Welcome To the Fourth Edition of the Health and Happiness Podcast

This Podcast Concerns:

1. Smokers.
2. NIH which is the national Institute of health
3. And the prevention of dementia.

There is a study stating that smokers that take Vitamin C and Vitamin D are healthier. Vitamin C prevents the smoker from the destroying the vitamin E in the body. Smoking uses up 35 mg of vitamin C per cigarette. Vitamin E protects the lungs against the free radicals produced by smoking. In the process of protecting the lungs the Vitamin E is oxidized and becomes a free radical. Free radicals are very detrimental to the body; they attack the cells of the body and prevent the formation of healthy new cells. Anti oxidants prevent the free radicals from forming.  Vitamin C, Vitamin E. and many other antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables prevent the formation of free radicals.

The Linus Pauling Institute said that smokers that take 1000 mg. of vitamin C stop the conversion of vitamin D to harmful free radicals. Vitamin C will help prevent some of the bed effects of smoking. The best thing to do is to give up smoking. A lot of people can’t do that. So the least you should do is take 1000 mg of vitamin C twice a day because vitamin C is used in the formation of the hormones that fight stress and strain and since we’re all under stress and strain the vitamin C gets used up in about 12 hours.

NIH has an expert panel that says,” The jury’s out on multivitamins “. This means that once again NIH is looking at bad vitamin studies. As I’ve mentioned before, NIH gets part of its funding from the large drug manufacturers. Before the year 2000 hundreds of good vitamin studies show that vitamins in high dosages improved health. E.g. Folic acid, B6 and B12 in high doses slow or prevent macular degeneration. Vitamins prevent diseases; they’re not drugs for the treatment of disease, except in the very few cases. It used to be thought that vitamins would be detrimental to cancer patients. It has now been found that high doses of vitamin C decreases the side effects of Cis-platinum and increases the killing of the cancer cells. So once again NIH’s expert panel saying, “the jury is out on multivitamins”. This ridiculous because there are hundreds of good studies that show that vitamins are quite healthful.

One of the statements made is a caution against smokers taking Beta-Carotene. This goes back to a very, very bad study.  The study was done with people who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day.  The people smoking five packs of cigarettes a day were given Beta-Carotene, vitamin E and a combination of Beta-Carotene and vitamin E. The study came to the conclusion that the vitamins didn’t do any good and maybe the beta-carotene was harmful.  The study did not show how they medically arrived at the conclusion that Beta-Carotene might be harmful. From that terrible study there are many statements saying that smokers should not take Beta-Carotene. Since this was such a bad study you cannot draw any conclusions from it.

As I had mentioned previously smoking a cigarette destroys 35 mg of vitamin C. So the smokers in the study had no Vitamin C in their body. There are ways to stop smoking. One of the good ways is to use medical hypnosis. It can’t be done in one session but repeating the sessions 3 to 5 times many people can give up smoking. Nicotine is a very habit forming drug. Many health professionals say nicotine is as habit forming as cocaine. Another method you can try are the nicotine patches, taken under a doctor’s supervision many people have been able to give up cigarettes.

In the New England Journal of Medicine they have an article on the prevention of dementia with B-12, and Folic acid. Americans need for Folic acid is so important that they now supplementing grains and cereals with it. The reason they found this out is that mothers that gave birth to children the Spina Bifida which is a disease where the spinal column is not completely covered were low in Folic Acid. They found that giving women Folic Acid supplements when they became pregnant prevented Spina Bifida.

Dementia affects a half-million people in United States. In some people over 70 the cognitive function declines abruptly and irreversibly. But at a younger age in some people it remains intact until it very old age. This indicates it’s not an intrinsic factor of aging, by that they mean because you’re aging it doesn’t mean you have to have dementia. They believe that Hemocysteine which is a substance produced by the body that shows inflammation in the body, that this is one of the causes of dementia. In their study and other studies that showed decreases in Hemocysteine there were decreases in dementia. More evidence of this was provided by the Rotterdam study by the Nurses study etc. These studies show that Hemocysteine is harmful to the body. This has been shown by many studies hemocysteine is a facture in dementia.. So by taking your vitamins and specifically taking B-12 and Folic Acid, which studies show has decreased in the elderly you might have a better chance of preventing dementia.

If you would like your questions answered on the health and happiness podcast our e-mail address is health@ Labs.com for more information on this subject and other subjects go to www.lencolabs.com thank you for listening to the health and happiness podcast with Leonard Austin.