Heart Health
Many myths exist today in regards to heart health. After 60 years
of intensive research, heart disease still kills, 600,000 people a
year in North America. It is the leading cause of death in men. There
are many risk factors that can cause your heart to fail, however....
Fat people potentially have the highest risk factor for heart disease.
Until his recent untimely death, Dr. Robert C. Atkins was a pioneer
in complementary medicine and the leading champion of the controlled
carbohydrate approach to nutrition. He claimed the best way to lose
weight was not a low-fat diet but a low-carb diet. For much of his
career Dr. Atkins was looked down on from many in the medical community,
until just before his death when many had a change of attitude.
First a New York Times Magazine article "What if it's all been
a big fat lie" attacked the myth that low-fat diets are healthy.
Then the Heritage Medical Center released the results of a study into
how low carbohydrate diets affect people with metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome is a diet induced disease causing cholesterol problems,
obesity, lack of energy, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
Participants, who ate a low-carb diet for 18 months, saw their LDL,
bad cholesterol, reduced by an average of 82%. HDL, good cholesterol,
scores increased by an average of 30%. Finally, in May 2003, less
than one month after Dr. Atkins death, the New England Journal of
Medicine, published a well-done study that found the Atkins approach
beats out the American health Association's own low-fat approach for
both weight loss and blood lipid improvement.
It would seem one of the first principals to better heart health is
to avoid low-fat labeled foods. The reason is quite simple. There
are only three macronutrients in food: fat , protein and carbohydrate.
Manufacturers do not add protein when they remove fat from packaged
food. So anything marked low-fat necessarily has more carbohydrates.
The added carbs are the worst kind of refined processed carbs. They
are the worst thing for your heart. Harvard researchers found that
substituting an equal number of calories of polyunsaturated fat with
carbohydrates increased the risk of heart disease by over 50%. Some
fats are actually healthy for your heart. Omega-3 fats, drive down
bad cholesterol and keep the blood flowing freely. Fats are needed
by your body to absorb the essential vitamins A, E, D and K. Your
body can make every carbohydrate, it needs. To produce crucial hormones
like prostaglandins, your body needs essential fatty acids. They are
essential for the function of the entire body. Among other things,
they clear arteries and fight inflammation to improve cardiovascular
health. However, your intake of these fats has to be balanced. Ideally,
one omega-3 to every two Omega-6 fatty acids. More omega-6 and less
omega-3 causes blood to easily clot and contributes to constricted
arteries. The precursor to heart attacks.
Over the last 75 years in North America , Omega-6's in the diet have
soared, and now the ratio is 20 to 1. The average North American eats
10 times as much Omega six as they should. These come mostly from
vegetable oils, processed foods and grain fed meat. It turns out those
native cultures, who consumed 85% of their calories as wild red meat
showed little evidence of having experienced modern heart disease.
In wild range or grass fed animals, you get a dramatically reversed
and heart healthy ratio of 0.16 to 1. This makes grass fed red meat
significantly more heart healthy than wild fish! If you prevent an
animal from getting normal exercise and feed it grains it does the
same thing to the animal it does to us. It makes it obese with all
the wrong kinds of fat. Processed foods are proprietary and very profitable,
and since the medical establishment advised us to avoid red meat,
and process our food even more, the food processing industry jumped
on the heart healthy bandwagon with both feet. When vegetable oils
are hydrogenated in processed foods they produce trans fatty acids.
These raise LDL and triglycerides in the blood. Both of these are
true enemies of the heart.
If you follow the advice to choose low-fat foods, you are actually
choosing foods that make fat loss more difficult because of the extra
carbs and added sugars. Low-fat products on supermarket shelves are
bad for your heart, especially those processed starch products often
marked as heart healthy, like breads and cereals. These culprits cause
heart problems.If you're going to eat bread, be sure to choose sprouted
grain. Once the grain sprouts, it acts somewhat like a vegetable in
the human body.
According to Dr. AL. Sears, M.D., manipulating micronutrients (protein,
fat and carbohydrates) is not quackery. It is a sophisticated and
effective approach to controlling aspects of metabolism and weight.
It is also much easier, healthier and more effective than the failed
calorie counting approaches.
Here are his effective rules, you can follow to maintain the right
balance of micronutrients. He claims the results will be a stronger,
leaner, more energetic and healthier you without eating cardboard
tasting and diet food.
1. Eat excess protein. Quality protein is the key to good nutrition.
Protein promotes muscle growth and overall health. Eating more protein
than you need for daily metabolism signals to your body that "the
hunting is good" and liberalizes the burning of carbs and fat
for energy. Wild fish, wild or grass fed meats, eggs, dairy, beans
and nuts are all good sources of protein. Eat as much of them as you
like.
2. Limit processed carbs. Processed carbs make you fat and diseased.
Starches in particular, our main cause of the North American obesity
epidemic. Limit consumption of anything made from grains (including
corn) or potatoes. Get your carbs from unprocessed vegetables that
grow above the ground. The exceptions are onions and garlic.
3. Eat natural fats. Fat is neutral as a micronutrients, but most
modern fat is a health nightmare. Eat unprocessed vegetable fats like
virgin olive oil or avocado oil. Get your animal fat from free range
or grass fed animals. These are some of the healthiest foods, you
can eat, not the health hazards we have been told they are.
Simply limit your carbohydrates at every meal, don't worry so much
about natural fats, and make quality protein the focus of all your
meals. If you do this you'll be well on the way to a healthier and
more enjoyable diet.
Hard Pill Test
Allan Spreen, M.D., has previously told us that the contents of hard
pills are not easily absorbed, here are his comments: "Theoretically,
'proper' testing is supposed to use vinegar,
I believe. However, I don't know because I wouldn't consider such
a test. If a pill doesn't disintegrate almost immediately in water
I don't use it. Many people don't produce nearly enough acid, so even
if they're taking digestive enzymes (but as hard pills), they may
never actually absorb anything. "Hard pills are cheaper than
capsules for one thing, and another thing is that more 'stuff' can
be pressed into them. That does NOT mean you can get it back out.
If I'm forced to use hard pills I at least break them in half, and
I'd crush them if I knew I could tolerate the taste. Capsules are
the way to go. Just ask a septic tank cleaner, most of whom can attest
to the tons of undigested pills that settle to the bottom of tanks!"For
the same reason I'd also avoid 'time release' types, which are specifically
designed NOT to release! Be your own time-releaser and take the capsules
more often. "Nutrient supplements are taken to enhance nutrient
levels that should be in our food (but often aren't, due to the poor
quality of our 'civilized' diet), so they should survive stomach acid
if mixed with food. Supplements shouldn't be taken alone, anyway...
a waste of money.
"Vitamin B-12 may be one exception, where injections and sublingual
types (under-the-tongue) are superior to oral, where acid may really
lessen the dose."
Keep Your Eyes Young
* 14 percent of Americans over the age of 40 develop cataracts
* Almost one half of all Americans will develop a significant
cataract after reaching age 75
* Worldwide health care costs associated with cataracts are estimated
to be $6 billion every year
The lens of the eye has two natural enemies: blue ultraviolet light,
and oxygen free radicals. Fortunately there are defenses against
both enemies: blue UV light can be filtered out with good sunglasses,
and free radicals can be neutralized with proper nutrition. Researchers
at a Tufts University nutrition and vision research laboratory recently
released a study on the effects of specific nutrients in preventing
cataracts from forming on the eye lens. In the current issue of
Agriculture Research Magazine, the leader of the Tufts research
team - bio-organic chemist Allen Taylor - explained how the lens
can become
damaged. As we age, free radicals damage crystallins, a set of proteins
in lens cells. Taylor compares crystallins to fiber optics, "allowing
light to pass through the lens and onto the retina." The oxidation
damage creates a clouding of the lens that gradually becomes more
opaque and reduces vision. This is how a cataract develops.
Taylor designed the study based on food frequency statistics gathered
over the course of 13 years on almost 500 women (aged 53 to 73)
enrolled in the Nutrition and Vision Project - a substudy of the
Nurses' Health Study. Taylor's team also conducted eye exams on
all of the subjects. After analyzing the data, researchers found
that women with the lowest amount of lens-clouding opacification,
also had the highest intake of the antioxidant phytonutrients lutein,
zeaxanthin, folate, beta carotene, and riboflavin, as well as the
highest intake of the antioxidant vitamins C and E. The researchers
theorize that antioxidants help promote the function of protein-digesting
enzymes that are believed to remove damaged proteins, and halt the
gradual formation of cataracts.
But one more critical detail stood out among the study's conclusions:
Women who had taken daily vitamin C supplements for more than a
decade were 64 percent less likely to show signs of the opacification
that leads to cataracts than the women who took no vitamin C supplements
at all.
Good food sources of xanthophylls include kiwi, red seedless grapes,
orange-colored peppers, spinach, celery, brussels sprouts, scallions,
broccoli, and squash. So even though you may be getting effective
cataract-fighting benefits from vitamin C supplements, the nutrients
in these foods will very likely give a considerable boost to your
overall vision health.
Iodine Test
You'll love this quick $1 cure for low energy...cold hands & feet...and
body weakness: If you've ever had any of these symptoms, you may have
a low thyroid function. Taking thyroid supplements won't do a thing
if you are deficient in iodine.
There is a quick test you can do right at home to check your iodine
level. Just take a Q-tip and paint an area about the size of a silver
dollar with two-percent tincture of iodine (get from any drugstore).
Paint it on your thigh or tummy.
If your iodine level is normal, the yellowish stain will disappear
after 24 hours. But if the stain disappears in less than 24 hours,
it means your body is deficient and has thirstily sucked it up.
Solution: Keep
applying iodine in the same way in different spots daily until it
no longer disappears before the 24-hour period.
Tomato's
can help prevent Cancer
Organic
is best
Those juicy, bright red tomatoes contain disease-fighting chemicals,
called chlorogenic acid and p-coumeric acid, that bind to the nitric
oxide (in cancer-causing nitrosamines) and lift it out of the cells.
Tomatoes also contain glutamic acid, which the body converts into
gamma-butyric acid - a natural calming agent that has been proven
to alleviate hypertension. Every fruit, vegetable, bean, and herb
has its own unique combinations of cancer or disease=fighting chemicals.
The tomato alone has an estimated 10,000. Large population surveys
suggest that those who eat plenty of tomatoes are less likely to
get prostate cancer and some other malignancies.Fresh is great yet
cooked is even better. Drink tomato based drinks with your meals.
Will to Live
"Those (cancer patients) who survived the longest were real troublemakers.
They fought with their doctors, sought alternatives and methods of
treatment. They refused to relinquish hope..."
(Dr. Bernard Fox, in How to Survive Medical Treatment by Stephen Fulder,
Ph.D.)
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