Could Inflammation Cause Belly Fat? ~ Holistic Medicine

Could inflammation cause belly fat?

What causes people to have belly fat? Well, there are a number of different things that contribute to it. Obviously, eating too much sugar and simple carbohydrates is one way to add extra belly fat. And cutting back on that can make a difference.

Also, the kind of food you eat determines the kind of organisms that live in your intestine. Not a few but approximately 30 to 100 trillion bacteria live inside your intestinal tract. And some of those determine whether you are going to gain weight or not. And it seems that the kinds of foods you eat have a big influence on what is actually living inside of you, and they help determine whether you are going to gain fats. So when you are eating, you are not just feeding yourself, you’re feeding the organisms which are talking to the system that determines whether fat cells increase or fat cells decrease.

And eating a lot of vegetables and some protein is a lot different from eating a lot simple carbohydrates, not only feeding your fat but feeding your organisms.

In addition, when you have a lot of stress you release cortisol, and there are people who believe that the cortisol has influence on gaining belly fat. So reducing stress by getting regular exercise, meditation, breathing exercises can make a big difference as well. Finally in metabolize according local exercise in the muscle tone, and if you are using your abdominal muscles by doing crunches or by doing exercises that involve your abdominal muscles, not only do you burn fat while you are doing that, but you burn fat all day long and all night long because those muscles are having more metabolic activity and requiring more energy. So that’s an additional way to get your body to burn up that belly fat.

So conversely, people who don’t get any exercise, who sit on a couch, work sitting down, and don’t get any extra exercise are likely going to gain more belly fat.

So the holistic medicine of eating right, exercising right, and managing stress can all help reduce belly fat.


3 Skin Secrets of the Mediterranean Diet ~ Natural Skincare

3 Skin Secrets of the Mediterranean Diet

There are many different perspectives on diet that can enhance your health, and help your skin as well. One of them is the Mediterranean diet. Now let’s talk a little bit about what makes the Mediterranean diet so useful. Mediterranean diet is basically conceptually what people would eat if they were living around the Mediterranean base, in Greece, in Italy, in Spain, in Northern Africa, Morocco, those areas. So what does that include? First of all when you think about Mediterranean diet, you think about olive oil.

Now olive oil is a terrific oil to be part of your food. It’s a mono-saturated oil. It has a nice flavor. Some of that green color is anti-microbial property of the olive leaf and the olive. So it has some benefits in that direction and also it’s avoiding so many nasty things that we have in our current oils which are really not healthy. It’s avoiding the toxins. Because when you think about the Mediterranean diet, you are not thinking about somebody spraying the olive tree. You think about a more organic and natural olive.

The second thing is it avoids high temperature heating oils, and oils that are saturated fats or oils that are very highly unsaturated that would become rancid. So all those things are being avoided when you are thinking of that. It’s avoiding things that are really; who knows what they are, like Canola. There is no such thing as a canola bean! Canola is the name of a conglomerate type of product.

So getting to olive oil is the real basic step that makes you healthier. So Mediterranean diet involves fresh foods and vegetables, involves fresh fish and meat. And a diet that has limited amounts of carbohydrates in it. And that could be tremendously important, both for the good things it’s bringing with all those products and also for the terrible things it’s avoiding.


Sunscreen Controversy? Best Holistic Dermatologist, New York

Sunscreen Controversy?

Most sunscreens have been tested and they are not likely to cause a problem, but sometimes there are problems that occur in specific individuals, and sometimes there are problems that occur way later.

So let’s talk about that for just a moment. First of all, I believe the safest sunscreens are the ones that are made from zinc and probably better, regular zinc than nano zinc. The problem with nano particles is that they can get into the skin. The good thing about zinc is it’s a very important element in the body. Now titanium in the nano form theoretically could get into the skin and get next to the DNA energy to cause damage to the DNA, but that’s never been proven.  ‘

So far titanium is likely to be safe, but zinc is likely to be safer.  Now that is one component part of sunscreens and those are often called sun barriers or natural sunscreens. But remember, the sunscreens even containing zinc and titanium are actually dealing with the energy, it’s not like putting a total cover across your skin, like with clothing.

The other sunscreens that are used are compounds that absorb the energy from the sun and turn it to something less harmful. Many of those compounds are related to the sulfonamide. So if you have allergy to sulfur drugs, sunscreen could be a problem for you. If you had a reaction to other sunscreens, including PABA, you still could react to some of their new sunscreens because they are similar chemically. Finally, the sunscreens that contain these various compounds may have a little bit of what we call estrogen-like activity, and so for some people they could stimulate hormone receptors and could be dangerous.

Although these kinds of things are only found out years and years after use and exposure, I prefer to avoid these kind compounds if possible. The higher potency sunscreens will contain both the zinc and/or titanium and these compounds. Take a look carefully at your labels. If you have the opportunity, find a sunscreen that avoids those kinds of chemicals, but does contain antioxidant nutrients that will give you a little bit of extra end protection.


Watermelon: Great Foods for Your Skin ~ Best Natural Skincare Diet

Watermelon is great for your skin

Watermelon has wonderful properties for a natural skincare diet. The the green part of watermelon has a diuretic effect, that is, it helps the body get rid of liquid. Watermelon is also an alkalizing food. So even though it’s sweet, it helps make the body more alkaline. The caution watermelon that it is very sweet, and there’s a lot of sugar there. So you’ve got to be sure you’re not eating an excess amount sugar, or that you don’t have a problem with sugar, when you’re eating watermelon.

How to Love the Summer Sun ~ Functional Medicine Skincare

How to Love the Summer Sun

There are positive benefits to sun exposure as well as possible harm, including skin cancer, wrinkles, and aging. Being outside and getting the air and feeling the warmth of the sun on your body is a nice way to relax and the kind of meditation that allows you to feel better. A little bit of sunshine also helps the body make vitamin D and as long as you are not burning or getting in areas that we are going to get excessively aged, that could be very beneficial. Vitamin D made by the sun is something that helps stimulate your immune system and prevent auto-immune disorders.

Another benefit of the sun is that, it just makes me feel good. So you shouldn’t be scared of the sun, you should figure out how to get sun exposure and make yourself feel better by being outside and getting the air. You can consult with me for functional medicine skincare.


The Allergy Solution: A great new integrative medicine book

The Allergy Solution: integrative medicine and inflammationToday, Dr. Leo Galland releases his new book, “The Allergy Solution”.

 
This book gives a comprehensive explanation of allergy and all of the conditions that can be related to allergy and inflammation. It affirms many of the points described in my book, “Radiant Skin from the Inside Out”. Points that developed out my research on inflammation and immune recognition, and had their practical development through Functional Medicine. For those suffering from allergy and related symptoms, this book gives a good practical understanding of how to gain control by getting at the underlying causes.
 
Dr. Galland is a colleague with whom I have shared the path of Integrative Medicine, who I have known since NYU Medical school. We have become close colleagues in the past 17 years, as co-members of a seminal group of integrative medicine physicians who met several times each year with outstanding integrative speakers.
Dr. Dattner
Integrative Medicine
New York

Could You Be Allergic to Your Wedding Ring or Other Jewelry? ~ Natural Skincare

Could You Be Allergic to Your Wedding Ring? ~ Best Natural Skincare

Could you have a wedding ring allergy?  I don’t mean to your spouse necessarily, but the ring itself.  Your wedding ring is made out of gold usually, but even eighteen karat gold can have nickel in it. It’s possible to have what we call contact hypersensitivity, especially to jewelry with nickel and rarely to gold, and also to many other things. It’s also possible to have an irritant dermatitis to the soap that collects underneath your ring.

These are all reasons that you get a red rash under your wedding ring or any other jewelry that you wear on your body. Contact dermatitis typically is in the areas where you are contacting some kind of metal or some kind of chemical in your clothing or in your environment. Typically contact dermatitis takes about two days to come on from the start time of exposure. It lasts for about two weeks.

Often people don’t notice what caused it because already a couple of days have gone by before they see it. You need to be aware that another form of dermatitis can be from external things and what we call contact dermatitis.


Avocado: Great Food for Your Skin ~ Best Natural Skincare Diet

Avocados are a great food for your skin, because they contain a lot of oils that are beneficial to your body. But there is a caution with avocados because they also are histamine-producing foods. And so if you have a condition of hives or severe itching that’s allergic, it may be best to cut back on the avocados and avoid them. So it’s imoprtant to know that when you’re choosing your foods. I think it’s always important to know that there are foods in general, but specifically for you there may be differences. So we have a wonderful food here in avocados, but it may not be good if your skin condition involves a lot of histamine release.


What is Metabolic Syndrome? Treat weight gain naturally.

What is Metabolic Syndrome? Treat weight gain naturally.

Sometimes people come into see me with inflammatory skin disease. And they also have increased abdominal girth. It’s wider around their belly than even around their hips. And that goes along with a number of other things including high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, insulin metabolism issues, and sometimes hypertension as well. But the main stay of it that is most important for me, is that they also have an increased tendency towards inflammation, and we sometimes call this metabolic syndrome.

The problems that can develop with insulin and sugar metabolism are contributing to this. So, those things have to be reversed including weight loss by cutting down on sugar and simple carbs in order to calm down the total inflammation in the body and get the skin problems under control.

And the side effects from this are tremendous benefits to cutting down on all these other problems that can lead to illness and earlier death. So looking at the patient as a whole person, looking at yourself as a whole person, and correcting metabolic syndrome and excessive weight loss, excessive weight can be a major benefit to treating yourself holistically to get better from your skin problems.


What’s the Right Amount of Sun Exposure for You? ~ Restorative Dermatology

WHAT’S THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF EXPOSURE FOR YOU ~ RESTORATIVE DERMATOLOGY

There are people who argue that you should get no sun exposure at all.  I’m not in that camp, as you can tell by my suntan.  However, I do protect myself as much as I can when I am outside.

I am a Mediterranean skin type with brown eyes and I can deal with ten or fifteen or twenty minutes of sun exposure with no problem. If I get a lot more sun exposure, I’ll get red. It’s the beginning of the season when I haven’t been outside it all. I’ll get even a chance at burning my skin, so I’m very careful with that. Now if you have light skin, you’re one of those types from whose family descends from the northern climates, then you could probably take less sun than that.

If your skin is darker, you can deal with even more sun, and not have a burn or as much damage. Remember our skin makes vitamin D. So the places that are family descended from determines how much sun we need to get through in order to make enough vitamin D. I think it’s important that you understand how much it takes to give yourself a little bit of vitamin D production, which could be ten or fifteen minutes on the side as an average, for an average person, say a Mediterranean skin type and from that, gauge how much sun you get, but certainly well before the time where you would turn red.