Welcome To The Hills Medical Group

In my practice the death rate is 100%. I once attended a seminar on death, dying, and grieving, and the question proposed was, "How many of your patients are terminally ill?" That was an appropriate question for this population of physicians and nurses because they were treating primarily terminal cancer patients and AIDS patients. My practice did not reflect as high a number of actively dying patients, but to the question, "How many of your patients are terminally ill?" I replied, "100%" with the added statement, "we are not going to get out of this alive." That moment was the beginning of my intense interest in life expectancy. In 3000 B.C., the average life expectancy was 18 years. In 275 B.C., the average life expectancy was 22 years. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 49 years.

I wondered where we came up with 65 as a retirement age and soon found in the history books that Bismarck of Germany wanted to be chancellor in the late 1800's. All of his competitors were over 65. He had a law passed for mandatory retirement of government officials at age 65, thus eliminating his competition so that he became Chancellor of Germany. In the 1935 during the Depression, social security was instituted in the United States and the retirement figure of 65 was selected. That was a governmental decision, and it was expected that most people would die before age 65. For one born in 1939, the average life expectancy was only 61 years; therefore, the supposition was that most of the people would die before they ever needed social security. That prediction did not turn out to be true. In 1965, Medicare was enacted and once again the government underestimated the problem. Even the life expectancy of people enrolled in Medicare in 1965 was fewer than 60 years, and yet there were large numbers of people over the age of 65. The average life expectancy of someone born in 1990 is 76 years, and we now know that there are approximately 60,000 people in the United States that are over 100 years old. Within the next 10 years it is estimated there will be 120,000 people over 100.

Looking at these figures, it is pretty clear that the problem with Medicare is not health fraud or providers providing excessive medical care or billing, but rather that the government has continued to underestimate the massiveness of the over 65 population. PEOPLE ARE LIVING LONGER AND THEY ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO LIVE LONGER AND LONGER. So, are they going to spend those years in nursing homes with degenerating bodies, or are they going to spend those years traveling, being active, and enjoying life.

For instance, people born in the year 2000 should have a life expectancy of 85 years, based on what we know about exercise and optimum nutrition. For people born in the year 2010, a life expectancy of 115 years is a reasonable assumption because of the additional elements of hormone replacement and rejuvenating body chemicals. People born in the year 2030 will have the advantage of genetic engineering and a life expectancy of 200 years could be normal. People today are going to live longer than their parents unless they choose to do all the things that make their lives unhealthy. Therefore, we have the choice to make those longer years healthy, vibrant, and happy. For the alternative -- go check out nursing homes! Frankly, "Power Aging" can help make those longer years exciting, active, and productive -- not dull, drab, and confined by a degenerating body.

WHAT CAUSES DEATH OR INCREASES LONGEVITY?

From 3000 B.C. to 275 B.C., the most frequent causes of death were accidents, injuries, and infections. Prior to 1900, deficiency diseases such as scurvy, infections, plagues, and pneumonia seemed to be the major causes of death. Interestingly enough, pneumonia was known as "the old man's friend" since it was usually the illness that took someone's life after a fractured hip. (Usually the result of osteoporosis -- a mineral deficiency.)

There is not much help in preventive medicine from the current medical literature since it focuses mostly on the fad of the time rather than the non-fad or health issues. To illustrate this I will go back to the story about scurvy. The diagnosis and treatment of scurvy was discovered some 200 years before it was actively incorporated by the British Navy. The clearly defined study conducted by the Chief Surgeon of the Royal Navy showed that those sailors who ate limes or lemons had no problems with scurvy while the others who did not had definite problems. This information was published, and it languished for 200 years while up to 4000 men per year died in the British Navy waiting for someone to rediscover it again and start the treatment (which came some 200 years later).

Medicine, like any profession, does not easily accept radical change. Individual physicians initiate change and others join in. But this process is slow! The reason that there are so many books written by physicians and directed to the general public is that many other physicians are not paying attention to new health developments. Thus, because many of us can get no response from our colleagues to new ways of thinking, we write to the general public which is more willing to embrace new ideas. Thus,this book as well as many other books, is directed to the general public rather than the readers of most medical journals.

After 1900, sanitation arrived, and many say that engineers who introduced sanitary processes were instrumental in the increase of the lifespan and the decrease of disease. To illustrate the importance of sanitation we read about towns that were besieged in the Middle Ages. Many of those cities survived siege because the armies outside had no good sanitary practices. Many of the soldiers became ill with typhus or typhoid fever from fecal contamination of food. Soon the army was too sick to fight. The army would then have to pack up and move, lifting the siege.

In the 1930's, antibiotics such as penicillin and sulfa became available, but originally there was the same reluctance by physicians to have anything to do with these new treatments. For example, Winston Churchill was dying of pneumonia after his trip in Yalta during World War II when finally somebody decided to try penicillin. It cured his pneumonia immediately. It was then that penicillin got its chance to become popular and useful.

Now we are at the point of looking at exercise and nutrition. I think that there has been great improvement in the last 30 years. We now know how much exercise to do and at what level of intensity. We also know that if we eat a high fiber / low fat diet we are much healthier. Only recently, authors of books have questioned whether we should eat more or less protein and more or less carbohydrate, but it is certainly clear that we need to eat less fat and we need to eat more fiber. Now the question is balancing out the protein and the carbohydrate. All changes come slowly, but I am 60 years old, and I do not have time to wait. I cannot wait another 20-30 years for a double blind 50,000 person study to be run and to see if they used the right parameters and did not foul up the design process. So this book will be about taking the best information that I can get and telling you about it so that you can actually take better care of yourself and hopefully reach 100 years successfully and happily. That is my goal.

WHAT CAUSES AGING?

The literature is replete with information about free radicals as a cause of aging and antioxidants as a major preventative of aging. In general, the antioxidants are considered to be glutamine, zinc, the carotenes, vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium. Recently some medicines that have been used to treat high blood pressure have been shown to function as antioxidants and are now widely touted as the treatment for both high blood pressure and diabetes because of their function in preventing injury to the tiny vessel walls in the body; particularly in the kidney, brain, and heart. Microvascular disease (which is the disease of the lining of the blood vessels damaged by free radicals) is the name of the disorder of blood vessels caused by high blood pressure and cholesterol deposits. Microvascular disease is prevented by the ace inhibitor type of blood pressure medication. The improvement seems to be related to nitric oxide which is released and seems to function as an antioxidant.

These studies suggest that the disease in our kidneys and our hearts are actually a result of free radical damage to the lining of the blood vessels. As the vessel repairs itself, it uses LDL cholesterol (bad kind) much like a scaffolding or brace to help support the artery. Antioxidants (vitamin E, C, zinc, selenium, carotenes, etc.) prevent the microvascular disease by keeping the LDL cholesterol soluble so it cannot be deposited in the cell wall obstructing the vessel. Antioxidants also prevent the free radical from damaging the cell wall. If there are not enough antioxidants then the vessel wall is damaged, the LDL cholesterol precipitated and is used to support and partially block the blood vessel. This is one of the few instances that I know of where the body seems to make an effort to build a support system for the artery and in the process closes off the artery.

So what are free radicals? People running around with different political views? No. There are millions of free radicals being released in every reaction of our body. A free radical is a single unpaired electron that is searching for another electron. A good illustration is that a free radical is like a guy in a bar on a Thursday night wondering who he is going to date for the weekend and hitting on any attractive lady. In essence, the free radical is on the prowl and any electron that it can get is the one for it. The antioxidants function to bind the free radicals or to supply them with electrons so that they do not have to damage cells or an organ system of the body. So if the antioxidants are not there, the free radicals take their electrons from cells, such as those in the lining of the blood vessels, thus damaging those cells. As the damage from the free radicals to our DNA and to our cells increases, this sets the stage for cholesterol accumulation in the vessels and probably things like Alzheimer's disease and heart disease.

The body has its own set of internal antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase, but they are not adequate to deal with all of the free radicals that are produced because of the environment that we live in. For instance, we eat a lot of foods that have preservatives in them and these preservatives can function as free radicals. We are exposed to cigarette smoke which also functions as free radicals. We are exposed to lead toxicity and mercury toxicity which produce free radicals. Therefore, there are many more substances in our environment today that cause us to have an increased number of free radicals than there were 100 years ago. We need more antioxidants which we can only obtain through our food and through nutritional supplementation. It is fairly well documented that diet alone will not provide adequate antioxidants.

Free radicals act to damage the chromosomes because the chromosomes contain DNA strands. When these strands are damaged by free radicals the body has the alternative to either repair that segment or remove and replace that segment. If the body has plenty of antioxidants available, then they absorb the free radicals and the attacks on the DNA do not occur. When there has been a lot of DNA damage, we can look at the cells under the microscope and see a compound called lipofucsion which reflects the aging process. The important point here is that free radical production does not decrease with age, but the body's production of antioxidants, the free radical trapping compounds, does decrease with age.

DNA in our cells is under the control of a gene clock and that gene clock is the segments on the DNA called telomeres. Telomeres are the end segments of DNA on chromosomes. As the chromosomes and telomeres are damaged, altered, and shortened; there reaches an eventual point where the cell dies and is not replaced. If enough cells do that in the right organs, then we die. There is a lot more information about this in a book by Dr. Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D. titled, How and Why We Age and a book by Dr. Michael Fossel, Ph.D., M.D. titled, Reversing Human Aging. I will leave that information for you to research on your own if you want a more complicated answer for what I am trying to uncomplicate. The key to remember is that as the chromosome shortens and the telomeres are altered, those segments eventually cause destruction of the cells, and then the cells age. If the cell does not do its job in the cellular family, then the cellular unit becomes dysfunctional; eventually the organ system becomes dysfunctional, and death results. Death can be accelerated by disease or cancer. ( Cancer actually causes the telomeres to lengthen on their own producing a whole set of other problems. )

Toxins, such as the lead in paint, and gas fumes containing lead are linked with hypertension. Studies have shown that law enforcement officials working in downtown urban areas have a much higher level of lead in their bodies than law enforcement officials working in country areas where the air is much cleaner and contains less lead from gas fumes.

We also now know that the mercury in the fillings of our teeth can produce toxicity in our bodies. In some people this mercury is very bioavailable and certainly produces toxicity, but it is fairly subtle. The changes we normally associate with mercury toxicity are also the changes we associate with aging: diminished function, feeling crummy, occasional vertigo, not being able to be as active, muscle aches and pains, joint stiffness, and in some instances Alzheimer's type symptoms. A wonderful review of this is available in the book It's All In Your Head by Dr. Hal Huggins who is a dentist. Dr. Huggins has been surrounded by a great deal of controversy since he started championing the concept of removing the mercury from our teeth, but his ideas are now being readily accepted by more and more people including physicians and dentists.

TOO MUCH RELIANCE ON DOCTORS AND MEDICATION

We have an interesting system of medicine in our country in that for many years most of the research has been paid for by drug companies. They want research on their new drugs, and they certainly do not want to encourage research on drugs that cannot be patented. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was formed about that time, in 1906, to help with food purity. Now, by law, the FDA has moved into the whole area of determining whether a product can be designated for a specific medical use, rather than allowing physicians the freedom to use a drug the way it seems best. Actually, no one can make any medical claims for a drug unless it has been studied and approved by the FDA (a process I am told that frequently costs about ten million dollars and five years or more).

With such power, it appears to me that the FDA regulators have become both pious and, in my experience, arrogant. Products like natural estrogens, natural progesterones, DHEA, melatonin, chelated minerals, antioxidants, and other nutritional supplements are not studied well because they cannot be patented. There is no way for anyone to make any medical claims for these products. Since they are not protected by a patent, one cannot make a profit after spending ten million dollars for FDA approval.

The advent of managed care with its "fat cat" insurance executives has worsened the funding of research. The intent, as I have watched it, seems to be to provide as little objective and careful patient care as possible, reduce access to medical care, and lower the use of drugs. This makes it more important that you become knowledgeable and active in your own care.

Physicians are caught in a bind. Most of the information they get is from their journals. The advertising in the journals is by drug companies, and the journals also publish articles about the use of medication or research that is actually funded by drug companies. Certainly articles that relate to inexpensive products promoting healing are either down played or unlikely to make the journals unless they are negative such as the recent articles on beta carotene. Although there appears to be hundreds or thousands of journal articles on the carotenes and their advantages, the ones that get the most attention from the media are the ones that are negative. So the media is not a good source of sound medical information.

I remember the same thing happening when Nathan Pritikin and the Pritikin Longevity Center produced their results of how many people improved their health with the use of the Pritikin diet. Mr. Pritikin was a bedridden heart attack victim and had severe coronary artery disease. He got well by eating a low fat diet and exercising. The medical articles that came out stated that the authors used the Pritikin diet, and that it did not work or change the cholesterol. In a rebuttal letter, Mr. Pritikin noted that the medical investigators never communicated with his organization to get the Pritikin diet or the Pritikin Program!

Thus, physicians are caught in a bind when reading their own journals, thinking they are getting a true analysis of what is going on in the medical world. They may wake up years later to find out that they have been led down a very narrow trail. They may then realize that the information they received was not the open scientific forum they thought they were getting but rather a narrow, distorted view dictated by moneyed interests. They may, however, not wake up at all!

It is time you became self-reliant in your healthcare. That is what this book is all about: How to become self-reliant in the ways that are going to help you truly become a member of the "Power Aging" fraternity, requiring very little intervention by the healthcare community.