This week there were two articles in medicalnews.com reviewing separate studies that show the benefits of broccoli. One of the articles that you can find by clicking here reports about a study that found that a compound in broccoli and kale helps suppress tumor growth. A second article that can be found here says that broccoli sprout extract may help treat schizophrenia. The interesting thing to me is that the articles do not state that actually eating broccoli has benefits. Often science will look for compounds in foods to isolate and study that might do something beneficial. But actually eating broccoli is much more holistic in my eyes than isolating a compound, increasing its strength and than taking it as a supplement. It seems to me that just eating things that we have evolved to eat, like broccoli with all the things it contains including fiber and vitamins and minerals, must be better for you than making a pill out of it. I could be wrong and in some instances this might not be the case. But keep eating your vegetables just in case. 

Ok, this one is probably a bit 'out there' for some people, but I loved this book and I think you might too. This book is about a women named Anita Moorjani who had terminal cancer, dies, has an NDE (Near Death Experience) and returns to her body. This sort of thing has been reported for hundreds if not thousands of years by thousands of people. The interesting thing about this book is that soon after returning from her NDE Anita's cancer was completely gone. Anita was convinced to write an account of her experience on an NDE website. The owner of the website, who is himself an oncologist, was so fascinated by the story that he flew to Hong Kong to review her medical records. He found that indeed she had had a miraculous cancer remission. The book is well written and and as a bonus the Kindle version has videos of Anita telling parts of her story. You can read her original NDE story on Dr. Long's NDE database here. But the book ads so much more and Anita's insight from her experience is very inspiring. Anita's original NDE report here.

This book is by Lillian Bridges a 5th generation Chinese face reader. Most people don't know about Chinese face reading and I am no expert in it, but I have been around it enough to know how powerful it can be. It is a powerful way of learning about many aspects of yourself including health, personality, talents and can help you set goals and find your purpose. If you read this book you will also learn about the 5 Element Theory of Chinese medicine. My partner Remee Gemo trained with Lillian for several years and is an amazing Chinese face reader. She gives readings to individuals and groups. Remee also uses this method to diagnose patients who have mystery illnesses, illness that no one seems to know what is going on. If you are interested read more on Remee's site and/or pick up this excellent book to learn all the basics. 

The are of course literally thousands of diet books. And most of them work pretty good as long as you stick to it. Most of them work, I would add - within reason. Some diet books are written just to make money, because if you write one, someone will buy it. 
When I heard a few years ago that America's quote 'favorite diet and fitness expert Jorge Cruise' had written a diet book that espouses losing weight by just counting sugar calories, it piqued my interest. I liked the simplicity of it. One of the things that I believe can stop someone from executing a new diet is the complexity. In fact the first review I read called it 'one of the best and easiest low carb diets.'  
We definitely have a sugar epidemic in the US, and we definitely have an obesity epidemic. Maybe their is a connection? I think so. So maybe just counting your total grams of sugar per day really will make you lose weight. Of course the book also addresses the problem of hidden sugar. No one really knows how much sugar is added for example to your standard takeout Chinese food. Most people do not read labels and this is something that this book will require you to do. So I'm in. Of course no diet book is good for everyone but this one will surely help some, especially those sugar addicts we all know or might even be. 

A new report out found that as many as 1 in 5 people diagnosed with MS does not have the disease. This of course is one more reason to always get a second opinion and maybe even a third.  And an added reason that this is a such an important finding regarding MS, is because once you start the drugs that are used to treat it, getting off of them is somewhere between very hard to impossible. So if the diagnosis is incorrect than you hav. You can find the report at this link. 

According to Chinese medicine, the best time to do a detox is in the Spring. It's a bit complicated to go into the details here as to why this is the best time of year for this. But if you are interested in learning more or participating in the spring detox, you can contact my partner - Remee. Remee has been runnig a spring detox for her patients for well over a decade and they love it. You can check out this program at this link. 

An interesting study from the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University found that women with LDL (the bad cholesterol) levels below 100 mg/dL may actually be MORE at risk for certain types of strokes. And the recommended levels of LDL are below this level! You can read a report on the study here. I'm not sure what is up with this, but to me it's another example that shows that we don't really have everything figured out (most things?). That there are very few absolutes in health. I am not reporting this to scare anyone, just to remind you to be skeptical of all medical advice  - including my own! One day meat is bad for you and the next it's saving you. One day they recommend to take your vitamins and the next they say it doesn't really do anything and might be harming you. There are some things that do seem to be written in stone, maybe. Like vegetables are most likely good for you. And exercise too, unless you are hit by a truck while jogging. Maybe  everything in moderation should be the maxim, including cholesterol drugs. 

I like to tell the story that the first time I ever got interested in things maybe considered 'alternative' was from taking a class at my alma mater the University of Texas at Austin. UT had classes called informal classes that the community could take and that students or exes could take at a reduced rate. And being Austin, the range and scope of the classes was eclectic to say the least. So, the first class I ever took there was actually a yoga class. This was before yoga was even popular and I didn't know it until later but for me it was life changing. Because, the way I felt after those first yoga classes I can still remember. Another class I took was on breathing. Amazing, a class on breathing. But the teacher, Charles McInerney was so impressive and informed about the way our breath can effect our health, that I realized that we can do things to become healthier on our own, without meds or western intervention. This opened up a new way of thinking for me. I hope Charles won't mind me linking to his web site, so here goes. For some amazing content click here.  I recommend reading his blog as well. 
So I was very interested in the study you can find here that talks about a western approach to improving our breathing that can increase heart and brain health in just 5 minutes a day. The yogis have been doing a practice called pranayama or breath control for thousands of years. And adding pranyama to your yoga practice is a good idea. 

In a word - no. Results of medical and lifestyle studies that could help us decide how to live healthier lives are a dime a dozen on the internet. Instead of taking these results at face value and perhaps changing your behavior, it is best to think about if the results are completely valid or not. Then you can decide if the study was good science or flawed in some respect. And believe me all studies that post headline-making results are not good science. Here are a few things to look for so you can decide: 1. look first at possible conflicts of interest. Who funded the study? How would gain from the results? if you read report of the fantastic health benefits of coffee, it should be a red flag if that study was funded by Starbucks! 2. how large a study was it and for how long? it makes sense that a study of 9 people done over a weekend might be a lot less accurate than one done with 10,000 people over 30 years. 3. how was the study conducted? If, for example, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire about how many times in the past year they ate meat, I would question the accuracy of the data, because memories can be bad. 4. was it a double blind study? The double blind study is the gold standard in research. This means that the person who is conducting the study as well the person in the study both do not know who is receiving a particular treatment. For instance if there is a placebo and a real drug given randomly to participants, neither the giver not the taker know who got the real drug and who got the placebo. This way the person giving the drug out as well as the one taking it does not expect a certain outcome. 
This type of thinking through studies and even polls works well not just for scientific papers but for any results that come out trying to influence you. Like a study showing that the best cars are made by Ford. Who funded the study (was it Ford?), If it was a poll who did they ask? Maybe they just polled 100 Ford dealership owners?
So we should be look a little deeper into any research or claims  in order to determine if the results are valid. Its healthy to have a degree of skepticism. 

Sometimes is the simple things that we do or don't do that make a big difference in our health and maybe even our lives. A study recently published in the International Journal of Cancer found an association between drinking tea at very high temperature and the risk of developing esophageal cancer. This was a big study and they followed the 5000 participants for more than 10 years. The results are rather staggering. Here they are: Overall, the study found that drinking 700 milliliters (ml) of "very hot" tea per day increased the chances of esophageal cancer by 90 percent compared with drinking the same daily amount of cold or lukewarm tea. So, what I get from this is that the inflammation caused by the hot beverage causes, on a day to day basis, inflammation that doesn't have a chance to diminish, and over time can lead to tissue damage and cancer. As the Greeks told us, everything in moderation (or pan metron ariston in Greek). Probably a good thing to keep in mind.