Dietary Enigmas
asking questions about our diet
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Archive of "nutrition" Category
Trehalose is here in EU/UK
We are delighted that Trehalose has been made available in the UK to end user customers. The prices are quite reasonable and the quality is excellent. Click herealzhiemers artificial sweeteners artificial sweetener artificial sweeteners artificial sweetener saccharin aspartame blood sugar levels carbohydrates complex carbohydrates control diabetes diabetes diabetics diet food food companies fructose corn syrup nutrasweet splenda sucralose sugar Trehalose type 2 diabetes alzhiemers artificial sweeteners artificial sweetener artificial sweeteners artificial sweetener saccharin aspartame blood sugar levels carbohydrates complex carbohydrates control diabetes diabetes diabetics diet food food companies fructose corn syrup nutrasweet splenda sucralose sugar Trehalose type 2 diabetesTrehalose - Update - Available Late July 2008
We are really pleased that almost 2 years of work has resulted in establishing a long term supply of the worlds finest trehalose for the UK and Europe.Trehalose has many benefits:
- natural alternative to sucrose - look and taste identical
- does not trigger rapid rise in blood sugar levels
- suitable for those with neurological issues:
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Parkinsons
- Huntingtons
- Alzhiemers
- Motor Neurone Disease
- easy to use - the family probably won’t even notice the switch
- safe for everyone to use
- comparatively great value
To pre order your supply e mail me
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Aspartame - It isn’t safe
You’ve probably heard the adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” as many times as I have over the years. In fact, there have been plenty of days where I’ve used it as my personal mantra. But all morale-boosting aside, there are some instances where it isn’t true. Take aspartame, for example.
For years, the food industry and mainstream health “experts” have clung to the idea that this artificial sweetener is safe for human consumption because, they claim, there is no concrete proof that it’s toxic. Of course, you and I both know that simply isn’t true. But even if it was, the argument doesn’t hold much water: Just because something may not be poisonous doesn’t make it safe – after all, I buy non-toxic carpet cleaner, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to put it on ice and drink it with a twist of lemon.
But it looks like some new research has shot even more holes in the mainstream’s already-flimsy case for aspartame.
A recent review published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that while aspartame may not kill you, it certainly won’t make you stronger. In fact, it may have a significant weakening impact on your brain, setting you up for problems ranging from mental and emotional disturbances to learning disabilities.
According to this recent analysis, despite what earlier studies and reviews have claimed, aspartame does appear to cause both direct and indirect changes in brain chemistry. The researchers found that, among other negative effects, aspartame can disturb the brain’s ability to metabolize amino acids and proteins, damage the integrity of nucleic acids, and interfere with the functioning of neurons.Based on all of the data they examined, the research team concluded that “excessive aspartame ingestion might be involved in the pathogenesis of certain mental disorders, and also in compromised learning and emotional functioning.”
Sacrificing your mental and emotional function to save calories is hardly a worthwhile trade-off. Save yourself the risk — and the calories — by sticking to natural sweeteners like trehalose, which are both available in natural food stores.
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Living With Diabetes - controlling your blood glucose levels
Diabetes is a problem of such large scale that it is attarcting the attention of the fiscal controllers in Government around the world. It is wholly treatable but very costly and once drus are used they probably have to continue for the rest of a persons life.
What is not so well known is that with very simple dietary modification before onset we can prevent diabetes entirely. Once it has taken hold then we can achieve the same or similar result with a much more radical diateray regime. The point of this entry is to alert you to the fact that you can do a lot to prevent diabetes and it can be redressed without drug intervention in most if not the majority of cases.
To learn more e mail me
Have a great day
Paul Barton
Living well with diabetes - controlling your blood glucose levels
The odds are that you or someone you know has diabetes already or is at risk for developing this disease. Nearly 21 million Americans—or roughly one in every 14 people—have diabetes, and many more are at risk. Of course, if you or someone you love has diabetes, the disorder is about much more than a statistic. It means a new way of life.
However, there’s plenty of good news emerging about diabetes. Research shows that keeping your blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible is worth the time and effort. Rigorous blood sugar control can enable you to delay or even prevent the progression of diabetes and its debilitating long-term complications.
The treatment regimens needed to achieve and maintain near-normal, or “tight,” blood sugar control differ for type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Type 1 treatment centers on replacing insulin to offset the body’s inability to produce it. Type 2 treatment typically relies on exercise, weight loss, and one or more medications to overcome insulin resistance and compensate for the insulin shortfall. Insulin injections, though, may become necessary. Most people with type 2 diabetes also have the added burden of managing one or more other conditions, such as obesity, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. Your treatment goal, regardless of which type of diabetes you have, is to keep your blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible to prevent damage to your eyes, kidneys, heart, nerves, and blood vessels.
Hair Loss - Low GI Diet?
Hi I’m a great devotee of the Low GI diet and have been for years - it is one of our threads in our quest to stay healthy. I was surprised when i read that a Low GI diet not only helps keep weight in the normal range but may also aid hair restoration. But once again when i read about what sucrose does to the body in my last post i realised that it also affects the hormonal system - hence the link with hair loss. Want to keep your hair - go Low GI, want to get pregnant - go Low GI, want to lose weight - go low GI. In fact if you want to live long and prosper - go Low GI
Healthy Mentors - here to help you
Trehalose - the safe sugarHow can I prevent hair loss?
Thinning hair isn’t just a problem for men—like many women, Kristin is experiencing hair loss. “I want to know how to slow it down, how to prevent it, and what are my options to try to get the thickness back,” she says.
Dr. Northrup says that Kristin’s thinning hair may be a result of a hormonal imbalance. “You can get it back by eating a low-glycemic diet, making sure that you are on supplements,” she says.
According to Dr. Northrup, glycemic foods can cause dramatic changes in the body. “One of the things that often happens in mid-life to people is if they have a lot of stress hormones in their system and they’re eating a high-glycemic diet, and the high insulin is in their blood from the high sugar … that actually changes the way hormones are metabolized. So you actually begin to shoot your estrogen and progesterone into androgen-like substances that produce male pattern baldness in women. Have you seen this—where [women] start to get a beard and they get thinning of the hair at the temples and so on?”
Other than a low-glycemic diet, Dr. Northrup has one other recommendation for thinning hair. “Acupuncture can be very, very helpful for it,” she says.
Drug interactions hidden or Unknown?
Hi its Monday morning and a quick trawl through the news brings up this article which seems to point to the fact that drug interactions are indeed harming our health. Thats no surprise to many of the people who read this blog but what was more interesting is that the negative evidence around the Cholesterol lowering drugs is growing. For someone who was told 15 years ago that i’d have to be on Zocor for the rest of my life and that once on the drug could never come off - hoggwash. I’m now off the dru, have been for 10 years and my cholesterol is lower than its been in 20 years. Please don’t always believe what the drug companies say. If you want to find out what i did and do today just email or Skype me.
Healthy Mentors - here to help you
Trehalose - the safe sugar
January 17, 2008
Major Heart and Mood Drugs Take Huge Credibility Hits
Cholesterol drug enlarges artery clogs; Makers of major anti-depressants hid studies with inconveniently negative outcomes
by Craig WeatherbyAmerica’s biggest prescription drugs, and the patients taking them, were reeling today after reading headlines about the second of two disturbing medical reports to appear this week.
We hope that these findings prove decisive in energizing the public to insist that legislators enact urgent data-disclosure reforms.
(more…)Too fat - not fat enough - where is the truth
OK - i am going crazy with this whole thing of overweight/obesity - lets get one thing straight - well several actually.
- Carrying too much fat around our middle puts us at far greater risk of developing cancer, diabetes, heart disease and more.
- being undernourished also damages our health.
- eat the right food, supplement the nutrients that are missing, combat the chemical toxins with antioxidants, exercise
Now Doctors Say Its Good to be Overweight
By David Usborne, The Independent
November 13, 2007
A startling new study by medical researchers in the
The study, published yesterday in the respected Journal of the American Medical Association, runs counter to almost all other advice to consumers by saying that carrying a little extra flab — though not too much — might help people to live longer.
Struggling dieters, used to being told that staying thin is the best prescription for longevity, are likely to be confused this morning if not heartily relieved. While being a bit overweight may indeed increase your chances of dying from diabetes and kidney disease — conditions that are often linked with one another — the same is not true for a host of other ailments including cancer and heart disease, the report suggests.
In fact, scanning the whole gamut of diseases that could curtail your life, being over weight is, on balance, a good thing. The bottom line, the scientists say, is that modestly overweight people demonstrate a lower death rate than their peers who are underweight, obese or — most surprisingly — normal weight.
The findings will be hard to dismiss. They are the result of analysis of decades of data by federal researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in
Being overweight, the report asserts in its conclusions, “was associated with significantly decreased all-cause mortality overall”.
“The take-home message is that the relationship between fat and mortality is more complicated than we tend to think,” said Katherine Flegal, the lead researcher. “It’s not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all situation where excess weight just increases your mortality risk for any and all causes of death.”
That the CDC has even published the report and thus threatened to muffle years of propaganda as to the health benefits of staying slender has enraged some medical experts.
“It’s just rubbish,” fumed Walter Willett, the professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It’s just ludicrous to say there is no increased risk of mortality from being overweight.”
Not that the CDC results are an invitation to throw caution to the winds and take cream with everything. The scientists are careful to stress that the benefits they are describing are limited to those people who are merely overweight — which generally means being no more than 30 pounds heavier than is recommended for your height — and certainly do not carry over to those who fall into the category of obese.
Obesity has been declared one of the main threats to health in the
The scientists at the CDC first hinted at the upside of being overweight a few years ago. Since then, however, they have expanded the base of their analysis, with data that includes mortality figures from 2004, the last year for which numbers were available, for no fewer than 2.3 million American adults.
Highlighting how a bit of bulge might help you, the scientists said that in 2004 there were 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in the
Aside from escaping diseases, tipping the scales a little further may also help people recover from serious surgery, injuries and infections, Dr Flegal suggested. Such patients may simply have deeper bodily reserves to draw on in times of medical crisis.
Not everyone in the medical profession was surprised or angry about the study. “What this tells us is the hazards have been very much exaggerated,” said Steven Blair, a professor of exercise science and biostatistics at the
“I believe the data,” added Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who believes that a BMI of 25 to 30 — roughly the the so-called overweight range — “may be optimal”.
Critics, however, were quick to point out that the study was concerned with mortality data only and did not take account of the quality of life benefits of keeping your weight down. The study “is not about health and sickness”, noted the obesity researcher Barry Popkin of the
The report “definitely won’t be the last word”, said Dr Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, who pointed out, in a report released last week by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, that staying slim was the main recommendation for avoiding cancer.
Others in the American medical community, while a little bemused, were withholding judgement. “This is a very puzzling disconnect,” said Dr JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The suggestion that a bit of extra weight may assist patients recovering from an infection or surgery was of no surprise to Dr Flegal. “You may also have more lean mass — more bone and muscle,” she said. “If you are in an adverse situation, that could be good for you.”
In their conclusions, the authors of the study note: “Overweight … may be associated with improved survival during recovery from adverse conditions, such as infections or medical procedures, and with improved prognosis for some diseases. Such findings may be due to greater nutritional reserves or higher lean body mass associated with overweight.”
Those of us mostly likely to benefit from a little bulge beneath the belt, the study adds, are between 25 and 59 years old, although there were also some advantages for people over 60.
Strontium: An Alternative Treatment For Osteoporosis
This article caught my eye the other day and as i know several people who are potentially at risk from Osteoprosis I thought that it would be a worthy post.
Paul Barton
by Teri Lee Gruss
(NewsTarget) Research spanning a century has shown that strontium, a naturally occurring trace mineral, is an important component of healthy bone tissue. Researchers from around the world have found that, in pharmaceutical doses, it dramatically increases bone density and reduces risk for fractures in women with osteoporosis.
National Osteoporosis Foundation statistics indicate that “osteoporosis causes more than 1.5 million fractures annually: 700,000 vertebral, 300,000 hip, 250,000 wrist and 300,000 fractures at other sites”. [1] Sadly, “an average of 24% of hip fracture patients aged 50 and over dies in the year following their fracture.” [2]
As our population ages in huge numbers, finding a safe and effective treatment for osteoporosis is more important than ever before. Dr. Susan Brown, director of the Osteoporosis Education Project (OEP) in East Syracuse, N.Y., says “Our bone crisis worsens each year, despite intensive public health and disease treatment efforts”. [3]
(more…)Meat can Kill you - but Vegetariansim may not be the full answer either
Meat can kill you.
That’s one of the key points that came out of a major review of 7,000 studies.
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) spent six years preparing this research. Too bad they went to all that trouble and then produced advice that wasn’t quite on the mark.
Fortunately, HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., is here to help them fine-tune their results for some truly useful advice (especially for vegetarians).
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Apples & oranges
——————————————–This headline from FoodNavigator-USA caught my eye: “Red and Processed Meats Increase Cancer Risk, Says Study.”
Of the 10 recommendations offered by the WCRF in this report, FoodNavigator decided to feature this one: “Limit intake of red meat and avoid processed meat.”
Researchers found that high intake of red meat and processed meat was linked to a 30 percent increase in colorectal cancer risk. But lumping red meat with processed meat is like lumping “Citizen Kane” with “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” So much of processed meat is pure junk: binders, fillers, and a host of chemicals that preserve, color, and flavor. There’s really no comparison to the quality nutrition found in meat from an animal that’s been properly fed and cared for (i.e.; not raised on a factory farm).
Unfortunately, very few of us consume such high quality meat, which is rarely available in the average grocery store. Here’s how Dr. Spreen put it when I asked him for his thoughts on the WCRF report: “The studies on the meat and colon effects do not take into account the presence of herbicides, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and the use of antibiotics and hormones given to the animals that produce most of our meat. So, the problem may very well be toxic chemical exposure, not ingestion of meat, per se.”
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Filling in the Blanks
——————————————–I can easily imagine someone reading the FoodNavigator-USA article and deciding: That’s it! I’m going vegetarian! What they may not take into consideration is the essential nutrition they get from high quality meat.
In previous e-Alerts, Dr. Spreen has noted how important it is for vegetarians to include vitamin B-12 in their supplement regimen. He states flatly that vegetarians cannot ingest this important B in adequate amounts unless they take a B-12 supplement. The irony here is that the WCRF report also offers this recommendation: “Aim to meet nutritional needs through diet alone.”
Good luck with that.
I wondered what other supplements Dr. Spreen might recommend for a strict vegetarian.
Dr. Spreen: “Besides the B-12, I’d add some conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), as that form only comes from being processed within an animal. Getting enough of the omega-3 oils in general is a problem, as the ratio tends to be more omega-6 in vegetarians (no fish). I’d also add some saturated fat – since butter and lard (animal fat) are out, vegetarians (especially young ones) are missing the type of fat that’s needed for cell membrane production (kind of important, as you might imagine). In that case I’d be pushing for the use of coconut oil and palm kernel oil (neither one being popular these days).
“Iron is a problem (especially since only animal sources provide iron in a form that ‘insulates’ its oxidative effects from the body within a heme ring), so I’d add an iron supplement.
“Vitamin D is no problem if the individual gets enough whole-body solar exposure daily. That’s kind of rare, unfortunately, so I’d be adding that.
“High quality protein (egg highest, milk next) is an issue. You’re only left with soy, a sad substitute (especially in young boys), but I’d have to add that.
“Vegetarianism is a wonderful cleanse in the short term – I definitely recommend it. In the long term…a total disaster.”
Ouch. I know a lot of our members won’t enjoy hearing their diet described as a “disaster.” But when a wide spectrum of nutrition is missing, a disaster is in the making without some supplementary help.
Talk to your doctor or an experienced dietician before adding any of these supplements to your daily regimen.