How to release excess fat........

Today's Post:  Friday, 9-28-2012

When people have more than a few pounds of extra fat to lose, they usually have some barriers to overcome.

It can seem as if their excess fat is locked down and not removable.

The bad news is that this is partly true it turns out.  The much better news is that you can systematically release these locks. 

And, the best news of all is that if you use the methods that release one of them, the others are also mostly released.  The methods are virtually identical.

1.  The first barrier is that your body has a natural feedback messenger to let you know you have enough food and turn off your hunger.

But it's as if it comes from a phone that has almost no volume so you don't hear it even if it's on its highest setting.

This messenger is called leptin. 

When you become fat, the process gradually creates this effect.:  You eat enough food and leptin is released just fine.  But your body no longer lets the message get to you.  So you don't feel that much less hungry or feel like stopping eating.  You eat food your body does NOT need.

It's called leptin resistance.

Fat loss expert Joel Marion in a recent email said in so many words that being fat causes this problem in part. But the initial cause -- and the one under your control that can reverse the problem -- is your intake of processed and packaged foods and the ingredients they are made out of.

The lack of fiber WITH the leptin may be part of the problem.  Ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, excessive sugars, excessive salt, MSG, oils high in omega 6, and hydrogenated versions of those oils have ZERO fiber.

And, refined grains have almost no fiber. 

All soft drinks have zero fiber.

And, when you subtract that ingredient list from the packaged snacks and packaged desserts that list their ingredients, there is often little or nothing left.  And, this is also true to a surprising extent of packaged dinners and entrees. 

For soft drinks and most of those foods too, there is often very little protein.

And, relative lack of protein tends to turn on your famine response which itself is a likely cause of leptin resistance.

How to lower leptin resistance:

There are several solutions. 

a) One of my favorites is to focus on protecting your health and STOP ingesting things that harm it. 

Soft drinks to a large degree and each and every one of these ingredients of packaged foods do things like cause heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, gout, and mental decline.  They are still legal to put in foods.  But once you know how deadly they are, it's easier to stop eating them and look for other kinds of foods and drinks you like that have NONE of these ingredients. 

Why on earth eat things that harm you when foods that support your health instead are available!?

That said, it's often MUCH easier to eat MORE of the foods that don't have these ingredients.

b) My favorite approach is to find the "superfoods" that do a great job in protecting your health and make sure to eat those and as many kinds as possible.  The more of those you know and eat or drink the easier avoiding the bad stuff gets. 

Organic blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and most other kinds of berries fit here.  So do nuts for those not allergic to them, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil.  Cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower fit here. (Raw they prevent cancer strongly; and they have lots of fiber and hardly any calories.) Cooked dark green and orange and yellow vegetables eaten with a health OK fat or oil produce multiple health benefits as well.  Broccoli is a superfood in part because it fits on the first of these eaten raw and on the second one cooked with something like extra virgin olive oil.  Most spices other than salt and MSG are super foods as are the plants they are derived from garlic and basil and sage are 3 examples of this.

Joel Marion's point is that a general rule that tends to eliminate the bad stuff and cause you to eat the good stuff is simple.

"….eat only one-ingredient foods." 

"What do I mean by one-ingredient foods? Simple. A one-ingredient food is a food whose only ingredient is that food."

He lists tomatoes which are a red-orange fruit usually used with savory foods as a vegetable.  He also lists green beans which despite having less protective nutrients many people like and are a nonstarchy vegetable with a lot of fiber. He lists spinach which I don't much care for but many like and is a dark green vegetable.

He lists apples and pears.  A recent email found a study showing that eating these two foods are strongly preventive of strokes.  (Unwaxed and organic apples and organic pears are far safer to eat.  This is extra important since a lot of the protection in red apples is in the peel; and the peel in both apples and pears has a lot of the fiber.)

Besides the raspberries and blue berries I listed, he adds cherries.  The dark red sour cherries are the best for you.  But they all taste good.  And, eaten one at a time, they slow your food intake which also can help with fat loss.

He lists 3 kinds of nuts, almonds, cashews, and walnuts. (It's critically important to eat nuts that are raw or dry roasted only and totally unsalted.  The packaged food versions cooked in junk oils and heavily salted are NOT good for you. Pecans, walnuts, and to a lesser degree almonds have the most health benefits for people not allergic to them.)

As I do, he lists avocados as a source of great nutrition and health OK oils.

He also lists olives.  And the extra virgin olive oil he leaves out also fits in this group.

For protein foods he lists:

Chicken, beef, fish, eggs, yogurt, and black beans. 

(Black beans, lentils, black eyed peas, pinto beans and other kinds of  can be cooked with only water and then only health OK spices added and health OK oils such as extra virgin olive oil added.  They are high in fiber, can be cooked ahead and eaten cold, and cost very little.

For chicken, beef, eggs, milk, cheese and yogurt there are two solutions for good health. 

Get grass fed beef and yogurt, milk, and butter from cows fed only grass; chickens fed only on natural pasture foods and eggs from such chickens –

Or get the least fatty versions from critters fed with grains.  The fats from grain fed animals are harmful in several ways.  So minimizing them a lot is protective.  Skinless poultry, nonfat Greek yogurt, nonfat cottage cheese, super-trimmed lean cuts of beef, and 2% lowfat milk are dramatically safer to eat when grain fed than eating them in the full fat versions.

Eggs are a special case because they have so little fat in their yolks compared to the nutrition when from grain fed hens. So eating some of those is likely OK.  But eggs from pastured hens are better for you and are beginning to be available.)

(Fish are only safe to eat if you get wild caught fish because the farmed fish are very high in pollutants.  And it’s important to eat fish with little or no mercury.  Sardines are OK on mercury while swordfish are totally not.  Tuna has enough mercury you should skip it or only eat it rarely. But once a month or so is likely OK. Mercifully, wild caught salmon are OK both ways and high in omega 3 oils.)

2.  The second block is how much insulin you have in your blood. 

If you use insulin less because of what you eat and your insulin works well when needed, you get 2 benefits according to Dr Jonny Bowden who calls the process of doing it right turning on your fat burning switch.

Insulin does lower excessive blood sugar which is protective. 

a) But if you use it too often you have too much in your blood -- or you become insulin resistant & you both use more and it lowers excessive blood sugar levels less – or both. Then you have even more of an excess of insulin in your blood!

But when that happens, the insulin tells your body to put the excessive sugars into your fat stores – the exact opposite of what you want if you want to lose fat!

b) It gets worse.  If you need extra energy, the high insulin levels lock up your stored fat so you can’t use it.

BUT if you have the normal lower and more infrequent levels of insulin in your blood, the “fat burning switch” is turned on.

You don’t have the excessive blood sugars to go into fat storage and you also have no excessive insulin to send your normal level of blood sugars into fat storage.

Even better, not having the excessive insulin to lock up your fat storage allows your body, according to Dr Bowden to release a messenger called glucagon that when you need extra calories takes removes them from fat storage to be used for energy!

As you can see, the way he explains it reveals in the bad condition you add fat on autopilot and it’s virtually impossible to remove it.

But switch to the desirable, low insulin condition, and you tend to never add fat and can burn what you do have after it’s removed from storage whenever your body needs extra energy.

What can you do to fix this if you are in the fat gaining mode?

a) Don’t ingest things that spike your blood sugar or do so dramatically less as in a twenty five times reduction or more!

All soft drinks and foods made with these ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, excessive sugars, and refined grains each spike blood sugar and insulin.

Many of the same ingredients that also cause leptin resistance!

And, it’s even worse than that!

When your insulin lowers the too high blood sugar that results, it overshoots because it was hurried by the big sugar spike.  Then you get low blood sugar and rebound hunger.  That hunger causes cravings for more sugary foods. Those calories are NOT needed for your body to operate. Every one of them is extra and unneeded.  Had you drunk water or eaten real foods instead, you wouldn’t even be hungry then!

Worse, it becomes a vicious circle if you give in and eat or drink more sugary stuff then!

Round and round it goes making you fat and keeping you fat.

Simply put, eliminating those foods and drinks as close to as totally as you can and as fast as you can is one of the most important keys to permanent fat loss.

You just saw what to eat instead in the first part of this post. 

When you upgrade your lifestyle to only eat those real foods, fat loss becomes possible and dramatically easier.  And keeping it off becomes almost automatic instead of impossible.

But there’s more you can do.

b)  You can lower excessive insulin and reverse insulin resistance a second way too!

You can get some moderate exercise most days of every week.  That works but is far easier for some people than others. Some people get 2 hours of walking each weekday as part of their commute for example.

It also works to do even as little as 5 or 10 minutes of vigorous exercise almost every day.  Because you can do this much at home first thing in the morning, almost everyone can do this.  And, it’s most effective studies show if you do some interval cardio and some strength training in each week.  Spending the same time per week on only the cardio or the strength training is less effective than some of each!  It’s also better for you as you are both fit and strong instead of only one of those.

This works two ways.  The exercises USE up blood sugar so there is less of it in your blood to potentially trigger an insulin release.  But, even better, you stop needing extra insulin and insulin resistance improves or stops completely!

How do you cause fat loss and release the locks on the fat you have?

STOP the bad foods and drinks and eat a lot of the good ones and get used to both parts and begin and keep doing regular exercise.

That’s common advice for fat loss. 

My hope is that this post has helped you to know why it’s essential and why it works!

Safety of 4,000 to 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-27-2012

The Vitamin D Council News email for today had a reminder that September is national prostate cancer awareness month.

In our last post, Tues, 9-25-2012, we posted the very good news that men who began taking 4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and continued and who had low risk and hopefully slow growing prostate cancer got much improved results by the end of the year, they had less and less risky cancer by several measures for 66% of the men.  For the other 34%, the news was a bit better because they no longer tested as having any prostate cancer.

I emailed that news to a friend who has been trading emails with me about prostate issues.

He said that he would likely try the 4,000 iu and said he would check how much he was already taking to know how much he had to add.

Then he asked if taking 4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 was safe in other ways.

It’s pretty simple really.

People who get enough sun and don’t wash off the oils in their skin that mediate the conversion to vitamin D too soon and use NO sunscreen, take in between 3,000 iu a day and 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.  They tend to have excellent health -- NOT side effects -- at those levels.

As intake of vitamin D3 drops below 3,000 and particularly below 1500 iu day from all sources people are no longer getting enough vitamin D3 for its many health protecting actions.

The evidence from many studies suggests that the lowest level of intake of vitamin D3 consistent with good health is 3,000 iu a day intake.  That means the real minimum daily requirement today for vitamin D is to take 3,000 iu of vitamin D3, the form made by sun exposure.

(4,000 iu a day is just a bit above that and well within the normal intake range that people used to get from sun exposure.)

And, since people today are far less often outside, use sunscreen, and tend take daily showers, only lifeguards who dislike sunscreen tend to get enough vitamin D – and that’s during the summer!

60 years ago before most people drove to work or watched TV, people tended to walk as part or all of their commute to work and evenings and weekends they were often outside walking to visit friends or playing sports instead of watching them on TV.

Today they drive to work and work inside for the most part.  Then they go home and watch TV or do something else inside.  And, when they do go outside in the sun they use sun screen.

In an email last Tuesday, 9-25 the vitamin D Council that tracks the new research on vitamin D had this:

Mean baseline vitamin D level was 13-14 ng/ml in all three groups, so almost all were deficient or insufficient. After 12 months of supplementation, mean serum vitamin D levels were:

400 IU:  25.9 ng/ml

1000 IU:  30.3 ng/ml

Placebo:  13 ng/ml

Using this measure, less than 30 is severely deficient.  30 to 49 is low and not high enough to get many health benefits.  50 to 60 is enough to begin to get significant health benefits.  And, above 60 is either optimal or high enough for decent health plus a safety reserve.

As you can see, people who take no vitamin D3 are horribly deficient.

People who get 400 iu a day of vitamin D3 in their multi are still severely deficient.

And, people who get only 1,000 iu a day are still just barely out of the severely deficient range.

As you can see, to get to the 50 to 60 range, most people will need 3,000 to 4,000 iu a day.

So far from being too high to be safe, 4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 is the lowest level likely to get the strong health benefits vitamin D3 delivers in people who get enough.

Over two years ago one of the very best doctors for complementary and integrated medicine, Mark Hyman, MD wrote blog post he reposted a few days ago with these quotes:

“Recent research by vitamin D pioneer Dr. Michael Holick, Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine, recommends intakes of up to 2,000 IU a day — or enough to keep blood levels of 25 hydroxy vitamin D at between 75 to 125 nmol/L (nanomoles per liter). That may sound high, but it’s still safe: Lifeguards have levels of 250 nmol/L without toxicity.”

(To convert these to the ng/ml used in most vitamin D discussions you divide by 2.5.  That means that the healthy lifeguards have about 100 ng/ml)

“In countries where sun exposure provides the equivalent of 10,000 IU a day and people have vitamin D blood levels of 105 to 163 nmol/L, “

(To convert these to the ng/ml used in most vitamin D discussions you divide by 2.5.  So the 105 to 163 listed here =42 to 65 ng/ml)

“….for optimal health. In that case, the range should be 100 to 160 nmol/L or 40 to 65 ng/ml. In the future, we may raise this “optimal” level even higher.”

So in short, far from being close to unsafe, the facts show that 4,000 iu a day is relatively low and that for many people 10,000 iu a day might be better.

To be conservative, given the above, I take a bit less than 10,000 iu a day at 8200 iu a day of vitamin D3.  My blood tests have been 82 & 80 ng/ml both higher than some people might have at my intake and still well below the 100 lifeguards tested with.

Since Wikipedia has that some harmful side effects show up at 100,000 iu a day, I’m not sure it’s totally safe to take 25,000 to 50,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.

But it’s extremely clear that intakes of vitamin D3 in the range of 4,000 iu a day to 10,000 iu a day are not only safe but extremely desirable. And they are consistent with what people used to get from sun exposure except in the winter.

What about the people who suggest far lower intakes of vitamin D3? 

They are ignorant of the facts or extremely timid or deliberately ignoring the facts. The relevant question has been answered: They are completely wrong whatever the reason is.

Listening to them, whatever their apparent credentials might be, is incorrect and will cost you health benefits you could have easily had by ignoring them.

Carlson makes a 100 capsule bottle of capsules with 1,000 iu of vitamin D3 that sells for less than $10 including tax.  So taking 3 a day would cost about $25 a month.

I also found a 5,000 iu capsule that costs me less than that to take once a day at one of the health food stores I go to.

Vitamin D3 is available at your local health food store. Brands like Carlson are OK but I’m not sure grocery store brands are.  I know my 5,000 iu capsule has that much because of my recent blood tests.

By the way, getting enough vitamin D3 gives you many extraordinary health protections.

Taking 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day helps prevent all cancers and Alzheimer’s disease and is more important in preventing osteoporosis than calcium. 

It also multiplies the strength of your immune system against viruses and bacteria.  At the same time it makes your immune system more accurate because it tends to prevent and may even help reverse autoimmune diseases!

There is even evidence that taking as little as 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 will cut your likely future medical care costs in half or more.

Enough vitamin D3 lessens prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-25-2012

The Vitamin D Council News email for today had a reminder that September is national prostate cancer awareness month.

We’ll list a summary of many of the ways to prevent ALL cancers at the end of this post from a recent post so it’s also here in this email.

Those actions by preventing all cancers also help prevent prostate cancer.  Some of them such as eating raw broccoli florets or raw cauliflower florets also cut the risk of aggressive prostate cancer in half.  (Doing this at least once a week cut the risk in half.  Eating these vegetables 5 to 7 days a week may be more effective.  I’ve done exactly that since I discovered this fact.)

But many men in their sixties or seventies get what seems to be slow growing prostate cancer.  Since the treatments most used for removing prostate cancer tend to ruin your sex life and cost a lot of money and have other obnoxious side effects, the new protocol is to leave these alone until or unless the slow growing prostate cancer shows signs of the aggressive kind that is actually life threatening.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra way to ensure the slow growing prostate cancer stays that way or even turns off somewhat?

It’s here.  You can go to the store and buy it.  And, it’s even relatively inexpensive!

Today’s email from the Vitamin D Council had this:

“Researchers from the Medical University at South Carolina administered 4,000 IU/day of vitamin D for one year to 44 men with low risk prostate cancer.

After 12 months, 60% of the men showed a decrease in the number of positive core biopsies or a decrease in their Gleason scores (cancers with high Gleason scores are more aggressive), or both.

34% of the men no longer had any positive biopsy cores.”  <<< A very nice result! 

The same email had separate information in a different article showing that people who took only 1,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 were still relatively deficient in vitamin D in their blood stream.

This is consistent with the new information that about 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 is the real minimum intake of vitamin D3 to achieve good health results.

One of the better supplement makers, Carlson, sells 1,000 iu capsules of vitamin D3 in bottles of 100 for less than $10.  So 4 a day comes to something like $12 a month to take or less.

(Taking 30 mg a day of lycopene has similar effects.  But it costs closer to $30 a month and unlike vitamin D3, it has fewer other health benefits.)

With a family history of prostate cancer, I take both the 30 mg of lycopene and more vitamin D3 than 4,000 iu a day and curcumin with black pepper each day and more.

But those other things we’ve known for a while.  Adding the large effects of taking at least  4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 to those may make an essential difference for many men and the information is still less well known.

Also, last Thursday, 9-20-2012, we did this post: “Three ways to beat aggressive and metastatic cancers.”

You can stop here and go there and read the whole post. Or you can read the section from it on some of the key ways to prevent all cancers here that I took from it.:

(I did know when I wrote it to include taking 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 based on what I’ve read from other research.  But the news today that is has such protective effects on slow growing prostate cancer found in a specific study is new to me.)

Here’s the list of preventing all cancers.  Most of these have significant other health benefits as well which literally makes each one worth doing.

1. Prevent all cancers.  (Here’s a brief summary.)

a) Tobacco smoke exposure or putting tobacco products into your blood stream by nose or mouth without smoke together causes 30 % of all cancers and something like 25% of all cancer deaths.

The smoke has many kinds of carcinogens and the tobacco itself has a radioactive element it puts into the blood so tobacco causes cancers everywhere in the body not just the lungs.

Don’t use tobacco products and be very focused and make a  very strong effort to avoid all tobacco smoke.  (See our post last week about quitting if you smoke.)

b)  Take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 since this has many other health benefits and helps prevent many cancers.

c)  Take curcumin or turmeric supplements daily with black pepper.  Eat some curried foods that use turmeric in the curry.  Doing this not only helps prevent all cancers, it helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and lowers LDL cholesterol.  And it lowers inflammation more safely than OTC drugs.

d)  Get regular exercise.  I found out in a talk recently that turmeric and exercise make the same genetic adjustment that helps prevent cancer in addition to their other benefits.

Aging increases the risk of all cancers.  But regular exercise slows aging by quite a bit!

e)  Eat as little animal fats from grain fed animals and poultry as you can.  Eat beans or wild caught fish, eat nonfat or lowfat dairy, eat only the leanest most fat trimmed meat and poultry.  Eat butter or cheese from cows fed only grass or use extra virgin olive oil instead.

Animal fats from grain fed animals have so much excessive omega 6 oils the inflammation caused helps cause cancers and heart disease.  AND, the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on the grain are bioconcentrated into the fat of  such animals.

f)  Use little or no herbicide or pesticides around your house.

g) To the extent you can find it to buy and afford it, stick to organic produce.

h) Eat virtually no packaged snacks or desserts or commercial baked goods or other foods made from refined grains and eat very little sugar.  Excess sugar and high blood sugar from eating these foods tends to help cause cancers.  So does the high omega 6 content in the grains.

How to start or restart stalled fat loss....

Today's Post:  Friday, 9-21-2012

Jillian Michaels sends out emails that I get with her take on many topics related to fat loss.

She sent one recently about a woman who was doing a good bit of work each week on an elliptical trainer, 50 minutes for 3 to 7 days a week for two months and she said she was keeping her calories per day intake down to 1200 to 1300 calories a day.

Meanwhile she lost no weight on the scale in that two months.

She wanted to know what to do to get more results on the scale.

Apparently she sent or replied to Jillian some other information.

She had not gained anything on the scale either and had asked if she might have lost some fat and gained some muscle.

Jillian offered 3 kinds of advice.

1.  How to be sure she was really keeping her calories that low.

2.  How to exercise in a way that burned more calories.

3.  And, what kind of medical check to get to be sure she had no medical problems preventing her fat loss.

Each of these 3 strategies can be effective for some people.  But it depends on some things not in her answer as well.  And, the information to know that was not in the question posted.

Here’s my take on it step by step.

1.  It’s incomplete to know to cut calories for many, many reasons.  But it’s also common to do many other things that help fat loss and NOT really cut calories at all with zero fat loss as a result.  It’s not enough by itself and tricky to do right.  But cutting net calories IS essential

I should know.  When I finally found out how to add cutting calories to eating healthy and exercising, I also finally lost fat and weight on the scale!

Jillian points out that the woman who wrote in may have been estimating calories and really been eating a lot more because she may have eaten larger portions than the calories per portion listed said she was.  Learning how to do that accurately and keeping a log to ensure no forgotten portions that Jillian suggested can help.

For example, my wife used to work with women who were trying to lose weight who would eat tiny salads for lunch but with no effect.  Meanwhile they were drinking huge soft drinks or snacking on candies every few minutes all day long.  Oops!  Their uncounted snacks and drinks were over half their whole daily calorie intake.

And, I gained back some of the fat I lost by kidding myself I could control the amount of almond butter I ate as an after dinner snack.  When I stopped bringing it home at all, I was able to restart my fat loss.

So Jillian has a good point for many people to be sure there is really some calorie cut back.

This one however is trickier than it looks which I’ll come back to later in this post. Some ways of cutting calories work MUCH better than others!

2.  She is also correct in her comment that finding ways to burn more calories with the exercise the woman does would help.

For example, Jillian recommended adding strength training to the woman’s exercise program.  She also recommended increasing the intensity of the woman’s cardio or trying new kinds of cardio every few weeks.

This is perhaps her best advice of the 3 parts, particularly adding strength training and making her effort gradually go up progressively in her cardio.

If you do strength training where you are beginning to work hard in the sets you do or are doing interval cardio with bursts of gradually more intense effort  during the cardio (interval cardio) AND particularly if you do some of each kind of exercise most days of every week, you get a wonderful fat loss benefit!

You get an incredible double effect. The more intense effort burns more calories during the exercise.  But you also burn extra calories for up to a few hours AFTER the exercise!

For example, if in her 50 minute elliptical trainer sessions, if she can get a clock she can see and do 60 second bursts as fast as she can make it go – or even 20 second ones at first a few times, she will rapidly gain real heart fitness and create this afterburn effect too!  It’s a good idea to get going for a few minutes before the first one and then do one every 10 minutes after that for example.

Another example would be to do a 20 minute session on a day when she doesn’t have time to do 50 minutes but do the fast intervals every 4 minutes so she does. 

I also like a point that Jillian makes elsewhere that you can begin strength training at home with no equipment at all!

You can start with as little as making 3 good faith efforts at doing a push up from your knees to doing 10 of them to 20 of them to 30 of them to 30 of them and one good faith effort at a regular push up from the toes to 5 regular pushups followed by a rest and then 15 half pushups to 25 regular push ups and a rest and 20 half push ups.

You can do the same starting with 2 or 3 quarter squats holding something solid for balance and wind up being able to do 30 full freehand squats.

That routine can be done in less than 10 minutes at home.  It may only take 5 minutes once you can use 45 second rests between the parts instead of 2 minute rests!

3.  There are some medical conditions and drugs that can stall fat loss.

So for some people and particularly for some women, the doctor check up she suggests can help.

For many drugs that tend to fatten or stop fat loss there are drugs for that condition that do not or natural methods you can use or both.

And, you can turn off some of the medical conditions that stall fat loss but ONLY if you know you have them and get effective help stopping them. 

Jillian suggests seeing a competent and board certified endocrinologist to get this checked out.

Such a doctor can review the drugs you take to see if any are on the fattening list and what can be changed.

They can test if you have insulin resistance.  (That one I’ll add some comments on below.)

She also suggests getting checked for PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) and low thyroid levels.

(I’ll also add this:

Some doctors can also help with personalized bioidentical hormone replacement plans for women past menopause.

This plus the health oriented lifestyle you need for permanent fat loss can help you lose more fat plus likely avoid increasing your health risks. 

But you do have to have some time and money and make regular visits to the doctor until you get your program individualized to you.  Plus you have to have such a doctor you can find and afford to visit.

The good news is that if you can, you not only will likely lose more fat and weight, you may dramatically improve your sex life.) 

4.  Cutting calories too much or for too long or both  or doing it without cutting back fattening foods or cutting calories without keeping all the protein foods and nonstarchy vegetables or cutting back a lot to many days a week are all effective ways to slam the door shut on fat loss1

This is the tricky part.

If you get these things wrong, your body thinks you are in a famine and stops you in your tracks.

It holds onto fat even when you lower your calories effectively, it makes you feel less energetic and lazy. You become much hungrier and your metabolism goes down enough to burn that many fewer calories!

This is a total train wreck for fat loss and weight loss.

a)  Some foods make this far more likely. So one great way to lose fat at all and an essential for people with no success or stalled weight loss is to prune them out of your life.

This includes all soft drinks both regular and diet.  It includes any food containing high fructose corn syrup or refined grains.  Whole grains and real sugar also need to be cut back to much less often.

b)  The three food groups that make this LESS likely are health OK protein foods, nonstarchy vegetables, and more moderate amounts of health OK fats and oils.

Protein is essential to prevent the famine response and avoid excess hunger.  Getting enough protein plus strength training tends to prevent the lower metabolism that all people losing fat otherwise get. Protein also turns down your appetite with zero rebound hunger.  (The fattening foods ALL do cause rebound hunger including the diet soft drinks.)

Nonstarchy vegetables have many dramatic health benefits and help you feel full and enable you to NOT eat the fattening foods or eat far less of them.

Lastly, studies found that people losing fat who kept in modest amounts of nuts or avocadoes and extra virgin olive oil lost MORE weight and fat and were far more able to stay on a health supporting eating style that works for fat loss.

c)  People who eat modestly every day but only go super low carb or cut extra two or three days a week lost MORE fat and weight than people who cut back a lot every single day.  Needless to say they also tended to be far better able to keep it up!

So this woman could also do things like stop drinking diet soft drinks and eat more like 1500 calories a day most days but two days a week only eat 1,000 and have that only be protein foods and nonstarchy vegetables.  (Note:  By eating enough of those she won’t be too hungry to do it or keep doing it.  Both kinds of food are filling.  And doing something a bit challenging two days a week that aren’t back to back is dramatically easier than doing harder work all seven days a week plus it’s far easier to keep doing.)

Her net calories avoided per week would be less. But her metabolism would stay up more than enough to counter that and she will find it dramatically easier to keep doing it.

This has been studied and proven to work!

Three ways to beat aggressive and metastatic cancers....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-20-2012

There are 3 ways to do this:

1.  You can not get that cancer to begin with -- so preventing all cancers works.  We do a brief review of some effective ways to do that.

2.  You can prevent the cancers from developing or creating cancer stem cells.

&

3. You can do things that prevent cancers from adding their own new blood vessels to fuel their growth.

1. Prevent all cancers.  (Here’s a brief summary.)

a) Tobacco smoke exposure or putting tobacco products into your blood stream by nose or mouth without smoke together causes 30 % of all cancers and something like 25% of all cancer deaths.

The smoke has many kinds of carcinogens and the tobacco itself has a radioactive element it puts into the blood so tobacco causes cancers everywhere in the body not just the lungs.

Don’t use tobacco products and be very focused and make a  very strong effort to avoid all tobacco smoke.  (See our post last week about quitting if you smoke.)

b)  Take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 since this has many other health benefits and helps prevent many cancers.

c)  Take curcumin or turmeric supplements daily with black pepper.  Eat some curried foods that use turmeric in the curry.  Doing this not only helps prevent all cancers, it helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and lowers LDL cholesterol.  And it lowers inflammation more safely than OTC drugs.

d)  Get regular exercise.  I found out in a talk recently that turmeric and exercise make the same genetic adjustment that helps prevent cancer in addition to their other benefits.

Aging increases the risk of all cancers.  But regular exercise slows aging by quite a bit!

e)  Eat as little animal fats from grain fed animals and poultry as you can.  Eat beans or wild caught fish, eat nonfat or lowfat dairy, eat only the leanest most fat trimmed meat and poultry.  Eat butter or cheese from cows fed only grass or use extra virgin olive oil instead.

Animal fats from grain fed animals have so much excessive omega 6 oils the inflammation caused helps cause cancers and heart disease.  AND, the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on the grain are bioconcentrated into the fat of  such animals.

f)  Use little or no herbicide or pesticides around your house.

g) To the extent you can find it to buy and afford it, stick to organic produce.

h) Eat virtually no packaged snacks or desserts or commercial baked goods or other foods made from refined grains and eat very little sugar.  Excess sugar and high blood sugar from eating these foods tends to help cause cancers.  So does the high omega 6 content in the grains.

2.  You can prevent the cancers from developing or creating cancer stem cells.

Raw cruciferous vegetables have been shown to cut the risk of aggressive cancers in half if you eat them once a week or once a day or more.

Raw broccoli and raw cauliflower florets do this.  And, raw cabbage and coleslaw and water cress or kale diced up into salads likely do this also.

Plus all cruciferous vegetables help prevent cancers in general too.

Because raw cruciferous vegetables have been shown directly to prevent aggressive cancers, I believe they probably shut down cancer stem cells as part of the process even though I’ve not yet read of a direct test that this is so.

Eating them WILL protect you from such cancers regardless of how it’s done.

3. You can do things that prevent cancers from adding their own new blood vessels to fuel their growth.

The drugs that do this sometimes have been surprisingly effective in killing off the intended cancers.  But they have some pretty severe side effects in some people also.

What if there were foods that did this too with none of the side effects?

It seems that there ARE such foods and I even once knew this and did a post on it. 

Mercifully that post was recalled to my memory because I got a comment on it by a spammer for an off topic ad.

So, here it is!:

You can starve cancer and fat cells with these foods and drinks....

Today's Post: Thursday, 2-11-2010

This is spectacularly good news since all of them have other health benefits.

In addition to the information we’ve posted on the many ways you can prevent cancer today’s news is that research has been done recently showing that many foods and drinks that we already knew were good for you prevented cancer both prevent cancer AND obesity.

It seems that these foods and drinks tend to prevent both cancer cells and fat cells from growing by preventing them from adding new blood supply.

The article today was a bit vague about which components of these foods & drinks do the job. But some, like cooked tomatoes, are already known to help prevent cancer, prostate and possibly breast and ovarian cancers, in the case of cooked tomatoes.

(AFP) had a story that saying that red wine & chocolate both help prevent cancer. This research was presented yesterday, Wednesday, 2-10, by Angiogenesis Foundation head William Li at the TED Conference.

The Massachusetts-based foundation is identifying foods containing nutrients that help cut off blood supplies to tumors, which starves them to death or at least keeps them from growing.

The foundation apparently has found that some foods or combinations were as effective or more so than approved anti-angiogenesis drugs.

Parsley, red grapes, berries, cooked tomatoes, dark chocolate, blueberries, garlic, and teas are included in their list. Red wine does have what amounts to an extract of red & dark purple grapes; but drinking too much of it or drinking it when tobacco smoke is present may prevent it from being as effective as grapes or grape juice.

They did report that they found that eating and drinking many of these foods and drinks was even more effective in fighting cancer than just one or two of them.

They apparently discovered that a large number of foods and herbs have anti-angiogenesis effects.

William Li also was quoted as saying this, "For many people around the world, dietary cancer treatment may be the only solution because not everyone can afford cancer drugs."

What he did not say is that for people who can afford the cancer drugs, it may be as effective as the cancer drugs if you ingest many of these foods and drinks and take the related supplements. Since that is both cheaper and safer, it may make sense for even people who can afford the cancer drugs to take that route in most cases.

Then there is this bonus discovery they made that a LOT of people will find of interest!

The foundation also discovered that anti-angiogenesis foods and drinks help prevent or remove excess fat because fat cells rely heavily on blood flow to sustain their life.

There are some people, though mercifully a tiny percentage, who literally have genes that tend to cause them to be obese or very fat.

If you think that may include you, check this out.:

They did tests showed that mice genetically very likely to be quite fat were trimmed to average mouse size by feeding them these foods.

So in addition to taking more than 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3, taking a daily curcumin or turmeric supplement, staying almost completely away from tobacco products and tobacco smoke, eating organic protein foods and produce, and otherwise avoiding herbicides, pesticides, chemical room fresheners, etc, we now have a large list of foods, drinks, and supplements that will help prevent cancer. (Just that set of things alone will prevent over half of all cancers from what I’ve seen.)

Now we know that they often work at least in part by anti-angiogenesis effects and can work in combination as well or better than anti-angiogenesis drugs.

And the bonus is that if you eat these foods, drink these drinks, and take the related supplements, you may very well be less fat too!

This is extremely good news.

Other foods, drinks, and supplements that have similar nutrients include:

Sweet potatoes, yams, squash, carrots, dark colored greens, and broccoli for carotenes similar to those found in cooked tomatoes. And, although getting a mixture of carotenes from food and eating the food for that purpose either cooked or with extra virgin olive oil works best, some natural health oriented doctors have found that supplements with mixed carotenoids have helped at least slow cancer.

Blueberries, tart or sour cherries, cranberries, black berries, blueberry juice,

100 % cranberry juice, bilberries, along with dark purple and red grapes and their juices, and red wine also contain anthocyanins, resveratrol, and related compounds that this research suggests also will fight cancer. Related supplements include, resveratrol, bilberry extract, elderberry extract, grape seed extract, and Pycnogenol.

Black tea, green tea, and dark chocolate taken without milk also have massive antioxidant effects and increase blood flow which gives them heart protecting effects. In addition, they contain vitamin k1 &, I think, vitamin K2. You can take green tea extract and vitamin K2 supplements although I think the teas and some green vegetables have enough K1 that if you do drink and eat them, you already get an optimum amount of vitamin K1. Even better, if you aren’t sure about taking these supplements for cancer, consider this, each of these supplements, dark chocolate, and the teas have been found to be heart protective. In addition, green tea extract has a bit of a fat removal effect.

Organic apples, garlic, and onions also have flavonoids and other phytonutrients. Garlic tends to work best if crushed raw just before it’s eaten or added to the food – or if taken as a deodorized garlic supplement such as Kyolic makes. And, many of these also contain quercetin which is available as supplement and said to also boost your energy and energy reserves and turn down or turn off allergies.

Lastly, if you eat these foods and drink these drinks, you are far less likely to eat nonorganic vegetables and farmed fish and grain fed meats and packaged and junky dessert and snack and will be less likely to drink soft drinks.

That will help you avoid pesticides and herbicides in your food and strongly help protect from being too fat or make it dramatically easier to lose excess fat.

Boosting your odds you'll quit smoking this time....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-18-2012

My wife and I recently got some great service from a man who suddenly had a short spell of a dry cough that is typical from throat irritation.

He said it was because he smoked.

I started to tell him of my great experiences with how effective Thayer’s Slippery Elm Lozenges were to turn off that kind of cough but our business with him cut that off.

So, I got his card and emailed him the information on Thayer’s.

And, I also asked if he wanted any info from me on quitting smoking successfully.

He replied his doctor had a plan for him to quit that it sounded like he might try.

I decided to email him back a really short summary of tips for making that try succeed.

He hadn’t asked for the whole elephant and likely needed something short and easy to do for him to do at all as busy as he is with his work.

So I sent him this:

“Sounds good!

Here's a few things to add to your doctor's plan.:

1.  Add some exercise even if it's just lifting light weights twice a week at the gym for 25 minutes and a few 5 minute walks occasionally during the week and on weekends. Fit them in first thing in the morning before your day gets busy if you can.  Doing that makes it easier to get to and stay with.

Eat more of some kind of yellow or orange or dark green vegetables and other nonstarchy vegetables.  Sweet potatoes, acorn squash, and carrots and broccoli if you can.  Cauliflower also works.  So does coleslaw.  You likely enjoy some more than others.  Eat those and the others less often.

People who do either are more successful at quitting.  People who do both are even more successful at quitting.  And, people who do both gain less weight when they quit.   (Weight Watchers works as if needed also.  They've upgraded to recommend vegetables and exercise more than they once did also.)

2.  Take 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day since it helps get rid of and recover from the effects of the smoking.  Eating the vegetables also does that and all of them have anticancer effects too.

3.  Plan out a future you would enjoy if you stay healthy.  It's just like sales, aim for success.  People who do that are more successful at quitting.  They are more future oriented.

4.  Between now and your last cigarette, ONLY light them with matches.  The hot flame of lighters makes the smoke five times more harmful.

5.  You've learned not to smoke around clients in your office.  Just do the same for yourself the rest of the time!

Hope it works for you!

This is just a bit more than half a page summarizing some of the best research on how to quit smoking successfully.

So, if you are trying to quit or you know someone who is who needs that kind of short summary with easy to start things to do, by all means use it yourself or feel totally free to cut and paste and email it to the person you know IF they OK you doing so. 

Asking them first, “Can I email you a half page summary of the latest research on how to quit successfully?” will likely get a yes if they have any shot at succeeding or making a real effort to quit.

If not, don’t send it as it wouldn’t help.  But most people trying to quit at all and who are even somewhat serious will say yes.

THEN email it to them and the odds they’ll use some of it or all of it go way up!

And, here’s my comments on each part in case you want a bit more info for any reason:

1.  Add some exercise even if it's just lifting light weights twice a week at the gym for 25 minutes and a few 5 minute walks occasionally during the week and on weekends. Fit them in first thing in the morning before your day gets busy if you can.  Doing that makes it easier to get to and stay with.

Comments.  Doing a lot more than this for a smoker who has not been exercising at all might be risky.  But just doing this much regularly slams open the door to eventually doing a lot more as they build up to it.  Also, they’ll learn they CAN do it and will think more in terms of protecting their health.  People who exercise in the first part of the morning exercise more consistently and are more than twice as likely to keep exercising.  And, people who strength train even with tiny weights feel empowered and their self esteem goes up even in the first two or three weeks.  So this advice is far more powerful than it might look.

Eat more of some kind of yellow or orange or dark green vegetables and other nonstarchy vegetables.  Sweet potatoes, acorn squash, and carrots and broccoli if you can.  Cauliflower also works.  So does coleslaw.  You likely enjoy some more than others.  Eat those and the others less often.

Comment:  These vegetables each and every one tend to help people lose fat and keep it off. And each one helps prevent cancer.  Most people like sweet potatoes or coleslaw at least some.  And some people who can’t make themselves eat broccoli will eat cauliflower.  Eating more of these makes it much easier to eat less junk food and packaged snacks and desserts.  Doing that also helps undo the damage and lower their heart attack risk.  And, if they do this at all, they will think more in terms of protecting their health which also makes quitting more likely the research finds.

People who do either are more successful at quitting.  People who do both are even more successful at quitting.  And, people who do both gain less weight when they quit.   (Weight Watchers works as if needed also.  They've upgraded to recommend vegetables and exercise more than they once did also.)

Comment:  Many people won’t quit because they fear it will cause them to become fatter.  And others who quit successfully do gain enough fat, they restart smoking anyway.  So letting them know that the things they can do to make quitting easier help prevent this, makes them using those two things more likely.  And, even when people know there is an escape if they need one, they are more likely to try the action.  And, some people will gain more than they want and try Weight Watchers.  But they’ll do that instead of restarting smoking!  This is particularly important because recent research found people DO tend to gain over 10 pounds or even up to 19 pounds when they quit.

2.  Take 500 mg of vitamin C twice a day since it helps get rid of and recover from the effects of the smoking.  Eating the vegetables also does that and all of them have anticancer effects too.

Comment:  As you know if you read my posts for both preventing cancer and heart disease, there are big lists of effective things you can do to do each one.  But this is like the exercise advice.  Someone brand new to the subject and not up to doing a lot will make a start they can build on by just doing this.  Again, if they do it, they reinforce the picture of themselves as health oriented and their chances of quitting go up even more. 

Also studies show that this kind of advice is more effective than scaring them badly with how dreadful the effects are of smoking in many people who smoke now.  The dreadful effects are real enough. But the focus is on helping them escape initially.  Later, finding out how tobacco causes cancer several ways and is dramatically more dangerous for their heart than the cancers it can cause might help them stay off.  But for many smokers to start, this much easier to do beginning is more likely to work.

3.  Plan out a future you would enjoy if you stay healthy.  It's just like sales, aim for success.  People who do that are more successful at quitting.  They are more future oriented.

Comment:  He was in sales before his previous job and still works with the salespeople in his current job.  So that comment connects the idea to something he already knows and believes.  But everyone has some idea of what they would like to do later in life if they stay healthy.  Simply thinking about that briefly focuses them on creating a good future.  And doing so even some, makes them far more likely to succeed at quitting smoking research found.

4.  Between now and your last cigarette, ONLY light them with matches.  The hot flame of lighters makes the smoke five times more harmful.

Comment:  This is quite true particularly for the risk of cancer and lung cancer due to the many highly carcinogenic compounds in the hotter smoke caused by using a lighter.  Most doctors don’t know this one.  But the curve of lung cancer incidence and the gradual increase in lighter use is so highly correlated and similar, they look like the SAME curve as indeed they very probably are!  Those same compounds likely help cause the excess inflammation of the blood vessels that cause heart disease as well.

5.  You've learned not to smoke around clients in your office.  Just do the same for yourself the rest of the time!

Comment:  If he feels like he cannot not smoke, this reminds him he already manages not to smoke for his job and that if the extends what he already can do to protect himself also, he has a real shot at quitting using something he already knows he can do.

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 9-17-2012

This month’s report is much better news in several parts.

Last month my news was that the local man, Bryan Wassom, who created an exercise desk using a recumbent bicycle lost 18 pounds in 9 months and lost enough inches from his waist he had to have his clothes redone to fit.  (I’ve since found out his heart health measures also improved that much.)

When I was so enthusiastic about the health and fatloss benefits when I contacted him, he offered to give me one to beta test here in my office day job.  (He had used it and found it workable in his home office but had not yet had someone in a regular office use one.)

At this point, I’ve used the recumbent bike exercise desk now for six weeks as of last Friday. 

1.  Here’s the good news first!

a) In that 6 weeks, I’ve lost 5 pounds and since my last monthly report, I’ve lost 4 & a half pounds!  At this point, I’m suddenly almost at my initial goal weight.

So, since I’m still getting up to speed on using it enough by remembering to start using it at appropriate times, it is clearly working to help me with my fat loss.

So far the scale results are far better than I expected! 

My estimate on the calories burned per hour of 200 I knew was at least slightly conservative.  (4.5 x 3500 = 15,750 calories for an average per week of 3937.5 and my estimated calorie burn was 5400 total for 1350 per week average.  To be sure, I could have eaten that much less.  But I certainly didn’t do so that I noticed!  The difference may be that I do gradually feel a good bit warmer as I run the pedals and that warmth lasts for some time after I stop, so my overall metabolism may be boosted by more than the calories burned during the actual exercise time.

And, other than it making it much harder than I’d like to move around my office and  do work not on my computer, I AM finding I can write posts or emails or reply to emails and read emails as well or better than I could before I began using it.  Running the bike as I work is not a distraction.  I do occasionally find I stop if what I’m writing is a lot of extra effort.  But even then that’s less common already.

In fact, I think I may average a bit sharper mentally than I was before using it.

b) The second way that I’m very pleased with using the bike is that there is a health impact of how many calories per week you use on the average with your health.

People who do less than 500 to 600 calories per week of exercise, the totally sedentary people, routinely gradually develop poor health.  Their brains shrink.  They gradually get fatter, they tend to develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes and their risk of cancer and dementia goes up.

People who get 600 calories or more a week of exercise do dramatically better.  Some of those harmful effects such as brain shrinkage no longer happen.  And the other things happen enough less that their health improves 40% as much as someone on an ideal amount of exercise each week.

People who get more than that, particularly twice that much or more, 1,000 to 1200 calories a week on the average have much better health results.  Before I got the exercise at my desk bike from Bryan at ActivDesk, I was getting about 1100 calories a week of exercise.  And though I was still fatter than I wanted to be and according to the studies more at risk than my blood indicators said heart wise, I was doing decently.  But I was close to maxed out on how much time I had to exercise.

But adding even my conservative and not yet up to full use 1350 calories a week at work using up almost no added time means I am now getting at least 2400 calories a week of exercise that studies find in the healthiest people!  (Averaging 2,000 calories a week or more of exercise does that.)

Even better, I have a shot at averaging the 2900 calories a week of people who lose fat and keep it off permanently if I’m not already reaching that now.  And, with just a bit more consistent use, I’ll average 3500 calories a week of exercise that is the ideal amount.

So for health and weight loss, it’s already clear this method of at work exercise rates an A+.

2.  For me there was one piece of bad news for this report however.

Since my original height was 5 feet 8 inches, 68 inches, one health measure of having your waist be half that for best health means my waist should be 34 inches.  And when I was in high school from age 15 to 18, I think it was about that.

So my goal has been to reduce my waist from almost 40 inches to about 34 inches. 

But even though I lost that many pounds last month and I did lose from 3/8 inch to half an inch off my waist since last month, I’m still at about 39 inches.  The rest is coming off fat on my chest and hips which went down by a half inch and an inch last month.

Perhaps in another 8 months when I’ve lost all the fat on my chest and hips, the fat will finally come off my waist.  That’s possible.  The 3/8 inch to half an inch off my waist I lost since last month times 8 months if it keeps going is 3 or 4 inches and 12 more months might be from 4 and half to 6 inches.

THAT would do the job.  I certainly plan to keep up my use that long and then keep using it after that.

  

3.  I was able to maintain all my food cutbacks and controls too during the month.

People who stop doing so or start adding tons of desserts when they exercise more do fail to lose much weight or fat.

I know not to do that.

The good news is that eating what I’m used to eating instead of more has been quite doable.

I have NOT been extra hungry!

4.  Last month, I spoke of a way to increase my strength and muscle building efforts, see my post on Thursday, 8-16 where I describe it. 

Last month I wrote, “So far, it’s working for me and will enable me I think to add a few pounds of muscle right away – even BEFORE I can get to the gym once a week to use heavier weights too.

If this keeps up, I may be able to lose another half inch to inch off my waist by four months from now.”

The bad news is that it stopped working. I was using it successfully and am still stronger than I was.  But I developed some mild muscle tears in my shoulders that have so far kept me from continuing to improve. 

I’m able mostly to keep my gains and I can still do most of the exercises.  But instead of making a bit more progress, I’m now waiting for my body to heal before I can resume improvements.

In the past that sometimes has taken months to do.  But I plan to hang in there. I’d like to add muscle to increase my chest and hip measurements with muscle.

That is known to shrink your waist which is the other reason to do it!

5.  My interval cardio on my Nordic Track is better however.  I made a major improvement there when I added two evenings a week of just 5 minutes or so of jump rope.

When I began my riding at my desk, on the Nordic Track I did well in the first half but not as well as usual in the second half because I wasn’t quite used to the extra exercise and hadn’t become fitter yet.

Last Saturday however, my second half was so good, I set a new overall record.

We’ll see how next month does!