4 Signs of Sugar Overload ~ Holistic Dermatology

4 Signs of Sugar Overload

Let’s talk about the sign of too much sugar in your diet. One of them is reaction to the sugar, so you get a boost when you eat the sugar and then you crash shortly afterwards which we call reactive hypoglycemia. Another one is of course pre-diabetes. This is where various changes occurring in your body and reflected in blood test showing elevated blood sugar and also elevated sugars, bound to different molecules in the body.

Now how can you look at that? There is a test called hemoglobin A1C or glycocilated hemoglobin. Now those big words mean that the hemoglobin which is a protein has sugar that stuck on to it, and the blood cells stick around for about 3 months so this gives you a picture of what’s going on in your body over a window of time of 3 months. If there’s too much sugar over that 3 months you’re going to have more of that glycocylated hemoglobin or hemoglobin A1C.

That’s the blood test your doctor can do if they suspect that you may have sugar overload.  Now, of course let’s go on other signs: cavities in the teeth can be a sign of sugar overload. Also, various kinds of reaction, after you eat sugar–craving of sugar can be a sign of repeated cycle of too much sugar, with the crash requiring more and more afterwards. And finally if you get so fat that your arm can’t reach out and touch the refrigerator door to get more that’s a sign of too much sugar.


Best New Sugar Substitutes ~ Integrative Medicine

Best New Sugar Substitutes

I’ve spoken about sugar in the past and so you probably wondering what kind of sugar substitutes I would recommend. Well for people who don’t have diabetes or problems in that direction but want to cut back on their sugar and use something else as a sugar substitute or sweetener. I have another suggestion, and that is to consider using ribose. Ribose is a sugar that’s part of the molecule of information that makes up our genetic material. Ribonucleic acid and the sugar in ribonucleic acid is ribose.

Ribose seems to be a very useful product for people who have issues with the heart. It’s one of the different ingredients that can be very helpful for the heart, so it’s one thing to use on occasion. On the other side of the argument for ribose, is it’s a very sticky sugar. So for people who have problems with too much sugar and too much stickiness in their bodies and their cells and their molecules too much glycation, I would not use huge amount of ribose. But keep it in mind it’s something that supportive of the heart and also sweetens your food.

I also like stevia, monkfruit, xylitol, and in small amounts, maple syrup, or honey.


3 Reasons Your Skin Wants Organic Food ~ Natural Dermatology

Organic Food: 3 Natural Dermatology Reasons Your Skin Wants It

Organic food is really important, and I’d like to say a bit how it fits into health and fits into treatment of skin disorders with holistic dermatology. Now if someone has been eating a lot of foods sprayed with pesticides, it’s really important to let the body get a break from that. And one way of course is to eat organic foods.

Now when we say organic foods, really that’s a technical definition in this country. The term organic allows certain kinds of pesticides to be used. And when I think of organic foods, I think of foods that are grown without pesticides or toxins at all. And that’s my favorite. So there are probably some places that have wonderful foods that are grown without pesticides that are not registered as organic, because the registration process is expensive. But they could be even better for you than the ones that have the organic label but are grown with the allowable level of pesticides. So that’s one of the questions you need to ask when you are at the farmer’s market or your grocery store.

The next thing is that there are certain foods that are heavily sprayed and apparently soak up more chemicals than other foods, and those are the ones to definitely choose organic. Leafy vegetables, celery, strawberries and just a few of those. Find places to shop for your fruits and vegetables where you can learn what sorts of chemicals are being used. Because if you can wash the off with soap and water or a food detergent (found in your local health food store), that may be acceptable.

So using organic food can be beneficial because it avoids toxins. And some of those toxins inhibit the process the body does to suppress allergic reactions. So avoiding toxic foods and eating organic foods can help reduce allergic reactions. But personally I sometimes choose to use the regular, non-organic foods if they are not known to be heavy in pesticides. And I also choose locally grown foods that come from farmers who don’t use pesticides who are not necessarily organic, as mentioned above.

Of course organic can also mean using foods that have been given natural fertilizers, which again is another important thing to make the foods more healthy. And finally, interestingly enough, foods that are grown organically have more stresses on them, so that the plant has to make its own pesticides. And some of those pesticides are called cell versantsAnd those products that the plants make have anti-cancer properties. So, there maybe additional benefits in those “stressed” organic plants or pesticide-free plant that cause them to make products within them that will protect you much further.

So another vote for organic food from the holistic dermatology perspective. To your health!


Inflammation & Autoimmune Disease ~ Holistic Dermatology

Inflammation & Autoimmune Disease

Interviewer:   Good, so what got you interested in inflammation, inflammatory conditions, and autoimmune disease before you were doing holistic dermatology?

Dr. Dattner:   Well, when I was in college, I was volunteering at a little place up in Rye called Sloan Kettering.

Interviewer:   Little place?

Dr. Dattner:   It was. It’s now a big village, the place where that was. It was a laboratory where they were testing all kinds of stuff that they could find and seeing if it could kill tumors. But there was one little laboratory in there that was doing tumor immunology. I went and started volunteering there and that was where I first learned about lymphocytes and cellular-immune reactivity and tumor immunology.

Interviewer:   Right..

Dr. Dattner:   From there I went to a series of different laboratories where I was studying cellular-immunology and winding up at the National Cancer Institute. I had a long interest in the basic science behind this. In fact, I translated into my clinical understanding of how these things work and it helps me see somebody’s picture and pull it together in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Interviewer:   Yes, so refreshing. I have to tell you with your background as a medical doctor to be engaged in all these alternative methods you use in holistic dermatology and integrative medicine, and seeing them work so well, you love it.

Dr. Dattner:   Well, it’s only because I had heard about them and I sort of believed it. But, when I did my work on immune recognition and saw how the equations could be so different than one could have imagined otherwise in terms of one thing stimulating another thing as a response, I started to understand why those things make sense and knew that there was truly a science behind it. That science didn’t become understood generally until almost 20 some odd years later when people started talking about this in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Interviewer:   That’s amazing, it’s great.


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.


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

What is Holistic Dermatology, Really?

What is Holistic Dermatology, Really? Healthy Frontiers

Interviewer:   It’s great. So what is a Holistic Dermatologist? Now we can go on forever…

Dr. Dattner:   Okay, there are a couple of things that are involved in Holistic Dermatology. One, is I am a dermatologist, so I understand the methods that are available and what the positives and negatives are.  I understand the biology and physiology of the skin, so I bring that to the table and at the same time I have other methods to use to get back to the etiology, to the root cause of the problem that’s going on. And the root cause is usually an environmental exposure, whether it’s something topical in which my colleagues are very good at diagnosing when if it’s a context sensitivity. But, the biggest source of foreign material entering the body is through the mouth, so the digestive tract is what I spend a lot of time correcting. Microbial, the digestion, leaky gut all of those things are things that I address in my practice. The other thing is that Holistic Dermatology covers a wide variety of inputs, so some people have an emotional issue which leads to an eating issue which leads to gut issue which leads to a skin issue. So when it becomes obvious that there is a particular area that needs treatment, I address that area.

Interviewer:   Right!

Dr. Dattner:   The other thing is that it’s very eclectic, so I use a number of different techniques that are not in conventional medicine. Those include herbology, those include some chiropractic techniques, some kinesiology to give me further information that corresponds with what I have learned from history and physical as well and helps me better select among the things that intellectually should make sense for say treating, but digestive issues I can refine that.

Interviewer:   That’s great; so why did you choose to practice that way?

Dr. Dattner:   Well, you know I got to the tip of the tip in terms of practice of dermatology and I saw what was known and what wasn’t known. The tip of the tip this was the National Institute of Health, building ten, where we flew patients in who we wanted to study from all over the country.

Interviewer:   Yes

Dr. Dattner:   And we had patients there who had rare disorders that were being treated with Vitamin C, but there was not an understanding of the lure around Vitamin C and bioflavonoids.

Interviewer:   Right

Dr. Dattner:   And I realize I had to go outside of current conventional medicine to bring in the totality of knowledge that was available and so it was very exciting when I found out that all this was available through the….what was called the alternative world then. But interestingly in this particular case with the Vitamin C, the work on bioflavonoids had been done in the 50’s by a Nobel Prize winner. So it had just left medicine for a while.

Interviewer:   Right, forgotten.

Dr. Dattner:   Wasn’t that it was never in it.

Interviewer:   Right, okay should have it was always there.

Dr. Dattner:   Yeah!

Interviewer:   Good!


Heartbreak of Psoriasis: Natural Healing ~ Integrative Dermatology

Heartbreak of Psoriasis: Natural Healing

Let’s talk a little bit about a condition known as Psoriasis or sometimes the Heartbreak of Psoriasis. Psoriasis involves thick red patches of skin often in the pressure areas or elsewhere throughout the body on the skin. It can be very mild and barely visible or it can be extremely widespread and for some people very disturbing.

Now, eczema is a much milder condition. But Psoriasis tends to be thick it can be itchy or painful and it is caused by the type of inflammation that enlarges the blood vessels in the skin. This causes the skin cells to reproduce and turn over much faster, that is like 4 to 6 days instead of 28 days before they get to the top.

And that over production of the skin cells causes the thickening and the scaling that occurs. So we need to cut down the inflammation that causes that. That is a lymphocytic delayed hypersensitivity celli or immune response causing it. And we know that partly by the new drugs that poison that response and we know that if we can take away what is setting off that inflammation, we can also calm it down. And we can do that through diet as well as through the modern drugs. If you need help with the heartbreak of psoriasis, contact my office for an appointment.


My Top 5 Tips for Great Digestion

6a00e55255b462883401901bb9043d970b-200wiParents frequently tell their children, “Chew your food!  You don’t have teeth in your stomach!” In fact, we have lots of enzymes in the body that break food down like very tiny teeth. But enzymes can’t break down big particles of food.

One of the main underlying diseases in my holistic dermatology practice is allergy. Food allergy, in particular, is aggravated and sometimes caused by improper digestion. To keep digestion at its best, follow these top five tips that will help your complexion as well as your digestion:

  • When you eat, you are literally re-creating your body with each bite you consume, incorporating new molecules into your being. Eat your meals sitting at a dining table (not while reading, watching TV, or driving) Chew your food completely, enjoying each bite with each of your senses.
  • Boost your digestion by taking “bitters” before you eat, ginger tea, or enzymes after you eat.
    1. Avoid liquids one half hour before and one hour after meals, sipping water sparingly if you’re thirsty.  This is because liquids kill the “fire of digestion” in the stomach, diluting enzymes that break food into usable components.
  • Your mood matters almost as much as your food. Find a way to eat in a peaceful mood, avoiding eating when angry, sad, or fearful.
  • After a brief rest, take a walk after your meal. This helps the body keep the metabolism up.

To your health,

-Dr. Dattner

Holistic Dermatology
New York

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As always, the content of this blog is for information and education purposes only, and should not be used to diagnose or treat illness; please see your physician for care.