Protect your prostate AND your heart....

Today's post: Friday, 10-31-2008
Yesterday we did a post on foods and supplements that DO very likely prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, and/or prevent the most aggressive and dangerous form of prostate cancer.

So today, when the Total Health Breakthroughs email I got had an article with some similar information on a way to prevent prostate cancer as well as a couple of ways to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH, Benign Prostate Hypertrophy or enlargement, I immediately decided to use this THB article as a starting point for my post today. (The benign in the name doesn’t literally mean that BPH causes no health problems. Far from it. It refers to the fact that the enlargement is caused by processes OTHER THAN cancer.)

Even better, the two supplements mentioned in the article to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH also have been found to lower LDL cholesterol which tends to help protect your heart. I discuss that in my comments after the Total Health Breakthroughs article.

Here’s the article:

"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, October 31, 2008

"Don't Gamble When It Comes To Your Prostate!

By Dr. Mark Rosenberg

By the time you are 60 -- if you're a man -- there's a fifty-fifty chance that you'll be suffering from an enlarged prostate. If you live long enough, your chances climb to 90%.

An enlarged prostate -- a condition called benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), is a non-cancerous swelling of the prostate. As your prostate begins to swell, you'll find that you need to make more frequent trips to the bathroom, your urine stream will be weak, and you'll have a hard time finishing what you started... if you know what I mean.

Of course, annoying bathroom urges are only part of the problem. An enlarged prostate can also interfere with your sex life and your overall quality of life. Often an enlarged prostate is a symptom of a hormone imbalance that could be having a more significant impact on your health than you realize.

Most doctors take a wait-and-see approach to an enlarged prostate. They figure if it doesn't grow too fast and the symptoms don't become too severe, then it's something you can live with. If the symptoms become unmanageable, then the next option is surgery.

This approach ignores several middle-ground options. In fact, you can begin treating your enlarged prostate right away. Many of the same steps you take now can also protect you from prostate cancer in the future -- an unrelated condition. You'll also relieve a lot of the symptoms that come with an enlarged prostate -- it's a win-win strategy.

Caring for an Enlarged Prostate...
How to Slow Its Growth and Keep it From Becoming a BIG Problem

Most doctors chalk up prostate growth to a natural part of the aging process. And that's why they feel comfortable taking a hands-off approach until things get real bad!

I'd much rather see my patients take action to slow their prostate growth and to attempt to prevent the need for surgery from ever arising. This strategy improves the quality of your life and has the added bonus of cutting your risks of cancer.

So, just how do you keep your prostate from growing out-of-control?

Your first step is to start eating the foods that can most help your prostate. I suggest that you include a quality protein with every meal and then have cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage four to five times a week. Snacks that are high in zinc and magnesium are also beneficial to your prostate.

But there's more you can do.

It's important that you be physically active. I'm not saying you have to kill yourself working out for 90 minutes at a time, but anything you can do to increase your daily physical activity will help. Research shows that men who get the most exercise reduce their risks of an enlarged prostate by 40%.1

You can also help reduce your risks of an enlarged prostate or slow the growth of your prostate by taking a supplement that contains saw palmetto. Saw palmetto contains compounds that help slow prostate growth. It can help prevent your prostate from becoming enlarged, or if you already have an enlarged prostate, it can help reduce your symptoms.

I recommend that you choose a supplement that's been standardized to at least 85% active fatty acids and sterols. Take between 300 and 350 mg each day.

Of course, you've probably already heard of saw palmetto and know that it can help your prostate, but it isn't the only supplement that can ease prostate problems. A lesser known supplement called beta sitosterol can also be of help... especially when it comes to preventing cancer. In laboratory tests, beta sitosterol slowed the growth of prostate cancer cells.2

Another good supplement to help prevent prostate cancer is cranberry extract. Cranberries contain several natural compounds that stop cancer cells from multiplying. In lab tests, cranberry extract effectively slowed all types of prostate cancer by an impressive 50%.3

When it comes to an enlarged prostate, it's important to take action and to take control of your health. You can slow down or even stop your prostate from continuing to grow, and while you're at it, you'll be giving yourself some extra protection against prostate cancer. All told, these steps can make a big, big difference in your quality of life later on.

Stay well,

Mark Rosenberg, MD

References

1. Dal Maso L, et al. Int J Cancer. 2006; 118(10):2632-35.
2. Jourdain C, et al. Eur J Cancer Prev. 2006; 15(4):353-61.
3. Seeram NP, et al. J Agric Food Chem. 2004; 52(9):2512-17.

[Ed. Note: Mark Rosenberg, M.D. is director of the "Institute for Anti-Aging in South Florida. He is a highly sought-after speaker for lectures on topics such as integrative cancer therapy and anti-aging medicine. Dr. Rosenberg is avidly involved in supplement research and is nutritional consultant for Vitalmax Vitamins.]”

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1. I’ll put my most important comment first. Beta sitosterol, saw palmetto, and the sterols found in many nuts and vegetables all are sterols. And, it’s been found that sterols tend to reduce LDL cholesterol. So taking them, as the doctor who wrote this article recommends, can help reduce your total cholesterol by lowering your undesirable LDL cholesterol. And that effect very likely helps protect your heart and blood vessels because it probably also helps reduce the amount of the small sized, small particle, LDL that actually has been found to produce damage to your artery wells.

It’s very interesting to find that the same two supplements you take to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH, also are likely to protect your heart.

I wonder if the other things that protect your heart might also be useful to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH?

(By the way, for those who haven’t read our previous posts, getting regular exercise each week; NOT ingesting any transfats or high fructose corn syrup; taking the B vitamin niacin, eating foods such as Oatmeal, apples, and beans that are high in soluble fiber; eating wild caught fish, lean poultry, nonfat and very low fat dairy, and/or beef fed only grass instead of beef or pork that’s been penned up and fed grain; and eating onions and garlic -- all either increase your HDL or lower your LDL and triglycerides or both. And, by doing those three things, these actions have been shown to drive down the amount of the small sized LDL that actually has been found to produce damage to your artery wells and harm your heart.)

I noticed that Dr Rosenberg does quote research showing that regular exercise IS useful to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH. So, for sure taking these two sterol supplements and doing regular exercise both tends to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH AND helps protect your heart!

Personally, I’m very grateful to Kenneth Cooper, MD who wrote the book Aerobics and studied the health and performance benefits of regular exercise. In a later book, he relates that taking sterol supplements lowers your LDL cholesterol. (You do NOT have to eat the margarine that sterols have been added to get them either! Beta sitosterol and saw palmetto are available directly as supplements online or in health food stores. Eating nuts regularly and eating vegetables every day also supplies you with sterols.)

I’ve found that a company called Natrol makes a product that was once labeled as Beta Sitosterol; but once they discovered that many of their buyers were taking it to lower their cholesterol they renamed the same supplement exactly to “Cholesterol Balance.” It only costs about $6 for a bottle. So it’s less expensive than many kinds of supplements AND less expensive that many other sterol supplements.

When my blood test showed I had a 130 LDL reading, I begin taking 160 mg of saw palmetto twice a day. And I began taking two of the Natrol beta sitosterol tablets at lunch and one for dinner each day. I also began taking 300 mg of niacin twice a day instead of once a day as I had been doing.

Much to my great delight, my LDL went down from 130 to below 100 and has continued to test out as about 100.

(Note that I was already doing the other things I list above that lower LDL and the dangerous form of LDL. Had I NOT been doing those things and began them AND began taking the supplements as I did, I might well have started with LDL cholesterol of over 160 and brought it down to 100 as well.)

2. His points about cranberry extract are not as strong as they would be if he reported that cranberry extract positively affected prostate cancer in whole people in a study. The fact that this happened in the lab IS promising. And it may mean that taking cranberry extract is protective against prostate cancer. But some things that kill cancer in the lab test out far less well in real people.

Meanwhile, however, cranberry extract has been shown to help prevent and treat urinary infections. And similar foods and supplements such as bilberry extract and blueberries have spectacular health benefits of several kinds. So taking cranberry extract may well be valuable enough to make it worthwhile to take for other reasons. Then if it turns out it DOES protect you from prostate cancer also, that would be a very nice added benefit.

By the way, eating dried cranberries is very much like eating raisins. Instead of being overly sour as whole cranberries are, by concentrating the natural sugars, dried cranberries tend to taste sweet.

So, if you want to add some extra flavor to your oatmeal without adding sugar, adding some dried cranberries instead might be a good idea.

3. There are also other supplements that may help with BPH. I’ve read that DIM, nettle root, pygeum, bee pollen extract, and pumpkin seed extract also can also help to prevent or ease the symptoms of BPH.

Some foods & supplements DO prevent prostate cancer....

Today's post: Thursday, 10-30-2008

Earlier this week a study of vitamin E and selenium as possible preventers of prostate cancer was reported to be getting bad results and was also cancelled.

This study of more than 35,000 men age 50 and older apparently was done by the National Cancer Institute.

The article doesn’t say if the vitamin E used was natural vitamin E or manmade. And vitamin E is one of the supplements where that makes a difference in the actual molecule people ingest.

However, there are two points that I think are most important.

1. I believe I saw one headline reporting this research that said something like “Study finds supplements don’t prevent prostate cancer.” The report was that these two supplements did not. But that headline could be easily misread as meaning that a study was done that tested every supplement that might prevent prostate cancer and they ALL flunked, so NO supplement would prevent it.

That study was NOT done or in the news. And, in fact there are supplements that either have been tested as preventing prostate cancer or there is better reason to suspect they might do so.

2. There is a widespread belief that all antioxidant supplements in general prevent the free radical damage that may help cause cancer. Since vitamin E and selenium are antioxidants this study may have found this belief about all antioxidants is incorrect. (Without knowing what form of vitamin E they used, how careful they were to monitor what supplements the participants took on their own, or how much of the two supplements people were given, it’s hard to be sure.)

However, the researchers who did this study may have missed the fact that it was studying two supplements that get valuable effects in other ways for something that they are not generally thought to do in the first place.

Vitamin E is better known for its cardiovascular protection; and selenium is better known for reducing the death rate in people who DO get cancer -- NOT for preventing it initially.

So this is a bit like studying antibiotics to see if they helped prevent prostate cancer. You can’t know for sure unless you test this idea to be sure. But it would seem to make better sense to me to test things that have a better track record in other studies as preventing cancer or prostate cancer.

30 to 45 mg a day of zinc (balanced by at least 3 mg a day of copper for other reasons); 3 mg a day of boron; and 30 mg a day of lycopene all would have made better sense to study than vitamin E and selenium. As we’ve reported in this blog, those things have been tested on a smaller scale & found to have some positive effect in preventing prostate cancer. In fact taking all three plus eating tomato sauce, cooked tomatoes, and raw cruciferous vegetables may prevent may prevent as many as 90 % or more of prostate cancers.

Also, since eating raw broccoli and/or cauliflower at least once a week has been found to cut the incidence of the aggressive and dangerous kind of prostate cancer in half; & eating cruciferous vegetables of all kinds tends to reduce the incidence of all cancers, it might also have made much better sense to study the supplements indole-3-carbinol & DIM. (3-indole-carbinol is found in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables; and, DIM, according to Wikipedia, "3,3?-Diindolylmethane or DIM is an anticarcinogen compound derived from the digestion of indole-3-carbinol."

So, since the foods these supplements are taken from seem to prevent all cancers and cut the incidence of the aggressive and dangerous kind of prostate cancer in half, it would seem a better bet to test those two supplements.

My guess is that such a study would show some positive effects. But cruciferous vegetables have many other cancer fighting compounds as well. So I suspect the results would be better for simply eating the vegetables which is cheaper AND has other health benefits. In fact that’s exactly what I do for cancer protection. (I do take DIM but because it boosts free testosterone. If it also prevents cancer, that’s an extra add-on benefit I don’t currently take it to receive.)

However, sometimes a concentrate of an active ingredient WILL work better than the food. So, that’s precisely why it’s good to test such things. Then if the test is well done and those two compounds turn out to be the ones that most prevent prostate cancer -- and in that concentrated form, we would have learned something of great value.

So those are the supplements I hope researchers will test in the future.

Meanwhile, you’ve just seen a list of supplements many of which have been tested albeit on a smaller scale to help prevent prostate cancer, you’ve seen a repeat of the information that eating broccoli &/or cauliflower at least once a week cuts the aggressive and dangerous kind of prostate cancer in half; and you’ve seen two supplements that might be effective against prostate cancer to consider.

In addition, though selenium may not, if their testing was well done, PREVENT prostate cancer, I ‘ve read that taking selenium DOES cut the death rate of people who do get cancer of any kind in half.

Higher intensity interval cardio takes off belly fat....

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-28-2008

Many people want to lose extra belly or abdominal fat the most.

That desire makes excellent sense.

If you have a flat belly with no extra fat, you look better and find it easier to fit into your clothes. You look healthier. In fact, studies have found that for both men and women they appeal more to the opposite sex if in men their waist is 90 % of their hip measurement or less and in women if their waist is 30 % of their hip measurement or less.

In addition, belly or abdominal fat is the fat on your body that tends to predict high blood sugar that may develop into type II diabetes and heart disease. It also produces angiotensin that contributes to or causes high blood pressure.

Exercise CAN help. But it’s been found that some kinds of exercise work MUCH better than others to take off belly fat and keep it off.

The really good news is that the most effective kinds of exercise burn fat faster and take less time to do than the less effective ones.

Here are a couple of articles from Early To Rise from yesterday and today that make this point very well.:

This one was in their enewsletter from yesterday.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“The Low-Intensity Cardio Lie

By Craig Ballantyne

Once in a while, a study comes along that surprises me. For instance, I recently found one showing that cardio works for fat loss - as long as it is high-intensity cardio.

Researchers at the University of Virginia assigned 27 obese women (average age 51) to one of three groups...

1. The control group did no exercise training.

2. The second group did five days per week of low-intensity exercise (LIE). (Gotta love that acronym... truly represents the "slow cardio lie.")

3. The third group did three days per week of high-intensity cardio exercise (HIC) plus two days per week of LIE.

Instead of exercising for a specific length of time in every session - LIE or HIC - the subjects exercised long enough to burn 400 calories. So no group burned more calories than the others, though the third group burned the 400 calories faster in their three HIC workouts each week.

And HIC kicked LIE's butt! The study found that the subjects in the low-intensity exercise group did not lose fat. On the other hand, the subjects in the high-intensity cardio group lost a significant amount of abdominal fat.

So, once again, research has shown that...

Exercising harder results in more fat loss in less time.

Only hard exercise burns belly fat.
Low-intensity cardio won't help you lose fat.
I prefer interval training to cardio for my clients who are on a fat-loss program. But the results of this study have influenced me to make a slight change in my recommendations.

I now occasionally throw in some high-intensity cardio for my clients, usually as a 20- or 30-minute session done at a pace they can barely maintain for that length of time. They don't like it, but it works. (Most of them prefer the interval training.)

If you are interested in trying this, you can add HIC to your program up to three times per week. Just remember to self-monitor your body for any symptoms of overuse injuries - and, as always, TRAIN SAFE.

I'll give the last word to the University of Virginia researchers who stated, "The present data indicate that body composition changes are affected by the intensity of exercise training with HIC more effectively for reducing total abdominal fat and subcutaneous abdominal fat in obese women." “

This one was their health article today.

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“Your Metabolism Slows Down and Stays Down, Unless...

By Craig Ballantyne

I have some bad news for you. According to scientists at New York's Presbyterian Medical Center at Columbia University, folks who succeed in losing weight tend to wind up suffering from a lower than expected metabolic rate. This means that if you lose weight, you will burn fewer calories each day than someone of the same weight who was never overweight.

Seems unfair, doesn't it?

The researchers studied three groups: subjects who had lost 10 percent of their bodyweight and kept it off for up to one year, subjects who just recently lost 10 percent of their bodyweight, and a control group.

All of the subjects were studied for 24 hours straight to determine how many calories they burned. Results showed that both weight-loss groups burned fewer calories during the 24 hours than the control group, even though they were matched by weight and gender.

This decrease in calorie burning is just one of the many reasons you will find it easier to regain weight after you lose weight.

So what can you do?

You must do everything you can to boost your metabolism. I highly recommend to all of my clients that they use interval training or high-intensity cardio rather than low-intensity cardio, and that they also engage in high-intensity resistance training three times per week. By performing high-intensity exercise, you will put up the greatest fight against your handicapped metabolism.“

X* X* X* X* X*

Note that you can burn 100 calories doing higher intensity interval cardio in 8 minutes or less. Walking takes 15 to 20 minutes to burn 100 calories. So the higher intensity interval cardio is much faster to do.

As their earlier articles and other sources have found, high intensity cardio done as interval cardio or training that has moderately short periods at a high moderate pace or level of effort which you alternate with shorter periods of much a much faster pace and greater level of effort both gets you into shape faster than steady pace cardio and much more safely than continuous high intensity cardio. The overall pace of the exercise by the end or the miles traveled may be the same for the exercise done with the several intervals of varying intensity as it would be for the continuous version. But the several intervals of varying intensity will get you in shape faster; it is much safer to do; and it burns fat and increases your metabolism MORE. In fact, your overall pace will soon be FASTER for the interval version than it would have been for the steady state version.

By doing this kind of interval cardio several times a week and doing progressive strength training at least twice a week in which you also have periods where you work quite hard, you burn belly fat best and keep your metabolism high the best.

More on calorie restriction and other ways to live longer....

Today's post: Monday, 10-27-2008

Two news stories that appeared today in the online health news had some exciting findings on just this topic.

1. The one that was in several sources was about the effects of a purple tomato that researchers had bioengineered to have anthocyanins that provide the purple color in blackberries, blueberries, bilberries, and other kinds of fruit.

Those researchers tested it on mice bred to develop cancers. The mice who were fed this tomato lived so much longer it would be as if humans fed this kind of purple tomato lived an average of 20 years longer.

They also found that two measures of inflammation and LDL cholesterol were significantly lower in these mice. Those effects tend to prevent cancer and protect against heart and cardiovascular disease

Since in today’s world we encounter so many kinds of chemical pollution our bodies already contain so many we might just as well be genetically bred to develop cancers because of the cumulative possible effects of these chemicals. To me that suggests that getting an abundant supply of anthocyanins from fruit and supplements is quite likely to do as much for us. And there is beginning to be some research that suggests this is so. Eating blueberries has been shown to help prevent or even reverse age related mental decline for example. I personally take bilberry extract and grape seed extract and eat blueberries 3 times a week.

My Tuesday, 10-14-2008 post on 14 ways to live longer that included, “eat purple food” looks to be accurate and the method effective based on this new study.

2. The second story appeared in yesterdays, Sunday, 10-26-2008 HealthDay online news.

In this study, the researchers fed rats tart cherry powder and the results suggest that calorie restriction and the effects of the anthocyanins in tart or sour cherries may overlap the results of calorie restriction. In fact, the study suggests that eating tart or sour cherries (with no sugar added anyway) and/or taking tart cherry extracts such as the tart cherry powder the researchers used may be a significant help to people trying to lose fat and to lose it from their waist or belly or abdominal area.

The rats the researchers fed the tart cherry powder to lost 14 % of their bodyweight mostly by losing fat in their belly or abdominal areas.

Most of us have ancestors who successfully survived famines, many of them more than once. So these fat loss effects are likely much more than people would experience. The amount of tart cherry powder per pound of bodyweight may also have been higher in these rats than people would be likely to consume.

However, it still looks as if sour cherries and any kind of tart or sour cherry extract is likely to give you some of the effects of calorie restriction. And, if you are eating right to lose fat or are using calorie restriction, eating sour cherries &/or taking any kind of tart or sour cherry extract might well improve your results and help you lose fat from your belly or tummy region.

Given the negative effects of excess abdominal fat on your health and appearance, that’s very good news indeed.

How sleep apnea boosts your blood pressure & harms your heart....

Today's post: Friday, 10-24-2008

It seems that even mild sleep apnea causes high blood pressure and can lead to heart disease and stokes and more.

Today on Yahoo’s online news in the Health Day section I found an article called, “Even Mild Sleep Apnea Hikes Heart Risk.”

The researchers in the British study reported there found that even mild sleep apnea created endothelial dysfunction, harm to the inside surface of your blood vessels, and, as a result it created increasing arterial stiffness which in turn significantly increases the blood pressure of the people it happens to. That increases the risk of the people who this happens to for heart attacks and strokes and can also help cause peripheral artery disease, PAD, kidney failure, and erectile dysfunction.

Previously we knew that people who have sleep apnea bad enough to make them too sleepy during the day had this risk. But this study found that this happened to people who had mild sleep apnea and may not even have known it. That is the news this study reported.

The study was done at the Oxford Centre for Respiratory Medicine; and the press release was from the American Thoracic Society news.

The study is also in the November issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

What the story did NOT report is how the researchers found out these people had mild sleep apnea when some of the people studied may not have initially known they had mild sleep apnea.

Here are three clues to look for:

1. Are you fatter than you should be and fatter in your face and neck than looks good or as you did when you were much younger? (Pictures of famous people who live in Tennessee, Kentucky, and other parts of the American South often show this look. Something in the regional diet from that part of the United States seems to cause this effect.)

This makes sleep apnea much more likely.

2. You often snore loudly enough to wake or bother your significant other.

When people snore loudly the same airway restriction often causes sleep apnea.

3. You have high blood pressure. Sleep apnea is far from being the only cause of high blood pressure. But if you have sleep apnea, as this study found, you also will develop high blood pressure.

If you have #1 or #2 or more two or more of these 3 clues, you may well have sleep apnea.

What to do if you have sleep apnea?

Something called CPAP, Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, works but requires you to sleep connected up to a machine that forces air into you.

There’s an alternative that I would check out more thoroughly if I were to get sleep apnea that may well do the job and which does NOT require you to be connected up to anything while you sleep.

The company who produces it says that the doctors who have used it have gotten excellent results; and it can be done one day and you can be back at work the next as it is not very invasive.

“Stop Snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnea with The Pillar Procedure.”

www.pillarprocedure.com

We are also about to publish an eBook on how to lower high blood pressure without drugs that has some ways to improve or reverse the endothelial dysfunction that causes the high blood pressure. These ways help your blood vessels relax and become more flexible which has been shown to lower high blood pressure. These ways also have other health benefits.

We’ll announce this eBook here when it is available.

Effectively slow aging without food restriction….

Today's post: Thursday, 10-23-2008

For quite some time it has been in the scientific and health literature that calorie restriction tends to slow aging.

And, there are now people who have decided to eat this way on purpose to slow their own aging. They are virtually all quite thin. And, they may avoid some diseases; but they do not have a strong and robust look to them. Their enjoyment of life may be a bit low too.

Some kinds of calorie restriction, such as minimizing sugar intake, eating a lot of nonstarchy vegetables and NOT consuming soft drinks, junky foods like packaged snacks & desserts, anything containing high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils (transfats) and refined grain foods tend to help you avoid being fat and are quite health protective.

But deliberate calorie restriction beyond that has a mixed review healthwise & is simply no fun to do.

So, it would be really nice to have a way to slow aging that does NOT require calorie restriction. It would indeed be very nice to not have to starve yourself to live longer.

It turns out there ARE several ways to do that!

1. As many of you already know, one of the several reasons that the supplement and phytonutrinent resveratrol is likely worthwhile to take is that it has been shown to turn on the same molecular switch that food restriction does that researchers believe calorie restriction does. And, resveratrol has been shown to have protective and antiaging effects in tests, particularly on the heart.

2. A recent study of runners found that abundant and very regular exercise allowed the runners, many of whom substituted other kinds of exercise for running as they got older, to dramatically outlive and be much more physically able and healthy than a group of nonexercisers who were matched in age and socioeconomic status.

This likely is part because exercise releases growth hormones of at least three kinds.

But earlier this week, I read that it may also be because regular exercise has an effect similar to the effect of calorie restriction as well.

Here’s the article I read in my Early to Rise email I recently. Then I include a second article from Early to Rise on the anti-aging effects of exercise.

(Plus I’ll add some other antiaging methods after the articles.)

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

2 Fountains of Youth

By Craig Ballantyne

Life extension is one of the most popular research topics in the world right now. You might have heard what scientists have learned about calorie restriction, for example. Many studies have found that if you cut calories from an animal's diet, they can live longer. This works with mice, monkeys, and even household pets.

But does it work for humans?

Researchers at the University of Florida's Institute on Aging recently investigated the possibility that calorie restriction could help extend the human lifespan. In this study, human subjects either decreased their dietary intake by 20 percent less than needed to maintain their weight, or they increased their energy expenditure by 20 percent through exercise. (The subjects needed a lot of discipline, because this went on for more than a year.)

The researchers found that both diet and exercise helped reduce oxidative damage to the subjects' DNA. And they expected that this would have a positive effect on lifespan.

What does this mean for you? It means that you might not have to starve yourself to live longer. Both diet and exercise appear to have the same beneficial effect on the aging process.

Of course, the best thing to do - for both life extension and weight control - is to combine diet and exercise for a double-whammy. Not only will you lose pounds, you could also add years.

[Ed. Note: Combine eating right and exercising to get the best health results. For ideas about which foods you should be eating and which foods to avoid - and recipes for delicious, healthy meals - sign up for ETR's natural health newsletter.

And for a short workout you can do to build muscle and burn fat at the same time, all while getting in and out of the gym in under three hours a week, check out fitness expert Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training program.]”

(The ETR “natural health newsletter” is available at www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .)

Here’s the second article:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

The Anti-Aging Effects of Exercise

By Craig Ballantyne

Growth hormone is known as a "fountain of youth" in the anti-aging community because it helps build muscle and burn body fat. But research has shown that people who are overweight tend to have lower growth hormone levels.

Exercise is a proven way to boost those levels. However, most overweight individuals can't do the 30 minutes of continuous exercise that it takes. So researchers from the University of Virginia wanted to see what would happen if they split their subjects' workouts into shorter sessions.

The researchers had their subjects do either 30 minutes of continuous exercise or three 10-minute sessions, at the same intensity, spread out over the course of the day. Both groups achieved similar growth hormone levels, which led the researchers to conclude that the "split workout" would work just as well as continuous exercise.

These results aren't just good news for obese folks who can't handle 30 minutes of exercise at a time. They also offer relief to busy men and women who have a better chance of finding time for three short exercise sessions instead of one long one.

For maximum body-transformation results, I recommend one 10-minute session each of strength training, interval training, and bodyweight exercises. This will help you build muscle, burn fat, and improve your mobility.

[Ed. Note: Building muscle and burning fat doesn't have to take hours of work. Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne has put together a Turbulence Training program that can help you get fit in three 45-minute workouts a week….]”

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By the way, one of the growth hormones released by exercise is testosterone. And, because of that and the increase in fitness, blood flow, and strength you get from regular exercise, regular exercise has been shown to reliably improve the sex lives of BOTH men and women.

3. The third major way to slow aging, protect your health, and keep a good quality of life is to complete avoid tobacco smoke.

Even teenagers who smoke have lungs that test out as having the diminished lung capacity of much older people. (And those norms were set for a population many of whom did not exercise.)

In addition to that, smoking increases blood levels of homocysteine which speeds up all aging processes.

And, both directly and through this effect on homocysteine smoking tends to damage your DNA over time. This speeds aging and is one of the ways smoking causes cancer.

Since the tobacco smoke produces these effects if you breathe it, it’s also important to avoid second hand smoke completely.

Smokers die younger, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty years younger. And, among those who have heart attacks, smokers have them about 10 to 15 years younger than nonsmokers do. Smokers are also more likely to HAVE heart attacks.

Bottom line, smokers tend to get old and sick in their fifties and sometimes die at that age while people who don’t smoke not only live much longer, they tend to stay healthy most of that time.

So, if you want to slow aging and be in good health, avoid harmful foods and drinks and include a lot of nonstarchy vegetables; take 100 mg of the trans form of resveratrol daily; get abundant regular exercise each week; & avoid tobacco smoke totally.

You can still enjoy your food and not have to starve yourself to be long lived and healthy!

Veggies equal less heart attacks and fast food equals more – How to use the info….

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-21-2008

An international study called INTERHEART was published yesterday in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association. This 4 year study examined what heart attack patients ate and people who had not had heart attacks ate in over 25 countries from literally every part of the world. The results were in the online health news yesterday and today. (AFP did the story in which I found the most details.) The researchers were careful to include Asian and developing countries and countries around the world and not just Western countries because in Asian and developing countries the rate of heart attacks has been rising along with their consumption of Western style foods and fast foods.

Here’s what they found:

People who ate a diet high in fried foods, salty snacks, and lots of meat had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack than people who ate little or none.

And, people who ate lots of leafy green vegetables, other raw and cooked vegetables, and fruits had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack than those who ate little or no fruit and vegetables.

Since fried foods, salty snacks, and meat in fast food in the 1999 to 2003 period studied were also often high in transfats and the meat was often beef fed or overfed grains instead of grass fed beef, the heart attack increase for eating those foods was actually a bit less than I would have predicted. These foods likely delivered transfats, extra saturated fat, extra omega 6 oils, and refined grains along with the extra salt. (In addition, many of these foods were likely served in fast food places along with soft drinks which have also been shown to have heart harmful effects.)

Clearly avoiding many of these foods completely and demanding and insisting on only transfat free foods and eating only grass fed beef when you do have beef would help prevent heart attacks.

2. Using the information in the other part of the story can be a bit more challenging to do.

Eating lots of vegetables, particularly, greens and other nonstarchy vegetables, helps you avoid being or staying fat and gives you many nutrients and phytonutrients that protect your health in many ways besides preventing heart attacks. Eating some vegetables even helps prevent cancer for example as many of our regular readers already know.

But greens and other nonstarchy vegetables don’t taste as good as many fried foods and salty snacks do. Some people who have rarely enjoyed or hardly ever eaten vegetables have difficulty getting themselves to eat more vegetables.

Eating lots of greens and other nonstarchy vegetables may be as important to your health as not smoking. (This study suggests doing this is almost as heart protective as not eating fast foods such as those in the study.) But it can be quite challenging to do.

That’s why I was delighted yesterday to find an article from about 6 months ago that I somehow missed in the Total Health Breakthroughs emails I get. It was on their website at
www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com in the “Reader Favorites” box.

"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"

Here’s the article.: (They had it under “Healthy Nutrition.”)

“Hate Vegetables? Here’s Help! 04/22/2008

by Laura B. LaValle

Remember when former president George H.W. Bush pronounced to the world that he hates broccoli? Unfortunately, many Americans are in the same boat. It turns out that if you hate vegetables you may be what is called a “super taster,” a person who can pick up more bitter flavors in their foods and drinks. Or maybe you just had too many bad experiences with vegetables as a child.

I used to be a vegetable hater. But the truth is, not eating vegetables is really bad for you and is a sure way to increase your risk of many chronic illnesses. So, don’t throw in the towel. Here are some pointers that helped me — and have helped even our most stubborn patients “eat their veggies.”

Roasting vegetables reduces the bitter flavors by adding a savory caramelized flavor. Learning to roast vegetables really renewed my own interest and got me to enjoy eating them — and not just because I should. To roast any vegetable (except those you don’t normally cook, like cucumbers) toss the cut up pieces with good oil and seasonings — sea salt ground pepper, and garlic. See full instructions below.

Cooking vegetables with meats or meat broths also reduces the bitter flavors and tends to really bring out some of their sweetness. So load up your soups or stews with lots of chopped vegetables. Or just finely chop vegetables and add them to ground meats, like meatloaf, burgers, and even chili.

Mask the taste or hide the vegetable. For instance, use some butter, salt and pepper on steamed vegetables. For raw vegetables, try the healthiest dip you can find. My yogurt-tahini dressing in the April 15 issue of THB is a great vegetable dip. You can also finely chop or puree vegetables and add them to sauces, like spaghetti sauce. Even mashed potatoes can hide cooked cauliflower and turnips. Honest you don’t even know they are there!

Use small amounts of stronger tasting vegetables in your dishes and then slowly increase your consumption. Your taste buds are similar to your sense of smell. Just as you can get used to odors that you smell all the time, your taste buds over time notice the objectionable tastes less and less. So, keep trying them and start with small tastes. For instance, if you only like iceberg head lettuce, start adding small bites of darker green lettuces into your salad. Once your taste buds don’t notice the flavor of the darker lettuces any more, increase the amount.

One final bit of encouragement. If you haven’t tried some of the stronger tasting vegetables since childhood, you need to try again. Our taste buds die off as we get older, so we don’t taste things as acutely as we used to when we were younger. In fact, you may already be enjoying other foods that you didn’t like as a child. The same can happen with vegetables. Give these tips a try — it does pay off.

Basic Grilled Vegetable Technique:

Drizzle olive oil over your vegetable of choice. Any vegetable will do, but it is particularly good with stronger flavored vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and asparagus. It is also a great way to branch out with vegetables you might not have ever tried, like root vegetables and squash. Toss vegetables with the oil to lightly coat. You can add minced garlic for really good flavor.

Wrap vegetables in foil for the grill or spread on a baking sheet for the oven. Add sea salt and pepper if desired, or any other seasoning blends you like.
Roast for 10 to 15 minutes shaking or stirring every 3 minutes. Cook vegetables until lightly browned, and serve warm.

[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 a truly useful article.

Note that adding extra virgin olive oil to a vegetable or vegetable dish, and to some degree even butter heated just enough to melt it or served on hot vegetables to melt slightly, is good for you because it literally increases the bioavailability of many of the nutrients in the vegetables when you eat them.

So some of these methods even have health benefits too.

Here’s another idea. I’m not fond of greens and lettuces myself. But I eat some very happily for almost every weekday lunch. My wife fixes me a small sandwich with romaine or other high nutrition lettuce, mustard, onion slices, and sliced tomatoes on a whole grain rye bread that also adds a bit of flavor. Despite the lettuce, these have so much enjoyable flavor, I look forward all morning to eating mine.

So these methods DO work. Use some creativity and try some. You’re very likely to find some you like and a few you like a lot.

Vigorous aerobics and interval training protect your brain....

Today's post: Monday, 10-20-2008

I got an email recently with the information that vigorous aerobics or cardio and interval training may reverse and can prevent declines in “executive function tasks” such as planning, scheduling, and the short term or working memory needed for everyday tasks and multi-tasking or switching easily and accurately between several tasks.

In the words of the researchers Drs. Arthur F. Kramer and Kirk I. Erickson, from the University of Illinois Beckman Institute, Urbana. , in the latest issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, “regular moderate physical activity, enough to make a person breathless.”

That’s exactly what vigorous cardio and interval training do. At times during your exercise session you push the pace enough to get slightly breathless or you would if you kept up that pace. In vigorous walking and interval training, that’s exactly what you do.

It has already been established that regular exercise releases a brain and nerve growth factor that causes your brain to grow new neurons.

These researchers tested a group of adults ages 60 to 75 who walked briskly for 45 minutes a day three days a week over a 6 month time period. They did increase their brain volume as we now know to expect. But they also tested as improving “their ability to perform executive function tasks - compared with a control group who engaged only in non-aerobic stretching and toning exercises.”

This means that you can prevent and to some extent reverse mental decline with regular and vigorous aerobics or cardio OR interval training.

We knew such exercise grows new brain cells. Thanks to these researchers, we now have evidence that doing such exercise regularly can help restore lost mental abilities or prevent them from declining. This is new. The new brain cells actually help you stay mentally sharp.

This is very good news indeed.

And, it has important implications for employers not just for individual people.

High fructose corn syrup also speeds aging....

Today's post: Friday, 10-17-2008

We’ve already posted that drinking regular soft regular soft drinks makes you fat in part because it not only adds calories without making you less hungry—it also increases your craving for sweet foods and makes you extra hungry when your body recovers from the sugar rush you get. I’ve read that each of these effects are worse with today’s soft drinks because they are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. (These effects existed back when soft drinks contained sugar though they were not quite as bad. But back then, soft drinks were smaller and people drank many fewer bottles of them. They also got a lot more exercise and watched less TV. So, soft drinks looked safe to drink. That is no longer true.)

We posted an article that contains information suggesting that ingesting high fructose corn syrup is as bad for your heart and blood vessels as eating transfats. It seems ingesting high fructose corn syrup lowers HDL a bit and increases triglycerides. (The ratio between them reveals how much of the small particle LDL cholesterol that creates heart and cardiovascular disease is in your blood.) This means that if your HDL cholesterol is lowered and total LDL cholesterol and triglycerides are increased, you have more of the damaging small particle LDL cholesterol in your blood. Transfats or foods that contain them have been tested as doing this. That’s why they are gradually being banned. For this reason alone, high fructose corn syrup may be next on the banned food additives list.

These effects of high fructose corn syrup also tend to cause type II diabetes.

Surely the case is proved by these first three effects that high fructose corn syrup should not be consumed and FOR SURE should not be consumed several times a day. (Between soft drinks, jam, and the other foods now sold in most grocery stores many of which contain high fructose corn syrup, you really have to be careful and determined to avoid consuming high fructose corn syrup several times a day.)

It’s hard to imagine that there might be more reasons to avoid high fructose corn syrup.

But there is one. It’s a crusher too. Ouch!

I found this in my Early to Rise email yesterday.

Here’s that article.:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”


“Are You Drinking Wrinkle Fertilizer?

By Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison

Sugar isn't always what you think it is. These days, most of it has been replaced with an impostor.

Known as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), this synthetic sweetener masquerades as being natural and healthy. But a chemical reaction discovered in 1914 by the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard proves otherwise. Every time you consume the corn syrup, it acts as wrinkle fertilizer, courtesy of "glycation" - the process by which sugars like HFCS bind to amino acids in the bloodstream and become Advanced Glycation End (AGE) products. This class of toxins has been linked to inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, vascular and kidney disease, and Alzheimer's.

Hardly natural, HFCS is made in a lab. Corn syrup is chemically altered in such a way that it becomes "high-fructose" corn syrup." This leads to a much higher rate of AGE production than occurs with plain old sugar. As sure as night follows day, AGE products bind to collagen, causing it to get twisted and tangled. This shows up as age spots, wrinkles, and everything else that makes skin look old and crumbly.

So steer clear of HFCS. Instead, opt for stevia or erythritol.

[Ed. Note: With tricky substances like HFCS lurking everywhere you turn, it can be hard to stay healthy. But if you take a few simple measures, you can protect your health and live a longer, more satisfying life.

Health expert Shane Ellison simplifies complex health issues while revealing the supplements and lifestyle habits that can help you beat today's pandemic
killers. ….]”

Shane Ellison writes often for Early to Rise. Early to Rise also publishes Total Health Breakthroughs which I also often find a good source for worthwhile health information.

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Here are my two comments.:

1. So, high fructose corn syrup is neither natural, despite using corn that is natural as a starting point, nor should anyone who wants to keep good health ever consume it.

2. Since even the natural sweeteners Shane Ellison speaks of may cause your body to crave more sweetened food, just like the several kinds of artificial sweeteners do, it may be better to use real sugar but just consume foods or drinks that contain sugar much less often than most people do now.

I also happen to really dislike the taste of stevia. To me it tastes something like marshmallow flavoring that something is slightly wrong with. And, it’s overpowering if added to a food.

I’ve not tried erythritol. But erythritol is a natural food and is said to have no added taste. One way to use it might be to use a bit less sweetening over all, 75 to 90 % as much; and then have the sweetening be half erythritol and half sugar. Perhaps that might allow you a sweet treat without causing you to crave extra sweets later. And the food would have less than half as much sugar.

5 ways to protection from stroke....

Today's post: Thursday, 10-16-2008

A stroke can kill you or disable you. The disability can include becoming a prisoner in your own body, unable to talk or unable to move or both.

So, the result to want is to never get one and/or to recover without disability if you do get one.

There are five different ways to do achieve this.

1. It was recently found and reported in the online health news that taking ginkgo biloba protects you from the worst damage if you get a stroke and sharply improves your chance of recovery. Even better, that was true in the people they studied who got a stroke when they were already taking ginkgo biloba before the stroke; it was true of the people who were given ginkgo biloba soon after a stroke; & it was even true of people who took ginkgo biloba a bit later after the stroke when other treatments tend to be too late to work.

(You do have to be quite careful in taking ginkgo biloba if you are taking prescription blood thinners however. This is because taking ginkgo biloba can multiply the effect of prescription blood thinners. How careful? If you need to take both, you might need a day or two in the hospital to be able to have your doctor safely adjust the dose of the prescription blood thinner you are taking. And, even then it’s a bit risky.

The good news is that if you take gingko biloba and follow other good health practices, you may well avoid needing to take prescription blood thinners)

It’s been known for years that taking gingko biloba can help you stay mentally sharp as you get older. But that taking gingko also protects you from any strokes you get is new and incredibly welcome news.

2. It’s also been shown that eating blueberries tends to prevent you from getting strokes in the first place. Eating blueberries tends to protect your blood vessels from oxidation or accumulating plaque due to their very high antioxidant levels. They also do this by increasing your beneficial HDL cholesterol. Also, since they have been reported to improve the mental sharpness of older people who eat them they may share some of the protective properties of gingko biloba. Blueberries also have vitamin C and other micronutrients that directly keep your blood vessels smooth and healthy. That also tends to prevent plaque from building up in your blood vessels enough for strokes to occur. (The small tears in your blood vessels that your body tends to patch up with plaque tend not to happen if you eat blueberries and take enough vitamin C. These small tears can also help cause hemorrhagic or “bleeding inside the brain” stokes.)

Lastly, blueberries taste great. So this is an easy method to use. I find they go very well with Quaker’s Old Fashioned Oatmeal and 1% lowfat milk.

3. The second way to recover from a stroke is to get really fast treatment.

The acronym to remember is FAST.

FACE If you look in the mirror or you look at the person you think may be having a stroke and when you or that person smiles one side of the face stays frozen while the other smiles, take action.

ARMS If you or the person you think may be having a stroke can raise only one arm out to the side or straight in front and the other doesn’t move, take action.

SPEECH If you or the person you think may be having a stroke cannot say a simple sentence, “I was very hungry at times yesterday.” or “I got to work late because my train was late.” would be two examples, take action.

TIME If someone is having a stroke, getting them to home treatment immediately if it can be done and to medical treatment within an hour can prevent death or serious damage.

A longer wait than an hour can cause avoidable death or serious damage and prevent recovery.

So fast action is critical. If you or the person you think may be having a stroke has one or more of these F, A, S signs, take action NOW.

First. Call 911 or an ambulance immediately. That ensures reasonably prompt arrival at the Emergency Room. And have the ambulance personnel or yourself phone ahead at the Emergency Room you are going to so they are ready when you arrive there.

Second. If you or the person you think may be having a stroke can swallow and you have them on hand, taking aspirin and ginkgo right away can be protective against strokes.

4. Work to keep yourself healthy and keep your blood pressure at healthy levels. Avoid smoking, exercise regularly, and avoid getting or staying fat. And, if you get high blood pressure, take action to lower it. It’s essential to include drugs if it gets over about 150 or 160 over 100.

(We are about to publish an eBook on how to lower high blood without drugs. By doing this with no drugs or with lower doses of fewer drugs you can have safe blood pressure without quality of life harming side effects. We will announce it in this blog when it is published and available.)

Bad heart and blood vessel health and high blood pressure cause strokes. So to avoid them keep your heart and blood vessels healthy and your blood pressure down to low normal levels.

5. Keep your brain flexible and healthy. Good circulation to your brain and a healthy well- functioning brain will be less likely to get a stroke and will be more likely to recover.

In addition to the other methods we’ve already covered in this post, keep your brain sharp and its circulation good with regular exercise, learning new things, and socializing with friends often.

Regular exercise literally grows new brain cells. It improves your brain’s blood circulation. And, it tends to relieve stress and optimize your neurotransmitters. The result is that people who exercise regularly including some exercises that cause you to be a bit out of breath at the end, of course without overdoing it., result in people with larger, better functioning brains who think better and make better decisions and are simply more competent.

Learning new things and conversation give your brain exercise just like running or strength training exercise your body.

Do all these 5 things or be ready to do them and you can usually avoid strokes or dangerous ones you don’t recover from.

14 ways to longevity....

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-14-2008

Short on time today, so this will be brief. These ways to longevity are in an article in the November, 2008 Prevention Magazine. I bought and read a copy recently.

1. Drink black or green tea daily. They left out to not drink it with milk or have milk at the same time. But both kinds of tea give a gentler energy boost than coffee so it’s harder to overdose on them. And, though green tea has more health benefits, both kinds provide strong health benefits.

2. Skip both regular and diet soft drinks. The average person drinks nearly 12 a week. And, since many people know enough to drink none, the people who drink them drink more than 12. As a result, compared with people who drink none, they are far fatter and more likely to develop a whole list of diseases such as type II diabetes which can result in early death.

3. Walk or exercise about half an hour a day. As our regular readers already know, this has a huge list of health benefits if you do it; and a huge list health penalties if you do less than half this much.

4. Have strong legs. This keeps you mobile and give you better balance as you get older. That increases longevity. Tai Chi, the wall, chairless, sitting exercise they describe in the article, and careful strength training of your thighs can give you this.

5. Eat and/or drink purple food. Blueberries, concord grapes and its juice, and bilberry extract all are high in polyphenols and anthocyanins. They help keep your blood vessels, heart, and brain healthy. And, they can make a BIG difference in how long you live & how well you think.

6. Avoid or minimize eating red meat. We’ll add to avoid red meat from grain fed animals if you can. Grass fed beef is far less harmful to eat. And, both avoid cooking red meat at high temperatures and eat it with spices, such as rosemary and garlic and onions. That reduces its chances of boosting your bad LDL and giving you cancer.

7. Keep learning new things. You can’t go back in time to be a college freshman though Prevention lists that as a longevity sign if you ever were a college freshman. But you have control over whether you learn new things every week.

8. Educated people also tend to live longer because far fewer of them smoke. Avoid cigarette smoke. Quit if you smoke. And avoid second hand smoke. Cigarette smoke does kill with lung and other cancers; but it kills more with heart disease and strokes. It also speeds up aging.
You’ll live far longer if you avoid cigarette smoke totally.

9. Like your friends. I’ll add to keep in touch with them regularly and treat them well. Your health will be far better; you’ll feel less stress, and you’ll enjoy life more. You even get brain boosting effects from talking to your friends!

10 Have healthy friends. People tend to adopt the health habits of their friends. So have some healthy ones. And spend a bit less time with any who have bad health habits. This can be a good reason to go to the gym as you meet health oriented people there.

11. Do some or all of your own housework. Studies show that even among people where that’s the only exercise they get, people who do this live longer and in better health than people who do not. It also helps keep your legs strong and burns enough calories to help you keep excess fat off.

12. Have a positive outlook on life and on the communities you are in. This one is surprisingly powerful. You not only will live a lot longer, you’ll enjoy it more.

13. Avoid getting too fat or having your blood sugar levels go to high. Totally avoid soft drinks and get regular exercise. Eat non-starchy and green vegetables every day and minimize your sugar intake. Do strength training, And make an extra effort to eat right and exercise more if you start to gain fat weight. Also be sure to get your fasting glucose and HBA1C tested every 6 months to year. You cannot fix it if you don’t know it’s broken, And with your blood sugar levels, to know, you have to get tested.

14. Do your best to find ways to overcome the challenges in your life. And do promising things and things you know are effective to overcome them.

Assume you can find a way to overcome your challenges and keep working on them.

People who are too pessimistic take no action, get bad results because they did not take action, and have poorer health.

People who are optimistic and hopeful take action. Eventually they take actions that work. And they have better health because they also take positive actions to stay health.

Why to choose natural sweeteners....

Today's post: Monday, 10-13-2008

Fruit is the best kind of sweetener to use if you eat whole fruit instead of juice.

Real juice with no extra sweeteners added has many of the benefits of whole fruit.

Occasional real sugar can be OK if you keep it occasional and get enough regular exercise and take the supplements alpha lipoic acid and chromium polynicotinate and possibly use the spice cinnamon with the sugar you eat. The exercise, the supplements, and cinnamon all help your body use the sugar without causing problems. And, by eating sugar just a few times a week or a month instead of several times a day you allow your body to recover before the next time you eat it. It also helps to eat some and not a huge amount each time you eat it.

Whole fruit has fiber which slows your processing of the fructose in it which enables your body to process it normally unless you are diabetic or nearly so.

And, both fruit and real fruit juice have vitamin C and other vitamins and micronutrients that protect your health and also seem to prevent the kind of blood sugar spikes that sugar by itself will cause.

If you are trying to control blood sugar that is too high or lose fat, you may be better off only eating whole fruit only because of the positive effect of the added fiber in it. At least keep fruit juice and real sugar to low and infrequent use, such as a few times a month or less.

Since the evidence is that sweeteners with no calories, possibly even natural ones, tend to cause your body to crave real sugar enough to cause you to gain fat, it seems to me to make more sense to eat real sugar if you want something sweet but to just eat it sparingly.

And, if you can override those cravings and insist on more frequent sweeteners, you are far better off if you use natural ones. You can also use half as much sugar and replace the other half with natural sweeteners with no calories that are natural. This cuts your sugar intake in half and may avoid the cravings sweeteners with no calories by themselves can cause.

Stevia, erythritol, and xylitol all work and are sweeteners with no calories that are natural. Some people like the added taste of Stevia. I’m NOT one of them. Erythritol & xylitol have no added taste. But large amounts of xylitol can cause gas.

Why, besides the tendency to crave and eat real sugar they cause, should you avoid sweeteners with no calories that are not natural?

They all tend to produce the same fat gain and health problems that over-eating real sugar does for starters. Researchers had hoped to confirm the popular belief that they did less harm than equal amounts of sugar. The found that artificial sweeteners with no calories were as bad or worse than excessive consumption of real sugar or of high fructose corn syrup.

But two of the most commonly used artificial sweeteners with no calories seem to cause more health problems than most artificial sweeteners with no calories.

HSI sends out one of the health emails I get. In today’s email, they listed several kinds of bad news for sucralose or Splenda. It tastes like sugar and is a sweetener with no calories. And, since it is made from sugar molecules it seems to substitute well for sugar.

For me, the only thing I needed to know is that it is made from adding chlorine to the sugar molecule. Chlorinated hydrocarbons tend to be long lasting. And, they tend to be poisons. Other chlorinated hydrocarbons are used for insecticides for example.

My guess was that if there were known health problems from sucralose, it was because it had been insufficiently studied yet.

The HSI email lists some reported problems with sucralose that are not yet well known.

It sometimes produces stomach or gas pains.

Between 13 and over 40 % of the people who eat it absorb some of the chlorine in it.

Eating it tends to make you gain extra pounds of fat, just like eating that much sugar would do. (Some studies even suggest it may be even more effective than sugar in doing this.) This defeats the main purpose of using it.

But there are more serious problems reported by HSI. Sucralose also reduces beneficial or probiotic bacteria in the intestines of people who eat it by as much as half. Since those bacteria support good health and help you digest your food, that’s more problematic than it may sound.

In fact, sucralose also has been found to significantly reduce the absorption of prescription drugs according to this article.

Dr Al Sears who also sends out health information email, sent an email today titled, “Ignore this Sweet Deception…”

This email lists several reasons why HFCS, high fructose corn syrup is harmful to your health.

He then explains that despite being made from corn, which IS natural, high fructose corn syrup is made using enzymes that are genetically modified. So the high fructose corn syrup in foods and drinks is NOT natural.

He then quotes a study finding that ingesting HFCS raises triglycerides and the bad kind of LDL cholesterol that causes heart attacks. (We reported that in a previous post.) He also quotes a study showing liver damage similar to that found in severely alcoholic people caused by ingesting high fructose corn syrup.

And, last but far from least, he notes that the large surge in blood sugar you get if you eat or drink things with high fructose corn syrup in them is bad for you in other ways.

Other artificial sweeteners have similar track records of health problems too.

So, this is one area where the only safe way to go is 100 % natural.

And high fructose corn syrup and sucralose are definitely on the do not consume list if you want to stay slim and healthy.

Pneumonia vaccine cuts heart attack rate IN HALF....

Today's post: Friday, 10-10-2008

The NewsMax.com Health Alerts email I got on Tuesday, 10-7, earlier this week had that this was the case in a study they reported.

A large hospital-based study found that people who were at high risk of heart attack had only half as many heart attacks in the next 2 years after getting the pneumonia vaccine as people who were not vaccinated.

They also found that this effect seemed to get stronger and the benefit appeared to increase with time after getting the vaccine.

They quote a Dr. Mohammad Madjid from the Texas Heart Institute who hypothesized that the pneumonia vaccine protects against heart attacks because it prevents pneumonia which has apparently been reported to trigger heart attacks. They also said there is evidence that flu and other and kinds of infections are associated with heart attacks.

So, the bottom line is that getting your flu shot each fall and getting the pneumonia vaccine when you get your flu shot this fall if you haven’t already had it not only may keep you from being sick or even dying of the flu or pneumonia, it also may spare you a heart attack.

Many locations that give the flu shot also have the pneumonia vaccine, so you can often get both shots at the same time.

(The pneumonia vaccine prevents something like 90% of the kinds of bacterial pneumonia & is thought to last at least 10 years. So, unlike the flu shot, you only have to get it occasionally.)

You can also do several other things to avoid the flu, pneumonia, and colds.

Here’s a repeat from an earlier post with that info. (Most of the things that prevent pneumonia also help prevent colds and flu.)

From our post on Thursday, 12-20-2007 on how to almost totally prevent pneumonia.:

1. Start by cutting your risk over 60 percent by getting by getting the pneumonia vaccine.

This one is the most important since, it cuts your risk so much. In addition, by adding the other five steps to getting the pneumonia vaccine, you begin to approach 100 percent protection.

If your body reacts properly to it, you actually get closer to 85 to 90 percent protection from the vaccine alone. But some of the people over 60 who need the protection most have less response to it.

The clear implication is that the younger you are when you get your first shot, the better your protection is likely to be.

So, if you haven’t gotten yours yet, our suggestion is to get it soon !!

If your holiday schedule gives you some extra time off, get it before the end of the year. And, if your holiday schedule is already over-filled, get it by mid-January for sure.

Since it takes 2 or 3 weeks after you get it to protect you, you want to have that protection BEFORE you get the flu or are exposed to pneumonia. So, again, soon is best.

2. You tend to get fewer infections of all kinds if you get enough vitamin C. It apparently acts as an immune system booster. So if you get between 500 mg & 2,000 mg a day, your pneumonia vaccine is more likely to work. And, your chances of getting a strain of pneumonia that the vaccine doesn’t cover, also drop.

Oranges, bananas, berries, kiwi fruit, & other fruits also have many other valuable micronutrients besides vitamin C, so eating many whole fruits or drinking some real fruit juice each week is protective. They also have fiber which has many other health benefits. Lastly, they taste good !!

I personally eat two or three servings of fruit a day & drink grape juice. AND I take 1,050 mg of vitamin C each day. (My vitamin C supplement has 500; my B Complex Plus C Stress Formula from Solgar has 500; & my multivitamin- mineral tablet has 50.)

Since my vitamin C from what I eat & drink is less than 500 mg a day, I think taking this extra vitamin C is important.

3. Take 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D. Recent studies show that getting enough vitamin D is even more effective at boosting your immune system than almost anything else you can do. There is even some evidence enough vitamin D boosts your immune system so well it prevents many cancers.

It’s also been shown to help prevent getting tuberculosis, another very nasty lung disease.

Because most of us no longer work outside all day; & it’s now winter time, very few of us get enough vitamin D from sun exposure this time of year. Many of us work inside all day even in the summer now as well.

So recent research has shown that taking this much vitamin D is quite important.

The even better news is that vitamin D in the 1,000 iu per capsule size is really
inexpensive.

Since I learned this, I’ve taken more than 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D myself.

So if you get take 2,000 iu of vitamin D a day, your pneumonia vaccine is much more likely to work. And, your chances of getting a strain of pneumonia that the vaccine doesn’t cover, also drop dramatically.

4. And, there’s even more protection from pneumonia available.

Thanks to an email from Dr Al Sears that I got today, I found out that people who take enough of the mineral zinc, about 30 to 50 mg a day total, are both much less likely to get pneumonia AND to recover from it easily if they do still get it.

To put it mildly, very few of the people who get enough zinc die from getting pneumonia. The data Dr Sears found had that info also.

Even better, taking that amount of zinc also tends to raise your blood level of the protective HDL cholesterol. Does it work? Yes, the data do show a lower rate of heart attack in people who get enough zinc.

This effect may also be in part because getting that much zinc each day helps your body process sugars properly instead of you getting type II diabetes which sharply increases your heart attack risk.

Because taking that much zinc tends to lower high blood pressure, that may also help create the heart attack protection it provides.

And, there’s even more benefits to taking that much zinc. It helps prevent prostate problems & prostate cancer. (I suspect it may also help prevent breast & ovarian cancers in women as well.)

Important Notes: Unless you react badly to copper, it’s important in order to not have too little to take 2 or 3 mg a day of copper when you take this much zinc. Also, more zinc is NOT better, taking much more than 50 mg a day for more than a couple of days tends to REVERSE the effect. So do NOT do that.

5 & 6. Pneumonia is often a secondary infection that you get after coming down with a bad cold or the flu.

So, # 5. is to always get your flu shot.

That way you don’t get cases of the flu that might have triggered pneumonia. And, if you do get the flu, the chances are it will be mild enough, it won’t be able to trigger pneumonia.

But what if you do get the flu or a bad cold anyway?

That’s where # 6. comes in to protect you.

6. If you do get the flu or a bad cold, eat spicy hot foods or add some red cayenne pepper to your chicken soup every day that you are sick. Studies show this prevents bronchitis & excessive chest congestion.

When you eat the Chinese dishes like, Mongolian Beef or Kung Pao Chicken or you eat a spicy hot Mexican food or salsa, you break into a bit of a sweat on your forehead & your nose runs slightly.

That effect also happens in your lungs so you don’t get the build up of excess mucus to get infected.

You feel better when you prevent that. But even better, since you prevent it, there’s often not enough build up for bacterial pneumonia to grow well. So you are much less likely to get it.

Drinking a few extra glasses of water each day you are sick also helps to do this. It’s one of the reasons doctors say to do that. But few doctors explain how incredibly important & protective it is to do that.

Bottom line, if you take all these 6 steps, your chances of getting pneumonia approach zero. And, your chances of dying from it drop even more.

Most of them are pretty easy. Why not do them all?

Low & Lower carb sandwiches....

Today's post: Thursday, 10-9-2008

As many of you who read this blog regularly know, refined grain foods are NOT good for you. They are high in carbs and have a high glycemic index. They also have much lower fiber and a much lower amount of nutrients than whole grain foods and vegetables have. Even worse, refined grain foods often have bad things added to them such as extra salt, high fructose corn syrup, and partially hydrogenated fats (transfats.)

But sandwiches are a common food, particularly for lunch. They are convenient to make and take to work. They are also sold in various versions at places where you go out for lunch.

Made with bread made of refined grain, such sandwiches help make you fat and sick however.

That makes sandwiches made with refined grain foods both useful, familiar, easily available, and convenient on one hand; and unfortunately, it also makes them bad for your health to eat.

This is a bit of a dilemma.

An excellent article on solutions to this problem was in today’s Early to Rise. After I include it, I’ll have some other comments.

One of their readers wrote to Early to Rise requesting one of their health writers to provide some solutions. The writer himself asked for help. The resulting article is quite good. My own title for it is: Substitutes for refined grain bread in Sandwiches.

Here it is.:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

“Dear ETR: What's a good substitute for bread?

"As bread is always being lambasted as being too high in carbs, exactly what can be used as a substitute that is both nutritious AND practical - i.e., that can be used every day to make a sandwich for lunch? Everything I can think of has a grain in it!"

Jim Crossman
Somerset, UK

Dear Jim,

Good question.

I asked my nutrition expert friend Isabel De Los Rios (thedietsolutionprogram.com) for some help. Here's what she said...

You can go one of two ways with this, or use a combo of both:

1. Choose organic, sprouted grain breads (such as Food For Life Ezekiel Bread) whenever possible. The process of "sprouting" grains makes them much more digestible and nutritious. Compared to "processed grain," sprouted grain is much higher in protein and fiber and lower in carbs.

2. Use vegetables - such as romaine lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced eggplant, and portabella mushrooms - instead of bread. For instance, instead of a boring sandwich, you could make:

turkey, roast beef, and cheese lettuce wraps (Don't forget a drop of mustard.)
sauteed chicken and vegetable lettuce wraps
tuna salad on sliced tomatoes
turkey or beef burgers on portabella mushrooms
scrambled eggs and bacon on sliced tomatoes
Happy eating!

- Craig Ballantyne

[Ed. Note: Supplement the above suggestions for low-carb meals with a fat-burning exercise routine. Learn how to build muscle and blast fat with Craig's Turbulence Training program. And for advice on how to lose weight, eat right, and exercise better, sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter.

Have a question for an ETR expert? Write to us at AskETR@ETRfeedback.com and one of them may respond to you in ETR]“

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My comments and other ideas for replacing refined grain bread in sandwiches.:

1. Their first solution listed works even better than you might think. My wife has very low level type II diabetes. So she checks the effect on her blood sugar of virtually everything she eats. If she eats refined grain foods of any kind, for sure if she eats refined grain bread, her blood sugar spikes by an extra 20 to 45 points.

She found though, that when she eats the Food For Life “Biblical” breads we buy at Whole Foods Market that the ETR article recommends, the Ezekiel and Genesis kinds in particular, that her blood sugar only goes up a normal amount. The extra 20 to 45 point surge no longer happens. So, the article’s advice on this bread is even better than it may sound.

I’m also very pleased that this company, Food For Life, does NOT add nonfood additives to this bread. Plus I’m very pleased to read that it’s also more digestible and nutritious than the refined grain bread my wife used to eat. (Because it has no junk additives to give it long shelf life, it’s stocked in the frozen foods section by the way.)

2. I do something different with my lunch. I take some walnuts, some pecans, some organic broccoli florets, and some kind of orange veggie -- usually either carrots or sweet potato. Then I start my lunch with a half sandwich using only ONE slice of a sprouted whole grain bread that has mustard, onion, lettuce and tomato in it.

That way, I get the full flavor of the sandwich without the extra carbs of a full sandwich.

3. The third method that some of their suggestions require is to simply use no bread at all and use a glass container with a lid as a carrier instead of a plastic bag and bread as a container.

That same method also works well in restaurants and even fast food restaurants. (It works very well at Subway fast food locations because they have so many decent veggies you can add to the meat part of the lunch to substitute for the food part of the bread.) For this method, you let the restaurant transport the food and provide a plate to substitute for the transport use of the bread and sandwich bag.

And, you eat extra veggies of some kind to provide the extra fill up the bread would have provided.

As you can see by their examples, this can be tasty and filling without any bread at all.

Some soaps & cleaners can make you fat....

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-7-2008

Regular readers of this blog know that all kinds of soda, eating foods with high fructose corn syrup and refined grains, watching too much TV, and never exercising all will tend to make you fat.

A huge number of people in the United States and now around the world do all of those things. As a result, the rate of obesity and type II diabetes has become an epidemic.

But if you never drink soft drinks, have stopped eating 95% of the refined grain foods you once ate, never buy or eat foods with high fructose corn syrup, limit your TV watching, and exercise every week, would you like it if you continued to be fatter than you want to be?

Would you like to be slightly low on energy besides?

Few people would. But if your thyroid function is impaired by contact with a toxin that impairs it, that’s exactly the result you might get.

Oops !! It seems that a very large number of soaps, liquid hand cleaners, household cleaning products, and lotions now for sale at your local supermarket have just such a toxin in them. Even some toothpastes do. If you touch these products to your skin, you get a dose internally of this toxin. And, having it in toothpaste is scary.

The good news is that it’s avoidable. But you have to know it has this effect. Read labels to be sure it is NOT a listed ingredient. And, never buy or use those products.

The article on this was in today’s Early to Rise. After I include it, I’ll have some other comments.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

“Toxic Gender-Bender Approved for Widespread Use

By Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison

I'm no health saint. Every now and then I do something really dumb. It's rare, but I've been known to drink too much wine or beer and even indulge in the occasional cigar. All of these are toxic. As a rogue chemist-turned-consumer-health-advocate, I'm not proud of imbibing. However, it's my choice. And that's the point. Exposing yourself to toxins should be a choice. But modern day society rarely allows this.

Many people are unknowingly poisoning themselves with man-made industrial toxins. The gender-bender known as triclosan is one example - and it makes my toxic indulgences seem as harmless as apple juice.

Triclosan is used in a nauseating array of household products, including toothpastes, soaps, and lotions. Synthesized over 30 years ago, it was once thought to be a safe and effective antibiotic. But results from a recent UC Davis study have sounded the triclosan alarm.

Researchers discovered that it accumulates in the body - even when applied topically - to eventually disrupt hormone activity. The study found that triclosan throws our thyroid and sex hormones out of whack, potentially leading to obesity, infertility, cancer, and age acceleration. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that 75 percent of people from a random sample were positive for triclosan.

There appear to be laws that protect us from such toxic exposure, but appearances can be deceiving. In 1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. It requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine safe levels of toxins in drinking water and over-the-counter products like toothpastes and soaps. These levels are called Maximum Contaminant Level Goals (MCLG). None of them are enforceable. That's why the gender-bending triclosan was recently approved for use in over 140 household products despite its real and present danger!

The best way to avoid this and many other toxins is to choose organic. Natural soaps and the safe antibiotic zinc oxide work as well as triclosan at beating infection. And neither of them can accidentally poison you.

[Ed. Note: With tricky substances like triclosan lurking everywhere you turn, it's not easy to stay healthy. But if you take a few simple measures, you can protect your health and live a longer, more satisfying life.

Health expert Shane Ellison simplifies the complex, and teaches you how the right supplements and lifestyle habits can help you beat today's pandemic killers. Learn how to overcome obesity, heart disease, and even cancer - and discover the latest natural cures - with Shane's Foundational Health Education program.
( http://www.thepeopleschemist.com/foundation.html?hop=etr07 ) “

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Other ideas for getting clean and killing germs without exposing yourself to this stuff include:

1. Shop for cleaners, soaps, and the like at Whole Foods Market. Their buyers often to usually edit out these kinds of ingredients. So if you find it works Ok for you at home & you buy it at Whole Foods, you’ll almost always be better off than picking up something at a less selective store.

2. Use soap without ANY germ killers and water instead of buying and using the “anti-bacterial” kinds. Washing with just soap and water kills or removes the germs you want to get rid of anyway. But it does not poison you or contribute to antibiotic resistant germs as the “anti-bacterial” kinds will do. (There have also been articles that quote studies showing that use of triclosan and other “anti-bacterial” compounds contributes to creating antibiotic resistant germs.)

I’ve not yet looked at the label; but the only liquid hand soap for use in a push dispenser I know of is the one from Ivory. And, since they do NOT advertise or label it as an “anti-bacterial” soap, I suspect it has no triclosan.

3. If you are washing out something with tons of germs such as cleaning a diaper or washing up after someone threw up, use chlorine bleach instead of “anti-bacterial” cleaners. The chlorine bleach smells like hell. But it kills the germs just fine. And, the smell gives you an incentive to wash quickly and rinse thoroughly. (I also use rubber gloves to keep the smell off my skin.)

4. Never use chemical air fresheners or have them in your house. Some may add extra “anti-bacterial” action with triclosan. And, they have other ingredients that are just as bad.

5. Read the labels today on the toothpaste and soap and lotions and household cleaners you use now and substitute triclosan free versions for any that contain it.

Some soy foods to avoid....

Today's post: Monday, 10-6-2008

Some people have listed soy foods as superfoods or as beneficial to your health. They are a vegetarian source of protein and also have appealed to people wanting a protein food other than grain fed red meat even if they are not vegetarians.

However, they may be a mixed review food at best and may even be bad for you at worst.

That information is still not well known by some people who are well informed and give great advice on other good for you foods. (The otherwise excellent book “ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine: A Food Lover's Road Map to Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Getting Really Healthy” is in that group, which I discovered after I posted on back on 9-16 that it sounded promising and bought a copy for my wife and me.)

There is some evidence that soy foods lower testosterone and the sex drive of both men and women who eat them in large amounts. And, soy also apparently lowers male fertility a study recently reported. The authors explained that in cultures that eat soy foods, a reason that the fertility rate is not very low is that people in those cultures eat some soy but not only soy and thus eat less than many people have believed. (There is another reason listed later in this post.)

One preventive medicine doctor I know, Dr Mike Nichols, even found evidence in the scientific literature, NOT the medical literature, that eating a lot of soy increased lp(a) in the bloodstream of the people who ate that much. Since high levels of lp(a) tend to help cause plaque build up in your arteries, that’s NOT good. He also pointed out to me that eating soy lowers bioavailable testosterone. He said eating it a few times a month was likely safe but that he himself ate none.

However, Dr Mark Harmon said he found that the problem was in part NOT just because soy was bad for you or that it had no health benefits. He found some evidence that traditional forms of soy foods that are fermented avoid many of the problems reported with soy foods. And, he said that some problems with soy foods were also avoided in a different way with tofu, which is also a traditional soy food.

He was very definite however, that the other forms of soy that are NOT traditional foods such as the soy protein in soy flour, in meatless meats and in health bars, soy milk, and those nontraditional soy foods were likely NOT good for you.

So, when today’s Early to Rise health article was on this subject & was well done, I decided to post it today and comment on it.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

“Soy Foods: Friend or Foe?

By Kelley Herring

You might think there's very little difference between tempeh and tofu. But when it comes to your health, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Why? Unfermented soy foods - like edamame, soy nuts, soy sprouts, soy flour, soy protein isolate, soy milk, and tofu - contain two anti-nutrients: trypsin inhibitors and phytic acid.

Trypsin inhibitors reduce the body's natural ability to digest proteins, and, therefore, assimilate the amino acids in them. Phytic acid reduces the absorption of minerals like magnesium and zinc, essential components of enzymes that participate in hundreds of biochemical processes.

Fermented soy foods, on the other hand - including miso, tempeh, soy sauces, and fermented soy milk and tofu - actually stop the effects of phytic acid. Plus, they create probiotics - "good" bacteria that benefit gut health and increase the assimilation of nutrients in the body.

Studies have shown that it's these traditionally fermented soy foods that should be credited with the reduced rates of cancer and heart disease seen in Asian populations. Not the soy burgers, soy shakes, and other processed soy foods that have been popularized in the last decade.”

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So, the bottom line is that nuts and some whole grains and eggs and whey and such foods as beef fed only grass, pasture raised poultry, wild caught fish and seafood that’s not high in mercury and is sustainably harvested, and nonfat and very lowfat dairy are the best protein foods for your health.

And, full fat cheese and fermented soy foods are best eaten as occasional foods rather than every day or every week foods. (The full fat cheese, particularly from grain fed cows, is too high in omega 6 oils and saturated fat to eat often.)

It does NOT look wise, this information suggests, to eat unfermented soy foods or foods made from them.

And, this specifically includes soy feeding formula for babies. (My wife and I fed our daughter a soy formula plus iron to help ensure she didn’t become allergic to cow’s milk which has since been found unnecessary to prevent that allergy. Unfortunately, she DID become allergic to all soy foods, peas, and peanuts. So far she has survived the experience. But I am not at all sure it’s safe to feed babies soy feeding formula after going through that experience. It has been both scary and obnoxious for her and for my wife and me.)

So, stick to light or occasional or light moderate intake of traditional soy foods and you should be OK if you aren’t allergic to soy. But avoid the nontraditional kinds of soy as they are not that good for you.