A cardiologist is a heart doctor, and they know all there is to know about the anatomy of the human heart. Living in Miami or Coral Gables or anywhere else doesn’t matter when it comes to coronary heart disease. Call Dr. Bordenave for a consultation and see how integrative medicine can help you be healthier.
Fasting doesn’t always mean going without food for days. As part of a health and wellness program, your fasting could simply be 16 hours out of every 24. For eight hours, you eat a healthy diet, then for the next 16 hours, you don’t eat. Living in Little Havana or Key West, fasting can be done anywhere.
Ringing in the ears, or tinnitus, affects nearly 12 million Americans. The noise can sound like a high-pitched hum, a roar, whine, squeal, hiss or click. For most people, tinnitus comes and goes and is not much more than a temporary nuisance. However, for more than one million people, the problem is severe enough that it interferes with their daily lives. For some, it is so distracting that it blocks out normal hearing, and they cannot work and sometimes not even sleep. Tinnitus usually occurs in people over 40-years old and men experience it more often than women do.
What Causes Tinnitus
If you have suffered from extended periods of tinnitus, you know all too well how disturbing the disorder can be. It is very difficult to block out the sounds in your head and concentrate on the ones coming from outside. Achieving wellness seems nearly impossible. If you are like the majority out there, the tinnitus will go away on its own. However, if it lasts for more than a week, check in with your doctor of general internal medicine.
Most tinnitus is caused by damage to the microscopic hair-like structures in the inner ear. The hair-like structures vibrate, sending signals to the nerves in response to outside noise and the information is translated by the brain.
There are multiple causes for the tinnitus. It may or may not occur with hearing loss, but
aging is the most common cause. However, a large proportion is caused by working or living near loud noise. Loud music is a very big culprit. Other reasons for tinnitus may be:
How to Cure Tinnitus
There actually is no cure for tinnitus, but it can be treated. Harvard educated Dr. Andrew Weil, founder of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, suggests an integrative medicine method. Take the supplement ginko biloba for a two-month trial period: two pills of standardized extract, with meals, three times a day. Ginko can help increase blood circulation to the head and neck.
CoEnzyme Q10 (CoQ10) has been shown in clinical trials to be beneficial to people suffering from tinnitus. CoQ10 is believed to energize the mitochondria in cells, which helps to prevent heart disease, as well as tinnitus. This supplement has been widely 
advertised as an antioxidant and can be helpful with coronary heart disease.
Other natural methods and recommendations for helping to reduced tinnitus are:
It is important to note that if you are having ringing in the ears, you should consult with your doctor because tinnitus can be a symptom of certain diseases, or as mentioned, could be caused by some medications. If there is an underlying medical problem, treating that disorder should take care of the ringing. Be sure you provide your internal medicine doctor with all of your medical information, including any supplements you take.
Miami Integrative Medicine and Dr. Jorge Bordenave invite you to visit us and see what a difference complementary medicine can make to your health and how it can improve your life.
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People living in Miami can do this kind of fasting on a daily basis. Simply limit the number of hours you eat each day and then fast the rest of the 24 hours. A balanced diet is particularly important when you practice fasting.
Some people in places like Hialeah and Aventura use fasting as a way of cleansing the body and achieving health and wellness. In terms of general internal medicine, this is fine when done periodically.
Around cities such as Sunrise and Daytona Beach, people are learning that all soda, whether diet or regular, are not good for the body. Dr. Bordenave recommends that drinking natural beverages such as milk, water or unsweetened fruit juice is a better way to quench your thirst.
For many years, the recommendation to eat six or so small meals a day has been passed around liberally. The idea is that by constantly providing fuel for the body, it would be continually energized and calories would burn at an even pace, making weight loss easier.
Bad Advice
More recently, it is becoming clear that eating five to six small meals each day is not such good advice. Although the premise may sound good, it doesn’t work very well in practice. One of the reasons for this is that those extra meals usually ended up being an “energy bar” or some other such quick fix and not the fruit or vegetable concentration recommended or a meal prepared at home.
Many also took this advice to mean, “eat all the time,” which understandably led to overeating. It comes as no surprise then that the advice to eat five to six small meals has coincided with the increase of obesity rates in the U.S.
Trying the Opposite Approach
Instead of eating every few hours, the idea is to put more time between meals, even beyond the typical three meals a day scenario: this is known as intermittent fasting, or IF. Cultures all over the world have used fasting in various ways for centuries, one of them being the perceived health benefits.
Intermittent fasting can take many forms. Some prefer to limit food intake to a particular number of hours each day, such as an eight-hour window. Others prefer to fast for entire days. There are increasing research reports that have found that IF may have many benefits for health and longevity.
Photo credit Noesis
Following a plan of intermittent fasting does not mean not eating one day and then binging the next. To reap the most benefits, IF means timing meals so that there are regular periods of fasting. For those trying to lose weight or some other health issues, IF can be a powerful tool. IF helps your body to shift from burning carbs/sugar to burning fat.
Is Fasting Healthy?
Is starving yourself a little each day, or for even a couple of days each week, a good idea? Accumulating evidence is indicating that yes, fasting can have beneficial health side effects.
Intermittent fasting requires that a person pay closer attention to their diet in order to obtain proper nutrition. This can include cutting carbs and substituting healthy fats such as olive oil, eggs, butter, nuts and avocados. Although it may take several weeks, the body will shift to burning fat and the desire for fast energy (carbs that turn into sugar) will disappear.
In a 2007 review conducted by the University of California, Berkley, concluded that fasting every other day might:
Yes, intermittent fasting can provide benefits to the brain. Research has shown that when the body begins to use fat for energy, fatty acids called ketones are released and these help to protect memory and learning. In addition, IF boosts the production of brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), which is a protein. Depending on the area of the brain, BDNF can experience a boost of 50 to 400 percent. Brain stem cells are activated by BDNF and they then convert into neurons, increasing neural health. The protein also protects brain cells from the changes that take place that are associated with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
So, what’s the point in fasting? Increasing evidence shows that it does have health benefits, and that’s reason enough. Before starting an intermittent fasting program, you should talk with your internal medicine doctor or cardiologist. IF can be considered complementary medicine or integrative medicine as part of a life centered on health and wellness.
Dr. Jorge Bordenave and his staff at Miami Integrative Medicine serve the communities of Coral Gables and South Miami, just to name a few. They would love for you to come in and learn how the holistic medicine approach to health care can benefit you. Call today for a consultation.
Published by Axiom Health Care Marketing
At Miami Integrative Medicine we are working toward the establishment of better relationships between doctors and patients in cities like North Miami Beach and Pompano Beach. When better relationships are established, health and wellness follow.
When your doctor wants to check the function of your heart, he will use an electrocardiogram and often an echocardiogram to measure how your heart is working.
The debate over diet soda is reaching something of a peak. Many now believe that it actually can cause weight gain. There are several theories making the rounds, but whatever the findings, soda really has no place in a healthy diet because it contributes nothing nutritionally.
