2007-12-24T13:30:21Z urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b93C-0003939e0af6 CoalEngine CoalSpeak urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a 2007-12-24T13:30:21Z

Getting Ready for the New Year By: Jacqueline Jacques, ND, Naturopathic Doctor Category: Jacqueline Jacques, ND Printer Friendly Most people believe they gain a lot of weight over the holidays. Of course, why wouldn’t they? For most US households, the season that starts with Halloween and ands with that Champagne toast in the final minutes of December is punctuated by candy, cookies, eggnog, special dinners, parties and a dozen other things that come with calories counts higher than your credit card balance. How much do you think you gain this time of year? Most people think 5 to 10 pounds. The good news is, it’s not usually anywhere near that. A study conducted in the year 2000 and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (A Prospective Study of Holiday Weight Gain), found that between Thanksgiving and mid-January, most people only gain just under a pound. The bad news? We tend to do this every year and never take it off. This study found the following things: The average adult in the US gains just under a pound per year Almost all of this is gained during the holidays Most people never take this off, so it is cumulative, year after year Holiday weight gain contributes significantly to lifetime weight gain for this reason So it’s no wonder we want to try to lose weight in the New Year. Forty-five percent of adults who make resolutions will resolve to lose weight. And trust me, the weight loss industry knows this. January is the biggest season of the year for new gym memberships, enrollment in weight loss programs, and the purchase of diet products. Right now, they are thinking about you eating those cookies that your neighbor made, and they are laying in wait. So how do you make smart choices going into the New Year? When most people set a weight loss resolution it is about a number. “I want to lose _ pounds.” I am going to suggest that it this is you, you should try something different this year. Try setting a health resolution instead. Ask yourself “what can I do this year to help myself be healthier” and make a list of the things that you need to help you on your way. This list might look like this: Make doctor’s appointment. If you want to be healthy and lose weight, this is a great place to start. Talk to your doctor about your weight. Get an accurate scale weight and BMI (Body Mass Index). Get labs done to see how healthy your heart is and what your blood sugar is. Find out if you may be a candidate for weight loss surgery, or if diet and exercise are a better option. Don’t just run out and join a gym, make a consult (or 2) with a trainer. One thing you will find in abundance in January - free trail memberships. Find 2-3 fitness facilities in your area and try before you buy. See if you can get a 15 or 20 minute consult with a trainer, try a free class, etc. If you like what you are signing up for, and it is convenient, you are much more likely to do it. Clean out your kitchen. Healthy - and thinner - start at home. Still have Halloween candy and cookies in the house. Toss them. Think about stocking your kitchen with healthy staples so that good food is always there and temptations are not. If you eat out regularly, locate some healthy restaurants in your area that can become new favorites. Don’t do it alone. While it is great to get healthy by yourself for yourself, most people will be more successful if they can do this with others. Maybe you enlist your whole family in a wellness strategy, or get your best friend to join you for walks. My final words: be wary of the quick fixes that will be everywhere come January 1. There are NO super-fast, super-easy ways to lose 10 pounds in a week, or 30 pounds in 30 days, or melt away fat while you eat. These are mostly super-fast, super-easy ways to spend your money. See you all in 2008! Printer Friendly

urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a 2007-12-17T22:49:17Z

Good News on a Good Thing (Multivitamin Assists Weight Loss and Appetite) By: Jacqueline Jacques, ND, Naturopathic Doctor Printer Friendly Among the many nutritional myths out there, I have long battled against a belief that some people hold that taking a multivitamin makes them more hungry and leads them to gain weight. Two new pieces of research show us some good news. Two studies published in late November the British Journal of Nutrition indicate that taking a multivitamin and mineral supplement may assist in weight management. The first study reported on a survey of survey of 267 men and 320 women aged 20 to 65. The survey found that in men regularly taking a dietary supplement weighed less, had less body fat, and lower BMI than those who did not. Women reported similar results, as well as generally reduced appetite. In the second study, obese patients were placed on a low calorie diet and either given a multivitamin or placebo. While both group lost weight equally, those taking the multivitamin reported significantly reduced hunger both between and after meals. What should this tell us? Our metabolism is driven by nutrients - vitamins and minerals are the cofactors that make all the reactions work. When we lack these nutrients, things just don’t work as well. Moreover, a basic reason we eat is to get the nutrients we need. When the body doesn’t get enough of what it needs, one thing it does is make you feel hungry so you will eat more to get those nutrients. There is ample evidence that the general American public does not meet their daily nutritional needs for many vitamins and minerals. On top of that we know there are specific deficiencies associated with obesity and those who have had weight loss surgery have new and added risks. Bottom line - if you are being weight conscious, a multivitamin is a simple safe thing you can take every day. Even if it doesn’t have a dramatic impact on your weight or appetite, it is good for your health. And that is good news! Printer Friendly

urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a 2007-11-24T19:32:01Z

Busted…Again By: Jacqueline Jacques, ND, Naturopathic Doctor Category: Jacqueline Jacques, ND Printer Friendly Just in time for the holidays, Kevin Trudeau, author and promoter, was found to be in contempt of a past FTC injunction against him for presenting false and misleading weight loss claims in his book The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About, and the associated infomercial. Take a look at the any best-seller list for non-fiction and there is a good chance that at least two of the book in the top ten are weight loss books. Look closely at these books, and they are all sure to promote themselves as the best possible solution to help you lose weight and keep it off. So you might ask, if every single diet book in America promotes itself as the latest and greatest thing why is the government picking on Kevin Trudeau? This is a reasonable question if you don’t know anything about Trudeau. But if you take a look at his history, he is clearly a repeat offender in the “take advantage of people who feel desperate” category. And for this reason, I have a hard time mustering a lot of sympathy for this current bust. Here is a brief history of his track record: In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission fined Trudeau along with a group of product developers and promoters for a long list of violations related to false and deceptive claims for products advertised for addiction, detoxification/weight loss, hair loss, IQ, and reading proficiency. Trudeau was personally fined $500,000 for consumer redress and was formally barred from making false claims for products in the future. You can read the FTC ruling here. Clearly, that didn’t stop him. In 2003, Trudeau along with Robert Barefoot, Shop America and others were placed under an FTC injunction forbidding them from making continued claims for a coral calcium product. They had been claiming in infomercials and other media that coral calcium could cure cancer, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and more. Unfortunately, the injunction didn’t really mean much to Trudeau. He continued to make claims for this product and others (one being an analgesic tape that was promoted as a permanent cure for all sorts of chronic pain). So in 2004, the FTC charged him with contempt and fined him $500,000 in cash plus forced him to hand over $1.5 million in assets (including a vacation home and a luxury vehicle). In 2005 Trudeau released the book Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You To Know About along with an infomercial. This started what continues as an ongoing battle with the FTC and the State of New York. And now for the latest (and the reason this is going into this Blog. On November 19th 2007, Trudeau was found in contempt of court for violating the 2004 injunction. U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Gettleman ruled that Trudeau “clearly misrepresents in his advertisements the difficulty of the diet described in his book, and by doing so, he has misled thousands of consumers.” Punishment is yet to be determined. You can read the ruling here. So besides being a repeat offender who clearly believes that the best way to make a living is to prey off the despair and trustfulness of people who are sick, in pain, and desperate to lose weight (which is contemptible by itself), what is Trudeau claiming in his book that got him in trouble this time? The “diet” plan that Trudeau (beware – this is a spoiler if you haven’t read the book…) extols as a miracle that government conspiracy is preventing you from having access to is one with a troubled past. It is a four-phased program that claims to change your metabolism by controlling your hormones, banishing hunger, and regulating your body’s fat cells. The first phase requires the adoption of an organic diet that is eaten six times a day and also asks dieter to have 15 colonics in 30 days, take regular saunas, and exercise for an hour a day. The second phase, dieters are instructed to eat only 500 calories per day, find a doctor to give them off label injections of the hormone beta-hCG, and stop using all medications and cosmetics. In the third phase you can eat as much as you want as long as it is organic, unsweetened, and contains no starch or trans fats. You are also instructed to get massages, avoid fluorescent lights and air conditioning, sauna, and take homeopathic human growth hormone. The fourth and final phase (which is the rest of your life), is an ongoing relatively restrictive diet and exercise routine. Trudeau says that “They” don’t want you to know about this because since significant parts of this plan were first introduced to America in the 1950s by British physician ATW Simeons who wrote the book Pounds and Inches: A New Approach to Obesity. The federal government has made repeat attempts to protect the public from something that is not only unproven for weight loss, but is potentially dangerous. A warning issued to physicians in a 1962 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) called the program “potentially more hazardous to the patient’s health than continued obesity.” In the 1970s as some unscrupulous practitioners continued to use this protocol to make money off desperation of their clients, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began requiring all manufacturers of the hormone beta-hCG to place a warning on the product that reads: hCG has not been demonstrated to be effective adjunctive therapy in the treatment of obesity. There is no substantial evidence that it increases weight loss beyond that resulting from caloric restriction, that it causes a more attractive or “normal” distribution of fat, or that it decreases the hunger and discomfort associated with calorie-restricted diets. Also in the 1970s, the FDA required that doctors and clinics using these methods for weight loss stop claiming that their methods are safe and effective. While it did not ban them from using hCG, it did require them to have all patients sign an informed consent saying that they understood that they were using a drug that was unapproved for this purpose. For the record, hCG is a hormone that women’s bodies make in pregnancy – it is actually the hormone that is tested for when you get a pregnancy test. Repeat studies on hCG for weight loss have not shown it to be safe or effective (except in conjunction with a 500 calorie diet – which is going to cause you to lose weight anyway, trust me). It’s also not free of side effects which can include: Headache, irritability, restlessness, depression, fatigue, edema (swelling), gynecomastia (swelling of breast tissue in men or women), pain at the site of injection, exacerbation of epilepsy, migraine or asthma, and severe allergic reactions. In women it may further cause ovarian cysts, ovarian swelling, ovarian hyperstimulation, and blood clots. In men, it may also cause spontaneous tumors of the testicles. Click here to read a complete list of side effects. You would think, given all of the above, that both doctors and patients would stop – but do a quick internet search for hCG and weight loss and you will find a thriving industry. I want today’s blog not only to inform you about Trudeau. We are well into the holiday season – which means the post-holiday/New Year’s resolution-induced diet season is right around the corner. Be aware. Be aware of repeat offenders like Trudeau who really just want to make money and don’t care at all about you and your need to lose weight. Be cautious. I would agree that the government and the FDA don’t have a perfect track record, but if they have taken the effort to warn you about something, try to find out why. Be smart. You have probably tried to lose weight before and you know it is not a super easy thing to do. If a book or an ad is telling you that the pounds and inches are going to melt away forever with no effort on your part, they are lying. It’s that simple. Printer Friendly

urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a 2007-11-15T00:12:06Z

Sour Over Vinegar By: Jacqueline Jacques, ND, Naturopathic Doctor Category: Jacqueline Jacques, ND Printer Friendly As long as there have been people needing to lose weight, there have been other people trying to sell them stuff to lose weight with. The more people there are who need to lose weight, to more pills, potions, diets, and machines appear to come to the rescue. Apple cider vinegar has been touted as a cure all for everything from digestive ailments to rheumatism. Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine” reportedly gave it to patients as a healing tonic in 400 BC. To the best estimates of modern-day herbalists, apple cider vinegar first appeared in weight loss remedies in the 1970s – although modern proponents claim that this was the secret weight loss cure of Ancient Egypt. The secret recipe that started the modern-day trend was a blend of Apple Cider Vinegar, kelp (seaweed), lecithin, and vitamin B6. The story was that the lecithin emulsified fat, iodine in the kelp increased thyroid function (speeding up metabolism), B6 somehow metabolized the freed fat, and the vinegar would then breakdown or dissolve the fat and accelerate metabolism. Other theories have tied weight loss benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar to increased detoxification or improved pH. In the 80s and 90s this remedy mostly went underground as it was replaced by herbal stimulants like ephedra and guarana, and later even more exotic substances. But Apple Cider Vinegar seems to have re-emerged in recent years with a renewed vigor – and mostly recently it has shown up in an FDA action against a company in Florida called Confidence Inc. Confidence, sells a weight loss product called Metaboslim. The company website www.confidenceusa.com says some pretty appealing things about the product, which also contains Hawthorne, Tea, Cassia, and some Calcium. To quote from their website: The main ingredient in MetaboSlim is Apple Cider Vinegar - - the most natural fat eater that also eliminates toxins. Apple Cider Vinegar can transmit orders to the fat cells to drain and send fat to the muscles through the bloodstream. This redirected fat can be eliminated by the muscles as they burn calories. Therefore MetaboSlim can help to eliminate fat deposits on the stomach, hips, legs and butt in a very brief period and also stop the development of new fat cells. It works like an anti-fat police force and plays an important part of a healthy weight management program for individuals wanting to loose weight. Amazing. I am currently going to skip a compelling discussion of illegal claims – which all of these are under Federal Trade Commission regulations. If you are interested in knowing more about deceptive tools used in weight loss product advertising, look at last week’s blog and follow the links to the FTC educational site. What I find more interesting is that Confidence seems Confident enough to keep making these product claims on their web site even after they were forced by the FDA to recall this product earlier in the year when it was found to contain the weight loss drug sibutramine. Not only is this potentially dangerous for people to take a drug without their knowledge, but it is the worst form of deception. (To see the FDA recall letter follow this link http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/confidence08_07.html People who took the adulterated product will not attribute their results (good, bad or dangerous) to the natural ingredients in the product. No wonder people don’t trust the dietary supplement industry! Is there any evidence at all that Apple Cider Vinegar can help you lose weight? Not much. I did find a study done in Egypt in 2001 that showed that mice given a high dose of Apple Cider Vinegar for 4 weeks had significant weight loss compared to those on a controlled diet. However, the vinegar-eating mice also had pretty significant damage to their livers, stomachs, and small intestines – including erosion of the lining of the stomach and intestines (ie, ulcers) and changes in the cells of the liver. Not good for the mice. I also found a case report of a woman who suffered an acid burn in her esophagus from taking Apple Cider Vinegar tablets. As part of the follow up to that case, investigators tested many products and found that some of them were so acidic (containing acetic acid levels over 20%) that they were in the range that the Consumer Product Safety Commission considers poisonous to humans. Apple Cider Vinegar has some very good and valid uses. You can use it in salad dressing, it makes a great addition to marinades or to tenderize meat, you can clean gold jewelry with it, and you can use it as a natural weed killer in your garden. But as a weight loss agent, it is probably not effective, and it could be harmful. References: Hill L. L., Woodruff L. H., Foote J. C., Barreto-Alcoba M. Esophageal Injury by Apple Cider Vinegar Tablets and Subsequent Evaluation of Products. JADA; 105(7): 1141-1144 (July 2005). Mohamed el-OA, et al. The effect of cider vinegar on some nutritional and physiological parameters in mice. J Egypt Public Health Assoc. 2001;76(1-2):17-36. Printer Friendly

urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a 2007-11-03T14:17:40Z

Nutritional Mythology By: Jacqueline Jacques, ND, Naturopathic Doctor Category: Jacqueline Jacques, ND Printer Friendly Lose Weight Without Dieting! Newly discovered plant from Brazil acts like “herbal exercise” – you’ll never need to go to the gym again! South American’s have long known the secret of a traditional plant that helps many a Brazilian beauty maintain her long sleek legs. But now, you can have these same benefits. BrazileanTM is the first product available in the United States that contains this incredible plant that will help you lose inches and get the toned look you want without hours of exercise. For only $49.95 a month – about what you pay for that gym membership – you can finally get results. Did I get your attention? Are you ready to order? Welcome to my blog. How many ads have you read that sounded like this? How many times have you thought, “It sounds too good to be true, but maybe…” My name is Dr Jacqueline Jacques, and this blog is going to focus on what I like to call Nutritional Myth. But don’t worry, we’ll look at reality too. Ultimately, the goal will be to sort of the crazy world of nutrition, dietary supplements, and obesity – and try to make some sense out of all the hype. Since we are new to each other, I thought I would take a brief moment to introduce myself. I’ll start with my name: It is not a mistake. My first and last names are almost identical. And despite appearances, I am not French, but I do speak just a little. That’s also not a typo in my professional title – it’s really an N not an M. I am a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, an “ND.” To keep it simple, it is easiest to think of NDs as primary care doctors who specialize in natural therapies. We study everything that “regular” doctors study plus medical nutrition, herbal/botanical medicine, physical medicine and more. If you really want to know more, you can visit the national organization online at www.naturopathic.org I have also spent the past five years working in the area of nutrition and weight loss surgery. When WLS Lifestyles suggested this blog to me I knew immediately what I wanted to focus on. I have spent a lot of my career in the dietary supplement industry, and I know it well. I have also spent a lot of my career educating both the public and other health professionals about the dietary supplement industry. The dietary supplement industry makes a lot of money off of weight loss and obesity. What do I mean when I say “a lot”? According to AC Neilson, in 2005 alone, US consumers spent over 322 million dollars on the category of weight-loss dietary supplements, shakes and bars. This number does not include what was spent on prescription or over-the-counter weight loss drugs, physician-supervised medical weight management, gym memberships, liposuction, weight loss books, or other treatments. By some recent accounts, all included, we are currently spending – out of pocket – over 30 Billion dollars per year* in a national attempt to lose weight. As a nation, we are still getting fatter. If you are reading this blog, you probably know that already. The dietary supplement industry definitely knows, and offers hundreds of solutions to boost your metabolism, burn fat, control appetite, trim your waistline, and shrink your wallet. It’s hard to go a day without seeing the ad or infomercial for the amazing new herb from the depths of the Amazon that will melt away the pounds; or finding the email in your inbox declaring that, you too, can lose 30 pounds in 30 days with a single pill; or hearing the announcer on the radio tell you all about the magical elixir you can drink at bedtime to shed pounds while you sleep. They show pictures too. You know what I mean – those before and after shots of pot-bellied men and cottage-cheese-thighed women looking toned and tanned and happy after just a few weeks or months. And despite the disclaimers telling us that Results are Not Typical, we believe them. At least we want to believe them. Tens of thousands of us are willing to take the promise of a miracle at face value and sign up to try the latest cure time and time again. So the question is: Does any of this stuff work? Is there anything at all that the natural products industry has to offer that may live up to the promises these companies make? Are these things safe? And how is it that they can make these incredible claims? This blog is going to look very carefully at the products, ingredients, pills, potions, creams and more that promise to help you lose weight. We will look at the science, we will look at the hype, and we will try to come to some conclusions about what is real. Since my area of expertise includes nutrition, I will also take a look at many of the latest trends in weight loss books. You can expect that over time we will explore the basics of low-fat and low-carb as well as the more exotic ideas of food combining, blood-type dieting, and master-cleansing. We will also explore cultural diets from the Okinawan Diet to the Mediterranean to the Paleolithic (maybe we had it right when we were hunter-gatherers?). Finally, I am hoping that some of you readers will have your own suggestions of things that you want to know. The latest herbal pill that you saw on TV, or the new diet your friend said she has already lost 10 pounds on – or maybe you have always wanted to know if it’s true that some foods burn more calories than they contain? I promise that I will do my very best to answer critically, honestly and as entertainingly as possible. Here’s a thing I will leave you to think about today: How Can They Say That? When you see ads like the one I created at the start of this blog, don’t you wonder how dietary supplement companies can make such amazing claims about their products? If they can say it in an ad, it has to be true, doesn’t it? Legally, you are right. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has very strict rules and regulations regarding truth in advertising, and issues detailed guidelines for dietary supplement manufacturers. Much of the time, however, advertisers choose to ignore them, hoping they will not get caught. In my experience, it is also true that the more incredible the product claims to be, the more likely the company is to be stretching the truth. In fact, the FTC recognizes that fraudulent advertising of weight loss products is a specific problem. Several years ago, they launched a campaign called “Operation Big Fat Lie” http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/11/bigfatliesweep.shtm to help educate consumers about false weight loss claims. Additionally, as part of these efforts they created two sham web sites that demonstrate common strategies companies use to deceive consumers. You can view these sites, plus more educational material, at http://www.ftc.gov/dietfit/ *Bryant, J., Fat is a $34 Billion Business, Atlanta Business Chronicle (Sept. 24, 2001), citing research by Marketdata Enterprises, Inc. Printer Friendly