Thursday, May 31, 2012


A new reason why exercise is essential for fat loss....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-31-2012

Some doctors who study obesity say exercise doesn’t do much to help fat loss.

Just like the story of the blind men and the elephant, they are partly correct.

If you still eat fattening foods and do nothing to change that or find and use a sustainable way to cut calories, you do have to get 8 to 10 hours a day of exercise to have exercise by itself cause fat loss. 

And, what many people do also prevents fat loss.  They get 200 or 300 calories of good exercise, yes.  But then they give themselves a 500 to 600 calorie fattening treat they think the exercise will help them get away with!  Oops!

Few people who get 8 to 10 hours a day of exercise ever get fat and few people today can have a life and get that much exercise.  So for most of us no matter how much or how well we exercise we will still be fat unless we stop fattening foods close to 100 % and find and use a sustainable way to cut calories.

But, guess what?  To do those things that are required for fat loss, you have to stop the habits involved in eating fattening foods and drinking fattening drinks.  You have to establish new habits to eat real foods instead.  And you have to add new habits to routinely do the other sustainable calorie reduction you find is doable for you.

That makes exercise essential for effective and permanent fat loss.

Here’s why. 

In a new book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, he does a great job explaining the new research that has found how to change habits successfully.

You DID read that correctly.  It’s not only possible to change habits, we know how to do it now and why it works!

In practice, the researchers found that new habits often get sabotaged by difficult or challenging circumstances.  BUT this does NOT happen to people who believe they can succeed.

They found 3 ways to create that belief a religious conversion experience or something like it; joining a group or community of people who have succeeded; and succeeding in changing a key habit on their own.

That specifically means that if you have 7 habit changes you need to make and do even ONE successfully, your chances of doing the other 6 go up dramatically.  In fact, in people who do a lot of positive habit changes successfully, that’s extremely common.

They call these keystone habits.

For fat loss you do need to make positive changes in what you eat and drink.

So it makes sense that if a certain kind of keystone habit was unusually effective in helping you make those changes it would really be worth it to do that one first.

We know what that habit is.

Yes!  Exercise IS that keystone habit.

People who begin to exercise regularly even at easy levels and just a few days a week, even one or two, routinely then do other habit changes successfully.

(People who exercise literally think better than people who don’t.  And, people who exercise feel dramatically more able to cause changes in their lives and to control what they do. So this effect is no accident!)

There are about 12 other solid reasons exercise is essential or extremely helpful with fat loss and keeping it off.  We’ve posted on them before. (Some kinds of exercise make fat loss easier and faster.  Exercise can help cut the amount of calories you need to cut back enough to make it sustainable to do so, a huge reason by itself.  And, though it’s not widely known, exercise can begin to deliver most of the benefits people lose fat to get -- well before they even lose much fat!)

But this news is extremely important and may be the number one reason why exercise is essential for successful fat loss.

Effective and sustainable fat loss depends on permanent upgrades in what you eat and drink including some kinds of calorie reduction you find doable.

But achieving effective and sustainable fat loss will ONLY happen for you if you stop any bad habits you have and begin do those upgrades by habit.

The research shows if you begin to exercise regularly and quite likely ONLY if you exercise, you have a decent shot at making those changes to your habits.

That means that the doctors who only know you need more than exercise to lose fat, ARE correct; but they won’t be very effective at helping people lose fat either!

If you want to SUCCEED at fat loss, exercise is essential.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

BIG added boost to heart protection also strengthens bones!


False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, Vitamin K2....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-29-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more. 

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements.  Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

 (Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do.  And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different.  Very different!

1.  Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial. 

There are a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large.  But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2.  We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer.  The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false.  And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer!  (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012.

We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C on Thursday, 4-12

On Tuesday, 4-17, we covered vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

On Tuesday, 4-24, we covered calcium.

On Tuesday, 5-1, we covered chromium.

On Thursday, 5-10, we covered Selenium.

On Tuesday, 5-15, we covered Zinc & copper which interact

Last week, on Tuesday, 5-22, we covered magnesium.

This week we cover vitamin K2.              

Wow!  It adds massive extra protection for your heart and strengthens your bones too!

This is still not very well known.  I just learned it myself last Friday, 5-25-2012, from the email I got that day from Natural Health Dossier.

I’d heard that taking vitamin K2 could at least partly avoid the easy bruising and possible hemorrhages from overdoing ways to protect your heart that reduce too much blood clotting.

Too much clotting and plaque build up inside your blood vessels both narrows them and then closes them entirely if you get a big clot into your bloodstream causing a heart attack or obstructive or ischemic stroke. 

So doing things like drinking red wine and taking ginkgo biloba and taking deodorized garlic and omega 3 supplements and eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 plus other heart protective things such as avoiding trans fats that reduce plaque build up each help prevent these two things and protect you from heart disease and heart attack.

I do enough of these things to have HDL, LDL, & triglyceride readings showing unusually high heart protection.  But from doing so many or from taking niacin’s effect on my liver too, I began to get extra bruises on my left hand without any blows and I began to get bad bruises if I did hit my hand.

So, when I heard that taking vitamin K2 would both turn down such easy bruising and help my liver do so as well by boosting its health, I began taking vitamin K2.  And, it did help quite a bit!

It seems that was no accident.  Wikipedia has that "Vitamin K was identified in 1929 by Danish scientist Henrik Dam" who found that both vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 are essential to some degree to enable enough blood coagulation or clotting.  (Coagulation was & is spelled with a K in Danish apparently.)

From the broccoli I eat and the large amount of tea and green tea I drink, I was already getting plenty of K1.  So what I likely was short of was indeed vitamin K2.

So when I also heard that adding vitamin K2 to eating calcium in foods and taking ample magnesium and vitamin D3 plus strength training plus NEVER drinking soft drinks made that set of things build my bone strength even more, I was delighted.

It seems the K2 acts as a catalyst working with these other things to deposit calcium into your bones in a way that strengthens them.

Nice to know. 

In fact, since drugs for osteoporosis have such dreadful side effects and tend to do more harm than good protecting your bones, this is very important information to know!

But what the email last Friday from Natural Health Dossier added was truly HUGE news.

This is so much so it should have been a front page news article everywhere.

It wasn’t.  But here it is for you.

It seems that vitamin K2’s action of putting the calcium into your bones is only a quarter of the value and half the story!

Vitamin K2, in doing this for your bones, ALSO PREVENTS THAT CALCIUM FROM DEPOSTING INTO THE PLAQUE INSIDE YOUR BLOOD VESSELS!

“Dr. Leon Schurgers, who leads the heart research program at the world-renowned Cardiovascular Research Institute in the Netherlands…”did some research on vitamin K2.

“His research shows that this vitamin - which most Western diets are seriously lacking - can slash your risk of heart disease by 57 percent.”

Note that this is on top of any other heart protective actions you may be taking or doing.

“Dr. Schurgers's breakthrough offers a new understanding of the role of calcium in heart disease and how it may be a big factor in most heart attacks.

His study shows that this little-known vitamin can redirect that calcium to where it needs to go in the body and help to keep your arteries clear of plaque.

"We have shown that cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis have common pathways," says Dr. Schurgers. "Studies show that calcium is linked to both diseases."

"Lack of [calcium] in the bones makes them weak," says Dr. Schurgers. "But excessive amounts in the blood leads to cardiovascular disease."

His latest research shows that Vitamin K2 can combat both diseases.

“A diet rich in Vitamin K helps to get calcium into your bones while removing it from your arteries. If your diet is low in vitamin K, you get calcium deposits in your arteries. That leads to plaque and calcification and ends in heart disease and heart attack.”
“Headed up by Dr. Schurgers, the Rotterdam Heart Study followed 4,800 participants for seven years. The study showed that people who got plenty of K2 in their diet had 57 percent fewer heart attacks than those who didn't.

The study also showed that plaque results when calcium leaves your bones and ends up in your arteries.”

(This also happens when you take calcium supplements on an empty stomach.  As we posted recently, that’s why to get calcium in food instead of supplements and if you take calcium supplements to take them only in small amounts right AFTER a small meal.)

Also note that vitamin K2 NOT vitamin K1 is the heart and bone protective one!

“If there's a K2 there's got to be a K1, right? There is. Vitamin K1 is found in leafy green vegetables like spinach.”  (And broccoli and  tea and green tea has decent amounts of K1         also.)

“Researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands studied 16,057 women for eight years. The women had no coronary heart disease at the start of the study. The study followed their intake of K1 and K2. The women getting K1 had 480 incidents of heart attack over the eight years. But the women getting K2 had nearly a 60 percent lower rate.
Researchers concluded that K1 had little effect on cardiovascular health. But K2 dramatically reduced it.

"K1 has little influence on cardiovascular health," says Dr. Schurgers. "Natural K2 prevents arterial calcium accumulation."”

That is really huge news because studies of "arterial calcium accumulation” find high levels of arterial calcium accumulation far more predictive of future heart attacks than almost all the other heart health measures combined!

Since arterial calcium accumulation is also a big reason people get high blood pressure as they get older because the stiffer blood vessels that result have more friction and less flexibility and responsiveness.

That means that knowing about eating calcium in foods and not taking it in supplements plus taking vitamin K2 is an extremely powerful way to protect your heart and prevent or reduce high blood pressure!

Wikipedia says that "No known toxicity exists for vitamins K1 or K2."  You can get vitamin K2 in 150 mcg doses.  I knew I needed more, so I take the 5,000 mcg of K2 size once a day.

I also have low level high blood pressure which may in part be from calcified plaque.  So I may have done myself a really big favor when I began to take vitamin K2!

It’s pretty simple really, vitamin K2 ensures that your body puts calcium into your bones to strengthen them and takes calcium OUT of the walls of your blood vessels where it can kill you!

Are there foods that have vitamin K2?

Yes but they may not be as good a choice for heart protection as taking the supplement.

The “best food sources of vitamin K2 include cheese, eggs, butter, chicken and beef.”

But these foods when from animals fed grain, cause chronic inflammation from excessive amounts of omega 6 oils.  And, when eaten in excess, they also tend to be harmful from having too much saturated fat.

There are two solutions.

Take K2 supplements.

And/or, eat whole eggs from chickens that at least are cage and antibiotic free.  Eat some very moderate amounts of cheese, butter, chicken and beef BUT if and ONLY if you can get them from animals only pasture or 100 % grass fed.

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Friday, May 25, 2012


Mental Decline IS mostly preventable....

Today's Post:  Friday, 5-25-2012

In a health news email I subscribe to there was an article with the information that moderate drinking seems to help prevent mental decline while heavy drinking tends to cause mental decline instead.

(The lower intake seems to relieve stress and promote better circulation while the higher intake of alcohol is too high for your liver to process and nerve damage seems to result.  It’s similar to the difference between taking a nice hot bath and being tossed into boiling water!)

However what sparked this post was a comment in that article:  "At present, there are no proven agents to prevent cognitive decline or dementia"

Simply put this is no longer true -- as long as any kind of action is meant by agents!

In fact there are even four separate kinds of things that have been tested to do so!

1.  Things that directly protect your brain cells
2.  Things that prevent cardiovascular disease
3.  Things that prevent excessively high blood sugar
4.  Things that build up the brain and its interconnections and which preserve function even when much of the brain has been damaged

It IS true there are no single drugs that do so that I'm yet aware of although millions of dollars are being spent to find one.

Since these millions of dollars are NOT spent first by priority on getting more people to know and use the things that have already been shown to work, that's unfortunate to a degree.

So, what does do the job?

A.  For starters, regular exercise fits in all four categories! 

1. & 4.: At least 600 calories of moderate exercise during every week and at least a few minutes of vigorous exercise most days of every week has proven benefits in each of these four categories!  It releases BDNF, a nerve and brain cell growth hormone.  People who don’t do this over time get brain shrinkage while people that do keep their brain size.  This also helps repair some damage cause by various factors.

2.  Cardiovascular disease cuts circulation to the brain. That kind of regular exercise not only improves your cardiovascular health and prevents plaque build up but, over time, the more years you do it regularly, the better your protection gets recent research found.  Even better, every time you exercise your give your brain extra circulation right then.

3.  Too high blood sugar tends to damage or destroy capillaries and cause cardiovascular disease both.  There is even some research to suggest that it directly triggers at least one of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

Regular, moderate exercise tends to lower high blood sugar and turn down insulin resistance.  (This may be only partly the case for type 1 diabetics; but for type 2 diabetics and people nearing that state, it works quite well.)

Even better regular, vigorous exercise of even 2 minutes a day has successfully lowered the HBA1C measure.  That means that it cuts too high blood sugar and turns off or down insulin resistance enough the average amount of too high blood sugar gets reduced over a two or three month period!

B.  And there is a LOT more!

 1.  Things that directly protect your brain cells besides exercise.

a) There is increasing evidence that ingesting the spice turmeric along with black pepper in curried foods or taking it or the curcumin derived from turmeric along with black pepper prevents the release of tau proteins that are thought to trigger Alzheimer’s disease and enables your immune system to remove beta amyloid plaque well enough to avoid it causing damage.

Doing so also lowers your LDL cholesterol and lowers your inflammation enough to help prevent heart disease. 

There is also evidence that doing so prevents cancer with the inflammation lowering and by its direct  effects on gene expression in ways that help prevent cancer.

I think taking the curcumin supplement is essential since not everyone likes curry and even people like me who do, don’t want it for dinner every day of the week!

b)  Taking at least 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 also seems protective.  It may work with turmeric to make it more effective.  And to the extent the immune system boost vitamin D3 causes helps clear harmful tau protein and beta amyloid it is directly protective.

c)  Taking omega 3 supplements made from purified fish oil and/or eating fish or seafood low in mercury and other pollutants 2 or 3 times a week is directly protective of your brain.  And taking some extra DHA, one of  the kinds of omega 3, also helps. 

(Important note:  farmed fish is fed badly which cuts its omega 3 content and is very heavily loaded with pollutants. Do NOT eat it!)

This set of things works with exercise to prevent brain shrinkage.  Research just found doing this helps prevent harm to your memory from intake of excessive high fructose corn syrup which likely means it helps combat the effects of high blood sugar too.  And, best of all, your brain directly uses DHA. So your brain cells function better when they have enough DHA.

d)  Shortage of many of the B complex vitamins in general and B12 in particular tend to cause brain decline directly and separately from Alzheimer’s disease and circulation problems.  So supplementing with them is very strongly protective; and it’s essential for vegan vegetarians and people over 70.

There have literally been people who were going to be institutionalized for suspected Alzheimer’s who returned to normal by taking enough vitamin B12.

So this is NOT a small effect!

2.  Things that prevent cardiovascular disease besides exercise.

The good news is that there is a LOT you can do.  I can only summarize them here.

Say completely away from tobacco smoke.

Ingest ZERO foods containing hydrogenated oils or trans fats & to do so learn what foods contain this junk.  Doing so helps you lose fat too.

Ingest ZERO foods containing high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners.  Cut WAY back on real sugar intake.  Eat virtually no foods made from refined grains.  Recent research shows this is essential both to prevent heart disease AND excessive blood sugar levels. Doing so helps lose fat and prevent adding it as well.

Taking curcumin and/or eating curries with turmeric also prevents heart disease as we note above.

Cutting way back on the fat from grain fed animals, all grain foods, and oils such as corn and soy high in omega 6 oils along with adding the omega 3 cuts chronic inflammation enough to help protect the inner surface of your blood vessels. So it is also a powerful preventer of cardiovascular disease.  Use extra virgin olive oil instead.  Doing so has been directly shown to prevent mental decline!  Adding the olive oil to far less omega 6 and more omega 3 very likely enhances this effect.

Eat organic berries or take berry supplements such as bilberry or both. Eating organic wild blueberries is very effective. This boosts your HDL and protects your blood vessels.  It’s even been shown to help older people regain seemingly lost brain function.

If your HDL is low or your LDL is high take niacin.  Even 300 mg a day after a meal helps.

If your LDL is too high take sterol supplements such as beta sitosterol.

Because of their many side effects and not being needed if you do all the above, only take statin drugs too if your LDL cholesterol is horribly high, well over 200, or you just had a heart attack AND your doctor has given you the $150 genetic test to see if you are in the minority of people who get good results and protection from statins.  They can cause vigorous exercise to harm you studies found.  Such exercise is too important to jeopardize when NOT necessary!

3.  Things that prevent excessively high blood sugar besides exercise. 
Cutting way back on the fat from grain fed animals, all grain foods, and oils such as corn and soy high in omega 6 oils along with adding the omega 3 cuts chronic inflammation enough to help protect the inner surface of your blood vessels. So it is also a powerful preventer of cardiovascular disease.  Use extra virgin olive oil instead.  Doing so has been directly shown to prevent mental decline!  Adding the olive oil to far less omega 6 and more omega 3 very likely enhances this effect.

People who do this and both kinds of exercise every week tend to NOT get this problem and doing the reverse is all too effective in causing this problem.

Taking the supplements chromium polynicotinate and alpha lipoic acid each help lower high blood sugar.  And there are some others that can help; but those are two of the most effective and available ones.

If you get this problem, taking the drug Metformin does help. So far it is the only diabetes drug  safe enough to take.

Also, this is a problem you can have and not know it.  So to find out, periodically get your fasting glucose and HBA1C tested. Your fasting glucose should always be less than 100 and your HBA1C lower than 5.9.  And readings of  85 or so and 5.6 or a bit less are better.

4.  Things that build up the brain and its interconnections and which preserve function even when much of the brain has been damaged – besides exercise.

Learning new things causes your brain to release BDNF and other nerve growth factors, add new cells, and add LOTS of new interconnections.  This has been found true from infancy to advanced old age!

Secondly, your brain’s associative network is like the internet.  If it has enough nodes and interconnections, you can lose a good bit of them with no drop off in function.

That means the learning is an essential protection for both of these reasons.  You are less likely to lose brain function and you may not notice even if you do!

The facts bear this out. 

People who are highly educated are less likely to get mental decline and if they do, it’s at much older ages.

People who speak more than one language fluently rarely show symptoms of any mental decline.

And, people who have an active social network with people they converse with often, rarely get mental decline.

They are under less stress which is brain protective. 

But the hidden reason for this is that while conversation seems easy since we’ve been doing it since a very young age, it uses massive amounts of your brain as you do it.  Five minutes of conversation may seem easy to effortless most of the time; but it exercise your brain as well as running a five minute mile exercises the rest of you.

That means such socializing is a HUGE protection!

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Thursday, May 24, 2012


High Fructose Corn Syrup intake harms memory and learning....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-24-2012

A new UCLA study shows it quite likely that the same overconsumption of high fructose corn syrup that has been making children and younger adults too fat also reduces memory and ability to learn.

They found this happens even with just 6 weeks of overconsumption.  Since the average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high fructose corn syrup each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that’s scary news indeed. 

Worse, most children not carefully taught better by concerned parents, have grown up thinking soft drinks and the other foods that contain high fructose corn syrup are normal and safe to consume lots of every day.  They often tend to consume more than their parents otherwise. 

In our country where jobs are tending to become knowledge work, this causes more economic harm than just the medical care costs, for treating diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart attacks, of ingesting this harmful ingredient.

The UCLA researchers noted that high fructose corn syrup is a liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar. And that it is in liquid form and costs less than sugar which is why it has been added to packaged snacks, packaged desserts, condiments like catsup, soft drinks, and even applesauce and some baby foods.

These characteristics make these foods and drinks more addictive than regular sugar and cheaper to make. 

The combination of these trends is scary indeed.

There are several likely reasons for this.  The blood sugar roller coaster disrupts the more stable sugar supply that enables our brains to work better. 

The HDL goes down and the triglycerides go up in people who ingest this much high fructose corn syrup.  This means that they have more of the small particle LDL that causes heart disease and results in lower circulation and blood vessel inflammation.  That is NOT good for brain function either!

In addition by actual test it was found that 30% of all high fructose corn syrup contains mercury, a neurotoxin.  That likely causes some of this effect too, particularly in people who ingest almost a POUND of high fructose corn syrup a week!

Was there good news in this UCLA study.

Other than strongly suggesting people NOT drink or eat things containing high fructose corn syrup, the UCLA researchers also found that omega 3 oils and particularly, the DHA omega 3 oil that has separately been found to aid and preserve brain function could act as an antidote to this effect.  It also helps that omega 3 oils also lower inflammation which ingesting high fructose corn syrup likely increases.

Eating blueberries and taking berry extract supplements such as bilberry also increases HDL and protects the health of blood vessels and has brain boosting effects.

Bottom line is that people who want to avoid excess fat, learn and remember well, and stay healthy should avoid ingesting ANY high fructose corn syrup.

It’s also true that soft drinks, packaged snacks, and packaged desserts that contain most of the high fructose corn syrup contain a whole list of other ingredients that tend to make you fat and harm your health.   People who ingest refined grains, excess salt, hydrogenated oils, and oils high in omega 6 also tend to be fatter and in far less healthy than people who don’t.

Bottom line is that people who want to avoid excess fat, learn and remember well, and stay healthy should avoid ingesting ANY high fructose corn syrup.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012


False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, Magnesium....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-22-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more. 

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements.  Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

 (Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do.  And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different.  Very different!

1.  Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial. 

There are a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large.  But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2.  We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer.  The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false.  And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer!  (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012.

We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C on Thursday, 4-12

On Tuesday, 4-17, we covered vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

On Tuesday, 4-24, we covered calcium.

Last week, on Tuesday, 5-1, we covered chromium.

Last week, on Thursday, 5-10, we covered Selenium.

Last week we covered Zinc & Copper.

This week we cover magnesium.

A.  Simply put if you want to feel good, have strong bones, a healthy heart, and avoid unnecessary pains, it’s important to take magnesium.  It also helps prevent or reduce asthma.

Adults should get about 400 mg a day of magnesium and a bit more is OK.  Since most people get about 100 to 200 mg a day in their food, taking 200 mg a day of magnesium is OK but not great.  Taking 400 mg a day is better.

And, if you take heartburn or reflux drugs which reduce your uptake of magnesium by reducing your stomach acid, you should take 800 mg a day.  I take 200 mg four times a day but 400 mg twice a day would also work.  Magnesium citrate is more bioavailable than magnesium oxide.

B.  Here are some specifics. Knowing this information is very important to keeping yourself healthy.

1.  Wikipedia has this:  “Magnesium is a vital component of a healthy human diet.

Human magnesium deficiency (including conditions that show few overt symptoms) is relatively rare[18] although only 32% of the United States meet the RDA-DRI;[19]

…low levels of magnesium in the body has been associated with the development of a number of human illnesses such as asthma, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

Taken in the proper amount magnesium plays a role in preventing both stroke and heart attack.

The symptoms of people with fibromyalgia, migraines, and girls going through their premenstrual syndrome are less severe (if they take magnesium) and magnesium can shorten the length of …migraine symptoms.”

2.  Whole Health MD has this:

“Magnesium plays a variety of roles in the body. Not only is it critical for energy production and proper nerve function, it also promotes muscle relaxation and helps the body produce and use insulin. .... magnesium is involved in the formation of bones and teeth, the clotting of blood, and the regulation of heart rhythm. Magnesium....is often used to treat such ailments as back pain, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and panic, muscle cramps, and migraine headache

….taking enough magnesium helps lower high blood pressure and prevent angina & irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia).”

Magnesium works as a catalyst with vitamin D and the calcium in your diet to renew and strengthen your bones.

Magnesium helps reduce the risk of diabetes and to prevent diabetes complications. It apparently helps reduce or prevent insulin resistance.

Taking magnesium can "...reduce emotional irritability in chronic depression, anxiety, and panic disorder. Magnesium and vitamin B6 are needed for the body to produce Serotonin,

Because deficiencies in magnesium have been found in many women suffering from PMS, taking magnesium supplements may help this problem.”

Whole Health MD also noted that people doing vigorous exercise had less soreness and pains and fewer muscle cramps if they took magnesium.

3.  Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, an expert on magnesium, said this:  “….magnesium helps the body to absorb and metabolize calcium. Unfortunately, American diet and supplementation practices lead to overconsumption of calcium, and soil depletion and processing of foods lead to underconsumption of magnesium.

The problem with this is that excess calcium intake can cause problems in the body. The National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements reports that less than half of calcium people ingest is actually absorbed in the gut. The rest may be excreted, or it can linger in the body to form kidney stones or cause calcification (hardening) in soft tissues.

In addition, numerous studies have shown that magnesium converts vitamin D into its active form so it can aid calcium absorption. Magnesium also stimulates the hormone calcitonin, which helps preserve bone structure and draws calcium out of the blood and soft tissues back into the bones, lowering the likelihood of osteoporosis, some forms of arthritis, heart attack and kidney stones.

A growing amount of scientific evidence, including a 2004 study published in the British Medical Journal, points to high calcium/low magnesium intake leading to calcification, or hardening, of arteries (also known as atherosclerosis, which can cause heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S.), osteoporosis and osteoporotic bone fractures.”

“The key to calcium-magnesium balance is at the cellular level. Calcium’s effectiveness and benefits with respect to bone health and the prevention of osteoporosis are enormously impaired unless the body maintains adequate magnesium levels. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get enough magnesium through diet to even meet the minimum RDA requirements because it has been farmed out of the soil and eliminated from most processed foods.

I recommend monitoring dietary calcium intake, supplementing with vitamin D3, getting the minimum daily requirement of magnesium and aiming for a 1:2 or at least a 1:1 calcium-magnesium ratio.”

Eating foods high in calcium and taking just a bit of it in your multivitamin plus taking 400 to 800 mg a day of magnesium plus taking at least 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and eating foods like nuts if you aren’t allergic and organic greens and nonstarchy green vegetables which have some magnesium will do the job she is recommending.

4.  Two last points.

First, You can avoid constipation by doing 3 things. 

a) Get some exercise, at least a few minutes of vigorous exercise or some longer session of moderate exercise such as walking most days of every week.

b) Eat enough fiber by eating lots of nonstarchy vegetables and beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas and for people who are in good health and not too fat or allergic some 100 % whole grain foods. 

The vegetables are essential. Most people are OK with the beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas.  And some people are OK with some 100 % whole grain foods.

And drink plenty of water.

c) Take 400 to 800 mg a day of magnesium.

The exercise helps your body move things along while the fiber, water, and magnesium keep everything soft enough to flow through.

Second, Some people who have taken magnesium AND taken a lot of Milk of Magnesia too get diarrhea and even have dangerous symptoms because they have overdosed on magnesium.

Taking magnesium and the other things make Milk of Magnesia less needed.  But if you take magnesium, go easy on the Milk of Magnesia!

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Monday, May 21, 2012

Advanced fat loss discoveries


My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post: Monday, 5-21-2012  

Since last month, there’s several kinds of good news!

1.  First, the month was a bit of a mixed review in many ways; but I LOST 3 & a half pounds on the scale and lost back the 3 quarters of an inch on my waist I’d recently gained.

The majority of that was because of a rare negative event.  I got a severe cold that created a significant secondary chest infection with lots of congestion.  That was about 3 weeks before my monthly Saturday measurement on 5-19.  I had to do less exercise and only gradually build back to avoid delaying my recovery.  And, for the week before I got sick plus two of the 3 weeks it took to recover, I ate 2700 calories of almond butter.  So, I expected to gain this month.

So, what happened to cause me to lose and by that much instead?!   My appetite dropped off just a bit, but the almond butter easily equaled or overcame that.  I exercised a lot MORE during those three weeks by coughing so horribly much.  I must have burned an extra 13,200 calories in those 3 weeks from coughing based on the math I know.  Even better, it was vigorous enough, I may have added some muscle in my core muscles that contracted when I cough.

2. In addition, I already added a way that looks likely to help me lose back the other weight I’ve regained over the last six or seven months. 

When I lost the original 20 pounds I was eating no almond butter.  Since then I’ve gained a pound or so on many months over several months. In fact, before my weight loss this last month I had regained a bit over half of it. 

When I did the math on the almond butter I was eating and found that even when trying to cut back, my records show that, virtually all that fat regain was from the almond butter I was eating, I decided that I’d better stop buying and eating ANY almond butter.

If I’m correct, and my recent good results that included my first week without it suggest I am, that means that just from tossing this one food that was reversing my resulting fat loss will enable me to re-lose that 10 pounds.

I’ve now successfully had NO almond butter for almost two weeks and it’s even easier than I expected it to be.

3.  The first piece of even better news is that, I’ve read that boosting my level of growth hormone to what it was when I was in my teens or early twenties or early thirties with shots of HGH, has a proven track record of taking fat off the abdominal area enough to restore the waistline I had at that time.  

(That would be 34 inches – the six inches off my waist I have wanted so much to lose!  I also found out just recently that for health reasons everyone should have a waist measure no greater than half their height.  My natural height in those years was 68 inches.  So dropping those 6 inches would be health protecting too!)

I’ve not done anything with that information because of three factors.  It’s WAY too expensive for me to consider; it may have side effects if you do it that way; and it’s likely to actually turn down the normal growth hormone release my body does by itself.

What I have needed was a doable and affordable way to cause my own body to boost my growth hormone that much.

I just found out that I’ve already been using the two proven methods to do that!  The great good news is that means by using those two methods more than I have, I actually have a shot at losing a good bit of the fat on my waist!

a) One way to do that is with strength training of your muscles to the point they almost get completely overloaded.  The other way is with quite vigorous interval cardio that you build up to gradually and include some rest breaks each time as a second way to make it safer.  I’ve gotten some positive results on the few exercises I done this on.  So, by adding doing this at least once a week on more of my exercises and working a bit harder on the ones I’ve been doing it on, I’ll release more growth hormone.  I certainly will begin to systematically add more exercises where I do that.

b)  Obviously a fast or partial fast every other day for 3 days out of 6 every week or even two nonconsecutive days each week, will cut calories.  Studies found this a superior way to cut calories once you make the needed upgrades in the quality of what you eat and drink.  One study even found that doing this just two nonconsecutive days each week lost MORE weight and fat than trying to cut back every day when it was actually tested recently. 

One reason for this is that it’s much easier to do than cutting back every day psychologically. 

But there are two even more powerful reasons!

Research found this kind of calorie cut back is similar enough to the way humans ate before 10,000 years ago that it does NOT trigger your famine response or does so far less than every day calorie cut backs.  Jon Benson is the fitness expert I learned this from.  (It’s pretty simple when you think about it. Back then, lean rations every day meant famine while lean rations a few days a week but quite decent the rest of the time was actually relatively good times.)

But the third reason is more powerful yet!  It seems that to ensure good repair on the short ration days, I just found out that when it isn’t a famine, your body boosts the heck out of your growth hormone release so your body can repair itself more efficiently.

Between those two factors, it strongly suggests that if I do more growth hormone releasing intense strength training and do two partial fast days a week instead of just the one I already found doable and have been doing, I not only will lose fat, I’ll begin to lose it from my fat tummy most of all!

To me, that is fantastically good news!

It makes me more hopeful about my own fat loss than I’ve been in many months.

4.  But there is even more good news yet this time!

For months I’ve known that I have a shot at better future results from a strategy I’ve ended this post with for those several months. 

Besides the short sessions of very intense exercise, the other proven fat reducer is just lots of moderate exercise each week.

Tons of more than moderate exercise tends to boost your appetite that much or more.  But intense exercise for short periods boosts your metabolism for hours after you do it.  Similarly, a moderately high amount of moderate exercise simply duplicates the normal conditions of humans before 10,000 years ago and your body tends to not boost your appetite more than the calories you burn.

One woman I read about had lost 20 pounds by food upgrades and not pigging out as much.  When she lost another 30 pounds on the same food, her doctor was amazed and asked her what had changed.  It was quite simple.  She had decided to take transit and was walking two miles as part of it each morning and another two miles back each evening.  Four miles total each day times five weekdays each week meant she was burning close to an extra 2,000 calories a week.

Since she didn’t get too much hungrier because that used to be an average day for humans activity wise, she lost the extra 30 pounds.

The problem with that of course is that she spent over an hour each day and about 6 hours a week walking.

Some young people have that much extra time and so do many retired people.  The rest of us not only don’t have that extra 6 hours, we need that much more to do well in the rest of our lives.

The solution exists however.

Do that moderate exercise while you watch TV or read at home and during much of the time you are at your desk at work.  You get the extra fat loss and health benefits without using hours of time you can’t spare!

I’d posted before that too much sitting is a health risk factor even for people who do vigorous exercises several times each week in shorter sessions.

And I’d posted before on some under the desk exercisers that cost about $150 but you had to order them online & might not be able to return them if they turned out not to be usable at your desk.

But three things happened since last month. 

I found out that having such an exerciser at work would improve my memory and mental sharpness on the days I used it.  I posted that news last week!

At my new job I do have enough more knee room under my desk, I’d known I might be able to get one of the tiny bicycle style exercisers and begin using that a few hours a day.  (They are just pedals and a support stand available online for about $150.  Not fancy; but an extra 200 calories a day on it will trim off some fat.)

And, it seemed silly not to try it already for that extra fat loss. But when I got the news it would improve me mentally too, I decided to try to implement it soon.

Then I realized I could go to the local sporting goods store to see if they had such an exerciser.  That way if I tried it and it didn’t work out right away, I could return it.  The news then got better.  I asked and they would refund my money if the exerciser turned out right away not to be usable.  But even better, instead of $150, it only cost $50!

So, tomorrow, I’ll set that up and begin using it on Wednesday this week.

I’d be somewhat happy with just losing a pound a month overall by stopping the almond butter along with some better progress on shrinking my fat tummy and waist measurement from adding the exercise upgrades, the second partial fast day each week, and the under desk exerciser.

But the potential exists to lose closer to 4 pounds of fat a month mostly from my waist.  If that happens, that would please me tremendously!

I might actually lose the six inches from my waist eventually if that is the case!

I’ll let you know how I do.

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Friday, May 18, 2012


Solutions to drugs that keep you fat--Insomnia drugs….

Today's Post:  Friday, 5-18-2012

Friday, 3-9-2012, our post “Some drugs can keep you fat” listed several kinds of general strategies to drugs that tend to fatten you or keep you fat.  For most of them, there is a better drug or a way to improve your condition that avoids using that drug.

Friday, 3-16, we covered anti-depressants since some of those can keep you fat.  Some don’t including Zyban aka Wellbutrin that helps some people quit smoking.

Friday, 3-23, we covered blood pressure lowering drugs.

Friday, 3-30, we covered drugs for type 2 diabetes.

Friday, 4-6, we covered statin drugs.  (There are far better ways to protect your heart.  And statins cause the exercise that is essential for beneficial and permanent fat loss harm you instead.!)

Friday, 4-13, we covered Corticosteroids.  (Some problems those help are hard to treat without them but your doctor may be able to help you use them in a way that minimizes the fat gain.  The better news is that for asthma, using corticosteroids can almost always be temporary.)

Friday, 4-20, we covered Birth Control pills. 

Friday, 5-11, we covered migraine drugs.

Today, we cover drugs for insomnia.

Some of the over the counter insomnia remedies slow your metabolism.  The active ingredient in them, diphen-hydramine slows down your metabolism.  Sominex and Nytol are two examples. 

Nytol at least is designed for temporary use to help you sleep better when you have a bad cold.

So the effect from Nytol is temporary plus as with any over the counter multiple drug product, if you can do OK without it, it’s safer and cheaper to do so.  

Sominex and the other insomnia drugs are different.

One the best reasons for fat loss is to protect your health.

If you value your health, you will use other ways to sleep better and take zero insomnia drugs.

Here’s why.

Eating lots of fatty meats from grain fed animals will increase your risk of death from heart disease.

Processed meats are fatty meats from grain fed animals that have also had extra salt and preservatives added.  Eating those meats often will increase your risk of death from heart disease a bit more.

Smoking is worse.  Even smoking 3 cigarettes a day will increase your risk of death from heart disease even more than eating preserved meats often.

Guess what? 

The champion is taking insomnia drugs.  The chances of death from all causes goes up MORE than if you did all those three at the same time!

I was so astounded when I learned this I already did a post on it which I will include below.

That post has some of why this may be the case.  And of course it includes ways to turn off insomnia without drugs. (It includes a drug that causes insomnia that our post in this series on statins suggests you can do better to replace.  At the least you can use less or take a different one or both.)

But before I add that post, there are some fat loss specific things to say.

1.  One of the most effective and essential ways to sleep well is to do regular exercise, ideally at least some vigorous exercise for a few minutes on most days of every week.

But doing that with progressive strength training and interval cardio plus some more moderate exercise as you can fit it in, is also essential for fat loss!

That means if you have yet to get into that kind of exercise, gradually and slowly adding it will turn off many if not most cases of insomnia. 

People who do this kind of exercise go to sleep more reliably, with less effort, in fewer minutes each night, and sleep better after they fall asleep.

This is a win-win deal.  You will lose more fat whether it shows on the scale or not.  Your health will improve.  And you will find it easier to keep off the fat you lose from eating better.

And you’ll have less of a problem with insomnia and sleep better too!

2.  One of the causes of insomnia is sleeping too much during the day due to sleep apnea disrupting your sleep at night.  This often causes people with this problem to take microsleeps and even periods of narcolepsy, a kind of microsleep that isn’t micro.

Besides effective snoring treatments such as the Pillar procedure and airway obstruction removal in some people and/or the CPAP all night treatment where the machine force feeds you air, the most effective cure for sleep apnea is significant fat loss.

So if you have a lot to lose and do it, your sleep apnea may well disappear.  At worst it will be far less severe.

This makes a fat loss a win-win too.  You’ll be less likely to be in a micro-sleep caused accident, you’ll be more productive during the day.  And since, during the day, you’ll get less sleep, you’ll go to sleep easier at night.

Here’s the post from a few posts back:

Sleeping pills have an extremely death rate….Thursday, 3-15-2012

Last Monday, 3-12, Jenny Thompson of HSI sent out an email about a new study published in the British Medical Journal.

Researchers studied 10,500 people who took sleeping pills, from hypnotics like Ambien to sedatives, during two and a half years and compared them with 23,600 carefully matched people who took no sleeping pills at all.

The higher death rate in that time period of the people who took the sleeping pills was so much higher it was truly scary!

The people who took sleeping pills 11 times a month or more were FIVE times as likely to die during that time.

The people who took less than 11 a month but at least 18 a year were four times more likely to die.

People who took 18 or less each year were more than 3 and a half times more likely to die.

A.  Why is this happening?

1.  The study found one reason for this.  The people who took the hypnotic drugs got more of many kinds of cancer during the time period.  That was particularly true of the people who took them every week.

2.  Another reason is that one of the main reasons people have really serious trouble sleeping is when they are extremely stressed.  And, that level of stress tends to be almost that harmful.  The list of demographic characteristics the researchers matched for didn’t appear to have included that difference.  The death rate for severely stressed people is elevated too.

3.  A third reason is that the most mentally healthy people, Dr Martin Seligman found, think of most bad things as temporary for various reasons that are usually true.  They do NOT over-generalize and see most things that severely stress them or trouble sleeping occasionally as continuing to happen forever or completely out of their control.

The people who think the opposite, that bad things will continue forever, are far more likely to self limit themselves and be depressed.  They also have MUCH poorer health most of the time.

So when the mentally healthy people see the things that stress them as temporary or fixable and see any trouble sleeping as fixable and temporary, they rarely will ask a doctor for sleep drugs.

4.  The hypnotic drugs by themselves have killed people also.  One man who had taken a hypnotic sleep drug went sleep walking in his light pajamas and went outside.  Unfortunately for him, it was mid-winter and below zero.  They found his frozen body in the morning.  People have also driven and died in accidents in their “sleep” while taking hypnotic sleep drugs or eaten poisonous things and died.

In real sleep, your brain induces a kind of paralysis.  That’s why people wake up from nightmares sometimes.  They try to escape or stop the scary thing in their dream and find they can’t move and wake up terrified.  It’s happened to me on occasion.

The sleep induced by the hypnotic drugs somehow fails to start up that effect.  So at any time people taking those drugs could die in exactly such a “sleep-walking” event.  Unfortunately some have been reported to have just that happen.

B.  Things that help you sleep that do not require you to take drugs to do it.

Jenny Thompson in her email listed several things that people can do to sleep better that do not require drugs.

1.  The best one is regular and vigorous exercise almost every day.  People who do that kind of exercise have much higher stress tolerance ability.  And, they fall asleep more quickly and sleep better once asleep.

She also notes that many years ago, when she was having trouble sleeping herself, she bought a new and better quality mattress and took the television out of her bedroom, and the quality of her sleep improved immediately.

2.  An uncomfortable mattress can make it harder to fall asleep and the extra discomfort can cause you to feel pain or more tired when you wake up.  So getting a new good quality mattress can help.

3.  But the really huge thing she did was to get the TV out of her bedroom!  Late night TV news is mostly about bad things you can’t do much about.  Even good TV shows you like can cause you to go to bed too late in the day. And, the extra light from the set tends to prevent your body from releasing the natural sleep hormone melatonin.  (Doing other things to make your bedroom dark also helps your body release melatonin.)  This is also better than a new mattress because it’s cost no money to do.

4.  And, there are some foods and supplements that can help too. 

a) If you have a raw vegetable and a healthy OK protein snack and maybe some fruit, the hunger that might have kept you up is gone and you will fall asleep and sleep better.  (Just keep the amount light and try to eat it an hour before bedtime.) 

A couple of broccoli florets and a single string cheese and two or three strawberries would work. 

I eat the broccoli florets first.  Then if I’m still hungry, I have a spoonful or two of nonfat cottage cheese and unsweetened apple sauce. Then if I’m still hungry, I’ll have a single spoonful of almond butter.  I’m trying to lose weight, so I don’t let myself have the almond butter often.  One man I know did well with lowfat yogurt and blueberries as a night time snack.

b) You can also take melatonin about an hour before bed.  A single one milligram or half of one will work.  So will taking 3 mg; but you may be groggy and too laid back the next morning if you do that.  That happened to me once. Try the lower amounts first!

c) There is also a safer way to calm yourself when you are super stressed.  Taking the herb valerian works.  People in Europe took it during World War II when their lives were in danger day after day.

But save that for really heavy duty stress and sleep problems.  Valerian quite literally stinks.  Worse it’s the calming compound in the valerian that smells bad.  I tried it once and decided to pass unless I was under incredibly high stress.  And, in that event I’d try to get sealable jar or box to keep the bottle of valerian in when I wasn’t taking it!

The good news though is that valerian does work and is safe otherwise.

d) If you take a drug every day, also check on Wikipedia or with a pharmacist to see if the drug you are taking causes insomnia. 

It turns out many people taking Lipitor get insomnia.  There is a genetic test you can get for about $150 to see if you are one of the minority of people statins help.  Most people are in the larger group that get better heart protection from niacin than from statins.

Or you may get the same heart protecting effect but no or less insomnia with another statin. 

For those two things of course, you’ll need to work with your doctor.

But for most people most of the time, it looks far safer to stick to these methods and NOT take sleeping pills at all.

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