HinesSight

Align probiotic seems to work for me

There comes a time in a blogger's posting life when he says to himself, "How much do visitors to my blog want to know about my digestive system?"

This is a question that separates the self-absorbed blogger who believes that the world is interested in the most intimate and mundane details of his body, mind, and soul (namely, the true blogger) from the faux variety.

I've made my choice: to lead the reader deeper into the bowels of me.

Though my digestive story isn't all that interesting. I've simply noted that my late-50s body doesn't handle food with quite the same alacrity that it did when I was younger.

Which isn't a big surprise. My body doesn't do many things as well as it did years or decades ago. But eating is pretty central to my life, as is getting rid of what's been eaten.

In the good old digestive days I never thought about what entered my mouth and left the other end. Whatever I felt like eating, I ate. End of story. When I got into my late '50s, I began to notice that food's effects became less predictable.

Being a vegetarian, my fiber-heavy diet has always made it easy for me to put in regular reading time in the bathroom. But there can be too much of anything, and occasionally I'd find myself making more visits than I wanted to.

Enter Align, a slickly marketed Procter & Gamble probiotic product. I've been taking a capsule daily for a bit over a month, and it seems to have smoothed out most of the wrinkles in my intestinal life.

I already was a daily yogurt consumer. I also was taking another supplement of beneficial bacteria, Kyo-Dophilus. However, when I read about how the active ingredient in Align, Bifidobacterium infantis, had been proven to be effective in a controlled study, I decided to give it a try.

And have been happy with it.

It seems overpriced ($29.99 for a month's supply) but, hey, it's made by a giant capitalist corporation that packages 28 small capsules in foil blister packs stamped with the days of the week and puts them in a fancy box with a breathlessly positive brochure.

Procter & Gamble supplies a "Personal 4-Week Progress Chart" where the user of Align can record his or her digestive trajectory: Great!, Good, Occasionally bothered, Often bothered.

I wasn't sure what to make of the brochure's description about what to expect in Week 3.

You should be experiencing a noticeable improvement in your digestive health – in fact, some people may be noticing you are doing something new.

God, I hope not! The last thing I want is to be broadcasting the state of my digestive health to the world. Except…oops, I'm doing just that right now.

(This isn't anything new, though, having already shared the depths of my intestinal soul in another post about my virtual colonoscopy.)

Behold: my sacred supplements list

OK, I don't actually worship the supplements that I consume every day. So it's arguable whether they're sacred to me. But I sure spend a lot of time genuflecting in their health-giving direction.

I've decided that it's time to share my supplement list with a not particularly interested world. However, likely there are some supplement geeks in the blogosphere who share my fascination with finding just the right combination of concoctions for optimum well-being.

Which sort of is like the quixotic medieval search by alchemists to turn base metal into gold, because no supplement can hold back the inexorable tide of aging and death.

Still, this 59 year-old male and his wife want to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible. Thus we've been researching the pros and cons of various supplements for many years.

We've added to and subtracted from the pills and capsules that fill several plastic boxes, neatly divided and labeled, which accompany us wherever we go. I won't attempt to justify what's included on the list below. The links usually lead to my purchase source – and more information about the product.

About ten years ago I had a good-natured argument with my family physician at the time, a man my age. When I told him about some of the supplements I took, he said "But those haven't been proven to be effective."

I told him, "Well, there's considerable evidence that they are. If I wait for scientifically exact double-blind studies to be conducted on everything I take, I'll be dead. So I'll take my chances on persuasive, though not proven, information about the supplements' benefits."

Nothing since has changed my mind about the wisdom of this approach. I'm in generally excellent health. At my last eye exam, my optometrist said, "It's amazing that you don't need reading glasses at your age. You must be eating something that's causing your eyes to stay so flexible."

Could be the lutein. Or bilberry. Or maybe the DHA and EPA. I don't know. Could also be the luck of the genetic draw. I'm not particularly concerned about which supplements are doing what for me. Just the end result: better health.

Not highly scientific. But practical. And good for the bottom line of the companies that make and sell the supplements below, because I'm reluctant to stop taking any of them even though I've got doubts about the efficacy of some.

Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Here's my list:

Acetyl-L-carnitine 620 mg
Alpha lipoic acid 100 mg
Aspirin 81 mg
Bilberry fruit extract 120 mg
Celadrin 1050 mg
Co-Q-10 60 mg
DHA, algae oil 400 mg
DHA and EPA, algae oil 345 mg
DHEA 25 mg
Garlicin 350 mg    
Gingko biloba 60 mg
Glucosamine, vegetarian 1000 mg
Green tea extract 725 mg
Kyodophilus 3 billion cells
Lutein 12 mg
Melatonin 200 mcg
Multi-vitamin ("Doctor's Choice for 50-Plus Men," I take 1/2 of recommended)
Pomegranate extract 500 mg
Pygeum 200 mg
Resveratol 100 mg
Saw palmetto 320 mg
Vitamin D 400 IU

Root canal is nothing to fear

I just had a root canal, my second. It was almost pain-free. In an hour I was out of the endodontist's chair, standing at the reception desk, where I experienced my only real discomfort of the morning.

An $1,115 charge to my VISA card. Ouch!

Dr. O'Neill and I talked some about root canals' undeserved bad reputation. "The Endodontist's Association has talked about a PR campaign to change public opinion," she said, "but it's hard to fight all those stand-up comics and their 'worse than a root canal' jokes."

Well, I'm happy to contribute this blog post to the Association's cause. Fear not, if you've been told you need a root canal. The procedure usually isn't any more painful than a filling.

I agree with Joe. The crown and bridge work I've had done was more uncomfortable than the root canals. The Chicago Dental Society has come up with ten other things that are less fun than having a root canal.

That barely scratches the surface. Whenever the Grammys are on I try to expose myself to music I don't usually listen to. But the rappers make me hit the mute button. You know, listening to that atonal #$!*% is worse than…

The American Association of Endodontists points out the gulf between imagination and reality when it comes to root canals.

In an opinion survey of 1,000 adults conducted by the AAE, 63 percent described root canal treatment as either "painful" or "extremely painful." But those respondents who had experienced root canal treatment were six times more likely to describe it as painless, than were those who had never had treatment.

"Fear of root canal treatment truly is fear of the unknown," Dr. Katz said. "In fact, many patients tell us that they dreaded coming in, but they found the treatment easier than having a cavity filled."

So what accounts for the dread of root canals? Some people have lots of pain caused by the condition the root canal is going to relieve. That's one theory—the pain of an abscessed (or "hot") tooth gets mixed up with the comparatively mild discomfort of the procedure to fix the problem.

Staff at Dr. O'Neill's office offered up another idea: that root canals used to be much more difficult, painful, and complicated than they are now. This hypothesis fits with my memory of watching Westerns on TV, when "Gunsmoke" and such were popular.

A dentist reminds us of those not-so-good old days:

For a large part of human history, the only treatment for these death dealing infections was extraction of the offending tooth. Usually done with an instrument known as a pelican, and without anesthesia except for a bottle or two of whiskey (if the patient could afford it), the tooth was RIPPED out as quickly as possible, most frequently breaking the tooth.

I'll take a root canal instead, thank you.

Here's some recommended waiting room reading: the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius, a Stoically inclined second century Roman Emperor. I took a copy along today (Staniforth translation). Marcus' wisdom holds both for the dentist's chair and anywhere else.

All things are in process of change. You yourself are ceaselessly undergoing transformation, and the decay of some of your parts, and so is the whole universe.

…Be like the headland against which the waves break and break: it stands firm, until presently the watery tumult around it subsides once more to rest.

"How unlucky I am that this should have happened to me!" By no means; say rather, "How lucky I am, that it has left me with no bitterness; unshaken by the present, and undismayed by the future."

The thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have emerged unembittered.

Well, not completely. When I get my VISA bill, there might just be a touch of bitterness at the four figure charge for an hour's worth of root canal'ing.

Sure beats drinking a bottle of whiskey and having the tooth ripped out, though. So go ahead and embrace your root canal without bitterness. No matter what it costs.

Avodart reduces my bathroom visits

Here’s one of the crucial questions facing a blogger: “Does anyone besides me care about how often I pee?” Well, how will I know unless I blog about it? And, if you don’t care, stop reading.

I suspect, though, that quite a few men of a certain age will find my subject fascinating.

For 50% of men over the age of 50 are said to have an enlarged prostate (90% over 80). In my “Female doctors do it better” post I noted that a prostate exam is the only time you don’t want to hear from a female who is inspecting your genital area that you’re larger than average.

That happened to me about fifteen months ago. At that time I started taking Flomax, a prescription drug that relieves the symptoms of BPH (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia), which include going often, going urgently, having a weak stream, and frequently waking up at night to go.

All of which described how my 57 year old urinary system was operating. For some inexplicable reason that casts serious doubt on the existence of an intelligent designer, in men the uretha comes out of the bladder and passes through the prostate (which adds fluids to the semen to nourish and protect sperm cells).

When the prostate enlarges due to the effects of the male hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the urethra gets squeezed. And the above-mentioned symptoms appear.

I’d been getting up at least two times a night to go to the bathroom. Recalling my youthful days, that wasn’t at all the case. Sleeping all the way to morning was the rule, not the exception. Then there was the flow thing.

At the athletic club where I work out, I generally use a side by side set of urinals (discreetly separated by a divider). One day I sidled up to pee at the same time as a twenty-something dude. I was struck by the difference in sound between us. One of us was imitating a small waterfall, the other a trickle tube.

You can guess which I was. But now I’m on my way to becoming a gusher again. And a much less frequent visitor to the bathroom, thanks to Avodart.

(Note: I have no financial interest in GlaxoSmithKline, which makes this drug. However, I'd like one. I’m entirely open to accepting cash and/or a free supply of Avodart from GSK if the company wants to express its appreciation for this marvelously positive free blog advertising. Or a Mini-Cooper S convertible, which would entitle GSK to a whole series of Avodart posts and really make me feel younger.)

When I went for my annual physical about three and a half months ago, my doctor told me that my prostate was still “generous.” I didn’t press for details. She said that while Flomax treats symptoms, it doesn’t shrink the prostate. Avodart does, by lowering the level of DHT. I was told that Flomax and Avodart can be taken at the same time, and that Avodart can take six months or so to have an effect.

Well, it seems to be working for me after just a bit over three months. I’m usually getting up to go just once a night now. And the frequency of bathroom trips is considerably less during the day.

Yesterday I peed at the athletic club around 4:30 pm, then went to my Tai Chi class. At 6:15 I drank a large Starbucks latte before beginning my weekly grocery shopping. Got home and took the dog for a walk. Peed again at about 8:00 pm. That’s three and a half hours between bathroom visits, even with a large latte coursing through my bladder.

Much improved from before. So I’m happy with Avodart.

It’s fairly spendy, but insurance is paying half the cost of my prescription. I haven’t noticed any side effects. That’s good, but I would like to experience the side effect of having hair regrow on my bald spot. Avodart is expected to work like Propecia, since it reduces the conversion of testosterone to DHT, one of the causes of hair loss.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the back of my head. Along with paying less attention to toilets.

Omega-3 from V-Pure algae, not fish or flax

Being a vegetarian can be complicated. Fish oil is the best source of Omega-3 fatty acids, which confer important benefits to the heart, brain, eyes, and other body parts/functions.

But I don’t like the idea of eating a once swimming life form (though my wife points out that I take a joint supplement, Celadrin, which contains an ingredient that once was part of a cow).

So I’ve been searching for a karma-lite way to get my Omega 3’s. Several years ago I started taking a couple of flax oil capsules every day. I’ve also tried frozen waffles with hemp seed, which are legal again after the failure of an ill-considered federal attempt to ban hemp products..

Flax is one of the best vegetarian sources of Omega 3. However, it’s still a long ways from matching fish oil. It seems that flax has lots of ALA (alpha-linoleic acid). This is a parental fatty acid that gets converted into the children of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid).

DHA and EPA are the truly beneficial Omega 3’s. So if ALA doesn’t get converted into them, eating gobs of flax oil or flax seed isn’t going to accomplish much. And from what I’ve been able to fathom (more knowledgeable readers, please correct me), a number of factors prevent vegetarian ALA from being converted into DHA and EPA.

Thus I’ve also been taking Source Naturals’ Neuromins DHA, which comes from algae. It’s billed as a “dietary supplement for the brain,” so I try to never forget to ingest two 100 mg capsules a day. That way I know how much DHA I’m getting, 200 mg—a bit more than my wife gets from her three Eskimo-3 fish oil capsules (130 mg).

Yet Laurel’s fish oil supplement has 210 mg of EPA and I’m batting zero. I’m no expert on the relative value of EPA and DHA, but the couple who wrote “The A-Z’s of Omega 3s” obviously have done a lot of research. They say:

Ralph Holman from the University of Minnesota and the Grand Master of essential fatty acid studies in humans, once summed up the situation by saying 'DHA is structure, EPA is function.'"

Well, I’d like my brain to have both structure and function. So it’s been bothering me that I couldn’t find a vegetarian source of EPA. Earlier this month I embarked on a search for this non-fishy Omega 3 Holy Grail. Thanks to Google, I believe I succeeded.

A few days ago two bottles of V-Pure Omega 3 arrived in the mail from Switzerland. It isn’t sold in the United States so far, to my knowledge. V-Pure is derived from algae by some sort of secret process that the makers are coy about, supposedly to protect their patent.

That makes me a bit wary. However, the bottles I received say that two capsules a day provide 75 mg of EPA and 270 mg of DHA (a lot less EPA than fish oil, but a lot more than nothing). Maybe I’m overly trusting of the European Union and Swiss manufacturing, but I’m taking them at their word.

With just three days of this supplement in my system my brain doesn’t seem to be functioning noticeably differently than before. I do seem to have a clearer view of the world, but that’s probably because I haven’t been watching much Fox News over the Christmas weekend.

So I recommend that vegetarians looking for a good non-fish Omega 3 source check out V-Pure. It’s kind of cool to order from a European web site (they have a currency converter) and I got my order in a shade under three weeks.

I’m skeptical that this product is going to change the world like the maker says. But if it changes my brain and heart for the better, it’s worth the charge to my VISA card.

[Update: thanks to a comment from ET, I was led to this additional information about the benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids and the need to reduce your Omega 6 intake to derive maximum benefit from the "3s."]

My virtual colonoscopy is a walk in the park (and to the toilet)

Nobody other than a masochist says, “Oh joy, I’m going to have a colonoscopy today!”

So I’ve resisted having an endoscope snaked up my butt, even while sedated. I’d heard horror stories about people who suffered a lot of pain during a colonoscopy but were too zonked out to effectively communicate what was going on.

Then I learned about virtual (or CT) colonoscopy. It’s non-invasive (yes!) and doesn’t require sedation. Like most things medical there’s debate over whether conventional or virtual colonoscopy is better.

A 2003 study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded:

“CT colonoscopy with the use of a three-dimensional approach is an accurate screening method for the detection of colorectal neoplasia in asymptomatic average-risk adults and compares favorably with optical colonoscopy in terms of the detection of clinically relevant lesions.”

Good enough for me. My family doctor was willing to write a referral for this endoscopic alternative, and this morning my 58-year old body found itself poised to pass through the maw of Body View Diagnostic Scanning’s CT machine (they’re in Clackamas, Oregon right off I-205; phone 503-653-7226).

It took just half an hour to get both a heart scan and a virtual colonoscopy. The first was completely painless; the latter was a bit uncomfortable because of the carbon dioxide that gets pumped into the colon to inflate it.

But it still was a walk in the park compared to a regular colonoscopy. The preparation procedure isn’t as onerous and there’s no sedation recovery time. Nor any risk of complications, such as a bowel perforation.

The main drawback of a virtual colonoscopy is that suspicious polyps can’t be removed on the spot. However, Body View says that polyps are found in only 7-10% of patients, so I’ll take my chances (I get the results of the scan tomorrow).

It’s important to have a colonoscopy once you’re over 50. But many people don’t, because the procedure is intimidating. What helped to sell me on a virtual colonoscopy was the Boston Medical Center’s pitch to physicians.

It is one thing for doctors to recommend colon screening for their patients, it is another thing for doctors themselves (their spouses and/or parents) to have their own colons checked. Now that an accurate, quick, and safe test is available it is even less excusable to avoid or delay "clearing your colon." Colon screening by Virtual Colonoscopy , at least for a doctor and his family, should be as basic and instinctive as a mammogram for her and a PSA for him once a certain age is reached.

Similarly, the Body View staff told me that they perform quite a few virtual colonoscopies on gastroenterologists. If it’s good enough for MD’s, it’s good enough for me. And Laurel, who has had one also.

Still, neither of us enjoyed the frequent trips to the bathroom during the bowel cleansing that starts the day before the procedure. After 5:30 pm, when you chug down some magnesium citrate, you don’t want to stray far from your new best friend: the toilet.

This has to be done with a regular colonoscopy also, though. And we liked Body View’s more lenient dining guidelines on the day before the exam. I got to have a normal breakfast, then a light low fat/fiber lunch (for me, banana and pasta with plain tomato sauce).

Dinner at 5 pm, such as it was, consisted of a nutritional drink. Then it was cold turkey (or, rather, tofu) for this vegetarian until 10:00 am the next morning, when I was able to eat some post exam snacks provided by Body View.

I’m not used to going without solid food for almost 24 hours. I did a lot of starving-children-in-Africa visualizing to keep things in perspective. It was hard to get to sleep on a nearly empty stomach. While I lay there, initially passing the awake time by feeling sorry for myself, I eventually realized that this is what lots of people in the world experience every night.

Overall, my virtual colonoscopy wasn’t as difficult as I expected. I got used to feeling hungry after a while. I felt almost normal (albeit several pounds lighter) driving up the freeway to Portland this morning.

The two-person staff at Body View greeted me with a smile. They’re pleasant, competent, egalitarian, and refreshingly informal. After the exam I got to view my heart and colonoscopy scans on computer screens and hear a general explanation of the procedures. Plus, get some initial heart scan results.

My cardiac calcium plaque score was 4. Pretty good, but not perfect. This means that my risk of coronary artery disease is very unlikely, less than 10 percent. The Body View guy said that I scored better than about 78% of men my age. I told him that was good news. But since most American men my age are out of shape, overweight, and eat unhealthily, I didn’t consider it great news.

I ended up with a $1,141.25 VISA receipt for my share of the two scans. It was that high because I hardly ever go to the doctor and still had $750 left to meet on my $1,000 Regence Blue Cross deductible.

But as my family doctor said when we discussed the pros and cons of getting these scans (mainly the heart scan; getting a colonoscopy is a no-brainer for anyone over 50), “It just depends on what you want to spend your money on.”

I told her that for eleven hundred bucks and change I could get a nice new computer. Or some other electronic toy. However, if I ended up with undiagnosed colon cancer or heart disease, I’d kick myself for not choosing the diagnostic tests instead.

Do yourself a favor. If you can afford it, or even if you feel that you can’t, get a colonoscopy after you pass the half century mark. With the virtual variety, you’ll hardly feel a thing.

Except a toilet seat, quite a few times, the day before. And some stomach rumblings when midnight snack time arrives and you can't even drink a glass of water. All in all, a small price to pay to markedly reduce the risk of dying from colon cancer.

Check out the Center for Virtual Colonoscopy at Boston Medical Center for more information about this procedure.

Marijuana may stave off Alzheimer’s

Ah, excellent news today: smoking pot may prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

I’m hoping the effect is long-lasting, since I inhaled enough THC in the 60’s to keep me Alzheimer’s-free for a thousand years (more or less; anyway, the whole universe could just be a speck in the eye of a Cosmic Dude who is just a speck in the eye…time’s got to be an illusion).

What a trip. All these years I’ve heard, “If you can remember the 60’s, you probably weren’t there.” Now it turns out that those cannabis-happy hippie days were good for the memory.

Far out.