Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. AN UPDATE ON VITAMIN C & THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 606 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. IS IT A COLD? INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 605 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 …
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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] Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode. I’m going to be discussing testosterone in this episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Testosterone is our most common masculinity hormone. It’s extremely important for our health normal levels. We’ll discuss all this over the course of this episode. It affects our facial hair and our body hair and affects the strength of our jawline and affects our voice. How deep our voices it affects our muscles, our bone health, our brain health. It affects our energy, our metabolism. Low levels are an issue and are commonly declines in older men. But even younger men, if they do not live a healthy life, testosterone levels can drop and there are consequences. So how can you safely bring testosterone back to your normal, healthy level? That’s a more, in my episode, Natural Ways to Improve Your Testosterone Level. Hi, I’m Jerry Hickey, I’m a pharmacist, my specialty is nutrition. I’ve been studying nutrition for decades. You can find our podcast episodes everywhere where you listen to podcast for free. Please subscribe and review, but you can also just go to Invithealth.com/podcast. I can also find Invite at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at InVite Health. So let’s get going.† [00:02:08]
[00:02:09] This is an important thing, now I’m an older guy. Doctor Landon Trust is a pretty famous urologist over at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. And he says as a man ages, testosterone tends to drop. This is a problem, but other things can cause testosterone levels to drop in any adult male. But I have to tell you, a drop in testosterone, it’s negative, it’s bad. It has a real role in male aging. As testosterone drops, so does our drive, yes, that’s right our drive and our initiative, our focus, our mental clarity, our bone health, which can lead of course, to an increased risk of a fracture like a hip fracture. Bad, bad, bad. Our muscle and our strength, our muscle mass is dependent on testosterone, so its strength. Now as muscle mass drops and fat accrues as fat builds, this can affect our blood sugar control, it can affect our heart health. In fact, a drop in testosterone is in many, many studies at many human trials connected with an increased risk of mortality and not just an increased risk of mortality in older men, an increased risk of dying in younger men as well. So what exactly is testosterone? Well, it’s a hormone. It’s the primary sex hormone in men. Now, women have a little bit and they’re very sensitive to it and they need it for like their sexual health, etc.. But it’s incredibly important to men. Our blood levels are much higher than in women. What’s our most important anabolic steroid? Meaning it builds us up. It’s a steroid, a hormone, it’s anabolic, it builds us up, and this is true.† [00:03:56]
[00:03:58] Now, most of it, I think over 95% is secreted by our testicles. The rest is mostly secreted by our adrenal glands. Our adrenal glands are often called our stress glands. They’re these little triangular shape glands on the top of each kidney. And they release other hormones also that are important for the immune system and controlling inflammation, etc., and waking up in the morning, etc. A pretty normal range depending on the lab could be anywhere from 300 to 1000, it really depends on the lab. They have different ways of testing, different sensitivity. So the amount that’s normal is different from lab to lab, but pretty much 350 to 650 is the normal range, which is nanograms per liter. So under 250 is hypogonadism, you can pretty much count on that, which means severely low bad testosterone levels and over 800 or a thousand is considered high. And this kind of makes you into a NASCAR driver. So too high seems to be involved with thickening the blood and may be associated with aggressiveness, even criminality. But that’s a totally different conversation, and I think that totally has to be proven about the aggressiveness and criminality. So the level of free testosterone is also very important. And what does that mean? Testosterone can be attached to serum binding of hormone levels. It’s called serum hormone binding globulin. So that’s not really active. It can also be attached to the protein in our blood, which is called albumin, and that’s okay because it pretty easily detaches from albumin. But the amount of free testosterone is thought to be free testosterone thought to be more active than regular testosterone. So you do want a good range of free testosterone.† [00:05:54]
[00:05:57] So what do we know about testosterone for men? What does it do? I mean, besides, you know, growth and sexual characteristics and facial hair, etc.? Well, it’s involved with our energy. If you lack testosterone, you can feel less energy, inflammation. If testosterone is low, you have increasing levels of inflammation, which is bad because that could affect the heart and the brain. We’ll get into that. It’s involved with memory. Testosterone is involved with your memory, your attention span, your focus, your spatial ability, your motivation, your drive. And, you know, regular levels of testosterone gives you some drive and some focus and some ambition. It doesn’t make you aggressive. It’s involved with bone strength. So if you lack testosterone, you do have an increased risk of thinning bones. Weakened bones, which does increase the risk of a hip fracture. And hip fractures are desperately dangerous in men and also sexual function. So low testosterone, once again reduced energy, reduced drive, reduced libido. That’s not fun because there’s a feedback loop, there that we’ll go into in a minute. Increased inflammation, fat gain, muscle loss, increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. These are all connected. In fact, low testosterone is commonly and repeatedly connected with an increased risk of mortality, which I already discussed. But it’s important to put these things into perspective, increased risk of hip fracture, issues with the brain, even an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. So, you know, it’s very important to get testosterone back to normal.† [00:07:36]
[00:07:38] So how does the body make testosterone? Well, there’s a feedback loop to control the level of testosterone in the blood. With low testosterone, the hypothalamus, which is a regulating organ in our brain and a more primitive part of our brain, the lower back part of our brain, it releases gonadotrophic releasing factor. And I tell you this because later on we’re going to discuss things that reduce the level of gonadotrophic releasing factor. So why is gonadotrophic releasing factor important? Well, this triggers our anterior pituitary, another organ in our brain to release luteinizing hormone. And the luteinizing hormone causes the cells, the leydig cells in our testicles to synthesize testosterone. So there’s a healthy feedback loop between our testicles and our brain. No jokes, please, controlling our level of our testosterone. So but once again, the level of free testosterone is also important. We don’t know to what degree, it’s a much smaller amount in our blood. So how can we release, how can we improve the release of our testosterone safely and naturally? Well, there are drugs, but drugs, they can be too much. They can make you more into a NASCAR driver than a regular guy. The drugs are going to have too much of an effect. And plus, they’re expensive. And, you know, there’s all kinds of visits involved with that, the doctrine of pharmacy. But fortunately, a normal, healthy level of testosterone can be improved by natural, healthy things like, one, limit your alcohol intake, so one, limit your alcohol intake, especially beer. Beer contains phytoestrogens, a lot of them, especially IPAs and India Pale Ale, because they contain a lot of hops and too much alcohol can lower your testosterone level. Some doctors feel that it’s safer to have vodka than to have beer.† [00:09:47]
ICYMI: TALKING HORMONES WITH CARDIOLOGIST, DR.DAVIS>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:09:48] Limit soy foods. Now legumes are good, okay? Beans and lentils and peas are good. They’ve even been shown to lower the risk of heart disease and possibly prostate cancer. But soy, soy foods are very high and very powerful phytoestrogens such as genistein and dioxin. Now, some soy is fine, but, you know, don’t sit down and eat a lot of tofu. That seems to be an issue. Better sleep. You need sleep for testosterone manufacture. So you want a dark room. You want to avoid blue light before sleep, which stimulates the brain too much. Plus sleep increases cortisol levels and decreases the morning release of testosterone, which is very important. Now, that’s interesting. If you lack some sleep early in the night, it doesn’t seem to be as bad as lacking sleep in the morning. So waking up too early seems to be worse than getting to bed a little a little bit late. You have to handle stress. Stress reduces the risk of gonadotrophic releasing hormone. If you don’t release that, you don’t, you don’t create testosterone. You’re testosterone levels drop and stress also increases the level of cortisol. So if you’re constantly stressed, the cortisol will increase your body fat level, which decreases cortisol, I mean, which decreases testosterone. So it’s not a good thing. There are supplements to help with stress, but, you know, nice, relaxing, good music, moderate exercise. It seems that excessive exercise has some kind of negative effect on testosterone, but that’s yet to be elucidated. The supplements L-theanine safely reduces stress. So does a little bit of CBD.† [00:11:34]
[00:11:36] I personally, what do I do for stress? Well, I handle it well because I’ve always been exposed to a lot of stress. But I paint. I’m an artist to a degree, and I exercise things like tai chi and pickleball and lifting weights. That helps with it, but I don’t overdo it. That helps with stress. Fat loss. Fat contains an enzyme called aromatase and aromatase, breaks down testosterone and converts it to estrogen. So too much fat increases your estrogen and reduces your testosterone. But also, you know, too much fat affects your blood sugar and your heart health. So it’s not good, so the fat loss approach of testosterone helps you control your blood sugar. I mean, it’s all good. Avoid BPA. Some plastics have BPA, which is called bisphenol A, bisphenol A lowers androstenedione, which is another androgen, and it lowers your testosterone level. So you want to use BPA free plastics, anything that sounds like BPA, you don’t want. You need fat in your diet to create testosterone. Good fats like fish or fish oils, walnuts, avocados, olive oil, flaxseed oil or eating flaxseed is even better. You’ll like this, healthy sexual life, sex improves testosterone. A lower testosterone leads to a lower libido, which is bad because a lower libido further reduces your level of testosterone. When you have a healthy sexual life, it helps with your libido and it helps control your testosterone. Now there are nutrients needed, so this is actually the ninth thing that’s involved with your testosterone. Nutrients, like low vitamin A in studies, low beta carotene, natural beta carotene and low vitamin A is repeatedly connected with a drop in testosterone levels.† [00:13:35]
[00:13:36] Zinc, the mineral zinc is needed for many things. Your vision, protecting the brain, your immune system, healing, making thyroid hormone, so many things. Zinc is required to make testosterone. Now, zinc is also required for spermatogenesis, you know, healthy such, healthy levels of sperm, a zinc deficiency contributes to hypogonadism seriously, dangerously low levels of testosterone. So you can get some zinc in oysters and meat, even chicken and fish and legumes. But I don’t mess around with this. Zinc is so important. It’s so easy to be low in zinc. So I’m taking, I’m getting zinc every day as a supplement. There’s so many benefits to zinc. We’ve done practically everything I’m talking about in general, like zinc and bone health and men, and we have other podcast episodes on the show, you can look for that.† [00:14:33]
[00:14:33] Vitamin D, you need Vitamin D to control your testosterone level. You need vitamin D to make testosterone. Now, magnesium, the mineral, magnesium, magnesium is needed to activate vitamin D and you need vitamin D to control your testosterone. But magnesium is also needed to release melatonin at night, which is needed for healthy sleeping patterns. Vitamin E, vitamin E is needed to maintain your zinc level, and zinc is needed to make maintain testosterone. And Vitamin C. Vitamin C interacts with vitamin E to control your zinc level. And zinc is needed to make testosterone. Selenium, you need the mineral selenium, you only need small amounts to make testosterone. Now, also, get your diabetes under control. Diabetes can affect your testosterone level. And interestingly, magnesium, zinc and vitamin D, which are needed to make testosterone, are also needed to control the release of insulin and glucagon to control your blood sugar levels. So all of these are important.† [00:15:40]
SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION, PART 1 – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 504
[00:15:42] So I want to thank you for listening to today’s podcast episode. You can find all of the invite podcast wherever you listen to podcasts for free, it’s for free or just go to Invitehealth.com/podcast, and please leave a review and please subscribe. You can also find info on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter at InVite Health. I want to thank you for listening today. This is Jerry Hickey signing off and I hope to see you next time on another episode of InViteⓇ Health Podcast. †[00:16:13]
[00:16:15] There is one more option to raise your testosterone level, but it’s a supplement. There’s a group of things in nature called flavonoids, there’s thousands of them. They have many benefits. They’re contributing to lower your risk of heart disease and possibly diabetes. They’re good for your brain. They have antiviral effects, which is always good during the cold, bad weather. They’re connected with longevity. They have many other functions, possibly even anti-cancer effects. Not all flavonoids are equal. My favorite flower is the passion flower. Very beautiful, complex flower, I grow it all year long. And out of that comes a flavonoid called Chrysin, chrysin slows down the enzyme that breaks down testosterone and converts it into estrogen. It’s kind of like if you build a dam and it rains, the water builds up a little and it rains again the next day and it builds up a little bit more. Your testosterone is starting to build up back towards your normal levels. You’ll never get a high level with this. So it’s safe, but it can help bring it back to your more normal level. The problem is Chrysin is very poorly absorbed, so there’s a trick to that. There’s something called bioperine, that comes out of the pepper plant, and bioperine increases the absorption of several substances, one of them being Chrysin. So if you take Chrysin with little bit of bioperine in there, you will absorb the Chrysin and I have seen it restore men’s testosterone levels considerably, where some of them were actually hypogonadal, they had very low levels, like 150 or 200 and a bottom up to like a range of 400, which is like a nice healthy pattern, a nice healthy level. So Chrysin is an option and I have no issue with it because Chrysin has several other activities, it seems to reduce the risk of developing certain kidney stones. It’s a very relaxing supplement and right now it’s being studied for its anti-cancer potential.† [00:16:15]
*Exit Music*
Dr.Kay talks about decreasing breast cancer risk, and supporting the breast tissue with diet and nutritional supplements.
Allie Might, INHC, AADP, ATT dives in to why calcium is an important supplement and how you can add it into your routine to reap the benefits
dry eye
Subscribe Today!
Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*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*
Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:40] Dry eye syndrome is very common. With dry eye syndrome, your tears do not adequately lubricate your eyes and this leads to all kinds of symptoms and the symptoms can be terrible. Here’s the issue, dry eye syndrome affects up to 70% of older people. So it’s very common in older people. This is according to data in the journal Experimental Gerontology, but it can happen in any age group. Nutritional supplements have been shown to help, so we’ll go over that.† [00:01:09]
[00:01:09] So welcome to my episode, Dry Eyes: Supplements Can Help. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a licensed pharmacist and I specialize in nutrition. I’ve been studying nutrition for decades. You can find all of the InVite podcast episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast and please subscribe and leave a review because that’s very helpful. You can also find InVite on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at InViteⓇ Health. So let’s get going because this is common and it can be helped.† [00:01:41]
YOUR EYE DOCTOR NEEDS TO KNOW THIS SUPPLEMENT – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 529 >> Listen Now!
[00:01:42] Now, everything in medicine, everything in our biology, everything in nutrition has at least two names. So Dry Eye Syndrome is also known as Dysfunctional Tears Syndrome, Dry Eye Disease, Corrado Conjunctivitis, Sica and many more names. But they’re all the same thing. Now, the symptoms. Well, you’re going to get burning in your eyes. It’s going to feel like there’s a foreign body in the eye, like an eyelash, it’s going to feel gritty. Your vision could get blurred, your eyes get tired very easily. So they’re itching, they’re stinging, they get very sensitive to bright lights frequently. You can also develop discharge, you know, like that green stuff in the corner, your eyes or oddly and paradoxically, more tears but they’re not lubricating the eyes.† [00:02:32]
[00:02:33] So causes; well, there’s two types of glands for the eyes. There’s the lateral mole glands on the edges of the eyes that release the liquid, the fluid, the watery stuff. But then there is Meibomian, Meibomian glands, and it’s called Meibomian dysfunction. It’s a very common cause of dry eye syndrome, a.k.a. dry eye disease. These are glands along the rims of your eyelids, and they produce an oily sebum like substance that slows the evaporation of your tears. So obviously, if you’ve got a problem, with your Meibomian glands, the tears are going to evaporate very quickly. So common cause; one way to help sometimes the glands just get caked up with soot and dirt. So wash your lids, you know, use a no tear shampoo, the baby shampoo is to wash your lids.† [00:03:26]
[00:03:28] Now, drugs, this is very common among older people. And of course, this could be reversed if you can substitute a different drug or get off the drug. And the issue also is many older people are not on one drug. It’s called polypharmacy they’re on many drugs. And the more drugs you add together, the greater the risk of developing dry eyes. And 2009, a physician’s desk reference, which is usually abbreviated PDR listed a number of drugs out of the top 100 prescribed in America that caused dry eyes. Out of the top 100 selling drugs, prescribed drugs, 22 cause dry eyes. 56% of them could possibly contribute to dry eyes. So if you mix two or three of these drugs together, you’re going to have dry eyes. Now, many of them also cause dry mouth, by the way dry mouth is also a bad thing because when your mouth is dry, bacteria build up and they cause all kinds of inflammation that could travel throughout the body. Not a good thing.† [00:04:29]
[00:04:31] So here’s some of these drugs. This is from the Journal of Ophthalmology. Hormone replacement therapy, male hormones, too. So the hormone replacement therapy, the estrogen, progesterone therapy, male hormone therapy, testosterone, antihistamines, very common. People are taking antihistamines for allergies. There are better ways to treat allergies. Drugs for anxiety, drugs for depression. Aspirin. Aspirin could cause dry eyes, ibuprofen, yeah and sage could be toxic to the eyes. Atenolol, Atenolol is a beta blocking drug that they use for a racing heart or to help with heart failure to keep people alive or to help with high blood pressure, decongestant drugs, drugs for an enlarged prostate, also drugs for bladder issues can cause dry mouth. Even statin drugs can affect the eyes a little bit so a lot of drugs affect the eyes a little bit. So if you add up two or three, these drugs that affect your eyes a little bit, it winds up affecting the eyes a lot.† [00:05:33]
[00:05:35] Now, low humidity, like in the winter, your house is as arid as the Gobi Desert. Your house gets very dry, so you have to keep some source of fluid around, you know, like a vaporizer. Or if you live in a dry region of the country, you know, like a desert, like out of Arizona or New Mexico.† [00:05:51]
[00:05:53] Another common cause is Sjogren Syndrome, it’s an autoimmune disease. Now there’s at least 100 autoimmune diseases where your immune system attacks your body. So, for instance, rheumatoid arthritis pretty much just attacks your joints, although it can attack other organs, too, and other tissues. But rheumatoid arthritis attacks your joints and systemic lupus erythematosus can attack your heart and your skin and and your kidneys, etc. So in Sjogren’s syndrome, your immune system typically attacks your lacrimal glands, those are the ones on the eyes that secrete the watery substance, into your tears. And it also attacks your salivary glands in your mouth, you know, the salivary creating glands it could be much worse than that. They can attack other things, too. It’s more common after menopause, obviously, it’s more common in women.† [00:06:43]
[00:06:45] Believe it or not but it’s temporary watching too much TV. Huh? I like to binge watch series, you know, like Peaky Blinders, but I take supplements that prevent the eyes from getting tired and dried out like I take lutein, I take a product called Lutein Plus HxⓇ that would prevent that from happening. But watching too much screen time, like on a computer, it reduces blinking. And when you reduce blinking, that contributes to dry eyes. Blinking is one of the most important defenses of your eyes, by the way. You blink extremely quickly, for instance, if something a projectile is coming out your eyes, but you also normally blink 15 to 20 times per minute. Now the blinking triggers, the formation of tears and a release of the tears. So blinking is actually really good for your eyes, because tears, first of all, tears contain antimicrobial agents like lysozyme and lactoferrin, Aleppo, calcium and immunoglobulins, so they help protect you from viruses and bacteria. But tears can also cleanse our eyes to some degree, as well as lubricating the eyes. So these are really important. So remember to blink.† [00:07:59]
[00:08:00] Obviously, if you don’t have enough tears, it’s going to lead to dry eye syndrome. Or if your tears are too thick, this happens or if your tears evaporate too quickly. Lacking vitamin A, vitamin A is important for many tissues and for the immune system and many organs. But lacking vitamin A contributes to dry eye syndrome and poor vision by the way. Now, here’s an interesting thing, because diabetes is also a risk factor that I’ll get into for dry eye syndrome. A lot of people get their vitamin A from vegetables, you know, like like broccoli and sweet potatoes, etc. But that’s not really vitamin A, that’s beta carotene. And beta carotene is stored in the liver and it’s slowly in a sensible, controlled fashion, converted to vitamin A. That’s why beta carotene can never be toxic. And diabetics and also people with thyroid disease. They have trouble converting beta carotene to vitamin A. So that might be a reason why people with diabetes have dry eyes. But we’ll go into that a little bit more in a minute. So lacking vitamin A is a cause. So that’s why when I make a supplement for a diabetic or somebody with thyroid disease, I like to put a little bit of natural vitamin A in there.† [00:09:18]
[00:09:19] Contact lenses; while contact lenses kill off the healthy bacteria of your eyes, your eyes have a microbiome just like your skin and just like women’s fragile tissue and like their breast milk and their milk ducts and your intestines. So you have these microbiomes living with you, a complex mixture of bacteria and viruses and yeast, etc. and when you wear a contact lens, it kills off your good bacteria and it can lead to dry eye syndrome. But I mean, that’s the reason why it leads to infections. You’re killing off the good bacteria to protect the eyes.† [00:09:52]
[00:09:54] Lasik surgery, be careful with this stuff. This is the laser surgery of the eye for Better Vision. I’ve had people had developed some serious reactions to Lasik surgery, but I don’t know how common that is. That might not be common at all. But the Lasik surgery, when it causes dry eye syndrome, it normally clears up within 2 to 3 months. But it doesn’t always. Sometimes with lasik surgery, the dry eyes become permanent.† [00:10:25]
[00:10:26] Now let’s talk about diabetes, there’s different types of diabetes like this, gestational diabetes that women suffer from when they’re pregnant. And there’s type one diabetes where the immune system attacks the pancreas, the insulin producing cells. And then there’s type two diabetes, which is by far the most common that adults typically develop, although it’s shifting to younger and younger people because of the obesity epidemic in the United States and throughout the world. But generally, we saw type two diabetes in older people. One cause of that could be they may not have enough receptor sites for the insulin, but the more common causes, they’re not exercising and they’re chubby, they’re overweight. So the term diabetes mellitus covers all types of diabetes, but those are the three most common forms. Type one diabetes, type two diabetes and gestational diabetes. So in a journal International Ophthalmology, researchers grouped together four different studies, over 2,500,000 subjects in the studies. There was a significant association between forms of diabetes and dry eye disease. Dry eye syndrome. Now, for one thing, diabetes kills off your friendly bacteria. So this can affect the eyes, just like you can affect the heart and the brain and the liver and many other organs and tissues. But also, diabetes makes it hard for you to form vitamin A out of the beta carotene in fruits and vegetables. So that’s a problem without Vitamin A. That’s an issue for the eyes. And also, diabetes causes inflammation pretty much everywhere in the body, including in the eyes. So this is going to confound the normal function of the eyes.† [00:12:06]
[00:12:07] So what are some solutions for dry eye syndrome? Well, artificial tears. So they use polymers that make the eyes lubricated, like, you know, the lubricating eye drops, the artificial tears. Now, don’t let the term polymers scare you. You’re actually made out of polymers. The number one ingredient in your body is water. And the number two ingredient is collagen, which is a polymer. A polymer just means you have a long chain of one single substance and that chain is repeated over and over and over again. So, for instance, 30% of your body or something like that is collagen around that. It makes up like 36% of your bones, 67% of collagen in your joints, about 70% of your skin. Your skin is made out of polymers because the other polymer in there is hyaluronic acid, which we’re going to get to right now, because hyaluronic acid is the typical polymer they use in artificial tears.† [00:13:04]
[00:13:06] Now hyaluronic acid is an injection they shoot into people’s knees who for some reason can not have knee replacement surgery. But their knee is totally destroyed and each one is totally destroyed. They get it usually from the Cox comb. So they make synthetic hyaluronic acid. That’s a polymer. And a thing about hyaluronic acid, it’s a hydrogel. It holds many times its weight and water like at least ten times its weight in water. So when you put drops of hyaluronic acid into your eyes along with fluid and lubricants, etc., it really does a pretty good job of of wetting your eyes and keeping them wet. So in the daytime, they usually give you drops. And at nighttime, they usually give you a cream or an ointment. The reason they can’t give you a cream and ointment in the daytime is it can blur your vision temporarily.† [00:13:59]
[00:14:01] So let’s look at some of the supplements and I’d say top of the list is whatever gives you fish oils. And I wouldn’t count on eating fish unless you’re eating it every day. So I would definitely do fish oils or krill oil. There is one study that was riveting that showed that krill oil may have been superior to fish oils, we’ll get to that. So the Cochrane database of systematic reviews is pretty dependable, it’s highly thought of, and they review anything to do with the body and health and science, the health of the body. So they look at drug studies and studies on different diets and studies on different laser techniques and study, you know, anything that affects the body. Different surgeries, different supplements, different herbs. And what they do is they go around the world and they appoint specific people to review the studies. Typically, somebody who has some background and what they’re reviewing. So in this case, they picked Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the IBM Watson Health Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and also the University of Melbourne over in Australia. And they looked at 34 randomized controlled human clinical trials from 13 countries. That’s a lot of data, and they showed that the fish oil ingredients to EPA and the DHA increase tear production and improve the quality of your tears. Now so that could be fish oil, that could be krill or eating fish every day.† [00:15:45]
WHY OMEGA-3S ARE IMPORTANT? – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 569
[00:15:47] So, I mean, this makes sense. Dry eye syndrome becomes more common with age. Now, this is just a hypothesis. Nobody’s ever put this together, to my knowledge. Dry eye syndrome becomes more common with age. The amount of fish oils in your eyes, declines with age. Fish Oils are very important to your vision they’re needed for fine vision, they’re needed for color vision, they need it to prevent inflammation in the eyes. So it makes sense. Now, if you try a supplement for dry eyes, you have to give a time because anything that works in the eyes that you swallow because you’re swallowing the fish oils, you’re not rubbing them on your eyeballs anything that you swallow, it takes time to build up in the eyes. And first of all, it has to travel through the brain and the brain grabs whatever it needs and things that are good for the eyes are good for the brain. I have never seen something that’s good for the eyes that’s not good for the brain.† [00:16:42]
[00:16:43] So the brain’s got to grab what it needs, that might not be any left over for the eyes. And this is something that occurs with age, with many things that are important for the eyes. Like zinc, lutein, zeaxanthin, fish oils. There’s less of them reaching the eyes with age because there’s less reaching the brain with age, because we absorb less from our food. And that’s just the way it is. And if there’s not enough of the brain, the brain’s going to grab what it can and very little is going to dribble down to the eyes. So if you try these supplements, give them some time and you swallow them, of course.† [00:17:18]
[00:17:19] So this is the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Connecticut, their Department of Ophthalmology. And they said, hey, fish oils, the EPA and DHEA have been shown to help dry eye syndrome. I just wanted to say that because it’s all different, researchers saying this. So here’s the journal Ophthalmology, January 2017, it’s the University of Melbourne Department of Vision Sciences because the University of Melbourne has done a lot of research on fish oils. The Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity, that’s also in Melbourne, Australia. And they took patients with dry eye syndrome and they were supplementing them with fish oils or krill oil or a placebo. Now both fish oils and krill oil made the tears more liquidy and less likely to evaporate. So better at moisturizing the eye is better at lubricating the eyes. And this is compared to placebo. But only the krill improved the symptoms of dry eye syndrome, which is also called dry eye disease.† [00:18:26]
[00:18:28] So the krill oil and this took time, didn’t happen overnight. It reduced the grittiness, the feeling of a foreign object in the eyes, you know, like dirt, less stinging, less itchiness all in all, it was actually improving the symptoms. So here’s the journal of so here’s the journal of Ophthalmological and Physiological Optics. That’s a good British journal the optometrist and optricians in Great Britain use that it gets better than the fish oils or the krill oils just making the tears more liquidy and better at lubricating the eyes, because they found that the fish oils that are in krill or fish oil capsules protect the nerves of the eyes of people with dry eye syndrome. So it’s helping put off long term damage to your your visual system.† [00:19:27]
[00:19:29] Now let’s look at some other supplements. This is the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It’s August 2020 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. That’s down in Nashville. And this was along with various Chinese research institutions. So international studies are very common cooperation between researchers and scientists throughout the world are getting more and more common because of the Internet. It’s easier and texting and all this. So it was 360 patients with dry eye syndrome. They gave them a placebo or they gave them a supplement with lutein and zeaxanthin their pigments you find in fruits mostly and vegetables. But along with the lutein and zeaxanthin, there was black currant. Now that’s interesting.† [00:20:19]
[00:20:20] Black currant is also called cassis and it has these purplish deep blue pigments in it, like Malvidin that are very good for the eyes. They also used chrysanthemum and Goji Berry. Goji Berry is loaded with antioxidants, so it reduces inflammation. And the supplement was very good in people who are suffering with dry eyes from like being on computers, etc., for the eye fatigue, for the blurry vision and for the eye soreness. So it really is worth using because it’s an anti-inflammatory that kind of like supports the functions of the eyes, lutein and zeaxanthin. You can add to that some zinc, some vitamin C, some natural vitamin E, some Bilberry, some cassis berry, which is also called black currant. And you can add some what else would also be good and some natural beta carotene. The supplement will help with the eye fatigue and the blurriness, etc.† [00:21:20]
[00:21:20] So here’s the journal PLoS One, which is a great American journal that our tax dollars pay for. It’s the objective of PLoS One to spread good information throughout the world to people who cannot afford a subscriptions to medical journals. So if you were a single doctor, a single practice doctor, and some small town in North Dakota, you have access to good information. Even though you’re not making the money and you don’t have the money, you get this information for free. So PLoS One is cool, it’s heroic. So this is PLoS One January 2016. It’s various research institutions in Korea, medical schools and hospitals and clinics, etc. That’s over 17,500 patients with dry eye syndrome. And here’s what they found, when they compared people with healthy eyes to those with dry eye syndrome, the vitamin D in their blood was consistently lower in dry eye syndrome.† [00:22:24]
[00:22:24] Now, we do know that vitamin D is an anti-inflammatory. We do know vitamin D helps lower the risk of developing autoimmune diseases. And we also know that vitamin D does play some part and functions in the eyes. It’s very important in the brain, but it’s also important in the eyes. So it’s not going to hurt to take some vitamin D, if you have some dry eye syndrome, take it with food, it’s absorbed better. So here’s a little bit more evidence for vitamin D. This is a systematic review and a systematic review, which is easier to do today. Scientists and doctors and researchers going to all these different medical web sites and they gather all the data on the specific type of subject they’re looking for.† [00:23:09]
[00:23:09] So in this case, they gathered data on people with dry eye syndrome and vitamin D it’s in the journal Acta Ophthalmologica, which is a good European eye journal and it was ten studies included in their review, about 19,000 patients. Patients with dry eye syndrome had lower levels of vitamin D than patients with healthy eyes. So it’s more of the same. But here’s what they found. The worse the level of vitamin D, the lower the level of vitamin D, the worse the symptoms, the more severe the symptoms of dry eye syndrome and less the production of tears. So as vitamin D levels declined, the there was fewer tears and the health of the tears were decreasing and the symptoms were worsening.† [00:24:03]
[00:24:05] So here’s what I would recommend. If you have dry eye syndrome, using an eye drop in the daytime and artificial tears is fine. They’re nontoxic, get a good one and make sure it has some hyaluronic acid in it and which is natural to the human body by the way, your skin is about 20 or 30% hyaluronic acid that holds the moisture in to your skin. It’s also in the whites of your eyes the whites of your eyes is basically hyaluronic acid water and a little collagen and it’s in you knee joint. And then use a good vitamin for the eyes like a good one that I’ve used in the past that I give to my wife is called Macula Hx, it’s a nice combination. And then take the additional lutein, with zeaxanthin. Definitely take fish oils, like I take two a day to preserve the health of my brain and my heart, my muscles, my bones and my eyes. Cause fish oils affect all those. So take the Fish Oils because they’re good for your brain and your eyes. Take a good vision related supplement. Make sure that beta carotene and vitamin E are natural or they’re not going to work as well. The beta carotene and vitamin E have to be natural sourced. The synthetic source doesn’t work as well. And get some additional lutein and zeaxanthin and it really should help you. Make sure in that eye and vision formula there’s a good amount of zinc like 30-40 milligrams of zinc.† [00:25:36]
[00:25:38] So thank you for listening to today’s podcast episode. You can find all of our episodes for free or wherever you listen to podcasts, just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find InVite on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at InViteⓇ Health. And of course, if you listen to the podcast, could you please subscribe and leave us a review? It’s helpful. I want to thank you for listening. Hope to see you next time in the next episode of the InVite HealthⓇ podcast. This is Jerry Hickey signing off. Have a great day.† [00:25:38]
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