Exercise turns off excessive hunger….

Today's post: Friday, 8-29-2008

Some really fat people think it’s genetic. Recent research shows that some of them may be correct.

It seems that some people have only have one of the two genes that keep BDNF at high enough levels to provide normal appetite control instead of having two as most people do. So, in both lab animals and people that heredity usually produces obesity. They tend to be hungry for more calories than they burn up – all the time.

But there are two facts the researchers didn’t mention.

1. There is a second cause of low levels of BDNF. It’s reliably lower in people with sedentary jobs who never exercise.

2. And, for both groups there IS a way to boost levels of BDNF.

Recent research found that people who exercise regularly grow new brain cells. And, the reason for this is that ample levels of BDNF cause this to happen while regular exercise increases or releases BDNF.

In addition, regular exercise helps people to endure more stress without reacting to it and to deal with it better if they do react to it.

Since perceived stress tends to make people hungry for foods high in sugar and refined carbs, that means exercise helps control excessive hunger caused by stress also.

But there’s more. Regular exercise also results in you burning a lot more calories regardless of what you eat.

So, if you do eat a bit more or have trouble eating less, IF YOU EXERCISE, you can still lose fat and keep it off without getting too hungry because you literally can eat more & stay trim.

There are three ways exercise can have this effect.:

The first is that no matter how mild the intensity, if you get about 3500 calories of exercise total each week, that’s 500 more calories a day you are burning compared to being totally sedentary.

The second is that people who exercise both increase their muscle mass over time and tend not to lose any if they diet and as they get older. Since muscle burns calories, and far more than fat does, even at rest, this means that people who exercise also burn more calories even when they are not exercising.

Progressive strength training does this best. And, due to the faster paced parts, interval cardio also does this to some degree.

The third way is that progressive strength training and interval cardio both turn up your metabolism significantly. And, this boost means you burn more calories often for over 10 hours after you stop exercising.

If you add up these effects, it’s pretty clear why people who exercise regularly lose more fat, lose more of the weight they lose as fat, and tend to keep off the fat they lose.

>>> So, if you are fatter than you’d like or have lost fat you’d like to keep off and don’t exercise yet, think up some ways you could start exercising soon. And, include both easy things like talking short walks when safe & you can fit it into your schedule and include thinking up or researching some ways you could learn to do progressive strength training and interval cardio.

The reason for this is simple. Knowing the benefits of exercise won’t help you keep off excess fat if you don’t exercise.

But if you actually exercise even if you know less about the benefits of exercise, you GET to enjoy the benefits.

Restricting SUGAR lowers high blood pressure….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-28-2008

As some of you read in our earlier posts, we are about to publish an eBook that reveals the methods that have been tested to work to lower high blood pressure & that do NOT use drugs.

(We'll announce that here when it's ready.)

One of the really nice things about these methods is that virtually all of them also provide abundant protection to your health in addition to lowering high blood pressure. That way you get both the lower blood pressure AND the health protection that you are trying to lower your blood pressure to achieve.

(This will also help many people to avoid the nasty side effects of the drugs that lower high blood pressure.)

And, in several places we recommend that you avoid high glycemic & fattening foods & nonfoods such as high fructose corn syrup, refined grain foods, and to minimize eating real sugar. We also strongly recommend avoiding most commercially produced snacks & baked goods that are made from those foods.

This protects your health. And just from the lower amount of excess fat you’ll carry, it will lower your blood pressure compared with what it would be if you kept eating this stuff.

We also point out that you need to take action to protect your health & lower the readings if your fasting glucose goes over 99 or your HBA1C goes over about 5.8. And we give methods that work to do this including the foods to avoid just listed.

And, we also list the abundant evidence that shows that eating a lot of fruit and vegetables that are high in potassium and taking enough magnesium PLUS keeping total salt to about 1500 mg a day lowers blood pressure effectively.

Doing that set of things even lowers blood pressure a bit in people with OK readings in the 120 over 80 range. And, it definitely lowers blood pressure that’s high and helps keep your blood pressure from going up.

In addition, about 30 percent of black people in the Americas whose ancestors survived coming to the Americas without adequate water to drink during their voyage and 10 or 15 percent of other groups are salt sensitive. And for all those people, salt restriction is even more effective and important to protect their health and keep their blood pressure at desirable levels.

It’s also worth noting that the commercially produced snacks & baked goods that are made from refined grains and sugar and high fructose corn syrup that we suggest lowering to keep your blood sugar levels down also contain enough salt that avoiding them can cut the salt intake by more than half in many people who still eat them now & who stop eating them.

So, as you can see, we do suggest limiting salt because of these facts. But we also suggest limiting sugar & eliminating refined grains & the junky foods made from them.

We did not however, have the information that limiting sugar & eliminating refined grains & the junky foods made from them directly lowers blood pressure also.

That made me intensely interested an article in last Tuesday’s Total Health Breakthroughs.

It not only says that lowering sugars and other high glycemic carbohydrates lowers blood pressure directly and effectively, it has evidence this may be even more important to do than restricting salt for many people.

(By the way, restricting salt has such a strong track record, we still recommend restricting salt in addition to restricting excessive sugar & high glycemic carbohydrates. It helps that the commercially made snacks and baked goods we suggest hardly ever eating have both.)

Here’s the article itself.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

Rethinking Sodium Restriction for High Blood Pressure

By Laura LaValle, RD, LD

If you have high blood pressure, you more than likely have been told to try to lose weight and to reduce your sodium intake. But have you ever been told to reduce your sugar and starch intake? More than likely you haven't. In fact, some people in the medical community believe that it's a myth that high carb intake can contribute to insulin resistance and high blood pressure. What a disappointment.

Many studies over the last decade have shown improvements in blood pressure as a byproduct of low carb diets. However, not many studies have looked specifically at blood pressure as an endpoint on a low carb diet. One study completed in 2003 and reported to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists in 2006, found that changing the diet to reduce insulin secretion resulted in a drop in diastolic blood pressure (the lower number) from 96 to 88.5 mmHg after six weeks.1-2

The diet used in this study was a low carb, high fat and animal protein diet. The only dietary restriction was sugar and starch, the two food groups that elicit the highest insulin secretion. There was no calorie or sodium restriction on the diet.

Although the study's lead researcher stated that they discouraged the participants from consuming too many high sodium processed meats like hot dogs and bacon, some participants ignored that advice and in so doing were consuming as many as 20 grams of sodium per day. (Current medical guidelines are to try to eat no more than 2.3 grams [2300 mg] of sodium per day.)

Despite increased sodium intake, blood pressure came down, and that's not the only thing. Fasting blood glucose and insulin, triglycerides, and VLDL all came down -- and there was an average of 12 pounds of weight loss. And finally, there were positive effects on LDL -- the particle size increased. (Larger particle size LDL is not as likely to become plaque in the arteries as small particle LDL.)

Participants were all patients who were overweight, had elevated blood pressure and blood sugar, and were considered to be at very high risk for heart disease and strokes. By the end of the six weeks, some patients were able to stop their high blood pressure and blood sugar medications altogether, and others were able to reduce their dosages.

This finding led the authors to conclude that medicine needs to stop paying so much attention to sodium and more attention to insulin as the cause of high blood pressure. You would think that news like this would travel fast, yet I have found that almost no one has heard of it.

Those of you who regularly read my husband Jim's and my articles, know that we are big advocates for low carb diets. I just want you to know that in reducing your carb intake, you are not only choosing a diet that is good for your weight, your lipids, and blood sugar, you are benefiting from one of the most powerful ways to reduce blood pressure as well. And by making that change you don't need to be nearly as strict with the salt shaker.

References

Abdul-Rahman, M et al. Abstract 201, Endocr Pract. 2006; 12(Suppl. 2), 50.
Hays JH et al. Mayo Clin Proc. 2003:78; 1331-1336.

[Ed. Note: Laura B. LaValle, RD, LD is presently the director of dietetics nutrition at LaValle Metabolic Institute (formerly part of Living Longer Institute). She offers personal nutritional counseling at LMI for clients who need help with their diet in relation to illness or disease. Laura also provides educational services in the areas of health promotion, wellness, and disease prevention…..]”

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This is good news indeed in many respects.

But the important news is how effective lowering bad carbs turned out to be in lowering high blood pressure.

I’ve not seen the study but the average reduction they got in the “diastolic blood pressure (the lower number) from 96 to 88.5” suggests that as a group these people started at about 162 over 96 and wound up at about 151 over 89.

That’s still too high for the best health protection, which is why we recommend salt restriction and several other methods to get further reductions as well.

But it does produce enough of an improvement it may help many of these people avoid or get off of blood pressure drugs.

Virtually all doctors will write a prescription for blood pressure drugs if they see readings of 162 over 96 & above. Research shows this lowers death rates. So that’s as it should be.

But they hope to get the resulting blood pressure to 150 over 80 or below with the drugs. So 151 over 89 is close enough to that, they may be a good bit more willing to have someone with those readings or a bit less work at lowering them without drugs.

And, all these these improvements reported in this study are extremely heart protective.

Eating a diet with at least moderate levels of health OK protein foods and fats including whole eggs, wild caught fish, beef fed only grass, and extra virgin olive oil & avocados is one good way to get or keep high HDL levels. Though the fats and protein foods in this study may not have been as good for the people as that, they probably did at least maintain or increase their HDL levels.

And, combining that with the lower triglycerides reported in this study is direct proof that the amount of the heart harmful small particle LDL they had in their blood went down.

So, that improvement plus the lower blood pressure means that the low carb diet did indeed improve their protection from heart attacks and strokes.

That’s nice to know.

Watercress prevents lung cancer….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-26-2008

It seems that eating raw watercress at least once a week, probably in a salad, will cut your chances of getting lung cancer in half.

1. Most cars and trucks are still powered by burning gasoline and diesel fuel. And, most of us live in urban areas or suburban areas that have ample air pollution as a result.

2. People in the Eastern United States & some people in Rocky Mountain states live near coal fired electricity generating plants still. This also produces air pollution. Even, in California, Oregon, & the state of Washington, there is now some air pollution from coal fired electricity generating plants from China. (It is a long way across the Pacific Ocean. But China has added so many of these coal fired electricity generating plants, it has helped increase global warming; and the pollution from it has been measured as reaching the U.S. West coast.) In the winter in many places people are also exposed heavily to the smoke from wood burning fires. It smells better but is no better for you.

3. Third, it’s now known that regular exposure to incense burning tends to trigger lung cancer and that most commercial air fresheners and even many common household cleaning products contain carcinogenic chemicals that are often not listed on the labels.

Worse, many people are exposed to air borne herbicides and pesticides, and tobacco smoke in the homes and businesses they visit or where they work – even if they do not have this exposure at home. And some furniture, paints, rugs, etc offgass chemicals into the air for months after they are installed. So many people are exposed quite heavily to indoor air pollution.

And, that’s for the people who don’t smoke.

Even though for most smokers, as we’ve posted before, cancer and lung cancer are the LITTLE risks of smoking, they are still much greater risks for smokers than for nonsmokers.
(Heart disease and other cardiovascular disease & damage happen to ALL smokers & are the BIG risk from smoking.)

Smoking basically disarms your lungs so all the air pollution from other sources that tends to trigger cancers in some nonsmokers, is much more likely to for smokers as the ability of their lungs to resist has mostly been shut down.

And, for some smokers, there is even worse news. Those who got a real rush of good feelings when they first smoked instead of feeling mildly sick, tend to be much heavier smokers and are less likely to quit. For those smokers, the risk of lung cancer is HUGE. Twenty five percent of such smokers get lung cancer.

So, preventing lung cancer is a good idea for most people today even if they don’t smoke. And, for smokers, particularly this last group of smokers, it’s essential. It’s also essential for people exposed to a lot of second hand smoke at home or at work.

With that background, when I saw a way to cut your chances of getting lung cancer, I decided it was worth posting it here.

It appeared in Early to Rise recently as their daily health article.:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

“If You're a Smoker... Eat This!

By Kelley Herring

We all know that smoking is bad for your health. But whether you're a secondhand smoker or are still trying to beat your addiction, there's something you can add to your diet to help negate the nasty cancer-causing effects. Watercress.

Recent research found that phenylethylisothiocyanate (PEITC), found predominantly in watercress, reduced the rate of lung cancer by 50 percent in animals exposed to the carcinogens found in tobacco smoke. Human trials have revealed similar results.

Your healthiest bet is to kick the habit. But adding watercress to your diet may help reduce the damage that's inevitable as a result of smoking. Buy fresh watercress and mix with your favorite salad greens. Its peppery, piquant bite is complemented by sweet fruits like pears and apples.”

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Diced onion that has been sautéed in olive oil or chunks of avocado or pecans or walnuts or feta cheese would also go well in a salad with watercress. So would de-seeded mandarin orange slices or blueberries.

Watercress also can be diced to help release its anticancer chemicals a bit more and to make it a bit easier to eat. The leaves aren’t that large; but dicing will help keep the longer stems from causing the salad to fall off your fork when you take a bite.

Of course you can avoid cigarette smoke and to some degree these other sources of air pollution also.

And, you can use the information from our other posts on preventing cancer.

Here is a partial list of some of those ways to prevent cancer.

Taking 2,000 iu or more a day of vitamin D3; taking 200 micrograms a day of selenium, regular exercise, and eating raw broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and other kinds of cruciferous vegetables all also help prevent cancer also. There is also some evidence that taking 100 mg a day or more of trans resveratrol will help do so as well.

But it’s nice to know that watercress is particularly effective in preventing lung cancer.

New information on homocysteine….

Today's post: Monday, 8-25-2008

A previous study did not show heart attack protection from taking the B vitamins,
B6, folic acid, & B12 in people who already had heart disease or previous heart attacks.

However, in that group, the lowering of homocysteine was not enough to be protective or even close to it. So, the results were inconclusive at best.

(You need to get to 8.9 or below, ideally in the 6.0 to 7.9 range to be protective. And, in this study, they lowered very high readings of over 13.0 only about a single point to more like above 12.0.)

However, recently a similar study found that taking more vitamin B12 got a similar group that had existing heart disease and homocysteine readings averaging over 12.0 to a bit above 8.0.

These people did have slightly fewer strokes but not enough to be statistically significant for sure and had about the same rate of heart attacks.

Since high homocysteine levels have been implicated in causing heart disease, this suggests that lowering them after the fact when there already is significant heart disease is ineffective as a treatment when done by itself even if it might have been preventive if done before the damage was already done.

It also probably means that the other causes of heart disease must also be addressed to enable lowering homocysteine to be effective. Low levels of HDL and antioxidants combined with high levels of inflammation and very high levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides may be so potent in causing more plaque deposits & heart attacks, that they override any help from lowering homocysteine unless they are also fixed.

However, it still looks as if lowering homocysteine is likely to be helpful in preventing heart disease. And it may even improve results in treating or reversing heart disease after it exists but in that case ONLY IF it’s done in addition to reversing these other causes.

As we’ve posted on, there are many ways to increase HDL from taking niacin to regular exercise to using mostly extra virgin olive oil to taking the right amount of magnesium and zinc and eating blueberries and other berries & eating onions and garlic or taking deodorized garlic supplements.

There are many ways to lower triglycerides including eliminating refined grain foods and high fructose corn syrup and cutting back on foods that contain sugar but not very much fiber or protein or oils. Taking omega 3 supplements and eating fish high in it combined with eliminating refined grains and meat from grain fed animals & oils such as soy and corn oil that are high in omega 6 oils helps. Eating onions and garlic or taking deodorized garlic supplements also helps lower triglycerides.

And, increasing HDL above 50 to closer to 100 and lowering triglycerides to below 100 plus NEVER eating trans fats or hydrogenated oils -- dramatically lowers the amount of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes heart disease.

If you also eat an abundance of nonstarchy vegetables and whole fruit and take antioxidant supplements such as vitamins A & C & E; 200 mg a day of selenium; & others such as CoQ10 & alpha lipoic acid, you also prevent the LDL you do have from becoming oxidized which also tends to render it safe & prevent it from harming your blood vessels.

Lastly, this set of things plus keeping your gums healthy to prevent bacteria build up in them will lower inflammation which also tends to protect your blood vessels from plaque build up.

Asking if lowering homocysteine is helpful in protecting people who already have heart disease when these other issues are unaddressed or badly addressed is the wrong question.

The two right questions are.:

If you address these other things effectively, will also keeping homocysteine at 8.9 or less add more protection against getting heart disease?

And,

If you address these other things effectively, will also keeping homocysteine at 8.9 or less add more protection against heart attacks in people who already have heart disease?

I strongly suspect the answer to both of THOSE questions is yes.

New information on homocysteine….

Today's post: Monday, 8-25-2008

A previous study did not show heart attack protection from taking the B vitamins,
B6, folic acid, & B12 in people who already had heart disease or previous heart attacks.

However, in that group, the lowering of homocysteine was not enough to be protective or even close to it. So, the results were inconclusive at best.

(You need to get to 8.9 or below, ideally in the 6.0 to 7.9 range to be protective. And, in this study, they lowered very high readings of over 13.0 only about a single point to more like above 12.0.)

However, recently a similar study found that taking more vitamin B12 got a similar group that had existing heart disease and homocysteine readings averaging over 12.0 to a bit above 8.0.

These people did have slightly fewer strokes but not enough to be statistically significant for sure and had about the same rate of heart attacks.

Since high homocysteine levels have been implicated in causing heart disease, this suggests that lowering them after the fact when there already is significant heart disease is ineffective as a treatment when done by itself even if it might have been preventive if done before the damage was already done.

It also probably means that the other causes of heart disease must also be addressed to enable lowering homocysteine to be effective. Low levels of HDL and antioxidants combined with high levels of inflammation and very high levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides may be so potent in causing more plaque deposits & heart attacks, that they override any help from lowering homocysteine unless they are also fixed.

However, it still looks as if lowering homocysteine is likely to be helpful in preventing heart disease. And it may even improve results in treating or reversing heart disease after it exists but in that case ONLY IF it’s done in addition to reversing these other causes.

As we’ve posted on, there are many ways to increase HDL from taking niacin to regular exercise to using mostly extra virgin olive oil to taking the right amount of magnesium and zinc and eating blueberries and other berries & eating onions and garlic or taking deodorized garlic supplements.

There are many ways to lower triglycerides including eliminating refined grain foods and high fructose corn syrup and cutting back on foods that contain sugar but not very much fiber or protein or oils. Taking omega 3 supplements and eating fish high in it combined with eliminating refined grains and meat from grain fed animals & oils such as soy and corn oil that are high in omega 6 oils helps. Eating onions and garlic or taking deodorized garlic supplements also helps lower triglycerides.

And, increasing HDL above 50 to closer to 100 and lowering triglycerides to below 100 plus NEVER eating trans fats or hydrogenated oils -- dramatically lowers the amount of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes heart disease.

If you also eat an abundance of nonstarchy vegetables and whole fruit and take antioxidant supplements such as vitamins A & C & E; 200 mg a day of selenium; & others such as CoQ10 & alpha lipoic acid, you also prevent the LDL you do have from becoming oxidized which also tends to render it safe & prevent it from harming your blood vessels.

Lastly, this set of things plus keeping your gums healthy to prevent bacteria build up in them will lower inflammation which also tends to protect your blood vessels from plaque build up.

Asking if lowering homocysteine is helpful in protecting people who already have heart disease when these other issues are unaddressed or badly addressed is the wrong question.

The two right questions are.:

If you address these other things effectively, will also keeping homocysteine at 8.9 or less add more protection against getting heart disease?

And,

If you address these other things effectively, will also keeping homocysteine at 8.9 or less add more protection against heart attacks in people who already have heart disease?

I strongly suspect the answer to both of THOSE questions is yes.

Cherries are a Superfood….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-21-2008

It’s beginning to look as if tart or sour red cherries are a real superfood.

And, fresh, canned, dried, or as a real juice, the evidence is accumulating to show they have significant health benefits.

I’ve read that they really help people who have gout.

And, it’s already known that making, cooking, & eating hamburgers to which dried cherries have been added both makes eating the hamburgers better for your health AND makes them taste juicier.

(Making them using beef fed only grass & eating them Atkins style-- using no refined grain bread or even whole grain bread-- & adding lots of onions is the healthiest way to eat them.)

It seems tart or sour red cherries do a great deal more than that. And, we may now know why they help people with gout.

Recently, I got this article in my Early to Rise email. (I add my comments after it.)

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“Tart Cherries Reduce Inflammation

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

Tart cherries might not be one of the first foods that come to mind when you think "heart healthy," but perhaps they should be. New research from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center shows that compounds in cherries may protect against the kind of inflammation that's been associated with both heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers fed two groups of rats bred to be particularly susceptible to heart disease the equivalent of an unhealthy human diet (aptly abbreviated SAD for Standard American Diet). Both groups got the same number of calories, but the diet of one group included dried extract of tart cherries. And the results were impressive. Markers of inflammation - TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) and IL-6 (Interleukin 6) - went down significantly in the group fed the cherry extract.

This is an important finding, because inflammation is a factor in every major degenerative disease, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and even cancer. In addition, the cherry-fed rats had significantly lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. And they were far less likely to build up fat around the middle. (Abdominal fat - in both rats and people - is linked to diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, a kind of pre-diabetes.)

The researchers believe that the secret ingredient in cherries may be anthocyanins, the pigment responsible for making cherries dark. The high levels of antioxidants in the fruit may also play a role.

How much would a human have to eat to get the same potential benefit? It's hard to make a perfect extrapolation to a 150-pound human from a rat that weighs a few ounces - but an educated guess is that it would take only about a cup and a half of cherries (fresh or frozen).

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden - a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health - can point you toward delicious and natural foods that will help you feel better and live longer. Check out his book, The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, for additional strategies to keep yourself in tip-top shape. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. And read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR's natural health e-letter.]”

(See www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .)


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The reduced inflammation may be one of the reasons that cherries help people with gout. They may do more; but that alone would be helpful.

I was also very interested to read that this study suggests that eating dried cherries or whole ones most days might help keep fat off your tummy. If that proves true in people, it could be very useful. For most people, taking fat off their tummy does the most to improve their appearance. So adding the right exercise and eating right otherwise and an effective fat loss plan with eating cherries might be a great way to take inches of fat off your waist and would improve your appearance enough to be quite motivating. As a bonus, it’s been found that taking fat off your waist does the most to protect your heart.

And, this data definitely shows that cherries are heart protective. If, as blueberries, which are also high in anthocyanins, do, eating cherries raises your HDL cholesterol, this may be even more the case.

This study DID show that cherries lowered triglycerides. If eating them also raises HDL, that means that eating cherries lowers the kind of small particle LDL that acts like a kind of sandy glue that causes plaque to build up your blood vessels. This study shows that by lowering triglycerides it might do that. If eating them also raises HDL, they would be very heart protective.

And, they may be that heart protective even if they don’t also raise HDL. This study didn’t measure CRP as an inflammation maker; but cherries did lower other inflammation makers and may lower that also. That would be very heart protective as high CRP levels are quite predictive of heart disease and heart attacks.

This study doesn’t mention that cherries have vitamin C and may have other antioxidants as blueberries do. That also is heart protective.

So, between what tart or sour red cherries have been shown to do in this study and what I suspect they also do, they may be one of the most heart healthy foods you can eat.

And, there are also related foods and supplements with proven health benefits that you can use besides cherries for similar effects.

Blueberries are a known and proven superfood. You can also take bilberry extract. And, bilberries are a kind of blueberry. Concord grape juice may have some similar compounds. And, grape seed extract also is high in anthocyanins. Dried cranberries also may have similar benefits.

(Dried cranberries are much sweeter and more palatable than fresh ones.)

I’ve never tried making a dessert with dried cranberries, canned sour cherries with no sugar added, and coconut or walnut halves. But I bet it would taste good.

And, this study suggests it would be really good for you.

Cherries are a Superfood….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-21-2008

It’s beginning to look as if tart or sour red cherries are a real superfood.

And, fresh, canned, dried, or as a real juice, the evidence is accumulating to show they have significant health benefits.

I’ve read that they really help people who have gout.

And, it’s already known that making, cooking, & eating hamburgers to which dried cherries have been added both makes eating the hamburgers better for your health AND makes them taste juicier.

(Making them using beef fed only grass & eating them Atkins style-- using no refined grain bread or even whole grain bread-- & adding lots of onions is the healthiest way to eat them.)

It seems tart or sour red cherries do a great deal more than that. And, we may now know why they help people with gout.

Recently, I got this article in my Early to Rise email. (I add my comments after it.)

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“Tart Cherries Reduce Inflammation

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

Tart cherries might not be one of the first foods that come to mind when you think "heart healthy," but perhaps they should be. New research from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center shows that compounds in cherries may protect against the kind of inflammation that's been associated with both heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers fed two groups of rats bred to be particularly susceptible to heart disease the equivalent of an unhealthy human diet (aptly abbreviated SAD for Standard American Diet). Both groups got the same number of calories, but the diet of one group included dried extract of tart cherries. And the results were impressive. Markers of inflammation - TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) and IL-6 (Interleukin 6) - went down significantly in the group fed the cherry extract.

This is an important finding, because inflammation is a factor in every major degenerative disease, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and even cancer. In addition, the cherry-fed rats had significantly lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. And they were far less likely to build up fat around the middle. (Abdominal fat - in both rats and people - is linked to diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, a kind of pre-diabetes.)

The researchers believe that the secret ingredient in cherries may be anthocyanins, the pigment responsible for making cherries dark. The high levels of antioxidants in the fruit may also play a role.

How much would a human have to eat to get the same potential benefit? It's hard to make a perfect extrapolation to a 150-pound human from a rat that weighs a few ounces - but an educated guess is that it would take only about a cup and a half of cherries (fresh or frozen).

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden - a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health - can point you toward delicious and natural foods that will help you feel better and live longer. Check out his book, The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, for additional strategies to keep yourself in tip-top shape. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. And read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR's natural health e-letter.]”

(See www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .)


X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

The reduced inflammation may be one of the reasons that cherries help people with gout. They may do more; but that alone would be helpful.

I was also very interested to read that this study suggests that eating dried cherries or whole ones most days might help keep fat off your tummy. If that proves true in people, it could be very useful. For most people, taking fat off their tummy does the most to improve their appearance. So adding the right exercise and eating right otherwise and an effective fat loss plan with eating cherries might be a great way to take inches of fat off your waist and would improve your appearance enough to be quite motivating. As a bonus, it’s been found that taking fat off your waist does the most to protect your heart.

And, this data definitely shows that cherries are heart protective. If, as blueberries, which are also high in anthocyanins, do, eating cherries raises your HDL cholesterol, this may be even more the case.

This study DID show that cherries lowered triglycerides. If eating them also raises HDL, that means that eating cherries lowers the kind of small particle LDL that acts like a kind of sandy glue that causes plaque to build up your blood vessels. This study shows that by lowering triglycerides it might do that. If eating them also raises HDL, they would be very heart protective.

And, they may be that heart protective even if they don’t also raise HDL. This study didn’t measure CRP as an inflammation maker; but cherries did lower other inflammation makers and may lower that also. That would be very heart protective as high CRP levels are quite predictive of heart disease and heart attacks.

This study doesn’t mention that cherries have vitamin C and may have other antioxidants as blueberries do. That also is heart protective.

So, between what tart or sour red cherries have been shown to do in this study and what I suspect they also do, they may be one of the most heart healthy foods you can eat.

And, there are also related foods and supplements with proven health benefits that you can use besides cherries for similar effects.

Blueberries are a known and proven superfood. You can also take bilberry extract. And, bilberries are a kind of blueberry. Concord grape juice may have some similar compounds. And, grape seed extract also is high in anthocyanins. Dried cranberries also may have similar benefits.

(Dried cranberries are much sweeter and more palatable than fresh ones.)

I’ve never tried making a dessert with dried cranberries, canned sour cherries with no sugar added, and coconut or walnut halves. But I bet it would taste good.

And, this study suggests it would be really good for you.

Keys to successful fat & weight loss….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-19-2008

The wonderful news is if you have taken steps to eat right and exercise & are beginning to do those two steps reasonably well, you are ALREADY less fat than you otherwise would have been. (See yesterday’s post on exercise or our other posts on exercise and our posts on eating right.)

But because of our sedentary lifestyles today, you may well still be fatter than you would like and fatter than it is OK for your health to be even if you already eat well and exercise now.

Here are five of the keys to losing excess fat and keeping it off.

We follow them with a summary of a study that found a way to more than double the results you get from these five steps. Then we add some other information that will help.

These steps allow you to lose fat & keep it off without getting extra hungry. They do take some ongoing effort to maintain. But doing so allows you to keep the extra fat off permanently.

A. Here are the five keys.

1. Never drink regular soft drinks.

For the same reason, read the labels on EVERY packaged food you consider buying & do not buy & do NOT eat any that have any high fructose corn syrup in them. If you haven’t yet done this, you may be astounded at how many foods now contain this junk.

And, the data show you should also never drink DIET soft drinks.

Regular soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup, & diet soft drinks all cause you take in calories but NOT feel less hungry. Even worse, they often make you feel MORE hungry.

So, they quite literally cause you to get fat if you eat or drink them & prevent you from losing fat even if you do many other things that would normally take off fat.

Not surprisingly they also tend to cause type II diabetes & heart disease.

In fact, if you have been drinking several soft drinks a day, by switching to water or tea or green tea or unsweetened cocoa or even coffee without added sugar, you may find that this one change will lose you 5, 10, or even 20 pounds. And, not only will the fat come off, you’ll actually be LESS hungry instead of more.

2. Eat some nonstarchy vegetables at almost every lunch or dinner you eat. They have so few calories & so much fiber Weight Watchers rates them as having ZERO points.

Organic vegetables not only have less pesticides & herbicides, recent studies show they are also dramatically more nutritious.

And, if you eat raw cauliflower, raw broccoli florets, or other raw cruciferous vegetables every week, your risk of all cancers, particularly prostate, breast, & ovarian cancers drops like a stone.

So does eating tomatoes, particularly cooked tomatoes and tomato & pasta sauces. (Pasta, however, is NOT a good idea for fat loss.)

Eating these nonstarchy vegetables makes you MUCH healthier, fills your tummy & turns down hunger with very little net calories.

It’s so effective that, BY ITSELF, it’s one of the secrets of successfully losing fat weight & keeping it off.

3. Do at least two sessions of progressive strength training each week with at least one day off in between.

Do at least three sessions of interval cardio each week that alternates moderate effort & very vigorous effort after you build up to it several times each session.

(Interval cardio & strength training are proven to increase your metabolism and fat burning for HOURS after you stop doing them. Strength training also adds at least some weight to your muscles which then burn more calories than the fat weight they replace even when you are at rest.)


Regular exercise has all kinds of extra health benefits --.including growing new brain cells and improving your sex life, which it does in BOTH men & women.

By doing this you lose fat in three ways: a) When you eat, you begin to feed the newly added muscle weight it develops & stop adding those calories to your fat stores. b) This kind of exercise boosts your metabolism for HOURS after you are done exercising; so for that time you burn a LOT of calories you otherwise would not. c) The weight you lose on the scale will all be fat; otherwise you tend to lose some muscle & less fat when you lose weight.

Each of these effects reduces the amount you have to cut back to lose fat & by continuing to exercise, it allows you to lose fat & keep it off without getting excessively hungry.

4. Eat health OK protein foods every day. This helps lose fat since eating protein turns off hunger better than eating fats & MUCH better than eating carbohydrates.

Stop eating virtually all refined carbohydrate foods; eat only moderate amounts of whole grain foods or less; & cut way back on table sugar and foods that contain it. Carbohydrate foods, particularly those with no fiber, only turn off hunger for a short time and then they turn hunger back on.

These foods tend to cause type II diabetes & sabotage your fat loss efforts by making you hungry when you would not have been if you hadn’t eaten them.

The low carb diets work by using this information. And, if you follow one of them AND eat more nonstarchy vegetables than they recommend AND exercise, they can work very well indeed. The “South Beach Diet” is one of the better and more up to date of these. For more recipes, you can also try the “Sonoma Diet” which is similar but slightly more food and enjoyment oriented. Both books are available at amazon.com & can be bought or ordered at your local bookstore.

Another way that works is to follow the DASH II diet or a Mediterranean diet but with less whole grains or pasta and MORE vegetables and health OK protein foods.

5. Watch less TV. Try NEVER to eat while you watch it. And, never allow a TV into your bedroom.

The more hours people watch TV, the fatter they are according to the many studies done on it.

You burn LESS calories watching TV than you do sleeping.

There are a lot of adds on TV for soft drinks, diet soft drinks, and for snacks and dessert foods that are mostly refined grains, sugar, & high fructose corn syrup. And these foods often contain bad fats too.

And, the more TV you watch, the harder it is to fit the exercise you need into your week.

So, be a LOT more selective in what you watch on TV & watch less or exercise while you watch TV or instead of watching TV some evenings.

If you do a good job on these five things, you will lose a good deal of fat & keep it off. And, you will be a LOT healthier than you might otherwise have been.

B. The very good news is that you can at least double the fat loss you get by following this program by keeping a food diary of everything you eat.

A study done at Kaiser that taught very similar strategies to people – including using the DASH diet -- was reported recently that found that people who kept a food diary each day lost double the weight the people did who did NOT keep the diaries.

And, the people who lost the most weight, also wrote down the exercise they did each week.

The people in the study were told to follow the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.

And, the points they emphasized were.:

Eat 9 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

Eat 2 to3 servings of low-fat dairy foods daily.

Aim for 25% or less of total calories from fat.

Aim for 2,400 milligrams or less of salt each day. (The DASH II diet aims at 1500 mg a day or less.)

And, drink no more than one alcoholic beverage a day for women; & no more than two drinks a day for men. One drink equals 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or half an ounce of 80-proof liquor.

They also were told to exercise & average about two hours of exercise a week. And they were told to keep daily food and exercise records.

The people in the study who: “kept their food diary six or more days a week lost an average of about 18 pounds in six months, compared with about 9 pounds for those who didn't keep food diaries. “

The people who lost the most weight also attended more of the group meetings and did the most exercise. They also wrote down their exercise each day. So at the end of each week, they could see how much exercise they had done.


It’s significant that the people who lost the most weight also kept a log of all the exercise they did each week and did more exercise.

Note also that keeping a food log each week is one of the key reasons that people lose weight & fat when they attend Weight Watchers meetings. And, it’s one of the reasons studies show that the Weight Watchers meetings are one of the most successful programs for losing weight & excess fat.

In fact, one excellent way to get started with keeping a food log and consistently eating enough less to actually succeed in weight loss is to join a local Weight watchers group.

If you do that, and add the other information here, you not only will lose weight; but because you exercise including strength training also and eat enough protein and restrict sugars and starches, you will lose fat instead of muscle.

That also helps you to keep the fat off after you lose it.

In my case, I simply got the Weight Watchers points system book from my Dad who had gone to the meetings.

I wrote down what I was eating and drinking and the exercise I was doing.

Then I multiplied the points by .90 to see what point total would cause me to lose about 19 of my 186 pounds. I saw that if I added a good bit more unstarchy vegetables to my lunch and dinner every day and cut my number of glasses of wine and beer in half, I’d likely lose about half that much.

That, by the way, is a much less aggressive and hard to stay on goal than Weight Watchers gives people because they want their members to see fast results.

But I realized the goal I set myself was both doable AND that if it worked, I could keep doing it.

It also helped that I was already doing both interval cardio and strength training every week and had long ago given up soft drinks and commercially made snacks and baked goods.

I decided that just losing the 9 to 10 pounds I predicted would be worth it. And, so I did it.

Did it work? It certainly did. And, after a few weeks, I lost the 10 pounds I expected to lose.

But, I got an extremely pleasant surprise after that !! Because it was doable, I was used to my new way of eating, and it wasn’t that hard AND because I surely wanted to keep the 10 pounds off, I kept doing it.

The first surprise was that after a few more weeks, I found I’d lost a SECOND ten pounds.

The really astonishing surprise was that a few weeks after that I lost a THIRD ten pounds.

So I set out to lose 10 pounds and lost 30 pounds. I succeeded in part precisely because I picked a plan I knew was doable enough I could do it consistently every week.

Even better, soon after that I found that even though I ate well at Thanksgiving and Christmas, by eating this way the rest of the time and continuing my regular exercise program, I gained ZERO pounds over the holidays.

Since I would have been about 30 pounds fatter if I still drank soft drinks and ate junky treat foods and didn’t exercise before this, that means that some of you reading this may be able to lose as much as 60 pounds of fat and keep it off by using this information.

Tips on why & how to exercise….

Today's post: Monday, 8-18-2008

If you exercise regularly, you will weigh less than you would have if you didn’t. At any given weight, more of you will be muscle & less of you will be fat.

If you need to lose fat weight & have efforts in place to do that, doing regular exercise each week that includes strength training, will help you lose more fat & to only lose fat weight. In addition, by continuing to exercise, you will be much more likely to keep off the fat you lose.

In addition, regular exercise helps keep your blood vessels flexible & responsive.

Exercise, particularly strength training & interval cardio where each session alternates vigorous effort with less challenging effort, helps to keep your blood sugar down to the levels it should be.

Regular exercise also relieves stress & increases your tolerance for stress.

And, regular exercise, particularly strength training & interval cardio where each session alternates vigorous effort with less challenging effort, helps to increase HDL levels which reduces the amount of plaque deposited in your blood vessels.

Walking & Tai Chi are ideal low intensity exercises & can often be fit into your day in as little as ten minute time periods.

Alternating strength training & interval cardio where each session alternates vigorous effort with less challenging effort, with two days of each or three days of each every week if, can also help.

The ideal is to do some of each of these 3 kinds of exercise each week.

But it’s critical to realize that even a little bit each week of walking has been shown to give you a full 40 % of the health benefits of an ideal program.

If you need to, start there & make a strong effort to continue each week.

Here are some tips to help you begin exercising that have helped many people.

The most important three are to:

a) Decide you want to be one of the people who GETS the benefits of regular exercise.

People who do regular exercise live longer and in far better health than people who do none. Regular exercise tends to prevent or does prevent high blood pressure, obesity, senility, senior moments, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, & even cancer. It’s also been shown to reliably improve the sex life of both men and women.

It makes such a large difference, it can truly be said, if the people who don’t exercise at all knew what this was doing TO them and what regular exercise would do FOR them, almost everyone would exercise.

b) Decide what kinds of exercise you CAN do now and begin to do them every week.

For years I did cardio but no strength training because I was unable to afford to go to a gym that had heavier weights. My wife got fed up with my do-nothing attitude. She made the point that if I figured out what I could do at home with exercises that used my bodyweight such as pushups and with the dumbbell set we had at home, I’d get 100 percent more benefits than taking about exercises I could not do then.

I’ve made it to the gym since; but the exercises she got me to start doing have given me enormous benefits. Even better, this kind of exercise takes up so little space, virtually everyone can do it.

Similarly, you may not be able to do walking near your work or at home or it may be unsafe some parts of the year due to cold or heat; but if not, almost anyone can do it.

Another good way is to get a personal trainer or go to a class to learn how to strength train or do Tai Chi or other kind of exercise or physical skill. That will get you started and, once you know how, you can continue on your own.

If you can make it to gyms, the social support can help keep you going and exercising.

But regardless of what it is start immediately doing some kind of exercise regularly that you can do.

Then keep doing it. You can always improve to doing more or better exercise. But this one step, even if small, will give you a full 40 % of the benefits of an ideal exercise program.

Decide what you CAN do; & begin to do it every week.

c) On your home computer or on a logbook that you buy at a stationery store, WRITE down what exercise you do each day.

If you get into this habit, it will help you exercise consistently and keep doing it. It also can be great if you make progress that you can see in this log.

Lastly, it helps you keep up your weekly total amount of exercise. You may be forced to skip a day or only have time for half a workout. But by seeing this in your logbook, you can do a bit more on other days that week or next week and make a stronger than usual effort to exercise on other days to be sure your weekly total doesn’t drop off too much.

(It can also help quite a bit if you can do at least part of your exercises first thing in the morning. Because the more unpredictable demands of the day often happen later in the day, people who exercise in the morning are twice as likely to keep on exercising compared with people who only exercise later in the day.)

There are 3 kinds of exercise you can do.

1. One kind is any activity at all that burns calories. That can include gardening, housework, sweeping, playing ping pong, and short walks. It all counts. And, any of these you do regularly or vigorously or for long periods of time can do a lot for you.

2. Aerobic or cardio exercise builds endurance more than strength. But we now know that somewhat shorter sessions that alternate easier and much more vigorous “intervals” or “interval cardio” has three wonderful benefits over longer and unvarying cardio.

It gets you into good shape much faster and into better shape;
it’s actually far safer if you build up the much more vigorous parts gradually and do the exercise sessions regularly and ease off enough in the easier parts;
& it does MORE to build strength, protect your health, and burn unwanted fat than longer and unvarying cardio. The ideal is to do at least 3 sessions a week so that you never go longer than 2 or 3 days with none. Monday, Weds, Fri works; but so does Thurs, Sat, Sunday. Three days in a row and four days off each week is too many days off for best results; but two or three days in a row can be Ok if you get other kinds of vigorous exercise the days you aren’t doing cardio.

3. Progressive strength training where you do 6 to 12 repetitions and then increase the weight slightly when you can do 12 easily makes you a good bit stronger than doing cardio only and does a great job of burning unwanted fat.

It burns extra calories when you do it; like interval cardio; it boosts your metabolism and the number of calories your body burns for HOURS after you stop; & the increased weight the slightly large muscles it develops burn more calories at rest than the fat you would otherwise feed with the food that you eat.

If you wait a minimum of time between set, just enough to catch your breath and set up for the next set AND you put strong effort into at least some sets, you also get some cardio exercise. And, because stronger muscles can move you with less effort, strength training also builds ENDURANCE not just strength studies found.

With strength training, it’s important to give your muscles a day off between sessions to rebuild. If you want and have time, you can still do it 6 days a week by doing upper body 3 alternate days and lower body exercises the other alternate 3 days.

And, if you work hard in your sessions and do them regularly, even two days a week such as Tues, Thurs, or Mon, Weds or Weds, Saturday will build strength quite well. You do a bit better and definitely burn more calories with three. But you get more than two thirds of the benefits just doing two sessions a week. The secret is doing the two sessions almost every week or every week and working hard at each session.

Lastly, it makes exercise safer if you take reasonable precautions if you exercise outdoors or in unusually hot weather; manage your heart risks well in addition to exercising and exercise regularly to avoid causing heart problems; and if you take extra care to avoid injuries in strength training.

Alpha Lipoic Acid for Better Health....

Today's post: Friday, 8-15-2008

I had heard that the supplement alpha lipoic acid had the very desirable double effect of both being a good antioxidant & the ability to improve the antioxidant effect of both the water soluble antioxidant vitamin C and improve the antioxidant effect of the fat soluble vitamin E.

But I still had not started taking it.

Then my doctor to his everlasting credit let me know my fasting blood sugar was too high to be desirable or entirely safe at 115. (If you do not lower such readings you get some health damage & may have the level go up more which puts you into type II diabetes. For good health your fasting glucose should be 89 or less.)

I immediately cut my sugar intake to less than half of what it had been. And, since I had also read that 200 mg a day or more of alpha lipoic acid tended to lower high blood sugar & protect you against its damaging health effects, I also immediately began taking 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid.

Since I did that & was already getting both regular interval cardio & strength training exercise that I continued to do, my fasting glucose went down to 87.

So, I’ve continued taking the 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid.

But, it seems I’ve done my health much more good by taking this much alpha lipoic acid than I had realized then.

The Total Health Breakthroughs email today lists some of the astonishing additional benefits of taking alpha lipoic acid.

So, I decided to post it here.

And, just below it I add some other information I got in my email earlier this week that lists even more benefits of taking alpha lipoic acid.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

"Friday, August 15, 2008

The Alpha-Lipoic Acid Miracle

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

What if I told you there was a supplement available that could help control blood sugar, protect the liver and the brain, and just might turn out to be one of your most powerful weapons in the fight against unhealthy aging?

Meet alpha-lipoic acid.

First discovered about 50 years ago, alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) is one of the most potent antioxidants in the human body, where it's normally synthesized in small amounts. In fact, Lester Packer, PhD, a senior researcher at the University of California for over 40 years has called it, "probably the most potent naturally occurring antioxidant known to man".

Antioxidants -- as readers of THB know -- are substances that help protect cells and DNA from the damage done by rogue molecules called "free radicals". This harm -- called oxidative damage -- has been implicated in virtually every degenerative disease from cancer to Alzheimer's.

Oxidative damage is almost certainly one of the processes that ages us on a cellular level. Antioxidants fight this damage and are therefore potent weapons against disease and aging.

Other antioxidants like vitamin C are water soluble while still others like vitamin E are fat soluble. But ALA isn't just any ordinary antioxidant -- it can go anywhere, acting as an antioxidant in both fat and water as well as in intracellular and extracellular environments.

Best of all, it's a virtual antioxidant wrangler. When antioxidants have scavenged free radicals, they basically become useless, having used up their ammunition in the fight against oxidative damage.

ALA on the other hand, serves as a kind of "rest and recuperation" station for these exhausted sentries, refueling and rearming them for battle. It literally regenerates vitamin C, vitamin E and Coenzyme Q10 -- turbo charging their antioxidant power while providing additional antioxidant firepower of its own.

ALA also regenerates glutathione, another of the body's most important antioxidants, and one which is very difficult to absorb from supplements or food. According to neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD,1 studies have shown that the lower a person's glutathione levels, the greater their risk of cancer. We need all the glutathione we can get, and ALA helps the body create more of it.

Possibly because it is such a powerful antioxidant, its actions are particularly important for regions of the body that are highly susceptible to oxidative damage, like the brain. Rats fed an ALA supplemented diet showed significant reversals in signs of aging compared to a non-supplemented group -- and the reversal was seen in as little as two weeks.2

And it's probably not an accident that ALA is showing up as a key ingredient in some of the best skin care formulas, where it's said to help repair some of the oxidative damage of the sun. According to Burt Berkson, MD, PhD, author of The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough, ALA protects collagen in the skin from cross-linking, thus preventing wrinkling and ultimately the appearance of an aging of the body.3

ALA is a go-to supplement for diabetics or people with blood sugar issues. It appears to enhance insulin signaling, helping to bind it to its receptors and increasing the ability of the cells to take in glucose -- possibly lowering insulin resistance (the signature feature of Metabolic Syndrome).

This action makes ALA a great tool for managing blood sugar. It's hardly coincidental that in Germany, ALA is an approved drug for diabetic neuropathy, the painful degeneration of nerves in the arms and legs.

It's also remarkable for liver function. Berkson3 has long been a champion of using ALA as part of a treatment protocol for hepatitis C. He has seen people recover from severe mushroom poisoning of the liver with a treatment plan that included intravenous ALA.

"I believe ALA deficiency is at the root of many common yet serious health problems", says Berkson. "It works on the cellular level to produce energy".

But as we age, we synthesize less and less of this important molecule. If you are over 40 you can never obtain ideal amounts of ALA from food alone. "You'd have to eat about 100 pounds of spinach just to get enough of the stuff to fill a 100 mg capsule" says Berkson. Clearly, supplements are the obvious choice.

How much? If you're over 40, 100 mg should do for a basic protective dose, though some experts recommend anywhere from 100-300 mg. If you're diabetic, have blood sugar problems or liver disease, a dose of anywhere from 300-1200 mg is in order.

Because the structure of lipoic acid is similar to that of the B vitamin, biotin, they both may compete for transport across cell membranes. It's unknown whether taking ALA requires extra biotin, but many of the best formulas include some biotin just in case. Since biotin has beneficial effects on blood sugar, this is a good thing, especially for people with blood sugar issues.

References

1. Blaylock, R, Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save your Life, Health Press, 2006.
2. Hagen, TM et al. FASEB J. 1999; 13:41-418.
3. Berkson, B The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough, Three Rivers Press, 1998.

[Ed. note: Dr. Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health. He's a board certified nutrition specialist with a Master's degree in psychology and the author of five books including The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. His latest book is The Most Effective Cures on Earth....]"

X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

And, earlier this week in another health information email I get I was reminded that
researchers have found that taking acetyl l-carnitine & alpha lipoic acid together has been shown to improve energy levels and cognitive ability enough to make older people perform almost like they did when they were younger. Dr Bruce Ames had popularized this finding in an article published in Reader’s Digest quite a while ago.

According to this more recent article it seems that taking these 2 supplements together has this effect by rejuvenating the mitochondria that provide the energy inside all your cells.

It’s pretty basic, if ALL of your cells begin to generate more energy, you feel more energetic and all your body’s functions that depend on energy.

This is very similar to how taking C0Q10 give you more energy. This also helps keep your mitochondria healthy.

So, the bottom line is that you will be less likely to get type II diabetes (& the heart disease & blood vessel damage that causes); less likely to get cancer; less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease or have your mental ability drop off; & have more energy if you take alpha lipoic acid.

And, also taking acetyl l-carnitine or taking CoQ10 increases this effect.

MSG makes people fat or fatter….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-14-2008

Health writer & expert Dr Russell Blaylock long ago began saying that in his opinion MSG & similar compounds in the class of things he calls excitoxins will tend to make you fat or fatter than you should be.

I have heard separately that others believe ingesting MSG may cause brain problems in some people but never had that confirmed in actual studies I’ve read myself.

It is well established that if you go to a Chinese restaurant that uses a lot of MSG you may feel too warm and flushed a bit after eating there. This “Chinese restaurant syndrome” can also cause headaches.

If you are sodium sensitive and have high blood pressure, it’s also important to realize that MSG is a shorthand way to write mono sodium glutamate & is a source of sodium you might better avoid for that reason.

And, Dr Blaylock also lists a very large list of names that appear in food labels that may mean that MSG is used as these misleading names are used to disguise the fact that the food actually contains MSG. Autolyzed yeast is one that I had seen before and had assumed it actually was some kind of yeast. Apparently, it is MSG instead. Even worse, if a product lists “other spices” or “other natural flavoring agents” that may mean that they include MSG but don’t desire to disclose it.

With this background, I decided to make sure we didn’t use MSG as a “meat tenderizer” in our cooking and to avoid buying products that listed MSG or autolyzed yeast. I also began to make sure to eat as few foods that listed “other spices” or “other natural flavoring agents” as possible and to not buy such foods at all unless this ingredient was listed last indicating this category was quite small.

I also prefer to eat in Chinese restaurants that have a sign or state or their menu that they do not use MSG – or I ask to have our food prepared without it.

These steps do not eliminate any MSG from my food because I do use some mustard a few times a week, which lists “other spices” as its last ingredient and because other restaurant food likely contains MSG sometimes. But it does minimize the amount I eat quite a bit.

Today, I read that researchers studied a large group of people in China some of whom used no MSG in cooking their food and some of whom used a lot.

The people who used a lot of MSG were indeed significantly fatter than the people who did not.

Did they eat more or exercise less than the people who used none? The report I read said that no they did NOT. It said that their results found that given the same amount of exercise and the same amount of calories eaten the people who used MSG, particularly a lot of MSG, were still fatter than the people who used none.

So, if you are one of the many people who are fatter than you would like or should be or you are working to prevent that from happening, this research shows you would do well to avoid MSG in your food as much as you possibly can.

Running protected health extremely well….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-12-2008

A long term study comparing members of an over 50 runners group to a control group of people who didn’t exercise that was done by researchers at Stanford was published yesterday, Monday, 8-11-2008 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

It made the online health news in Reuters and elsewhere.

Here are some key quotes from the Reuters article.:

“Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers at Stanford University in California found.

"At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls," Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Any type of vigorous exercise will likely do the trick, said Stanford's Dr. James Fries, who worked on the study.

"Both common sense and background science support the idea that there is nothing magical about running per se," Fries said in a telephone interview. "It is the regular physical vigorous activity that is important."

The study supports Dr Fries. As they got older fewer of the runners ran for exercise but they kept doing some form of regular vigorous exercise every week if they did so.

This quote is also significant.:

“Most of the volunteers did some exercise, but runners exercised as much as 200 minutes a week, compared to 20 minutes for the non-runners.”

If the volunteers in the control group averaged walking a mile a week, that’s about 100 calories of exercise. And, if the runners ran 8 minute miles, 200 minutes means they burned at least 2500 calories.

I’ve not seen the actual study. But it seems that the control group got well under 500 calories a week of exercise while the runners got over 1,000 calories a week, maybe as much as an average of over 1500 calories a week.

Separate studies of such levels of regular exercise have found similar results.

In addition, two other factors likely helped cause the better health and longevity of the runners, particularly their lower rate of cancer.

Fewer of the runners smoked than did the members of the somewhat similar control group.

And, since running is an outdoor activity, the runners got considerably more sun exposure & therefore much more vitamin D than the control group.

This is also significant since studies reported in the recent online news showed people with high levels of vitamin D also had fewer cancers, had better health, and lower death rates than people who were low in vitamin D.

The good news on vitamin D is that you can take 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 quite inexpensively from supplements to get these effects. The sun exposure may have other health benefits; but it looks as if the vitamin D does the most to protect your health.

In addition, the runners, or as they tended become over time, regular exercisers, had better quality of life than the people in the control group.

Here’s a quote that shows this.:

"Members of the running groups had significantly lower mean disability levels at all time points," they added.

If you haven’t been taking vitamin D, would it still give you health benefits to start now? The evidence I’ve seen suggests the answer is a definite yes.

In this study the researchers decided to check if this was true for people who were already older who hadn’t been exercising and who started running or getting other vigorous, regular exercise.

Here’s a quote on that from the Reuters article.:

The team also set out to answer whether taking up running late in life would benefit, and whether people who stopped exercising began to pay a price as they aged.

Most of the runners have stopped running as they reached their 70s, Fries said. But it was difficult to find people who totally stopped exercising. "Almost all of them did something else. They continued their vigorous exercise," he said.

People who took up exercise when they were older also improved their health, he said.”

In this study, the people in the running group actually had fewer injuries than the people in the control group.

But, people who run for exercise after age 40 instead of doing other kinds of exercise tend to get injured often from overuse injuries.

As I see it, there are two explanations for this paradox.

1. The members of the running group were people who were over 50 years old who were those who had few enough injuries or learned to run injury free well enough to continue running at age 50. People who had more running related injuries or who switched to other kinds of exercise after getting running related injuries were not in the group of runners studied.

2. The injuries the control group had were likely those caused by being older and having weaker bones, weaker muscles, and less agility than the people in the runners group. Any group of people who get enough regular exercise will get fewer such injuries.

Strength training probably prevents these kinds of injuries even better than running does.

To me, the take home message from this is to have a long life free from unnecessary diseases and disability, there are three things it will pay you huge dividends to do.

1. Get at least 1,000 calories a week of some kind of vigorous exercise every week.
(The people in this runners group did.)

2. Take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.
(The people in this runners group likely averaged a good bit more than that from sun exposure.)

3. Don’t smoke and avoid second hand smoke.
(The people in this runners group were more likely to do this than the control group.)

Green tea extract may protect your brain from stress....

Today's post: Monday, 8-11-2008

In the book, Brain Longevity, Dr Dharma Khalsa explains that too much stress can damage your brain’s memory operations center, the hippocampus.

For that reason, he recommends meditation or similar regular, stress relief to people who come to him with memory problems & as a way to prevent them.

Last week the email I get from him, TheHealingMinute@DrDharma.com, said that it had recently been found that green tea extract reduced the damage stress does to the brain.

(It’s mostly a sales email. But he occasionally has information such as this discovery that is well worth knowing and that I don’t see elsewhere.)

He emphasized that this means that green tea extract would help protect your hippocampus and memory as a result.

Separate research has found definite heart protective benefits from taking green tea extract or drinking green tea often.

But this new information suggests that it may also pay you & protect your memory to take green tea extract or drink green tea often if you are under extra stress.

And, as our regular readers also know, if you substitute green tea for soft drinks, you will likely lose some extra fat without any hunger; and it will help prevent or lower blood sugar readings that are too high.

By doing that you replace a health harmful drink with a health benefiting one. So, you benefit double.

STRENGTH produces longevity....

Today's post: Friday, 8-8-2008

I once read that people who test as high in grip strength tended to live longer. And, since then my at home upper body strength training workout has always had a set or two of grip and forearm exercises.

Now, it seems that ALL of the strength training I do will help me to live longer.

I got this news last Tuesday in the Total Health Breakthroughs email I get.

Here’s that article. After it I give reasons that explain why I think this effect occurs.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,

visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

“The Fountain of Youth is Made of Iron

By Joseph McCaffrey, MD, FACS

Aerobic exercise (walking, jogging, bike riding and such) has long been the darling of the wellness folks. For years, these people wouldn't consider lifting weights. They somehow thought they'd morph into a bodybuilding freak if they so much as touched a dumbbell.

As if…

They also didn't think that muscle mass and strength had much to do with health. More and more evidence shows the error in that way of thinking. A recent long-term study reported in the British Medical Journal adds to this body of evidence.1

In this study, researchers followed 8,762 men between the ages of 20 and 82 years of age for an average of 18.9 years (as I said, this was a long-term study).

When the men signed up for the study, their comprehensive evaluation included measuring upper and lower body strength as well as their performance on a treadmill.

Adjusting for age, the risk of death during the course of the study was highest in the weakest men and lowest in the strongest. This difference persisted even when other factors such as lifestyle, family history, and other medical conditions were allowed for.

The difference persisted even allowing for cardiovascular fitness. That is, the men who were both aerobically fit and strong did better than men who were equally fit aerobically but not as strong.

As I said, this ties in with a lot of other evidence supporting the importance of strength training.

It used to be taught that losing muscle mass and strength was an inevitable part of aging. We now know this isn't the case at all.

Training with weights minimizes the strength loss that would otherwise occur. Studies show resistance training benefits even nursing home residents.

The image of an ideal exercise program has shifted dramatically in the last decade. Gone are the long hours of repetitive aerobic exercise sessions at 60-80% of maximal heart rate.

The new model rests on shorter, more intense, and highly varied exercise periods. It definitely includes resistance training.

Body weight exercises such as squats and pushups are a great beginning. And you'll find many good fitness programs recommended here on the pages of Total Health Breakthroughs. The main thing is to begin. The "use it or lose it" maxim definitely applies to muscle mass and strength.

Reference

BMJ. 2008; 337:a349.

[Ed. Note: Joseph F. McCaffrey, MD, FACS is a board-certified surgeon with extensive experience in alternative medicine, including certification as a HeartMath Trainer. His areas of expertise include mind-body interaction and cognitive restructuring. Dr. McCaffrey strives to help people attain their optimum level of vitality through attention to all aspects of wellness…..] “

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Wow !!

This research pretty well nails it down that being strong will help you live longer.

It’s possible of course that one of the causes of this is that proactive, healthy, and determined people are more likely to exert extra muscular effort when they need to than people who are the reverse. And, being in good health, being proactive, and determined are all factors that tend to help people live longer. It’s also clear such people will be stronger as a result.

So, learning to be proactive, optimistic, and effective at solving problems and achieving your goals will both make you likely to be stronger and likely to live longer.

However, just doing strength training has been proven to make you stronger even at advanced ages, even well over 80 years old as the article refers to. And, doing strength training has several life extending and health protective effects that are known.

In older people being at least moderately strong allows for more ability to go places and do things for oneself. That in turn makes life more interesting, increases self esteem, avoids dependence, and makes you more likely to survive in some kinds of emergencies.

But the longevity producing effects of strength training go beyond that. Although interval cardio has some of the same effects, you can become aerobically fit from the less intense longer sessions that were originally popularized -- which is less effective at producing these effects than strength training. Doing progressive strength training by its nature always produces these effects.

Doing progressive strength training releases growth hormones. This likely increases the growth of new nerves in your brain as we’ve posted about recently. And, it increases your body’s efforts to rebuild and repair itself. Those two effects clearly promote longevity.

And, the combination of this increased growth hormone and physical stress on your bones tends to make them get stronger instead of weaker. Because one cause of death and becoming an invalid for older people is hip and leg fractures, doing progressive strength training, particularly leg exercises or standing when doing upper body exercises, clearly helps prevent this from happening. That also increases longevity.

We’ve often posted here that doing progressive strength training increases your HDL levels. That helps prevent cardiovascular disease or helps to prevent it from getting worse if you already have it.

We also posted once that doing progressive strength training lowers your homocysteine levels. This also helps prevent cardiovascular disease or helps to prevent it from getting worse if you already have it because homocysteine tends to rise to levels too high for good health as you get older otherwise.

It may even be that the combination of increased growth hormone and lowered homocysteine helps prevent your telomeres from fraying at the ends. If that’s true, it literally slows aging by ensuring your cells make the perfect copies that keep you healthy and alive.

No matter how you explain it, it seems crystal clear that strength training will tend to make you live longer.

New info on protecting your brain....

Today's post: Thursday, 8-7-2008

Your ability to do your work, do the other things you want to do, & to enjoy life all depend on your brain.

If it stops working right or begins to work less well as you get older – or it already has – that’s NOT good.

So, we’ve already posted that regular exercise, particularly interval cardio, helps improve your brain circulation. And, we’ve posted that the researchers recently discovered that exercise causes your brain to grow new nerve cells. Both strength training and interval cardio likely do well at growing new brain cells due to the growth hormone release they cause.

(And, we’ve done many posts on how to prevent heart disease including those on lowering homocysteine. Using that information, also improves brain circulation & protects your brain.

Plus, taking the supplement Curcumin helps to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and some cancers.)

Here are two more pieces of information on how to ensure your brain is protected and gets enough circulation to stay healthy.

1. I read today that the news that exercise builds new brain cells is true; but the complete news is even better.

Exercise also causes these new brain cells to grow interconnections & become useful brain components; AND it causes your body to add new blood vessels to supply the new brain cells.

In addition, other studies show that people who exercise think and remember better than similar people who don’t. (The studies on exercise growing new brain cells helps to explain why this is so.) The new brain cells do make a positive difference in other words.

2. On this past Monday, Reuters Health News reported a study that found that although some older people developed dead areas in their brains that may have been caused by lack of circulation, “Older adults who regularly eat fish may have a lower risk of subtle brain damage that contributes to stroke and dementia, as long as the fish isn't fried…..”

They found that the people who ate the most fish regularly tended to have no dead areas in their brains. This was not true or was much less true of the people who didn’t eat fish or ate fish very infrequently.

This effect is due to two factors I think:

Eating fish provides more of the omega 3 oils, DHA and EPA than taking fish oil supplements unless you take them by the handful; & DHA is directly good for brain function plus these omega 3 oils in this amount tend to lower or prevent high blood pressure; improve circulation; lower inflammation and triglycerides; & prevent the kind of heart rhythm problems that can temporarily shut off blood flow.

And, people who eat fish are NOT eating as much fatty meats that are high in saturated fat that can tend to cause cardiovascular problems.

There are two caveats in eating fish however.

Mercury is high in some fish & causes brain damage in those who ingest too much of it.

King mackerel (not regular mackerel though); swordfish; & to a smaller extent tuna, are too high in mercury to eat or eat at all often if you want to avoid mercury.

Tuna is likely OK once or twice a month; but sardines, wild caught salmon, and regular mackerel are better choices to eat once or twice a week or three times. Oysters, shrimp, & scallops also work.

Second, farmed fish are often fed grain which causes them to have the omega 6 oils that tend to produce inflammation and not as many of these omega 3 oils -- plus they tend to have a high level of pollutants like PCB’s etc.

Lastly, in addition to eating fish that are wild caught and NOT high in mercury once or twice or three times a week I think it also makes sense to take DHA supplements and some purified fish oil supplements daily so your brain and body have those during the days of the week you don’t eat fish.

So, only taking the supplements and eating beans instead of fatty meats is probably better for your brain and your health than eating farmed fish.

Bottom line, regular exercise and eating the right fish and seafood regularly &/or taking omega 3 supplements plus limiting fatty meats from animals that have been fed grain, all work well to protect your brain.

2 Good ways to do cardio at home....

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-5-2008

Treadmills & stationary bikes can work well for getting in some exercise. And, you can watch TV while on them.

However, the good ones are quite expensive and take up a good bit of room. And, I’ve found them to be less conducive to the kind of self-paced interval cardio I now believe is best than the two alternatives I recommend in this post.

Many gyms have treadmills & stationary bikes & have them set up in front of TV’s. So if you belong to a gym and want to get some conditioning and calorie burning & you already go to the gym for strength training, that can work out well. And many people do this.

However, there are two home exercisers I’ve found that work better with interval cardio that cost far less that you can get at home.

1. The Urban Rebounder, www.urbanrebounding.com ,

This mini-trampoline which is much less expensive, well under $200, than good quality treadmills & stationary exercise bikes and most other cardio exercisers; gets excellent results due to the jumping motion, and gets good ratings from users.

2. Another is the Nordic Track cross country skiing simulation exerciser.

http://www.nordictrack.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product2_12401_10301_22051_-1_19554 (Or go to www.nordictrack.com & go to Ski Machine under products on the left hand side of the page.)

Or, you can often buy used Nordic Track ski exercisers which are still in good shape for a good bit less. I got my current one for $150.

I've found I need ChoPat knee straps to protect my knees and have had to cut way back on how much I use it each week now that I'm over 60 to protect my hip joints; but it produces better cardiovascular fitness faster than most other exercisers.

With many of cardio exercisers such as elliptical trainers or stair steppers or stationary bikes, your thigh muscles give out before you get to the upper level of your heart's workout tolerance. This is NOT a problem with the Nordic Track.

But you can do strength training for those same muscles if you want to target them. And, just doing regular sessions on the Nordic track will give you a good bit more thigh exercise than you realize while you are on them. But unlike the other exercisers, it doesn’t get in the way of a superb cardio work out.

Low carb diets Protect your heart also....

Today's post: Monday, 8-4-2008

Many of you have seen the studies that show that low carb diets DO help people lose weight. In many of them the people lost MORE weight and fat on low carb diets than on other approaches.

And, some of you have read the post we did that quoted research that helps explain why. When you eat protein foods, your appetite is turned off and you stop being hungry until it’s time to eat next. But when you eat carbs, particularly high fructose corn syrup or sugars, you do initially feel less hungry; but a bit later this reverses and you get hungry again before it would normally be time to eat.

But, because some high protein, low carb diets have been high in saturated animal fat, many health experts have believed that low carb diets were not likely to be good for your heart.

And, in fact, there ARE some health and heart problems associated with eating a lot of fatty meats from grain fed animals that are penned up and stuffed. This practice ensures you get too much saturated fat and omega 6 oils -- which tends to result in high LDL cholesterol and CRP inflammation. THAT kind of high protein intake from such fatty meats is very probably bad for your heart. So those experts had a point.

But, what if you had people eat a high protein, low carb diet where the protein was from lean, naturally fed animals &/or from plant proteins such as eating nuts and beans?

It seems that this research HAS been done. The people who ate that way DID lose more weight than people who ate calorie limited Mediterranean or low-fat diets. Even better, the people on the high protein, low carb diet ate what they were hungry for instead of limiting their portions. They did eat fewer calories than the other two groups; but they didn’t have to work at it nearly as much. (Since they did want to lose weight they likely did avoid stuffing themselves, however.)

But, here’s the real surprise that should have been front page news.:

The people who ate the high protein, low carb diet where the protein was from lean, naturally fed animals &/or from plant proteins such as eating nuts and beans had even better changes towards heart health than both the people eating the calorie limited low-fat diet AND the calorie limited Mediterranean diet.

Somehow that rather important news was missed and not publicized.

I found this out from an article in the Total Health Breakthroughs email I get in their email last Friday, 8-1.

Here’s that article, after which I’ll post some comments.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,

visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"


“Friday, August 1, 2008

The Real Story on that "Diet War" Study

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

You certainly would have had to look far and wide to find a "no-spin" reporting zone a couple of weeks ago when the New England Journal of Medicine1 published a headline-grabbing study comparing weight loss on one of three diets: (1) Mediterranean, (2) Low-Carb, or (3) Low-Fat.

I doubt if many headline writers or reporters bothered to read the entire 13-page study -- they were too busy writing dramatic headlines. But God is in the details, and in this case, the details were pretty important. So let's take a look at this fairly important study and talk about what it actually showed (and, also important, what it didn't show).

Israeli researchers recruited 322 moderately obese subjects and randomly assigned them to one of three dietary groups.

Group one followed a low-carb diet without any restriction on calories. For the first two months they limited their carbohydrate intake to 20 grams a day (the exact amount on the Induction Phase of Atkins). They were then encouraged to increase their intake of carbs up to a maximum of 120 grams a day of carbs. (Sharp-eyed readers might note that 120 grams of carbs hardly constitutes an Atkins diet, even during the most generous "maintenance" phase.

For someone eating 1500-1800 calories a day diet, that would be between 25-40% of calories from carbs, closer to "The Zone" than to Atkins. But I digress.)

In contrast, both the Mediterranean and the low-fat groups were calorie limited: 1500 calories a day for women and 1800 for men. The low-fat group followed the standard American Heart Association guidelines (30% of calories from fat). The Mediterranean group were allowed up to 35% fat, mostly from olive oil and nuts, and were counseled to substitute beef and lamb with poultry and fish.

Interestingly, all three groups lowered their calories significantly from where they started, even though the low-carb group wasn't told to do so, meaning the low-carb group "naturally" ate fewer calories without even trying. (This is an important point, since I've long maintained that a low-carb diet is easier to follow for many people -- especially those with sugar addictions -- because it doesn't stimulate the appetite like high-carb diets frequently do.)

Fast forward two years: the low-carb group lost the most amount of weight, the low-fat diet brought up the rear and the Mediterranean group was in the middle. It's important to remember that the actual amount of weight loss we're talking about was pretty pathetic -- an average of about 12 pounds for the low-carb group, 10 for the Mediterranean group, and 7 for the low-fat group -- but I'll get to that in a minute.

The weight loss results, however, were only part of the picture. The low-carb group had the highest increase in HDL ("good, protective cholesterol"), the most improvement in cholesterol ratio, and the greatest reduction in triglycerides -- an important risk factor for heart disease that many say is more important than cholesterol. (Triglycerides didn't budge in the low fat group.)

It gets better. As readers of THB know, inflammation is a silent killer and a component of every known degenerative disease -- from heart disease to obesity. One of the best markers for inflammation is a blood component called C-Reactive Protein (CRP). Low-carb dieters saw their CRP go down the most -- it barely budged in the low-fat group.

So what's the take home?

Well, first of all, diets are tough. The amount of weight lost by all three groups was pretty dismal, but those numbers were averages -- some people lost a lot more (the highest number of pounds lost was lost on the low-carb approach, by the way).

Second, although this study was pretty rigorous about checking "compliance," we all know that it's just about impossible to truly monitor "compliance" in a free-living situation -- so exactly how well the subjects followed the test diets is open to question.

Third, though the "low-carb" group did the best, I can't help wonder how much better they would have done if they had actually kept carbohydrate levels down to a more reasonable level of under 100 grams a day (or even less) -- a level that seems to work the best for people who have problems with sugar, insulin, and carbohydrates in general. (I'm guessing they would have lost a lot more weight.)

Fourth -- and maybe most important -- the study shows that there are health benefits to a low-carb approach that go beyond weight loss. Lowered CRP, lowered triglycerides, and increased HDL are nothing to sneeze at -- and a nice slap in the face to the establishment that keeps telling us how "unhealthy" low-carb diets are!

I think many of the "distinctions" between the three diets -- especially between the low-carb and Mediterranean approach -- were somewhat artificial. You could easily follow low-carb and eat more olive oil and nuts, and you could easily follow Mediterranean and eat low carb.

Both programs emphasize a ton of vegetables (yes, even low-carb diets do!), healthy protein, and good fat. In this study, even the low-fat approach sounded dangerously close to the Mediterranean diet (30% of fat vs. 35%).

The best we can say about this important study is that it got a lot of attention (after all this was the New England Journal of Medicine) and gave credibility to the researchers stated conclusion that there are other ways to go besides low-fat. It also gave credibility to the unstated conclusion that no one program works for everyone -- and that some people may be more metabolically suited to low-carb (just as some may thrive on vegetarian or raw food diets).

And as far as the dismal weight loss results, let's just remember that weight loss remains a tough nut to crack. But with the right match between program and person, the right social support system, a level of determination and commitment, it can be done.

And it frequently is -- often with much more dramatic results than were seen in this study.

Reference

Shai, I et al. New England Journal of Medicine, 359(3), 229-241, 2008.
[Ed. note: Dr. Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health. He's a board certified nutrition specialist with a Master's degree in psychology and the author of five books including The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. His latest book is The Most Effective Cures on Earth. ….]

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1. These results are extremely significant because they show quite clearly that a higher protein, high vegetable, low carb diet results in lower CRP readings. And, high CRP readings are more predictive of heart problems than many other measures such as total and LDL cholesterol.

(It seems that lowering high CRP readings is the main engine that allows statin drugs to help prevent heart disease—much more so than their LDL lowering. And, dramatically lower doses of statins or getting more omega 3 oils AND, according to this study, adopting a low carb diet do also.)

2. And, these results are extremely significant because they show quite clearly that a higher protein, high vegetable, low carb diet results in a combination of higher HDL cholesterol and LOWER triglycerides.

Researchers have found that this ratio is reliably indicative of the amount of the truly dangerous and undesirable small particle LDL you have in your blood which is one of the major drivers of heart and cardiovascular disease. So, when you boost HDL and lower triglycerides at the same time, you don’t just lower LDL cholesterol, you lower the kind that will actually harm you. Even better, the effect is strong because you BOTH increase the good part of the ratio and lower the bad part of it at the same time.

3. I also like that the author points out that a low carb, high protein, Mediterranean diet would also work to lose weight and fat. Extra virgin olive oil lowers LDL cholesterol but leaves your HDLs high; has very little omega 6 oils and has other health benefits. The cooked tomatoes and garlic in it also tend to prevent heart disease. And, garlic and extra virgin olive oil tend to lower high blood pressure.