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Fibromyalgia Monthly Newsletter
Fibromyalgia Newsletter – July 2005
Brought to you by: Jane Oelke, N.D., Ph.D.
DoctorOelke@aol.com
Health – Keeping Good Communication Between Cells
Recently I attended a seminar by Dr. Ron Rosedale in St. Joseph, MI. I waited to write this newsletter until after that seminar so that I could share some of his ideas with you. He is the author of “The Rosedale Diet” that is about balancing insulin and leptin to prevent many chronic diseases and reverse obesity.
Dr. Rosedale explained in the seminar that we need to keep good communication between our cells to maintain health. We have 10 to 15 trillion individual cells that are trying to live in harmony. When our cells communicate well we are able to restore health even from chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Even fibromyalgia is part of this picture. Much of what causes fibromyalgia pain is the miscommunication between the nervous system and the muscles that makes the muscles hypersensitive to pain. Chronic stress, poor dietary factors, and lack of quality supplementation are the culprits that cause this miscommunication.
Our metabolism is the chemistry that turns our food into energy. When our metabolism is able to create energy when it is needed we will stay healthy. Yet, when we have health issues, this is often due to our metabolism not being maintained, causing miscommunication between our cells.
For example, insulin is a hormone that helps regulate energy production in our cells. It helps maintain many metabolic processes. It determines how fast our cells reproduce, which can cause cancer when they reproduce too quickly. It regulates the level of magnesium needed by our body for oxygen and energy production. It also regulates thyroid function.
So as you can see, insulin is more than a blood sugar maintaining hormone. So if you are insulin resistant, and many people with fibromyalgia are, then you may need to look into balancing your insulin levels. The more insulin resistant we are, the quicker our cells will age, all caused by miscommunication between our cells.
If you are struggling with losing weight, look at balancing your insulin and your leptin hormones. Many people who struggle with weight loss, can’t lose weight no matter how little they eat, or crave sugar so much that by the end of the first day of a low carbohydrate diet, they are already binging on cookies. They need to look at balancing insulin and leptin. Leptin is the hormone that helps you control your food cravings. When we are overweight, or when we are burning sugar instead of fat, our leptin hormone level is out of balance.
Many people, when they go on a diet, will lose muscle instead of fat. That is because they are burning sugar instead of fat. Anyone with insulin or leptin resistant is doing this, and so it does not mean just overweight people. Many thin people with chronic diseases are suffering because their body is burning sugar for energy. When the little bit of sugar that is stored by our liver is used up, the body will go to burning muscle and bone. In fact, this is the cause of osteoporosis today, not the lack of calcium. When leptin is out of balance you will be more prone to osteoporosis, especially if you are thin and try to stay thin by eating a low fat, high carbohydrate diet.
So how do we keep insulin and leptin in balance?
To balance insulin and leptin, we have to change from burning sugar to burning fat in our cells. We do this by avoiding medium and high glycemic foods, getting our carbohydrates from vegetables, and getting low fat protein, and omega-3 fatty acids in our diet to reduce the inflammation that is automatically there with insulin resistance. You can learn more about glycemic food values at Natural Choices for You website and click on the Glycemic Index / Glycemic Load List link.
Why do we need omega-3 fatty acids in our diet?
Omega-3 fatty acids help to improve cell signaling, help to burn off fats that have accumulated from excess sugar, reduce oxidation of LDL cholesterol, and reduce the damage sugar does to our cells, that cause inflammation to occur in the first place. Fish oil supplementation is best with high EPA and DHA values. EPA-DHA Complex, or EPA-DHA Extra-Strength (found at www.drjane.meta-ehealth.com) are my favorites. Keeping them refrigerated will help with preventing fish oil “burping” when digesting.
Flax oil has the most vegetarian based omega-3 fatty acids, but needs to have adequate magnesium levels to be transferred to EPA to actually work well. The more insulin resistant you are the less magnesium will be available, so I tend to avoid flax oil as my only source of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-6 fatty acids found in soybean oil are pro-inflammatory and need to be avoided as much as possible.
Make sure you are getting your antioxidants and minerals at the same time as your fatty acids. This helps both be absorbed, creating better communication between your cells.
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