Overcome food cravings....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 1-31-2013

Food cravings range from a bit obnoxious but ignorable to all but forcing you to eat no matter what you think of the idea.

1.  But if you stop cravings from happening at all that goes away!

2.  If you can turn them down and/or sharply increase your ability to ignore them, that also works reliably.

3.  If you give in to eating -- BUT eat something that turns off the craving or turns it down enough to ignore AND which does not fatten you, that also works.

I haven’t time to do 6 pages on each, unfortunately, but here are some methods that work in each category.

1. One way to beat cravings is to stop them from happening at all!

a) Here’s the biggest one”

If you lose weight by just eating a lot less and nothing else, your body thinks you are in a famine and makes you a LOT hungrier.  We’re talking about cravings that overpower anyone here.  It also reduces how many calories you burn and slashes your energy level.

Then, your weight loss and fat loss stops! You may even regain what you lost.  Yechh!

However, if you instead:

Eat enough calories to avoid the famine response most days of every week;

do vigorous exercise every week – particularly exercise that boosts your metabolism and adds muscle to you;

and eat enough health OK proteins and foods high in fiber;

AND only cut back on what you eat one or two or three days a week;

AND completely stop drinking soft drinks and eating packaged snacks, packaged treats, junk foods, commercial baked goods – AND stop ingesting anything made out of or containing refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, oils like corn oil or soy high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils, and/or are too high in real sugar or salt, the addiction and cravings caused by these foods gradually stops. (Those lists are about 95% the same stuff!)

You also prevent all kinds of fatal and horrible and expensive diseases!

Do all these things, and you can beat most of the remaining cravings most of the time.

Best of all, doing these things makes gradual and continuable AND permanent fat loss possible with something like 5% or less of the cravings doing it the other way gives you.

b) Isabel de los Rios who runs BeyondDiet.com said that she’s found many cravings are due to nutrients you are low in.  And, by giving your body those, those cravings go away.

Look up BeyondDiet.com if you like this essay she wrote on this that I include here.

I’ll add some comments after.  But I very much like it just as she wrote it:

"Isabel, what do you do when you have cravings?"

Well, the truth is, I don’t really get cravings anymore. Does that confirm I’m an alien? Probably.

But in all seriousness, I really believe when you do your best to cover all of your nutritional bases, most, if not, all cravings will greatly subside.

Let’s go through some of the most common ones right now.

Chocolate

Now who doesn’t just love chocolate? I often joke with people that even an old gym sock might taste good if you dipped it in some chocolate (eww, Isabel, you’re so gross). And hey, a little chocolatey goodness is good for you from time to time (minus the sock). What gets people in trouble is eating tons of chocolate every day. I have even heard some people say they just can’t make it through the day without it.

If you find yourself in a similar situation with chocolate or any particular SWEET treat, you may have a nutrient deficiency that is the root cause of the problem.

Chocolate cravings have been closely linked to magnesium deficiency. Try eating some extra spinach, broccoli, or some nuts, such as almonds and cashews, to boost your magnesium levels.

You need even more magnesium during your menstrual cycle, which explains why cravings can be pretty crazy during that time.

Some studies have even shown chocolate cravings to be a deficiency in vitamin B6. Add in some potatoes or bananas to your meal plans for an extra B6 boost.

Potato Chips

I never quite understood people’s fascination with potato chips, but once people start crunching, they just can’t stop! If your cravings are more on the side of SALTY, you may be deficient in just that...SALT. And I’m not talking about refined table salt (which is what is added to almost all potato chips). The good salt you need is unrefined Sea Salt. My favorite varieties are Himalayan sea salt, Celtic Sea Salt, and Redmond’s Real Salt. If you’ve ever found yourself at the bottom of the potato chip bag, still craving more, you don’t need more chips, you need more good, healthy unrefined sea salt.

But it may not be as simple as just adding in some salt. In animal studies, researchers have found that a lack of potassium, calcium, and iron causes test subjects to devour table salt. To increase your potassium levels, reach for some coconut water or bananas. For increased calcium, go for some canned salmon or sardines with bones. And for more iron, reach for the red meat and organic egg yolks.

Breads and Pasta

Well maybe this craving just has to do with you wanting to be Italian...I’m kidding of course! Most cravings for foods that are high in carbs are due to blood sugar imbalances. Craving carbs means you need more protein to balance out your blood sugar levels. I know grabbing a chicken drumstick is not exactly what you’re looking for when your tummy is telling you "bagel, bagel, bagel," but you will find yourself much more satisfied and full and NOT craving even more later in the day.

Craving carbs may also mean you are low in energy-providing B vitamins. Although there are some foods that are higher in certain B vitamins than others, B vitamins are widely distributed throughout the food supply, so if you're eating a varied, balanced diet that includes foods from all food groups, you're most likely getting as many vitamins as you need. Make sure to include green leafy vegetables, a variety of natural protein sources, and a colorful variety of fruits and vegetables to cover all of your B vitamins.

Remember that cravings can be greatly caused by 1 or more nutrient deficiency in your body, whether that is a macro-nutrient (protein, carb, or fat) or a micro-nutrient (vitamins and minerals)."

Isabel leaves out that you can also not buy or bring home many of these foods – except dark chocolate or unsweetened cocoa.  It’s dramatically easier to overcome cravings for things you have no access to when the craving happens.

And, she leaves out that taking 400 mg a more a day of magnesium, and a good multivitamin plus minerals and a good B Complex vitamin every day also does a lot of heavy lifting to prevent these kinds of cravings.

2.  If you can turn down cravings and increase your ability to ignore them, that also works reliably.

a)  The more you do this the easier it gets.  David Kirchoff, the CEO of Weight Watchers, put it this way.  He said something like this:

Many cravings and other fat loss problems are less about willpower than having the commitment to do the right thing and practicing it every week until it becomes your normal habit. 

The payoff of course is that following your normal habits is virtually effortless most of the time.

(For some things that can happen even before 3 weeks and for others it can take more like 7 weeks.  But if you once persist for 2 months, you are about 98% of the way there!)

b)  What if you came to two doors and one said, “Cravings beat you here” and one that said “Cravings are really easy to ignore.”  -- if you want fat loss, wouldn’t you go in the second door instead of the first?

For many cravings, research found it’s literally as simple as getting used to going in the right door every time.

Harmful and fattening foods have two characteristics:

They are harmful and fattening!

And, the makers and sellers ensure they taste good and are somewhat addicting.

Research recently proved that it’s literally which characteristic you focus on that determines if the craving beats you or not.

If you focus on the ways that a food harms you -- such as it’s listed on the label that it contains high fructose corn syrup, and corn oil that’s been hydrogenated, and refined grain, and lots of salt, and then focus on how horrible it is for your health to ingest, it gets pretty easy to not consume any!

But if you focus instead on how good that stuff tastes instead, you’ll probably drink or eat it.

(This is NOT necessary to get food that tastes good by the way.  Foods that are not harmful or fattening are routinely available or such recipes are that give you other foods and drinks that taste good!)

c) Last time on Tuesday, 1-29-2013, we posted on a unbelievably effective way to add enough muscle to reduce the fat in your body and do it relatively quickly.

To do it you have to work really hard part of the time.  But you get used to it.  You build up to it.  It’s over each time in short and predictable time.  For the gym versions that come with a personal coach, you even get help getting into it and doing it.

But besides the dramatic help with fat loss, getting much stronger, and the health benefits, the bonus effect is that you also boost your willpower for other things too—like overcoming cravings!

“If something about your food upgrades gets challenging or you are fighting cravings for harmful and fattening stuff you used to like, it does take some effort to do the right thing.

BUT once you do this system for a while, you KNOW that YOU can persist and do hard things because you experience yourself doing it routinely every single week!

That may not have been at all your experience before, but once you have done this for a couple of weeks or more, it will be!”

3.  If you give in to eating BUT eat something that turns off the craving or turns it down enough to ignore AND which does not fatten you, that also works.

Here’s an example from my own experience.

Like Weight Watchers CEO David Kirchoff, I get late evening cravings.

For me it isn’t just psychological, I am often actually hungry or I’m hungry enough that I’ll likely wake up later with stronger cravings if I eat nothing.

I was eating full fat cheese and other things with enough calories to slow or even reverse my fat loss some months.

That included applesauce with no sugar. But that does have some fructose.

And, I was drinking milk with bad fat calories and lactose sugar, and milk’s insulin boosting that produces fat gain!

Now, using this principle instead, I DO eat now.  But I eat protein nonfat foods, foods high in fiber, and take 2 apple pectin capsules.

I eat nonfat cottage cheese and nonfat Greek yogurt instead of drinking milk and mostly have also stopped eating the full fat Irish Cheese that’s from grass fed cows.

And, I take apple pectin to replace the fiber that I was getting in the applesauce.

And, I always have raw broccoli or cauliflower florets for more fiber and the crunch!

Sometimes I’m a bit hungry after all that still.  But it’s usually mild enough to ignore.

And, the evenings it’s more than mild I only need one cheese stick sized piece of Irish cheese to turn it off instead of 3 pieces!

So, I now have virtually the same hunger reduction; but I take in far fewer calories and no lactose or fructose or insulin boost – all of which was happening to me before!

Breakthrough in fatloss and health....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 1-29-2013

Astoundingly, the research that pioneered this breakthrough was done 30 years ago.

It was done in hopes that elderly people with osteoporosis might then have a safe and effective way to build bone and muscle.

It was astonishingly successful!

They were able to do it without injury as far as I’ve heard; they got much stronger; and they did build more bone mass.

Since then, at least two outfits offer this method plus a gym dedicated to it and a personal trainer to help novices do it well enough to succeed at it:  The Perfect Workout & SuperSlow.

The Perfect Workout is the one that just came to our area which got my attention with their local announcement.

Once they got my email they sent me some of the background info.  I read something in that and decided if this method was PROVEN to work best, it was essential for my own fat loss program to try it immediately, which I’ve done.

A.  What this is method IS I put first here to make it clear.

B.  Then I cover what it does for you. (It delivers the best of the benefits of exercise times TEN!)

C. Then I have how it works to use their system and how you can do it at home.

A.  The summary of the key concept was and is this:

Research has found that THE most effective way to build muscle and strength is to do strength training where on each lift, you take 14 seconds to lift the weight and 14 seconds to lower it

AND you do as close to 5 repetitions as you can. This takes using a weight you could do 25 or 35 times at normal speed -- NOT your best single lift weight!

 The ideal is to do 4 and a half and need to fight before giving up on the 5^th one—or just barely get it lifted and have to fight that hard on the way down. 

When you can do 5 reliably, increase the weight slightly.  You may only be able to do 2 or 3 at first but do your best and you will eventually get to where you can do 5.

Toward the end of each set, it gets astonishingly hard for such a light weight.  But it’s doable because for each set, it only lasts a few minutes. 

(With the trainer if you don’t do it at home, they help you make the effort too.  So, you have real help and encouragement when you need it during the process.  That ensures even beginners who have little exercise background do well!)

Even better, you only need to do it once or twice a week because it is so effective.  In fact, once a week may be better because it’s so effective that it can take your body that long to recover and grow your muscle after each session.

The last section in this post has my tips for doing this at home.  I’ve discovered some helpful techniques.

But before I do anything else, here’s what happened when I tried it the first time.

I DID find it hard to do 5 repetitions for such a light weight.  In fact, on one exercise that I normally can do 25 to 28 of I found I can only do 3 or 4 using the 14 seconds each way system.

And each set of only 5 took double the time or more I was taking to do 25 repetitions before.

The results were astounding though!

The result you want is to feel what people experienced in it call “the pump” where your muscle that you exercised feels bigger and more noticeable and clearly very effectively exercised almost as soon as you are done. 

You want to avoid feeling as if you injured yourself or get extremely sore.

Wow!  The very first day I tried this, every single muscle I’d exercised felt good and very effectively exercised.  It literally felt TEN times or more as effective as what I had been doing.

B.  The benefits:

First it’s an unusually safe way to exercise if you do it exactly as it specifies -- and use no fast jerky motions when it gets hard. (Fast jerky efforts routinely cause injuries.)

You use a lighter weight and move it so slowly you cannot tear things that a snap start with a heavier weight all too often does do.

That means it’s perfect and safe for beginners. 

But it also, albeit using a much heavier weight, is just as effective for an advanced strength trainer or professional athlete who has been exercising for years.

1.  For fat loss, four things really help. 

This kind of strength training is an effective and relatively fast way to add muscle – and by using it,

a) You lose enough fat relatively quickly that you begin to lose inches and find your clothes fit you more loosely.  Once that goes on for a bit, you begin to LOOK noticeably different.

b)  You can KNOW you are making progress even on weeks where you failed to weigh less because you literally FEEL it happening every single time.

c) Best of all, you can lose fat without having to eat so much less!

That’s because every pound of muscle this causes you to gain burns about 3 times as many calories as the fat it then replaces AND after every one of these sessions you burn extra calories for HOURS after you are done as your body lifts your metabolism to do what it needs to do to recover!

By combining that with eating better for you food and that only, you can lose fat without having to have be too hungry or hungry too much of the time. 

And you gradually have MORE energy instead of less due to your fat loss program!

Those things ensure you WILL succeed at fat loss AND you can keep off the fat you lose!!

d)  Then there is a big extra bonus you get within the first few weeks.

If something about your food upgrades gets challenging or you are fighting cravings for harmful and fattening stuff you used to like, it does take some effort to do the right thing.

BUT once you do this system for a while, you KNOW that YOU can persist and do hard things because you experience yourself doing it routinely every single week!

That may not have been at all your experience before, but once you have done this for a couple of weeks or more, it will be!

(Our post next time is on successful ways to overcome cravings.)  This single thing, doing this kind of strength training, can double the effectiveness of all the other proven ways to do it!

2.  For health,

Exercise improves every single marker of heart health over time. 

Vigorous or intense exercise burns excess blood sugars like a furnace AND turns off insulin resistance.

Such exercise is MORE protective than drugs for both heart disease AND high blood pressure!

Vigorous or intense exercise improves circulation both directly -- and by doing those things we just listed, and that helps ensure your brain and kidneys and liver keep working properly.

AND, such exercise slows aging almost to a stop and can even reverse some aspects of it.

When you exercise older muscle cells well, they quickly switch and become similar to what they were when they were younger.  To do that they lengthen, repair or rebuild the telomeres in those cells.  Work at Stanford found vigorous exercise slowed aging and added years of healthy life to the people who do it.  So that suggests that this process may spill over to the rest of you also!

Secondly, aging is to a degree a build up of undone repairs and maintenance.  With near youthful levels of growth hormone those repairs get done!

And this method of strength training, produces a massive surge of growth hormone every single time.

Third, aging is to some degree a drop off in capacity to do things.  That in turn is often caused by a drop off in muscle strength and control.  This kind of exercise is proven to reverse that!

C.  But what if you don’t have one of these gyms near enough to you to go to once a week?

What if you cannot even begin to afford their fee for even once a week visits?

Or, what if you already are set up to work out at home and are experienced in it?

Super slow strength training CAN be done at home! 

I’ve been doing it myself for 3 weeks now.

I use a dumbbell one set each for each hand, first left hand then right hand so I virtually never stop exercising once I begin – and I also do bodyweight exercises like push ups, then pushups from my knees the very next set -- and half and full squats.

I do about half an hour first thing in the morning -- a time that I am able to virtually never miss entirely.

Here’s what I found helps me to do this style:

1.  I already knew that I count, even slowly, faster than once per second.  So to approximate 14 seconds each way, I count to 25 when lifting and count to 25 when lowering the weights.

2.  Then to avoid losing track of how many I’ve done. I use self talk at each part of each rep.

When I’ve just lifted the weight the first time I say to myself, “That’s one.” Then on the way down I say “Finishing one.”  Then for each time I repeat the process.  “That’s two” etc.

I’m still getting used to doing it after just 3 weeks and lose track sometimes anyway.  I’m confident though that I’ll begin to keep count better each time I do it however with this method.

3.  14 seconds working hard does NOT work well on one breath as normal repetitions do.  So I find simply breathing in and out at my normal rate is doable for most of each set.

That gets MUCH harder for the last really hard payoff repetitions.

Last night I found a way to overcome that and make my strength a bit greater at the same time!

My wife signed up at the Perfect Workout center that opened near us and her first session was last night.

So, I now know their solution to this. When the last one or two reps get hard, switch to the fast and deep panting that childbirth classes teach women to do in heavy labor.

You get much more oxygen when you need it that way!  That increases how much you can do and how hard you can work your muscle – and boosts the results you get!

Note that if you are a beginner, you can do one set of pushups followed by one set of pushups from the knees, followed up by one set of half squats.

No equipment needed!  You can even do this in your hotel or motel room to maintain when you are traveling.

This method is SO effective that will begin to give you some of these benefits even by starting with just those 3 exercises!

Great added way to beat osteoporosis....

Today's Post:  Friday, 1-24-2013

Since the drugs now tried for osteoporosis tend to cause bad acid reflux -- and far worse, the bad events they are taken to prevent!! -- other ways to actually solve the problem are badly needed.

Mercifully there are many effective ways to do this.

(We add the new one at the end in part B.  It’s a huge advance!

Feel free to scan down and read that one first if you like.)

Each of these methods work. Why not do ALL of them?

A.  What we already knew to work before this new research:

1.  Weight bearing exercise. Women who walk a lot and do housework standing up AND who know enough to do effective strength training -- BUILD up their bones. (Of course this works for men too!)

It cannot be more directly stated.  People who do this kind of exercise several days every week tend to have strong bones.  People who are completely sedentary tend to LOSE bone strength and bone mass!

2.  Taking 400 mg to 600 mg of magnesium a day even helps strengthen bones for people taking acid reflux medication that lower their ability to digest magnesium in their food.

Plus most people without reflux are deficient in magnesium if they don’t do this! Magnesium beside its other benefits apparently helps your body build bone.

Research found that people who take tons of antacids or the proton pump inhibitor drugs for acid reflux

3.  Most people don’t yet take the most helpful amount of vitamin D3 due to the disinformation about it.

But the people who do know to take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and do it build their bones MUCH more effectively. 

Apparently your body needs that vitamin D3 to take the calcium you eat to build your bones with it.  Studies show vitamin D3 plus eating lots of calcium in your food builds bones. Just taking calcium without the vitamin D3 doesn’t seem to do so -- according to research testing it both ways!

(John Farquhar, MD, founder of the Stanford Research in Disease Prevention is semi-retired but still keeps up with the newest and best research in disease prevention.  Almost a year ago I went to hear him speak about how people can use the latest research on disease prevention and he recommended everyone take 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. 

No surprise really.  When almost all people lived and worked outside, they got tended to get 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 from sunshine.  Life guards in the summer time get over 10,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day from sunshine even now -- and have zero bad effects. Sunburn maybe but NOT harm from that level of vitamin D3.)

Taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 has been shown cut the incidence of injuries to muscle and bones – even in football players – in half.  And, it helps people who do have broken bones or serious illnesses recover more reliably and faster.

The research shows that if you want strong bones that are far less likely to break, 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 every day is close to essential.

4.  If and apparently ONLY if you take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3, eating foods high in calcium builds bones. (Nonfat Greek yogurt or nonfat cottage cheese has a LOT of calcium but is NOT fattening.)

Research indicates calcium by itself does NOT build your bones without enough vitamin D3.

Also, new research finds that calcium supplements release into your blood so fast if you take too much and on an empty stomach that the calcium winds up hardening your blood vessels instead of your bones! 

So, stick with food sources of calcium – OR – take your calcium supplement only after your largest meal of the day.  That makes the calcium release much more slowly and is far safer apparently for your future health and heart health.

If you eat the foods and take these other steps 200 mg to 500 mg of calcium is more than enough in supplement form to build and strengthen your bones.  From what I’ve read, taking more than 500 mg of calcium as a supplement is both overkill, unnecessary, and potentially harmful.

5.   Taking vitamin K2 also helps the calcium you eat or take NOT deposit into the walls of  your blood vessels AND tends to ensure that the calcium gets deposited in your bones instead – much like vitamin D3.  People who avoid meat may be deficient in K2 and taking up to 5,000 mcg a day of vitamin K2 does help you build your bones.

6.  Yet another dreadful and harmful result of drinking soft drinks is that the phosphoric acid in them to give the drink an extra crisp mouthfeel along with the carbonation LEACHES calcium FROM your bones. 

More than one soft drink a week is NOT a good idea for this reason. None ever is a far safer choice just for this reason alone!  Note that the diet soft drinks ALSO do this!

7.  Taking strontium as a supplement might help.  It apparently does make your bones heavier and harder than taking calcium. 

But the word I’ve gotten is that it has not yet been tested to see if your bones become less prone to fractures. It might. But it’s not been tested enough to know I’ve heard.

You also may get enough strontium without taking it as a supplement if you get your calcium from dairy foods since some strontium is in dairy foods also along with their calcium content.

(That’s why radioactive strontium from atomic bombs was once such a worry during the cold war. It then would be in the milk people drank!)

If your bones have gotten really light from osteoporosis and adding some weight and hardness to build on is needed though, in that case, taking extra strontium might make sense.

B.  Here’s the new discovery.

It’s a huge advance because it can easily be added to the others.

By itself, eating this food that they researched has a significantly large effect on building your bones. 

AND recent research shows that eating it ALSO prevents heart attacks, strokes, and can even REVERSE brain aging or prevent it!

You get far more benefit than just the boost in your bone strength.  But this new research says you get that too – and quite a lot!

It’s eating organic blueberries 3 or more times a week!

The research found this one thing to deliver 36% more bone mass AND a 22% increase in bone mineral content AND, in the research, in as little as 14 days!

In the research they may have used the equivalent of much more blueberry extract per pound of bodyweight than people would eat in a week to deliver such results so fast.

But it seems clear to me that eating organic blueberries 3 or more times a week for years as a normal part of your diet can make a very significant increase in your bone strength!

There is also a bilberry supplement you can take daily.  And bilberries are a kind of blueberry.

By the way, it’s very important to eat organic blueberries only because the kind sprayed with pesticides are quite heavily sprayed and the berries then have pesticide residue which is harmful to you.

(Both Whole Foods and Safeway sell organic frozen blue berries.  And I found the ones from Whole foods tasted better and kept better.)

The story was in the Natural Health Dossier, INH Health Watch, email of January 4^th -- 4 weeks ago.

Apparently researchers with the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center fed rats freeze-dried blueberry extract powder.

And it only 14 days later those rats had a 36 percent higher bone mass than the rats that didn’t. Those rats also had a 22 percent increase in bone mineral content.

Older rats came closer to 15% increase in bone mass than the 36 % found in younger rats.  But that’s still quite substantial!

The email also quoted a study in people showing similar results.

Conclusion:

By doing all 8 of these things -- or all 7 except taking strontium, you can make a very large difference in your bone strength with no need for the drugs which are harmful to take and NOT very effective!

What resveratrol DOES do....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 1-22-2013

As some of you know, taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol that is found in red wine and other foods, was once thought to slow aging by boosting the sirtuins that you otherwise had to eat near starvation amounts of food all the time to do.

The findings testing this were negative to mildly positive and nothing to write home about or act on.

BUT, there WERE also findings that taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol was strongly heart protective.

A bit over two weeks ago I got an email from Dr Al Sears.

That email contained WHY taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol is so good for your heart.

And, it showed that taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol does slow your rate of aging somewhat BUT in a different way than the original speculation.

1.  Taking 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol….“stimulates the production of adult stem cells called endothelial progenitor cells.

These stem cells are so powerful, they have the ability to seek out, repair and heal the trouble areas in the lining of your blood vessels called the endothelial cell barrier or ECB.”

“Since the release of a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, scientists and researchers have focused more and more on the power of these endothelial progenitor cells.

And for good reason. The study from the New England Journal of Medicine showed a “strong correlation” between the number of progenitor cells circulating in the blood and a person’s overall risk of heart disease.1

The connection is so strong, I could make the case that the number of progenitor cells will become the new “marker” of cardiovascular health, even replacing the two major forms of cholesterol, HDL and LDL.

Simply stated, the more of these progenitor cells you have, the more likely you are to avoid disease. This view is supported by the fact that patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and/or cardiovascular disease have low levels of progenitor cells.”

“In many recent studies I’ve read, I find that resveratrol increases the number of these endothelial progenitor cells.3,4,5,6”

This is dramatically important because without these stem cells to safely repair your inner surface of your blood cells, the endothelium, here’s what happens.

This causes inflammation and the back up repair system of pasting cholesterol into your blood vessel walls as an emergency fix gets triggered.  (It happens a bit even before that and much more easily if you have lots of small particles of LDL.)

That causes your blood vessels to become gradually blocked or to have chunks break off later and block all blood flow causing strokes and heart attacks.)

BUT these progenitor stem cells apparently create a repair WITHOUT any of that heart attack, stroke, and vascular dementia causing plaque build up!

So the finding that taking resveratrol helps make that happen is truly a HUGE discovery!

2.  “Resveratrol also has the distinction of activating telomerase, the enzyme that rebuilds your telomeres.”

THAT directly slows and has even been shown to partly reverse aging!

It isn’t sirtuin release.  But it does slow aging.

As many of you know, telomeres are the caps at the ends of your strands of DNA. 

When your telomeres are long enough, all the copies of your DNA are virtually identical and as good as the old ones they replace.

BUT when your telomeres get too short, the copies stop being exact and do NOT work as well as the originals.  Then every time they get copied, the copies get worse.  Then your cells don’t work.  Oops!

You are more likely to get sick and eventually all your systems no longer work.

BUT, keeping your telomeres long prevents this aging process and can even reverse it somewhat!

Conclusion:

1.  If you take 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol, your protection from blood vessel diseases and the heart and brain damage and diseases caused by blood vessel disease goes WAY up. That’s because you get blood vessel repair that DOES NOT cause those diseases!

2.  If you take 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol, your telomeres stay longer which ALSO prevents these same disease and slows your rate of aging!

Not bad!

I’m glad I take the 100 mg a day of the trans form of the supplement resveratrol.

This research certainly makes it look like a VERY good idea!   

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 1-21-2013

As is often typical, this month’s end of the month report is mixed but a bit better than last time.

BUT, there are MAJOR improvements coming!!

I lost a pound on the scale and lost another half an inch on my waist.  And, I gained a half inch on my chest and a half inch on my hips – both likely from added muscle!!

But this end of the month result obscures some strong progress from two sources.

(I now measure just my weight every Saturday to catch changes during the month between my main weight and measuring day I do one Saturday each month.)

A.  Since last time, I gained 4, repeat 4, pounds the week Christmas was in. 

And, I lost FIVE pounds during the other 4 weeks!

B.  The two sources for the 5 pound weight loss:

1.  One is a small and decent, but now wired in drop, of about 300 to 600 calories a month.

I was eating an after dinner snack that included one to three Table spoons of No Sugar added applesauce. 

(I was eating that No Sugar added applesauce since its fiber would fill my tummy and keep me from waking in the night with hunger AND the soluble fiber also helped keep my LDL Cholesterol down below 100 along with the other methods I use.  But I often ate more like two or three spoonfuls of apple sauce each evening than one.  And it was adding to my total sugars each day – NOT good for fat loss.)

I’d considered using PGX fiber supplements instead; but that’s so high fiber I was concerned it would interfere with digesting my food and supplements.

BUT then I remembered that you can get apple pectin supplements which are basically the applesauce with ALL the sugars removed but which still has apple fiber!

I decided that taking two of those capsules each evening at the time I was eating applesauce wouldn't prevent digestion in any way.  BUT, it would give me the soluble fiber and the more full tummy WITHOUT the few hundred calories a month of sugar from the applesauce!

And, taking exactly two apple pectin capsules each night prevented me and still prevents me from taking in even more calories on nights I might have had 3 spoonfuls of applesauce.

It also helps remind me to eat less of everything else at that time of day.  And, my daily record of my after dinner snacks shows it did.

2.  The other cause for the 5 lb pound loss in the other 4 weeks was a truly remarkable and effective way to add muscle studies tested to work best comparing it to other strength training methods.   

I’ve only tried this new method just the past two weeks. 

I literally can feel the difference in how much more effectively this method works my muscles – and I did even the first time I tried it.

That does the double! 

It burns more calories from afterburn every day I do it! 

AND it adds extra muscle mass and weight which burns more calories every day than the fat it replaces – which it does every day, not just on the days I do the exercises!

It also means I can add muscle to my larger chest and back muscles and leg and buttocks muscles with the weights I have now at home.  I don’t have to wait until I can use heavier weights at the gym sometime in future months!  I can do it NOW!

The method is simple.  I take a weight for an exercise I can do with moderate ease for 25 reps moving it right up and down moderately fast.

BUT instead I  only do FIVE reps for each exercise with that weight.  BUT I count to 25 as I very slowly move the weight up and 25 each time I lower it down – all five times! (My 25 count is about the 14 seconds each way the researchers tested.)

Yikes!  That is SO intense. But I can finish or close to finish the set of 5 reps most of the time at that weight.

A side benefit is that this style of exercise can be done, despite is incredible intensity, with LESS blood pressure boost than the other way of doing it.

That’s because that close to 14 seconds each way is simply too long to do on one breath in and one breath -- or holding my breath as I lift.  I have to breathe in and out more gently several times lifting the weight and then lowering it also.

(I’m also still adding a minicupful of Whey protein each morning because it’s been shown most effective at adding muscle mass when you do effective strength training.)

C.  I’m still averaging well over 2500 calories of exercise a week instead of the 1,000 a week only I was getting without the exercise at work by doing an average or 1500 calories a week on my recumbent bike at my desk..  And, one interesting note is that my estimate of calories burned at work may be low because I get warm doing the exercise bike.  This is true despite not pushing the pace past just keeping the pedals moving!

My goal is to push past 3,000 calories a week total because the people who lost over 30 pounds and still are keeping it off average just a bit less than that, about 2950.

And, my hope is to get to the 3500 to 4,000 calories a week range by boosting my at work exercise to 2500 to 3,000 a week.  That IS a challenge since my best week at work so far was 2,000.  But I’m at work 9 hours a day; and 3,000 calories a week requires me to keep the pedals moving for just 3 hours a day of that. So it’s potentially doable.

D.  The green coffee bean extract I’ve begun taking once before breakfast and once before dinner each day might also have helped.

But even though my guess is that it wasn’t that big a part of my weight loss, I did lose weight since I began it.

And, since green coffee bean extract has the same special antioxidants as the coffee I can no longer drink because of acid reflux, if I become sure it adds no extra fat loss, I’ll keep taking it.

Why?  The more of the special antioxidants from coffee people take in each day, research found from drinkers of coffee and decaf, the lower their rate of Alzheimer’s is!  (As good for you as green tea and black tea are for other things, they do NOT show that effect!)

Then there is the what if factor.  What if the green coffee bean extract did add a pound or two of the 5 pounds I lost on the weeks that I did lose on the scale?

E.  But there are 3 more things I’m setting up to do which will remove two sources of my belly fat and one which has proven to help lose all fat!

1.  Mike Geary, the very, very well informed expert on nutrition and removing belly fat, posted an article that really hit home with me! (See Mike Geary or the “Truth about Abs on Google for his work.)

Even 100 % whole grain wheat foods not only add the fast carbs that add fat in general, his research

-- and the research he has read show that eating even 100 % whole grain wheat at all often or at all, puts the fat into your belly fat AND is a direct cause of acid reflux!

I’d already begun eating ONLY whole grain wheat and cut my intake of that in half long ago.

a) But I still find all my fat loss comes off everywhere and NOT off my belly fat more.  So despite my overall fat loss, my belly STILL looks fat. 

b) And, I HAVE acid reflux which I hate I would dearly love to get rid of!

So I’m setting up plans starting this week to cut back even more on my wheat intake.  And, I may go to stopping ANY wheat intake at all in the future.

At the very least, the substitute foods have fewer calories, few carbs, and cause less of a blood sugar and connected insulin surge, so the net effect will be some fat loss in general.

2.  Two percent lowfat milk has been one of my staple protein foods for most of my adult life. 

Two percent lowfat milk IS high in protein, inexpensive, and easy to drink or add to other foods.  And, milk has lots of vitamin B2, and some vitamin B12. 

And milk has a large amount of bioavailable and slowly released calcium for strong bones.  The most effective and most heart protective way to get calcium is IN foods NOT in supplements recent research found.  Plus if you get calcium in foods and take 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 plus do strength training, you will tend to develop and keep strong bones. 

(I take more D3 than that and strength training.)

However, I had heard that despite a low glycemic effect on blood sugars, milk caused some extra insulin release.

THE NEWS IS THAT Dr Mark Hyman found research and posted an article on it.  Drinking milk DOES spike insulin levels!  Worse, it does so enough to triple them!!

(Milk contains both lactose, a sugar, AND directly contains insulin like growth factor.)

I just found that article very recently within the last few days by getting his articles on Facebook.

That means that every single time I can substitute nonfat cottage cheese or nonfat Greek yogurt and a glass of water for a glass of milk, I not only save a few calories, I slash the amount of fat depositing insulin in my blood.

The nonfat super low carb dairy foods have far less lactose and likely cause less of that fattening insulin surge according to the research I’ve seen.

But even if the insulin surge still happens some, it likely happens less without the lactose to trigger it AND I’ll intake fewer sugary carbs and cut my calorie intake.

I’m just in the early stage of making that switch particularly on my every other day fat loss days.  But I’m going to cut my milk intake in half or more with the next few weeks.  I’ve already begun doing so!

3.  Dr Pierre Dukan, one of the low carb diet proponents, has found that even ONE virtually carb free day a week, helps fat loss and is very good at helping people keep fat off.

And, a separate study found that people who had just two totally carb free days each week lost MORE fat than people who tried to eat low carb every day.

Despite reading those two things, I’ve not yet tried even one truly carb free or almost carb free day a week because of my daily milk intake and my every other day oatmeal and wheat germ intake AND my applesauce intake.

BUT, now I’m cutting down a LOT on all three. So I’m developing plans to do the almost carb free days every Wednesday and Thursday.

I’m at the place now where some of the things are in place and I’m adding others.

Conclusion:

Between cutting more calories with the exercise bike at work and adding that extra muscle in my at home strength training, I NOW EXPECT to see no more weight gains on the scale AND see some lower waist measurements!  I’ll lose fat and add muscle.

And, that’s far from all!

The other changes I’m making to cut sugars and milk and wheat from my diet most days and almost totally on two days each week, may help me lose a few MORE inches from my waist.

At the very least, the cut in my calorie intake each week will help me lose a few pounds on the scale.

The combination of those looks very promising to put it mildly!

Two ways to slow aging that work....

Today's Post:  Friday, 1-18-2013

Many people don’t think they want to live longer since today many older people are confined to nursing home or are invalids at home or simply don’t feel well all the time and have no energy.

But what if you could have 20 or 30 more years of healthy and enjoyable life?

If you simply slowed aging to very, very little & slowed way down AND were able both to be disease free and have the same energy you had as a young person and you could avoid the drugs that cause you to not to feel well or get sicker?

Two unusually powerful ways to do both have each been researched to work.

1.  The better known method is to get vigorous exercise most days of every week.

Stanford Researchers noticed that people there who started out as runners seemed to be younger looking than their colleagues at Stanford who didn’t run besides being less fat.

They decided to set up a matched group of Stanford people the same ages and economic group as the Runners to see if there was a difference over time.

During the study the runners mostly had to stop running from injuries BUT virtually all kept up some kind of regular and vigorous exercise.

What happened?  The exercise group got far less of the diseases the control group got, they tended to stay alive during the study, and they continued to look younger.  By the end of the study, the control group people looked much older and many of them had already died.

Then another study found that blood markers for heart health improved in another group of regular, vigorous, exercisers after a year.  But the huge news is that every year they continued exercising, they kept getting better and better heart and other protection and even more desirable blood markers for heart health! 

Yet another study looked at muscle cells.  Before the older group began exercising their muscle cells were operating less efficiently and at an older, more aged level.  Then after a period of regular and vigorous exercises for those muscles, the post test showed them completely restored and basically young muscle cells!

It’s proved beyond doubt as far as I’m concerned.  Regular vigorous exercise slows to almost stops aging AND is a dramatically effective way to avoid disabling or deadly diseases.

Exercisers quite literally have more years of healthy life where they almost have the same ability to do what they did as younger people!

To me that’s extremely clear and I’ll fight to keep up some kind of vigorous exercise no matter what.

(For exercise to be safe, start at an easy level and make progress slowly but steadily and avoid overdoing it until you know what your body can tolerate. 

Take breaks if you get too winded until you recover.  Working past that point can be harmful.  You just gradually build up to where that point becomes hard to reach. 

AND, it’s imperative that you learn how to prevent heart disease and heart attack.  We post on that often and there is a quick summary in the next section.

I got into studying heart protection so I’d be able to prevent heart problems caused when doing my exercises.  My blood tests show my efforts are working too.)

2.  CoQ10 prevents the mitochondria that are the power source inside all your cells from aging.

People make CoQ10 internally as young people and gradually make less until they lose the protection and their hearts pump less well and they have lower energy reserves.  They then act and feel much older.

Researchers fed older rats CoQ10 and found they acted as if they were younger, they were more active and began having sex again and looked less aged and aged more slowly.

But Coq10 is NOT what your body uses directly.  Your body converts the CoQ10, aka, ubiquinone, to the ubiquinol form and uses that.

So researchers then tried feeding the rats ubiquinol directly.

WOW!  The rats fed ubiquinol then acted and looked like much younger rats!

And they lived about 10 to 24% longer!

Now, in people, we know from blood tests why this is so. 

People who take ubiquinol instead of CoQ10 have FOUR times the blood level of the active form, ubiquinol than people who take CoQ10 at the same dose AND that blood level remains that good TWICE as long!

(One of the reasons statins are such undesirable drugs is that they seriously deplete CoQ10 and ubiquinol in people taking them.  That’s a known and understood effect.

But, far worse, people taking statins without also taking 300 mg a day of ubiquinol tend to have the very protective vigorous exercise they should be doing harm them and their muscles and to feel much older and have far less energy.

Recent research found that indeed it was the CoQ10 depletion that caused the muscle harming effect.  So if you are taking statins.  Find out if your genetic test places you in the group statins help protect you or in the one where they hardly do.

Find out the other ways that work to protect your heart, in addition to regular, vigorous exercise. Taking niacin and sterol supplements, virtually never, ever eating hydrogenated oils, and completely avoiding tobacco smoke are the most effective. But there are many others.

Then, if you are in the group they help and you want to keep taking them, the research shows you can do so with dramatically more safety and side effect if you also take 300 mg a day of ubiquinol.)

To get these effects:

If you are over 40 and often feel less energetic even when you aren’t sick, consider taking 50 to 100 mg a day of ubiquinol.

If you are over 60 take 100 to 150 a day of ubiquinol.

I’m 69 as of next month and take 150 mg myself.

Clearly the research shows that doing regular, vigorous exercise and taking ubiquinol can slow to almost reverse aging.

Sure other things can age you faster, smoking for one.  And there are many other ways it’s desirable to protect your health.

But using those two methods alone can do most of the heavy lifting!   

Exercise prevents Alzheimer’s TWO ways....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 1-15-2013

We already have known that regular exercise, particularly walking, interval cardio, and strength training -- plus taking the omega 3, DHA, prevents brain shrinkage because such exercises cause your body to release BDNF which grows new nerves and brain cells.

So, if some of your brain cells go offline due to the underlying damage that results in beta amyloid build up and that causes Alzheimer’s disease, your total network may still be large enough to not lose performance that much and your body may even replace some of the damaged nerves.

1.  The news!

What if regular exercise prevented the damage too!? 

If it did, people who exercise would show less beta amyloid deposits than people who don’t.

Exercise does lower amyloid build up!

I get an email from Dr David Blyweiss called Advanced Natural Medicine. I recently got one that had this:

"Research finds that adults who are more active and get plenty of exercise have less buildup of beta-amyloid than those who are sedentary.

It even helps people who carry the gene variant (APOE-e4) that puts them at greater risk of Alzheimer's."

Wow!

(This may be because the damage that causes the beta amyloid that is linked to blood sugar being too high and may be linked to lack of blood supply. 

Regular exercise, particularly vigorous exercise every week, turns down and helps turn off high blood sugar. 

And regular exercise directly turns off one of the main causes of heart disease by reducing your blood levels of small particle LDL.  That, helps your brain cells get better blood flow and get rid of cellular debris.)

2.  We have already posted that taking curcumin supplements daily from the spice turmeric with black pepper has tested to lower the blood levels of tau protein which is now thought to cause the damage and beta amyloid build up AND doing so directly or by lowering inflammation and boosting your immune system helps clear beta amyloid build up. 

(Eating curried foods with turmeric and black pepper also works.  But even people who like curried foods may not want them every day.)

Taking turmeric also lowers LDL cholesterol and inflammation to help keep your blood vessels clear.

3.  There is some evidence also taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 makes taking turmeric work better.  And, doing so  keeps you healthy in many other ways!

4.  Dr Blyweiss lists other ways to prevent dementia and prevent mental decline in that email that I’ll list and comment on.  (Then I’ll add some other things you can do after that.)

a) “Stimulate your brain. …. Research shows people who do more reading, writing and game playing have less amyloid protein in the brain.” 

Searching the net for information, taking courses of any kind, & getting tutoring also work.

In fact, learning to play a musical instrument or a second or third language seems even more effective.  (Those who do that not only prevent mental decline and build up their brain’s total network, a recent study also found their brain nerves work faster!)

AND, even though it feels easy because you have done it since babyhood, conversing with people takes massive brain power and lights up your brain like a Christmas tree.

One of the reasons that people who socialize regularly have less mental decline is they are better able to deal with stress.  BUT, talking with people gives you far more mental stimulation than you may have known it does.  And that effect may be even more important.

Also, such mentally active people develop larger neural networks that can sustain more damage without causing performance drop off of their brains.

b)  “Supplement with N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) and alpha lipoic acid (ALA).

These two glutathione precursors help reduce oxidative damage caused by excess amyloid beta and tau proteins. They also help remove mercury and other metals that may be affecting your brainpower. I recommend 500 mcg of NAC and 50 mg of R-alpha lipoic acid (the more potent form of ALA).” 

200 mg a day of the less expensive alpha lipoic acid is also helpful.

AND, taking 500 mg a day of NAC has been shown directly to make mental decline less likely!

c)  “Cut down on sugar and carbohydrate intake. Mayo Clinic researchers have found people 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have nearly four times the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment. The danger also rises with a diet heavy in sugar.”

Do even more than he recommends here. 

Eliminate drinking soft drinks both regular and diet. 

Virtually never eat foods made with refined grains.  (That does take some effort since refined grains are in so many breads, buns, snacks, and desserts.)

Even with 100% whole grain foods, eat them less often and/or with health OK oils and protein foods to lower their glycemic impact.

Never eat or drink things that contain high fructose corn syrup.  Don’t use agave or the main artificial sweeteners.

And, cut back dramatically on how much regular sugar you eat.

The average American has been eating or drinking 7 Tablespoons of sugar a day while 3 to 5 a week is pushing your body’s ability to deal with it well!

Doing that AND regular vigorous exercise every week both cuts down on blood vessel damage from type 2 diabetes and inflammation AND prevents circulation drop off by keeping your blood vessels clear and healthy.

It also helps you to be far less fat!!

5.  Cut way down on pro-inflammatory foods.

a) These include ALL the cheap oils made mostly from GMO crops that are high in omega 6 oils.  Soy, corn, safflower, and canola oils are in this group. 

b)  Eat protein foods from natural sources such as wild caught fish, beans and lentils, raw nuts that have not been cooked in oil and salt, and eggs and meat from animals 100 % grass fed or pasture fed only.

c) Or, when eating protein foods from grain fed animals, eat the leanest most fat trimmed meats and poultry from you can and not very often; & use nonfat &/or lowfat dairy.

The grains fed to chickens and cattle etc result in fats with up to twenty times too much omega 6 oils and excess fat and saturated fat AND contain bioconcentrated pesticides and herbicides form the grains!

d)  Eat foods raw or steamed or sautéed at moderate heat with extra virgin olive oil, or boiled, or cooked in a slow cooker.  And avoid eating fried, deep fried, grilled, or other foods, particularly protein foods.  (Do cook meats; but many cruciferous vegetables give you the most cancer prevention when eaten raw.)

Foods cooked at high temperature, both vegetables and meats, it’s recently been found increase your rate of aging and boost inflammation.

e)  Aim for 1500 mg a day but not a lot more of salt.  Salt intake above 2500 mg a day increases inflammation and damages the inside of your blood vessels.

6.  Make sure to take B complex vitamins particularly including vitamin B12.  People who are low in them develop mental decline that can even look like Alzheimer’s disease.

7.  Be sure to include strength training at least twice a week in your exercises even if you are a woman.  Senior citizens who do so develop less mental decline overall and far less decline in their ability to manage and organize things.

The exercise itself with its growth hormone release is important for preventing overall mental decline.

But because strength training involves going through a set of different exercises and counting the repetitions, it also exercises your ability to manage and organize things and does so every week!