How to eat right for your health and upgrade recipes part 3....

Today's Post: Friday, 9-30-2011

This is my fourth post in the 8 ways to stay healthy.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

(We did the first one on Friday, 9-9: 1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks. And, we repost the list of all 8 ways at the end of today’s post.)

This post is part 4 of eating OK and good for you foods..

C. There are several foundation blocks for foods that actually benefit you and your health to eat.

In an earlier post in this series we covered the two kinds of health supporting oils, monosaturated fats and omega 3 oils, particularly those found in fish.

Besides those, the three most important kinds are health OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.

(Fruit and starchy vegetables can be OK but need special handling and although sometimes very beneficial, they are less essential and more a nice to have option than OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.)

This post is about health OK plant protein foods.

Health OK plant proteins have multiple advantages and benefits for your health.

Most of them cost far less than the health OK animal proteins such as wild caught fish, eggs, and meat from birds and animals fed only their natural diets 100 % of their lives.
How do you afford the extra cost for the health OK animal proteins?

One answer is eat the health OK plant proteins a majority of the time.

a) Beans and lentils are particularly good. They are very cheap.

You can boil them once a week yourself after buying them in bulk which costs even less. My wife and I do that with pinto beans which is a staple in my diet. Doing it this way uses no salt. So when add pasta sauce with some salt to the pinto beans for my dinner 3 or 4 evenings a week, my salt intake is still relatively low.

The canned, cooked lentils, I have as part of my breakfast 3 or 4 days a week cost more per serving than the pinto beans we cook ourselves but are still quite inexpensive. The third of a can I eat on those days costs just 66 cents!

Beans and lentils are relatively low glycemic and have a lot of LDL lowering soluble fiber. They have a lot of total fiber and even are high in antioxidants and some vitamins and minerals.

One fatloss expert, Tim Ferris, found that just eating health OK animal protein and nonstarchy vegetables left him and many of the people he was coaching a bit too hungry; but adding some beans turned off the hunger without stopping their fat loss!

Beans and lentils do provide an incomplete protein so I eat them with a bit of parmesan cheese in some cases. The days I eat the canned lentils for breakfast I also eat two boiled eggs; and I have a glass of 2% lowfat milk.

b) Nuts, for those who aren’t allergic to them, are such a potent superfood I once read that people who eat nuts daily live as many MORE years as the number of years LESS people live who are smokers!

Nuts contain health OK and heart health improving monosaturated oils. People who eat them regularly have their protective HDL go up. They also tend to eat less saturated fat and omega 6 oils while still getting the essential oils their body needs.

It is also very important to eat nuts raw or dry roasted only.

The nuts prepared by cooking in oils high in omega 6 and then salted, do taste good but the extra omega 6 oils and salt will cancel the health benefits of the nuts except for the minerals such as magnesium in the nuts. Some prepared nuts even are coated with hydrogenated omega 6 oils which have trans fats and are heart attack starter! So, avoid any nuts of this kind!

Nuts can be a bit expensive. The good news is that Whole Foods Markets sells raw, unsalted nuts in bulk. My wife and I eat walnuts and pecans. And, for almonds, the unsalted almond butter at Whole Foods costs less than the bulk almonds, so we eat that.

Did you know that nuts are high fat but rarely fattening? This counter-intuitive fact is due to two things.

Nuts are crunchy to eat and taste good but take a bit of chewing to eat. That makes them psychologically satisfying.

And nuts are superb at turning off hunger. Protein turns off hunger. Nuts have health OK plant protein. Fats turn off hunger. Nuts have health OK fats and oils. Fiber turns off hunger. Nuts have plenty of fiber. So raw nuts turn off hunger all three ways!

In practice, studies found, that when people eat 500 calories of nuts, they wind up NOT eating 500 calories of other foods and do NOT gain weight.

The one exception to this is nut butters. Between tasting good and requiring very little chewing to eat, you CAN gain weight or stop losing fat if you eat too much. That has happened to both me and author Tim Ferris with almond butter.

Nuts are also an excellent source of the several kinds of natural tocopherols including the alpha tocopherol form, vitamin E.

Even better, nuts are a source of natural tocotrienols which may be even better for your heart and which cost 10 times as much or more as a supplement than getting them from nuts.

(Note that for people who aren’t allergic, peanut butter that has only peanuts or only peanuts and salt is a similar food to almond butter in its effects. Adams makes and I think Laura Scudders makes that kind of peanut butter.

But there are many hazards to peanut butter almond butter does not have.

Many, many more people have potentially fatal allergies to peanuts. So for that reason, it’s much safer if you avoid taking any peanut butter out of your house or putting any peanut butter in your kid’s lunches -- ever.

Even more of a concern, is that most other companies that sell peanut butter add sugar and some even add partially hydrogenated oils. Yikes !! Since this isn’t yet illegal, if you buy peanut butter, you absolutely must read the labels and avoid those kinds.)

c) Mushrooms are only health OK plant protein, fiber, water, taste, and nutrients.

Mushrooms are a nonstarchy vegetable with health OK plant protein, distinctive flavors, and some interesting health benefits.

You can dice them up raw and add them to salads or cook them into cooked egg dishes. You can use them in soups. You can even cook the large Portobello mushrooms in extra virgin olive oil as a center piece for a meal.

Because some wild mushrooms are dangerous to eat, I personally pass on buying wild mushrooms at the store. But Portobello mushrooms are unmistakable. And the inexpensive white and brown mushrooms have the majority of the immune system boosting power of their much more expensive cousins for many dollars less.

That extra immune system boosting power is quite powerful. I’ve read that women who eat mushrooms several times a week are significantly less likely to get breast cancer. I’ve not yet tried eating extra mushrooms to get over a cold or the flu or an infection. But it might well help!

c) Whole grain foods are a mixed review. Some studies show eating 100 % whole grains has health benefits and some show health harm.

So, here’s my take on them.

Bad news first:

Some people are allergic to wheat or do NOT process the gluten in wheat well or at all. This can cause health problems from mild to severe.

Most wheat is grown in large factory farms using pesticides and herbicides and much of it is likely genetically modified. So that’s an issue too.

Even brown rice and 100 % whole wheat flour and the foods made from them have 100 % of the potentially health harming VERY high glycemic index as their whiter, refined cousins. Their glycemic index is about fifty % HIGHER than sugar! Yikes!

So, most people with even slightly elevated blood sugar or type 2 diabetes should take a pass on most whole grain foods in addition to a total pass on all refined grain foods.

Another consideration is that the oil in whole grains is omega 6 oil. So eating a lot of whole grains every day can help cause chronic inflammation.

In addition to that, grains are NOT in the paleo diet. Before 10,000 years ago, people did not eat grains.

That’s one of the reasons many people don’t process grains well.

Here’s the better news about whole grains.:

The other side of the story is that whole grains also have some health benefits and the studies of people who eat ONLY 100% whole grains often show they are healthier than most people. (Of course the people who weren’t as healthy likely had no clue to avoid refined grains and were eating a LOT of them.)

Whole grains are only moderate in price. They are high in plant protein. And, whole grains are high in many kinds of B vitamins and some minerals – notably chromium which helps keep your blood sugar under control.

Whole grains also are high in fiber. In fact, barley, oat bran, and rolled and steel cut oats are each high in soluble fiber which helps lower LDL cholesterol. People who eat them often do seem to have less heart disease.

Wheat germ is a concentrated source of B vitamins including so much choline that eating wheat germ will raise your protective HDL cholesterol. And wheat germ is high in fiber.

I personally eat rolled oats and wheat germ with 2% lowfat milk for these exact reasons. But by cutting back to doing it every other day and eating 2 boiled eggs and some lentils on the other days, it did help me lose 15 pounds of fat.

In addition there are a number of ways to have less harm from eating grains.

Whole grain breads made from sprouted grains are lower glycemic than regular whole grain breads. That’s one partial solution.

Another is to add zero glycemic or very low glycemic foods to whole grains to buffer the blood sugar boost. A piece of 100 % whole grain bread with a good bit of almond butter will boost your blood sugar far less than just the bread by itself. Garlic bread using extra virgin olive oil on a 100 % whole grain bread also boosts your blood sugar less than just the bread alone.

For people who cannot eat gluten, a company called Bob’s Red Mill makes a 100 % gluten free whole grain buckwheat flower. This has more fiber and is lower glycemic than using flour from refined rice. And the foods made with buckwheat flour don’t tend to crumble and fall apart as those do which are made with rice flour.

Then too, you can try making breads or baked goods with a mix of buckwheat flour and pecan meal. That will create a richer taste and be far less glycemic.

The supply of it is now threatened by irresponsible mining near where it is grown; but wild rice can also be worth trying. It has far more fiber and less starch than most grains. You can eat it by itself or mix it with brown rice and nuts to create a dish that is lower glycemic and more filling than brown rice by itself.

Lastly, quinoa, pronounced “Keen Wah” I’ve read, is a grain-like seed that you can use instead of grain. I think it is lower glycemic than real grains. But it can be eaten and cooked with as if it was a grain. And, quinoa also has a more complete set of amino acids for a more high quality protein than grains.

d) Soy foods are a special category. Botanically they are beans. But in use they are much more like grains.

There is moderately good news about some forms of soy and bad news from not great to much worse news about other forms of soy.

If you don’t overdo it and aren’t allergic to soy, eating the OK kinds of soy foods that are OK can be a good idea.

We recommend a total pass on everything else made of soy.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Even for people who aren’t allergic, raw soy or isolated and extracted soy protein are:

hard to digest;

the protein is an incomplete one;

they tend to lower testosterone in men and increase levels of a less known cause of heart disease, lp(a), if I remember correctly. (A local health oriented doctor in my area found that in the literature for scientific research instead of in medical research.)

And, worst of all, the soy used for such products is virtually all from genetically modified plants; and any soy oil in raw soy contains soy oil which is high in the pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils.

My take is that these forms of soy are best always avoided. At the very least, it’s likely not wise to eat them more than a handful of times a month; and even that is questionable. Soy bacon and other soy meat substitutes and soy milk and soy baby formula and “power bars” with soy protein; or other products “fortified with textured or isolated soy protein are all best left on the shelf in my opinion.

The good news is that in cultures where people have eaten soy foods for hundreds of years seem to not have most of these problems with it.

They eat soy foods in moderation as only a part of their diet. And they eat either tofu or fermented soy products such as miso, tempeh, & natto.

These foods are processed in ways that make the soy much safer to eat. And, so far, they grow the soy they use for these foods without the genetically modified plants used for raw soy or isolated and extract soy protein.

By eating these health OK plant protein foods often and combining them and combining them with some health OK animal protein foods, I think you get the best tasting food. And, you definitely get the best health results!

Our next post in this series will be about fruit, juices, and health OK drinks.

* * * *

Here’s the 8 ways to protect your health. (This post above has been following up on the first method with what to do instead.)

There are many, many ways to stay healthy.

But I find these eight ways cover most of the best and most effective methods.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

3. Get regular exercise every week -- mostly doing the most beneficial kinds.

4. Take key supplements.

(For almost every one of the diseases that are in your family history or which millions of people now get or which will kill you if you get them, there are supplements known to prevent or help prevent those diseases.) Hopefully we will get to keep this one as it can add so much to your protection.

5. Avoid tobacco and its smoke.

(Even though they cause 30% of all cancers, some smokers escape cancer. But EVERY exposure to them begins to cause heart disease, damage your lungs, and increase your rate of aging. No one exposed to tobacco smoke escapes this harm! That includes light smokers, teen smokers, and babies exposed to second hand smoke.)

6. Practice some form of physical stress control most days.

(So far, tai chi looks to be the most effective and time efficient way to do this.)

7. Become a purposeful, playful, proactive, and prudent optimist.

(Such people make good things happen and avoid bad ones. Also learn ways to survive and overcome difficulties and bad times that happen anyway.)

8. Practice other key prevention steps. (Brush and floss your teeth and gums well every day. Always wear your seat belt. Get your key blood indicators checked so you don’t get harmed by a problem you could have fixed first. There are more. But those 3 are extremely protective.)

Covering these 8 will turn into a series since each one deserves its own post.

Two spices to protect your heart two ways....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-29-2011

Background: I was taking 300 mg a day of niacin every day right after breakfast. I was exercising almost every day. And, I was drinking red wine almost every day.

In addition to that, I was eating in a heart healthy way. I was eating beans and oatmeal and applesauce which each have soluble fiber. I was drinking lowfat milk and not eating any kind of meat at all often.

To be sure, my family history is such that my LDL cholesterol would have been over 160 if I was doing none of those things. But I was still startled to have my LDL tested to be 130. That’s still moderately high risk.

(To protect your heart, it IS more important in many was to have high HDL, very low triglycerides, and low chronic inflammation as measured by the HSCRP test.

But having low LDL cholesterol IS also protective. Here’s why:

The small particle kind creates blockages by sticking into the spaces in your artery walls it’s so small. Oxidized LDL causes inflammation and can harm your artery walls. And even the usually harmless large kind will harm your artery walls and even destroy your capillaries if excess sugars build up on it. It’s as if your LDL was coated with sticky, coarse sandpaper.)

I decided to do more to lower my LDL cholesterol from that moderate risk level. So, I began taking a second 300 mg tablet of niacin each day after my lunch.

I found out that 300 mg capsules of inositol hexaniacinate, sometimes called “no flush niacin” provide about 250 mg of niacin as the niacin is gradually released from the inositol. So I also added one of those a day at breakfast and one at dinner.

Niacin does the heart protecting triple! It increases your HDL and lowers both your LDL and your triglycerides. (Foods that contain hydrogenated oils and tobacco smoke are so dangerous because they each do the reverse!)

And, I began taking beta sitosterol 3 times a day. (Sterols lower LDL cholesterol safely. Margarines with sterols had lowered LDL cholesterol. But I was delighted to find I did NOT have to eat the bad for me margarines to get the sterols! (The beta sitosterol, sterol supplement I’ve been taking by Natrol is called Cholesterol Balance. Even with tax, that’s just been about $8 for a 20 day supply. That’s just $12 a month!)

I retested in a few months and my LDL was down to 96. A few months after that, it was 106. Those were low risk readings. I was quite pleased. I had made a special effort to lower my LDL with these supplements and it worked!

Of course, I’ve continued to take the supplements since.

Then I added three things.

I found out that taking the supplement curcumin, which is in the spice turmeric looks promising to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. I began taking a curcumin supplement once a day.

Then I found out that eating foods spiced with curry which have turmeric and other spices, particularly black pepper, makes the curcumin more available to your body. I saw research that begins to explain how curcumin prevents Alzheimer’s disease. I saw that the inflammation reduction from curcumin or turmeric also helps prevent many cancers! So I also eat curry and turmeric and black pepper on my dinner three or four times a week as spices.

I also like the mellow heat after you eat ginger or drink a good bit of powdered ginger mixed into water. So as a tonic when I get up each day, I began to drink a small glass of water with about a tablespoon of ginger stirred into it. (I knew that doing this makes motion sickness less likely. But I did it for the tonic feeling in my mouth from the ginger.)

(Some people get the same effect by using the actual ginger root, peeled and diced to make ginger tea.)

And, I’ve read that, botanically, ginger and turmeric are related and are similar in some ways.

So, I realized these 3 things were likely keeping my chronic inflammation low.

And, we now know that low chronic inflammation helps prevent heart disease as well as many cancers.

So far that has seemed promising. I like the ginger tonics each morning. And, by adding extra virgin olive oil and pasta sauce to the curry and turmeric, I like the dinners I eat that has them all.

THEN, I had occasion to get my blood lipids tested.

My LDL had dropped ANOTHER 30 points to the mid 70’s range!

That’s extremely low risk for heart disease!

I wondered if the curcumin, turmeric, curry, and the related ginger might have done this. But I wasn’t sure.

Then I read a bit in Dr Dean Ornish’s new book, The Spectrum. I found a reference there that studies HAVE found that turmeric DOES lower LDL cholesterol.

Aha!

Does that mean that if you want to lower your LDL or total cholesterol and protect your heart, you might want to do as I did with these spices and supplements?

It very well might. Except for some people who have liver problems that the niacin might make worse, each of these steps is safe, have virtually no bad side effects, and clearly lower LDL and protect your heart. (Since the niacin tablet I take is only 300 mg; and I only take it after eating my breakfast for the first one and after my lunch for the second, I rarely get much of a flush reaction from it.)

You can get blood tests for your liver to check though the amount of niacin I take is usually OK. I get the tests and take milk thistle for extra protection for my liver.

The reason I did this post is to add the information on curcumin and the turmeric and curries it’s in and the information on ginger.

Many doctors know about niacin. Some doctors know about sterols. But few people or doctors yet know that turmeric and ginger lower LDL cholesterol and chronic inflammation. So far, I think Dr Ornish is one of the few doctors who know this.

That definitely means that turmeric and ginger are each superfoods for your heart!

Now you know about them too!

The basics of fatloss....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 9-27-2011

We’ve already posted on this topic quite often in parts.

An example is yesterday’s post on the new information that the diet soft drinks so many people consume DO tend to make them fat.

(Drinking diet soft drinks often goes with eating other things that are fattening.
When your body gets the sweet taste it releases insulin to power down the expected blood sugar surge. But that drives down your blood sugar then making you very hungry for fattening, sweet foods. And, the insulin tells your body to store fat and hold onto it.

Then there’s the recent research finding that diet soft drinks and artificial sweeteners lower your metabolism so you burn less calories which also makes you fat or makes fat loss much harder.)

The 3 biggest basics are:

A. You have to custom fit your fat loss plan to you because YOU have to be the one doing it.

The way you put together your fat loss plan has to custom fit you. You can grow into things and do more. You can learn new skills.

But to work, you have to upgrade your life and keep doing the upgrades. Your plan has to work using things you are willing to try. It has to help you develop an upgraded lifestyle you can keep doing. The way your plan works has to also help you achieve the goals you want.

At each step, ask yourself, what of this am I willing to try? How can I use this? What seems to be working for me? How can I make this fit me or my lifestyle better and still get the job done?

B. Your plan has to leave you with your energy levels intact or improved. Your plan has to slightly increase your metabolism or at least leave it the same. And, your plan has to keep you from being excessively hungry all the time.

It’s also helpful if you can do much of it on autopilot once you set it up and get used to it. (You may put your thumb in the dike to hold back the flood. But you can’t hold your thumb in it forever. You need to upgrade to a permanent repair so you can also attend to the rest of your life.)


And, it is extremely important to find ways to support your efforts from strategic information to giving you solutions to common problems to encouragement or even direct individual coaching.

Each of these helps virtually guarantee your success and not having them or worse, having the reverse, definitely makes failure much more likely.

Probably the single most important one is this: People who lose fat without extra hunger most of the time usually succeed. People who are too hungry all the time for too long all fail.

One reason for this is your body’s built in famine response failsafe. If your body decides you are in a famine, it makes you a LOT hungrier; you have far less energy; and your metabolism goes down. Worse, your body orders up fat storage and restrictions on fat withdrawal to ensure you keep up your emergency reserve in case the famine is a long one!

Hunger free fatloss is sustainable fat loss. That means you never gain it back!

C. An orientation to protecting your health is vital!

There are two reasons for this.

There is about an 80 to 90 percent overlap of the lifestyle that will help you lose fat and keep it off and the lifestyle that enables you to be healthy and stay that way.

If you learn and follow the lifestyle that enables you to be healthy and stay that way, adding the other specific fat loss skills is easy!

The other reason is also extremely important. There are often times that your motivation to be less fat may be a bit on the low side. But if the tempting but fattening thing you are presented with also is extremely harmful to your health, you may well be able to pass on it even when your fat loss motivation is temporarily low!

What do you do to get all that done?

1. Stop eating or drinking things that either, make you hungry, don’t turn down your hunger when you eat them, are fattening, or are harmful.

This one is HUGE lever for fatloss. It’s even potentially easy to do. Why? Eliminating most of these foods and drinks either has no effect on how hungry you are, or it may even make you LESS hungry.

The potential in just this one strategy is astounding. Today, most Americans eat and drink virtually only things in this category! They are from 15 to 105 pounds fatter than they would be if this were not the case. If they stopped 100 % and followed the next strategy well for a year or two they would be 10 to 80 pounds less fat even without doing the other things we list to get rid of excess fat.

Other than changing their patterns, it would be and often has been ridiculously easy. There’s no extra hunger to deal with at all!

2. Do eat and drink the things that support and protect your health and do so without fattening you.

You get a lot of extra leverage if they are good at making you feel full and less hungry.

You get mental leverage if you know why they support your health.

And, you also get a lot of extra leverage if you enjoy eating or drinking them; combine them in ways you enjoy; or get used to eating things that for you are OK but not great but which turn off your hunger well or give you superb health benefits.

3. You can lose fat more easily, be far healthier and even enjoy life more, and will be dramatically more likely to keep any fat you lose from returning if you also add exercise.

You can lose weight and fat without exercising. But if you exercise you lose the fat faster and most of the weight you lose is fat only. That ensures you don’t harm your health with your weight loss. And, it also means your body won’t work to make you gain back the muscle and bone you lost. That makes it a LOT easier to keep off the fat if you exercise.

Interval cardio and strength training help you ADD muscle and bone. That makes you healthier and tends to increase the calories you burn all day long.

It’s also true that if you eat wrong and exercise, you will tend to stay fat though you will be much healthier.

The second strategic reason to add exercise is that if you try to get all your net calorie reduction from taking in less calories, you may get too hungry.

Oops! If you get too hungry, that’s BADD news! Game over. You lose. And your fat loss stops.

But you may well easily get away with cutting back half that much on calories by doing the first two strategies. Then by adding exercise for the other half you lose fat just fine. But you do NOT get so hungry you fail.

And, there’s two more reasons to exercise.

If you get regular, vigorous exercise every week, your body regulates your blood sugar using LESS insulin for shorter periods of time. That does prevent type 2 diabetes. But this effect is HUGE for fat loss. With this lower amount of insulin in your system if you do have a sweet treat, your body will store far less of it as fat. The excess insulin to do that has been removed by the exercise you’ve been doing.

The other reason is the massive and astounding health benefits of regular exercise. It helps prevent almost every kind of preventable disease. But in addition to that, your rate of aging slows, your sex life improves or stays as good, and you think better and are much less likely to get or stay depressed. You even grow new brain cells.

4. It’s also helpful to find a way to eat some of your meals each week where you find extra ways to cut calories with out adding much to your hunger and to be extra strict mostly by using foods that have more fiber or protein or less calories.

There are several styles. Our upcoming eBook on Fat Loss will feature the one I find most doable.

This category is important.

Some people won’t lose fat without doing it.

(I was never hugely fat since I ate so much less junky food than most people. But until I learned to do this step, I was unable to lose the extra fat I did have. When I used this step, the fat and pounds came off.)

It is the one strategy that is NOT included in just doing what’s best for your health.

But, surprisingly, it can be reasonably easy to do.

By eating right and exercising far less of a cut back is needed. And since you don’t eat that way at every single meal, it’s MUCH more doable. You CAN keep doing it.

5. Make a study of what foods and drinks prevent the avoidable diseases and which ones do the reverse.

You can prevent something like half of all cancers and the majority of heart disease (and erectile dysfunction) with this knowledge. And, it’s beginning to look as if you can also prevent well over half of all kinds of mental decline – including Alzheimer’s disease.

This knowledge makes it MUCH easier to pass on eating things that are fattening when you also know it will cause you to be sick, in pain, or die or spend thousands of dollars in preventable medical bills!

6. Set up your own system to track your efforts. You may not be able to directly manage your results. But you can track what improves them or makes them worse if you track your results.

And, a proven way to keep up exercise and feel good when you make progress is to keep a log of the exercise you do.

This also gives you an early warning to make an extra effort or make corrections if you begin to gain weight or fat in time to turn off the problem.

7. Find ways to support yourself in your efforts or use a paid service that will give you fatloss support.

This one step can double your chances of success.

I think this can be done more effectively than Weight Watchers does it and am working on a service that will be better.

But until then, if you add these basics to attending their meetings or using their online service, it may be very helpful to you.

By using all these methods together, your chance of successfully achieving fat loss that is successful and permanent and will avoid making you hungry all the time go from less than 10 % to well over 90%.

New information shows diet drinks and artificial sweeteners DO fatten you....

Today's Post: Monday, 9-26-2011

We’ve already posted that two of the reasons for this are that:

Drinking diet soft drinks makes you hungrier for sweet foods within a short time after that.

People who drink diet soft drinks often eat them with the same fattening foods such as potato chips and French fries and the like that they were eating with regular soft drinks before.

But since then, I’ve found out it gets MUCH worse than that!

1. Recently, I read that the reason that you get hungry for sweet foods later in the day after drinking diet soft drinks is that your body releases the insulin needed to lower the blood sugar spike it expects because of the sweet taste.

Then your blood sugar drops and you immediately are hungry for something sweet to bring your blood sugar back up to normal.

That alone can cause fat gain. You tend to get strong cravings for sugary, fattening foods and eat some.

But, here’s why it’s so much worse. These insulin surges also are a biochemical messenger that tell your body to add more fat from the food available and hold onto this added fat even if it’s needed for the energy you are using.

That tends to fatten you and make it harder to remove the fat! Oops!

2. I just read an article, “Artificial Sweeteners Could Be Sabotaging Your Diet” by Mark Hyman, MD.

He quotes research showing that drinking diet soft drinks also likely slows your metabolism.

Without even realizing it, when you drink diet soft drinks, you also burn fewer calories each week!

That also tends to fatten you and make it harder to remove the fat! Oops!

This is a huge issue. About two thirds of adult Americans drink diet soft drinks or eat sweet treats often made with refined grains and sweetened with artificial sweeteners.

Most of them are fat or still fat too!

A) To lose fat and keep it off, you need to do several things.

To NOT get fat in the first place, you need to do the same several things.

1. Eat foods that turn off your hunger but do so without feeding you too many calories. Eat foods that boost your insulin levels very little.

Then you stay trim and free of excess fat WITHOUT getting extra hungry.

2. Get either a lot of exercise or get exercise that burns calories after you stop doing it or both.

3. Doing both things together, eating right AND exercise, gets the job done.

B) How to fail at fat loss and weight loss:

1. Trigger your famine response. Trying to lose fat and its weight by eating less than we are hungry for usually triggers your famine response. When you keep doing eating less than you are hungry for long enough it almost always does so.

That makes you very hungry and particularly hungry for fattening foods.

And, it slows your metabolism so you also burn fewer calories.

That stops fat loss even if you force yourself not to eat the fattening things. But after days and days of this, few people can resist eating more fattening things.

It’s a failsafe most of us have since we are descended from people who survived famines. The people without it died and we are not descended from them!

2. Do something else that makes you particularly hungry for fattening foods and slows your metabolism.

NOW we know, drinking diet soft drinks DOES fatten because it does exactly that!

Permanent fat loss without excessive hunger IS possible.

But two sure ways to trigger the opposite are:

to temporarily eat way less than we are hungry for every day for weeks --

and/or to drink diet soft drinks or eat sweet treats sweetened by artificial sweeteners.

What is the solution?

a) Drink things that have NO sweetener – with NO sugar or high fructose corn syrup OR artificial sweeteners.

Such as?

Water! (Chilled or iced water is even better since you need extra calories to combat the chill.)

Tea or green tea with no milk or sweetener added. (Milk prevents some of the health benefits of tea and unsweetened cocoa or chocolate.)

Hot drinks with only unsweetened cocoa or chocolate added and NO sweetener added.

Black coffee or coffee with 2% lowfat milk but no sweetener added.

Water that is only carbonated -- or chilled or iced water that is only carbonated but with NO sweetener added.

b) Eat some treats with real sugar (and NOT high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners); but eat those treats once or twice a month or less instead of two or three times a day or more.

Or eat treats that have no sweetener added. Eat raw nuts if you aren’t allergic or eat some low glycemic whole fresh fruit for treats instead of sugary treats. Or eat savory treats like guacamole or hummus.

How to eat right for your health and upgrade recipes part 3....

Today's Post: Friday, 9-23-2011

This is my fourth post in the 8 ways to stay healthy.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

(We did the first one in this series on Friday, 9-9: 1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks. And, we repost the list of all 8 ways at the end of today’s post.)

This post is part 3 of eating OK and good for you foods. The post on Monday, 9-12 was part one. The post last Friday, 9-16 was part two.

C. There are several foundation blocks for foods that actually benefit you and your health to eat.

In an earlier post in this series we covered the two kinds of health supporting oils, monosaturated fats and omega 3 oils, particularly those found in fish.

Besides those, the three most important kinds are health OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.

(Fruit and starchy vegetables can be OK but need special handling and although sometimes very beneficial, they are less essential and more a nice to have option than OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.)

This post is about health OK animal protein foods.

There is some evidence that the Paleo diet and the low carb, high protein diet for fat loss are mostly sound. They work to produce good health and to keep you trim and reasonably lean.

Before 10,000 years ago almost everyone ate that way. That means that for the hundreds of thousands of years before 10,000 years ago, our genetic patterns were based on eating that way.

That specifically means that if you have excess fat you want to remove and never get back, you will get better results if you eat in this way. Despite earlier efforts to ignore the evidence or think it faked, people who eat a paleo diet or a high protein, low carb diet do tend to get and stay trim. So, permanently upgrading your eating habits to a version of these diets is one of the keys to losing excess fat you then keep off.

But there have been some changes since 10,000 years ago in the content and health effects of animal protein foods.

Some animal protein foods are as good as they were 10,000 years ago. Some are almost as good.

But the majority of animal protein foods in most stores today are not good for you to eat in terms of their impact on your health. One kind has recently been found to be pretty harmful in fact.

One kind even will help prevent you from losing fat even though you have cut back on carbs and eliminated the most fattening carbs!

It seems many kinds of animal protein foods, I just found out, are treated with an effective fattener. Then if you eat those, you get the fattener along with the protein! Yikes!

There are two solutions to this.

One is to eat health OK plant protein foods too. That’s practical since the lower cost of those helps make eating the health OK animal protein foods that cost more, considerably more doable. Even better, plant protein foods tend to improve your health in ways complementary to animal protein foods. They also have fiber that helps you feel full and not hungry better than just eating animal protein foods and nonstarchy vegetables is able to do.

The second solution is in three parts.

The health damaging animal protein foods have several problems. Their fat contains excessive amounts of the chronic inflammation producing omega 6 oils from the grains they are fed. They are often deliberately fattened by penning them up and by giving them estrogen which has a fattening effect. Because the grain the animals are fed is grown with pesticides and herbicides, the fat in the animals has pesticides and herbicides in it but more bioconcentrated than it was in the grain they ate.

Then, some of these animal protein foods from grain fed animals are also “processed” by adding preservatives and excess salt. Researchers recently found the preservatives, high amounts of nitrates and nitrites, cause damage to the insides of your blood vessels which acts as heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure starter. Even worse, processed meats tend to be fattier meats.

So, the three parts of this solution are:

a) Eat less animal protein foods and when you do so, mostly eat those that were able to eat their natural diet. The best choice now is to eat wild caught fish that are high in omega 3 oils but low in mercury and other pollutants. Sardines, herring, small mackerel, and wild caught salmon are examples. (Farmed fish not only do not fit, they tend to contain so much of so many pollutants that they are the worst kind of animal protein to eat if you want to keep your health!)

The other choice is to eat 100 % grass fed beef, lamb, or buffalo or eat poultry that was only pasture fed in an area where the pasture was pollutant free.

b) Since most of the problem with protein from grain fed animals is in their fat, when you do eat these foods, make it as lean and fat free as you can manage.

Butcher’s Kitchen and Jaccard make mechanical meat tenderizers that can enable this kind of very lean meat to be decently tender. And you can add back extra virgin olive oil to carry flavors and add to the hunger reducing ability of the meat.

Skinless poultry also works.

For these foods, slow cooking in a Crock Pot or other slow cooker also works well.

(These cooking methods also work with 100% grass fed meats since they too tend to be quite lean.)

I recently found out that nonfat and 1% lowfat milk have had inflammatory dried milk added. But 2% lowfat milk has only about half the fat of whole milk and avoids that problem.

Eggs have so much very high quality protein and the yolks have so many powerfully helpful nutrients and not that much fat, they are a good idea to eat a few times a week. They tend to raise your beneficial HDL cholesterol.

That means eating some eggs is OK even if the chickens were grain fed. Of course, when you can get eggs from chickens that were pasture fed in an area where the pasture was pollutant free, that’s the best kind. They not only have fewer harmful ingredients, they have more nutrition and look and taste noticeably better.

c) The third part of this solution is to eat the most harmful kinds of animal protein far less and to eat the most health OK animal protein foods and health OK plant protein more.

Many people eat a processed meat every day for breakfast. Bacon, sausage, and ham are common. (Once or twice a month or never is dramatically better for you!)

Then they eat a processed meat or a grain fed meat for lunch.

Then they eat a grain fed meat for dinner.

Yikes!

That can work for fat loss. But it is a health disaster otherwise. And, the people who now eat that way would lose more fat and keep it off better eating only health OK proteins instead. The estrogen and other chemicals in these purposely fattened animals gets into the blood stream of the people who eat this way. The health OK proteins have none of these things in them

Health OK animal protein foods and health OK plant protein foods do NOT have these problems. In fact, wild caught fish high in omega 3 and beans and lentils even have some antidotes for these problems!

Our next post in this series will be about the health OK plant protein foods.

* * * *

Here’s the 8 ways to protect your health. (This post above has been following up on the first method with what to do instead.)

There are many, many ways to stay healthy.

But I find these eight ways cover most of the best and most effective methods.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

3. Get regular exercise every week -- mostly doing the most beneficial kinds.

4. Take key supplements.

(For almost every one of the diseases that are in your family history or which millions of people now get or which will kill you if you get them, there are supplements known to prevent or help prevent those diseases.) Hopefully we will get to keep this one as it can add so much to your protection.

5. Avoid tobacco and its smoke.

(Even though they cause 30% of all cancers, some smokers escape cancer. But EVERY exposure to them begins to cause heart disease, damage your lungs, and increase your rate of aging. No one exposed to tobacco smoke escapes this harm! That includes light smokers, teen smokers, and babies exposed to second hand smoke.)

6. Practice some form of physical stress control most days.

(So far, tai chi looks to be the most effective and time efficient way to do this.)

7. Become a purposeful, playful, proactive, and prudent optimist.

(Such people make good things happen and avoid bad ones. Also learn ways to survive and overcome difficulties and bad times that happen anyway.)

8. Practice other key prevention steps. (Brush and floss your teeth and gums well every day. Always wear your seat belt. Get your key blood indicators checked so you don’t get harmed by a problem you could have fixed first. There are more. But those 3 are extremely protective.)

Covering these 8 will turn into a series since each one deserves its own post.

New reason to quit smoking and other ways to avoid mental decline....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-22-2011

There at least a dozen effective ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of mental decline.

Some literally build up your brain. Some prevent it from harm. Many of those also help prevent Alzheimer’s disease too. Some specifically prevent Alzheimer’s disease. And, some make your brain work well or better if you have any brain left to use. There are ways to reverse some kinds of mental decline that mimic Alzheimer’s or are causing it by removing their causes. Removing mercury from your body is one of these. Ensuring adequate levels of vitamin B12 is another.
There are even a few things that actually help people with early stage Alzheimer’s disease to function better.

This post is in three parts.

The first one lists why smoking is so much worse for you than virtually all smokers know it is.

The second one is about the new information that smoking not only causes mental decline and helps cause Alzheimer’s disease, if you smoke and stop your memory gets better very quickly!

And, the third part lists some of the most important ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and mental decline.

1. Incredibly, I read recently that a third of the people don’t even know tobacco smoke is bad for you. Yikes!

Most of the rest of people and virtually all smokers have no clue whatever that
smoking is as bad for you as it actually is. They think that smoking’s big problem is that it causes cancer. And smokers tend to assume they will be one of the lucky people who don’t get cancer.

Avoid tobacco smoke.

Yes, it produces 30 % of all cancers and 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancers. To be fair, some smokers don’t get cancer.

NEWSFLASH: Tobacco smoke is horribly worse for you than that. And no one exposed to it escapes harm! (Unfortunately few smokers have any clue about the larger dangers from smoking.)

EVERY single exposure to tobacco smoke begins to deposit the plaque in your arteries that causes high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and erectile dysfunction. It also causes you have the lung power and breathing capacity of a MUCH older person. This is true even for teens and brand new smokers!

There’s more too!

Exposure to tobacco smoke triggers heart attacks in people who would have otherwise escaped them.

And second hand smoke harms the people who are exposed to it in all the same ways, including babies and small children.

2. One of the main causes of vascular dementia and mental decline is bad circulation to your brain. There is even some evidence that bad blood flow and the things that cause bad blood flow help to cause Alzheimer’s disease.

One study recent found that people who: avoid soft drinks and fast food and packaged foods and eat real food including nonstarchy vegetables and who use mostly olive oil; exercise regularly; and completely avoid tobacco smoke tended to escape getting Alzheimer’s disease.

These things each tend to protect your heart, lower chronic inflammation, keep your blood sugar from being too high and from your blood vessels being destroyed. Guess what? That means your circulation to your brain stays good. And we now know that regular exercise actually grows new brain cells and nerves.

Another study found a direct link from smoking to getting Alzheimer’s disease.
(Given what we now know about bad circulation helping to cause Alzheimer’s disease and how effective tobacco smoke is in causing your circulation to become worse, this is no surprise!)

But just this week, there was better news or much scarier news depending on your point of view.

People who didn’t smoke or who stopped long enough ago, performed 25% better on tests of memory than people who still smoked.

That means that even if you don’t have mental decline yet, if you smoke, your mental abilities are already noticeably less than they would be if you didn’t smoke!

The better news is that if you quit smoking, your memory will get better. And, a 25% difference is a BIG difference.

3. We’ve already listed in parts one and two ways to avoid mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

a) Avoid soft drinks and fast food and packaged foods and eat real food including nonstarchy vegetables and use mostly olive oil; exercise regularly; and completely avoid tobacco smoke.

(The DASH II diet with olive oil instead of oils high in omega 6 such as soy, corn, and canola is one way to eat well and stay healthy. The Mediterranean diet with lots of nonstarchy vegetables and less pasta, bread, and processed meats such as salami works well. The paleo diet but, instead of fatty meats from grain fed animals -- eat meat only from 100 % grass fed animals but in moderation, chicken that has been pasture fed or only skinless chicken if grain fed, some eggs, raw and unsalted nuts if you aren’t allergic, wild caught fish that is low in mercury, and beans for protein; then add some olive oil also works.

You’ll notice these 3 diets tend to overlap and all avoid junk foods and refined grain and excessive sugar. And they also all include health OK protein mostly monosaturated oils and oils high in omega 3; and abundant nonstarchy vegetables.)

b) Regular exercise actually grows new brain cells and nerves. And, that’s in addition to its positive effects on better circulation and blood flow to your brain!

c) Your brain is like the internet. If you keep adding new quality information and interconnections, you can lose more of the hardware and still have the system function. But your brain is also better than the internet. Even people over 80 grow new brain cells and interconnections when they learn new things. Learning and regular exercise actually help you to even add more capacity to your brain!

So, educate yourself in areas you find important or find really interesting. Whether scanning the internet for information or formal courses, keep learning new things almost every week.

And, incredibly, people who converse with other people often not only have lower physical stress which helps prevent mental decline, they actually turn their brains on high and get huge mental exercise effects!

How can something that feels so easy most of the time do that?!

We’ve done it since we were very young kids maybe from before we can remember much as younger toddlers. We’ve done it so long it tends to feel quite easy.

But the brain power you use while conversing and your actually measured mental processing while doing it virtually as high as it is solving complex math problems!

So talk to people! Your brain will be in top shape and you’ll feel less stressed if you do it well. Both things prevent mental decline.

d) Avoid ingesting mercury and get enough B vitamins, particularly vitamin B12.

As much as 30% of all high fructose corn syrup contains mercury because of the way it’s made.

It also tends to spike blood sugar which causes obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Each of these harm your circulation to your brain. And too high levels of blood sugar have been implicated as causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

So, one important way to avoid mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease is to make an extremely strong effort to never eat any high fructose corn syrup! If a treat or other food lists high fructose corn syrup or corn sugar or corn syrup on the label, set it down! Do not buy any or eat or drink any!

Mercury is also in swordfish, shark, and the large King Mackerel although the smaller mackerel tend to not have that much. Don’t eat these three kinds of fish. Tuna are large predatory fish and tend to be moderately high in mercury. If you already have too much mercury or are pregnant or breast feeding, don’t eat ANY tuna. Eating some tuna once or twice a month is likely OK for most people. But be sure not to eat it more often than that!

Vegan vegetarians, people taking the potentially beneficial drug metformin, people taking antacids every week or taking proton pump inhibitor drugs for reflux disease and people over 70 who no longer digest their food well all are at risk of mental impairment from lack of vitamin B12.

People who get way too little vitamin B12 become somewhat mentally impaired. In older people who have been B12 deficient for a good bit, this can even look like Alzheimer’s disease. But it isn’t & getting enough B12 will mostly reverse this kind of mental decline.

If your blood levels of B12 test very low, the most effective way to restore them is to have your doctor who helped you get the test and saw the very low results to give you B12 shots.

You can also take 1,000 mcg a day of a form of B12 in small tablets that dissolve in your mouth and the B12 goes directly into your blood stream. That way if you take antacids every week or taking proton pump inhibitor drugs every day or are old enough your digestion has become less effective, you still get enough B12.

Lastly, if you eat a lot of nonstarchy vegetables or take folic acid or both AND you get enough B12 and avoid tobacco smoke, your homocysteine goes down.

So far, in my view because of how they have tested it, getting enough folate and B12 to lower homocysteine has not yet tested as reversing heart disease.

But lowering homocysteine these 3 ways HAS tested as helping to prevent mental decline.

As you’ve seen, avoiding tobacco smoke and getting enough B12 work in more than one way to prevent mental decline. So does getting enough folate from eating a lot of nonstarchy vegetables each week.

e) There is some evidence that the curcumin in turmeric which is one of the main ingredients in curry spice and getting 4,000 iu to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 not only each help your body prevent the beta amyloid plaques that are part of the process of causing Alzheimer’s disease, they also help your body reverse the process new research has found. Best of all they seem to work even better if you get both of them! (People in India who eat curried foods almost every day hardly ever get Alzheimer’s disease which is how this effect was initially discovered.)

Also, when I added taking curcumin and eating curried food a few times a week and eating some ginger, a cousin of turmeric, most days, my LDL cholesterol fell by 30 points! Dr Dean Ornish notes this effect in his book, The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Gain Health. So the lower LDL from doing these 3 things happens to other people too. And it’s a lot cheaper and dramatically safer way to lower LDL than taking statin drugs.

f) Eating organic blueberries raises your HDL which helps keep your brain’s blood circulation good. But doing this apparently does far more for your brain.

People who have had minor mental decline who start eating a lot of blueberries each week, often reverse several years worth of decline and have measurably better memory.

(I eat a large serving of organic blueberries three times a week. And I take a bilberry supplement once a day. Bilberries are a kind of blueberry.)

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post: Monday, 9-19-2011

Since last month, I lost a half pound.

This past month my waist measured the same as the month before.

I also took two measures to try to make them more comparable. The normally but not excessively relaxed waist measure, the conservative one, was the same 39 & 3/4 inches as that same measure last month. The normally but not excessively tense measure was about 38 inches.

I now need to lose 5 1/2 pounds total to return to my goal weight. And, I still need to lose at least three to 6 inches off my waist.

According to pictures I’ve seen, I’m now at about 22 % bodyfat or a bit more, perhaps 25%. To remove my abdominal fat, according to those same pictures, I also need to add enough muscle to stay at or just slightly below my goal weight AND lose about 12% to 15% of my current bodyweight as fat.

This translates into losing 20 to 25 pounds of fat while gaining 14 to 20 pounds of muscle.

My strength training has gone decently lately; but I’ll eventually need to add some heavier dumbbells and go the gym to use heavier weights as well to do that. That’s mostly true for leg exercises since I’ve not done enough heavier exercises for them.

(Eventually I’ll also need to get a specialized minibike exerciser I can use while seated at my desk and another I can use while reading at home.

They don’t yet make those that I know of but most people today need them. Given the health harm of sitting too much and how many people do that, these minibikes and chairs that match them well are coming soon I think.

Walking burns about 300 calories an hour. (200 if you are skinny and walk slowly to over 500 if you walk really fast or walk somewhat fast but are much heavier.)

Using a seated minibike exerciser that you use much less effort on but keep moving slowly most of the time you sit can easily burn 50 calories an hour.

Then if like many people today you sit for 6 hours a day, you could easily add an extra 2100 calories a week by using a seated minibike exerciser most of the time you sit at home or at work. That would help people lose about 2 and a half pounds a month for a few months once they got into the habit of always using one.

If I’d used one of the seated minibikes since I began my current fatloss plan, I’d still need to add the extra muscle to be at my goal weight. But I’d be trying to add muscle weight to get back to my goal weight! That’s because I’d be 10 to 15 pounds less fat.

A. Last month, my two part plan to eat differently was a bit better.

1. My plan to eat less almond butter was a bit better.

I was unable to cut back to one serving a week. But I did cut back last month a bit from what I ate the month before that.

2. I had also planned to eat a few thawed frozen, organic, broccoli sprouts in place of the almond butter. (I had found before that adding nonstarchy vegetables is effective.)

I DID manage to eat a good bit more thawed frozen, organic, broccoli sprouts last month. I put the frozen chunks in their container much more consistently and ate some of the thawed florets most evenings last month.

To the extent that I ate less almond butter, this likely was what helped me to do that.

That was my most important goal for last month.

Next month I need to be sure to continue doing this!

B. I still had the significant worry most of last month. But I have taken action to resolve it. And, I have worked on building a just in case strategy too since last month.

I’ll still worry for quite a while since it will take months to know if my efforts helped, but I’m somewhat calmer emotionally. That will help me avoid gaining fat from eating too many comfort foods.

C. Though some of my progress was stopped by a minor injury on my two evenings a week doing jump rope, I was making progress before that. And, wanting to make sure the minor injury stays healed once it does, even though I had to cut back a bit from what I had planned, I’ve been better about doing the jump rope both evenings a week instead of just once.

D. The week before my measurement day last month, my wife and I went to a special breakfast. I ate well. I don’t think I ate enough extra to gain 3 pounds. But some of the 3 pounds I gained last month may be because I overdid a bit then.

We were unable to go to that monthly event this time. So that may have helped too.

E. The good news is that most of what I did to lose the 15 pounds I wanted and 3 pounds extra is still in place. I’m still doing those things. And, I am still 9 and 1/2 pounds lighter than I was when I started.

I’ll keep that up and work to implement the fixes from the problems I had last month and the month before.

I’ll let you know how that works next month!

How to eat right for your health and upgrade recipes part 2….

Today's Post: Friday, 9-16-2011

This is my third post in the 8 ways to stay healthy.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

(We did the first one last Friday, 9-9: 1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks. And, we repost the list of all 8 ways at the end of today’s post.)

This post is part 2 of eating OK and good for you foods. The post last Monday, 9-12 was part one.

C. There are several foundation blocks for foods that actually benefit you and your health to eat.

In the last post in this series we covered the two kinds of health supporting oils, monosaturated fats and omega 3 oils, particularly those found in fish.

Besides those, the three most important kinds are health OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.

(Fruit and starchy vegetables can be OK but need special handling and although sometimes very beneficial, they are less essential and more a nice to have option than OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.)

This post is about nonstarchy vegetables.

Eating them is so valuable it’s like buying gold for a few pennies.

The more nonstarchy vegetables, particularly organic ones, are in your food, the better your health will be.

They create the effect of a multivitamin and mineral supplement with hundreds of extra ingredients that both have direct benefits and make the others deliver more benefits than they would by themselves.

They actually have a low dollar price compared to other foods. Considering their very large value for your health that makes them huge bargains.

But their second major value is that the cost of eating nonstarchy vegetables to your waistline and potential for excess fat is so low it’s almost zero.

Between their very low calorie content and their high fiber content, eating nonstarchy vegetables fills you up and helps you to turn down hunger and be less fat.

You need to eat health OK protein foods and oils to make this effect last longer once the vegetables leave your stomach.

But while the fiber from the vegetables is in your stomach, it becomes dramatically easier to pass up harmful and very fattening foods. And, it makes it much easier too to avoid eating too many calories of the health OK proteins and oils also.

The other thing is that the health benefits are so very high for nonstarchy vegetables.

Raw cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and many others reduce your risk of most cancers. Best of all they can cut your chances of getting the kind of aggressive cancers that do the most harm and kill the most people by as much as half.

Nonstarchy vegetables that are high in the many kinds of carotenes also bring you many kinds of benefits. The best way to eat those is to eat them cooked along with extra virgin olive oil. That’s because the cooking and the olive oil together increase your access to the carotenes by over 10 times.

Many carotenes prevent cancer, two give your eyes very strong protection, and they also tend to make you more able to throw off or survive infections. They help protect your ears and hearing from loud noises. And they help protect your skin from sun damage.

Then between the lower sun damage to your skin and the slightly reddish glow they give your skin, you look healthier.

Best of all, this is actually true. You ARE healthier. The people who have the highest blood levels of alpha carotene from eating these vegetables have lower rates of most diseases and live longer than people who have low levels of alpha carotene.

Tomatoes, particularly cooked tomatoes and pureed ones, are high in carotenes.

So too are broccoli and kale. That means that people who eat broccoli or kale raw protect their health. And people who eat them cooked protect their health. That means it will pay you to do both!

Carrots, orange and yellow squash, sweet potatoes, and yams are also high in carotenes. (Pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and yams are a bit starchy but can be eaten in moderation. And if you cook them and add extra virgin olive oil, you not only get more of the carotenes, the zero blood sugar boost of the olive oil buffers the blood sugar boost from their starches.)

Vegetables can be a bit of an acquired taste.

Here are three solutions.

1. Eat the ones that are most nutritious so often that you simply get used to them. That’s worked for me when I eat the raw broccoli florets in my lunch.

2. Find ways to prepare them that create a dish that tastes good even if the vegetable doesn’t quite do so. (Much of the cuisine of traditional cultures that tend to have good health does a lot of exactly this kind of combinations.)

Kale can be a bit of a harsh taste. But sautéed in extra virgin olive oil along with some chopped garlic the kale shrinks a lot in size and tastes much milder. And for those who like garlic, it actually tastes good.

For some people, raw broccoli can be quite harsh. But if you steam it and add a pat of butter or some sliced cheddar cheese or sprinkle it with a good bit of finely diced parmesan cheese, it can be a nice contrast to the rich, good tasting, and salty cheese or butter. (This is much better for you if the butter or cheese comes from cows fed only grass than if they are grain fed. But if you don’t do it too often, the broccoli is so good for you, it can make sense even if the cows were fed grain.)

Dips also work. You may not like carrot sticks. I don’t much care for them myself. But if there is some great tasting hummus or guacamole I can dip them in, I’m happy to eat several carrot sticks!

Salads work. To some degree that’s why we have them.

Raw kale, finely chopped or chopped water cress may be a bit to harsh. So can diced red cabbage. But add some extra virgin olive oil and chopped raw walnuts, and some raisins, and diced onion, and you may like the result a lot!

3. Find the few vegetables you actually like!

Many people who find raw broccoli florets too harsh, actually like raw cauliflower florets which have very much the same cancer protection, as one example.

And, you may find some surprises. I read about one young girl who loved crisp, raw green pepper so much, she would do extra work to get some!

Learning to eat and like several kinds of vegetables almost every day is one of the most effective keys to good health ever found!

As an extra benefit, doing this makes it dramatically easier to keep off excess fat without hunger or to lose excess fat you never have on your body again.

* * * *

Here’s the 8 ways to protect your health. (This post above has been following up on the first method with what to do instead.)

There are many, many ways to stay healthy.

But I find these eight ways cover most of the best and most effective methods.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

3. Get regular exercise every week -- mostly doing the most beneficial kinds.

4. Take key supplements.

(For almost every one of the diseases that are in your family history or which millions of people now get or which will kill you if you get them, there are supplements known to prevent or help prevent those diseases.) Hopefully we will get to keep this one as it can add so much to your protection.

5. Avoid tobacco and its smoke.

(Even though they cause 30% of all cancers, some smokers escape cancer. But EVERY exposure to them begins to cause heart disease, damage your lungs, and increase your rate of aging. No one exposed to tobacco smoke escapes this harm! That includes light smokers, teen smokers, and babies exposed to second hand smoke.)

6. Practice some form of physical stress control most days.

(So far, tai chi looks to be the most effective and time efficient way to do this.)

7. Become a purposeful, playful, proactive, and prudent optimist.

(Such people make good things happen and avoid bad ones. Also learn ways to survive and overcome difficulties and bad times that happen anyway.)

8. Practice other key prevention steps. (Brush and floss your teeth and gums well every day. Always wear your seat belt. Get your key blood indicators checked so you don’t get harmed by a problem you could have fixed first. There are more. But those 3 are extremely protective.)

Covering these 8 will turn into a series since each one deserves its own post.

Action items to prevent heart disease, diabetes, & cancer....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-15-2011

The current UN meeting on the worldwide crisis in disease and increased health care costs caused by preventable, non-communicable diseases has already released the information that 90% of the diseases and health care costs in the United States are caused by these diseases

This is a timely reminder to consider doing the things yourself that will help you escape these diseases and health care costs!

Consider these.

1. Sugar, refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, and, surprisingly, artificial sweeteners as well, each tend to cause blood sugar surges, lower your protective HDL and increase your harmful triglycerides. These effects tend to make you fat and cause heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

Cut your use of sugar in half. Eliminate any food or drink that contains refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners.

Drink water, tea, coffee, or vegetable juice instead. Eat only 100 % whole grains or eat nonstarchy vegetables or beans instead of refined grains.

Extra benefit: If you have been eating and drinking a lot of these things, this can give you effortless fat loss. The extra fat will leave you; and you’ll NOT be hungrier.

2. The health benefits of the DASH II diet and the Mediterranean diet are very high. They help prevent all these diseases from Alzheimer’s disease to heart disease and high blood pressure. The combination of these two diets is likely the best diet to eat to stay healthy.

The two key things that seem to have the most health benefit are to eat lots nonstarchy vegetables and use only extra virgin olive oil or olive oil.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

a) Add one nonstarchy vegetable one time each day. Add one serving to your lunch or dinner. (Adding more than one a day each week can be faster than your body can adjust to it. So don’t add more than two a day the first week.)

Raw broccoli florets or cauliflower florets help prevent aggressive cancers. Tomato slices are also good for you and taste good. They too are nonstarchy. And there are dozens more nonstarchy vegetables you can try.

Nonstarchy vegetables have truly awesome health benefits and almost zero calories. So they combat diseases and help people avoid fat gain without extra hunger at the same time!

b) Get some mild tasting olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. Use that instead of all other oils or margarine. Use it instead of butter where you can. Where you can’t substitute olive oil for butter, use half as much butter.

(Be sure to never eat anything that contains hydrogenated oils or trans fats as they are proven heart attack starters.)

Using only olive oil increases your HDL, lowers your LDL, and lowers your level of chronic inflammation. Each of those effects protects your heart.

3. Exercise prevents disease, grows new brain cells, and slows aging. And, a surprisingly small amount gives you 40% of the health benefits of an ideal exercise program.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

Try doing some kind of strength training at home for just a few minutes first thing two mornings each week. Take one day off in between. This can range from doing 3 pushups from your knees and 5 half squats each time to 15 or 20 minutes using dumbbells for several exercises each time.

And, three or more days each week take a 15 to 20 minute walk or two 10 minute walks. Walk normally for most of it but trying a few bursts of walking really fast each time.

But get started with something you can do this week!

Once you can do just that much and keep doing it each week, you get 40 % of the health benefits of an ideal program. Of course, once you do that, you can add more if you have time.

4. Avoid tobacco smoke.

Yes, it produces 30 % of all cancers and 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancers. To be fair some smokers don’t get cancer.

NEWSFLASH: Tobacco smoke is horribly worse for you than that. And no one exposed to it escapes harm! (Unfortunately few smokers have any clue about the larger dangers from smoking.)

EVERY single exposure to tobacco smoke begins to deposit the plaque in your arteries that causes high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and erectile dysfunction. It also causes you have the lung power and breathing capacity of a MUCH older person. This is true even for teens and brand new smokers!

There’s more too!

Exposure to tobacco smoke triggers heart attacks in people who would have otherwise escaped them.

And second hand smoke harms the people who are exposed to it in all the same ways, including babies and small children.

So consider doing this or at least trying it out for just a week.

If you smoke, contact the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association and use their help to make a strong, focused, and determined effort to quit. Try the over the counter nicotine products if the nicotine craving gets too bad for you to handle. (Knowing the information above will make it easier for you than it is for most people trying to quit.)

If you smoke and decide not to quit, at least for the next week, make a very strong effort to never smoke in public or around your friends and family. See if you can protect the people around you from second hand smoke even if you keep smoking.

Also, if you are a doctor, for the next week, ask every patient if they smoke. For every one that does, hand them a copy of this information and PRESCRIBE in writing that they quit. Studies show this gets results. Most people respect doctors and often do as they are directed by their doctors.

5. There are supplements that help prevent these diseases as well.

Supplements are not always effective; but those that are can be more effective for prevention than drugs when several are taken in combination. Supplements usually have NO side effects. Even better, the ones with health benefits often protect several parts of your health at the same time!

Here’s an example.

Vitamin D3 has recently been found to help prevent many cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune diseases, and to build your bones better than taking calcium.

They found that’s true IF you take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day. (This helps replace the over 10,000 iu a day people used to get from being out in the sun all day.)

Supplements are food concentrates or pure and consistent versions of folk remedies used safely for hundreds of years or are substances natural to the human body.

Thousands of Americans are preventing many of the most expensive diseases to treat by taking supplements.

Heart attacks, cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease can take over $50,000 each to treat.

Estimating that 30 % of the population takes supplements and at least a third of those or 10% are successfully preventing these diseases, if these supplements were suddenly unavailable nationwide, our health care costs would go up at least 10%.

For example, in 2009, New York City was estimated to have a population of 8,391,881. So it has about 8,400,000 now. If we estimate half of those are adults, that’s 4,200,000 adults. This means that if 10 % of these people who are preventing those diseases with supplements, New York has 420,000 people who are NOT getting these diseases.

The added health care costs each year that would be incurred in New York if everyone were no longer able to get these supplements would run to billions of dollars.

Incredibly, that will happen soon unless it is stopped.

The FDA has just proposed re-classifying almost all supplements as drugs and removing them from the market completely. Only the handful that drug companies successfully get to pass the tests that drugs pass would ever be available again. That would be as much as ten years from when they were removed and they would cost over 10 times as much as now.

Even worse, a simple registration process with the fees for random testing from each supplement company would allow the FDA to find and remove the small number of companies making supplements for weight loss, muscle building, or sexual restoration that contain dangerous drugs not listed on the label.

So consider doing this sometime you schedule now for some time this week.

Write both your US representative and Senator to demand of the FDA that they remove their proposal and use the kind of simple registration process instead that would help the FDA more quickly remove the real problems.

This will save the United States from billions of dollars of new health care costs each year that supplements are now preventing.

How to eat right for your health and upgrade recipes part 1....

Today's Post: Monday, 9-12-2011

This is my second post in the 8 ways to stay healthy.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

(We did the first one last Friday, 9-9: 1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks. And, we repost the list of all 8 ways at the end of today’s post.)

A. Refined grains tend to fatten you, give you heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The high omega 6 oils in them tend to boost chronic inflammation which also increases your aches and pains and even helps cause cancer.

But they are still everywhere. So far, most people don’t yet know never to eat them.

What makes sense to do instead to eat right and stay healthy??

> One way is to simply take a pass.

Don’t buy anything at the grocery store that contains them. Instead, buy nonstarchy and organic vegetables or fruit or health OK protein foods or nuts if you can get the raw and aren’t allergic. Or, make that thing at home yourself with only 100 % whole grains and other real foods. (That way you eat less and eating less of even whole grains is helpful with fat loss and avoiding harm from type 2 diabetes.)

Buy a sandwich and a piece of fruit or get two sandwiches. Then eat the insides of the sandwich or sandwiches only. That way the refined grain bread acts as a mess preventing but biodegradable wrapper only. But it no longer fattens you or harms your health.

Or, buy and pay for the whole sandwich but have them serve it on a plate, “Atkins style.” You can ask for extra onion or tomato slices or mustard or other veggies too.

Subway fast food sandwiches, if you only get water and Atkins-style sandwiches, is a great choice because they have mild peppers and many other kinds of vegetables which you can serve yourself to do this with.

> Another way is to eat less of all grains and only eat 100 % whole grain foods when you do.

As an example: try what I did to help me trim 10 to 15 pounds of fat. (I switched from eating oatmeal and milk every morning to eating it every other morning and eating 2 boiled eggs and enough cooked lentils to provide the same fiber as the oatmeal and as much protein as the milk and oatmeal.)

> Another way is to eat tiny bits of refined grain bread but only tiny servings or less and not often.

For example, when at a restaurant, they offer you refined grain bread while you are very hungry -- to eat while waiting for your order to arrive, try one of these:

Order a salad to be delivered ASAP instead and have them take the bread away.

Or, take one piece and cut off one or two much smaller pieces that are about the size of an eighth of the original piece. Then put just a bit of olive oil or even butter (but NOT margarine) on it. The calories are about the same. But you avoid the blood sugar surge from the refined grain bread that you would have gotten. And if the restaurant is upscale enough to have olive oil or butter from cows fed only grass, you also eat less omega 6 oils.

Order your glass of wine to be delivered right away. Then sip it and savor it and talk the person you are with. Soon you will feel enough of a buzz that being hungry is way less hassle and waiting for your main order is easy.

(I’ve done each of these.)

Another example is when you are at a party or other event and there are dips and things to dip with. Focus on eating the dips made from health OK ingredients such as salsa or guacamole or hummus or fat reduced Greek yogurt. Then use broccoli florets or carrot sticks or cauliflower florets all or most of the time instead of the refined grain crackers. Apple or zucchini slices also work.

(My wife and I often bring the veggies and a variety of health OK dips to family events to make sure we and everyone else there has access to doing this.)

You can also use this strategy with peanut butter with nothing in it but peanuts or almond butter as a dip instead of as a sandwich.

Another way to go is to have ONE piece of bread made from 100 % whole grains instead of two pieces of refined grain bread.

B. Many people use oils that are cheap and which are excessively high in omega 6 oils such as corn oil, soy oil, canola oil, and safflower oils. Or they eat a lot of meat or dairy fat from animals fed only grains like corn which then deliver as much of omega 6 oils in excess. (Also note that something like 95 % or more of the plants these are from are genetically modified plants. I’ve read this is true of corn, soy, and canola oils; but have no information on safflower oil. On the other hand, safflower oil has the most omega 6 oils in it!)

These oils boost chronic inflammation, help cause heart disease, and even help cause cancer and possibly Alzheimer’s disease. They both boost inflammation and lower your protective HDL in the case of heart disease.

Even worse is when the food manufacturer uses these oils but then hydrogenates them to make the more butter like and have a longer shelf life. Hydrogenated oils also cause your HDL to go down. But they are even worse because they cause your body to make a lot more of the dangerous small particle LDL that is a direct cause of heart disease. Hydrogenated oils and trans fats are heart attack starter. We suggest you make a strong effort to never ingest them!

What to eat instead?!

Monosaturated oils are neutral in your omega 6 and omega 3 oil balance. They tend to help keep your LDL low. Best of all, they tend to boost your levels of your protective HDL.

Their postive effects are not just theory either. Olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and avocados are high in them. Study after study finds the people who eat them have far better health than people who do not. The people who eat the most of them and the least omega 6 oils have the very best health results.

The other kind of oil that produces good health benefits is omega 3 oils from fish or the algae the fish get them from. Wild caught fish not high in mercury and purified fish oil supplements are the two ways to get them now.

(Farmed fish have too much omega 6 and far less omega 3 oils. And, most of them have very high levels or organic pollutants. We urge you to take a pass on eating them.)

Omega 3 oils lower inflammation; they decrease depression, they lower irritability and excess hostility. And this works best if you get ample omega 3 and cut way back on omega 6 oils at the same time. Do this and you’ll feel better with fewer aches and pains. You’ll get along better with the people around you because you are less depressed and not as grouchy.

We will continue with part 2 later.

Here’s the 8 ways to protect your health. (This post above has been following up on the first method with what to do instead.)

There are many, many ways to stay healthy.

But I find these eight ways cover most of the best and most effective methods.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

3. Get regular exercise every week -- mostly doing the most beneficial kinds.

4. Take key supplements.

(For almost every one of the diseases that are in your family history or which millions of people now get or which will kill you if you get them, there are supplements known to prevent or help prevent those diseases.) Hopefully we will get to keep this one as it can add so much to your protection.

5. Avoid tobacco and its smoke.

(Even though they cause 30% of all cancers, some smokers escape cancer. But EVERY exposure to them begins to cause heart disease, damage your lungs, and increase your rate of aging. No one exposed to tobacco smoke escapes this harm! That includes light smokers, teen smokers, and babies exposed to second hand smoke.)

6. Practice some form of physical stress control most days.

(So far, tai chi looks to be the most effective and time efficient way to do this.)

7. Become a purposeful, playful, proactive, and prudent optimist.

(Such people make good things happen and avoid bad ones. Also learn ways to survive and overcome difficulties and bad times that happen anyway.)

8. Practice other key prevention steps. (Brush and floss your teeth and gums well every day. Always wear your seat belt. Get your key blood indicators checked so you don’t get harmed by a problem you could have fixed first. There are more. But those 3 are extremely protective.)

Covering these 8 will turn into a series since each one deserves its own post.

8 ways to stay healthy....

Today's Post: Friday, 9-9-2011

There are many, many ways to stay healthy.

But I find these eight ways cover most of the best and most effective methods.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

3. Get regular exercise every week -- mostly doing the most beneficial kinds.

4. Take key supplements.

(For almost every one of the diseases that are in your family history or which millions of people now get or which will kill you if you get them, there are supplements known to prevent or help prevent those diseases.) Hopefully we will get to keep this one as it can add so much to your protection.

5. Avoid tobacco and its smoke.

(Even though they cause 30% of all cancers, some smokers escape cancer. But EVERY exposure to them begins to cause heart disease, damage your lungs, and increase your rate of aging. No one exposed to tobacco smoke escapes this harm! That includes light smokers, teen smokers, and babies exposed to second hand smoke.)

6. Practice some form of physical stress control most days.

(So far, tai chi looks to be the most effective and time efficient way to do this.)

7. Become a purposeful, playful, proactive, and prudent optimist.

(Such people make good things happen and avoid bad ones. Also learn ways to survive and overcome difficulties and bad times that happen anyway.)

8. Practice other key prevention steps. (Brush and floss your teeth and gums well every day. Always wear your seat belt. Get your key blood indicators checked so you don’t get harmed by a problem you could have fixed first. There are more. But those 3 are extremely protective.)

Covering these 8 will turn into a series since each one deserves its own post.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

Strategically this one should be very easy. For some people it can be effortless. And most people can learn to replace doing so with habits and foods and drinks that do the reverse—if they know why and work at it.’

But why isn’t always easy?

After all if you don’t want your hand to hurt, it should be a no brainer to stop hitting it with a hammer!

There are 3 reasons.

Many of the harmful foods and drinks were once traditional foods that were rarely consumed and were mostly made with health OK ingredients.

Many of them did not exist at all before about 100 years ago—or for the millions of years of human evolution before that.

But as they became cheaper to make, often by adding harmful ingredients that are cheaper or which increase shelf life, the companies making them made more money, spent a good bit on advertising and made a LOT more of them.

When that happened, people grew up consuming them. And almost all the people they know bought them and consumed them. Then it seemed normal; and people who didn’t seemed a bit odd.

In fact, to this day, over 80% of the shopping carts of people checking out at most supermarkets are still made up of ONLY these harmful foods and drinks.

Then too, few people knew or yet know even now why these foods and drinks were harmful and still are or just how dreadfully bad for you they are if you consume them every week or several times a day for most of your life.

But if you learn what these foods and drinks and ingredients are and make a focused and consistent effort to avoid them and eat more natural foods and drink much less harmful drinks only, you get startlingly beneficial results.

Within a year or two of doing this, you will be less fat.

Depending on how badly you were doing on this strategy before and how long you were doing it, this could be from 10 to 100 pounds of fat within a year or two or three.

Best of all, since you are still eating all the OK or good for you foods and drinks that you are hungry for, you have virtually no extra hunger. In fact, many people doing this will be LESS hungry!

But what diseases do you avoid?

Wow! What a list of those there are!

Heart disease and heart attacks. Strokes. Type 2 diabetes. Vascular Dementia. Alzheimer’s Disease, High Blood Pressure, and increased aging, and Much higher medical bills -- including drugs it is often expensive or obnoxious or even actually harmful to take, to name just a few.

What are these foods and drinks? If you have read this blog long, you can list them as well as I can.

All soft drinks, virtually all pre-made & packaged snacks, desserts, and commercial baked goods, including most breads, belong on this list.

Farmed fish. For many reasons, but the very high level of pollutants contained in farmed fish being most important, virtually all farmed fish belong on this list.

So does the fat in meat from grain fed animals.

Are there any guidelines to avoiding these things?

Yes indeed there are?

a) One author suggested, “Does it grow that way?”

Oranges grow. Green beans grow. How about donuts, potato chips, or soft drinks? Nope. Never happen.

So that’s one way.

(Often organic produce has more nutrients and is safer to eat than conventional produce.)

b) Michael Pollan and the Paleolithic or caveman diet people often go by

This related set of questions:

“Did people eat or drink this over 100, or over 10,000, years ago? “ – and, if they did, “Does this particular food or drink contain things it would not have contained then?

Similarly, “Was the animal this food is from eating from the food sources it evolved to eat? Or has it been stuffed with things it never ate before on its own?

c) Then there is the long list of food ingredients we now know are harmful to ever consume in some cases or that are unsafe to consume more than a few times a month.

If you can find out or read a label, here’s a long list of ingredients to NOT eat or drink. They either cause disease or are fattening. Often they are both.

(This post is already likely to be continued over several posts as it is becoming so long. So in this post I’ll leave out why to avoid these ingredients. But if a food or drink has ANY of these ingredients, your best choice is to take a pass every single time or at least only consume it a few times a month or a year.)

Hydrogenated oils and the trans fats they contain.

Oils high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, safflower and to some extent canola oils.

Fats and oils from grain fed animals.

Excess salt.

MSG & related compounds.

High fructose corn syrup.

Other sugars high in fructose such as agave nectar or straight fructose by itself.

Excess sugar.

Artificial sugar.

Refined grains.

Many preservatives.

Mercury.

Lead.

Pesticides, Herbicides, and the genetically modified foods that build them into the structure of the food where they cannot be removed. (Most corn, soy, and canola plants and their oils today are made from genetically modified versions of the plant.)

Incredibly many foods and drinks contain ONLY ingredients on this list!

Soft drinks are prime example!

Instant stress relief you already know how to do but likely aren't using!....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-6-2011

There is a stress reliever that you already know how to do that works in as little as 15 seconds.

Once you know what it is, you can use it almost any time you need it.

Unbelievably, you can also use it to remove stress and increase harmony in social situations with your family AND at work.

WOW!

Here’s a bit of background on how I found it.

Since Yahoo News dropped over 80% of their daily health and medicine stories, I’ve had less information that would be useful to you to use as a source for my posts.

So, out of curiosity, after reading a recent news article, I tried Stumble Upon.

(I find it leaves out 95% of what you need to know to use it well from their introductory directions. But many online services still have that problem.)

BUT, I did discover the good news too.

The articles it does manage to get you are those that very bright and alive people & also interested in that topic found to be well done and liked. Even better, lots of those people liked that article.

I’m SO glad I did.

I found one of the most important and useful health and personal success articles I’ve ever seen!

Today’s post summarizes it.

People today are bedeviled by all kinds of stress: stress from their personal relationships, stress from their jobs, fears that limit them, and serious worries and threats.

That often causes high blood pressure, mental decline, and costly divorces just to name a few!

Meditation helps some but takes a LOT of daily time to do and many get little stress relief from it. (It takes 15 minutes a day to over an hour.)

Tai Chi has dramatically better results. It slows aging, is so effective it lowers high blood pressure about three times as well as meditation. It even works when drugs don’t. Doing it is an exercise too and one that burns as many calories as that much time spent walking. Best of all, even 10 minute sessions are effective.

But neither meditation nor Tai Chi work in 30 seconds or less. And, neither one will remove much of the stress and hassles from stress from relationships.

With Tai Chi you also need lessons or a coach to learn to do it well in addition.

Contrast those with this:

There is a stress reliever that you already know how to do that works in as little as 15 seconds. Once you know what it is, you can use it almost any time you need it. Unbelievably, you can also use it to remove stress and increase harmony in social situations with your family AND at work.

WOW!

1. How well do you already know how to do this?

How does this sound? I saw our daughter do a variation of it within seconds of her birth!

You are virtually born with knowing how hard wired into you.

That of course is one of the reasons why it is so profoundly effective. Doing it is hard-wired into the stress relief it gives you.

2. And, it lowers social stress and increases harmony because if you do it, the people around you automatically tend to copy you get their own stress relieved. Then they feel better and think better too.

This last effect has a tip on what it is.

3. Here’s the tip so strong, you’ll likely guess what it is.

It also helps you wake up and energizes your brain.

It’s YAWNING and/or the simple arm and shoulder stretches that tend to go with it.

Here’s the start of the article:

“Yawn It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain. By Andrew Newburg

Yawn.

Go ahead: Laugh if you want .... but in my professional opinion, yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience. Even my colleagues who are researching meditation, relaxation, and stress reduction at other universities have overlooked this powerful neural-enhancing tool.

However, yawning has been used for many decades in voice therapy as an effective means for reducing performance anxiety and hypertension in the throat. "

Does that mean you can use yawning and stretching as an effective last minute help to relieve stage fright or performance anxiety.

Yes! That’s exactly what it means!

Then you are more awake and less stressed and are almost guaranteed to do better.

But there’s far more. In social situations, even if they try to override it, the people you are with or speaking to ALSO are more awake think better, less stressed, and feel better.

Yawning is so contagious and hard-wired, they may not even notice they are doing it too.

Yawning is like having Harry Potter hit you with a stress relief magic spell. It’s that fast acting and effortless to do.

What if you feel it would be rude to yawn or fear people will think that of you?

There are three solutions to that. You can even combine them.

One is simple. Just cover your mouth as you yawn and do it as if you are overpowered by the urge to yawn but know to be polite.

The second one is to do the stretching that often to usually goes with yawning.

The third one is to take the exact deep breath you do while yawning but do it through your nose with your mouth closed.

That’s the stealth version! Many people who are watching you may well find themselves yawning and boosting your social effect without even noticing they are doing so.

(That’s the one I saw our newborn daughter do. She swung both her arms above her head just like the signal for a touchdown. She did a BIG stretch and took a deep breath.

I was quite impressed. Before that, I thought you needed to learn to do that! Apparently not.)

Or do them all at once. Cover your mouth and stretch big and breathe in and only let your mouth open only a bit.

Here’s another quote from Andrew Newburg’s article:

“Yawning will relax you and bring you into a state of alertness faster than any other meditation technique I know of, and because it is neurologically contagious, it’s particularly easy to teach in a group setting.

One of my former students used yawning to bring her argumentative board of directors back to order in less than 60 seconds. Why? Because it helps people synchronize their behavior with others.”

Here’s a plug for his book and a bit more on who Andrew Newburg is:

"Andrew Newburg is director of Penn's Center for Spirituality and the Mind.

This essay is from the book: HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman. Copyright © 2009 by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman."

I’m truly honored to bring his brilliant news to you.

I hope you find it as helpful to you as Andrew makes it sound.

It looks like he has biology and evolution to thank. And, it also looks like yawning really is that effective and easy to do for that reason.