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Is Milk A Healthful Food?

dairy cows milk

Few dietary topics create as much controversy as the issue of milk. Billboards, commercials, and magazine ads (featuring celebrities with milk moustaches) encourage us to drink more milk via the influential “Got Milk?” campaign, launched by the dairy industry in 1993. Even our government promotes the heavy consumption of milk—the latest federal nutritional guidelines recommend the equivalent of 3 glasses of milk daily, either fat-free or 1% fat.

Unfortunately, the recommendations for dairy are channeled to us through the perspective of the dairy industry, and are based more on marketing schemes than on scientific research. If you didn’t already know, the dairy lobby is a powerful force, and drives the government’s recommendations.

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Recent Highlights In Health Research

Painted Hills - health research

To enhance my work as a clinician, I spend an average of two hours every day researching and compiling data in the fields of health, nutrition, botanical medicine, dietary supplements, and conventional medicine. This includes evaluating studies on innovative pharmaceutical drug therapies, particularly in the realm of oncology.

From time to time, I’ll be sharing a few of the week’s highlights with you. I hope you will find these interesting, and perhaps the information will be beneficial for you or someone you know.

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Evaluating New Guidelines for PSA Screening

Today’s guest article is written by Mark Bricca, ND, LAc. Mark practices as a clinician at the Mederi Centre for Healing in Ashland, Oregon.

For years, “routine” PSA screening was considered a standard part of prudent, preventive medicine, and surveillance was commonly encouraged by doctors for men beginning in their 50’s. About a year ago, in May of 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) came out with a new recommendation—namely that all men, regardless of their age, should not regularly have PSA screening tests performed unless they are determined to be at increased risk for prostate cancer. What changed, and why the new guidelines? Let’s see if we can understand this whole situation a little better!

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A Model for Integrative Oncology

Magnolia

I believe that we are at a crossroads in oncology and our approach to cancer, where a total paradigm shift in philosophy, strategy, science, and medicine is needed to replace the prevailing “War on Cancer.” This war, declared by Congress in 1971, has yielded little real benefit, despite four decades of effort by conventional medicine and more than $100 billion tax dollars.

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Enjoy Mushrooms For Better Health

I thoroughly enjoy mushrooms—in fact, I actually crave them. It’s likely that this craving can be traced to my Italian culinary heritage—we often add mushrooms to pizza and pasta dishes, but we find them equally delicious in soups, stir-fries, and salads. In addition to the common white button mushroom, we also search for maitake, morel, oyster, portobello, shiitake, and any other unique varieties that appear at our local farmer’s market or natural foods store.

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Thoughts on Healthy Aging

Woman Standing on Rock

This may seem to be a radical stance, but I believe it is mistake to think that illness and disease are an inevitable part of the normal aging process. Although we may think of aging in relation to outward appearance, the way we look reflects only certain aspects of age, some of which are superficial–such as gray hair and laugh lines. How we think and feel inwardly–including our energy and zest for life–and the way our brain, bones, digestion, immune system, and the rest of our body functions is a much more accurate indication of our aging status.

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