This week I'm playing a lecture I recorded a while ago, about menopause and weight loss. I talk about how it's harder to lose fat after menopause, and why. It's all about the cortisol! Get that cortisol down and it will help. Also, having a little extra weight on after menopause is actually good, because the fat makes estrogen for you, and carrying it strengthens your bones. But, if you want to be at a lower weight, here's some tips! Just like all my advice about weight loss, the first rule of weight loss is to not focus on weight loss.

This week, I talk about my jump to the Dark Side. Well, not really. Hey, did you know that the term "going to the Dark Side" was popularized by Star Wars? I'm going to try another BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATION, and hopefully this time I can take it and stay on it! We're going to try low dose lisinopril, an ACE inhibitor. The more I talked with various cycling friends, the more of them I discovered were taking it, feeling fine, and enjoying riding their bikes as much as they liked! So my PCP prescribed it, and first dose will go down the hatch tonight. I'll report on how I'm feeling, hoping for no dizziness!

We continued the series on weight loss, some basic good advice on lifestyle choices that can help. Drinking water, reducing carbs, reducing stress, eating produce and fiber, all good! All of those things are basic habits that are great for healing from anything. Ron also read off some calorie, fat and sugar content of some very large coffee-based drinks available at a popular regional establishment. A large version of one of them had 1100 calories! Pair that with a glazed jelly stick, and that's all your calories for the day! We particularly talked about Neuropeptide Y, which gets stimulated when you eat fat and starch or sugar together. It turns off your satiety signals, so you wind up eating most of the pizza, or the entire pint of ice cream! So avoiding large portions of fat and sugar together is a good idea.

This week I talked about how I tried hibiscus tea and it pretty much knocked me out, so if I do hibiscus it has to be in very small amounts! Everyone is different and responds differently to herbs and supplements. I DO feel good taking l-theanine, a calming amino acid from the tea plant, which calms without grogginess! And I also took the gastrodia/uncaria Chinese herbal complex in pill form, and I did better with that than the big cup of tea.

There's so much to talk about with weight management and loss. This week, I managed to discuss these neat Please Don't Weigh Me cards that you can get, and discussed the merits and detriments of being weighed at the doctor's office. Bottom line: if it makes the patient feel comfortable, no need to weigh them! Also, if you're at the doctor's office, you do not have to consent to ANY physical exam that you don't want to do. At my office my patients always have a choice! We also discussed the most important aspect of fat loss, which is stress reduction. Lowering cortisol is good for ANY condition, but directly helps to lower cortisol so that it's not putting more sugar into your blood for you to store. And there's lots of ways to reduce stress!

This week, I talked to Ron about his muscle building efforts, which are still taking a long time. We talked about how the cholesterol-lowering drug he took didn't allow him to rebuild muscle, and may also have affected his nerves, He's eating a lot of oats, and the beta-glucan in them can help to lower cholesterol; he's also eating a lot of ground flaxseed to help to sweep extra cholesterol out. He's looking forward to his next cholesterol test! We answered a question about shilajit and lithium orotate from a listener in India! I tried a pea-sized amount of shilajit for the first time live on the air, and it give me a mild rush! Then we went on to discuss my take on weight loss, and went through a Prevention article that is very much in line with my thinking, that weight loss, the numbers on the scale, and BMI are not nearly as important as more direct measures of health, like cholesterol, blood sugar, nutritional status, getting regular exercise and rest, and eating a healthy diet of whole fooods and avoiding processed, chemically laden foods and food intolerances. There are studies that really do bear out Healthy at Any Size!

This week, I talked about going back to conservatively healing my meniscus, and talked about a Chinese formula that my acupuncturist gave me for hypertension, Tian Ma Gou Teng Yin. I have to drink it as tea, and it's pretty good! It helps with blood pressure, migraines, headaches, tremors, and more! If you like at the Chinese indications, it helps to move liver blood out of places it shouldn't be. When I was in ND school, my teacher told me that it was my right as a Jersey girl to have a sluggish liver. Oy! So this may help. Then I got into it about bariatric surgery and how those weight loss drugs work, like Ozempic, Wegovy, Victoza, and Trulicity, and benefits and risks. It may be the only way to weight loss for some! A lot of pratitioners of all kinds are encouraging people to use them as part of their weight loss strategy.

This week, it was all about the teeth: hydroxyapatite vs. fluoride toothpaste for your teeth. Which is better? In the end, they both protect teeth from decay, cavities, and sensitivity. But some people don't want to go near fluoride because of possible toxicity. If kids swallow it, it can cause fluorosis and weakening of the teeth and bones. So, is hydroxyapatite just as effective? Listen and find out!

This week, we talked about the long haul and Lyme disease. The idea is that you have to treat for a long time, some say at least a year, and definitely until you have been symptom free for 2 months. Treating for that long can be WEARING, but to successfully treat this sticky, insidious, difficult illness requires tenacity! It is understandable that people get treatment fatigue. To do it right, especially if you're trying to avoid or minimize the use of antibiotics, it seems you have to take a lot of stuff! But I'm going to stick it out until I figure it out, and hopefully can get back to riding my bike when I want, however I want. Not to mention enjoying the rest of my life!

Speaking of summer, I felt inspired to talk about the health benefits of all the great produce that's available right now. Tomatoes for lycopene and cancer prevention. Berries for antioxidants. Cherries for sleep! Also, we discussed all the terrific benefits of shopping at your local farmers market, not the least of which is if you're going to buy celeriac from Anita, she'll tell you a great way to cook it! But even better, fresh, nutritious, low carbon footprint, meet your friends and neighbors, and DOGS!