Why I Hate Cilantro

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The All of Us genetic testing results I told you about Tuesday included four more genes; by examining the results, these genes explain a lot about my personal tastes. These are not world-changing genetic analyses such as risk for cardiovascular disease or celiac disease, but they’re nevertheless interesting. Here’s what else I found out about myself from the results.

Bitter

Remember, there are five tastes: bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami. Evidently not everyone tastes foods the same way; I didn’t know that there are at least 25 different types of bitter receptors. I have a gene that allows me to taste flavors that are considered bitter. There are at least 550 foods identified as bitter; some I naturally like such as coffee. We can adapt to tastes regardless of our genes, so you may develop an appreciation of bitter foods if you don’t like them now.

Earwax

I have a normal gene that allows me to produce wet earwax as opposed to dry, flaky earwax. In the analysis I received, there’s a long explanation about earwax and what it does. One function of earwax is to keep the ear drum dry when water enters the ear canal; it made me wonder if that’s why some people are more prone to “swimmer’s ear” than others.

Lactose Intolerance

There’s a gene that, depending on its location on your DNA, will allow you to produce more lactase, the enzyme that breaks down the milk sugar lactose. If the gene is in a different position, you may lose your ability to produce enough lactase, and thus you become lactose intolerant. Mine is evidently in a good position because I digest dairy products just fine.

Cilantro

I have the “I hate cilantro” gene. Actually, that’s an overstatement. If you have the gene mutation, you have a slight chance of disliking it, somewhere between 3% and 21%. To me (and Paula), it strongly tastes like soap instead of the refreshing citrus flavor most people experience.

Those were the genetic results I’ve gotten so far—nothing earth shattering but interesting nonetheless. It explains a lot, including that in spite of your genes, you can overcome some of your genetic tendencies and learn to love cilantro.

Consider joining the All of Us Research Program. You’ll be contributing a lot and you just might learn some interesting things about your genes as well. Check it out at https://www.joinallofus.org//#.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

All of Us: Genetic Results

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Almost two years ago, I wrote about the All of Us Research Program. Their goal was to get 1,000,000 partners who would be subjects in the largest study ever done within the U.S. I decided to participate fully and that means answering questionnaires as well as giving blood samples and other basic health information. I’ve gotten some results but this past week, I finally got some of the analysis of my DNA and genetics.

Paula likes to call me a pure-bred: all of my ancestors were Polish (with the exception of one maternal great-grandfather), while her ancestors came from all over Europe. While I was curious what the ancestry portion of the DNA test would reveal, there wasn’t much doubt. The All of Us program goes through great pains to explain why some people might want to know their ancestry while others might not. I would describe it as fairly rigorous just to make sure that you really, really wanted to know the outcome.

My DNA confirmed that there was a 79% chance that I was from Eastern Europe, specifically Poland or the Ukraine. The rest of the probability was northern or western European. No great surprises there. They also tested for four other genes, and I’ll talk about those on Saturday.

They’re still looking for participants. I would urge you to go to https://allofus.nih.gov/ and be part of something greater than yourself. You might also find out why you love cilantro or think it tastes like soap.

Super Bowl Webinar Replay

If you missed out on the webinar, you can still watch it in its entirety by purchasing the replay. It was the kick-off event for longer term focus on helping you become the best version of yourself. Aging with a Vengeance is just the beginning; you’ll see more as the year goes on.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Fighting the Mutants Among Us

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Unless you’ve been avoiding all information about COVID-19, you know that there are now variants or mutations of the original virus. The first mutation was identified in the United Kingdom; soon after, another was identified in South Africa, and finally, another in Brazil. Will there be more? Undoubtedly. Is it a big deal? Maybe.

If a variant doesn’t respond to current treatments or one of the current vaccines, that’s a problem. If we’ve had the virus and it doesn’t respond to the antibodies we’ve developed, we have to start over again. We don’t know if those problems will show up; at this point, we just don’t have enough data.

But there’s one thing that we can do. We can try to avoid catching the COVID-19 virus in the first place, no matter which variant we get. While we may get a mild form of the original or variant viruses, the longer the virus stays in our body, the more it replicates. And every time it replicates, it gets a chance to try something new: to mutate. With an increase in replication comes an increase in the odds of another successful mutation. The virus can learn how our bodies attack it and, simply by wildly reproducing itself, increase the odds a variant will survive. We spew the variant virus without knowing it, and voila, another mutant gets a chance to spread.

We are each part of the first line of defense: if we deny the virus a host, we remove its chance to replicate and mutate.

You personally could be the one person who stops the next deadlier mutation by not giving it a place to do its dirty work. That’s why we need to deny the virus a chance to get inside our noses and mouths; even if you’ve been fully vaccinated, do everything you can to keep the virus out of your body. Double up on masks, social distance, wash your hands—you know the drill. Apply the Swiss Cheese COVID Protection approach. In this case, we’re trying not to catch it, not to give it a chance to replicate and mutate, and not to spread it.

Be a hero: don’t give the virus a chance to invade and mutate.

The Bottom Line

I know if we had our druthers, we wouldn’t bother with masks and so on, but the overwhelming feeling I get is that we just want this to be over. Let’s all work to that end by doing what we have to do to stop the virus in its tracks.

The title of tomorrow’s Super Bowl Webinar is Aging with a Vengeance. Dealing with viruses and other health challenges is a part of that.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Double-Up for Safety

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This is Super Bowl week so let’s lead with a football analogy in the fight against the COVID-19 virus. “The best offense is a great defense” has been used as a way to deal with teams who have a great offense: if you stop them from keeping the ball, they can’t do much scoring. That appears to be a good strategy used to keep from getting COVID-19, especially as new strains appear.

The CDC does not recommend wearing two masks because there’s no science to support it, and I haven’t found a single study on double-masking. But it does make sense from this perspective: if wearing one mask is 50% effective, which it appears to be, wearing two may increase it to 75% effective. Remember the Swiss Cheese COVID Protection approach to reducing infection? No single approach works perfectly but put all of them together, and they can significantly reduce the risk of catching the virus.

I’ll take it one step further. Wear two masks when you’re going to be in one place for a long time. I double-mask when I work out: a cloth mask over a surgical mask. With restaurants opening in more states, it’s probably a good idea there as well. With shopping, if you’re standing talking with someone, yes. If you’re picking up and buying something like restaurant takeout, maybe yes and maybe no because you still may have to wait in line. Remember: respect, not fear.

Super Bowl Webinar

My 11th Annual Super Bowl Webinar is Sunday at 3 p.m. ET; Aging with a Vengeance is the theme. I’m going to provide attendees strategies on four aspects of aging and specific ideas on how to address each issue, all in about an hour. Join me Sunday afternoon, but if you can’t, I’ll have a replay available for viewing later. Sign up today. Members and Insiders: remember to sign in to drchet.com first to get your discount.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

How to Be Stone Free

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I do my best to avoid social media. Occasionally, I make a comment and it confirms I was correct to have hands off in the first place. There was a discussion on the benefits of a lifestyle-only approach to health, completely avoiding conventional medicine. I remarked that some things, such as the bladder stones I just had removed, couldn’t be fixed with lifestyle alone and that it was good to have medical options available. That led to being lectured on how diet could fix anything. Hmmm. I, too, have Google. And I also have a PhD in health education and nutrition, but okay and buh-bye. I can’t deal with that level of ignorance.

After my urologist told me he had removed stones over an inch in diameter, my little stone didn’t seem so bad. I asked him, “What was the treatment before catheters and surgery were invented?” What happened was that people died. They couldn’t urinate, developed infections when they couldn’t eliminate their urine, and died.

Every time you think things were better back then, before conventional medicine was developed, think again. That doesn’t mean our healthcare system couldn’t be better, but it sure beats death.

Preventing Stones

There are several steps we can take to reduce the risk of forming any type of stone.

  • Drink plenty of fluids. Aim for one-half your body weight in ounces of fluids per day. Every fluid counts, even caffeinated drinks such as coffee and tea, plus the ice that melts in your iced tea or soft drink.
  • Reduce your sodium intake. That’s one of my specific issues because I love salty foods. Sodium can help cause stones from calcium, so lowering your intake is important.
  • Reduce protein intake from animal sources. Excess protein contributes to an increase in acidity, which can also help create an environment that makes stones.
  • Increase vegetable and fruit intake. They contribute to making the body more alkaline, which reduces stone formation.
  • Increase your citric acid intake. The easiest way to do that is to drink lemonade, limeade, and eat more citrus fruits. Just remember to pay attention to the sugar in the lemonade.

The Bottom Line

The biggest risk factor for getting a stone is having had a stone. To reduce the risk, we have to change our lifestyle. We don’t have to be perfect; we just have to be better than we are today. If you’ve experienced the pain and discomfort of any type of stone, these changes are a whole lot easier to live with in my opinion.

And for the record, diet can’t fix everything. It can help, so do all you can, but if you need medical care, the smart move is to call your doctor’s office.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

The Inconvenient Stones

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Bladder stones, kidney stones, gall stones, gout—all can present quite a challenge if you happen to produce them. Imagine being scared to eat because you may end up writhing on the floor with gall stones. Or how about feeling a twinge in your lower back and having that fleeting thought, “Oh, no, I hope I don’t have another kidney stone!”

In my case, it was a bladder stone: a 1.5 cm bladder stone rolling around my bladder; the photo on the right shows what it looked like after my doctor blasted it into pieces and removed it. Without getting too graphic, attempting to urinate was always an unknown experience, depending on exactly where the stone was positioned at any given time and whether it was blocking the urethra. Painful? Not always. Inconvenient? If you can’t evacuate your bladder completely, you feel the need to go more often. So yes, you bet it was inconvenient.

Not anymore. I had the stone blasted and removed last Friday. It was not a comfortable 24 hours, but my body is working as it should again. Once you’ve had a stone, any type of stone, that’s the greatest risk factor for getting another one. Is it preventable? Most likely not, but I’ll happily take a few stone-free years. Are there things that we can do to reduce the risk? Yes, and I’ll cover those on Saturday.

Insider Conference Call

The next Insider Conference Call is tomorrow night. This call will include an Aging with a Vengeance topic related to muscle mass. Also, I’ll answer Insider questions. This year is dedicated to helping you become the best version of yourself, so it’s time to consider whether you’d benefit from an Insider membership. Sign up by 8 p.m. ET and you can participate.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Why You Need Taurine

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Two years ago, I wrote about an episode of food poisoning that Paula and I both had. It was gut wrenching, literally, but it may have been a good thing. How is that possible? Believe it or not, it might have been a training session for our microbiomes.

Scientists have been examining ways to reduce our dependence on antibiotics, and that includes studying the way the microbiome responds to bacterial infections. They have exposed rodents to specific bacterial pathogens and then studied how the animal’s gut responds. When they later expose the animals to the same or similar pathogenic bacteria, the response is significantly reduced. How?

The second exposure caused an increase in the probiotics that release hydrogen sulfide; this chemical interferes with the pathogenic bacteria’s ability to produce energy, thus reducing the negative effects of the invader. The microbiome “remembered” the invader and responded with the correct defense. They further explored how taurine supplementation would impact the response; because taurine contains a sulfonyl group, it supports the production of hydrogen sulfide. They found taurine was effective to increase production and reduce the impact of the pathogens.

Taurine is found only in animal sources; seafood leads the list. However, the body can make taurine from cysteine; that may help as long as a person, carnivore or vegan, gets all the amino acids. Taurine is also found in energy drinks and assorted sports products. We’re not at the point where a specific quantity of taurine can be recommended for suspected food poisoning, but it’s good to know that our microbiome may be trained against some food-poisoning pathogens.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References: Call. 2021. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.12.011

Planning Your Infrastructure Upgrade

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In order to give you some ideas to help you focus on your body’s infrastructure, I’m going to share my list. I’ll give you my issues and why I feel they’re problems for me; I hope that will stimulate your thinking so you can determine your infrastructure upgrades for 2021. I don’t know that I can accomplish all of them in a single year, but I do know I can make a good start, and that’s what I’m hoping you will do as well.

Increase Muscle Mass

If there’s one getting-older issue that I completely underestimated, it’s the loss of muscle mass. It just sort of crept up on me and while I can’t quantify it in terms of pounds or percentage, I know I’ve lost strength in my upper body, and my legs seem to be a shadow of their former selves. Part of the reason that my legs lost so much mass, I believe, is directly tied to my inability to run consistently. I have no idea when I’ll be able to run freely again, if ever, so strength training is going to be critical to increase strength if not mass.

Improve Skin Quality

I have to confess that I never examine my skin. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my face in the mirror, and I ignore my arms completely. But lately I’ve noticed that my skin is thinner and a slight scrape against the door frame that doesn’t even hurt can leave a huge purple spot. I’m not trying to recreate the quality of skin I had in my 20s, but I know it can be better than it is. (Has anyone in my household been nagging me about this for years? Um, maybe.)

Decrease Body Fat

The one that drives me crazy is the increase in body fat around my waist. I weigh 45 pounds less than my highest body weight ever, yet my waist circumference is greater now than it was then. The reasons are complicated, from the loss of muscle mass reducing metabolic rate to the gradual reduction in hormones as I get older. I know that there’s no such thing as spot reduction, and I don’t know if the general rule “you lose it first from where you put it on last” applies as you get older. But aside from increasing muscle mass, this one is just not acceptable and is a priority for me.

Increase Bone Mass

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have osteopenia. In fact, I’m one-tenth of a Z-score from having osteoporosis. I have improved my vitamin D and calcium intake since my last bone-density test. I’ll find out in April whether that has resulted in any change. I’m not interested in continuing to be the amazing shrinking man, so this is an internal infrastructure change that must happen in 2021.

Improve Posture and Balance

This one seems a lot less obvious, but it’s still critical to overall health. Why? Because working on improving posture now, which means resetting the resting “tone” of the postural muscles will help with balance as we get older, and balance is critical if we hope to make it to an advanced age. The inner ear is part of it, but our ability to be able to move and do the things that we want to do can be dramatically impacted by poor balance. The modifications in muscle mass and fat mass, as well as bone mass, will have an impact, but it’s also critical to specifically work on posture and balance movements as well.

The Bottom Line

There you have it: my infrastructure plan for 2021. I’ve begun working on some, but there’s still research to read to find better solutions. That will include different approaches to exercise, whether weight training, stretching, or aerobic exercise. There could be specific dietary approaches that apply rather than just cutting calories. Supplementing with nutrient isolates and specific dietary supplements may also be part of the solution.

How about you? You may have cholesterol and HbA1c that needs to get lowered, cardiac output that needs to increase, and a microbiome overhaul; maybe you need to build strength in specific areas to compensate for arthritis and loss of cartilage.

Identify your three to five areas and write them down. As the year progresses, I’ll share the solutions I’ve found with you because my goal hasn’t changed: to help you become the best version of yourself. Specify where you want to go and let’s get started.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Improving Your Body’s Infrastructure

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We need to plant our trees before we want the shade and fix our systems before they break.

I read that quote from Seth Godin in his daily blog last week, and it spoke to me. I immediately emailed him and explained it embodied what I want to teach you, my readers, on how to approach health; I wanted to use it giving him the attribution. He said no need and good luck.

My goal is to focus on lifestyle changes to make us the best version of ourselves. It’s much easier to prevent disease than treat it. It’s critical to make all our bodily systems as strong as they can be to prevent them from breaking down. It’s amazing that we will change the oil and filter in our car and replace furnace filters to make sure our car and home systems work well, but we don’t think of the food we eat as critical to making sure every system in our body works correctly and we don’t prioritize our annual check-ups.

What systems of yours need repair, tune-up, or preventive maintenance? I’ve given a lot of thought on that for my body, and I’ll share those thoughts with you Saturday. Feel free to share yours with me by replying to this memo; maybe you’ve thought of something I haven’t. It’s time to get our body’s infrastructure prepared for the health challenges we most assuredly will face.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Using Melatonin to Treat COVID-19

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Today’s research paper is a type of study that uses large datasets to examine the relationship between successful treatments for people with COVID-19 and related viral infections. Let’s take a look.

Network-Based Drug Repurposing

To say that this is complicated is a tremendous understatement, but let’s give it a go. Researchers identified specific targets for the many different strains of COVID and SARS viruses, including all of the research on the receptor targets in the body for every COVID-related virus, such as the ACE2 receptor. Then they examined each drug that has been used to treat people with the virus to see how effective it was, along with drugs that had specific receptor targets when used for other reasons. Researchers weren’t looking for a cure; they wanted to determine whether specific symptoms in various parts of the body improved such as the lungs, the heart, fatigue, etc.

They started with dozens of receptors and over 2,000 FDA-approved medications, and after running the initial analysis, they reduced the number of drugs to 135. They ultimately came up with three pairs of medications that could be effective in treating COVID-19: sirolimus plus dactinomycin, mercaptopurine plus melatonin, and toremifene plus emodin. I would wager that five of those are medications you’ve never heard of, but you’re probably acquainted with melatonin. That’s what caught my attention, so let’s take a look at why melatonin would be included in a potential treatment for COVID-19.

Melatonin as an Antiviral

In their explanation, researchers said melatonin has been reported to have a potential for treating antiviral infection because of its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. As suggested, melatonin can indirectly impact the ACE2 receptor, which is a key target of the COVID-19 virus. Mercaptopurine blocks specific papain-like proteases such as the ACE2 receptor; the hope is that the combination will block the ACE2 and other target receptors from the virus and reduce the inflammatory response.

The Bottom Line

The researchers say there’s a long way to go before this combination can be used to treat COVID-19—pre-clinical and clinical trials for sure to test whether this combination actually works to treat the virus.

When it comes to melatonin, it makes sense to add it to our immune-boosting regimen. Its mechanism of action is different from the zinc, vitamin D, and vitamin C we may already be taking. The question is how much? I don’t have a specific answer because there’s still so much research to review. But I’m going to begin with 6 mg. That’s not too much and even if it doesn’t work for immune boosting, the potential benefits for memory, etc., make it worth taking; take it at night, of course, because of its ability to help you sleep. When I’ve reviewed more research, I may be able to give you a more definitive answer. In the meantime, there’s no apparent downside to taking melatonin. If you feel you need the additional immune boosting—and who doesn’t—give it a try.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41421-020-0153-3