So what makes a pharmacist qualified to talk about diet?  Nothing really.  But I’m not your typical pharmacist.

Growing up, I was always a very skinny kid.  Starting around twelve years old, I began lifting weights.  I saw the movie Pumping Iron with Arnold Schwarzenegger and wanted to look like those guys in the movie.  So I began to follow the workout routines of these advanced bodybuilders.  These routines in the bodybuilding magazines and books are for men who have been in a gym for five or ten years and who are using, well, let’s call them “performance enhancing substances.”

For a skinny kid who didn’t know anything about eating properly, this type of plan got me nowhere fast.  Hitting the gym regularly for years barely produced any results at all.  I graduated high school a skinny bean pole at just over 150 pounds with five years of gym experience under my belt.  Needless to say, what I was doing wasn’t working. Read the rest of this entry »

As women age, the consistency of menstrual cycles become erratic. Bleeding that was once regular, has become heavier, then lighter, then absent, then spotting with no rhyme or reason as to which type of month the next will be. It is these unpredictable cycles that lead to the highs and lows of estrogen and progesterone.

Natural bio-identical hormone replacement (BHRT) has only come into popularity in the last dozen or so years. Prior to that, women were told to use the synthetic hormones to relieve their menopausal symptoms. Because of the gaining popularity of BHRT, several years ago I began studying and learning about this “new” approach to therapy. Coincidently, while investigating these hormones, the frequency of questions from patients about the therapy increased. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you wondered about the HCG Diet?

How does it work?

Does it work?

This is an excerpt from an interview I recently did with fat-loss expert Scott Tousignant from FatLossQuickie.com.  During this 9 minute audio, Scott gets pretty passionate about his feelings towards this diet.  You make up your own decision based on what you hear from two experts in the field.

PS That is NOT Scott nor his 6-pack abs

Click Play to listen in…

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Many woman use the term PMS to refer to symptoms of bloating, breast tenderness, food cravings, headaches, irritability, mood swings, weight gain, and many others.  A term that was coined decades ago by Dr. John Lee is “estrogen dominance.”  This is what is going on inside that body when the term PMS is used.

Before we get deeper into the issue, we need to define a couple terms…

We have three types of estrogens that are natural to the human body, each with different functions.  Produced in the ovaries and fat calls, they are responsible for the development of sexual characteristics, fat storage, development of the follicle, inhibit bone absorption, improve insulin sensitivity, and many other functions.

Progesterone is made mostly in the ovaries with a small amount made in the adrenal glands.  Progesterone helps with sleep patterns, maintains fluid balance, helps use fat for energy, promotes the build-up of bone, maintains pregnancy, opposes the actions of estrogen, and a host of other functions. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the mid-1960′s, Dr. Robert Wilson wrote a book titled “Feminine Forever” where he proclaimed that menopause was an estrogen deficiency. This “discovery” led to the synthetic drug Premarin becoming one of the most popular prescription drugs for decades. In 2002, it was revealed that the manufacturer of Premarin, Wyeth-Ayerst funded much of the research, marketing, and speaking events to support the book.

When scientists began studying the outcomes of this therapy, they learned that by 1975 uterine cancer rates increased 600%. One of the complications with giving too much estrogen is breakthrough bleeding, even in a menopausal woman. Because of the bleeding issues and the uterine cancer increase, physicians began using a synthetic progestin, Provera (medroxyprogesterone). In 1998, the uterine cancer rates had declined but breast cancer rates were increasing. In 2002, the Woman’s Health Initiative (WHI) was stopped due to unacceptable incidence of cancer, strokes, and heart disease. The reports of this study caused many women to stop hormone replacement therapy. By 2003, just one year later, breast cancer had decreased 7%. Read the rest of this entry »