Healthy by Nature radio show this week: Kidneys are two of our organs that quietly do remarkably complex and crucial jobs without much appreciation or attention until they get in trouble. We can head them into harms way without realizing it and end up suffering high blood pressure, kidney stones and much worse. Rich Snyder, DO, author of What You Must Know about Kidney Disease: A Practical Guide to Using Conventional and Complementary Treatments, will help us with your questions about kidney health and disease treatments. Live 8 AM Central. Click here to find podcasts, show archives and ways to listen nationwide. Call with your kidney questions at 1-800-281-8255.
 
A new way to keep your wits about you
Last week we discussed how B complex vitamins help with stress and depression. LINK. Would you be even more impressed to know that they help also protect our brains from shrinking? (I don’t know about you, but I’ve got no extra brain to spare!) A recent study in England followed 168 subjects, ages 70 and up, who had mild memory problems. One group took a placebo and the active group took a daily combination of B12, B6 and Folic Acid. The group that took the B’s did 70% better on memory tests than the placebo group. LINK Even more remarkable, at the end of the 2 years, the B vitamin group had preserved 30% more brain mass than the controls. LINK

That by no means implies that the combination is a cure for dementia, but no drug offers even that much help. Further more, B12, B6 and Folic Acid have additional fringe benefits. Those 3 B’s are also known to help protect us from a chemical in the blood, homocysteine, that is also believed to be a cause of heart disease and even cancer. It is indeed suspicious that Alzheimer’s patients have higher levels of homosysteine.

Food sources of B’s include nutritional yeast and whole grains. Meats, and beef (especially beef liver) is a good source of B12. (We’ve all heard of people getting energy from a B12 shot.) But these days commercial beef contains so many antibiotics and hormones, that we should consider buying range fed meat. The study above and the one last week used greater amounts of B’s than you can get from food. Unless you get your multivitamin at a health food store, it probably has wimpy levels designed to only prevent terrible deficiency diseases. What I take is a sublingual called No-Shot that is both a high dose and exceptionally pleasant to take. I buy it from one of our sponsors. LINK.

My first book : Natural Alternatives to Nexium, Maalox, Tagamet, Prilosec & Other Acid Blockers. Subtitle: What to Use to Relieve Acid Reflux, Heartburn, and Gastric Ailments.

My latest book : Aloe Vera-Modern Science Sheds Light on an Ancient Herbal Remedy

Copyright 2011 Martie Whittekin, CCN