Dr. Lustig is a nationally-recognized authority in the field of neuroendocrinology, with a specific emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. He is currently investigating the contribution of biochemical, neural, hormonal, and genetic influences in the expression of the current obesity epidemic both in children and adults. He has defined a syndrome of vagally-mediated beta-cell hyperactivity which leads to insulin hypersecretion and obesity, and which is treatable by insulin suppression. This phenomenon may occur in up to 20% of the obese population. He is interested in the hypothalamic signal transduction of insulin and leptin, and how these two systems interact. He is studying the cardiovascular morbidity associated with hyperinsulinemia, and developing methods to evaluate and prevent this phenomenon in children. He is also analyzing the contribution of the autonomic nervous system to insulin secretion and insulin resistance in obese children, and the utility of assessing insulin dynamics in targeting obesity therapy.
Dr. Lustig graduated from MIT, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. He performed his pediatric residency at St. Louis Children's Hospital, and his clinical fellowship at UCSF. From there, he spent six years as a post-doctoral fellow in neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University in New York.
Dr. Lustig has authored over 70 research articles and 35 chapters. He is the Chairman of the Obesity Task Force of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, a member of the Obesity Task force of The Endocrine Society, and on the Steering Committee of the International Endocrine Alliance to Combat Obesity.
“The normalization of the mentally ill via nutrient supplementation would be the most significant breakthrough in the field of mental illness since the beginning of time,” states Bonnie Kaplan – a professor in the faculty of medicine at University of Calgary who has conducted research into Stephan’s micronutrient treatment – in conference materials for Micronutrients for Mental Health, held in San Francisco in December.
Kaplan co-authored a study with New York University economics Professor Dermot Gately, published in November 2009, examining 358 adults with bipolar disorder who were using Stephan’s approach. The study showed that symptoms of bipolar disorder were “45-per-cent lower after six months” of taking micronutrients, according to their report in the journal Clinical Medicine: Psychiatry. This involved daily doses of vitamins and minerals that could be sourced from almost any drugstore.
Although this treatment originated in Canada, other countries might be in the process of legitimizing it.
Senior Citizen Politics
One in 9 Senior Citizens Going Hungry Says Report to Senate Aging Committee
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) says 35 million Americans going hungry, senior citizens are ‘disproportionately affected’
March 10, 2008 – One out of every nine senior citizens in America is going hungry, according to testimony last week at a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which was called by the ranking member, Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR). Smith said 35 million Americans are going hungry and senior citizens are “disproportionately affected.”
A major reason for the hearing was to showcase the release of findings by the Meals on Wheels Association of America (MOWAA) Foundation, which quantifies the problems and causes of hunger that seniors face and how these trends will continue into the future as our society ages.
“Hunger is a disease that is affecting our country, but unlike other diseases we have a cure for hunger today. Because of Senator Smith's leadership on this issue, we now have a national forum to present these findings,” said Enid Borden, President and CEO of MOWAA.
Key findings included:
● In 2005, over five million seniors, 11.4% of all seniors, experienced some form of food insecurity (i.e., are marginally food insecure).
>> Of these, about 2.5 million are at-risk of hunger (i.e. are food insecure), and about 750,000 actually experienced hunger (i.e., very low food security) due to financial constraints.
● Seniors are more likely to be at-risk of hunger if they are ages 60 to 65, poor, African-American or Hispanic, divorced or separated, living with a grandchild and/or renters.
● In 2025, an estimated 9.3 million senior Americans will experience some form of food insecurity, almost double the number in 2005.
Mental and behavioural disorders include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, Alzheimer’s or
dementia and schizophrenia. As group they relate closely to income, falling from a high of 146
per thousand in the bottom quintile to 64 in the highest, with most quintiles significantly
different from the adjacent quintiles. There is a highly significant drop in incidence as we go
from the bottom to the second quintile and from the fourth to the top quintile as well, reflecting
greatest incidence among the poorest Canadians with the wealthiest quintile least affected
Anxiety and mood disorders, the two specific conditions for which incidence rates could be
reliably calculated,xvi showed clear relationships with income. In each case there is a significant
drop in incidence with movement from the bottom to the second quintile.
In the case of anxiety the rate in the bottom quintile (81 per thousand) is significantly higher than
the rate in the next quintile (44 per thousand population), and indeed, significantly higher than in
all other quintiles.
Mood disorders are found at a rate of 105 per thousand in the lowest income quintile, a rate over
60 per cent higher than the 64 per thousand rate found in the second quintile. Similarly, the rate
in the second quintile is significantly higher than the rate in the third and fourth quintiles, and the
rate of 39 per thousand in the highest quintile is significantly lower than the rates of 54-55 found
in the third and fourth quintiles.
"Obsessions, compulsions and anxiety are NOT
mental illnesses, nor are they a bad habit,
nor due to a weak character...they are biological!
Something which has a physical origin and
something that can be reversed."
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.
The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.
Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
...
Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades.
The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent.
The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.
As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.
“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”
At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.
"The report details several examples in which people who were clearly ill murdered someone and were found incompetent. It also tells the stories of those who were still tried, convicted and eventually executed, despite their mental illness.
For example, Larry Robison was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His parents checked him into a few facilities. Each time he was about to be released, his parents asked the physicians to retain him. One psychiatrist stated that Robison needed long-term care, but when the hospital learned that Robison was not covered by insurance, his parents said the hospital "could not wait to get him out of there." His parents were told he could not get help because he was not violent, but if he became violent, he would be placed in a mental hospital.
Robison began to self-medicate and was admitted to a rehabilitation center for his drug use, but was not treated for schizophrenia. Robison was arrested for the murder of five people just four years after his first diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His first violent act was murder. Robison was executed, without ever receiving the treatment he needed."
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