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Articles from Bette Dowdell | Selfgrowth.com
- ***6 Reasons to Love Saturated Fat - by Submitted on Sep 14, 2010 from Bette DowdellWe’ve probably all heard about Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats. And a lot of what we’ve heard is wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but standing-on-its head wrong. Let’s check this out. With some exceptions, Omega 6 fats come from plants and Omega 3 fats come from animals. Omega 6, the ...
Views: 2307(1 vote) - ***A Closer Look at Protein - by Submitted on Apr 25, 2014 from Bette DowdellAll proteins are not created equal. For instance, animal protein provides more health benefits than plant protein. To make the imbalance larger, a lot of plant protein comes from soy. Besides not having the oomph of animal protein, soy is really hard on the body. It beats up your thyroid, ...
Views: 1261(1 vote) - ***A Glimmer of Marginally Good News - by Submitted on May 09, 2014 from Bette DowdellOn May 1, 2013, neuroscientists announced, in the journal Nature, that the hypothalamus is important. Well, yeah! That baby is part of the brain and controls both the nervous system and the endocrine system, which, in turn, control everything that happens in our bodies. I think we can all ...
Views: 1159(1 vote) - ***Coconut Oil - by Submitted on Apr 07, 2014 from Bette DowdellWhat with all the publicity it’s getting lately, it probably won’t come as news to you that coconut oil’s pretty astonishing stuff. A medium-chain saturated fat, wondrous coconut oil blesses the socks off your body. First, since our endocrine system makes its hormones from saturated fat, ...
Views: 1457(1 vote) - ***How Much Protein Do You Need? - by Submitted on Jan 06, 2015 from Bette DowdellThe government’s food pyramid and leading poobahs recommend that we eat very little protein, which is a no-science, no-facts recipe for disaster. In fact, most politically-correct thinking about health leads to poor health, even disease and death. How much protein you need is a case in ...
Views: 1549(1 vote) - ***Saturated Fat: Friend or Foe? - by Submitted on May 02, 2014 from Bette DowdellAccording to just about everything to you read or hear, saturated fat is bad, bad, bad. Dietitians say so. Doctors, too. Magazines follow along. Televisions shows such as “The Biggest Loser” agree. It’s kind of like some sort of mantra that gets repeated endlessly. One teensy little ...
Views: 1172(2 votes) - ***Symptoms vs. Causes - by Submitted on Mar 17, 2014 from Bette DowdellMedicos diagnose and treat symptoms. All day, every day, only symptoms matter. The cause of the symptoms gets scant, if any, attention. But putting Band-Aids on symptoms–which I call the patch, patch, patch approach–doesn’t work. For instance, diabetes shows up when the body can’t handle ...
Views: 1177(1 vote) - ***The Blank Slate Myth - by Submitted on Jun 05, 2014 from Bette DowdellHave you ever met people committed to the idea that babies arrive as blank slates. Beyond body parts, a lot of noise at one end and foul deeds at the other, babies, they believe, have nothing. No personality. No talents. No will. No inbred likes or dislikes. Just pure nothingness, a blank ...
Views: 1357(1 vote) - ***The Dietitians’ Blank Slate - by Submitted on Jun 13, 2014 from Bette DowdellIn The Blank Slate Myth, I talked about parents who see newborn babies as blank slates, an invitation to push, pull and otherwise shape their kids to fit their parental fancies. Well, good luck with that. And parents aren’t the only blank-slate believers. Hoo boy! Medicine comes ...
Views: 1178(1 vote) - ***Unmentioned Ingredients - by Submitted on Feb 05, 2014 from Bette DowdellIn 2009, Ronald Ball bought a can of Mountain Dew from the vending machine at work. One swig, and Good Old Ron was throwing up all over the place, sicker than the proverbial dog. Upon breaking the can open and pouring out its contents for a look-see, what to his wondering eyes did appear but ...
Views: 1231(3 votes) - ***Vote For Your Health - by Submitted on Oct 27, 2010 from Bette DowdellBette Dowdell Medicine is a mess. Doctors don’t even try to heal chronic illnesses, content to treat symptoms instead. Probably because that’s all they learned in medical school. But it means their patients--that's us--drag through life, out of gas, running on fumes. Even worse, while some ...
Views: 1534(1 vote) - ***Your Thyroid on Drugs - by Submitted on Apr 10, 2014 from Bette DowdellPrescription drugs are dangerous, a leading cause of death year in and year out. Some drugs slay you in one fell swoop, but most just nibble your health away. To give you examples, I went to a health site that lists drug side effects. Since I write about the endocrine system, I looked at ...
Views: 1211(1 vote) - Detox: Friend or Foe? - by Submitted on Apr 28, 2010 from Bette DowdellThe short answer is, for people with endocrine problems, detoxing is a foe. Let’s talk about it. Our endocrine system and our gastrointestinal system–that part of us we’re thinking of detoxing–are joined, in a manner of speaking, at the hip. You can’t affect one without affecting the ...
Views: 1701(1 vote) - How To Relieve Aching Muscles - by Submitted on Oct 26, 2010 from Bette DowdellOne of the many miseries that can accompany a whacked-out thyroid–or any member of the endocrine system, for that matter–is muscle pain. Your muscles knot up. They lose flexibility. You creak like you’re 102. And through it all, you ache. One thing for sure, you don’t want to learn to live ...
Views: 2675(1 vote) - It's Not Your Grandmother's Chicken Anymore! - by Submitted on Apr 21, 2010 from Bette DowdellDoesn’t just about everybody like chicken? And doesn’t it bring up memories of the family around the table, enjoying a wholesome meal and good family time? Chicken’s the inexpensive choice, with thousands upon thousands of recipes singing its praises. Well, those were the good old days. I ...
Views: 1548(2 votes) - Six Ways to Get Your Energy Back - by Submitted on Feb 17, 2012 from Bette DowdellSo, there you are, dragging your patooty through one grey day after another, wondering where your brain went, why your body aches and if you’ll ever feel good again. Even if your doctor checked for thyroid problems, and the flaky blood tests actually found the problem, you probably ended up ...
Views: 1566(2 votes) - The Toxin in Your Pantry - by Submitted on Feb 05, 2014 from Bette DowdellGather round and hear the story of how we’re losing a war to an enemy most people don’t know about. The whole thing started in the 1930s when chemical poobahs decided to create a synthetic form of estrogen and make boodles of money with it. And so it was that they created Bisphenol A ...
Views: 1693(1 vote) - This Is Your Endocrine System - Pituitary - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2010 from Bette DowdellThe pituitary gland is King of the endocrine hill. A tiny teardrop sort of arrangement, the pituitary hangs from the base of the hypothalamus portion of the brain, not too far behind the bridge of the nose, a vulnerable location for such an important actor. Studies link concussions to ...
Views: 2351(2 votes) - This Is Your Endocrine System: Gonads - by Submitted on Mar 26, 2010 from Bette DowdellThe gonads, testes and ovaries, play a huge role in how the endocrine system works. And we seem to be doing everything we can to put them on the disabled list. We need to talk about this. Everybody has–and needs–estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Now, obviously men and women, boys and ...
Views: 2412(1 vote) - Why Do Doctors Ignore 500-Pound Gorillas? - by Submitted on Feb 19, 2010 from Bette DowdellMedical research is beginning to look more and more like an old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie. A problem rears its ugly head, our plucky protagonists put on a show, the amazingly talented cast of friends and neighbors sings and dances its way to the finale–after which everybody lives happily ...
Views: 1116(1 vote) - ***Enemies Are Everywhere! - by Submitted on May 23, 2014 from Bette DowdellHave you been reading about phthalate? (Phthal as in thal, rhymes with Hal.) Yikes! Talk about your basic poison! This stuff is murder! Phthalate is a toxic “softener” added to plastics, cosmetics and everything else they can lay their hands on. For starters, it throws the endocrine ...
Views: 1259(2 votes) - ***You Mean Cholesterol’s Not A Problem? - by Submitted on Feb 21, 2014 from Bette DowdellThe crusade against cholesterol seems to be losing steam, so the poobahs are working on the real cause of heart problems. WooHoo! You shouldn’t hold your breath, howsomever. First off, cholesterol drugs bring in really, really big bucks, and that won’t stop until patients start ...
Views: 1097(2 votes) - This Is Your Endocrine System - by Submitted on Feb 23, 2010 from Bette DowdellGather round as I tell you about something so important that it controls almost everything that goes on inside your body, but so secret that almost nobody knows about it. Oh, a few may know the name of it, but they couldn’t explain it to you–even if you offered them a million dollars. What is ...
Views: 1792(2 votes) - This Is Your Endocrine System - Hypothalamus - by Submitted on Feb 25, 2010 from Bette DowdellThe hypothalamus controls both our nervous system and our endocrine system. Which adds up to pretty much everything that goes on. It’s the tiny king of a vast realm. About the size of an almond and the shape of a little, lumpy pancake, the hypothalamus tucks up under the base of the brain, ...
Views: 3408(2 votes) - This Is Your Endocrine System: Adrenals - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2010 from Bette DowdellWe have two adrenal glands, each perched atop a kidney. With your spine dividing your back in two, you can locate a kidney in the middle of each half, with the bottom of the kidney right around the bottom of your rib cage. A few inches above that sits an adrenal gland, topping the kidney like a ...
Views: 1598(2 votes) - This Is Your Endocrine System: Pancreas - by Submitted on Apr 05, 2010 from Bette DowdellThe pancreas is below our stomach, front and center, near the bottom of the rib cage. It may be the busiest twelve inches going. First off, just to make things more complicated (and who in the world thought that was necessary?), the pancreas is both an exocrine and an endocrine organ. The ...
Views: 1644(2 votes) - “Expert” Claims Cure For Thyroid Disease! - by Submitted on Apr 23, 2010 from Bette DowdellSo there I was, standing in line at Walmart, waiting to pay for my hair spray. As I checked out the scenery, such as it was, a Woman’s World magazine leapt to my attention. Oh, it wasn’t the cover picture of Oprah. I mean, the magazine rack looked like an Oprah retrospective, or family album ...
Views: 1813(2 votes) - This Is Your Endocrine System: Thyroid - by Submitted on Mar 04, 2010 from Bette DowdellOur most well-known endocrine gland is the thyroid. Not nearly as well known is the fact that half the population has thyroid problems, mostly undiagnosed or mistreated. The thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland located by your Adam’s apple, controls metabolism and affects everything else. You ...
Views: 1296(4 votes) - ***And Yet Another Health Enemy - by Submitted on Feb 05, 2014 from Bette DowdellIt interferes with thyroid function. It gets estrogen and testosterone out of whack. It puts a hurt on your immune system by messing with your thymus gland. It increases your chances of becoming resistant to antibiotics. It sets your kids up for asthma and infections. And it’s ...
Views: 1219(1 vote) - ***Have You Poked Your Lymph System Today? - by Submitted on Jul 03, 2014 from Bette DowdellI tell you true, our bodies are a wonder. Leading the parade of wonder is our endocrine system, a model of intricate cooperation. Part of the endocrine system, the immune system, is a complex mystery all on its own. And a part of the immune system, the lymphatic system, raises ...
Views: 1069(1 vote) - ***INNOCENT-LOOKING ENEMIES - by Submitted on Jul 03, 2014 from Bette DowdellWe’re surrounded by health enemies, and that’s a fact. Trouble is, they seem like such a part of everyday life, we don’t realize they might not be friends. One enemy was born in 1974, fluorescent lights. First, it was long tubes; now it’s curly-cue bulbs. Trouble, I ...
Views: 1174(1 vote) - ***Thyroid, Cholesterol and Statins - by Submitted on Feb 14, 2014 from Bette DowdellHalf of us have thyroid problems–most without realizing it. And thyroid problems can cause high cholesterol levels. Few doctors know this however. Besides, it’s easy to prescribe a statin drug, but harder than blue blazes to figure out thyroid problems. So guess what you’re getting, ...
Views: 2464(1 vote) - ***Where Medicine Goes Astray - by Submitted on Feb 21, 2014 from Bette DowdellMedicine sees our various body parts as separate and entire unto themselves. Each speciality treats a specific body part–with almost no reference to anything else. There’s no point in asking, say, a heart doctor about your digestion. Heart doctors don’t do digestion. And while nobody can ...
Views: 1072(1 vote) - Does God Understand Life in a Cubicle? - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2009 from Bette DowdellOr, for that matter, does God understand what’s going on in the life of a road warrior sales person? Or life on a clanging, banging, push, push, push assembly line? Or on an oil rig? As part of a building crew? To tell the truth, the God of our Sunday School days kind of comes across as a ...
Views: 1262(1 vote) - Enzymes Mean Health - by Submitted on Aug 27, 2010 from Bette DowdellDisease rates are rocketing to the moon, with no slowdown in sight, because we don’t know how our bodies work. Most of what we’ve been taught is wrong, and doctors, cornered by insurance companies into ten-minute office visits, simply don’t have time to offer instruction. When it comes to ...
Views: 1792(1 vote) - How to Stay Healthy Every Day - by Submitted on Feb 04, 2012 from Bette DowdellPerhaps you noticed that I didn’t joined “The sky is falling!” crowd worried about fallout from Japan’s triple disasters. You know, like the warnings to start gobbling down potassium iodide by the handful. Well, actually, while iodide’s great stuff, potassium iodide is a kinda cheap form of ...
Views: 1737(1 vote) - Talking About Aging and Disease - by Submitted on Jul 08, 2009 from Bette DowdellPeople in the health biz throw around the lingo as if everybody has a clue. Well, some do, but some don’t. And even those that do may recognize the word without understanding its meaning. So, lets talk some terminology. Especially about things that drag us down–including body parts that ...
Views: 1569(2 votes) - The Fluoride Fraud - by Submitted on Apr 13, 2009 from Bette DowdellEnough with the fluoride already! Communities began adding fluoride to our drinking water based on “scientific” studies–which turned out to be bogus–claiming fluoride would protect our teeth from cavities. Based on the same “science,” companies put the stuff in toothpaste. Fact is, fluoride ...
Views: 1374(2 votes) - Understanding Hormones - by Submitted on Oct 22, 2009 from Bette DowdellTo most of us, talking about hormones means estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. True enough, they’re hormones, and we all have all of them. Men, women and children have them, in different proportions of course, but none of us can make it without all three working together. But these ...
Views: 1781(2 votes) - Vitamin C: Good for What Ails You - by Submitted on Jun 02, 2009 from Bette DowdellDid you know that some animals produce their own Vitamin C? They never get heart disease. No atherosclerosis. No heart attacks. Just singing a song all the day long. Sad to report, humans aren’t part of that happy group. Heart disease runs rampant amongst humans. Hark, Sherlock, might that ...
Views: 1523(1 vote) - Why Thyroid Meds Don't Work - by Submitted on Aug 16, 2009 from Bette DowdellSo, you go to the doctor and spill your bucket of symptoms–fatigue, weight gain, hair loss, etc. If you happened upon an alert doctor, you’ll get a thyroid test. And you’ll celebrate that help is on the way. Well, maybe. While doctors love blood tests–and disdain symptoms–thyroid tests aren’t ...
Views: 2781(2 votes) - Silent, Good-looking Help For Allergies - by Submitted on May 06, 2010 from Bette DowdellHalf of us have thyroid problems, mostly undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. A whacked out thyroid tends to drag down the whole endocrine system, of which it is a part. In turn, a misbehaving endocrine system can drag along all kinds of stuff. Stuff you’d never in a million years figure out had ...
Views: 1679(2 votes) - They've Gone And Messed With Popcorn - by Submitted on May 17, 2010 from Bette DowdellYou know the world’s upside down when you have to cast a wary at popcorn. Popcorn! What in the world could be wrong with good old popcorn? Well, they’ve gone and messed with it, that’s what. It’s not the simple, innocent, family treat of yesteryear. First off, corn ranks number two in ...
Views: 2335(2 votes) - How Big Pharma Controls Medicine - by Submitted on Jan 20, 2010 from Bette DowdellThe large pharmaceutical companies–Big Pharma–control medicine in the U.S. And they stand between us and good medical care. Let’s be blunt about it. Big Pharma is all about money. First, last and always, it’s about the money. They dress it up with talk about the frontiers of science, ...
Views: 2523(4 votes) - Autism Wars - by Submitted on Apr 03, 2009 from Bette DowdellWanna choose sides in the latest autism war? One side says the mother’s lack of Vitamin D during pregnancy causes autism, while the other side says it’s the glutamate that’s in the many immunization shots babies and young children receive. Let’s take a look-see. Autism comes from brain ...
Views: 1572(1 vote) - Flaxseed: The Ticket to Where You Don't Want to Go - by Submitted on Apr 27, 2009 from Bette DowdellFish oil’s good for you. Everybody says so. Yeah, fish oil, that’s the ticket. Well, what about all the warnings about mercury in fish? Okay then, flaxseed’s good for you. Everybody says so. Yeah, flaxseed, that’s the ticket. Begging your pardon and all, but there’s a teensy problem ...
Views: 1772(1 vote) - How To Save A Tea Party - by Submitted on May 28, 2010 from Bette DowdellMy three-year-old niece Rachel came to live with us the on the same day we moved from New York to our new home in Connecticut. Nobody really planned it that way; it just happened. Ten-year-old Chrissie already had the willys about the move, and eight-year-old Charles didn’t lag far behind in ...
Views: 1062(1 vote) - In Praise of Cholesterol - by Submitted on May 24, 2009 from Bette DowdellCan we all get over our fixation on cholesterol? I mean, now that it’s clear that cholesterol isn’t what’s causing heart disease? But, but, but, if cholesterol is building up in my arteries, doesn’t that mean cholesterol’s the problem? Actually, no. Your cholesterol is simply trying to ...
Views: 1441(1 vote) - Is It Leptin That Won't Let You Lose Weight? - by Submitted on Nov 05, 2009 from Bette DowdellThe old curse says “May you live in interesting times.” Well, ‘interesting’ is one way to describe the times we live in. ‘Mind boggling’ might be another. In either case, I think my head’s going to explode. Let’s talk about the new ugly of body fat. Researchers discovered leptin in 1994, ...
Views: 1796(1 vote) - Thyroid or Adrenal? - by Submitted on Aug 26, 2009 from Bette DowdellSo, there you are, dragging your patooty and wondering what in the world happened to you. A friend suggests that you probably have thyroid problems. Another friend jumps in to say, no, you probably have adrenal problems. So you poke around the internet, getting nowhere. When they talk about ...
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