Friday, June 29, 2012


Good news for type 2 diabetics....

Today's Post:  Friday, 6-29-2012

First, the two pieces of bad news are that:

1.  Many people today have type 2 diabetes or are well on their way to getting it but have never been tested and don’t realize it.   This is like getting into your car to drive it somewhere and not knowing the brakes are out or failing. 

(The tests to get are for fasting blood sugar and HBA1C.  To stay healthy, they should be 99 or less for fasting blood sugar and 5.8 or less for HBA1C.  Fasting blood sugar is like a snapshot & HBA1C gives you an indicator of your average blood sugar 24 hours a day for the last 60 days or so.)

2.  The always too high blood sugar defined as type 2 diabetes is unusually harmful to you and your health:

The excessive and chronic blood sugar that is termed type 2 diabetes tends to harm the inner surface of your blood vessels and destroy capillaries.

What recent research suggests happens is that the extra sugar sticks on to your LDL even the normally less harmful large particles of it.  When it does so it acts in your blood vessels like moving particles of abrasives.  Think of pouring sand into an engine.

In your brain, this tends to cause Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.  In your optic nerve this causes blindness. For men it at least doubles heart disease and for women it multiplies it by four times!  It causes erectile dysfunction and reduces response in both sexes. It even causes direct damage to your sensory nerves.  Some people lose enough peripheral circulation they wind up with amputation of their feet.

In addition to being sedentary and eating and drinking high fructose corn syrup and too much real sugar and eating lots of refined grains, exposure to second hand smoke as a child and exposure to a fungicide and likely some other toxins make this problem more likely.

Fortunately, there is a long list of good news including two blockbuster brand new stories of great importance to anyone working to stop or turn down high or very high blood sugar.

1.  First, the exercise that turns down or prevents chronic high blood sugar has so many other proven health benefits, that anyone not yet doing regular exercise is at risk from so many kinds of health harm and missing so many health benefits that having to add it to combat high blood sugar is actually a good thing for many people. 

(Even a few sessions a week of quite vigorous exercise for just a few minutes each time lowers HBA1C.  Even people who are extremely pressed for time can do four or five sessions of 2 or 3 minutes each at home each morning.  Regular, moderate exercise such as walking also lowers blood sugar if you can fit enough of it in or can’t do vigorous exercise.  Doing both is ideal.)

Similarly the eating style that includes health safe protein foods and oils and lots of vegetables and some whole fresh fruit and stopping almost all eating or drinking high fructose corn syrup and too much real sugar and eating lots of refined grains that lowers high blood sugar and tends to prevent it has so many other health benefits and prevents so many kinds of health harm, having to add it to combat high blood sugar is actually a good thing for many people. 

Dr Mark Hyman has experience with patients who have been able to stop high blood sugar or keep it turned down by just doing both of these well and continuing to do so.

2.  Two supplements have long been known to help your body regulate blood sugar and prevent it from harming you.  Chromium polynicotinate also has heart benefits when you take 200 mcg a day.  Alpha lipoic acid not only lowers blood sugar but acts to prevent nerve damage and it’s an antioxidant soluble in both water and oil. So alpha lipoic acid is protective in every part of your body.  Even 200 mg a day will help though some people may need to take 300 mg two or three times a day.

Before I became knowledgeable about this subject, one of the best doctors I ever had added the fasting glucose test to my heart health lipid panel.  My fasting glucose was 115.  I had no clue this was the case nor that such a reading was scary, dangerous.  When he told me it was too high and to stay safe I needed to lower it, I’d heard of taking chromium and alpha lipoic acid.  So I added both and cut my intake of sugar in half. 

Fortunately most of my diet was good and I already exercised regularly.  My fasting glucose dropped to the 85 to 96 range and has remained there ever since.  It may even be better now because I exercise a bit more and have cut my sugar intake in half twice since then.

3.  If you already have really bad numbers on these tests, fasting glucose of over 120 and HBA1C 6.0 or higher, clearly you need to safely begin regular exercise, stop eating and drinking the things that cause the problem and eat right instead.  It will likely help you to add these two supplements.

But what if you still test with fasting glucose of over 120 and HBA1C 6.0 or higher because you just began these things or you started with far higher readings?

There once was another supplement that worked even better and had been in use for I think hundreds of years.  Since then it has been super-concentrated into the drug Metformin.  Even in two lower doses a day with your two largest meals, it reliably lowers fasting glucose and HBA1C.  Even better, it helps a bit for people to lose fat and belly fat!

This drug works and is unusually safe.  The only side effect you need to compensate for is that Metformin tends to deplete vitamin B12.  But you can I think override this effect by taking 1,000 mcg a day of B12 in the sublingual form that goes directly into your blood without having to be digested and reduced down first.

But there are two problems with taking Metformin. 

Some people start out and remain over 7.0 on their HBA1C reading even after they do the first set of things and take Metformin.  Ouch!  That condition is health and life threatening.  What can be done then?

Also, I’ve read some people have Metformin begin to not work as effectively.  What can be done then?

Many efforts have been made to develop added drugs to lower high blood sugar.  Those drugs have been a disaster.  Virtually all of them have worse quality of life side effects than Metformin.  Worse, many of them directly caused the heart disease people were taking them to prevent and killed many people.

That’s where the news gets much better recently!

Berberine has been around as a minor supplement long enough it’s recognized as safe and side effect free as far as I know.  It’s not cheap but is moderately priced instead of expensive.

Remember that Metformin is essentially a super-concentrate of a supplement.

I’d heard a woman say her doctor wanted her to take Berberine for lowering blood sugar.  Her doctor said it worked as well as Metformin and he thought it likely to be even safer.  Since my previous exposure to Berberine was that it often was in combinations of supplements to help people get over colds and flu, I was astonished.

But due to the importance of this information if it were true, I did an online search.  Dr Julian Whitaker had this:

“In a clinical trial published in Metabolism, people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes were randomly divided into groups and assigned to take Metformin or berberine. Improvements were noted the very first week, and at the study’s conclusion the average blood sugar and hemoglobin A1c levels were significantly decreased in both groups. Remarkably, berberine was every bit as effective as Metformin. The two had “identical effect[s] in the regulation of glucose metabolism.”

He adds that Berberine has several other health benefits also.  Like Metformin, it also helped a bit to lose fat and belly fat.  Like niacin it improved blood lipid measures of heart health.  And like alpha lipoic acid it has nerve protective effects.

I don’t yet know how much the people in the study took of Berberine.  (You can buy 400 mg capsules of Berberine on Amazon.  And at my local Health Food store they found and have begun stocking a supplement with 200 mg capsules.)

I don’t yet know if Berberine has been tried with people who need more blood sugar lowering than Metformin alone can deliver. If so, I’ve not heard the results.

And, I don’t yet know if it has been tried with people who stopped responding well to Metformin.  If so, I’ve not heard the result.

Clearly what both groups of people need to look at first is eating right and getting regular exercise.  These two things work directly to remove the causes of high blood sugar and help prevent some of the harms from high blood sugar.

Failing to do that is like putting new tires on a car to make it have better gas mileage but without stopping dragging a large sea anchor behind the car!

But for the few people who do have side effects with Metformin or for whom Metformin is not enough or stops working, Berberine looks well worth trying.

This is extremely good news indeed.

The other news is as important if it checks out and the new drug does wind up being free of harmful side effects.  Clearly it tested as effective in lowering blood sugar. And like Metformin and Berberine it is OK to use in people who want to stop or avoid having too much excess fat.

HealthDay had this:  “THURSDAY, June 28 (HealthDay News) -- A new drug for type 2 diabetes causes significantly less weight gain and may carry lower risks for hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), heart attack and stroke than standard medications, a new study indicates.
Researchers in Germany noted that the new drug, linagliptin (Tradjenta), is intended for use in patients that do not fare well with metformin, the most common first-line drug used to treat the disease.  

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Thursday, June 28, 2012


Low carb tests best for fat loss....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 6-28-2012

Three diets were tested.

Each of them caused lower calories burned which tends to slow fat loss or fat regain.

Each of the 3 diets had the same number of calories.  That was low enough all the people studied lost weight.

Calorie-wise the low fat one had 60% carbs, 20% fat, and 20% protein
It caused a drop in total calories burned of 423 calories a day.

The second group was called the low glycemic group which was in between on carbs but emphasized low glycemic ones such as beans and low glycemic fruit apparently.

Calorie-wise the low glycemic group had 40% carbs, 40% fat, & 20% protein
It caused a drop total calories burned of 297 calories a day.

Calorie-wise the very low carb group had 10% carbs, 60% fat, and 30% protein.
It caused a drop total calories burned of 97 calories a day.

The researchers from Children's Hospital Boston published their preliminary research in JAMA.

This means that over time the low carb group will lose more fat, regain less, and the people eating that way will likely keep more of it off.  Also due to the high protein part, the low carb people will lose less muscle and other lean weight. More of their weight loss will be fat!

My initial comments: 

People who like meat and cheese tend to do quite well on the low carb diets. 

And because the extra protein and fat does turn off hunger while carbs tend to cause rebound hunger, almost everyone on a low carb diet is less hungry than the other two groups!

Secondly, people who lose fat and keep it off average about 400 calories a day of exercise.  Exercise, except for overdone long duration cardio and too fast increases in intensity, also improves virtually all the markers for heart disease.  So, people who exercise that much, except for people who overdo carbs, lose fat and keep it off even with this reduction in calories burned found in the study!

David Ludwig, a noted fat loss expert and I believe one of the researchers, noted that the low fat diet had the worst impact on heart health – including insulin sensitivity worse, triglyceride levels higher and HDL cholesterol levels down.  

But Dr Ludwig also noted that the low carb diet increased inflammation which is also a cause of heart disease.

Worse, a recent study also came out showing that the traditional Atkins diet did tend over time to have heart disease causing effects.

What is the win win strategy using this new information?

There are several.

One is from a study that found people who only ate a low calorie super low carb diet two days a week lost MORE fat and weight than people doing it all 7 days a week.

The calories eaten dropped less.  But it looks like the nearly 700 calories a week drop in total calories burned may have dropped to near zero.  In addition, this twice a week group was clearly less hungry and felt far less restricted.  That means that the chances of them continuing until they lost all their excess fat and their chances of keeping it off went up a great deal!

Second, bacon and butter and cheese and other fatty meats from animals fed grains are excessively high in omega 6 oils.  And using oils high in omega 6 such corn oil and soy oil also add omega 6.  When people eat that stuff and get very little omega 3 oil, their chronic inflammation DOES go way up. That is proven to cause heart disease and there is evidence it raises the risk of cancer a good bit too.

Those foods fit the low carb diet just fine and many people using the Atkins diet eat them.

The Atkins people ARE right.  The very high carb diets are so heart disease causing that much of the data on HDL and blood sugar and triglycerides even in people who eat this junk DOES get better.  But due to this inflammation effect, long term this kind of low carb diet is a BAD idea.

But, the better news is two fold. 

1.  There’s a very big list of high protein foods and oils that do NOT have omega 6 in excess!

Beef and lamb from animals fed only grass may be best eaten in moderation and their cost helps people do that! But they do NOT have the excess omega 6 oils that cause inflammation.  Shrimp, lobster, crab, & oysters from sustainable sources avoid excess omega 6.  So do eggs from pastured hens.  And, wild caught fish avoids the pollutants in farmed fish, has no omega 6 oils to speak of and many kinds are high in omega 3!  Mushrooms have no oil and no omega 6.  You can also get cheese and butter from animals fed only grass.

There’s also a way to get some inexpensive high protein foods from grain fed animals. The problem with meat, poultry, and dairy from grain fed animals is in their fat.  If you eat these foods in moderation in nonfat, very lowfat, and low fat versions, you can have a high protein low carb diet and with only modest boosts to your inflammation.  Nonfat cottage cheese  works.  You can also use lean cuts of beef where you cut out the visible fat and drain off the fat that comes out of them when they are cooked and then add back some spices and extra virgin olive oil.  Cooking skinless poultry this way also works.  (With milk, it’s a bit high carb and nonfat and 1% are made with inflammation-boosting dried milk.  Drinking some 2% lowfat milk is a better health choice though it doesn’t quite fit as a low carb food.)

By emphasizing such protein foods and deleting high carb junk foods and adding a lot of vegetables the DASH II diet lowers high blood sugar and has other health benefits, for example.

Extra virgin olive oil, avocados, and nuts have mostly monosaturated fat and very little omega 6 oils.  Plus, except for people allergic to avocados or nuts, they all have multiple health benefits too!  (Nuts are so high in health OK oil, fiber, and protein they are zero glycemic and are one of the few foods that contain carbs that are OK in a low carb diet.)

So if you only go to super low carb foods two or three or four times a week and eat these health OK protein foods and oils all 7 days each week, you can lose fat.  And, you can do it without the inflammation boost of the grain fed fats.

2.  As with the protein and oils and fats, it also makes a dramatic difference what carbs you eat all 7 days a week.

The better choices have a lot of fiber and water content and have massive health benefits.  Non starchy vegetables and low glycemic whole fruit do have carbs.  But they are very low calorie and very filling.  Each cruciferous vegetable fits from radishes to broccoli to water cress to cabbage to cauliflower to Brussels sprouts.  Eating them raw strongly prevents cancer.  So does eating onions and garlic and most spices derived from plants, notably turmeric.

Low glycemic fruits include whole apples & berries such as blue berries and raspberries and straw berries and stone fruits from cherries to plums.  They have massive health benefits.  The fact that they are much safer to eat if they are grown organically helps you eat them in moderation also.

Beans and lentils and black-eyed peas are a bit higher in carbs but are also high in protein and fiber and are low glycemic.

Less starchy vegetables such as squash and yams and sweet potatoes but not russet potatoes are higher glycemic but not very high and have strong health benefits.

Real, 100 % whole grains are high glycemic and have a lot of carbs.  They do have some decent nutrients and a good bit of fiber.  But on low carb days, they should be skipped!

Meanwhile excess intake of sugar, more than three or four times a week, all high fructose corn syrup, all refined grains, and artificial sweeteners are both harmful to your health and fattening.  They are even more fattening in soft drink form since the delayed increase in hunger happens but with no decrease in hunger when you drink them.  At least with these foods, you initially become less hungry.

In conclusion, if you don’t eat a super low carb diet every day; you eat health OK protein foods and oils as protein and fat sources; and you eat the healthiest carbs each time you have any carbs, you can lose fat and weight.  And, you’ll minimize any increase in hunger or decrease in total daily calories burned. 

That’s beginning to repeatedly test as best at keeping you lean AND keeping you healthy.

And, for both fat loss and good health adding strength training, interval cardio, and as much moderate exercise as you can fit in each week is extremely valuable and effective.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2012


Ways to lose belly fat and inches off your waist....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-26-2012

So far, I’ve not been able to get enough leverage to do this myself very well.  At one point, I weighed 191 pounds and lost down to 161.  But I only went from 40 to 38 inches on my waist.

Then after gaining a bit more than half of that back to weighing 178 pounds, I lost down to 158 and again lost from 40 to 38 inches on my waist.  And then I gained back to 172 & 40 inches on my waist. 

I have prevented myself from gaining above 40 inches on my waist and am still 19 pounds, 10%, less than my worst weight.  So it’s clearly been worth the extra effort to do.

My goal is to lose back to 161 but lose 6 inches off my waist – AND to make both more permanent changes.  So that then becomes my new normal and stays the same.

As you can see, losing belly fat and inches from my waist is something that vitally interests me!

Clearly I’ve had and still have three challenges:

1. Both my job and my favorite recreations except for exercise are done sitting down.  And I’ve close to maxed out the time I have to exercise already.

*Walking and active recreations, when done enough each week, tend to remove excess fat and tend to remove belly fat.  <<<<<

I’ve found that during the times I’ve had to do brisk walking of a mile or more each day to take transit almost every day, my waist and belly fat go down.  My wife sees the difference when that happens and comments on it.

One time I had a week where I walked over 20 miles – some of it quite briskly and could see my waist was smaller from just that week of extra walking.

Also, one woman began to eat right and stop eating badly and ate just a bit less.  She lost 20 pounds.  Then she decided to take transit to work.  In her case, she had to walk briskly for 2 miles to and another two miles from work each day to do this.  That’s 20 miles a week.  She ate the same AND lost another 30 pounds.  So she lost 50 pounds and a good bit on her waist too, though my source did not say how many inches more the walking took off.

(I close this post with a potential way to do this without taking any work time to do it.)

2.  I spent most of the last 30 years stressed by lack of money most of the time.

I recently became much less stressed financially due to a new and reliable source of income.   And, I am adding another new source of income that will stop my financial stress completely if I add it fast enough.  (I’m doing the work successfully to launch this and the people who have done the same work a bit longer than I are making five times the income I am now.)

*Removing excess stress and lowering the excessive cortisol it delivers to your system are known to remove belly fat.  <<<<<

*And, doing things that lower excess cortisol directly also tends to remove belly fat.  <<<<<

>I already get vigorous exercise on most days of every week.  That boosts cortisol briefly as you exercise but lowers it the rest of the time.

>One doctor wrote that ingesting 2,000 grams or more a day of omega 3 oils lowers excess cortisol.  I already get more than 2,000 grams of fish sourced omega 3 oil between almost half that from omega 3 supplements and more than half that from eating canned wild caught salmon.  So I do that.

>The same doctor said that taking the supplement Rhodiola also helps lower excess cortisol.  That I’ve not yet tried.  But I may try it since it also lowers stress and improves mood and boosts mental energy.

>The same woman doctor says that activities like yoga, tai chi, and meditation lower cortisol levels.  My reading suggests that meditation is the least effective of these but that it does work well for some people.  I hope to learn tai chi and a form of active yoga and do 10 minutes a day of one or both.  But I’ll need more time to fit it in that I don’t yet have.  And I don’t yet have access to the funds or time to learn that form of yoga or tai chi.  I plan to do both eventually.

The people who do that form of active yoga all seem to lose fat.  And, doing tai chi lowers high blood pressure by lowering physical stress and likely also sharply cuts excess cortisol.

3.  I’m 68 years old and have clearly lost at least 10 pounds or more of muscle from my legs and butt.  I plan to add some heavier exercises to build that back but can’t yet fit them into my schedule.  But when I do, I expect to lose some fat and inches from my waist.

*Muscle does burn more calories than fat.  And, people who strength train enough to add significant muscle do lose belly fat every time.  <<<<<

*Other things that lose belly fat:   <<<<<

>The book, the Flat Belly Diet presents evidence that cutting out omega six oils and all hydrogenated oils and most fat from animals fed grain and eating monosaturated fats such as extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and avocados instead helps lose belly fat when added to an effective fat loss plan.  This strategy cuts belly fat better for some than others.  But some people have found it effective.  And, best of all, EVERYONE who does this will be healthier according to abundant research on the Mediterranean Diet which is one way to eat this way.  <<<<<

* Losing enough total fat to get down to 10% fat in your body for men and 15% for women does it.  If you go from 40 % fat to 20% fat, you will look better and feel better and will be dramatically healthier.  But to lose belly fat, you have to do more.  (The strength training enough to build muscle and the big boost in walking or comparable moderate activity work to do this.)  So does eating more consistently for fat loss -- from lots of vegetables and very little sugar and no junky foods or soft drinks to drinking a bit less alcohol.  <<<<<

(Tim Ferris’s book, 4 Hour Body has pictures that reveal this clearly.)

*Three supplements recently have shown the possibility of losing enough extra fat to lose belly fat and two of them tested as directly losing belly fat, one of them for sure and one of them very likely due to its other effects.  <<<<<

Two supplements that have been in the news lately that may turn out to add to fat loss safely as their early reports suggest are ursolic acid and green coffee bean extract.  The initial ursolic acid results show added muscle and faster metabolism and fat loss.  The initial results on green coffee bean extract show some metabolism boost and fat loss.

So far, most such supplements with early positive reported results tend to work only for people who eat better and exercise more because they believe it’s worth it due to the supplements that they believe in but in larger more careful trials showed very little effect from the supplement itself. 

These two newer supplements do look more promising so far.  Besides the small amount of caffeine, green coffee bean extract has high amounts of antioxidants and may well have other stimulants and metabolism boosters.  Though the changes from ursolic acid were found while testing rats and such animal testing doesn’t always get the same results in people, the details of the high level analysis of the biological changes suggest strongly that the same results will happen for people.

The bad news is that both supplements are quite pricey now.

*For people who are exercising regularly and eating right enough – and for those people only
-- there is evidence that for those people eating a good bit of wakame seaweed or taking the supplement  fucoxanthin derived from wakame seaweed lost more fat than matched people who don’t.  Better yet, more of the extra fat they have lost has been belly fat.  <<<<<

That too is a bit pricey as a supplement now.

So far, for me, most of these things are still a bit too much money or take too much time.

Though in each case, I plan to change that.

Each of these things is doable now with one exception.  Once I have more money and a bit more time, I plan to do them all.  Hopefully many of you can do them now.

However, neither now nor in the future will I have enough time to walk 20 miles a week added to my schedule each day on weekdays.  (That comes to between an hour to an hour and twenty minutes each day before the extra time for changing clothes or showering or both.)

The good news is that there is a potentially cost effective way to do that much moderate exercise at my desk while I work. 

Since I need not work fewer hours to use it, it takes very close to ZERO extra time.  In fact this kind of exercise has been found to improve mental energy and ability each day it’s done and on that day!

So I’m beginning to work to see if I can induce a company to make it. (The basic design already exists and is proven to work.) Using one takes more hours a week but is less intense per hour so it’s less overheating.  So no extra shower or clothes changes are needed.  And since it does not stop you from working or from working at your desk, it takes close to zero extra time to do.

If you might want one when they are available, email me at davideller7@yahoo.com .  

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Thursday, June 21, 2012


New ways to turn off gout and high blood pressure....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 6-21-2012

Introduction:

There were two stories early this week about the relationship between excess salt intake and endothelial dysfunction (damage or irritation or inflammation of the inner surface of your blood vessels) and uric acid levels.

The research apparently was done by researchers, from Harvard Medical School and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and one report of it was from or similar research was done at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

First, the importance of this news for turning off or preventing heart disease and high blood pressure.:

I’d always heard that excess salt caused high blood pressure in people who had ancestors who survived lack of water in hot conditions, mostly black people living in the United States.

I’d read that excess salt combined with lack of other electrolytes such as magnesium and potassium caused higher blood pressure.  And I’d heard that there was some direct effect by excess sodium causing water retention and the extra water in the blood vessels causing high blood pressure.

I think those things are still true.  People who have normal blood pressure who adopt the low salt DASH II diet have slightly lower blood pressure after doing so for example.

But this study established something else.  They say they found that:

“Excessive salt intake can damage blood vessels” directly!

They further explain that “individuals with a high, long-term sodium intake tended to have greater uric acid and albumin levels - both of which are known markers of blood vessel damage.“

And, it seems when endothelial (blood vessel inner surface) damage was greater as measured by “levels of albumin and uric acid” in the blood, continuing a high salt intake was far more likely to cause enough rise in blood pressure to make it too high.

How does that translate into “New ways to turn off gout and high blood pressure”?

It can be harmful to get LESS than the 1500 mg or so of sodium allowed by the DASH II diet and people who sweat a lot on hot days may need a bit more sodium on those days. 

Also, although there are many ways to spice foods to taste good that do work, those foods that need some salt to taste good, simply taste flat and depleted without any salt at all or too little of it.  (Early on, some restaurants that tried to serve health OK foods but that overdid salt restriction failed because those kinds of foods simply didn’t taste good enough.)

BUT, this research shows that an every day intake of salt in the 3,500 to 7,000 mg a day range is a DIRECT cause of heart disease AND, over time, a direct cause of high blood pressure.

That by itself is extremely important news.

It means that the sources of excess salt in salty snacks, many prepared foods, most restaurant and fast foods, some prepackaged dinners, and some canned foods is best avoided from totally to almost all of the time.

It also shows that if you avoid the other causes of endothelial dysfunction and heart disease and/or do the things that improve endothelial dysfunction you can safely have a bit more salt than only 1500 mg -- though over 3500 mg is still directly harmful.

In addition to the many ways that you can prevent heart disease and endothelial damage that we just posted on Tuesday, 6-12, a few days ago, and have often posted on before, you can ease the symptoms of endothelial dysfunction and sometimes lower high blood pressure. 

You do this by taking the amino acids l-arginine or taking l-arginine with some l-citrulline on an empty stomach since doing so causes nitric oxide release and causes your blood vessels to relax a bit and become more flexible. 

Also taking l-lysine on an empty stomach at a different time of day helps prevent the extra arginine from causing viruses that like it from causing you extra problems.  Even better, taking l-lysine on an empty stomach -- and one researcher found that adding l-proline and extra vitamin C -- helps entirely prevent endothelial dysfunction by making the surface of your blood vessels stronger, tougher, and more resilient.

Doing these things can help lower high blood pressure and keep it from getting worse -- and in men who have ED caused by endothelial dysfunction, it can improve things a good bit.

So if you want to avoid heart disease and high blood pressure avoid excess salt and the foods that contain it:

Eat raw or dry roasted nuts instead of salted nuts.  And virtually never buy salted nuts.  Avoid virtually all chips and salty snacks.  Read labels on prepared foods and canned foods & avoid the ones high in salt.  Usually avoid fast food.  And, in restaurants lean towards small servings of foods that are salted. 

When you cook, learn the ways that work to make foods taste good without salt and use them. 
Extra virgin olive oil, minced fresh garlic, powdered garlic, diced raw onions, diced sautéed onions, and all the other savory food spices from basil to turmeric and more in different blends work.  Finally, some kinds of shredded or shredded and diced parmesan cheese taste really salty but actually have less salt than their taste suggests.

When you use salt in your cooking, use a bit less.  (By all means suggest that people who want it a bit saltier add a bit at the table.)

And when you eat, ALWAYS taste the food first BEFORE you add salt and then add just a bit and don’t add more until after you taste. 

Also, consider adopting the DASH II diet or a blend of it with the Mediterranean diet, doing so has dramatic other benefits too from fat loss to preventing heart disease in other ways.

How this may be huge news for turning off gout:

It’s not at all widely known that higher levels of uric acid are a marker for and caused in part by endothelial damage and the related development of heart disease.

Nor, until this research, was it known or at all well known that excessive salt intake directly caused endothelial damage.

People with gout have known to stop overindulging in large servings of fatty meat and drinking too many alcoholic drinks too often.

Eating celery and taking celery seed extract helps. So does eating cherries or even canned, pitted sour cherries with no sugar added.  And drinking real cherry juice and taking cherry extracts helps some people quite a bit.

And, eating fewer foods high in purines helps. Besides fatty meats, WebMD lists, “Foods with the highest purine content include liver, organ, and game meats, sardines, mussels, anchovies, herring, and beer.”

The great news of this study is that literally everything else you can do to prevent heart disease or lessen endothelial dysfunction ALSO turns down gout!

That virtually quadruples the leverage you can have for getting rid of gout beyond what was known before!

One doctor, David Blyweiss, had this as added ways to lessen gout in a recent email:

"Turmeric and Curcumin: All forms of arthritis, including gout, are responsive to turmeric or curcumin for ongoing pain management with no side effects. You can take 1000 mg of curcumin, twice a day and 300 mg. 3 times a day of a standardized extract of turmeric. Or better yet, find a blend of the two specially-formulated for arthritis sufferers. With flare ups, you can increase the curcumin to 3,000 mg. twice a day safely and up to 500 mg. 3 times a day of turmeric.

Vitamin C: Another supplement shown to cut gout risk is vitamin C. A 20-year study of almost 47,000 men shows that as vitamin C increases in men's diets, the risk of gout decreases. In the study, 1,500 mg. of vitamin C a day reduced the risk of gout in men by 45%"

Turmeric and curcumin are powerful anti-inflammatories and vitamin C is a strong antioxidant.

But turmeric and curcumin also lower the kind of LDL that causes harm to your blood vessels and vitamin C makes them stronger.

So this new research validates his two extra methods!

But it also means that you can add stopping salty snacks and other sources of excess salt to the list of things that prevent gout or turn it down.

You can take the amino acids we listed above to improve the health of your arteries which looks likely to lower uric acid levels too.

You can add avoiding tobacco smoke totally. That avoids what may well be the very worst cause of endothelial damage and therefore the biggest direct cause of gout.

You can add no longer eating refined grains and high fructose corn syrup or eating too much sugar.

You can add no longer eating anything from shortening to nondairy creamer to pie crusts made with shortening to commercial baked goods like cookies made with hydrogenated oils.

You can use extra virgin olive oil instead of ever using high omega 6 oils like soy and corn oil and stop eating foods in which these cheap oils are used.

You can be sure to get regular exercise most days of every week once the gout is turned down enough.

You can add no longer drinking any regular or diet soft drinks.

Of course doing those things also prevents heart disease, heart attacks, stroke, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and fast aging!

Not only that, you will find it much easier to lose excess fat and keep it off.

But until now, that very large list of things was NOT yet known to prevent gout or turn it down or off.

So, if you have gout or know anyone who does, tell them about this news and this post.

We now know, thanks to this research, how to get something like TEN times the leverage on preventing gout and turning it down or off than was commonly known as recently as a couple of weeks ago!

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Tuesday, June 19, 2012


3 ways to be effective and happy and healthy....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 6-19-2012

This post will be a bit brief but it may be the most important one I’ve ever done.

All the things that I post about to keep you healthy and long lived work.

But if you are happy and work well with people and are effective, those things are far easier to do and the extra life you gain is much more worth living.

What are these 3 magic things?

Kindness, gratitude, and moderate challenge.

1.  Kindness. 

Make a strong special effort to be good to the people around you, find reasons to care about them, and avoid harming them when it can be avoided.

A man in old China had a very large family that was so uniformly happy that he and his family became famous throughout China.  Their story is apparently based on a real family.  They had one simple family rule:  “Always be kind.” 

This goes well with optimism. 

If you realize that most of the time when people are in a bad mood or do things you dislike, this is because of specific causes that may not repeat or can be fixed or that would affect you the same way if you were subjected to them, it’s far easier to be kind to them.  People get in bad moods or have or are in challenging circumstances or are sick or low in energy.  It happens.

Only people with brain damage or who had grave and harmful early life circumstances are horrible people all the time.  For everyone else, it’s temporary.

Since there are such people and sometimes even temporary issues can cause people to harm you or try to, you do have to protect yourself at times.  If that happens, to protect yourself you do need to act to escape or stop them.  But with that one exception, always be kind.

When you treat people with kindness usually they respond well. But even if they don’t for whatever reason, YOU will feel better and your stress level will be less and your neurotransmitters will make you think better.  And, by being kind even when the response is poor, you stay in the habit and will then be kind later when the response is very good.

So always do it.

2.  Gratitude.

Your life is as good as your experience in it.  But for virtually everyone there are good things and bad things and good events and bad ones.  There are efforts that succeed or that help you learn something that will keep you out of trouble or help you succeed later.  And there are efforts that simply don’t work at all.

But your mind is in many ways a focus machine.  If you make a habit of noticing when things go well or you enjoy something or you did something that worked or you learned something and then you focus on it when you remember it later, your life experience will be good.

Some things are good enough that if you listed things you are thankful for, you’d include them.

Take time to do notice these things when they happen and list things you are grateful for occasionally. 

New studies have found that people who do this often or learn to do it regularly are far happier and their quality of life is better than people who don’t.

What has gone well in your life recently?  What are a few things you are grateful for?

One Thanksgiving I was reminded to do this.  I listed a few things.  Then a day later, I realized I’d forgotten a few things as I did the day after that.  I wound up with something like 50 things many of which I was and am very happy about and grateful for.  But I’d not focused on them much lately at the time when I did that.

I was far happier afterwards!

Similarly, combine the two, kindness & gratitude, and take time to thank people when they do something to benefit you or they please you.

Just like the other ways to be kind to people it may or may not seem to do much for the person you thank or let know they pleased you.  But it virtually always will make YOU feel better.  And the more you do it the more people will react well.  Any one time, it may or may not do much for them.  But if you do it a 100 times, the positive effect you create will be huge.

3.  Moderate challenge.

I’ve seen 4 sources for different versions of this idea.

a) A psychologist at Harvard, David McClelland studied the habit of mind that produced significant achievement and progress.  He found that in societies with little kid’s books and children’s stories modeled these habits, they had much more robust economic growth when those children grew up than in societies that did not.  He called one of the 3 factors he found “Need for Achievement” which consisted of having goals and focusing on effective ways to achieve them.  He found that people high in this consistently worked at a level of moderate challenge.  They set goals that were worthwhile and easy enough success was possible but hard enough they had to make a moderate effort to achieve them.  People high in this did NOT set goals they could do with no effort nor did they set goals they had no chance of achieving.

(The other two factors he found were:

Working by persuasion, negotiation, and agreement instead of force or coercion.

& Making a very strong and focused effort when it counts most.  He called that one hard work but what he found was a bit more working hard when it would make the most difference to the result.)

b) Unfortunately I don’t remember the title or the name of the authors.  But a psychologist couple who worked with high level executives wrote a whole book on moderate challenge.

Their key point was that by keeping the challenge level moderate most of the time it IS possible to do quite hard work and achieve a lot but do so without burnout.

c) Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article about the related concept that if you have a low level of anxiety or worry about something, you often will be complacent and miss things that will cause you to do badly.  Or if your anxiety and worry level is too high for more challenging things it will distract you enough to cause poor performance while for routine things, you can still do them but it will wear you out from the extra effort needed.

The ideal is a moderate level.  You worry enough you find and indentify potential problems which you then work ahead of time to prevent or get ready for.  Then you usually perform well.

d)  But the most detailed and helpful description of high preparation and moderate challenge in acting to achieve is in Jim Collin’s new book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen.

His description of what he calls the “twenty mile march” concept is very detailed on how on preparation and taking worthwhile actions known to work and consistently doing a moderate amount of those actions every day creates great success.  He highlights why doing too much more on easy days creates LESS success than “stopping at 20 miles.” (It creates burnout or complacency.)

He found that even in companies with less good luck or more bad luck, the ones that did this were unusually successful while those that didn’t were not -- thus the title:  “Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All.”

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Monday, June 18, 2012


My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 6-18-2012

This month’s report is a mixed review.

1.  First, I’d hoped the five new things I did or kept doing over the month since last time would help me lose a pound or two.  And, hopefully, they would help me lose one or two quarter of an inches more on my waist to add to the three quarters of an inch I lost the month before. 

But instead I gained a half pound which wasn’t too bad -- but gained back a half to three quarters of an inch on my waist which was much more disappointing.

2.  The better news is that I DID do the five new things consistently over the month since last time that I’d hoped would help me lose a pound or two, etc.

One. I ate no almond butter in my after dinner snack after eating nearly enough of it to make a pound per month difference in my fat level, about 3500 calories a month.

Two. I did run the inexpensive foot powered wheel while reading on evenings and weekends for about a total of 3 hours a week.  If that burns 150 calories an hour or about half what walking would, that could lose a half pound as that equals 1800 calories for the month.

Three.  I did well several times in my strength training a few times each week at making a strong enough effort to lift a bit more or  do more repetitions that I likely did release extra growth hormone and might have gained a bit of muscle. 

Four.  I did successfully add a second vegetable-only for lunch semi-fast each week without any noticeable problems or too much hunger.  If I’d done this by itself it could have cut about 920 calories each month including last month – enough to lose about a quarter pound. (During the last month, though, I had a couple of extra dark chocolate bars one on each of two Saturdays which added about 660 calories and likely left me with only a 260 calorie drop.  Over a couple of years that will add up to 7 pounds even with the dark chocolate.  But for just one month, it’s closer to zero.

Five.  I did eat a bit of raw broccoli florets almost every evening at my after dinner snack and did not overdo the nonfat cottage cheese or Irish cheese or no sugar apple sauce.  So my record doesn’t show I ate too many calories to compensate for not eating almond butter.  (Eating the raw broccoli florets almost every evening instead of just sometimes, helped do that.)

3.  So how did I go from losing 3 pounds without most of these efforts and gaining a half pound with them?


Apparently the persistent and many times a day bad cough I had, to clear my lungs, due to the got a severe cold I got 3 weeks before my monthly Saturday measurement on 5-19 last month, must have burned an enormous amount of calories

Month before last I didn’t do most of the things on this month’s list AND did less of my regular exercise to avoid making my cold better instead of worse.

Apparently I exercised a lot MORE during those three weeks by coughing so horribly much and hard.  I must have burned at least an extra 14,000 calories in those 3 weeks from coughing based on the math I know. In fact, it might have been closer to 21,000 calories.  It was vigorous enough, I may have added some muscle in my core muscles that contracted when I coughed.

In short, had I not added all the new things I did this month, I might have gained 2 or 3 pounds this month instead of just a half a pound.

4.  But what more do I need to do to add muscle and lose fat enough to restart losing a pound or so each month on the scale and more fat than that too?

a)  I came up with a plan to cut back on red wine with dinner just a bit.  I may or may not be able to maintain it.  But the one day last week I tried it, it did work.  That will lose a pound or two if I do it for a month which I’ll keep off if I maintain the cut-back after that.

b) It looks like I need to do enough more strenuous strength training and/or with heavier weights to add muscle and maybe also add other things to boost my level of growth hormone. 

I’ll try to do a bit more now and at least keep up the efforts I’ve been making.

Once the summer heat leaves in the mid to late fall, I may make more progress.

And, once I get a bit more control over my schedule, I’ve a plan to go to the gym one night a week for access to heavier weights which may help, particularly with adding muscle to my legs.

Also, once I can afford it, I may be able to take more of the amino acid supplements known to boost growth hormone release.

This category of actions is important since if I can gain 5 pounds of muscle, I’ll lose 15 pounds of fat by eating the same.  Even better, that will lose some belly fat out of that 15 pounds of fat.  And the 10 pounds net lost on the scale will get me back below my goal weight.

What I hope to get to is to double that muscle gain and gain 10 pounds of muscle eventually.  That would lose a total of 30 pounds of fat and I’d finally lose my fat belly if I can lose that much fat. 

c)  I’ll keep adding small strategies to cut calories as I find an opportunity to do so.  At this point that may add a pound or two loss per year of fat.  That’s not a lot but far better than nothing,  And, I have two or three I have in mind adding.

d)  I’ll keep up the efforts I’m already making.

e)  I also hope to add an exerciser I can use at work.  Since I’ve not been able to find what I need, I may have to find a company to make it.  (I know a design that will work and recently found out it wasn’t patentable when it first was put into volume use.)

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 month!

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!

I did set that up and found that at work even with the extra knee room it was a bit too hard to stay on it and it took double the knee room I’d have needed at my last job and fifty percent more than I have now.  I do now use it at home.

But the big payoff and results will be when I can get one that I can use at work.  Even 20 hours a week for 150 calories per hour is about 3 and a half pounds of fat loss per month until my excess fat is mostly gone.


I'll let you know how I do on what I can already do and when and if I can add these other things.


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Friday, June 15, 2012


Snacks can make you fat or LESS fat!....

Today's Post:  Friday, 6-15-2012

Snacks can make you fat, MUCH fatter in fact.

And, snacks can make you LESS fat and be a real asset for permanent fat loss.

Why?!

It depends mostly on what you eat and drink when you snack.  And to some degree it depends on how you snack.

A.  What you eat and drink when you snack is critical to whether your snacks make you fat and sick or help you lose fat and keep it off.

1.  What NOT to eat or drink:

First is the really unfortunate bad news.

Most foods thought of and eaten as snacks or drunk with them are so horribly and dreadfully fattening they should never be eaten or drunk by anyone wanting to avoid being quite fat.  And, it gets worse.  They are routinely so harmful we now know that no one who wants to stay healthy should do so either!

Some people often eat donuts or pastry for a morning snack. 

The refined grains and sugar or high fructose corn syrup in these helps cause those people to gain fat just from the added calories, be more likely to get type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and have blood sugar swings that mess around with their mood and cause excess insulin to be released which acts as a messenger telling their body to deposit all the calories as fat and not take out any even if extra energy is needed.

Then too -- almost all of them contain hydrogenated oils.  So they cause heart disease two ways in addition to making you fat because of and the sugars and refined grains and the hydrogenated oils.

It gets worse for those who drink coffee to which nondairy creamer – made out of hydrogenated oils – and sugar or artificial sweeteners are added. That adds to the blood sugar swings and excess insulin swings and the double heart disease boost and the boost in type 2 diabetes risks.

It gets even worse for those who drink colas or other soft drinks at their morning break.  Both regular and diet soft drinks are almost perfect fatteners. 

Regular soft drinks add a lot of calories without any effect on making you less hungry!  Then the rebound from the blood sugar spike a short time later makes you MORE hungry. 

Diet soft drinks are the perfect drug to make you fat!   They make things taste less sweet by comparison AND the effect of the insulin surge from the sugar surge your body expects but fails to get then makes you crave sugary foods.  Most of the time, people who drink soft drinks have sugary foods around and then eat extra of them when that happens.  Studies show that most people who drink diet soft drinks get  fatter and even tend to add the fat as belly fat.

What about afternoon and evening snacks?

Those tend to be store bought packaged desserts or salty snacks. 

The packaged store bought desserts are just like the donuts and pastries still too often eaten as a morning snack.  Read the label on one sometime at the store.  After the sugar or high fructose corn syrup and the refined grains and the salt and the hydrogenated oils, many have nothing else left! 

If you want to keep your health and either not get fat or stop being fat, after reading that, put it back on the shelf and never buy it again. It’s also wise to hardly ever eat it if you have the opportunity otherwise.

The packaged salty snacks usually don’t have sugar or high fructose corn syrup or have far less.  But in addition to the hydrogenated oils and refined grains, they contain excess salt which adds water weight and boosts your blood pressure.  In some people it boosts their blood pressure enough your doctor may put you on one of the high side effect blood pressure drugs to lower it.

Then it gets worse!  Most of them contain MSG although it’s sometimes hidden with a listed ingredient name like autolyzed yeast or natural spice or “spices.”  Oops!  People who ingest MSG routinely get fatter research has found.  And the more MSG they eat the fatter they tend to get.  Why is this so & why is it added?  MSG makes the food that it’s in more addictive so you eat more and are more likely to buy it again. 

(The chips eaten with fast food lunches and as snacks are exactly this kind of food.  So are most of the French fries and other similar foods served at fast food places.  You often don’t see labels. But the ingredients of refined grains and salt and MSG and poor quality oils or hydrogenated oils are much the same.)

It is true that better fast food places and restaurants serving such things now use canola oil or palm oil which is still extra calories and fattening but no where near as harmful to your health.)

Read the label on a packaged snack sometime at the store.  After the refined grains and the salt and the hydrogenated oils and the MSG, many have nothing else left! 

If you want to keep your health and either not get fat or stop being fat, after reading that, put it back on the shelf and never buy it again. . It’s also wise to hardly ever eat it if you have the opportunity otherwise.

What if you like some of these foods?

There are four cures.  Actually there are two but each one has two ways to do it.

Here’s two ways to simply not eat it or drink it:

Accept that you know you like it and have enjoyed it in the past.  But remind yourself of what it’s made out of and how much those things harm your health and fatten you. Then realize you now know better than to ever have any.  Now it’s the same food or drink but you have made an upgrade in your life and no longer think it safe or wise to eat or drink.

Or, let yourself have it but only once a month or once or twice a year. (I love root beer floats and I’ll have a double or triple sized one someday.  But it’s been two years now & I’ve not yet gotten to it though I did come close once.  I have a few times eaten double chocolate pieces of cake.  And on some family special occasions I’ve eaten some commercial desserts.)  What I have not done and will NOT do is to have these things more than once a day every week

Find things that you like that much but don’t have these dreadful things in them!  Some of those will be more OK in moderation and some are always OK.  Then when you want to reward yourself or celebrate or de-stress eat or drink those things instead.

Red wine, dark chocolate, and any kind of organic berries or other fruit you like can help.  Raw unsalted nuts also work.  I do all of the above.  I have one serving of fruit every day at breakfast because my body and yours can process the sugar best at breakfast.  I drink a glass or glass and half of red wine with dinner.  And, I eat four half bars of dark chocolate as a snack on separate days.

You do have to be careful of the amount per day or week of red wine and dark chocolate.  But the fruit has fiber and water and is more filling plus it has more health benefits. 

And for those who aren’t allergic and avoid just stuffing them down while watching TV, nuts are so filling between their health OK oils and their protein and fiber that in practice people who eat them tend to automatically eat enough less they gain no weight or fat when they eat nuts!

Besides nuts, other health OK or almost OK high protein foods also work as snacks.  (Protein turns off hunger and helps you keep or build muscle. Even better, you get no extra hunger rebound later like you do with refined grains, sugars, and artificial sweeteners.)

Boiled eggs, ideally from pastured or cage free chickens fit here.  (Where I live, just recently Whole Foods began stocking eggs from pastured chicken from two different companies.)

Small pieces of skinless cooked poultry also work.  Occasionally, small pieces of cheese or string cheese can work.  Plus you can now get cheese from cows fed only grass and not fed antibiotics.  Small pieces of that kind of cheese are even better.  They cost a bit more so you eat a bit less and they are much better for you.  A small container of pre-cooked, canned, Alaskan wild salmon also works.

Lastly, did you know there is a kind of snack that protects your health and makes you less fat almost automatically?  Find a few kinds you actually like and find some kinds you find at least edible you could eat with another food you like more.

These are nonstarchy vegetables and the raw cruciferous ones prevent cancer too.

So here are some snack combos with these:

A slice that’s an eighth of an 8 ounce block of Irish cheese from grass fed cows and a raw cauliflower floret and a few radishes.

A piece of skinless and cooked chicken breast and a small container with some tomato slices.

An ounce of raw walnuts plus an ounce of raw pecans plus a few raw broccoli florets.

A single string cheese and some celery sticks with guacamole.  (If you aren’t allergic, avocados have health OK monosaturated oil and so many kinds of nutrients and vitamins they are a super food even among super foods!  Plus you may, like me, like guacamole.)

Some nonfat cottage cheese and diced tomatoes in a container and a boiled egg and a few raw broccoli florets.

B.  How to snack without gaining fat and when NOT to!

Two things NOT to do are to eat a morning snack because you didn’t eat breakfast or to eat a snack when too little time has passed between meals.

One way people get sabotaged is they skip breakfast.  Then at work either directly when provided for free at work or at a vending machine at work they are so hungry they actually need something to eat. But what they have to choose from are only fattening and harmful choices.  Ouch!  Many people get fat from this one mistake alone.

So, do two things. 

Even if it itself is a fast snack, ALWAYS eat breakfast before you go to work.  Have some kind of protein food such as a boiled egg or a small glass of milk.  Then have something high fiber that has good nutrition too. I like a bit of cooked lentils and a piece of fruit or some organic wild blueberries.

Then when you consider a fattening mid-morning snack remember what almost all of the commercial ones are made out of and harm your health.  Then you will be able to pass on them in part because you are enough less hungry from eating breakfast.

Also, if you have more than four and half or 5 hours between meals, take a health OK and not fattening snack to have in between ahead of time.  In my case, I finish breakfast by 6:15 and eat about 11:45 each morning.  So I have my small snack at mid-morning.

My gap between my lunch and dinner is so much smaller I don’t get hungry for a snack and my lunch has enough protein and health OK fat and fiber I don’t need a snack or miss it.

But what if people in my office did have some kind of low fiber and fattening snack in mid-afternoon?  It’s light enough I could eat it and the rebound hunger would show up about at my dinner time.  Big problem though.  If I did that or for the people who do eat snacks in such short time periods between meals and eat fattening snacks, the results are dreadful.  Fat gain and worse health and future health then show up!

Third, the other time never to snack is when watching TV.  (Watching the SuperBowl has become a separate, special occasion when most people do.  So each year I do a post about health OK foods and snacks just before it.)

But the rest of the time people who snack while watching TV almost always get and stay fat.

Usually when people eat they eat what they planned to eat or until they are no longer hungry and then they stop.  They are mentally present and notice they are eating.  But when people are watching TV, they set out food and then go on automatic and mindlessly keep eating as they watch.  When the snacks are fattening too this is a recipe for fat gain and worse.

But there’s more bad news.  When you watch TV you burn less calories than when you are sleeping.  So when you add that much fattening from snacks from a lot of calories you don’t need it’s usually a disaster.  Most people who do this often are not just fat, they are very fat or “obese.” 

But worst of all, most of the ads on commercial, evening and weekend TV, are for the very soft drinks and packaged desserts and snacks to avoid if you want to avoid being fat.

C. So to have snacks help you lose fat and keep it off:

Always eat breakfast.  Eat health OK snacks that turn off hunger.  Usually you have to bring these from home.  And never eat the snacks that fatten you and make you sick eventually or worse.  And only eat snacks when it’s more than four and a half hours between meals. Then away from work avoid eating snacks while watching TV.

If you follow that advice you can lose fat you keep off while the people who do the reverse keep getting fatter and running up future medical bills!

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