Functions: necessary for bone formation • helps blood coagulate • plays a role in activating certain enzymes • assists in regulating capillary and cell permeability • important for nerve-impulse transmission and muscle contractions.

Deficiency signs and symptoms: rickets (in children) • osteomalacia (in adults) • osteoporosis (thinning of bones) • joint pains • muscle cramps • heart palpitations • insomnia • cramping of muscles • nervousness and irritability • numbness and tingling of extremities • tooth decay.

Calcium’s enemies: chronic stress • alcohol • high protein diets. CHLORIDE

Functions: necessary for maintaining the body’s acid-base balance • essential for stomach acid • helps preserve body fluids. Deficiency signs and symptoms: fatigue • weakness • heart irregularities • cramping of the muscles. Chloride’s enemies: fad diets and starvation diets.

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Your thoughts are the key. Thoughts become beliefs; thoughts and beliefs together help determine whether “good” or “bad” messages are sent from your brain to the rest of your body, including your immune system. What you think can literally make you sick—or healthy.

Your mind is like a factory, filled with assembly lines producing chemical messages. Speeding along the various pathways in your body, the messages bring happiness, depression, health or disease. How do you know what the message will be? You create many of the messages with your thoughts. You, and only you, determine if they are messages of joy or despair.

What are some of the “bad” messages? Anger and rage result in the production of large amounts of epinephrine (adrenaline) and other powerful chemicals. Long-term manufacture and release of these strong substances can lead to elevated blood pressure, heart disease, ulcers and other problems. Depression and self-doubt spur the synthesis of hormones such as cortisone. Cortisone is an important and necessary body substance, but too much of it can have a deadly effect on your immune system, encouraging infeciions and even cancer.

The messages you want to see spread through your body are those of health and happiness. And for that you must look to hormones such as the endorphins. As I explained in a previous book, DLPA to End Chronic Pain and Depression (1985), the endorphins, produced by various cells in your body, are responsible for lifting your mood and blocking certain kinds of pain. It’s postulated that chronic pain and depression are related to a deficiency of endorphins in the body.

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STOCK

Whenever you steam or cook vegetables, save the water to use as stock in soups. Store in a covered glass jar in refrigerator.

BETA CAROTENE FRUIT SOUP

creamy. If you prefer soup thicker, add more banana. If you prefer it thinner, add more fruit juice. Chill and pour into soup bowls, or mix with crushed ice and drink. Top with parsley.

Serves 4 to 6.

SHIRLEY’S ZUCCHINI SOUP

2 lbs. zucchini 3 onions

4 cups chicken stock 1/2 cup skim milk 1 tsp. curry powder

Cut zucchini into 1/4-inch slices. Thinly slice onions. Put zucchini and onion slices in stock, and cook until very tender, about 20 minutes. Puree vegetables and stock in blender. Add 1/2 cup skim milk and curry powder to taste. Serve warm or chilled. Makes a thick, tasty soup.

Serves 3 to 4.

VEGETABLE BARLEY SOUP

3 carrots 1 bunch broccoli

3 potatoes, medium 2 tomatoes, medium 1 onion, finely chopped 1/2 cup barley 3 cups water or chicken stock 1 tsp. basil

1 tsp. oregano 1/4 tsp. dill

1 tsp. vegetable seasoning

pinch of chopped parsley pinch of chopped mint

Wash vegetables. Slice carrots, cut broccoli into small pieces and dice potatoes and tomatoes. Set aside. Saute onion, put in pot with barley and water (or stock) and bring the mixture to a boil. Then reduce the heat and simmer until the barley is almost done, about 30 minutes. Add the vegetables and spices; continue simmering until the vegetables are tender. Check water while soup is simmering; add more if necessary. Add the fresh parsley and mint just before serving.

Serves 4 to 6.

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Crucifers are also cancer-fighting Super Foods. The crucifer family includes broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi and kale. Even the very conservative Committee On Diet, Nutrition and Cancer, of the National Academy of Sciences, agrees that crucifers, along with carrots and spinach, are important cancer fighters.

Eating crucifers encourages the formation of substances, called indoles, in your intestines. Studies have shown that indoles help prevent some kinds of cancer. The beta carotene, vitamin C and fiber in crucifers also work against cancer.

Besides fighting cancer, crucifers are good for your health in general. They are full of CCs but have very little fat and no cholesterol. All in all, they’re just what the doctor—your “doctor within’—ordered. Broccoli is an excellent crucifer that not only supplies you with indoles and other cancer fighters but generous amounts of beta carotene and vitamin C as well.

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WHITE OR BROWN RICE?

In the United States it has been the custom for quite some time to treat high blood pressure with a rice diet. A Swiss sanatorium has employed the same diet to combat hypertension with the satisfactory result that the pressure decreased significantly, but at the same time the diet produced a bad side effect – the patients became anaemic. What could have caused this unfortunate result? Well, it was quite simply due to a lack of knowledge. No one took into consideration that white rice is not at all suitable for diet purposes; having had its goodness to a large extent removed, it gives rise to typical deficiency symptoms. Did not the outbreak of beriberi make the world aware of this fact?

A mono-diet of rice is indicated only if it is based on the whole grain; it must be unpolished brown rice. Only then will the patient benefit and the blood pressure drop without any accompanying deficiency symptoms. It is a good thing to observe this in everyday cooking as well, because brown rice is far more nutritional than the refined white kind, as brown rice contains 9.5 times more minerals (nutritive salts) than white rice. During the refining process, not only is the external cellulose husk removed, but so too is the tasty silvery membrane and the germ. While this process makes for a nice white rice grain, it devalues it at the same time. It is an open secret that the removed ‘wastes’ of the rice grains are not thrown away but are bought by the pharmaceutical companies to be included as ingredients in their tonic medicines. It is always good to look behind the scenes if you can, because you often discover some useful hints for better health.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

The production of sufficient saliva is important to proper digestion. Besides producing enzymes that help to break down food so the body can use it, saliva helps to prevent tooth decay and also makes swallowing easy. Though a decrease in saliva production is more common in adults, an increase—known as sialorrhea—does occasionally occur.

Treatment

Dry mouth, or xerostomia, is often a side effect of a particular medication. However, an increase in the output of saliva can also result from taking a new drug. Bethanechol chloride, which you may be taking if you have a urinary retention problem, and neostigmine, a medication that alleviates the symptoms of myasthenia gravis, a neurological disease that results in a loss of muscular control, can also cause your glands to produce more saliva than usual.

Sialorrhea is virtually always reversible when your doctor switches your medication. If your doctor does not want to change yout medication, I recommend that you take the antihistamine Benadryl in pill or capsule form twice daily. Seldane is another antihistamine that will also help to dry your mouth, but it doesn’t cause drowsiness like Benadryl does; I suggest you take Seldane once or twice a day. It’s also important to know that increased salivation can be a sign of the progression of Parkinson’s disease, a result of the muscles of the throat becoming lax and hard to control.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Frequently, a cold that starts out with a stuffy nose will end with a runny nose, also called rhinorrhea. It’s the body’s way of ridding itself of the cold germs and viruses that are on their last legs as you begin to feel better.

Treatment

There’s not much you can do for a runny nose except wait it out. Some people use antihistamines, which cause mucus to thicken, but the downside of using these preparations is that your cold may stick around longer than it would otherwise. Thickened mucus helps to keep germs and viruses in the body longer, and just when you’re feeling better, a virus or germ can get its second wind and attack again.

And the older you get, the longer a cold tends to stick around. So it’s a good idea to avoid using antihistamines for a runny nose and drink lots of fluids, which will hasten the end of your runny nose.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Mrs. C, a regular patient, visited me for a checkup and complained that food just didn’t taste right to her anymore.

When I pressed her for details, she became visibly upset. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Ever since I turned 60, it’s as if all my senses have deteriorated. It just takes more of everything for me to smell anything lately.”

She described how, in particular, food tasted bland and even the flowers in her garden didn’t smell as sweet as they had the year before. Though, as a rule, women tend to retain their senses in later years better than men do, the sense of smell starts to fade when a person reaches his 50s and 60s. Since the sense of smell is closely connected with the ability to taste, sometimes the first sign that there’s a problem will arise when foods don’t taste the way they usually do. And sometimes certain diseases can hasten the loss.

If your loss of smell is sudden, it’s probably not due to aging. Illness or allergies—whether they’re seasonal or year round—can affect your sense of smell. So can the medication you’re taking for it. In fact, taking any kind of prescription or over-the-counter medication can result in a decreased sense of smell.

To discover if your reduced sense of smell is due to regular aging or an illness, allergy, or medication, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can I pinpoint exactly when my sense of smell or taste began to decline? Or was it more gradual?

• Have I started to take a new medication recently?

• Have I recently recovered from a lengthy respiratory illness?

• Have I had major dental work done recently?

• Do I tend to lose my sense of smell at the same time every year?

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

When you first wake up in the morning, it’s not that uncommon for your vision to be distorted. The digital numbers on your clock may appear a bit wavy, or the cat may look thinner than she really is. Usually, blinking your eyes a few times or just sitting up to regain your equilibrium is enough to make your vision return to normal.

You can blame this funhouse mirror act on your retina and the gradual, yet harmless, deterioration it undergoes as our eyes age. Since the retina’s function is to decode the light that enters the eye through the lens before sending it on to the final processor, the brain, when the retina becomes less flexible with age, the image your brain “sees” will be temporarily distorted in some manner. Some people will notice a slight difference in their vision; for others, the change will be quite dramatic.

Treatment

A certain amount of deterioration in the retina is natural and starts to become noticeable after the age of 60. As aging affects the retina, it becomes dull, and the amount of time it requires to process the light entering the retina increases.

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do to prevent deterioration of the retina. The good news is that a stronger eyeglass or contact lens prescription can frequently cure the distortion. You should, however, be alert to changes in your vision, because sometimes the distorted images you’re seeing as the result of an aging retina can lead to more serious retinal problems, such as macular degeneration and retinal detachment.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

It’s natural for your eyes to droop a bit as you get older, but if your lids appear to be normal in the morning but then sag noticeably as the day goes on, you may have myasthenia gravis, a rare neurological disease. You may also have diplopia, or double vision. Myasthenia gravis gradually progresses to the rest of the body if left untreated.

Myasthenia gravis is a rare condition in which the body chemicals that control the neurotransmitters that transmit electrical impulses from the nerves to the muscles, particularly acetylcholine, fail to work properly. In effect, the nerves run out of gas. The cause of myasthenia gravis is not confirmed, but we think it’s due to a defect in the immune system. The disease affects primarily the facial muscles, particularly the eyelids and the muscles that control swallowing and the movement of the vocal cords. In addition to eyelids that progressively droop as the day goes on, a person with myasthenia gravis may find that she also starts to blink incessantly and uncontrollably, which can result in fatigue.

Treatment

Myasthenia gravis is such a rare disease that there’s a good chance your drooping eyelids are a normal sign of aging. However, if your eyelids continue to droop noticeably over the course of the day, you should see your doctor. Myasthenia gravis is thought to be caused by a reaction by the immune system. It is commonly treated with regular medical checkups to monitor your condition and the avoidance of certain medications such as antibiotics, beta-blockers, and psychotropic drugs, which can make the symptoms of myasthenia gravis worse.

But some medications, such as the decongestant ephedrine hydrochloride, and corticosteroids, are routinely prescribed to treat the disease. These medications can help bolster the immune system and ease the symptoms of myasthenia gravis. They can also prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine, allowing the nerves to continue to send messages to one another and the muscles.

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