Lynne Sinclair Taylor

Why doesn’t Cholesterol cause Heart Disease?

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:27:42 +0000

Will you get a heart attack if you have high cholesterol or LDL cholesterol?
High cholesterol, according to new research, is not even a very predictive risk factor for heart attacks!

Why not?

• A new American study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had normal cholesterol levels that did not indicate that they were at high risk for a cardiovascular event.

Almost 75 percent of heart attack patients fell within recommended targets for “bad” LDL cholesterol, according to Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science at UCLA, reported in the January 2009 issue of the American Heart Journal.

• Researchers also found that more than half of patients hospitalized for heart attacks had LOW levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein HDL cholesterol levels, as measured by national guidelines.

Why Cholesterol’s Not To Blame for Heart Attacks

Cholesterol serves many important roles in the body.
In the context of heart health, cholesterol is an anti-inflammatory, rising in response to inflammation in the cardiovascular system.

• If, over time, the inflammation persists and cholesterol can’t compensate, heart disease sets in and LDL cholesterol gets the blame!

What Causes A Heart Attack?

Most scientists now agree that heart disease is brought on by chronic inflammation.
• The most compelling evidence suggests that it is not just the “bad” LDL cholesterol that is the problem, or “predictor.”

• Instead, it is only when fats become OXIDIZED they become “sticky” and gum put the arteries.

• Then, it is the OXIDIZED cholesterol – specifically, oxidized LDL cholesterol — that leads to the development of arterial inflammation.

Measuring Your Risk

People say, “I have high cholesterol” as if it is a disease, but it is not.
How can you best tell whether you are at risk if cholesterol levels are not predictive?

In other words, what are the best MARKERS of any underlying inflammation?

• Known indicators of blockage of the arteries are C-reactive proteins, (CRP’s) and these were found in the long standing Framington study to be most predictive of heart disease.

• Your doctor can easily check your CRP’s the next time you have blood tests done, to give you an indication of the levels of inflammation you have.

Stopping the “Oxidation” of Fats & LDL cholesterol

“Oxidation” makes fat rancid! Antioxidants protect fats from becoming rancid.
How best to prevent the free-radical damage of lipids (fats) and therefore the OXIDATION of LDL cholesterol?

• Consuming antioxidants from a wide variety of sources by eating a rainbow of fruit and vegetables will ensure the greatest protection against the free-radical damage of fats and oxidized LDL cholesterol.

• Long chain omega-3 fatty acids, e.g. from fish, are anti-inflammatory, and may be even more effective than statins, e.g. Lipitor and Zocor in reducing cardiac mortality.

Improving your own Master Antioxidant:

When fats become oxidized they become stickier, and they end up gumming up the arteries, so the presence of glutathione can prevent this from happening.
• Because glutathione is the body’s Master Antioxidant, it stops the oxidation of fats by making glutathione peroxidase, which keeps the fats in a safer state.

• A study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that “increasing glutathione might lower the risk of cardiovascular events.”

• The September 2004 issue of the American Heart Association journal Stroke published the findings of Japanese researchers, that higher levels of plasma glutathione (GSH) are associated with a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease, particularly cerebral small vessel disease.

Fortunately, you can improve your glutathione levels by adding a cysteine-rich protein to your diet!

This has been clinically shown to be able to improve your glutathione levels, as a protection against heart disease.

How to know your glutathione levels? Blood tests are expensive and need to be done within hours.

However, researchers have found that by the time people reach the age of 60, half of the people are seriously deficient in glutathione.

Low glutathione has been shown to be predictive of heart attacks and chronic illness, whereas high glutathione levels are associated with good health.

• Adding the nutritional precursors for improving your glutathione levels is the best strategy for everyone. http://www.healthdiscoveries.net/heart-attack.html

Check out how you can accelerate your glutathione naturally at http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ipvozBGIAik&feature=related and contact me if you are interested. I can help you.

Some brushstrokes of my life

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:27:07 +0000

As an artist I’m going to paint you a picture with three colours relating to aspects of my life.
Summarizing my life I’d say I’m a passionate person with a strong faith and have a desire to live life to the full. I have a real love of colour and my art slogan is ‘adding colour to your life.’ Someone once said “at every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.”
My first brushstroke is GREEN. It represents my sprouting, or growing years. I had loving parents and an older brother Wayne (who is also a professional artist). We had the same interests in sport and art. I remember at primary school choosing to do an assignment on a goldfinch. Why? Because of it’s lovely colours. I loved geography because I could draw maps accurately and colour them in. I remember one school report I was scared to bring home because it said “I was quite a talker.” I entered colouring in competitions and designed and made clothes for my dolls and later on for myself. As a teenager my love for colour showed in my clothes. I remember designing a bright orange dress with a bold blue panel down the sleeves. It certainly wouldn’t be my choice today. Then there was my bright yellow mini skirt with bright yellow platform shoes which took me to at least 6ft tall. My height didn’t seem to bother me. In my early 20’s I worked with all males and they were never quite sure what I would wear next.
My GREY brushstrokes represent the difficult times in my life. One major disappointment was catching glandular fever. No it wasn’t caused through kissing as my workmates tried to tell me. I disappointingly didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. Unfortunately this sickness struck at the peak of my athletic season and I had to move back home to Blenheim to recuperate. The greyest time in my life was when I had something like chronic fatigue and I had this on and off for a number of years. I jokingly say that the good part of this was that my life slowed down enough for me to meet the man of my dreams so he could propose to me.
Grey is not my favourite colour but every cloud has a silver lining. Looking back most of my ‘grey’ times were times of sickness but because of this I’ve become more compassionate and I’ve learned a lot about staying healthy naturally. I am now a health advisor and have the joy of seeing changed lives.
PURPLE is my favourite colour so the purple brushstrokes stand for my favourite times. I remember the fun family camping holidays, competing in sport all around the country with my parents cheering me on. I competed nationally in basketball, netball and athletics. One great highlight was winning a trip for 2 to Paris and I was able to take my mother with me. Of course my very favourite time was marrying my husband Alan. Getting back to ‘colour’ we see colours so differently. He calls a colour ‘blue’ when I call it turquoise, lavender, navy or aquamarine. He calls a colour ‘red’ when I call it purple, magenta, violet or indigo. It doesn’t really matter much although I’m told men are more prone to being colour blind. Seeing our three sons grow up to be fine young men has brought me many joys. We’ve recently had a family holiday for 3 weeks, a holiday of a lifetime and even though they are 21, 23 and 25 they still enjoyed being with us oldies and we made great memories together.
There are many more colours in my life that I haven’t touched on, sad times, exciting times, difficult times, fulfiling times. When these are handled in the right way, they are all necessary to create the painting of my life at this stage. All our lives are forming a painting. We all need to embrace every colour on our palettes to live life to the full and to reach our destiny.

The Still, Small Voice by John Harricharan

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:41:36 +0000

“It is the still small voice that the soul heeds; not the deafening blasts of doom.”
- William Dean Howell
Often, it seems, we come upon a problem that takes all our strength to even begin to figure how to solve it.
As time goes on, it appears that every problem we encounter becomes more difficult than the previous one. How can we proceed when it appears that the world is crashing all around?
What choices do we make? Where do we go for help? How do we cope? What road do we choose? Obviously, Yogi Berra’s statement, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it” does not bring us great comfort at such times.
Some of us analyze the facts and study the intricacies of the problem. This is good, but analysis is not always enough. Then again, we may not and cannot know all the facts. Analysis alone may lead to the “paralysis of analysis.” And facts may not be facts after all. Many of them may just be opinions.
So how do we deal with our most troubling challenges? By using a combination of methods and means. Remember, there are only three types of problems in life: money, health and relationship.
Name any problem you have and, if you look closely, you’d see that it falls under one or more of these.
Within each and every one of us is a guidance mechanism that always points the way to overcome challenges. It doesn’t matter whether the problem you are facing is large or small.
It really is not important whether it’s a problem of money, health, relationship or a combination of these. The first thing to realize is that you are more powerful than any problem that comes your way.
You came into this world equipped with all the tools necessary to solve all your problems. Deep within us is a place that’s not affected by problems as we see them.
Way, way deep in our hearts and souls is the perfect solution to any problem that may come our way. All we have to do is work with the guidance mechanism that we all have.
To start accessing this mechanism, first we must become quiet. All of us keep up a lively, running dialogue in our heads. We have to quiet the dialogue for at least a short while so we can receive information from the deepest part of our souls. Then the voice of intuition will speak to us.
A number of times a day, choose a few minutes to be quiet. By being quiet, what I am really saying is to turn down the volume of your self-talk. It won’t entirely go away, but it would become quiet enough so that we could hear the “still small voice” of our inner-sense whispering guidance to us.
Listen intently to the messages you’re getting from
your inner-self. Do not force it or try to interpret
what you’re hearing. Just listen with an open mind.
At first, it’ll seem a bit difficult to do this. But as you practice, it will become much easier. And as it becomes easier, it’ll become more useful.
The solutions to all your problems exist right now. The answers are already there. Just listen for them in the quietness of your being and they will come to you — perhaps not immediately, but very soon. And trust the process; it works much better and faster when you trust it.
Keep an open mind. Don’t argue or analyze the messages you get from your intuition. Sometimes the message may not make sense right away.
Just go on with your daily work and you’ll start finding that you get hunches about what is troubling you most. Follow your hunches. They are God’s messengers trying to lead you to your
greatest good.
If you practice this seemingly simple exercise, you
would find that guidance comes to you in many forms and in many ways. The answer to your problem may come to you while you’re taking a shower, driving to the supermarket, walking the dog or even in your sleep as a dream.
You may even find answers in a song on the radio, the words on a billboard or a phone call from a friend. The universe has all the answers to our problems. Be guided by the great wisdom within you. Trust yourself and trust your God. You are the universe’s special project and you cannot fail.

Cancer Cells feed on Fructose, Study Finds

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:25:46 +0000

Research shows the refined sugar helps cancer cells proliferate
By Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON — Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.
“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.
“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”
Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.
Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.
Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda.
The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.
Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.
Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. “Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.
“I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,” Heaney said in a statement.
Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

Breast Cancer Link to Air Fresheners by Martin Hickman

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:29:31 +0000

1:42 PM Tuesday Jul 20, 2010
Air fresheners and some cleaning products increase the risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.

Women who regularly used a combination of cleaning products were twice as likely to have breast cancer as other healthy women, US scientists found. The strongest link was between cancer and air fresheners and mould and mildew removers.

Increased incidence of cancer was also linked to insect repellents.

But there was no connection with home and garden pesticides and surface and oven cleaners.

The researchers admitted the study was imperfect because they asked cancer sufferers to remember whether they had used cleaning products and the strongest correlation was found among those who believed chemicals contributed to the disease.

But they defended the findings as “biologically plausible”, saying many air fresheners and cleaning products contained endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to breast cancer in laboratory experiments on rodents.

They said synthetic musks and phthalates were commonly used in solid and spray fresheners and antimicrobials, phthalates and alkylphenolic surfactants were found in many mould and mildew products.

Researchers from Silent Spring Institute, Massachusetts, and Boston University interviewed 787 women with breast cancer and 721 healthy women for the study.

The women – who all lived in the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts – were asked about their use of cleaning products and pesticides, and split into four groups ranging between high and low users.

According to the study, published in the journal Environmental Health: “Women who reported the highest combined cleaning product use had a doubled risk of breast cancer compared to those with the lowest reported use. Use of air fresheners and products for mould and mildew control were associated with increased risk.”

The authors said their work was the first into a potential link between breast cancer and cleaning products.

Breast Cancer Research UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, which campaign against confirmed carcinogens such as cigarette smoke, said conclusions could not be drawn from it because it suffered from “recall bias”.

“This small study asked women with breast cancer to remember how often they used cleaning products many years ago,” said Jessica Harris, Cancer Research’s health information officer.

“It only linked the products to breast cancer among women who believed chemicals could cause breast cancer, and not in women who didn’t think such products caused the disease.”

Philip Malpass, director general of the UK Cleaning Products Industry Association, said UK brands did not contain substances shown to cause cancer, adding: “We agree with the US authors who recognise that these results could arise simply from selective or biased recall of cleaning product use.”

Clare Dimmer, chair of trustees at Breast Cancer UK, said: “Although we will have to wait for more research before we can be sure about the link, some women already diagnosed with the disease may want to take a precautionary approach and review the levels of potentially-hazardous chemicals in the products they use.”

- INDEPENDENT

By Martin Hickman

Vitamin C Blocks Tumour Growth by Martin Johnson

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:18:38 +0000

4:00 AM Tuesday Jul 20, 2010

New Zealand researchers have established that vitamin C can help to block the growth of cancer cells – an important experimental finding they expect could be quickly adopted into cancer treatment.

The role of vitamin C in cancer treatment has been controversial for decades, with contradictory findings from various studies. In an international review of 20 human trials of vitamin C and other “anti-oxidant” supplements, the influential Cochrane Collaboration found no convincing evidence that they could prevent gastro-intestinal cancers – and said they “even seem to increase mortality”.

But now a team from Otago University at Christchurch, in a paper published in leading international journal Cancer Research, have shown that vitamin C has a role in controlling tumour growth.

They say their study of tumorous and normal tissue samples from women with cancer of the uterine lining provides the first direct evidence of a link between vitamin C and a protein called HIF-1.

HIF (hypoxia inducible factor)-1 is considered a key protein in tumour survival. High activity of it promotes tumour growth and resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy and is linked with a poor prognosis for patients.

The Christchurch study, led by Associate Professor Margreet Vissers, of the university’s Free Radical Research Group, found that high-grade tumours had around 40 per cent less vitamin C than matched, adjacent, normal tissue.

The researchers say their study suggests that restoring the vitamin C levels in tumours would limit factors that promote tumour growth, and recommend animal trials to test the hypothesis.

Professor Vissers said the study suggested it would be beneficial for people with cancer cells to have more vitamin C. It could help restrict the rate of tumour growth, increase responsiveness to chemotherapy and might prevent formation of solid tumours.

“There’s enough informati

What is Humility and How Can we Use it Productively?

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:48:29 +0000

One prevailing counterfeit of humility is self-deprecation, or thinking you have little or no value. But as Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale wrote:
“People with humility don’t think less of themselves; they just think of themselves less.”
Pride leads you to compare yourself to others and to derive your self-worth from things outside of yourself.
When you’re humble, you’re only concerned with your own progress relative to yourself–not to other people.
True humility flows from having the proper allegiance to a Higher Power; no matter how far you’ve come, your Higher Power can show you how far you have yet to go.
Humility — used properly — can help you to always stay producing no matter how much value you’ve produced in the past. It opens your mind to see how much more you can do.
Be humble without devaluing yourself, and value yourself without being proud.

On Values, Priorities & Outcomes by Greg Fullerton

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:13:11 +0000

I’ve written previously on the importance of identifying your values through conscious introspection.
But not only is it important to identify your values, but you must also prioritize them.
In the classic movie “Chariots of Fire,” the protagonist Eric Little had three values: his religion, his love for his country, and his love for running. He was clear and solid with those values.
He had also prioritized them. How do we know that? If you remember in the story line, it came time for him to run in the Olympics, and he wanted to run, and he wanted to represent his country, and he had to run on Sunday. And he turned down the opportunity because running on Sunday conflicted with his religious beliefs.
At one point a high-ranking government official told him, “You know, Eric, there comes a point where you must give everything up for your country.” Eric still refused.
Had Eric valued his country over his relationship with God, the outcome of that story would have been totally different.
And so it is with you: The outcome of your life will be determined both by what you value and how you prioritize your values.
Just as you don’t want to live life by default and be tossed about by the values of others, neither do you want to be caught in situations when your values conflict, and feel torn and ultimately make a poor decision.
The hard decisions aren’t between clear rights and clear wrongs; they’re between equally good things.
It’s your life and your story. You organize your values anyway that suits you. But whatever you do, do it consciously and before you’re forced to choose under duress.
There’s no guru that can tell you how your values should be prioritized. The best I can tell you is to take time to look deep inside and make the choice.
This prioritization will make a much bigger difference than you may realize. It could save your marriage or your relationship with your children. It can bring you more peace, stability, and confidence in your life.
If you have four values — love for your wife, love for your children, love for God, and a desire for financial security — and you value financial security more than the others, your life will be completely different than if one of the other three took precedence.
You’re going to make a whole different set of decisions based on how you prioritize those things, or how you feel about them, or the passion that surrounds them.
And they need to be yours. I can’t stress enough how important it is that it be your story, you’re not trying to impress anyone else, this is your story, this is what you live by and your quiet moments.

How a Week of Green Smoothies Can Transform Your Life

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Fri, 21 May 2010 03:15:07 +0000

A friend introduced me to green smoothies about 3 months ago and I’ve been having them twice a day. You mix fruit and vegetables (not root vegetables) with water in a blender for a delicious, nutritious drink. It has amazing health benefits. check it out at http://greensmoothiesblog.com/green-smoothie-retreat/

Grab Life’s Opportunities

Lynne Sinclair Taylor — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:09:09 +0000

My husband and I have just returned from an Advanced Leadership Seminar with Klemmer Associates in Tweed Heads, Australia. It was one of those opportunities that came our way that we are thankful we grabbed. It would have been easy to have let it slip by and we could have made lots of genuine excuses for not going but I’m so thankful we made the decision to go. It was five days and nights of intensive life changing training. Although I had to break out of my comfort zone and face some of my fears the results will last with me for a lifetime. I remember years ago an interview with ex missionaries who were in their 90’s and they were asked what they would do differently if they had their life over again and they all said they would take more risks. I want to be a risk taker and get the most out of life. “Attempt something so hard that unless God intervenes you’re bound to fail.”