Excess body fat around the middle that surrounds internal organs is a well known cause of increased systemic inflammation that contributes to hormone and metabolic dysregulation, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, arthritic conditions, autoimmune disease and cancer.

Body shaming has no place in this conversation. We all reach the state where we are currently at by both our choices, and happenstance outside our choosing. What is most important is the informed decisions we make going forward with new awareness.

While it is indeed possible to be both oversized and healthy, the population evidence says this pairing is true for only a minority of obese people, not most.

There are many strategies to reduce central obesity and visceral fat that do not require living in a state of lifelong deprivation. Dr. Clark can help guide you through choosing interventions and lifestyle plans that have promise to work best for you.

These are nutrients that we absolutely must acquire from our diets. If the nutrients are not present in our food, we are unable to create them from the other foods we do eat.

Unfortunately, there is no labeling, no visible clue that lets you know the trace mineral, vitamin or fatty acid content of the healthy foods you eat. If you mostly eat organic whole foods prepared fresh in your own kitchen — a practice I highly recommend — you have no ingredients label to guide you to knowing the essential nutrient content of what goes onto your plate.

The “organic” label is important, but only promises there are no agrochemicals contaminating the food. The label conveys nothing about the nutritional content of the food. There is no promise the soils growing organic foods are replete with essential trace minerals that the plants don’t need but can incorporate to produce essential nutrition for you.

There are nine trace elements/minerals that have been identified through science to be essential to human biology and metabolism. An acute deficiency of any one of these elements causes well known human health problems. A chronic insufficiency of these same minerals causes sub-optimal metabolism and sub-optimal health that is not as easily pinpointed.

The heavily industrialization of our conventional food supply does not replenish human essential trace minerals to heavily farmed soils — only the macronutrients the plants need to achieve production goals of weight and appearance of the food product.

Even before industrial agriculture, there have existed naturally occurring regional disparities in trace mineral distributions in soils. Historically noted soil deficiency examples are a lack of iodine for humans eating locally and living far from the sea.

For farm animals in places like western Oregon, there is a severe deficiency of selenium in the native soils. Selenium is a mineral also essential to humans. The plants that grow from these soils contain no selenium, and the animals that eat only local plants develop critical deficiencies.

Iodine deficiency in humans is historically known to cause thyroid goiter and hypothyroidism. Lack of selenium in farm animals dramatically causes white muscle disease, an especially devastating condition in sheep.

The remedy for both of these historical examples of soil mineral deficiency problems has been dietary supplementation. Iodized salt for the all but forgotten human goiter problem, and selenium fortified salt for the now vanished and almost forgotten problem of white muscle disease in Western Oregon farm animals.

There are 13 essential human vitamins that we must also acquire from our food. Some are found only in foods taken from animals, many are found in foods taken from plants. There has been a meager attempt to fortify some commodity macronutrients with the barest of vitamins to prevent historically well described acute deficiency diseases. The question of optimal amounts of vitamins by individual is generally not answered, other than to deduce that it must occur somewhere between too little and too much.

Essential fatty acids are an issue of both adequacy and balance. Plants, animals and fishes are each partial sources of essential fatty acids. No one food source has all that you need. In the highly processed American diet there is a need to consciously balance omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. An optimal ratio is three omega-6 to one omega-3. Human assays have shown over and again that 20:1 is the typical American ratio. This imbalance supports chronic inflammation and an inability to resolve inflammation when it is no longer required to protect the body.

Conventional medicine as an industry of doctors and drug companies seems to not want you to look upon vitamins, minerals and other supplements as a way to support good health.

Every imaginable fiction has been thrown out in public warnings to avoid the practice of fortifying our diets with well considered, science guided nutrient supplement strategies. These denunciations are often done based simply on the great authority of medical experts while providing no compelling evidence for these dictates.

The evidence and reasoning for consuming a moderately dosed, well balanced, high quality multivitamin, mineral and fatty acid supplementation plan is thus:

1. We now have well established, scientific evidence substantiating a list of 9 minerals, 13 vitamins and 3 fatty acids that are essential nutrients for human health that we must acquire from our diets.

2. We have no way of looking at the food at the market or on our plate to understand which nutrients are in abundance and which are in deficiency.

3. Our bodies sort nutrients at every meal. Micronutrients that arrive in abundance are taken up and distributed throughout the body, with the excess metabolized and released into our biological waste streams. Nutrients that are hard to get, and in short supply, are stored and hoarded by our bodies.

“Supplemented vitamins create expensive urine” is a particularly cynical claim from profiteering drug company shills. A good quality multi-vitamin and mineral doesn’t have to be expensive. Even if 99% of that supplement ends in urine, the acquired 1% was well worth it. Supplementation is even more valuable in removing uncertainties when we get into the complexities of our unique genetic variations, chronic illness, aging, and things we individually do to deplete ourselves of essential micronutrients.

Regular consumption of high quality, moderately dosed multivitamin, minerals and fatty acids removes doubt from how our food supply is meeting our requirements for essential micronutrients.

Our bodies are made of cells that are constructed from proteins, fats and carbohydrates. We metabolize these same proteins, fats and carbohydrates for the cellular energy that keeps us alive and functioning.

In the USA most humans have not just enough, but more than enough macronutrients in their diets. All too often people consume far more macronutrients than what their body can put to good use. The excess intake leading to excess fat storage and our well known obesity crisis. Obesity raises our risk for cancers, diabetes, and other chronic health problems.

Another macronutrient issue is the quality and contamination of the foods that we eat.

Highly processed, sugar added, trans fat containing convenience foods are killing us — according to the alarming opinion of more than one outspoken expert bearing compelling evidence.

Whole foods, fresh as possible, with as few agrochemical contaminants as possible, prepared as often as possible in your own kitchen, is the first step I propose to every patient under my care. There are farmers markets and organic sections in most if not all grocery stores where I live. With even a small patch of ground you can grow some organic, nutrient rich greens for your table.

We are both an individual organism and a massive colony of organisms ideally working together. We never eat alone as it turns out.

Sweetened foods and refined carbohydrates stripped from their accompanying plant fibers are the worst foods for our microbiome, fomenting the worst microbial actors. These acellular carbohydrates overgrow the bad microorganisms that promote inflammation throughout our bodies through their fermentation products.

In a health optimizing diet we are also provisioning the desirable microbes that live within us. Feeding our friendly microbial friends the plant fibers they thrive upon reduces inflammation, our risk of illness, and enhances our own nutrition through symbiotic fermentation byproducts.

After acknowledging the cancer preventing benefits enjoyed by those who consume plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, the scientific community has worked further to identify the plant compounds responsible for these benefits.

Most of what these scientists discover in cancer protecting nutrients never comes to proper attention because of the regulatory barriers allowing only patented drugs to make health claims.

Yet this work provides great insight on our food choices found ready to go in nature. This is scientific evidence pointing to whole plant foods that we should all eat regularly and in abundance. This science also points towards compensating supplements to deliver higher concentrations of beneficial phytonutrients with potentially cancer preventing properties.

Dr. Clark is able to recommend and sort through proactive anti-cancer supplement plans.

While everyone is ideally pursuing a cancer preventing lifestyle, some of us have higher risks. These elevated risks come from genetic predispositions both detectable through DNA testing, and a family history of cancers.

Age based physical cancer screenings have been a standard practice since the PAP test was first put into use.

New, more sensitive, less invasive screening has in recent times become available to routine medical practice. FIT tests are now widely used to detect markers from digestive system cancers.

The Galleri blood test has recently emerged and is able to screen for early markers from 50+ different cancers.

Most cancers are multifactorial resulting collectively from our environment, lifestyle choices and genetic predispositions.

Inherited cancer risk results from DNA mutations that have been convincingly identified as causing significant increases in risk. Yet these are still only risk factors and not 100% certainty a cancer will occur in any specific person. Environmental and lifestyle factors must also be considered within a family history of cancers.

The most expensive way to test for genetic cancer risk factors is one by one. Comprehensive genetic cancer screening panels are available. They are still expensive, but much less so than testing risk factors one by one. Ancestry DNA from any of those test providers create raw data that can be downloaded. Then uploaded to an independent data service that matches sequences to the ever growing human health DNA library.

Here is a more in depth resource from the people at Yale medical school on screening for inherited cancer risk.

Dr. Clark is available to assist you in acquiring DNA testing and to assess inherited cancer risk factors.

Not to be confused with cancer prevention, screenings like PAP smears, prostate exams and colonoscopies are early detection strategies.

Here are the screening recommendations from the US Preventative Services Task Force as reported by the US Centers for Disease Control.

With a single blood test markers for over 50 cancers can be assessed. A positive finding is not a diagnosis of cancer — instead is an indication for further workup to rule cancer out and motivation for earnest engagement in cancer preventative steps.

Learn more about the Galleri test at their public facing website.

Dr. Clark is available to order this test for you. Then help you interpret the results and guide you towards next steps based on those results.

Humans are not meant to be couch potatoes. Neither are we all meant to be iron men and women, hyper athletes, operating at the limits of human physiology.

Toned muscles reduce insulin resistance and increase our base metabolic rate. Lymphatic drainage and blood circulation are completed by muscle movement. Movement of our bodies is essential.

The most effective exercises are the ones you are willing and able to participate in regularly. For many, the most important change is to just get moving. Walking for 20 minutes daily at any speed achieves 80% of the benefits of exercise in reducing health risks, including cancers.

In our modern life and personal environments many known and potential carcinogens are undetected and out of our sensory awareness. Yet they are very much entering our bodies on a regular basis. We need to be aware and take necessary steps to minimize these exposures. Here are carcinogen lists reported by the American Cancer Society.

It can be overwhelming to confront so many hidden risk factors. With awareness, sound, accessible strategies emerge to help us minimize the carcinogens that confront us in our everyday lives. Air, water and food are where we encounter most of these hidden carcinogens.

Air filters, water filters and prioritizing organic foods not sprayed with agrochemicals are most people’s top line strategies for eliminating and minimizing carcinogens from their personal environments.

Carcinogens outgas from manufactured materials, devices, sprays, and personal care products. Potential carcinogens contaminate our water, and are sprayed on the food we eat. Recently PFAS carcinogens have been detected in the drinking water of almost half of American homes.

The two most common self administered carcinogen exposures are tobacco usage and excess alcohol consumption.

Dr. Clark can assist you to inventory your personal risks and develop strategies for mitigating those risks.