Many people with risk factors for heart disease need to take several pills - one (many times several pills needed to get blood pressure controlled) to control their blood pressure, one to control their cholesterol, and an aspirin to prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Results of an initial study of an experimental polypill were presented at the American College of Cardiology conference this week (results will be published online in the journal Lancet).  The polypill actually contains low doses of 3 different blood pressure medications (atenolol, ramipril,  and a “water pill” thiazide), plus the generic form of the cholesterol lowering medication Zocor, and low dose aspirin.  This would allow patients to take only one pill instead of five pills every day.  This study was performed in India and involved over 2,000 patients with at least one risk factor for heart disease.  Patients taking the polypill had lowering of their blood pressure and cholesterol numbers and effective anti-clotting effects.  No increase in side effects was seen, side effects were similar to patients taking the five individual medications.  Taking this single polypill could potentially cut a person’s risk of heart attack and stroke in half.

Of course further larger scale studies are warranted and FDA approval (which could take years) needs to be obtained before this combination medication would be available in the U.S.  But these are promising initial results and could possibly improve medication compliance.

We’ve all heard, “Eat more Fiber”…for crying out loud…it’s in every health magazine article, mentioned in numerous commercials,the topic of convo at lunch, and advertised on thousands of food products we encounter every single day. So, what is all of this fuss about fiber?

Let me start by saying that FIBER is FABULOUS. I myself, eat about 30 grams of fiber per day and sometimes more!  “How?”, you ask…Simple…here’s the down low on fiber and why you should include more into your day.

There is only one way to get fiber- through plant foods such as vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, and fruits, which are quality carbohydrates loaded with fiber!  These plant foods deliver minerals, vitamins, fiber, and phytochemicals along with carbohydrates such as whole grains, beans, veggies, and fruits.  Now, don’t get scared about the word carbohydrate because you cannot judge these foods without knowing its fiber content.

Fiber is the edible part of plants or carbohydrates that humans can not digest.  Now, although this fiber is not absorbed, it does wonders for our bodies.  First off, fiber slows down the absorption of other nutrients eaten at the same meal, including carbohydrates.    This slowing process may help prevent spikes and dips in our blood sugar levels, which reduces our risk of Type 2 Diabetes.  Moreover, fibers found in beans, oats, and some fruits can help lower our blood cholesterol.  And the best part is that fiber helps people stay full and satisfied.  Who knew?

However, most Americans do not know this.  Therefore, they spend their day eatingprocessed and refined “white” grains- bagels, buns, muffins, pizza, bread, white rice…I could go on forever.  A quick tip for your knowledge: the “whiter” the grain-based food, the lower the fiber. 

To increase your fiber intake, be sure to switch to whole grains at every meal and snack in such items as: pasta, tortilla wraps, chips, pretzels, bread, crackers, buns, rolls, and pizza.  The whole wheat/ whole grain variety of these products are available in most food stores.  Moreover, it is important to include beans and bean products as well as plenty of fruits and vegetables.  There are countless beans, veggies, and fruits-  experiment and taste a new fruit and veggie each day to see what your taste buds enjoy! The best part is you’ll know you’re doing your body good by giving it some much needed fiber.  In addition, these forms of fiber are unprocessed/ minimally processed whole foods, which contain natural sugar such as the fructose in fruit.

There are two types of fiber; insoluble and soluble. 

Soluble fiber binds with cholesterol in the intestines and prevents it from being absorbed; which may cholesterol levels.  Moreover, this type of fiber is also thought to help minimize the rise in blood sugar levels after a meal (helpful for people with diabetes).

Good Sources of Soluble  Fiber (Dissolves in Water) include:

• Oatmeal / Oat Bran
• Citrus fruits, Strawberries, Apples, Pears, Mangoes, Plums, Blackberries, Raspberries, Peaches, Dried Apricots, Prunes, and Figs
• Peas, Lentils, Beans
• Rice Bran
• Barley

Insoluble fiber adds bulk to stools, helps treat diarrhea and constipation and may reduce the risk of colon problems.  This fiber has been known to help people with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). 

Some sources of Insoluble Fiber (Does not Dissolve in Water) are:

• Vegetables such as Cabbage, Beets, Cauliflower, Tomatoes, Zucchini, Celery and Carrots
• Whole Wheat Breads, Cereals, and Wheat Bran
• Whole Grains, such as Barley
• Skins of Many Fruits and Vegetables

Now when looking at the nutrition facts, be sure to check the ingredient list to make sure the whole grain is the first or second ingredient on the list.  Surprisingly, products that claim, “100% wheat” or “multigrain” are NOT usually whole grain.

According to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, the daily needs of men and women for fiber differ and change as they age:

Age 50 and Younger:    Women: 25 Grams     Men: 38 Grams

Age 51 and Older:           Women: 21 Grams      Men: 30 Grams

As for how to get those fiber numbers into your diet, here are a few easy tips that will get you loving fiber in no time!  Please note, however, to avoid stomach upset, increase your fiber by only a few grams each week over the course of several weeks.

• Start your day off with a nutritious high-fiber breakfast such as a bowl of oatmeal or oat bran.  Be sure to top it off with fiber-rich foods such as blackberries and bananas instead of sugary syrup.
• Enjoy a whole wheat sandwich spread with fiber-rich hummus instead of mayonnaise and filled with fiber-rich vegetables.
• When reading labels, be sure to look for “rich in”/”high in” or “excellent source of” fiber–but be aware, you want the product to provide you with 5 grams of fiber per serving!
• Snack time? Nosh on a homemade trail mix of seeds, nuts and dried fruit or reach for a fresh, crisp apple (be sure to keep the skin on)
• Juicing is a great way to get your daily veggies, however, REMEMBER…when juicing, all the fiber is stripped from the veggies and fruits.

How do you incorporate fiber into your day? What have you changed/added to your diet to “up” the fiber intake?

Breath into a paper brown bag, you freak!

Here’s how it started…all of it. The DJ’ing, the irresponsible lifestyle I used to have, the fantastic experiences, the headaches…this is where It started. A bedroom in Miami, I was lying down in my bed. There was horrific news and so I was paralyzed by the fear that something was terribly wrong with me. A terminal virus. The end is all I was thinking.

About a month before this day, I was inside a blood donation trailer trying to expel my fear of needles. Best way to do it, I stupidly thought, was to donate blood. So I went with my friend Mike, Mr. Happy all-of-the-time-Mike. We rolled up our sleeves, some lady pressed down on my arm, swabbed the area where my vein was and plunged the needle deep in. Drop after drop of blood trickled into a bag and then a nice steady pour filled it like a heart. I watched the bag spread as its capillaries filled, arteries and then it slowly pumped full of blood. My blood.

They gave me a cookie and an orange juice and sent me back out into the world. I felt sort of used. I expected a reach around of some sort but my big reward was knowing that I did it. Did the fear go away? Fuck no.

So there I was a month later, holding a letter in my hand from the American Red Cross. Little boxes were checked off.

Very high liver cell count – check

Blood contaminated – check

Traces of Hepatitis C found – check

Here’s how I read their letter:

Dear Mister Carlos Detres:

We regret to inform you that your donated blood had to be disintegrated in an incinerator and you might have a deadly disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year called Hepatitis C. We regret to inform you that your life span is cut by half – at least but probably more. You’ll be lucky to see 40. You’ll be lucky to live til 30. You’ll be lucky that your girlfriend doesn’t kill you when she finds out that she has it too.

By the way, the NAT test, which was the method used to provide you with this prognosis is not FDA approved and could be faulty. We recommend you seek council from a liver specialist, pediatrician, oncologist, and a mortician. Arrange your letters and will. You have 20-25 years left but we’re not sure.

Thanks for the blood.

Our deepest sympathies,

The American Red Cross

What made this worse was that I didn’t know what the fuck Hepatitis C was. In fact, I thought it was the precursor to AIDS. This was 1998. A lot of things were different back then.

I called some nurse hotline. Is this the precursor to AIDS?

“No,” she said.

Oh good, I thought. Some penicillin, a shot into my ass and they turn me loose again. But it doesn’t work that way…

Hepatitis C, she explained is a disease that attacks the liver and has extreme epidemic potential. Murdering microorganisms, your life could end she basically said. Very soon or maybe not at all. Sometimes it takes years for the worst of it to really show itself and by then it’s too late. The dust is bitten. That raw deformed liver of yours will only fail or harden or maybe not.

This is all too confusing, right? I said to the nurse. See your doctor. And so I did.

My doctor, I forget her name, Doctor something, she took my blood, ran some tests and they came back negative but that wasn’t enough she said. I had to go see another doctor to be certain because it depends on when I became infected. Maybe the test can’t detect it yet. My guesstimate: it could have been July a few months before when I got my nipple pierced or maybe it could have been either of those two girls from Kansas I fooled around with in Miami Beach but from the literature I was given, it could have been from anywhere. An infected toilet seat, a cut against a wall, touching, kissing…depends…it all depends on where, who, how…and here’s the real swinger – Hepatitis C at that time was mostly unstudied so no one knows. There’s this bloody epidemic infecting everyone, killing everyone right here and no one knows.

I had the nurse hotline on speed dial. “Am I dying? Am I dying?” I could hear them flip through the pages of some manual. What are your symptoms? What test did the Red Cross use to get this result? What did your doctor say? It’s just a person on the other line making minimum wage or fulfilling some parole agreement, community service or whatever but I needed someone to tell me that I was OK. That I’d live. Maybe have some kids. A family. Go to Europe. See something. Do something. Anything but die so young. Thinking like this is how I ended up in the hospital but it wasn’t because I was diseased.

My girlfriend at the time, K, rushed me to the emergency room. I had blacked out, couldn’t breathe, face was feeling swollen, chest was hurting, arm was hurting…I felt a sharp pain come from my abdomen about the size of a ping-pong ball. Maybe a small tumor in my liver. The size of a bunch of Hepatitis C cells prepariing for revolution.

One hour went by. I’m dying.

Two hours went by. I’m really dying.

Three hours…I should be dead by now.

The breathing, the tunnel vision without any god on the other side to pull me into the light. Just a desperate struggle with my body…silently weeping before doom.

 And then the doctor called me in. My girlfriend, the sweetheart she was, held my hand as he took x-rays, checked my pulse, ran a whole course of diagnostics and he could do whatever he wanted. Right then and there, he was my god. My holy father. My savior who would pull me out of the tomb that I was slowly crawling into.

A list came back with boxes checked off.

"Oh, you are so beautiful."

All vital signs – normal

Lungs – normal

Liver – normal

Blood – Clean as red

Everything came back satisfactory and my health returned. I felt fine. Euphoric even. My god, my holy father gave back my life. I went home, smoked a cigarette and blew the air out into the night, which sliced the moon in half.But then the next day…same thing. Maybe he missed something. Maybe I should get a second opinion. My heart is burning. My eyes are bulging. Everything is hurting – worse than ever before. So I went back…nothing. All of the results came back normal. My girlfriend was happy. I was happy.  

The next day…off to the panic track where my anxiety ran off with the horses again. My heart is racing, my feet hurt, back hurt…the disease is killing me. It’s over this time for sure. Girlfriend didn’t rush this time to the hospital. She was annoyed. Wouldn’t talk to me and I thought, Now I hope it’s for real this time. I hope I’m dying because she’ll regret ignoring me. The doctor was pretty annoyed when we got there. He checked me out, did his thing. The whole appointment was over in five minutes.

He said, “I’m going to prescribe you a paper brown bag. When you feel it happen again just breathe into it. There are people here who actually need help”.

I went straight to the store and bought a whole package of paper brown bags.

So back to where we started this story…there I was lying in my bed, counting lucky charms in the popcorn of my ceiling. I then took an old Radio Shack DJ mixer from out of my closet, connected two portable CD players to the mixer and mixed trance songs together. It was messy but I stopped worrying about death or disease or panic. The CD players had no pitch control so there was no way to match the tempo of each song but I felt genuinely and sincerely happy for the first time since before I donated my rotten blood. I thought to myself that I could beat this disease. I could survive and strive to be a survivor. I’ll live until at least 60 and then just pass on with grace. The man who survived with a deadly disease. That’s who I’d be.

Finally saw the liver specialist after a few more months of this. She was the last word so however the test results came back, I would deal with it. I was all ready prepared to be the survivor, the martyr, the inspiration to thousands of other afflicted Americans. Maybe I’d write a book or a movie.

 The liver specialist walked into the room, sat down next to me and said, “You’re negative.”

Negative? Like a pessimist?

“No, you’re disease free. Completely fine. The reason why the NAT test isn’t approved by the FDA is because it’s faulty. The Red Cross uses it because it can detect infected blood sooner than other tests that are approved. They have to stay on the safe side.”

I left with my life back and promised myself to really suck on the ribcage of life like a hungry dog. Disease? Fuck disease.

So like a witch foretelling the future using chicken gizzards and blood, everything that happened years after could be traced to that year. Live a predictable life? Fuck normality.

It’s the end of March and I almost forgot about a terrific article that I saw in Better Homes and Gardens magazine.  It was the February issue: “Know Your Heart.” A friend of mine called me and said, ” You just got a great mention  in this article.”   Well, Easton is a small town but that Saturday I went out and, after a few stops, I found the issue. Now I want to share it with you.

As we age, there are things we all must learn. Managing your health — and especially being heart healthy –  is one of the essentials.   Did you know that 1 in 3 women dies from heart disease, a problem that is largely preventable? The article goes on to suggest that, with regular exercise,  a proper diet and also adding some supplements, you can help decrease the risk.

The first addition to your daily routine is to start adding soluble fiber.  We have all heard about adding fiber; it’s in all the papers and on TV. Yet what this article recommend?  Why, psyllium, of course.

I know, I know, psyllium is used as a laxative and you’re saying, “I don’t need a laxative.”  Psyllium has more uses. Clinical studies done with both oatmeal and psyllium were reviewed by the FDA.  The Food and Drug Administration review found that there was a heart health benefit.  In fact, you can reduce  your cholesterol anywhere from 10-15% by adding these fibers to your daily routine.   So how much psyllium do I need per day?  Well, the article says 10 to 12 grams per day.  (Check our chart of recommended amounts of Konsyl psyllium fiber products.)

Now the two products that I know about which are registered as over the counter (OTC) drugs are Metamucil and Konsyl.  Everyone knows Metamucil because Proctor & Gamble has done a wonderful job in advertising this product.

You may not know about Konsyl but you may want to take a minute and learn about us. Konsyl is the only OTC product which contains ONLY 100% Natural Psyllium. This is important because you want the most bang for your buck. The other benefit of Konsyl is that it does not contain any fillers,  sugars  or flavors. If you’re watching your glucose levels, this is great to know.

I know you’re thinking psyllium is hard to mix.  Not if you know the secret.  Add it to your favorite juice in a shaker cup or use a whisk.  It blends up just right!!! You can also get creative and find ways of making it right for you (get psyllium recipe ideas here).

Now, don’t try to start taking too much at once because as a all-natural product, it takes time to adjust your routine.  As a lot of smart people tell me:  “You cannot run a marathon until you learn to do a 3K  first.”  So start off with a smaller dose (1/4 teaspoon) and build up to a level you are comfortable with.  It takes all of one minute!  Less time than it takes to brush your teeth — and you do that every day, don’t you??

Face it : Your life is not practice, it is the real deal!  We have to learn how to manage our good health and Iwould rather do that then to have to take medicine the rest of my life.   So if your cholesterol levels  are borderline high, why not try the natural solution?  Why not try Konsyl? And don’t forget you can still get this trial pack of Konsyl psyllium (which comes with the shaker cup!) for less than $3.

Have a good day.

The Fiber Guy

P.S.  Take a look at your grocery or pharmacy shelf. Konsyl is right there with the other fiber supplements — look for the burgundy cap. You can also make it easy and order online. Here’s a list of stores that carry Konsyl.