Misleading Labels and how beat Yo Yo Dieting....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-26-2013

I.  Many of the big food companies found that if they label ordinary and even more fattening and harmful foods with labels that sound like they have safe contents or will would help with fat loss, sales will go up!

Many people would prefer foods that are better for them.  And, many others want foods that will help them lose fat or keep it off.

But these foods all too often have the reverse effects instead!  Yikes!

Fattening and health harmful labels that sound good but are NOT:

1.  Natural does NOT mean organic and may not mean non GMO and both high fructose corn syrup and MSG have been called natural because they start with natural things before the processing refines them. 

All too often natural means one or more of those things IS included!

Certified Organic, foods labeled as non GMO or 100% GMO free, NO high fructose corn syrup, contains no MSG.  Those labels do mean something!

Natural does NOT mean anything good or even definite.  It’s a sales trap for the ignorant.

2.  Low fat or even nonfat or fat free or "diet" can be even worse if the fat left over is harmful in the case of low fat. 

Too often sugar, high fructose corn syrup or even the super fattening very high fructose corn syrup believe it or not IS in such foods. 

Worse even than that, such foods often contain hybrid GMO wheat and other high glycemic refined grains.  Similarly, MSG may be added to make up for the lack of sweetness or flat flavor.

Normally nonfat or 1% low fat milk would in fact be better.  But commercial milk so labeled is made with dried milk which is very pro-inflammatory.  That is very harmful for your health.

2% low fat milk with no rBGH or 2% low fat milk even or whole milk in moderation from cows fed only grass and organic sprouts drunk only after a hard workout is likely OK once a day.

Skim and non fat milk IS sold as less fattening with such labels.  In fact, many people DO believe it is less fattening.

In fact, skim and non fat milk tests out as MORE fattening too!

Jenny Thompson who writes the HSI emails had a brief article on it in her email today.

She says that even many mainstream nutritionist  believe “….skim milk equals skinny. End of discussion.

Well, they can cling to that myth to the bitter end. But it won't make it right.

New research proves that the exact opposite is true.

This study shows a significant link between drinking skim milk and higher body weight. And that result held up across all racial, ethnic, and economic groups. “

She then lists why they now know that is: 

First: calcium intake helps you lose weight. This fact has been known for years. What's not quite as well known is this... The process that skims fat from milk also strips away nutrients.

Nutrients such as...that's right -- calcium.

And it just so happens that your body absorbs calcium much better when you consume the mineral with -- yep! -- milk fat.

But wait. There's more... Your body absorbs milk sugars slower when they're consumed with milk fat. So if you skim away the fat, the sugars are rapidly absorbed, which turns them into FAT.”  

That’s because this extra blood sugar plus the insulin released causes those sugars to be deposited as fat.  And, that happens far more than it does with 2% or whole milk because the zero glycemic fat buffers this enough blood sugar and insulin go up MUCH less.

In addition people who eat moderate or somewhat low levels of  health OK fats and oils (but NOT low or very low or zero) are LESS hungry and stay eating right and keep fat off and HAVE less fat than people who do not.  They are also MUCH healthier.

(The only way that low fat or nonfat milk is better is when the milk fat is from cows fed GMO grains.   That means the milk fat has very high levels of omega 6 oils which are very pro-inflammatory; and they contain bioconcentrated pesticides and herbicides AND when the dairy product in question has very little if any lactose.

Nonfat cottage cheese and Greek yogurt are high in protein and low or near zero in lactose.  So they not only have fewer calories, they can help with fat loss.  Plus you can add extra virgin olive oil and spices to nonfat cottage cheese.  And, you can add nuts such as raw pecans or walnuts to nonfat yogurt.)

Diet or sugar free almost always used with food that contain many of the things that make low fat or nonfat foods fattening or harmful AND in addition to that it, very often means they contain an artificial sweetener which is proven to be even more fattening and are thought to be as harmful as HFCS. 

Yikes!

 Diet itself also is a very damaging word to use for conversations or thinking about fat loss!  This is so much so that when it is used to mean style or plan of eating, it's almost better to say it that way.

That's because for fat loss, “diet” as it has come to be used, means to eat enough less each day that you are always hungry and lose weight each week -- on a temporary basis -- until the person loses the fat weight they want to lose.  It includes the wishful thinking that then returning to their previous eating will keep that weight off!

THAT is trouble!  In fact, for permanent fat loss, it has an over 99% failure rate!

First, it limits how much people lose initially.  They only do this for a few weeks and then their failsafe famine response slams on. Then, their metabolism slows down until fat loss stops.  Worse, they then become extremely hungry -- particularly for fattening foods! Yikes!

In the few cases people somehow manage to keep going and do lose what they'd like on the scale much of the weight they lose will be bone and muscle.

But then since this was "only temporary" until they lost that much weight, aided by their famine response they begin to eat "normally" and almost always gain it all back -- as fat!

(This is why 95% of permanent fat loss is instead:

Learning and doing a set of things that cause fat loss without making you hungrier --

AND which you can and do keep doing as sustainable, permanent lifestyle upgrades!

NONE of that is temporary!  None of those things leave you hungry all the time! 

And, NONE of them trigger the failsafe famine response.)

Too often people who are defeated by diets, get angry when they gain it all back and keep trying.

That motivation and persistence are good!

The problem is that most of them still use a "diet" instead of such permanent lifestyle upgrades that don't cause such hunger all the time!

The resulting yo yo like motion of gains and losses of weight, have gained that name, "Yo Yo Dieting."  

B. You can reach permanent fat loss from a background of Yo Yo Dieting but it does take a bit longer and more care is required to do it.

Instead of starting out with some kinds of calorie cutbacks that usually do NOT trigger the famine response right away, you have to hold off on using any of them until you have been learning and doing a set of things that cause fat loss without making you hungrier for several weeks.

And, when you do add some extra calorie cut backs you can only use half as many or half as often AND find ways to increase things that boost your metabolism and make you feel less hungry at the same time.

In addition, while ongoing and effective support really helps in learning and doing the set of things that cause fat loss without making you hungrier, for ex yo yo dieters, it's critical and essential!

A.  For a while, the famine response does lower your energy level. You feel like doing less and resting more.

That has two cures.

1.  Doing things that help you eat right that take little energy and doing short but intense sessions of exercise that you do in just a few minutes.

You can buy some health OK foods pre-made instead of making them from scratch. 

And you can do high intensity cardio in two or three five minute sessions a week or just one or two 20 minute sessions of superslow strength training a week.

You don't have to bake no carbs, no gluten bread even if you like cooking and have the equipment.  It may just take too much time and energy to do every week. But you can buy Paleo Bread which is exactly that online or at Whole Foods.

It CAN be helpful to take one or two brisk walks for an hour at a time on at least 5 days a week.  But besides the time you need, you may not have the energy when in the grip of the famine response.  But you can make yourself do one or two sessions of high intensity cardio each week.  Those can take less than 10 minutes a time to do!

And, you can go once a week for just 20 minutes to The Perfect Workout where their trainer helps you stay motivated while you are there.

The trick is to do just a little bit that you can force yourself to do just a few times a week; but have the things you do be very effective for the time and energy they take to start doing and not last for a long time for each session. 

2.  Do things that restore your energy level.  Take naps; drink coffee in moderation or drink extra tea; read things that inspire you; go to bed a bit earlier and turn off your TV before bedtime.  Be sure to go to bed and get up at the same exact time each day on weekdays if you possibly can.  Do some of these things with someone who you like who has more energy and is fun to do them with.

Take the supplement ubiquinol if you are older than 40 or take statins.  This helps your mitochondria in your cells that generate their energy to do more.

B.  There are a set of foods that do a good job of turning off hunger but tend NOT to fatten you or even help you lose fat!

a) These are health OK protein foods from animals that are wild caught or fed the food they are evolved to eat such as eggs from pasture fed hens and milk and meat and cheese from cattle fed only grass or organic sprouts.  And this category also includes beans and lentils.

I found out there are studies which show you can avoid or help turn off the famine response if you eat enough of these kinds of protein foods!

You can eat a high moderate amount of these particularly if you also get regular, vigorous exercise.  The combination of such exercise and protein foods helps build muscle which then boosts metabolism.

Health OK protein foods turn off hunger well; support you preserving and gaining muscle which burns extra calories; and eating enough protein foods can prevent or turn down the famine response too! 

b) These are health OK oils in addition to those in the health OK protein foods that are monosaturated such as extra virgin olive oil, raw and unsalted and no junk oils added tree nuts such as walnuts and pecans.

Studies show people who enjoy these foods often but not excessively DO take in more calories BUT have smaller waists and are LESS fat!   And these foods really help to avoid triggering the famine response and can help get rid of it.

c) And, nonstarchy and organically grown vegetables do a great job.  You get to eat a lot more and fill your tummy better since they are high in fiber. They have very few calories and are often so nutritious and protective of your health they are considered Superfoods.  In addition, it was recently found that the extra chewing they take to eat turns DOWN the hunger hormone ghrelin!

Nonstarchy vegetables have a lot of fiber so you feel and are full for after eating. They take more effort and chews to chew them which turns down the hunger hormone ghrelin too.  Most of these vegetables are nutritional Superfoods AND they have little calories.  You can literally eat a LOT of them and take in not that many calories.  And, eating health OK oils in moderation satisfies hunger another way and like eating protein helps turn down your famine response.

You may need to do the little energy needed things and exercise and eat extra for a year to get over the worst of the famine response.  But by doing these things, you CAN outlast it and even make progress while you are waiting too!

The  bottom line is that by exercising and eating this way , you can eat well most of the time so you literally are rarely hungry and lose fat without turning up or keeping up the famine response. 

The best news is that by doing these things you will add muscle, recover your energy level and even lose some fat too

-- AND you will be SO much better off than the people who don't. 

Statistics show they will gain well over 10 or 20 pounds of fat in that time instead! 

Cures for antibiotic bacteria available NOW....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-24-2013

A.  Background:

My wife is a history buff and loves to read well done history books.  One of the times in history that interests her most is the American Civil War.

These books spend some time on the lives of the people involved outside of their roles in the history.

One thing that jumps out at her are how often people then died suddenly and how much time people spent going to funerals.

That has NOT been true for decades since then.  Why not? 

1.  Public health and sanitation are at least half the reason which people often don’t know is so!

So many people died during the Civil War or were incapacitated from disease caused by lack of these things, in between that time and the end of World War II, the American military made huge strides in using preventive public health and sanitation.

And, these advances have been used across the country.

2.  Since then, we have found effective vaccines against many adult and childhood disease that used to kill so many.

3.  But the really big reason is that since the ending years of World War II, we have had effective antibiotics.

B.  THAT is on its way to becoming no longer the case!

To some degree that threatens your life and the lives of people you care about or depend on.

Worse, the dollar cost of fighting antibiotic resistant infections is rapidly becoming a really large issue in our total health care costs.

According to the CDC, at least 2 million people in the U.S. become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of those infections. Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection.

Worse, the overuse of antibiotics in factory farms in the United States and the widespread and uncontrolled use of antibiotics in the less developed world is likely to make this problem steadily worse.

True, there are efforts to develop new antibiotics and some of that research may pay off.

But many of these new drugs, have dreadful side effects and once they are used often, they too will tend to stop working.

C. Cures for antibiotic bacteria available NOW

The older and original antibiotics worked and had predictable effects on infectious bacteria with not that many side effects.

What if we could still kill antibiotic resistant bacteria with them now?  What if we could boost the capacity of the people sick with such bacteria to survive the assault while we killed the bacteria?

The potentially good news is that we can do both those things.

These methods are not now in wide use.

But there is a place that experiences such high direct costs now from fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria, they might be willing to try these methods when others don’t have enough motivation.

That place is the hospital!

So, it’s my hope that these existing methods in combination will cure people and do so enough faster that the hospitals who test them will get such good results, other hospitals will adopt them.  Then most people who need them will have access to them.

We now know 8 ways to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria with no new antibiotics needed!

The process is like a double check in chess.  The bacteria can resist one kind of attack.  But when you start hitting it with two or more kinds at the same time, it dies!

1.  The first one I found out about is silver.   There WAS a study reported in MNT that found that silver given patients with bacteria having multiple antibiotic resistant bacteria along with safe, now inexpensive, and once effective antibiotics allowed them to work!  The bacteria could fight the silver which was only moderately effective by itself.  And they had learned to fight the antibiotic.  But just like a double check in chess they could NOT do both at once!

2.  This article quotes results showing that adding thyme oil, carvacol, and lavender oil also does this though perhaps not as effectively as silver.

It certainly looks as if adding those to the antibiotics that used to work plus silver might even work with MRSA that is killing a patient or for antibiotic resistant gonorrhea or TB.

3.  Intravenous vitamin C HAS been shown to be effective against some cancers.  It may also be effective when fighting MRSA that is killing a patient or for antibiotic resistant gonorrhea or TB where a faster cure is wanted.

4.  Intravenous glutathione may boost the patient's immune systems and ability to survive and recover from the attack. According to Dr Perlmutter who tested it on his patients, it DOES do so.

5.  For people low in vitamin D3, 50,000 iu a day until the people test at 50 or above and 5,000 to 10,000 a day has also been shown to boost the patient's immune systems and ability to survive and recovery from the attack for both physical injuries and viral and bacterial infections.

As just one example, a Scandavian study found in an epidemic of a virulent flu that killed a number of people, it killed people seriously deficient in blood levels of vitamin D3 and almost no one with desirable levels.

6.  Taking astragulus may also have this kind of effect.  But that research is less for sure than those two are and the effect may be lower.

7.  For C Diff, having the patient drink a drink they like that's sweet and use TONS of sucralose first which has been found to kill almost all gut bacteria indiscriminately may well work to help kill the C Diff from yet another direction with great force.  Adding that to these other methods will likely cause it to be eliminated.

8.  Then the injection of the cleaned bacteria from the colon of a healthy person that has been tested to work is but less obnoxious and faster than a whole load of the stuff, restarts things and taking two kinds of probiotics three times a day for 3 weeks and then once a day after that would finish the job.

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 9-23-2013

Almost a carbon copy of last month; but I gained less and the news on future progress is better too!

This is another of my not so great but mixed review reports. (That report is in Part I.)

But the likely results soon are GREAT!  (Why is listed below in Part II.)

Part I:

Bad news first: 

I gained back two more pounds.

Never happy with that; but I’m now back at my goal weight. 

So as long as I am careful enough to not gain back more, I’m still OK so far.

I did gain back a bit on my waist however.  THAT is FAR less OK!

In addition, I had my waist measure at The Perfect Workout and had it as 40 inches exactly.  Yikes!  My measurements aren’t that inaccurate; however, that’s a minimum of 2 inches too big for good health and still 5 to 6 inches larger than my goal.

OK  news:

I did gain an inch on my chest and about half an inch on my hips; and THAT may have included some muscle. 

I will fight to avoid gaining back any more weight; but at this point my main focus will be to add muscle.

(I think when I cut back even with the two a day partial fasting, I was doing enough already that I got a bit of famine response on appetite.  So as long as I don’t gain back more, I think it may pay me to focus most on adding muscle at this point.

I also need to boost my metabolism to the extent I can do so.  Adding muscle and the exercises I’m doing do help with that already.)

Part II.  The good news!:  Why the likely results soon are GREAT!

Next I list why I’ve NOT been able to add quite a bit more muscle as I need to do to force the loss of my remaining belly fat.

So, why is the future looking so great all of a sudden?  It’s because just last month, I tried something that solved both of those two problems!  And, I can keep doing it!

1.  The two reasons why I’ve NOT been able to add quite a bit more muscle despite knowing the effective way to do so:

In my at home super slow strength training, I’ve been held back by struggling with some issues from a left shoulder injury. 

This injury has prevented me from getting stronger on the exercises that use my left shoulder.  Worse, it has kept me from making further progress on several of the exercises where I DID get stronger.

Unlike my right shoulder which healed, my left shoulder seems to keep getting re-injured.

THAT is now coming to a screeching halt!!

I asked my doctor about it and she referred me for physical therapy.

My previous experience with trying Physical Therapy was simply  dreadful.  But in hopes I might learn something this time to stop re-injuring my shoulder and get corrective exercises I went just in case to the first appointment.

MUCH BETTER!  The woman Physical Therapist immediately found out the two things I’d been doing that kept injuring my left shoulder and bothering my right shoulder a bit too.

a)  I was throwing my whole arms through the motion on my jump rope sessions on every repetition.  You have to do that a bit to start the jump rope at first each time.  BUT, you can minimize it a bit and then use a wrist snap to keep it going mostly after that.  THAT removes 90% or more from the high impact forces on my shoulders!

The bad news is that I’m still relearning this new form and am terrible at it.  So my amount of exercise is down from what I want.

But the good news is MUCH better.  I AM getting better at it!  And the best news is that doing my jump rope sessions no longer re-injures my shoulder.

b)  I’d been doing all my exercises for which I use my shoulders with a shoulders hunched bad posture.  That was causing them to work twice as hard at an angle they were not designed to do well.

So, she said to make a special effort to lift my chest as I did these exercises.  AND, she gave me two corrective exercises to increase my strength and control over how well I can hold my shoulders in the OK position.

That is still a work in progress.  And it will take some time to get better at it.

BUT, the exercises ARE less hard on my shoulders.

Now that they no longer re-injure me when I do them, my muscles now WILL heal and gradually allow me to get my strength back, get stronger, and add more muscle mass!

2.   Secondly, most of the muscle I lost since I was younger I lost in my legs and buttocks and lower back. 

But to add that muscle I’d need more space and MUCH more weight to do the needed exercises at home. 

I’d also need a leg press machine or a rack with a setting to keep the weight from going down to the floor. And, when I’m working to the level where I can’t do a complete last repetition, one of those two ways of making that safe are critical.

So I’ve been making no or very limited progress on the exercises I do for my upper body at home and making too little for my legs and buttocks and lower back to add the muscle I need.

So, despite my willingness to work hard and the potential I can tell is really there to add the muscle I need, it had NOT been happening.

However, I AM now doing just that set of exercises at The Perfect Workout once a week; and I’m making steady progress at adding weight each week!

In addition, I’ve gotten a good bit stronger on the calf exercises I’ve been doing at home.

And, there’s more!

Even before my recent progress with my shoulder, I found that I WAS able to do their chest press on their machine without my shoulder holding me back!

Now that I also can hold my shoulders in a better position and they will get stronger, I will now gain the chest muscle mass and arm muscle mass I’ve wanted.

And, they also have machines to exercise the big muscles in my upper back.  And I’m getting stronger and adding weight on those exercises too.

So, I now have a real shot at adding enough muscle to force fat loss from my waist!  Finally!

3.  The other interesting news is that their scale measured me as having 8% body fat and having about 40 pounds of muscle.

So if I can add 20 pounds more, my calorie burn from my muscles has the potential to go up by 50%!!

THAT will keep me lean for sure!

Since my arms and shoulders and legs look like I have 11 to 17 % fat; and my belly looks as if I am at least 20% fat, their body fat percentage is WAY low!

But to the extent I am a bit more lean than I thought, it may mean that I’ll have to try something like liposuction to cut enough more from my belly.

However, I think it’s just off in my case.  Based on comparing my appearance with people who DO have 8% body fat; I think my overall fat is still closer to 20% at best.

So for now, working very hard to get fifty percent stronger or more and adding that 20 pounds of muscle is my goal.

AFTER I do that and get my body fat measured by a more accurate device; then I’ll think again about adding laser liposuction or something similar if I still need to do so.

But based on the experience of other people and how they look after adding the muscle, I think that may not be needed.  

Solutions to the salt paradox....

Today's Post:  Friday, 9-20-2013

A.  Three key facts:

1.  Ingesting too much salt is proven to harm the inner surface of your blood vessels if you do it too much or too long.

Recent studies show this then causes high blood pressure from that damage even after people stop ingesting that much.  It causes gout too!  And, it makes the damage from excess blood sugar worse.

That means that eating way too much salt can cause you pain, extra medical care costs, and increase your chances of having a heart attack or vascular dementia or ED.  The drugs for high blood pressure have dreadful side effects in addition!

You are far better off if you NEVER do this or do it very, very rarely!

More than 2800 mg a day of salt begins to do this; and over 3500 mg a day definitely does.

At least half our population now takes in that much!  Yikes!

2.  Eating a DASH II diet with added vegetables and fruits and other foods high in potassium and magnesium while working to eat 1500 mg a day of salt or less is proven to lower high blood pressure.  It even lowers blood pressure a bit in people who have normal blood pressure!

3.  There have been some studies showing other kinds of harm from salt intakes that low, particularly if people eat far less than that! 

And, if you use too little salt -- even if you use other spices and flavors very well, food can taste too bland or harsh or colorless.  Initially some health oriented restaurants that overdid this failed because their food didn’t taste good enough.  I once ate at one.

B. So the paradox is this, how do you get the benefits of low salt intake and avoid the truly dreadful effects of high salt intake and still have your food taste decently – and avoid the harm from too little salt?

1.  Eat fewer foods that have salt you don’t even taste that much added to them in excess.  Fast food, packaged snacks and desserts and dinners, and canned foods – particularly soups often do this.  So do most breads and baked goods.  You must read labels to know in the store and stop or cut way back on eating out in places that use a lot of extra salt but have no labels.

Eat versions of these foods that have less salt; stop eating many of these foods at all since they are often fattening or harmful for other reasons.

2.  There is some evidence it is the sodium and not the salt that is harmful to overdo.  This is yet another reason to avoid all MSG and foods with labels that deliberately hide it.  As we posted on recently, MSG is double fattening AND the S in MSG stands for sodium! Watch for other chemicals in your food with sodium and minimize your intake of those also.

3.  Eat some sea salt or magnesium chloride.  Sea salt has many other chlorides and minerals besides sodium.  And replacing half your salt with magnesium chloride has been shown to lower blood pressure.  It seems there is some evidence that the bad effects of too little salt are from lack of chloride NOT from lack of sodium.

Note that some sea salts are not in stores, and some have an extra taste besides salty or are hard to use in recipes. In addition, it may help your thyroid and your cancer protection to have iodized salt.  Most sea salts are NOT iodized.

The great recent news is that Hain foods now sells a uniform sea salt that does work well in recipes AND is iodized!  I found it recently at Whole Foods.

4.  Eat cheese from cows fed only grass in moderation.  This adds some salty taste and adds protein to recipes where you add it on top or melt it into the foods.  It also makes the food taste richer and cuts back on harsh tastes. It also lacks the heart damaging omega 6 oils of cheese from cattle fed grain.

5.  Use all the other spices except salt well. Often your food will taste great with no added salt.  This is particularly true if you use bottled or canned food that has some salt but not too much or if you add cheese as we just listed.

6.  Never slam lots of salt onto a food you haven’t even tasted yet!

7.  When the food seems too unsalty or flat or you want to give the food a more inviting and warm taste, go ahead and salt it lightly – but ONLY after you taste it first.

If the food is well spiced otherwise and you are used to not eating super salty things, you’ll find you don’t need much.

The better news is that often if the food does taste too bland or flat, adding just that little bit of salt will improve the food’s flavor dramatically.

8.  Do the other things that are heart protective and prevent damage to your blood vessels.  Avoiding too much sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and refined grain foods does this.  So does getting some vigorous exercise most days of every week.  

New information on how to keep lost fat off....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-19-2013

Recently my email with features on Yahoo highlighted information on how to keep off fat you lost.

The article was written by, Kristin Kirkpatrick, M.S., R.D., L.D.  Manager of Wellness Nutrition Services at Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute.

Her title was:  “The Real Weight Loss Battle: Keeping It Off” and it was first posted on09/01/2011.

This post lists her points.

1.  One of her points adds a dramatically important reason to eat raw vegetables and very lightly cooked vegetables that still have some crunch to them and eat raw nuts, un-oiled and not salted  that are also crunchy!

She quotes research that found that chewing more turns down a hormone called ghrelin that causes you to feel strong hunger.

“In this particular study, blood tests taken 90 minutes after eating showed that individuals that chewed 40 times (as opposed to 15) had much lower levels of ghrelin and thus, ate less due to decreased appetite.”

This is an extremely important point.  This is why eating some raw or very lightly cooked vegetables at almost every meal except breakfast is so helpful.  It not only is very high in nutrition and low in calories and filling due to the high fiber content, you have to chew it more to eat it!  So you are not only more full and nourished, your hunger itself goes down too!

Also, advice like “chew more” ruins the enjoyment of food if you count chews plus hardly anyone is so into health as to get themselves to do that every time!

But if you include raw vegetables and very lightly cooked vegetables at almost every lunch and dinner and some snacks, you do it automatically.

And you also get your hunger turned down by the extra fiber too.  Plus their low calorie content helps you eat more food and less calories at the same time!

2.  She also highlights that removing things like potato chips and soft drinks and other sources of lots of sugar or large boosts in blood sugar or insulin must be a permanent life style upgrade.

She paints a picture of your fat cells just waiting for you to begin eating or drinking just a little bit of those so they can gain all their fat back!

(It’s our hope that by helping people learn just how relentlessly fattening these are and how harmful they are to health that people will write them off and never have them again. 

Any exceptions need to be extremely rare and very carefully limited to avoid this.)

Adding health OK protein foods and fats and oils also helps with this as they turn down hunger far better than these high glycemic fast insulin producers do. 

Eating health OK fats and oils also turns down another hunger hormone called CKK -- which is why people who include them in moderation lose more fat and keep it off far better because they stick to healthy eating far more often than people who only eat nonfat and super low fat foods.

By finding or developing tasty combination recipes for salad and vegetable main dishes that incorporate such vegetables and health OK protein foods and fats and oils and some whole fruit plus skillful use of spices you can develop a set of recipes that you really enjoy eating. 

Using extra virgin olive oil -- and cooked and raw diced onion and minced fresh garlic – IF those are to your taste – can really help with this as it dramatically improves your chances of continuing your healthy eating. 

These foods and spices also are very strongly health protective particularly if organic.

Eating a version of the Mediterranean diet that features lots of organic vegetables and removes most of the bread and pasta dishes is a great way to do this.  (You can also now find or make breads and pasta using no grain at all which also works.  “Paleo Bread” does this very well.)

3.  She also makes the point that at times, you will have to make an extra effort to keep doing the things that removed the fat and are keeping it from returning.

“You did it! You lost the weight and now you're looking and feeling like a million bucks.

….How can you….(not) regain (your lost fat) when…many others have failed?’

“ It won't be easy, but with hard work -- and a few tactics you may not have thought of -- you may just beat the odds.”

This is far easier if you set things up where you eat health OK foods that taste good; you get into a routine of eating these things regularly; and you eat the foods that cut your hunger with fewer calories.

It also helps to increase your calorie burn with effective strength training and short periods of high intensity cardio.  This allows you to eat more without the fat returning.

And, last but not least, this is why an ongoing and well run support group that teaches these things would be so helpful.

As many of you know we are working on that to offer you!  

Even more info on preventing mental decline!....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-17-2013

A.  Dr Dharma Khalsa isn’t perfect but is a foremost researcher in preventing mental decline and Alzheimer’s and maintaining function in people with early symptoms of it.

Nearly two weeks ago his assistant emailed out some valuable information.

There was a “Super Ager” study at Northwestern University in Illinois. They studied people who were older but still in great shape mentally.

1.  From the email it looks as if one finding was that these people have a positive attitude and overall upbeat outlook on life.

2.  In the study, the MRI brain scans showed  that the Super Agers had thicker brain cortices and that thinning brain cortices correlate to loss of brain cells and gray matter.

Apparently they found that chronic oxidative stress and low-grade systemic inflammation tended to cause thinning brain cortices.  (See our other posts on how stopping sources of excessive omega 6 oils, using extra virgin olive oil instead, and taking or eating DHA and other omega 3 sources in combination turns down chronic high inflammation.  So does taking curcumin and eating turmeric and ginger.)

3.  In the email they said that:  “…. research shows that (this physical brain decline) starts in your mid 40’s when your body’s principal antioxidant glutathione system starts petering out.

You may remember that glutathione is the mother of all antioxidants but can become overwhelmed and depleted as we age and as we are over exposed to the stress and toxins of modern day living.”

“….Glutathione deficiency is found in nearly all of his very ill patients.

These include people suffering with serious diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes and chronic fatigue – to name a few.

So what we should be asking then is how do we boost our natural glutathione levels?

There is a compound called ALA or Alpha Lipoic Acid (has been shown to boost) the glutathione production in your body and actually raising blood glutathione levels after a 6 month period” (in a study).

Along with exercise and meditation it is a sure fire way to get glutathione levels back up to healthy levels and reduce the chronic oxidative stress and low level systemic inflammation.”

Alpha lipoic acid is an antioxidant that supports other antioxidants and works with both water based and oil based organic molecules.  (R lipoic acid is more expensive but may be more effective than alpha lipoic which is a mixture of the R and the D forms.)

And, there is a much stronger glutathione booster, N-acetyl- Cysteine aka NAC which you can also buy as a supplement.

B.  That same day, I got a separate email that said that phosphatidyl choline (aka listed as the B vitamin choline) helps keep the cells of all your body including your brain fluid and functional.  We also know that choline boosts the good kind of cholesterol, HDL, and is found in egg yolks and other foods.

This email said that getting enough choline also boosts glutathione! 

Besides getting choline in foods you can buy lecithin supplements that mostly contain choline.

A related compound, I think they appear together often called phosphatidyl serine or PS has been shown to help keep brain cell walls fluid and functional and prevent oxidation and stiffening well enough that people who began taking it restored 12 years worth of mental decline in studies.  PS is available in supplements.

Choline also has recently been found to cut triglycerides by 36%. 

Since choline also boosts the protective HDL, this means that getting enough of it also lowers your level of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes plaque, reduced circulation, and heart disease. 

THAT also prevents mental decline by preventing vascular dementia.  So between the parts getting enough choline and PS strongly prevents mental decline.

AND, besides causing the increased release in the brain cell and nerve growth factor BDNF which is also protective, getting vigorous exercise most days of every week, even if in brief sessions also directly cuts your level of the dangerous small particle LDL that causes plaque, reduced circulation, and heart disease.  This is also strongly protective against heart disease, stroke, and vascular dementia.

In addition, your doctor can tell because such exercise also boosts your level of HDL and reduces triglycerides.

C.  In addition, in the Medical News Today email it was announced today that a diabetes drug already in use apparently improves function and may be partly curative in late stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Since it’s already in use, it may be approved for that use soon.

The even better news is that you can do each of the things this drug is thought to do with things already available to you NOW!

Diabetes drug enters clinical trial for Alzheimer's treatment

http://mnt.to/a/4gQf

A drug commonly used for treating diabetes may reverse symptoms of late-stage 

Alzheimer's disease and is now in the process of entering a major clinical 

trial. Researchers from Lancaster University in the UK conducted a study 

revealing that the drug, liraglutide, may reverse memory loss in the late stages 

of Alzheimer's, as well as prevent the build-up of toxic plaques on the brain 

that contribute to symptoms of the disorder.

"Liraglutide activates receptors on neurons that set a growth-factor type of signaling cascade in motion.

This means that the cell repair of neurons is improved, the energy metabolism is normalized, and synapses are kept functional. Oxidative stress is reduced, and growth and replacement of neurons is improved. The brain is much better placed to cope with stress and toxic influences."

This is great news for people with more severe Alzheimer's disease!

Since the drug is already approved and used with reasonable safety, if it does test as working for this, in this case, making it available soon makes sense.

But the effects of this drug that are thought to cause this improvement are already available now!

(I've read such late stage people also do better when fed MCT oils which give their brains energy without the sugars that caused the problem initially.)

Here's what they think the drug does:

"Liraglutide activates receptors on neurons that set a growth-factor type of signaling cascade in motion.

This means that the cell repair of neurons is improved, the energy metabolism is normalized, and synapses are kept functional. Oxidative stress is reduced, and growth and replacement of neurons is improved. The brain is much better placed to cope with stress and toxic influences."

Regular vigorous exercise, even if brief, most days of every week improves energy metabolism and releases the brain cell and nerve growth factor BDNF.  Even moderate exercise does so to some extent.

Taking the omega 3 DHA as a supplement or eating it in wild caught fish increases the release of BDNF. Doing that plus the exercise CAN be done early in Alzheimer's and is protective before that.

One researcher documented that ingesting DHA and choline and a substance called uridine which is in Brewer's yeast directly at the same time a few times a day caused better, more normal repair in the nerves and improved brain function in people with early stage dementia.

Taking the supplement ubiquinol improves energy production in the mitochondria of older cells and might well improve the energy availability of nerve cells and brain cells. It’s also a good antioxidant.

You can have people eat wild organic blueberries which are very high in antioxidants and have been directly found to be brain protective even more than that;  eat other organic fruits and vegetables high in antioxidants; and take antioxidant supplements, notably N-Acetyl Cysteine which releases the potent antioxidant glutathione to improve antioxidant protection to the brain. Coffee, green tea, tea, and spices are also high in antioxidants.

You can eliminate the sugars and other damaging foods that cause blood sugar and insulin issues to eliminate a major cause of mental all decline:  stop all:  excess intake of real sugar, any high fructose corn syrup, agave (also high in free fructose), virtually all refined grain foods, white rice, and virtually all use of artificial sweeteners.  (Those all tend to boost the damaging triglycerides.)

And, taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day and turmeric or curcumin supplements derived from it with black pepper each day has been shown to help prevent amyloid plaque and may even remove it to some degree.

For early stage mental decline or Alzheimer's -- or for prevention, each of these is available now!

To the extent they are possible to use they may also work, or at least improve matters, with later stage cases if you can use them all.

So I hope they do test and approve this drug quite soon.  But the effects are each available now!   

Vitamins OR Superfoods? BOTH is best!....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-12-2013

A.  A recent study notes that unusually nutritious foods such as organic produce: blueberries or broccoli florets or pecans or carrots; or extra virgin olive oil or wild caught salmon; provide more and better health benefits than most people ever imagine.

THIS is totally correct!  In fact, it may be an understatement.  Real foods have so many kinds of nutrients and little known cofactors that it’s truly astounding – hundreds are in many foods!

B. It goes on to say that vitamin and mineral and other supplements are not needed or helpful since foods are so great.  It says the evidence for supplements is weak or mixed.  I haven’t read the original study yet but it also likely makes a case for not using larger doses of key vitamins and minerals.

THAT’s false!  In fact, it’s total crap and disinformation. It’s often said honestly from ignorance.  People who don’t know a subject can miss really valuable information in that subject area and this study does just that! They simply don’t know it exists. (Or they write as if they don’t.)

If you read how many things are prevented or improved by extra large doses of key vitamins and minerals and other supplements here or in some of the original studies, you know better! 

Sure, eating Superfoods helps and virtually never eating or drinking the many kinds of super damaging and heart attack starting foods & food ingredients are critically important as are getting regular moderate and vigorous exercise most days of ever week. 

But there ARE extra large doses of key vitamins and minerals and other supplements that prevent or stop things such as heart disease, migraines, many cancers, Alzheimer’s disease and more. 

The thing that is dangerous about publicizing studies like this one is that it lays the groundwork for preventing you from accessing these supplements.  That would be a public health and personal freedom disaster!

 And the drug companies also do seem to be paying for people to publish such things on supplements where the truth is the opposite of the conclusions listed to help remove safer and more effective and cheaper competition!

Adding the false statement to a valuable true statement is great for that purpose because it gives seeming credibility to their incorrect information which makes this USDA study a bit suspect.

C.  The people who have by far the best health do several things not just one! 

They do know and eat the Superfoods! 

They do know and take many of the most effective vitamins and minerals and other supplements also! 

They do know what foods and food ingredients are very harmful and fattening and go to some trouble to avoid them.  (Uninformed and poor people eat little else!  Which is one of several reasons our health care costs and disease rates are so high despite being preventable.)

And they do get both moderate exercise and quite vigorous exercise most days of every week.

As a result, people who do ALL these things age far more slowly and have better quality of life and not only live longer but have dramatically more healthy years of life.

Is this a trivial and small difference? 

NO!  People who do none of these things are lucky to have 30 years of healthy life once they become 18 and rarely have more than 50.  People who do them all tend to have from over 50 to over 80.  Twenty to over fifty more years of healthy life is NOT a trivial difference!

So when you read things like this, DO the things they show cause good health!

AND take with great suspicion any advice to not do things others find support good health!

1.  A few years ago, I happened to see the data on the health results of different diets and foods in China.

It was enormously valuable to me to see some of the data he found.

More recently I found his book:  Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition by T. Colin Campbell and Howard Jacobson (May 7, 2013), now available on Amazon, at my local bookstore.

He makes the same points as this study.  And, like the study, he does not know supplements at all or what they can do when you use the right vitamins and minerals in the higher dosages along with the best other supplements for various health purposes.

But I was able to read his description of how little vitamin C a whole apple is listed as having while at the same time, it’s been shown that eating a whole apple delivers the effect of taking 1500 mg of vitamin C!  That’s because of the hundreds of other nutrients and supporting co-factors that work with the vitamin C it does have!

That does clearly mean that besides avoiding the harmful and fattening foods and food ingredients, eating a wide variety of organic plant foods that are high in nutrition and animal foods wild caught or fed only their natural foods that are high in nutrition, you will have the very best health from the foods you eat.

As he so ably shows, you not only get the standard nutrients that we've known about for some time, you get far more, dramatically more, health benefits than you might expect by eating these real foods.

(One of the reasons to stop eating the very harmful and fattening foods and ingredients is to make room and funds available to eat MORE of those kinds of foods!)

And, the books by Dr Joel Fuhrman cover how eating a wide variety of organic plant foods that are high in nutrition in relation to the calories they contain helps you get unusually good nutrition from this high nutrient density diet, you can eat a lot and still be free of excess fat.

His recommended diet contains a vegan mix of salads with raw vegetables, cooked vegetables, and a daily serving of beans.

In fact, the volume of vegetables is so high, it’s a major undertaking to follow his diet.  You almost need to get a grocery bag or two of produce each day and then prepare food with it every day; and he leaves out the Superfoods from animal foods wild caught or fed only their natural foods and he leaves out the health OK oils due to their higher calorie content.

That said, every single kind of diet found to have health benefits has a large input from the kinds of vegetables he recommends.  And, all though he overdoes it for most people, eating more IS better and helps fat loss best.

The trick is to eat a set of vegetables that you prepare in batches when you can and then eat for several days or buy them pre-prepared.  And, you focus on the kinds with the most nutrition.

These include the cruciferous vegetables, those both red yellow or orange and those dark green that are high in carotenes, and artichokes.

The study and I also suggest eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils, tree nuts for those not allergic to them, and extra virgin olive oil – and the red wine in moderation that I and other health writers recommend.

The evidence is that you get more complete nutrition by doing this than eating only vegan foods, you get even greater health benefits of many different kinds, and most people find it dramatically easier to eat this way and continue to do so!

(Note that this is dated Thursday, 9-12 but got posted Friday, 9-13.  That’s because I was suddenly called away as I write this on Thurs, 9-12 before I finished it and posted it.)

2.  It is also extremely important to do as Colin Campbell and this study suggest NOT to do!

DO become knowledgable about the vitamins and minerals and other supplements that DO work and take them as you can afford or need to do.

Why get Alzeimer’s disease or a stroke or a cancer or a migraine or a heart attack you could have prevented?

To be sure, those who eat as this study and Dr Joel Furhman and Dr Dean Ornish and Colin Campbell -- AND I -- suggest and exercise and avoid tobacco and its smoke, WILL avoid such things better than people who do not.

But why stop there when you can do roughly twice as well with the right supplements!

By the way, these supplements, just like the super foods, have multiple health benefits.

It’s fun to take one for a protection it’s known to have and then learn it is also protecting you from other harms and illnesses too!

For example, I began taking curcumin supplements and eating curries containing the turmeric it comes from because there is solid evidence that it is one of the effective ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and may even help reverse or slow it in its early stages.

THEN I found out it also helps prevent many cancers and does so very strongly if you take it with black pepper!

THEN I found doing this was one of two things I was doing that caused a 25 point drop in my LDL cholesterol.

Another supplement that is becoming famous for this -- its multiple health benefits, is taking 3,000 to 5,000 or a bit more of vitamin D3 each day!

Doing this ALSO helps prevent all autoimmune diseases and helps keep your bones strong.

Like taking curcumin, it prevents Alzheimer’s disease and many cancers. 

Taking this much vitamin D3 also makes it less likely you’ll get colds or a case of the flu;

your flu shot will be more likely to work!, AND you’ll be less likely to get complications –

or die from them a study of deaths in a European flu epidemic found.

And taking this much vitamin D3 ALSO helps prevent all autoimmune diseases and helps

keep your bones strong.

Don’t let studies like this prevent you from accessing that kind of protection!   

Hidden double fattener you likely eat now....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-10-2013

1.  A few years ago, I happened to see the data on the health results of different diets and foods in China.

In that data, they found that people eating very similar or comparable foods in different parts of China ate about the same number of calories. 

They looked at how fat and heavy the people were.  And, the ones that in their area ate lots of MSG were fattier and heavier than those eating the same amount of calories from very similar or comparable foods who used little or no MSG.

Turn that around and what it proves is that if you eat MSG you will be fatter than you would if didn’t.

And, if you stop eating MSG, you’ll likely be less fat –AND that will even happen if you do NOT eat less food or calories.

This is a huge point in permanent fat loss because every single thing you do to remove excess fat that allows you to keep eating well makes keeping off the fat you lose doable! 

So if you do fifteen such things, you will become less fat and it will never, ever come back.

So, when I saw that to avoid MSG, you not only had to read labels and not buy foods that list it, you also have to avoid foods that say they contain autolyzed yeast, “spices”, and “natural spices”; and of course you have to NEVER eat or use meat tenderizers like Accent which are made out of MSG!

(For far more info on MSG, I found this on Google just now.  And, if you want more background on what MSG is and the many reasons food companies like to sneak it into foods, it’s a good site:  http://www.msgtruth.org/ http://www.msgtruth.org/  .)

(For tenderizing meat such as superlean most fat removed, grain fed meat and for 100% grass and organic sprout fed meat which is quite lean to start with there are effective mechanical meat tenderizers.  They are more effective and faster than pounding the meat with a hammer.  Also slow cooking helps tenderize meat as it cooks, such as in a crock pot.)

So, at that point I knew that it would pay me to avoid MSG and I did stop buying foods with those things on the labels.

But recently, I found out that MSG is dramatically more fattening than I had dreamed!

 And, I found out a whole set of foods I’d not known to avoid for containing MSG.

Right away, MSG makes you fatter on the same food than you would be if you used other spices and completely avoided MSG.

The graphic I saw comparing a normal rat fed their regular food and rats fed that same food but with MSG was truly startling.  The MSG fed rats were almost twice as big and all the difference was fat!

With foods you eat regularly, you have a massive multiplier factor over a period of a year or more!

So, if you’d rather not be fat, clearly it would pay you to avoid MSG!

Also more recently I read a study showing that MSG and related compounds are one of the several triggers of Alzheimer’s disease.

But the real bombshell shocker is this one:

“MSG an Epidemic of Thyroid Disease  

A 1981 study by Dhindsa showed that MSG administered to lab rats caused marked hypothyroidism with striking histology changes in the thyroid gland.(10)”

Yikes!

That was 32 years ago!  When that came out, it should have been front page news and MSG and related compounds should have been made illegal to use or add to food!

If your thyroid hormone is low, “hypothyroidism” the direct fix is to take animal based thyroid or drugs.  But these are expensive and often have side effects.  Plus some doctors don’t test for low thyroid well.  So you can have enough low thyroid to have low energy, low metabolism, and fat you make an enormous extra effort to lose and might not take off -- and not get help from your doctor.

That means that not only does MSG make you fatter right away, after it lowers your thyroid, it will do a job on you and help KEEP you fat –even when you do the right things that would normally get rid of it!

THIS means that hidden MSG IS a real cause of the obesity epidemic!

It makes you fat when you eat it.  AND, after it lowers your metabolism by reducing your thyroid hormones, it keeps on making you fat!

I found that and this on Facebook in article on Aspartame, MSG, and other harmful food ingredients recently.

That article also had this:  “Hidden Sources of MSG – It’s not on the label.

Virtually All Fast Foods Contain Large Quantities of MSG

A new problem with MSG is that many of the sources are hidden.  In other words, the processed food contains MSG in some form, yet the name MSG does not appear on the label.  MSG is present in all Fast Foods, including Burger King, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizzas, Wendy’s etc.”

The problem with deliberately hiding MSG is hardly new.  But this certainly makes eating in a fast food place a dramatically more fattening and less desirable thing to do than you may have dreamed!

MSG is quite common in canned soups and packaged foods that are designed to make a soup or pasta dish just by adding hot water.

If you have low thyroid now, could making sure you don’t consume any more MSG help make your thyroid problem much better or go away?!

Given how fiendishly well they hide it, it might!

The author makes of study on Facebook makes the point that to avoid it, you need to never eat at fast food places, ever.

It’s also in virtually every savory snack or pre-made and packaged dinner sold.

Worse, it’s in spices and condiments and spice blends – including those at Whole Foods!!  

(Yesterday my wife Abbie made her own BBQ sauce from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking.  Every single one sold at Whole Foods listed “spices” on the label!)

If a label has ANY listing of “spices”, “natural spices”, or “autolyzed yeast” it DOES have MSG and they don’t want the buyer to know!

I was delighted to find a yellow mustard by Annie’s Naturals at Whole Foods that does NOT include “spices” on the label.  It really is just mustard!

I also found recently that the 365 Whole Foods brand Ketchup has no high fructose corn syrup OR MSG recently.

Warning:  Virtually ALL mustards and ketchups sold except for those two also has MSG and the ketchups have high fructose corn syrup too.  

With flu season starting early what to do....

Today's Post:  Friday, 9-6-2013

A.  Every year there are scary statistics posted about yearly deaths from the flu.

This summer I found out two critically important things.

1.  Of the 36,000 number predicted the actual death rate from the flu itself is about 500.  The other 35,500 was from people dying of pneumonia who got the flu first.

2.  Research done in a flu epidemic in Europe that did kill people directly proved conclusively that it killed people severely deficient in vitamin D3 and was survived by virtually everyone with a good blood level of vitamin D3.

Conclusion:

Yes.  Getting the flu shot is protective.  You likely will get fewer cases of the flu over several years if you get the flu shot every year.  And, every time you avoid the flu, you’ll avoid any pneumonia that you might have developed as a complication.

However, the two most effective ways to avoid dying during flu season are to:

1.  Take 3,000 to 5,000 iu of vitamin D3 year round to ensure you have enough when you need it if or when the flu shows up where you are.

2. And, get the pneumonia vaccine which prevents a majority of the various kinds of pneumonia. 

The best news is that the protection from the pneumonia vaccine lasts more like 5 to 10 years instead of one year.  So once you get it, you are protected without having to get it every year. 

The exception may be to get the new kind that protects against 13 kinds if you previously got the older form that prevents 9.

B.  The best strategy is to do all 3:

1.  Take 3,000 to 5,000 iu of vitamin D3 year round.

2.  Get the flu shot every year. 

The flu viruses are slightly different each year. Each year’s shot does have the kinds of protection that are most likely to need.

The flu viruses are slightly different each year.  But the protection lasts a bit, so if this year’s version is similar to the one five years ago, you may avoid the one this year or have a much milder case if you had the one five years ago.  That means that to some degree the protection is cumulative.

3.  Get the pneumonia vaccine immediately if you haven’t ever gotten it and then get it every five to ten years after that.

This 3 part strategy is by far the best strategy, because, in people who get that much vitamin D3, they will get fewer cases of the flu or pneumonia that the vaccines don’t cover and those they get will be milder; AND both the flu vaccine AND the pneumonia vaccine will be more likely to work and prevent those diseases!

Why get vaccinated when it’s 60% likely to work when by taking enough vitamin D3 first and during and after it’s more like 90% + likely that it will protect you?!

C.  Start each part of the 3 part strategy you don’t already do or have done for this year right away. 

On Facebook, one of the people who does posts I see had a bad case of the flu over her Labor Day weekend which she is still recovering from. 

So as of today, the flu season has started this year already and you should take action now or very soon for the best protection.

If you don’t take the vitamin D3 yet, you can go to any health food store and get vitamin D3 inexpensively from Carlson or any other good quality supplement company.  Vitamin D3 is quite affordable.  100 capsules of 1,000 iu vitamin D3 costs less than $10 including tax most places.  And, if you take 3 a day, that’s a month’s supply!

You may need to wait to get the flu vaccine but get it at your first opportunity.

If you haven’t yet gotten the pneumonia vaccine, be sure to start the vitamin D3 and then get the vaccine a week or so later.  Or, if you already take enough vitamin D3 – at least 3,000 iu a day, get the pneumonia vaccine within a few days if you haven’t already done so.

D.  If you get the flu anyway, here are two things to be sure to do.

a) Only do things to lower the fever if it gets higher than about 105% or you get severe symptoms from it.  When you get a fever, it activates your immune system to counter attack the flu viruses.  If you turn that off early, you’ll have a longer, more severe case of the flu.

b) However DO protect yourself from getting dehydrated by the fever!  THAT is always critical do to.  It makes the difference between being sick and being severely limited and weak too.

Make sure to drink a LOT of water! 

Between the fever burning off extra water and feeling bad causing you to forget, you can get even worse from adding dehydration. 

If you drink extra water first thing in the day and then right after you visit the bathroom all day long, that will do it! 

You still feel sick; but you don't get weak or dizzy or debilitated to or get as many follow on infections.  You’ll be far safer and more able to do things if you need to do them.

Doctors SAY to drink lots of water but most of them totally forget to say why it's so tremendously important!! 

It is!  Now you know why!  

Coffee boosts mental performance AND protection....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 9-5-2013

An email I get is from Medical News Today.

They list the key information from reports of recent health and medical research.

We already know that studies found  that coffee boosts mental performance and everyone knows who has ever had coffee knows it can help you wake up and be alert for a while soon after you drink it.  One writer said it takes effect in about 18 minutes.

And, previous studies have found that drinking 3 or more cups of coffee a day – either regular OR decaf helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease!

Last week Medical News Today had a story that the protective effects of coffee drunk 3 or more times a day include preventing prostate cancer.  (That likely means it helps prevent other cancers and cancers in women too.)  This protection has been credited to the high levels of antioxidants in coffee in the sources I’ve seen before.

This new study says drinking a LOT of coffee is protective but then has two cautions not to do it.

1.  There IS a drawback to drinking that much coffee; but both cautions they list are incorrect for most people. And they don't list the valid one!

2.  You CAN get the protection without drinking that much coffee.  

(See my comments below.)

High coffee intake may help against prostate cancer

http://mnt.to/a/4gvK

Consuming four or more cups of coffee a day could reduce the risk of prostate 

cancer recurrence and disease progression, according to a study published in the 

journal Cancer Causes and Control.

My comments:

Four cups a day of coffee can cause anxiety type symptoms and sleep disruption.  So, one or two or sometimes three cups a day is better for you. 

I personally think that two and sometimes three cups of coffee is best and if more wake up is needed than that:   taking a brief nap, or a few seconds or a couple minutes of brisk exercise, or several cups of tea or green tea plus the green coffee bean extract two times a day will do the job.  And, it will do it without then disrupting your sleep to make you start groggier than you otherwise would have.

Note that the green coffee bean extract now available and decaf coffee each have two of the 3 ingredients they say in this article that might be creating the protective effects.

With my reflux, even the two or three cups of coffee a WEEK I drink, I pay for with extra symptoms.

So, I'm glad I've been taking the green coffee bean extract twice a day for some time now.

I also get caffeine from tea, green tea, dark chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa!

(Coffee with those ingredients and other antioxidants is also tested as reducing the odds coffee drinkers will get Alzheimer's!)

2 points:

1.  Percolated coffee for sure and possibly espresso boost cholesterol.  Drip coffee which is easier to make and in far more common use does not! So this caution is not completely accurate.

2.  Stress boosts blood pressure reliably.  If that's happening already -- particularly if combined with no exercise, that much coffee can add to the effect a bit. Stress also may make feeling a bit anxious worse on 4 or more cups of regular coffee.

Otherwise, drinking this much coffee is rarely a problem with boosting blood pressure. So that caution is not accurate as stated either!

Also, the few potential health problems with coffee:  a compound called acrylamide, the chemicals used in growing coffee, and the solvents used in processing it may well be considerably less in the coffee and decaf from a company called Mt Hagen organic coffee and decaf. 

It’s organic and heated less so it has less acrylamide and has far less of a taste of processing chemicals than standard instant regular or decaf coffee. 

I found Mt Hagen decaf and regular instant coffee at Whole Foods when I was looking for a better tasting instant decaf for my wife and me.  It’s remarkably more mild and smooth and tastes less of processing chemicals than the kind we were using.  Then we found that their instant regular coffee was similarly better than the regular instant coffee my wife was drinking.

(Acrylamide is also produced by heating grains and potatoes & it’s thought to be mildly carcinogenic and harmful to the nerves.)