Sex Hormones

Eating Right is Not Enough: Maintaining Youthful Levels of Sex Hormones, Thyroid Hormones, Insulin and Vitamin D

Nutritionally Dense, Low Calorie Food Prolongs Life, Arrests Chronic Diseases

My experience with the National Institutes of Health CAM (Complementary Alternative Medicine) audits on nutrition and cancer in 2002 and first hand experiences with cases from Kushi Macrobiotic Institutes and Hippocrates Wellness have long ago convinced me that consuming nutritionally dense, easily digestible low caloric foods arrests the ravages of aging and chronic diseases. Not to say the disease is gone but somehow the damages stop, some permanently and some for a period of time.

Nutritional intervention by raw foods at Hippocrates is one type of caloric restriction.

Sex Hormones Change in People Eating Limited Calories

The well documented longest surviving centenarians live in Okinawa, an island off the coast of Japan. I witnessed these centenarians and reviewed all the research work with Suzuki and Wilcox who documented the data and published their findings in professional literature. These people age slowly compared to us and their hormones do not decline as quickly in the 70 to 100 age group.

Okinawan centenarians (unlike their modern younger descendants who eat fast foods) eat low calorie, highly nutritious foods. The people are active and have a sense of belonging to

a community.

We mammals are the most complex in the animal kingdom and have evolved to the point that our brain and hormones are the command centers which signal messengers to coordinate other parts to function as a whole unit. Even our digestive tracts are longer in length and more complex and cohabit (symbiosis) with living organisms such as bacteria to process foods and chemical byproducts to keep us healthy.

Our hormones are intimately tied to our primal self, health and longevity. While technological advancements have prolonged our stay on earth well past our reproductive usefulness, our primal sex hormones have not adapted to these sudden changes.

In 1978, as a resident at Johns Hopkins working under Dr. WW Scott, I witnessed the castration of 100 men (induced testosterone deficiency) for advanced prostate cancer in a compressed period of one year. (This is a phenomenon seen by most doctors over a 50 year period in aging men.)

I saw what happened to men depleted of sex hormones: they lost muscle, bone and blood with a common symptom of fatigue. Many became diabetic by the end of one year. The most evident transformation were the profound mental changes in cognition and mood. Many of the men became depressed and apathetic. They could not focus on thoughts and most of the men lost an interest in activities that once brought pleasure.

What I witnessed was a