Ingredients

100 grams chicken breast

1/4 cup tarragon and garlic infusion (page 57)

1/4 cup chicken broth or water

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2teaspoon fresh chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon chopped onion

1 clove garlic minced

Dash of mustard powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Heat the chicken broth, vinegar, garlic, and onion in a small saucepan or frying pan. Add chicken and sauté for about 10 minutes or until chicken is completely cooked and liquid is reduced. Deglaze the pan periodically with a little water to create a sauce. Serve hot.

Makes 1 serving (1 protein)

Most of us are not getting enough iodine and there is a growing amount of evidence that shows that low iodine levels increase the risk of cancer and fibrocystic disease of the breast and ADHD. According to the World Health Organization, 72% of the world’s population is affected by iodine deficiency disorders and 54% have severe iodine deficiency.  Unfortunately, the problem has been getting worse.  The US government reports that iodine deficiency has increased by four times over the last twenty years.

It seems ironic that as health care and nutrition have improved in America, the problem of iodine deficiency has gotten worse.  However, the reasons are quite simple: iodine intake has decreased while the consumption and exposure to competing halogens like bromine, fluoride, and chlorine have increased.

In the 1960s, bread dough contained potassium iodate as a bread conditioner.  However, in the 1970’s, this was replaced by bromine.  Bromine is an iodine antagosist and is also found in citrus-flavored soft drinks such as Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Powerade, and Orange Fanta.

Fluoride also decreases iodine absorption.  Until 1970, European doctors used fluoride to suppress thyroid function in patients with hyperthyroidism.  Incidentally melatonin can protect against the damage caused by fluoride.

Chlorine is another halogen that acts as an antagonist to iodine.  With the abundance of cleaning products with chlorine, fluoridated water, and bromine used in the food industry, it is no wonder that iodine deficiency has reached epidemic proportions.

Iodine deficiency may also have a role in the increase in ADHD.  One study measured ADHD levels over a period of ten years in children from an iodine-deficient area and compared those levels with children from an iodine-sufficient area.  ADHD was diagnosed in almost 69 percent of the children in the iodine deficient area compared with zero percent in the iodine sufficient area.  The total IQ score was also lower in the iodine-deficient area (92.1) than in the iodine-sufficient area (110).

Iodine supplementation not only helps prevent breast cancer and ADHD, but also has a positive response to healing in polycystic ovary disease, diabetes, arrhythmias, and other cognitive dysfunctions.

For those who are wondering if taking a prescription thyroid medication is sufficient, the answer is ‘no.’  Our bodies need both iodine and iodide.  Certain tissues have more of an affinity for iodide than iodine and vice-versa. 

The easiest way to get your daily dose of iodine is to take a supplement.  There are iodine solutions like Lugol’s that contain both iodine and potassium iodide, but the taste and smell are not well tolerated.  Iodoform, on the other hand, is a tablet that contains iodine and iodide, but without the caustic taste.  It is inexpensive and with all the benefits of iodine supplementation, taking it is a no-brainer.

We have an HCG Diet Friendly hot drink for you to enjoy in this cold weather!

Do you know someone suffering from menopause? Guess what, men? It can happen to you too!  In males it’s called andropause and results from your body’s natural decline in testosterone production. It usually begins around the age of forty and can result in a lack of energy, inability to workout, loss of muscle mass and strength, an increase in body fat, a decrease in libido and sexual dysfunction. It gradually worsens as your testosterone levels diminish over the course of many years.

Andropause is not a new concept. It was first recorded in medical literature in the 1940’s. However, our ability to diagnose and treat this condition have grown by leaps and bounds.  Your body’s natural testosterone is available as a prescription in its exact bioidentical form and can be made into an individually tailored dose by a compounding pharmacy.

A low testosterone level can also have long term effects on your body including osteoporosis or weak bones, long-term back pain, and Cardiovascular risk.  Also, emotional, psychological, and behavioral changes may result.

If you have any of theses symptoms, evaluate your hormone levels with a free self test at www.trielle.hormones.com.  Start feeling young again!

Are you ready to spice up your HCG diet routine? Here is a fresh new salad option for you!

Ingredients

100 grams crab

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon Bragg’s liquid aminos (optional)

1 tablespoon finely minced red onion

Dash of garlic powder

Dash of onion powder

Cayenne pepper to taste

Salt and black pepper to taste

You may substitute 1 teaspoon of Old Bay seasoning for the powdered ingredients.

Directions

Steam the crab and chop into medium chunks. Toss with onions, spices, and liquid ingredients. Marinate for 15 minutes or more and serve over mixed green salad or add 1 cup diced celery.

Makes one serving

Just The Facts, Please!
Here we go again! Another misleading headline and story hits the wires with glaring generalizations about hormone therapy. One version in the September 20, 2009 LA Times screams “Hormone Therapy Nearly Doubles Risk of Death from Lung Cancer, Study Says.”  It kills me when people like Dr. Apar Kishor Ganit or Dr. Mark Faries make sweeping “authoritative” statements saying these findings “seriously question whether hormone-replacement therapy has any role in medicine today.”
There was no mention in this story that the study used HORSE ESTROGEN and synthetic deviants of human progesterone. You women who are using native, bio-identical human hormones (exactly the way your body makes them) under experienced medical care to improve your lives and bless your relationships: pay no attention to this dribble. It is incredibly irresponsible to apply these findings broadly to all hormone therapy, yet every few months some doctor does just that. It’s faulty logic and bad science. Good doctors, how can you say that the study vilifies all “hormone replacement therapy? With all due respect, sirs, the study applies to the compounds that were ingested, namely horse estrogen and medroxyprogesterone, which are foreign to the human body. Period. We’re sick of your fear-mongering WHI “conclusions” telling women that even their own hormones are killing them.

Citrus Ginger Dressing/Marinade

Ingredients

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons orange juice

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon Bragg’s liquid aminos

Ginger fresh or ground to taste

Salt and fresh black pepper to taste

Stevia to taste

Directions

Combine spices with liquid ingredients. Enjoy over salad or double the recipe for use as a marinade. Warm slightly to enhance the flavors.

Makes 1-2 serving (1 fruit)

Serve with additional orange slices to complete a fruit serving

Good luck!

A little bit of walking goes a long way. A study led by a Duke cardiologist called STRRIDE (Studies of Targeted Risk Reduction Interventions through Defined Exercise) showed that walking 30 minutes a day or 12 miles a week was enough for overweight men and women (40 to 65 years old) to lose weight and body fat without a change in diet. A control group of non-exercisers all gained weight and fat during the 8-month study.

“From the perspective of prevention, it appears that the 30 minutes per day will keep most people from gaining the additional weight associated with inactivity,” said Cris Slentz, Ph.D of the Duke University research team.

The Results:

The average result for walking 30 minutes a day or 12 miles a week was 1% lost body weight, 1.6% off of waist measurement, and 2% lost body fat and a 0.7% gain in lean muscle.

Jogging 12 miles a week resulted in an average of 1% lost body weight, 1.4% off of waist measurement, 2.6% lost body fat, and a 1.4% gain in lean muscle.

Jogging for 20 miles a week resulted in an average 3.5% loss of body weight, 3.4% off of waist measurement, 4.9% loss of body fat, and a 1.4% gain in lean muscle.

The non-exercise control group: Gained 1.1% weight, 0.8% in waist measurement, and 0.5% in body fat.

Also, exercise without dieting can reduce the risk of major illness. According to Slentz “this study revealed a clear dose-response effect between the amount of exercise and decreases in measurements of central obesity and total body fat mass, reversing the effects seen in the inactive group,” Slentz said. “The close relationship between central body fat and cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hypertension lends further importance to this finding.”

Here Comes the Sun!

Since we at Trielle love to talk about hormones and how they help you feel good, we want you to see the (sun)light about vitamin D. But first of all, we’ll throw you a curve ball. Vitamin D is mostly considered a hormone! 

Nature has miraculous ways of keeping us healthy and vitamin D is one of them. We see foods like milk, yogurt and cold cereals “fortified” with it and hear that getting enough vitamin D has something to do with the sun, but how does all this connect? Why do you need vitamin D anyway?

You’ve probably got some idea that calcium, vitamin D, and strong bones and teeth and drinking milk are all connected and may be bored with the subject. Let us connect the dots and erase the boredom. You need vitamin D because it helps regulate the amount of calcium in your blood, which supplies the right amount of calcium to your cells and all your cells need calcium. It also helps absorb calcium and phosphate from your intestine for strong bones and teeth. That was the boring part, now it gets interesting.

Most of you already know that your skin is the largest organ of the body. It does more than freckle, sweat, goose-bump, tan, shed, sag and wrinkle. Skin cells actually use sunlight to convert a cholesterol-like substance to an inactive form of vitamin D. From there, the vitamin D goes to the liver and kidneys and turns into a hormone!

You might be thinking, “If sun is so important for my health but I heed advice about using sunscreen and covering up to avoid the sun, am I doing the wrong thing?” The answer is: it depends (Of course, why can’t it just be simple?).

The amount of sun exposure you need to produce vitamin D depends on your skin color, age, season, location and time of day. It doesn’t take much sun—certainly not the amount that causes skin cancer. The next time you are outside, take note of how long it takes to turn your skin pink; you only need 25 percent of that time to make enough vitamin D (usually about 5 to 10 minutes). You only need to expose your hands, face, and arms two or three times a week. People with dark skin need more exposure, usually at least three to five times more, because the melanin acts as an effective sunscreen.

What if you use sunscreen? If you use sunscreen over SPF 8 during the needed exposure time, you won’t be able to convert vitamin D. Also, you need the exposure between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Yes, this advice is the exact opposite of what you usually hear about sun exposure, but that is to prevent skin cancer and wrinkles. So, all those times your mother told you to run outside and get some fresh air—she did it for your own good, to help your teeth and bones grow strong, when all this time you thought it was because she was tired of having you underfoot all day!

All this talk of sun exposure is great for those who live where the sun shines, but what about those of you who live in northern climates in the winter? Unfortunately, you will not get enough vitamin D from the sun and need to get it from your diet. However, you will still need some sun because only 80 percent of vitamin D from food is absorbed. Some people may also be able to use vitamin D that is stored in fat during the summer months.

What about children and adequate sun exposure? Studies have shown that breastfed infants who don’t get enough sun can get the disease, rickets. This disease, caused by inadequate amounts of calcium in the bones, causes soft bones, and the legs bow out, from the body’s weight. So, breastfed babies need vitamin D supplements that are carefully monitored by a doctor to avoid toxicity.

The adult version of rickets is called osteomalacia which leads to hip, and other, fractures. As you age, you produce less vitamin D through the skin—about 70 percent less by age 70; that is a lot! Older people should get sun exposure in the early morning and late afternoon to get the benefits but avoid the risk of skin cancer.

Speaking of cancer, vitamin D can reduce cancer risk too! Because it helps normal cell development in the skin, colon, prostate, ovary and breast cells, it reduces the chance of abnormal cells (cancer) developing.

So, hormones may seem complicated and hard to sort out sometimes, but this essential hormone, vitamin D, is as simple as getting out and enjoying a few relaxing minutes in the warmth of the sun. Ahhhhhh.  

There are a lot of doctors out there that are pretty pessimistic and make just plain nonsensical statements. I’m sure you’ve run into them before and I would be willing to bet money that you are listening to some of them in your life right now. And well, we propose to challenge a few.

Case in point: According to an article in Medscape Diabetes and Endocrinology on May 31, 2009, Bruce Johnson, MD, director of the Dana-Farber Harvard Medical Center Lung Cancer Program, in Boston, Massachusetts was the moderator of the briefing at a press conference at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s 45th Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, where findings of a study were presented.  The finding comes from a secondary analysis of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study, which found that among current smokers who were using combined progestin and estrogen hormone therapy, 1 in 100 experienced an avoidable death from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) during the 8 years of the study.  See the full article.

In Dr. Johnson’s commentary, he explained that these findings are robust because they come from a randomized clinical trial. He concluded his summary by saying (and this is the good part) that the new data showing an increase in mortality from NSCLC are “yet another reason not to take hormones.”

So, let me get this straight.  A study using progestin (medroxyprogesterone - a human hormone deviant) and horse estrogen caused a 1% incidence of death from a type of lung cancer in a group of women whose average age is 63, and now we should all stop taking hormones of any kind.  Wow. That’s quite a statement!  So, according to this study that dealt with chemically altered hormone drugs, we are to view supplementing with human hormones, identical to what the body makes, in the same light as those imitations?  Hmmm. Seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water, doctor.

With all due respect, we completely disagree with Dr. J’s summary conclusions. That’s like saying orange juice is like apple juice and everything about apples applies to oranges. Grammar school kids can see the error in that logic. Let’s look at a hypothetical situation to understand this better: we could say, again, hypothetically speaking, that sulindac, a prescription anti-inflammatory drug, has been shown to cause cancer (in reality, it has not). We could then say, using the logic of our beloved Dr. J., that “because people got cancer while taking sulindac, that’s yet another reason not to take prescription drugs for arthritis pain and inflammation.”

You’ve made a gross overgeneralization and faulty extrapolation, sir.  It is an irresponsible statement and intellectually and scientifically dishonest!  Now, maybe bioidentical hormones would have caused the problems too, but you did not prove that, nor test for it. You paint with far too broad a brush. And people listen to guys like you because they don’t understand all the medical jargon in the study! We call on the Dr. Js of the world to tighten up their research conclusions. Are you listening to the likes of Dr. J? There is a lot of stuff out there that is just bad science.

Send your conclusions to the human ovaries, doctor. They dose the body with hormones every day.