Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) has introduced the Dietary Supplement Labeling Act of 2011 (S. 1310), which we believe would impose needless new regulations on supplement makers in an attempt to address the issue of manufacturers who mislabel their food and drink products as dietary supplements.

Among other provisions, the bill would direct the Department of Health and Human Services (presumably the Food and Drug Administration) to create a list of ingredients and proprietary blends of ingredients that “could cause potentially serious adverse events.” This overly broad language (no definition is offered of “could cause,” for example) takes the regulation of supplements well beyond the current, effective rules.

The bill also would direct the FDA to impose mandatory warning labels on ingredients the government decides are potentially harmful. There are no protections in the bill from the inevitable lawsuits that would follow.

NPA recognizes the intent of the bill is to halt the sale of food products that are masquerading as dietary supplements, and the association has repeatedly called on the FDA to use its existing authority to act against such rule breakers. Imposing additional regulations on the legitimate dietary supplement industry is neither an appropriate nor effective way to achieve this goal.

Please join us in urging Congress to oppose S.1310. Click here to send your letter to your lawmakers.

THE LINK TO SENATOR HATCH IS: http://hatch.senate.gov/public/ click on email tab and fill out form or call this phone number 801-524-4380

THE LINK TO SENATOR LEE IS: http://lee.senate.gov/public/ click on email tab and fill out form or call this phone number 801-524-5933

For years we have been told to use sunscreen to protect our skin from damage that can lead to skin cancer.  But is it all hype?  Sunscreens are designed to block UV rays from penetrating the skin.  These are the rays that cause sunburn.  However, these rays also trigger our bodies to produce vitamin D.  Vitamin D production is essential to maintain the health of our heart, and protect us from other health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, MS, autism, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, joint and muscle pain, frequent infections, colds, flu, and yes, many types of cancer.

Here are some interesting statistics:  Malignant melanoma (skin cancer) is only responsible for 10,000 fatalities per year in the United States.  Lung cancer causes about 150,000 deaths and breast cancer 40,000 deaths per year.

William Grant, a prominent vitamin D researcher, estimates that vitamin D deficiency causes 100,000 people to develop cancer each year who wouldn’t have if they had adequate levels to provide protection.  Moderate levels of vitamin D could prevent 28,000 deaths of colon cancer per year.  (10 minutes per day of direct sunlight is sufficient for most adults.)

So, do the benefits of sunscreen use out weigh the risks?  Recent studies of sunscreen’s effectiveness against melanoma risk were inconclusive showing even numbers of results for and against.  Some studies showed relative to latitude, an increased risk of skin cancer due to an increase of free radicals that develop with the chemical exposure of sunscreen.

What are some healthy alternatives?

Keep your skin covered with clothing or protective shade.

Use antioxidants and polyphenol plant extracts to protect skin topically during exposure.  Your local health food store will have a natural product or contact our office for ideas in making your own.

• Get proper rest
• Eat a healthy diet including:
• Fresh fruit and vegetables
• Healthy oils (fish, olive, flax)
• Lean meats
• Nuts and seeds
• Whole grains
• Increase your water consumption
• Exercise 3-5 times per week
• De-stress your life through planning and organization
• Cut down on caffeine, sugar, and refined foods
• Take supplementation of vitamins, minerals and probiotics
• Spend time playing
• Focus on positive things
• Get regular adjustments

Some other good practices to adopt are:

• Wash your hands as soon as you come home
• Use anti-bacterial wipes or lotions when touching public surfaces
• Keep your hands away from your face
• Use your own pen
• Open the restroom door with a towel

If you do get an illness, Dr. Giles has many herbal, homeopathic remedies and detoxification processes to help you repair quickly.

It starts out as a “friendly” game, then before you know it, it’s a full-out tooth and nail competition.  Monday rolls around and you’re paying for the weekend of fun.  Sadly, many injuries can turn into long-term problems.  Here’s how to protect and repair yourself if an injury does occur.

Prepare:
Arrive early to prepare for the event
Warm up with 5 minutes of cardio exercise followed by stretching the key muscles
Hydrate your body prior to your game
Gear up with the correct equipment for the specific event
Listen to your body’s clues that you’ve had enough

Prevent:
Replenish electrolytes, minerals and protein within 2 hours of the game to recharge your cells
Stretch post event to keep muscles loose
Keep moving as your body cools down to prevent muscle spasm

Repair:
Have a chiropractic adjustment to align anything that may have jarred during your activity
Protect any areas that feel stressed or over-stretched
Rest to give your body time to repair and rejuvenate
Apply compression to strains or sprains
Ice or a cold compress will ease muscle pain
Elevate swollen areas to allow blood to leave the site of injury

For an acute asthma attack, inhalers or puff medications will get the person out of trouble.  We are concerned for the daily maintenance of the lung integrity and repair and renewal of the tissue.  Daily use of the inhalers, puffs or steroids add more toxins into the body and the liver becomes overloaded.  This then adds additional stress to the lungs creating a cycle of toxin overload and the need for more inhalers.  With each asthma attack, our body also has a stress on our energy stores and our adrenal glands become tired.  This is evidenced by the dark circles under a person’s eyes.

How are the toxins entering the lungs?  We find contributing factors to be leaky gut, toxic liver and kidney overload.  Also there may be an invading pathogen from fungus, bacteria or parasite creating weakness of the respiratory system.  So treatment would first be to get rid of the pathogen, tighten the bowel, detox the liver and kidneys and repair the organs.  As these other detoxification systems are functioning better, it takes the load back off the lungs and we can begin with their repair if necessary.  Many times the lungs will strengthen on their own without all of the overload.  Of course, all we can do to keep toxins out of our bodies in the first place is a great idea by having pure air, water and foods grown without chemical interaction.

Now for a look at children:  As children play, mucus in the linings of the respiratory pathways increases due to exertion.  Add to that allergens from pollen and milk and an asthmatic situation can occur.  We find that milk allergies are quite a problem because of the pasteurization process.  Pasteurization kills the enzymes needed for the digestion of the milk.  Without these enzymes, our bodies are unable to process the milk and it becomes toxic to our systems.

We can easily check for allergens with a scan on the Asyra machine.  Call the office and mention this article for a free allergy check.

Colic and difficulty nursing can be a major issue for infants.  A couple of contributing factors to these problems can be:

Misalignment

Anti-biotic usage via the mother or given to babies

A gynecologist I recently spoke to said that they believe that the anti-biotics given to pregnant women do not pass to the fetus.  However, for some reason in my practice, a high number of babies have fungus on their tongues or thrush in their mouths who have never received anti-biotics directly.  The fungus is easily recognizable by viewing a white coating on the baby’s tongue or in their mouth.  The baby’s tummy gets bloated, and she feels pressure and pain.  Milk has sugars that are processed which the fungus feeds on, adding to the problem.  The baby gets fussy and is hungry but doesn’t want to eat because it causes more pain.

During your baby’s visit we will check her with the Asyra scan as well as looking in her mouth and patting her tummy for the signs of fungus.  Then a usual treatment includes using a natural anit-fungal (Phung Ex) and re-establishing the good bacteria using an acidophilus product (ProDophilisFOS).  These are important steps to take not just to ease the colic, but will help with cradle cap and also strengthen the baby’s immune system to further illness and problems.

Misalignment of the neck often occurs during childbirth.  The obstetrician may need to twist or turn the neck to allow the shoulders to come through the birth canal.  This misalignment may be visually un-noticeable or visibly noticeable in the case of torticollis.  As the baby turns to feed to the misaligned side, this causes further pressure on the subluxated vertebrae and she won’t want to feed on that side.  This can be a problem for nursing mothers especially.  Getting the neck back in to position will alleviate this problem and is simple and painless.

Remember to have your baby checked chiropractically as soon as you can after birth.

The Second Law of Health – Drink

The year of 2007 was a very interesting weather year in Utah.  We were about one month ahead of the normal weather pattern.  The snow pack melted a month ahead of normal, the heat of July was here in June, and the fire tankers were flying overhead sooner than normal.  With all that heat it was very important to make sure we were drinking enough water.

I recommend you drink one-half your body weight in ounces of water each day.  That means if you weigh 160 lbs. you would drink 80 ounces per day.  Remember you are sweating much more and losing much more fluid in the summer than you do in the colder months.  You are also losing more minerals in your sweat.  With the loss of minerals, heat stroke is much more likely.  Dehydration can also occur during illness where vomiting, diarrhea and fever are present.

Our bodies derive minerals from fruit and vegetables, mostly from green leafy vegetables, so eat lots of salads.  Another source of minerals is from supplementation.  BioNativus is a company that harvests wonderful minerals from the Great Salt Lake.  This awesome body of water holds many keys to health.  The Great Salt Lake receives its water from 35,000 square miles of the most mineral rich dense land in the world.  All 72 minerals and noble gasses are found in this water.  What’s interesting is that these minerals are highly electrically charged due to being hit by lightening from the electrical storms of the summer.  This charge helps with the absorption of the minerals into your cells.

Don’t dry up and blow away during the summer and dehydrate in the winter with the heater on!!  Stay well hydrated and add minerals to your water.  The minerals come in a plain liquid concentrate, or they can be added to the water with a tasty flavored concentrated drink mix.

The Lymphatic System

The lymphatic system is one of the most important systems in the body.  It supports life by bringing nutrients to the cells and removing toxins and transporting them back to the liver for processing.

The lymphatic system has three major functions:

1)  Transport nutrients for cell use such as proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
2)  Fight infections via killer cells such as killer T-Cells and Macrophage.
3)  Remove waste from cells and transport it back to the liver for detoxification.

The following example helps to illustrate the lymphatic system.  A freeway represents a major artery and blood flow, the off ramps represent a transition from the blood to the lymphatic system, and the city streets represent the lymph system.   As blood passes along the freeway or arteries, there is a 10% outflow of fluid from the circulatory system into the lymphatic system via the off ramps.  Within this fluid are delivery trucks that carry nutrients to the houses in the city which represent cells.  The houses use the nutrients and the waste is placed into dumpsters.  Garbage trucks come and pick up the waste and take it back to the burn plant or the liver.  Sometimes when the garbage trucks try to get back on the freeway, there are accidents on the on-ramp and the garbage trucks are not able to re-enter the freeway.  This causes backing up of fluid into the city or edema in the body.

Treatment for the Lymphatic System

1)    Determine the cause of excess toxins such as from leaky gut, or layers of infection.
2)    Support the body with supplementation to repair the organs and fight the infections.
3)    Help the body drain the excess fluid through supplementation and detoxification therapies.
4)    Make lifestyle changes to limit toxic exposure through the use of organic produce and free-range meats, use of filtered air and water and choosing natural or organic personal care products and household cleaners.

The First Law of Health – Eat

Commentary by Dr. Troy Giles:

Are you hungry for food and the life it brings?  I love food and the joy it brings, especially during the summer months with all of the family parties and social events.  Sometimes I lay there with my stomach so full I can hardly move or roll over.  That’s the problem!!  If I can’t move, how can I exercise?  Exercise?!?..?!  I think I’ll just lie here a little longer and have another piece of blueberry cream cheese pie.  Does this sound familiar?  It does to me some days.

We can attend all of the wonderful parties and enjoy all of the foods, just don’t eat until you are stuffed.  When we eat to excess, the washing machine effect begins in our stomachs.  You know, when you overload your washing machine and the soap sits on top of the clothes and doesn’t mix in with the water?  This is what happens when we overload our stomachs.  The digestive enzymes don’t mix well with the food, and improper digestion occurs.

Here are some helpful hints when eating:

1)    Eat proteins such as meats with vegetables.  Vegetables are a neutral food and can be eaten with both high starch and high proteins.
2)    Eat high starch foods such as bread and rice with vegetables.  Again, vegetables can be digested well with either starch or protein.
3)    Eat fruits alone as a meal or between meals as a snack.  Fruits are digested quickly and if you place them in the same meal with proteins, the fruit will ferment since protein takes longer to digest.
4)    Eat a diet consisting of 50% vegetables, 20% fruits, 20% proteins, and 10% fats.  Remember to eat fruit away from a full meal.
5)    Water is best sipped during a meal rather than drinking a lot of water.  If you drink a lot of water with the meal, the digestive enzymes are diluted which can lead to ineffective digestion.
6)    Eat dessert first as life is too short!!!  No, eat dessert, but just a little and later on after the meal.  You can add almonds or nuts, to slow down the “jet fuel” effect of the sugar.  Make desserts that involve better choices for the sweetener.

Follow these ideas, and you will have a much better digestion, and you will still be able to eat and have fun at those family parties.  Here’s to your health!