Dr. Mark and Dr. Chip's Healthy Blogs

  Hello Everyone in Natural Health Nation-                 I t was a pretty nice weekend, all in all. No more snow and was nice to have the sunshine and a little warmer temperatures. Looks like this week will be even warmer and hopefully were climbing out of winter. It’s really easy to notice that the days are growing longer and that’s a positive sign of spring coming, plus the birds are sure flying around and chirping in the morning. It will be great to be outside more and get the vitamin D activated with good warm sunshine soon.                 It’s still February so were talking about heart issues. Our health shop this week will be looking at heart issues and repair. There seems to be a lot of heart issues out there now with the myocarditis and pericarditis issues. I’ve seen mainstream doctors talk about not being able to repair this but we do it all the time he...

  STORY AT-A-GLANCE Top 5 signs you may have a vitamin D deficiency that you will notice as an individual include ongoing musculoskeletal pain, frequent or intense colds and flus, neurological symptoms such as depression, impaired cognition and headaches, unrelenting fatigue and head sweating As a society, three key things that indicate a vitamin D deficiency are increasing or stable rates of the incidence of breast cancer, the increase in the number of preterm births and, now, an increase in the incidence of Type 1 diabetes An estimated 40% of Americans are profoundly vitamin D deficient, defined as having a serum level below 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L); 75% of American adults and teens are deficient when a sufficiency level of 30 ng/mL is used. If the sufficiency cutoff is moved to a healthy 40 to 60 ng/mL (100 to 150 nmol/L), as recommended by the GrassrootsHealth panel of 48 vitamin D researchers, deficiency rates in the U.S. would likely be in the high 90% bracket 20 ng/mL is grossly...

  Hello Natural Health Family. I imagine everyone is doing well or getting better. Life continues to stay interesting with spring making its appearance as winter slowly fades away. This month is still heart month at Natural Health so let’s continue the conversation and acknowledge the heart and its role in our health.  The heart is a fascinating part of the body. When many people think of the heart they may think more about a physical organ of the body. They may imagine the way it looks and most know that it is responsible for pumping blood throughout the body. People might remember what they learned in anatomy class or what they were taught in school. Others may lean towards what they know about family members or what they hear on the news about heart issues. Since many people know someone who has a heart condition they tend to think that it’s a part of life and that heart dis-ease is part of life. This thinking is based on an outdated understanding of how health works. Hea...

  Hello Everyone in Natural Health Nation-                 Well, it’s starting to warm up. It looks like our temperatures are starting to creep up but I’m sure we’ll still have some winter left. The snow is really pretty but it sure moved around a lot this weekend. In all my years I haven’t seen snow drift from three different directions in one weekend, or at least I don’t remember it. Probably a suppressed memory-ha. We’ve even seen some snowmobiles running around our area and that’s uncommon, but this year they’re having lots of fun. Again, with all my years, I’ve seen good winters and bad winters, lots of snow or no snow, very cold weather or 70 degrees. The weather is different every year, as it always has been. This can be a stress on the body though, and we have lots of good supplements to help strengthen your response to the environment. And immune system support as well. Just feed the body what it ...

  STORY AT-A-GLANCE When taking high-dose vitamin D3, it’s important to also take extra vitamin K2 and magnesium to avoid complications associated with excessive calcification Magnesium, the fourth most abundant mineral in your body, is a component necessary for the activation of vitamin D, and without sufficient amounts of it, your body cannot properly utilize the vitamin D you’re taking As many as 50% of Americans taking vitamin D supplements may not get significant benefit, as the vitamin D simply gets stored in its inactive form due to magnesium deficiency The only way to determine how much sun exposure is enough and/or how much vitamin D3 you need to take is to measure your vitamin D level, ideally twice a year To assess your magnesium level, check your RBC magnesium level and track signs and symptoms of magnesium insufficiency to determine how much magnesium you need. Low potassium and calcium are also common laboratory signs indicating magnesium deficiency This article was p...