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- Ben Fuchs
I had just finished a talk when, as usual, folks were milling around looking to get some questions answered. A woman named Nancy steps out of the crowd. She's in her early 50’s with a whole slew of symptoms I’ve heard many times before: Hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, and anxiety. Her moods are swinging like a cheap screen door in a winter storm and loss of libido may end her marriage. She’s carrying an extra 30 pounds of body weight. No matter how she changes her diet, she can’t seem to drop them.
She, of course, knows it’s her hormones. At least that’s what she tells me. But when I ask her what exactly she means by "hormones", she really can’t come up with much of an answer. That’s because she has little understanding of what is meant by this catch-all term “hormones”. Nancy isn’t alone. Women like Nancy come up to me after every presentation I do. I receive letters, take phone calls, answer texts and messages on this subject many times a week.
Modern scientific understanding of hormones is over a hundred years old. However if you do a random survey amongst your non-medical friends, not many people could really explain what a hormone is and/or what it does. How can we really understand how to address hormone related health issues without having a basic grasp of what these things are and how they work?
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- Ben Fuchs
Shrimp and lobsters make their own anti-inflammatory molecules, and that has scientists very excited. In a press release posted last week by the College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University, officials announced that they had received a $380,000 National Institute of Health grant to investigate just how the marine medicine could be used to eliminate inflammatory diseases in humans.
The crabby chemical that is the center of attention is called a chitin, and it’s a key constituent of the shells of various oceans animals including crayfish, shrimp, krill, and barnacles, and is one of the most abundant molecules in all of nature, second only to cellulose. And, as it turns out, in addition to being abundant (and cheap), chitin has powerful anti -inflammatory properties. Properties that are so impressive, that the natural molecule found in so many crust critters is being studied in hope of finding a pharmaceutical treatment for inflammatory diseases including Irritable Bowel Syndrome, arthritis, and heart disease. And it’s not just shellfish that contain this fascinating medicinal molecule. You can find chitin in the hard shells of insects as well as in the cell walls of most fungi and algae.
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- Ben Fuchs
Recently something called “Avocado Soybean Unsaponafiables” (ASUs) has gotten a lot of attention. Dr. (Wizard of) Oz and guests on his syndicated television show have raved about it. A European research review determined that it was beneficial for patients with osteoarthritis of the hip. And, according to U.S. National Library of Medicine, ASUs can help reduce the production of inflammatory agents secreted from the body’s defense (immune) system.
As the name implies, ASUs are derived from avocados and soy. But what exactly are “unsaponifiables”? Well, to understand unsaponafiables, we must first understand saponafiables.
Basically, there are two important classes of active materials we can get from plants. One can be turned into soap; the other can’t. Scientists call the soapy ones “saponafiable” and the rest are said to be “un-saponafiable”. Saponafiables called glucosides are a key ingredient in many “natural” cleansing products. For example, one specific type of glucoside called “decyl glucoside” is a standard issue foaming ingredient derived from the saponafiable components of corn. Unsaponifiables, on the other hand, while valuable are the parts of plants, including avocado and soy that can’t clean your skin.
