Dietary Enigmas
asking questions about our diet
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Archive of "obesity" 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 diabetesDiets work because you get less fructose
For those of you who follow this site you’ll know that I have a particular interest in the relationship between carbohydrates and fat – this article just confirms what we know to be true empirically to be true scientifically.
According to new research, people on low-carb diets lose weight in part because they get less fructose, a type of sugar that can be made into body fat quickly.
The study shows that the type of carbs someone eats can be as important as the amount. Although fructose is naturally found in high levels in fruit, it is also added to many processed foods, especially in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.
For the study, six healthy people performed three different tests involving drinking various mixes of glucose and fructose. Researchers found that fructose turned into body fat much more quickly, and that having it for breakfast changed how the body handled fats at lunch.
Sources:
alternative and complementary medicine artificial sweetener saccharin aspartame blood sugar levels blood vessel disease body weight gain carbohydrates children complex carbohydrates control diabetes diabetes diabetics diet fats fructose corn syrup gi tract glucose high fructose corn high fructose corn syrup low carb diets lunch nutrition processed foods relationship alternative and complementary medicine artificial sweetener saccharin aspartame blood sugar levels blood vessel disease body weight gain carbohydrates children complex carbohydrates control diabetes diabetes diabetics diet fats fructose corn syrup gi tract glucose high fructose corn high fructose corn syrup low carb diets lunch nutrition processed foods relationshipGlobal obesity rates alarmingly high
Mon May 12, 2008 6:25pm EDT
By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – New research shows “alarming levels” of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States, principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health. The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity exacts on the heart and blood vessels.
“The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on cardiovascular disease mortality (death),” Burke and colleagues warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or “MESA” study, researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one third to one half were obese.
Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese, suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not considered “inevitable.”
The investigators also found that obese adults, compared with normal-weight adults, had higher rates of high blood pressure (up to more than twice as high), abnormal lipids (two- to three-fold higher), and diabetes, despite a “huge number” being on costly medications to lower blood pressure and lipid levels and control diabetes, Burke said.
“As the obesity numbers increase further, we will spend an even larger amount of health care dollars just treating risk factors,” Burke said.
Obese adults also had more silent vascular disease (blood vessel disease that causes no symptoms); they had more atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and thicker heart walls, even after adjusting for “traditional” risk factors like high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.
Given the higher amount of silent blood vessel disease with obesity, Burke said “one could worry that this will cause us to reverse our 50-year decline in cardiovascular disease mortality due to the obesity epidemic.” This will likely be accompanied by an increase in diabetes, other heart disease risk factors, and silent disease – “on top of the aging of the baby boom generation.”
“Our findings support the imperative to redouble our efforts to assist in increasing healthy behaviors and to remove…barriers to maintaining a healthy weight,” Burke and colleagues conclude.
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, May 12, 2008.
archives of internal medicine blood vessel disease control diabetes costly medications disease mortality hardening of the arteries health health benefits health care dollars heart walls high cholesterol levels important news insulin resistance lower blood pressure obese adults obesity epidemic obesity rates overweight traditional risk factors wake forest university archives of internal medicine blood vessel disease control diabetes costly medications disease mortality hardening of the arteries health health benefits health care dollars heart walls high cholesterol levels important news insulin resistance lower blood pressure obese adults obesity epidemic obesity rates overweight traditional risk factors wake forest universityLiving 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.
The Greatest Tragedy of All Time
This film was a personal response to our over reliance on the established medical treatments and it expresses some of my personal views. If you want to see more please go to website www.squidoo.com/greatesttragedye mail me
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Trehalose – the safe sugarToo 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.
Health Vs Fitness: Have we got it right
I was talking with a friend and colleague yesterday who brought my attention to this interesting article. That then sparked another thought that has been bugging me for the last couple of years. I work in the area of preventative health using all possible means. So often I am talking with a client who says ‘this therapist says they have the whole answer to my problem’ – another says that xyz therapy can cure everything’ – frankly they are displaying the same behaviour as an ostrich – sticking its head in the sand.
Get it and get it once and for all NO THERAPY HAS THE UNIVERSAL ANSWER. Stop trying to score points of each other – work together – treat everyone as an individual and don’t be so arrogant as to think you have all the answers all the time. At risk of offending ‘Classically Trained Homeopaths’ some of them are among the worst offenders in the business while some have moved on and into integrative health-care. This article is all about Fitness ‘therapists’ having all the answers – fitness is related to health but unless we address the dietary issues as well as exercise we are not serving people well.
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Trehalose – the safe sugarPrivate gyms are reaping the benefits from obesity health scares but are doing little to help fight the epidemic, a report has said.
Obesity figures are still growing despite the UK’s booming gym industry, according to research by an academic at the University of Leicester.
Dr Jennifer Smith Maguire’s study found private gyms were mostly used by richer members of society.
This left the less well-off struggling for help to combat weight problems.
The gyms also promoted exercise not as a part of everyday life but as something to be “squeezed” into the daily routine.
The focus was placed on looking healthy for image and not health reasons, the study added.
“The commercial fitness industry benefits from the scientific legitimacy and political urgency bestowed on population health issues such as inactivity and obesity,” Dr Maguire said.
“But it is ill-equipped to address those issues for a number of reasons. (more…)
Blood Pressure Vs Cholesterol
A high blood level of cholesterol, which damages the heart by clogging the arteries with plaque and fat deposits, is probably the number one contributing factor for heart disease. But high blood pressure (currently defined as anything above 140/90) comes in as a close second, also known as hypertension, it is often called the silent killer, because there are usually no symptoms.Hypertension can often be controlled with medication, but there are a number of other measures you can take that may help as well. You might want to experiment with some of the following to see how they work for you, but consult your doctor beforehand.
- Exercise — Specifically, aerobic exercise — that is, any activity that elevates your heart rate and keeps it there for a time — helps strengthen the heart, which means it can pump blood with less effort, thereby lowering blood pressure. Typically, your doctor might recommend running, jogging, swimming, biking or using gym machines such as treadmills or Stairmasters. You have to do it consistently to have an effect, though. Shoot for 30 minute sessions most days of the week.
- Reduce salt intake – High sodium intake raises blood pressure in two ways. First, it causes more fluid to be retained in blood vessels, forcing the heart to work harder. Second, it may also constrict the arterioles, blood vessels that help regulate blood flow and blood pressure. Sodium’s negative effect on blood pressure is not universal, but there’s no good test to determine who is salt sensitive and who isn’t, so doctors tend to recommend that folks with hypertension reduce their salt intake.Basically, this comes down to not adding salt to your meals as well as cutting out salty snacks. You may also need to check food labels for sodium content, since salt is in a lot of common foods you might not expect, such as breads and cheese, and lots of processed, pre-packaged foods in general. Usually, doctors recommend hypertensive patients keep salt intake down to under 2,400mg a day. (Note: You absolutely should not try to completely eliminate salt from your diet. A certain amount of sodium is necessary for proper functioning of muscles and nerves.)
- Quit smoking – If you smoke, you really need to quit, for a lot of reasons. In regard to hypertension, cigarettes and other tobacco products contain nicotine, which raises your heart rate while constricting blood vessels, which leads to a temporary rise in blood pressure.
- Lose weight – If you’re overweight, you can help reduce your blood pressure by slimming down. This goes hand in hand with aerobic exercise (see above), which is beneficial whether you’re overweight or not. Carrying extra weight only puts an unnecessary strain on your heart, and, therefore, hypertension.
- Reduce stress – A stressful lifestyle has been linked to hypertension. You can alleviate stress a number of ways. Exercise (see above) is effective, so is yoga, meditation, or even just kicking back with a good book.
- Natural supplements – There are a number of supplements available in health food stores that are reputed to be helpful in lowering blood pressure. These include:
- Garlic – Research shows that garlic can significantly lower blood pressure. See your doctor before using garlic supplements, though, as it can thin the blood to an unsafe degree if taken with certain medications.
- Fish Oil – Studies show that fish oil has a modest effect on blood pressure.
- Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) – Studies indicate a relationship between lowered blood pressure and the regular ingestion of CoQ10 supplements. To get the best e mail me.
- Hawthorne – Long recommended for hypertension by practitioners of herbal medicine, studies have indeed shown hawthorne to help reduce diastolic blood pressure.
- Glyconutrients – These are plant sugars that provide the body with the ability to complete the code that is at the centre of every function of the body. Get this right and the rest may well correct itself.
- Water – this is so simple – if the blood is thick it is harder to pump and the result is higher blood pressure – ensure you are drinking 2 litres per day or more.
Healthy Mentors – here to help you
Trehalose – the safe sugarForesight Report On Obesity
The Foresight report, while stating the obvious, is a welcome study of the trends that are affecting our wester diet and lifestyle – but and there is always a but. Who will read the report and more importantly can government and the food industry actually change behaviour – I think it is unlikely. My feeling is that an enormous proportion of the west’s population is now committed to a self indulgent, ostrich like existence that believes either there is no point in making any changes or that any changes are futile. The slope we are sitting on is slippery and comfortable but we are inexorably sliding towards an obesity epidemic, a diabetes epidemic and a chronic illness epidemic that will ultimately demand rationing of health care resources. I read in a book recently by Marcus Buckingham (the Galup Organisation) that the choices we make today inevitably detrmine our future – if only we could see it. The slight Edge by Jeff Olson talks about the small choices we make every day being what influences our future – we don’t get sick today by making one bad choice – they accumulate over years. We do have a choice – but we have to act from a place of education not ignorance and comfort.
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Trehalose – the safe sugarTo Read the report in full Click here