End Stinky Feet with This Fermented Apple Elixir

End Stinky Feet with This Fermented Apple Elixir

Claremont Colonic Newsletter
A little in your salad, a little in your foot bath! Apple cider vinegar’s long history as a natural remedy means that it has been used to treat everything from sore throats to obesity — and even the feet. Feet are particularly sensitive to their environment, making them susceptible to bacteria, fungi, calluses, and more. Apple cider vinegar contains many beneficial properties that could help improve these conditions. Here’s why you should soak your feet in ACV and how to create the optimal foot bath.
What’s so special about apple cider vinegar?

For centuries, people have turned to organic, unfiltered apple cider vinegar (ACV) for medicinal purposes. Its high levels of acetic acid are believed to be the reason why. ACV is made from apples that have been crushed, distilled and then fermented, according to research published in the Journal of Food Science. Adding yeast to the mix is what ferments the sugars and turns them to alcohol. Bacteria are then added to ferment the alcohol further, which turns it into acetic acid — the active compound in vinegar. Studies suggest that the acetic acid (normally five to six percent) gives vinegar its pungency and many beneficial properties. Other health benefits of ACV are believed to come from a substance called the “mother.” This natural substance gives ACV it’s murky appearance and is made up of strands of enzymes, proteins, and friendly bacteria.

Why you should soak your feet in ACV

Since ACV protects against harmful pathogens like bacteria and fungi, soaking your feet in it could provide a natural remedy for common foot problems, including:

Foot Odor

Just like the skin under your arms and on your body, your feet are covered in sweat glands. When your feet are tucked away in tight-fitting shoes, they begin to sweat. And of course, sweat is the perfect environment for bacteria to grow, which emits that foul odor. Some people find their feet sweat even without engaging in exercise or strenuous activity. Vinegar makes your skin inhospitable to bacteria. Since ACV is antimicrobial, soaking your feet in a vinegar bath for 10 to 20 minutes a day can help kill the stinky bacteria.

Athlete’s Foot

Let’s face it; you don’t have to be an athlete to get athlete’s foot. However, walking around barefoot in public places like gyms and swimming pools will certainly help. Athlete’s foot (tinea pedis) is a contagious skin disease caused through contact with certain fungi. Wearing shoes or damp socks further allows the fungi to multiply thanks to the warm, dark, moist environment. Telltale signs of athlete’s foot include a scaly rash that usually itches, stings, and burns. It can often show up between the toes, but it is not limited to this area on your foot. Research suggests soaking your feet daily in an ACV foot bath can help repel fungal infections like athlete’s foot.

Calluses and Dry, Cracked Feet

ACV acts as a mild exfoliator for skin and even nails, thanks to the acetic acid. This makes it a perfect foot bath for callused, dry, and cracked feet. This gentle exfoliation, over-time, may help slough off dead skin cells and encourage new cell growth. It’s best, however, to use cool water instead of hot water, which can further dry your skin. Soak your feet nightly and follow with a moisturizer and a pair of socks to lock moisture in.

Toenail Fungus

If your nails have thickened and changed color, then you may have toenail fungus. Other signs include:

  • Nails that warp or change shape
  • Nails that become discolored and turn dark
  • Nails that become loose or begin to separate from the nail bed
  • A buildup of chalky nail fragments under the nail
  • Nails that become brittle, thickened and broken


ACV has always been a popular remedy for toenail fungus. Many people swear that over time, and with repeated use, apple cider vinegar’s antifungal properties cure toenail fungus. However, there is no clinical evidence that suggests ACV will definitely work. But it is a low-risk remedy and unlikely to cause any harm. Bottom line…it’s worth trying. Simply soak your feet in a warm ACV foot bath for about 15 minutes, twice daily. To avoid reinfection:

  • Soak Your Feet Regularly
  • Trim your nails straight across. File down thickened areas and smooth edges.
  • Disinfect your nail clippers after each use.
  • Wear sweat-absorbing socks and shoes that breathe.
  • Wear footwear in locker rooms and pool areas.
  • Choose a nail salon that sterilizes manicure tools regularly.
  • Stop using nail polish on your toes, or switch to a breathable polish.


Creating the Perfect Foot Bath

Start with clean feet, cleansed with a regular, soft soap prior to soaking. Apple cider vinegar will not hurt your feet. But for your footbath, you should dilute ACV with warm or cool water.

  • Fill a basin with one cup of apple cider vinegar and two cups of warm or cool water.
  • Continue to add one cup of vinegar and two cups of warm water until the basin is full.
  • Soak feet for 10 to 20 minutes
  • Dry feet thoroughly and finish with moisturizer.


Apple cider vinegar is generally safe for the feet and makes a wonderful, relaxing soak. However, it is still possible for vinegar to irritate inflamed skin, so use with caution. In addition, people with diabetes should consult with a specialist before using home remedies for their feet.


Contributor-Katherine Marko, AlternativeDaily.com

What Is the Connection Between Diabetes and Stroke?

What Is the Connection Between Diabetes and Stroke?

Claremont Colonic Clinic Newsletter
People with diabetes are 1.5x more likely to have a stroke. Make sure you understand this link so you can prevent stroke and stay healthy.


Type 2 diabetes is endocrine disease. It basically means that your blood sugar is elevated. There are two types of strokes. One is just an occlusion. The second one is the burst of one of these vessels, and in that case, we call it hemorrhagic stroke, meaning that these vessels burst and there is a bleed inside the brain. There is an acronym that I think synthesizes pretty good the signs of stroke, and this is FAST. F-A-S-T. F stands for facial drooping, A for arm weakness, S stands for speech, slurred speech or difficult to talk, and T stands for time, and it means that it is time to call 911.

Diabetes is an inflammatory disease, which means it causes inflammation in your whole body. This includes big vessels and small vessels. With this inflammation, basically what it causes is plaque formation in the walls of the arteries that down the road, can lead to an occlusion or even a burst of one of these vessels.

People with type 2 diabetes are at higher risk of a stroke when you compare them with people without diabetes. People with diabetes also are known to have other comorbidities, like hypertension and high cholesterol. People with diabetes can lower their stroke rate by diet, exercise, and having their diabetes under control with the appropriate medications. There are multiple types of medications that we can use, that include pills and even insulin, but always these need to be combined with lifestyle modifications like exercise and diet. You don’t have to let diabetes define you. With appropriate control and appropriate medications, you can have the same type of outcomes as people without diabetes.


Contributor: Frederico Trobo: Cardiologist and Heart Failure Specialist, HealthGuides-CNN.com

Talking on Zoom Could Help Older People Stave off Dementia

Talking on Zoom Could Help Older People Stave off Dementia

Claremont Colonic Newsletter

Talking on video-conference services like Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic has helped older people stave off the effects of dementia, a new study has suggested.

Researchers found that regular communication helps maintain long-term memory, and elderly people who often use online tools showed less decline in memory than those who don’t.

The study, by the University of West London’s Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory, studied the communication of 11,418 men and women over the age of 50.

They were asked how often they interacted with friends and family online, on the phone and in person, and then completed memory tests that involved recalling a list of 10 words at various intervals.

The participants who only used “traditional,” face-to-face communication showed more signs of cognitive decline than those who used technology to keep in touch with friends and family.

“This shows for the first time the impact of diverse, frequent and meaningful interactions on long-term memory, and specifically, how supplementing more traditional methods with online social activity may achieve that among older adults,” the study’s leader Snorri Rafnsson said.
“With more and more older adults now using online communication so frequently, especially during the past year of global lockdowns, it poses the question as to what extent technology can help sustain relationships and overcome social isolation, and how that can also help maintain brain health.”

As the pandemic has forced people to stay apart, video conferencing tools like Zoom, Skype and Google Meet have exploded in popularity.

In recent months Zoom has emerged as the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store, repeatedly breaking its download records.

A study last year found that negative thinking is linked to dementia later in life. And separate research found that apathy, the decrease in motivation and goal-directed behavior, could also be a trigger in older adults.


Contributor: Rob Picheta, CNN Health

Salad or Cheeseburger? Your Co-workers Shape Your Food Choices

Salad or Cheeseburger? Your Co-workers Shape Your Food Choices

Claremont Coloic Newsletter
The foods people buy at a workplace cafeteria may not always be chosen to satisfy an individual craving or taste for a particular food. When co-workers are eating together, individuals are more likely to select foods that are as healthy — or unhealthy — as the food selections on their fellow employees’ trays. “We found that individuals tend to mirror the food choices of others in their social circles, which may explain one way obesity spreads through social networks,” says Douglas Levy, PhD, an investigator at the Mongan Institute Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and first author of new research published in Nature Human Behavior. Levy and his co-investigators discovered that individuals’ eating patterns can be shaped even by casual acquaintances, evidence that corroborates several multi-decade observational studies showing the influence of people’s social ties on weight gain, alcohol consumption and eating behavior.

Previous research on social influence upon food choice had been primarily limited to highly controlled settings like studies of college students eating a single meal together, making it difficult to generalize findings to other age groups and to real-world environments. The study by Levy and his co-authors examined the cumulative social influence of food choices among approximately 6,000 MGH employees of diverse ages and socioeconomic status as they ate at the hospital system’s seven cafeterias over two years. The healthfulness of employees’ food purchases was determined using the hospital cafeterias’ “traffic light” labeling system designating all food and beverages as green (healthy), yellow (less healthy) or red (unhealthy).

MGH employees may use their ID cards to pay at the hospitals’ cafeterias, which allowed the researchers to collect data on individuals’ specific food purchases, and when and where they purchased the food. The researchers inferred the participants’ social networks by examining how many minutes apart two people made food purchases, how often those two people ate at the same time over many weeks, and whether two people visited a different cafeteria at the same time. “Two people who make purchases within two minutes of each other, for example, are more likely to know each other than those who make purchases 30 minutes apart,” says Levy. And to validate the social network model, the researchers surveyed more than 1,000 employees, asking them to confirm the names of the people the investigators had identified as their dining partners.

“A novel aspect of our study was to combine complementary types of data and to borrow tools from social network analysis to examine how the eating behaviors of a large group of employees were socially connected over a long period of time,” says co-author Mark Pachucki, PhD, associate professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Based on cross-sectional and longitudinal assessments of three million encounters between pairs of employees making cafeteria purchases together, the researchers found that food purchases by people who were connected to each other were consistently more alike than they were different. “The effect size was a bit stronger for healthy foods than for unhealthy foods,” says Levy.

A key component of the research was to determine whether social networks truly influence eating behavior, or whether people with similar lifestyles and food preferences are more likely to become friends and eat together, a phenomenon known as homophily. “We controlled for characteristics that people had in common and analyzed the data from numerous perspectives, consistently finding results that supported social influence rather than homophily explanations,” says Levy.

Why do people who are socially connected choose similar foods? Peer pressure is one explanation. “People may change their behavior to cement the relationship with someone in their social circle,” says Levy. Co-workers may also implicitly or explicitly give each other license to choose unhealthy foods or exert pressure to make a healthier choice.

The study’s findings have several broader implications for public health interventions to prevent obesity. One option may be to target pairs of people making food choices and offer two-for-one sales on salads and other healthful foods but no discounts on cheeseburgers. Another approach might be to have an influential person in a particular social circle model more healthful food choices, which will affect others in the network. The research also demonstrates to policymakers that an intervention that improves healthy eating in a particular group will also be of value to individuals socially connected to that group.

“As we emerge from the pandemic and transition back to in-person work, we have an opportunity to eat together in a more healthful way than we did before,” says Pachucki. “If your eating habits shape how your co-workers eat — even just a little — then changing your food choices for the better might benefit your co-workers as well.”


Contributor: Massachusetts General Hospital-Science News Daily