therapeutic lifestyle | Central Illinois Natural Health Clinic

Lifestyle changes, not a magic pill, can reverse Alzheimer’s

Last summer, a research group from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) quietly published the results of a new approach in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. What they found was striking. Although the size of the study was small, every participant demonstrated such marked improvement that almost all were found to be in the normal range on testing for memory and cognition by the study’s end.

Gamification

Healthy lifestyle habits: we know we should do them, but sometimes, it just seems like work. Yes, Dr. Peters, I know that a Mediterranean diet and exercise will decrease my risk of dying, but it’s just one more thing to add to the daily to-do list. A phenomenon has popped up in recent years that makes it just a little less onerous to keep our minds and bodies fit:

Healthy Food? Blech!

One of the main impediments that many people cite in avoiding healthy foods is taste. When the average American is faced with the choice between a Frappuccino and a kale salad, it’s no mystery which one will be chosen. Our brains are hard-wired to seek out fats, sugar, and salt for survival — but with the modern food-industrial complex,

More Good News for Coffee

By now, you’ve probably heard that coffee is not the no-no that natural health experts used to think it was. True, if you drink a lot of it, it can have negative effects such as disrupting sleep, increasing anxiety, and over the long term, exhausting your adrenal reserves. In fact, you may recall that researchers have even found the cut-off for how much is too much: more than four cups (32 fluid ounces) per day increases the risk of death.

Natural Medicine Myth #4: Acai Berry

This is a continuation of my series (in no particular order) on misperceptions in the field of natural medicine. My previous articles focused on policosanol, cinnamon, and systemic candida.

If you’ve been to any sites on the World Wide Web in the past several years,

Natural Medicine Myth #2: Cinnamon

Starting with last week’s article about policosanol, I have been outlining five of the most common misperceptions I encounter in the field of natural medicine, and examine some more effective alternatives.

Myth #2: Cinnamon controls blood sugar (or even “cures” diabetes).
T’ype 2 diabetes and “pre-diabetes” (insulin resistance) are on the rise in the U.S.,

Great Science on What We Should Eat

In recent years, medical researchers have recognized some common denominators in chronic degenerative diseases: insulin resistance, long-term inflammation, high blood pressure, and cholesterol imbalance (to name a few). In fact, several of these factors have been grouped together to form metabolic syndrome, a constellation of symptoms including at least 3 of the following 5 conditions:

Fasting blood sugar (glucose) ≥100 mg/dL
Blood pressure ≥130/85 mm Hg
Triglycerides ≥150 mg/dL
HDL-C (“good cholesterol”) <

Transitions

It’s that time of year.

Yes, the weather is still blazing summer heat (though we’ve finally been getting a break now and then!), but we hit a transition in the last couple of weeks. Somewhere in there, we reached the point where it’s still dark outside when my 5:30am alarm goes off. There’s about a three-month period —

If You Value Freedom, Then Read On

This Independence Day, my family watched the movie 1776, a dramatic reminder of the birth of our nation, and the risks the founding fathers were taking to stand for freedom from tyranny. The Declaration of Independence was not just a piece of paper — it was a set of principles that was carefully crafted and debated,

With health care, do you get what you pay for?

The U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world, yet a recent study found that we trail many other countries in terms of life expectancy. If life expectancy is a measure of population health, then what is our money buying? It’s nice to have access to expensive, high-tech medicine like MRIs,

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