking, and if someone is doing that responsibly, we still have to think about the long-term implications that can occur from the intake of alcohol and how the body’s actually metabolizing that.† [00:02:59]
[00:03:00] So all of these things are important factors because there’s many moving parts. We know that most of the alcohol passes into the small intestine and it’s absorbed rapidly into the blood, which is why blood alcohol levels, you know, for the most part, are pretty good indication as to how fast your body is taking in that. We know that the conversion of alcohol into acetaldehyde occurs predominantly in the liver through an enzymatic pathway regulated through something called alcohol dehydrogenase. So the alcohol dehydrogenase converts into acetaldehyde. Now remember, acetaldehyde is not our friend. This is oftentimes what creates that headache or that nauseousness that people can get after consuming or overindulging in alcohol. Or if we think about a hangover, this is because of acetaldehyde, this toxin, this neurotoxin that builds up, and we can see that that acetaldehyde that’s produced from the alcohol, it’s converted by an enzyme known as aldehyde dehydrogenase into acetate, and the acetate can be utilized for energy throughout the body. So there’s a lot of moving parts, and the main thing to focus in on is what is actually happening, what is occurring. So we know that there’s these different pathways. You know, you go in, you get your wine, you get your vodka, you get your beer, whatever it is that you’re choosing to drink. And this is going through the intestinal absorption, the, you know, immediate release of that alcohol into the bloodstream. If you have these different moving parts, these different pathways for the breakdown. And then we have this byproduct that’s created, that acetaldehyde.† [00:04:49]
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[00:04:51] Now the problem is, is that many people when they get a unwanted side effect from overconsumption of alcohol, they right away want to turn towards like a NSAID, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug like, you know, ibuprofen or, you know, taking aspirin. But we know that, you know, this can lead to issues in terms of, you know, GI issues. And if someone already has underlying GI inflammation, it’s probably not the best. Now, acetaminophen is definitely the worst because acetaminophen is directly detrimental to, to the liver itself. So when we think about liver toxicity, acetaminophen or your Tylenol is the, is the one that will create the most havoc when it comes to liver. So if the liver is already stressed out because you just poured in a bunch of alcohol into your system, the last thing you want to be turning to is acetaminophen. So this is key.† [00:05:55]
[00:05:56] I’m talking about the subject ’cause I get so many questions about this on a regular basis is, “What should I do? I’m not going to not have a drink with my friends. I’m going to go out and I’m going to, you know, be around family or friends or whatever, be the case, and I’m going to have one or two drinks and this may happen one or two times a week or whatever the case may be. So what do I need to be doing?” So this is when we look at, you know, finding out which nutrients in particular can become depleted through alcohol use. We know that B-vitamins… yes, 100%. You can see this in alcoholism, where B1 in particular really takes a hit. And this is a major concern even in the setting of social drinking. So B-vitamins is something that, if you are going to be indulging in your alcohol, make sure that you are taking your B-vitamins. But we can also look at how other nutrients minerals such as selenium, for example, Vitamin E can also take a hit when it comes to the way that that alcohol is being processed in the body. So these are all things just to to be cognizant of.† [00:07:07]
[00:07:08] The biggest problem that many people will recognize when it comes to alcohol consumption is a hangover. So when we get that buildup acetaldehyde and you, you get that dizziness, you, you know, maybe have a headache, there’s a, you know, irritability, there’s a lot of different ways in which a hangover can present from one person to the next. But we certainly know that a hangover can impact your normal functional status and through the way that the alcohol itself is being metabolized in that buildup of that toxin, that actual toxin that is created, acetaldehyde, this is what is incredibly problematic. So how do we rid the body of this? This is kind of the key thing. Well, we know that our B-vitamins are important when it comes to metabolic detoxification for enhancing our natural antioxidants. So clearly, we have to look and say OK, if our antioxidants are not able to keep up with the demand that the alcohol is putting on that, then obviously we need to be looking at antioxidants putting those back in, including things such as glutathione. And so we would then look at more than likely we’d be looking at utilization of N- acetyl cysteine. This is going to be usually the best option when it comes to the reestablishing proper glutathione on stores. But we also want to look at things like Vitamin C, your B-vitamins, Vitamin E, for example.† [00:08:39]
[00:08:41] Inflammation is key when we think about alcohol consumption. Many times people don’t recognize the dangers, and this is why I say, you know, even social drinking can lead to harmful effects within our vascular system. But understanding that inflammation is going to be generated through the consumption of alcohol. So the alcohol itself creates this increased permeability within the intestinal lining. So when we talk about leaky gut, for example. So this is allowing these different endotoxins to pass into the bloodstream, which is then going to trigger an inflammatory response. So when we have these inflammatory cytokines traversing through the body along with the alcohol, now we’ve created a real problematic situation. So through the stimulation of the inflammatory system, this is where a lot of that cellular injury can occur. And it’s not just limited to the liver. We can look at the vascular system in particular. We can certainly look at our nervous system and within the brain. So looking at how we can minimize this, how do we minimize this? Well, number one, try to not drink or if we’re drinking very moderately. Obviously, having foods that can offset the acetaldehyde, things such as green tea is a really excellent choice when it comes to the mitigation of the harmful effects of acetaldehyde and the buildup of that. So if someone’s going to be drinking, I always say it may not be a bad idea to be considering green tea in conjunction. So maybe switch on and off. You have your alcoholic drink and then you have your green tea, so Green Tea TxⓇ, White Tea TxⓇ, excellent options for you.† [00:10:36]
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[00:10:36] And then we want to look at those key nutrients, so we have to look at the B-vitamins. We know that those B-vitamins are so critical to so many different functions in our body when it comes to our immune defenses, when it comes to the way that our brain and the neuronal connections work when it comes to the release of certain key neurotransmitters. So definitely a B-complex is incredibly advantageous. And even if you’re one of those folks where maybe you just go out and you’re drinking, you know, once a week or once a month, make sure that around that time that you are going to be consuming your alcohol, that at minimum you are on your multivitamin. But I would definitely advise being on the methylated B. So the InViteⓇ Methyl-B, the activated B-vitamins to really try to help to offset that would certainly be advantageous. Then we have to think about the antioxidant response, and this is where NAC would come into play to really give the the liver that support when it comes to bolstering up its antioxidant defense system via glutathione. So N-acetyl cysteine, certainly important. We have to look at how Vitamin E is known to be depleted in the presence of alcohol. So having natural Vitamin E as part of a supplementation routine, if you are more of that moderate social drinker, then definitely, you know, Vitamin E is something that you would want to be having into your routine. I had mentioned the mineral selenium. This is another thing. If we have inadequate selenium, we are once again going to disturb the proper functioning of how glutathione is processed and released. So in the absence of selenium we’re once again setting our body up into a state where we have a lower antioxidant defense system. So taking the multivitamin, which contains that selenium, will help to cover that basis as well. Your Vitamin C certainly is going to be beneficial.† [00:12:44]
[00:12:45] Thinking about the different targeted nutrients that we know are very friendly to our little hepatocytes, our liver cells, things like milk thistle, for example. The flavonoids contained within that milk thistle certainly can be very beneficial when it comes to targeting the inflammation that is driven up within the body. And then obviously looking at things like resveratrol, grape seed extract are all excellent choices, and we have to also look at the structural damage that can occur within the cells, not only just within the liver, but when we think about, you know, throughout the brain, throughout the vascular system. So we want to make sure that we have good omega-3 fatty acids on board. Certainly going to be quite advantageous to to maintain the health of that cellular membrane. So in combination, there’s a lot of different nutrients we have to look at, you know, the big ones being your B-vitamins, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, NAC, milk thistle are all really excellent options. But the key thing is is to to just be wise, be smart, don’t overindulge. We can see the long lasting impact in that negative way and who wants to have a acetaldehyde building up in their system? I certainly don’t. When we understand what acetaldehyde is actually doing and the harmful effect that it has within our system, we don’t want to be the the cause of that. If we know how we can make our body make acetaldehyde is through drinking, we should probably not be doing that. So this is that highly reactive compound has a, you know, very detrimental effects. And as I mentioned, most people the way that they feel the acetaldehyde is through kind of those known factors with the with the hangover, but definitely just be be smart. If you’re going to be taking an alcohol, make sure you have the right nutrients on board. Have your green tea to help combat that acetaldehyde and those key vitamins and minerals, as well as your fatty acids, very important.† [00:15:05]
[00:15:06] So I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the InViteⓇ Health podcast. Remember, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting invitehealth.com/podcast. Now, do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health podcast.† [00:15:06]
*Exit music*
