Very high alcohol intake kills mitochondria....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-29-2014

I.  Why losing those mitochondria is so harmful to you and your health:           

1.  Very high alcohol intake and binge drinking also INCREASE heart disease and heart attack rates.

Low moderate drinking, particularly of red wine, lowers heart disease and heart attack rates and even death rates.  As long as it doesn’t lead to harmful car or other accidents even heavier moderate drinking does the same.

But drinking twice that much over a long time or binge drinking let alone binge drinking often, has the reverse effect!

For men, a high intake of alcohol is two or more drinks in a single day and/or 14 or more per week or 30 or more per month.  Women vary some but tend to be able to handle from 50% to 80% as much alcohol. 

Binge drinking for men is five or more drinks in a day and for women it’s three or four or more drinks in a day depending on the woman.

2.  Recent research has found that such very heavy drinking kills mitochondria.  That link from Medical News Today is below.

3.  That’s very bad news indeed because it’s extremely desirable to keep all your mitochondria -- or even grow new ones -- and to keep the mitochondria you have healthy and fully functional.

Your mitochondria are quite literally the power and energy providers inside each of your cells

How much energy you have; how fast you can move; how youthful you are and act depend directly on having enough mitochondria in all your cells.  It’s also essential they be in good health.

Harming mitochondria causes muscle weakness -- including heart failure where your heart begins to not pump well enough to send blood to you or clear the blood from its chambers completely when it pumps. 

So harming mitochondria speeds aging & lowers perceived energy and real energy in your body's cells.  It also contributes to obesity by reducing metabolism and lowering muscle mass.  And, it contributes to insulin resistance and is also a direct contributing cause of sleep apnea!

The calories in high alcohol intake also tend to cause obesity.

II. What to do about it:

So:

1.  Have one or one and a half drinks or less most days and very rarely have two or more in a single day.  And if you can, have at least one day a week with no or only a half or one drink. Work to average less than 10 drinks a week and less than 40 a month.

(The ideal is to drink between 3 and 8 drinks a week with 1 & a half the most in any one day.)

2.  Do NOT take statin drugs.  They too harm mitochondria. 

(It’s not at all well known; but eating 6 or more servings a day of vegetables and following the methods in our post two weeks ago, 5-15-2014, on increasing your HDL and lowering your LDL lower death rates from heart attacks and your overall death rate. 

One study found eating 6 or more servings a day of vegetables cut overall death rates by 42% and by about 24 % from heart attacks.  The exercise that boosts your HDL was recently found to cut your overall death rate by 48% -- nearly by half!

Statin drugs do NOT cut your risk of death as the research found that they produce ZERO drop in overall death rates.  Worse, 9 % of the people who take statins develop type 2 diabetes – far more than prevent nonfatal heart attacks!

That means you can get MUCH better protection from heart attacks and heart disease without statins and their proven harm to your mitochondria.)

3.  AND, if you can, take the supplements ubiquinol and PQQ. 

Ubiquinol helps keep your mitochondria healthy and/or boosts their energy output. 

(In one study on mice those fed ubiquinol aged less and even became more youthful.  They moved far better and even LOOKED younger. 

Ubiquinol is the form of  CoQ10 that your body actually uses to power your mitochondria and is a MUCH more effective  supplement.)

PQQ either speeds or catalyzes mitochondria repair or grows new ones as taking it increases the number of healthy mitochondria you have! 

(This is a new supplement studied as doing this at UC, Davis.  PQQ is also a natural compound; and there is some in kiwifruit.)

4.  Do some vigorous exercise most days of every week even if the total amount per day is 4 to 20 minutes a day. 

It looks quite likely that some of the anti-aging and disease prevention effect of such exercise is that the mitochondria of your muscles and heart and possibly the rest of you is because doing so also gives your mitochondria beneficial exercise.

Here’s the link to the study showing that heavy alcohol intake kills mitochondria:

http://mnt.to/l/4mSZ

Muscle weakness is a common symptom of both long-time alcoholics and patients

with mitochondrial disease. Now researchers have found a common link:

mitochondria that are unable to self-repair.

Slow or partly reverse aging by making your telomeres longer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-27-2014                                                                         

I.  As you very well may know if you are a regular reader, regular and vigorous exercise most days of every week, has already been shown to produce several kinds of prevention of many diseases more common in older people.

A study found regular and vigorous exercise delivers powerful heart protection and increases your HDL and lowers LDL and triglycerides.  The great news in that study was that in the people in the exercise class they studied, all these improvements and protections kept getting better every year the people kept doing this!

This double confirms the separate research showing that exercise directly lowers the amount of the dangerous small particle LDL that is a key cause of heart disease.  (When exercise does this, you can see it in the higher HDL and lower triglycerides without going to the expense of getting the detailed exam of your blood particles used in that study.  Research at Harvard found the cheaper and more used lipid panel with HDL and triglycerides and the ratio between them tracks small particle LDL almost exactly. 

You want high HDL and quite low triglycerides.  Exercise helps deliver that!)

Another study at Stanford found such regular exercisers were far less impacted by diseases and had more years of healthy life AND lived significantly longer.  Moreover this was true when comparing them to other professional and economically advantaged peers who did NOT exercise!

Yet another study showed that in the muscles directly exercised the genetic messages and muscle fibers and capacity reverted to a youthful state even when the person was older.

As you may know, one of the biggest causes of aging if not the number one cause is when the telomeres at the end of your DNA strands that protect the insides get short enough the copies begin to have imperfections.  If you keep your telomeres longer, the copies are accurate and fully functional which avoids that.

In addition, people who have shorter telomeres at any age tend to get more heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and other diseases.

Given all this, it looks as if one of the ways to keep your telomeres long and enjoy all these health protections and more years of healthy life, is to exercise!

The news that sparked this post is that last month Dr Al Sears emailed me this:  "....recently a study of 2,401 twins found that physical activity was related to telomere length.

The researchers found that vigorous exercise that didn’t last too long or too short a time helps people have much longer telomeres than people who get no exercise or who exercise for too long.

The people in the study got to choose the kind of exercise they liked to do, like I do .... They did things like running, swimming, or tennis.

Those who exercised vigorously had telomeres that acted 9 years younger."

2.  Are there other things that you can do to keep your telomeres long or make them longer?

Yes.

a)Taking the supplements alpha lipoic acid or r-lipoic acid does this. 

So does taking NAC, n-acetyl-cysteine which causes glutathione release.  (Like vigorous exercise, lipoic acid lower insulin resistance and helps keep your nerves in good repair.  And, glutathione is a powerful antioxidant that enables you to exercise without oxidative damage.)

These are effective and easy to get at this time.

b) Avoiding or escaping from severe stress; effectively solving the problems that would otherwise cause it; having good relationships with people and frequent contacts; and using effective stress release techniques such as Massage, Yoga, and Tai Chi each help prevent short telomeres and even make them longer. 

Each of these is big topic and there are good books on each of them. 

My solution which I recommend to you is to exercise and take the supplements and do my best at the last set of things.

Even though my efforts at the last set of things fall short sometimes, I’ve done far better by making an effort to do each one than I did when I was younger at didn’t know to do that.

Overcome injuries....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-22-2014                                                                       

A.  Prevent them!  It’s a cinch to fix injuries you don’t get!

1.  If you must ride a motorcycle, or a bicycle -- get a good helmet and always wear it even for the shortest trips!

The head injuries you avoid by doing this can save your life or prevent you from having disabling injuries you can’t recover from. 

Always wearing a helmet can enable you to walk away from an accident that would have killed you or ruined all the rest of your life.

Then do your best to ride safely in every way you can. 

If you ride a bicycle be sure you and your bike have reflectors AND both a steady light and a blinking one front & rear because most bad bicycle accidents at night are from people never seeing you.

2.  In a car, ALWAYS wear a seat belt. 

Paradoxically it’s the shortest most routine trips where the seat belt is most likely to make a difference between a severe injury and none at all.

And, because of the risk of that HUGE number of repetitions per year of such trips, that’s where most of your risk actually is!

At higher speeds, seat belts are less protective but they still prevent about half the deaths and reduce the severity of the injuries AND the medical bills about three to one!

3.  Don’t allow your car to move if you aren’t paying attention! 

People who must talk on the phone for business and learn how to dial out carefully enough and are able to drive safely AND talk – particularly if they have a hands free phone but only ONE ear is connected to it.

No one else who cannot drive that way using a cell phone should use a cell phone while driving unless it’s a very serious emergency -- and even then they should be extremely careful.

People who are so spacey while talking to friends on a cell phone that they drive through red lights or come close to running the people they don’t see off the road when they weave out of their lane ARE driving recklessly and in a grossly negligent manner. 

You can avoid injuries to you AND getting yourself into all kinds of trouble if you totally avoid doing this.

Texting is worse – MUCH worse – because you stop looking at the road and the oncoming traffic.  Driving with ice covering your windshield or most of it causes similar dangers.

Never, ever do it!

People who text while driving have a scary rate of very severe injuries and dying.  They also kill totally innocent people including little kids.  DO NOT do this.  Text before OR after your car is moving and never, ever WHILE it is moving.

Learn the skill of talking safely while talking on your cell and driving with attention at the same time if you must communicate.  If you must text, have someone else drive!

4.  If you do have three drinks or more, wait a few hours before driving; stay put; or have someone else drive.  (It’s best for health anyway to virtually never have more than two drinks a day.)

B.  Make injuries from sports and exercise far less likely:

1.  Superslow strength training, careful focus on proper form, and doing all exercises while paying attention and using care each make injuries less likely.

Injuries happen most often when you make an extremely fast movement that starts in a split second.

Superslow strength training prevents injuries by using a lighter weight that you can lift without that kind of start and by gradually adding the force for the first repetition until the weight moves but NOT starting that abruptly.

Injuries also happen when making an extremely fast movement to avoid falling or to catch a weight that got out of control and which use your muscles in ways that they are at bad angles.

Use good form and pay really good attention and use care while exercising to avoid this kind of injury.

2.  Would you like to cut your chances of injury from exercise and even being struck in half and also cut the severity of any injuries you do get?  

Would you also like to recover in half the time?

There IS a tested method to do this that is proven to work:

Football at the varsity level in even in high schools produces a lot of injuries.  Where the high school is in an area where there is a strong stress on having a championship seasons where the team wins most of its games every year this is even more the case.

In the state of Georgia in the Atlanta area, a local doctor who worked in a hospital had discovered that people who were badly sick or were injured recovered MUCH better and faster if they took 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.

He wondered if taking that much vitamin D3 would also help prevent exercise injuries and injuries from blows. 

So he had the local varsity football coach tell him the number of injuries in the athletes on his team during the previous season or two. 

Then he had him have all the young men on his team take that much vitamin D3 each day starting several weeks before the football season and keep doing it all that next season.

The number of injuries dropped to half as many!

If you exercise and take vitamin D3 you can have that same protection! 

Cutting your injuries from exercise in half is very desirable to do.

You also get all the many other health benefits from taking that much vitamin D3. 

 

B.  Do things that speed your recovery if you do get an injury:

1.  Taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 will help! In fact doing that and taking an extra 5,000 iu a day for the first week or even first month if it’s a broken bone or more severe injury HAS been shown to speed healing!   (That’s what the Georgia doctor had seen that caused him to test vitamin D3 as an injury preventive.)

2.  You may or may not be able to take the time and money to get a full body massage each day during the first week or two. 

But if you can, the dramatic increase in circulation to all parts of your body has been proven to speed healing!  This even works in the earliest stages when the injured part of you hasn’t recovered enough yet to stand up to being massaged!  Having the rest of you massaged sends that extra circulation to your injury too!

3.  In many cases you will still be able to do a strength training exercise that you use another part of your body to do. 

a)  If you injured your arm or shoulder or wrist, but you still have access to the leg press machine, by doing the heavier superslow motion strength training with that heavier weight releases enough growth hormone that your injury will be healed faster.

Similarly, doing bench presses or chest presses on the machine will work if you injured a leg or knee or ankle.

b) If you exercise a part of you that you have two of such as a knee or shoulder or wrist, do your regular strength training exercises that you were doing with both -- but on just the un-injured side.

Incredibly, even though you don’t stress or even move your injured part, your bilateral nervous system sends enough of the control and recovery messages to your injured part the same as it does for the side you ARE exercising that you retain MUCH more of your strength on the injure side while you let it heal.  And, it then heals and recovers faster too!

C.  If you keep getting the same injury, replace the exercise that caused the injury -- at least for several months -- or ongoing -- with one that gets the results you want but without injury!

a) My friend I were avid runners as young men. 

But he began to get knee injuries and pain. 

He switched to walking and then to using an elliptical trainer which worked for him.

b) And once I got older than 35, every time I’d done just enough running to get in really good shape and enjoy running because of it, my right Achilles tendon would get an overuse injury and cause problems when I used it and pain the rest of the time. 

After this repeated a few times, I switched to using a NordicTrack exerciser for my cardio.  I still use it.  And I now use three other kinds of interval cardio sessions each week and do the NordicTrack just once to avoid overuse injuries from using the NordicTrack.

I’m even increasing the intensity on two of those interval cardio sessions each week.

c) I was getting great results from having those two interval cardio sessions be doing the jump rope twice a week.

But it kept injuring and then re-injuring my shoulders.  I finally realized that without an in person coach to help me use better form and a getting a better jump rope, this was going to keep happening.

Now I do two other kinds of higher intensity interval cardio that do NOT stress my shoulders in this way.

I’d love to go back to running and jumping rope at some point even once a week each.  With better form and effective coaching to get there that may be possible.

But for now, I’m still fit and improving each month without running or jumping rope!

You can do something similar if you keep getting the same kind of injuries from your exercise program.   

Remove toxins and prevent cancer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-20-2014

A.  To remove harmful metals:

1.  Eat cilantro & fibrous vegetables and beans and lentils and mushrooms and berries -- all in quantity.  Most cruciferous vegetables are high in fiber and prevent cancer several ways besides!

Eating cilantro leaves diced up into salads or salsa or even added to a VitaMixed blend has been found to help remove mercury and other harmful metals.  (Mercury causes nerve damage and helps trigger mental decline including Alzheimer’s disease.) 

2.  Avoid eating or drinking them to begin with or using personal products they are in!

a) Recently it was found that all lipstick tested that was from the major companies in the United States contained lead.

So for sure stop any lipstick made by a company based in the United States.  Don’t use lipstick or use lipstick from a small company specializing in cosmetics with no harmful ingredients or at least use lipstick from a company based in Europe. 

For lipstick, this company looks worth checking out:  www.gabrielcosmeticsinc.com .

They carry lipstick in many colors and shades and for sure DO refuse to use many biochemical ingredients such as Triclosan known to be carcinogenic or health harming.  They did not specify that they have tested their product to be sure it’s also lead free.  But the things they ARE sure to not include are well worth avoiding.  And, to ask about lead or any testing they have had done, email them at info@gabrielcosmeticsinc.com  .

b)  To avoid mercury avoid eating swordfish or king mackerel at all.  (The sardine sized small mackerel are OK as are sardines, herring, and wild caught salmon.) Never eat farmed fish which are massively polluted with all the things that Gabriel Cosmetics avoids in their products and may also contain excess mercury.  And, eat tuna an average of once a month to once a week only and pregnant or nursing women not at all! 

c)  To avoid aluminum read our post from last Thursday, 5-15, on how it does cause Alzheimer’s disease and how to avoid it.

d)  To avoid arsenic, eat no rice or only a small serving three times a month or less.  This is wise as rice is too high glycemic to eat at all if you want to stay healthy.  But a mix of brown rice with quinoa or wild rice can be OK a few times a month.  Now we know that besides being too high a glycemic food, rice also has too much arsenic in it to eat more often than that.

It also helps to be sure your drinking and cooking water are arsenic free.  But at this writing I do not know any method that is money and time efficient enough to do that to share.  But if you find one or a source of water tested to be arsenic free by all means use it and share it – and email me also at davideller7@yahoo.com . 

B.  For cancer prevention or surviving any you get, here are some other things that help.

1.  Come as close as you can to completely avoiding tobacco smoke 100 % of the time. 

Don’t smoke or quit for sure and never go back; avoid second hand smoke; and avoid moving into or renting a place to live that had a heavy smoker live there just before you.

Tobacco smoke is very carcinogenic.  Worst is the first few drags from a smoker who lit the cigarette with a lighter instead of a match or being right next to them.  But tobacco itself is radioactive so even contacting the left over ash is carcinogenic too.  All second hand smoke is harmful AND is also known to trigger heart attacks!

Because tobacco is radioactive, use no tobacco products of any kind.

Lastly, despite not causing cancer as far as I know, the nicotine in tobacco DOES help cause heart disease.  So also avoiding all e-Cigarettes and their users also is important.  And, if the nicotine is sourced from tobacco, it may be radioactive too!

2.  Often in people with strong immune systems, their immune systems routinely kill off cells with pre-cancerous changes and prevent them from becoming full blown cancers. This function is robust in healthy, young people but as people age and their immune systems become less robust this function does also.

So boosting your immune system helps:

Immune boosters that work:

Eating mushrooms even button mushrooms from any produce department; and lemon juice and citrus fruit and citrus rinds or zest but from only those fruits that are organically grown; and taking astragalus supplements, probiotic supplements, and 3,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 each have been found to be effective immune system boosters. 

The vitamin D3 is so important that people who are severely deficient which is most people who don’t live outside during all daylight hours and take no vitamin D3 of at least 1,000 iu a day, have MUCH higher death rates in this has been shown to be true for virulent flu strains and other diseases.

3.  High chronic inflammation has been shown to cause and to speed up cancer.  So avoiding it is protective:

Inflammation reducers:  Taking turmeric and curcumin supplements; eating ginger and taking ginger supplements; eating tart cherries and taking tart cherry supplements; & taking Shea oil supplements; and taking devil's claw supplements all work.  Turmeric/curcumin, ginger, and tart cherry seem to be most effective.  Taking turmeric or its curcumin extract with black pepper has tested to work as an anti-cancer method in fact.

4.  Removers of excess estrogens and chemical estrogen mimics:

Eating cruciferous vegetables in quantity both raw and lightly steamed and taking indole 3 carbinol supplements is the best at this.

5.  Cancer preventers:

All cruciferous vegetables in quantity both raw and lightly steamed;

Turmeric and curcumin supplements;  (The second listing for this one!)

All high carotene vegetables cooked from steamed to lightly braised to boiled or VitaMixed raw or steamed AND then eaten with a health OK food or two from extra virgin olive oil to tree nuts and avocados if not allergic to pitted olives both green and ripe (brown); & lycopene supplements.  Carotene containing vegetables work raw.  But cooking them or VitaMixing them and then eating them with a health OK oil works even better a second way to prevent cancers!

Raw, minced garlic and raw or sautéed or braised onions and green onions and leeks; and deodorized garlic supplements.  Those also have strong anticancer properties.

And take 3,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. (The second listing for this one also.)

This is one of my choppier and less organized posts.  And, I’ve posted on many of these before.  But some is new.  And it all may be new to some readers.

I hope you do many of these things and have them work for you!

My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 5-19-2014

This report is quite positive in several ways.

The immediate improvements were still modest but my leverage and ability to force more progress went up in several ways.

1.  Here’s my immediate progress section first:

a) I lost another half pound on the scale.  AND, I lost back the half inch on my waist.

Moreover I did this while ramping my exercise program back up to speed and just beginning to add and substitute a lot more vegetables in what I eat.

My measurement each month is done on Saturday morning on the date closest to the 18^th of the month.

b) And, just last Saturday night and Sunday, yesterday and the day before, I made some real progress on adding more lower-calorie vegetables to what I eat.

Best of all, since eating more vegetables is something my wife is already good at and has wanted me to do, she is pleased and even has helped the process along. 

I created a dish I call “Sweet Slaw” which is a slightly reduced calorie slaw but with a LOT more flavor and a bit sweet but with no added sugar.  I made enough that she and I will be able to have some today and possibly tomorrow and even Wednesday.  And, we each had some Saturday night and yesterday.

Then yesterday she showed me her braised Kale recipe and we worked together to fix it. We had some with our curried egg scramble with Parmesan cheese for brunch yesterday.  Here too we made enough to have some today and possibly tomorrow and even Wednesday. 

This isn’t perfect and it is NOT nearly as time efficient as using the VitaMix I plan to get for us.  But it IS a very promising and definite start.

You can only make changes you start at all let alone complete them.  And knowing how to make the foods that work to remove your excess fat taste decent or even very good also helps!

The braised Kale is an OK but not great dish.

But my sweet slaw turned out well enough we could take it to potlucks. My wife was actually impressed by it!

So, here’s the recipe:

We got a head of organic green cabbage and a head of organic red cabbage and an organic yellow onion and some organic raisins—all from Whole Foods. We also got a package of organic carrots.  The one lemon I got was not organic this time as I bought it at another store.  (Since we didn’t use the skin, that’s likely OK.) But Whole Foods carries organic lemons for next time.  The component that is most important to get only the organic kind is the raisins!

I made about a half cup of shredded and diced components out of the green cabbage, the red cabbage, some of the carrots, and the onion.  Then I added about half a cup of the organic raisins.  I put all these into a large metal mixing bowl. 

Then I used a very efficient, “smash” style juicer and put all the juice of that one lemon in.  Then I added two Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive oil.  The brand we use is relatively light and mild.

Then I stirred all these ingredients until the slaw was well mixed.

The health and nutrition this set of things delivers is extremely high: cruciferous vegetables, carrot with all kinds of carotenes and a large serving of onions.  The raisins have grape nutrients and micronutrients and minerals.  The extra virgin olive oil is a health OK oil. And the lemon has some other health benefits.

And, between the buffered lemon juice by combining it with the olive oil, the natural sugars in the carrots, and the raisins -- the slaw is modestly but not excessively sweet.

Plus this recipe has no canola oil* nor did I have to make our own real mayonnaise at home to make this slaw.  (Real mayonnaise uses extra virgin olive oil only.  The foods that are labeled as mayo in the stores use canola and or soy oil are health damaging substitutes – NOT mayonnaise.)

*In case you are unfamiliar, canola oil is far too high in omega 6 oils, is made with heavy chemical refining that tends to leave some of that residue, and over 90% if not 95% of all canola oil is made from GMO rapeseeds.

c)   Since last month, I was able to lower my immediate stress because I got some key and ongoing help with one recurring problem each month.

That’s a work in progress to be sure but it did remove some threats that relieved my more severe stress.

d)  AND, last month, just at the point my exercise program was seeing progress and I had just started adding new and proven information on how to get more sustainable fat loss from how I eat, I came down with a bad chest cold.

My estimated calories per week from exercise dropped from 2100 the week before to 800 during the bad week from my chest cold -- on last month’s report.

The much better news this month is that in each of its last two weeks my total calories from exercise were back up to 2300 calories per week each.

I set a new record on my Nordic Track.

And, I’ve managed to recover in my strength training and am again becoming stronger as well.

2.  I also made progress since last month on the how and why to eat a LOT more vegetables for fat loss AND how to make both the transition eating that way more doable for me and for most people.

Background:

Last time, I described the work of Joel Fuhrman, MD on his very high nutrition, low calorie plan – a vegan vegetarian eating style with lots of beans and lentils and NO grains.  (My sweet slaw recipe would work well in his plan for example.)

Also last time, I described the research and resulting eating style found by Weston Price nearly 100 years ago!:

“Weston Price and his work studying earlier and traditional eating styles in people still using them AND with very good health and very little if any obesity, found that virtually all of them DID eat some animal foods and/or seafood.  This ensures they get many nutrients not in plant foods and that are essential to good health.  (They also did NOT eat grains.)

Most people know that vegans need to supplement with vitamin B12 to stay healthy.

Most would do well to supplement with iron and zinc.  Some who rely too much on grains and eat too little of the dark green vegetables and nuts, would do well to supplement with magnesium while slashing the grains and adding lots of dark green vegetables and some nuts.

But Weston Price found that there was another nutrient of almost greater importance than all of those put together that some animal protein and animal fat from naturally fed animals contains.  We now know it is important for strong bones and teeth and heart disease prevention.  Even better,  people who want to be vegan for sustainability or religious reasons can get it now as a supplement.  It’s vitamin K2.

K2, it seems, directs calcium to go into your bones and NOT go to or to even come out of your blood vessels!

Note that most of these peoples did eat Dr Furhman style the other 80% of the time!

In addition, in my own case, I want to be more muscular than I am now.  And instead of weighing 140 pounds to lose my last 24 pounds of excess fat, I’d prefer to also gain 21 pounds of muscle to weigh 161 pounds.

The protein intake needed to support the gains I want is about twice what is in a Dr Furhman eating plan.

But, so far, even with more effective strength training exercise and some increased in strength I likely have only gained a pound at best -- and my at my age only be able to add a couple more.

That means I should jump from about 15% his style to at least 75% if I want to lose my belly fat, my reflux, and my slightly high blood pressure.

Since I want those things enough if I cannot have them by adding muscle, I’d better move my diet from 15% his style to 75%.

I won’t look the way I want.  But I won’t be as weak as I’ll look!  I’ll be faster.  And I’ll get great leverage on stopping my few health problems and living longer.

If the information is accurate and I can make that change that well, I should lose at least 9 pounds and maybe as much more as 18.  The average of those is about 147 less than I weight in high school.  And  losing 9 pounds would about put me at my high school weight.

So that’s next on my to do list.”

The key to making it happen:

As I’ve already posted getting a Vitamix to help me get to the 75% Weston Price/Furhman style that will remove fat best.  And they do and will make it more doable for everyone else.

(My sweet slaw was very good.  But it took 30 to 40 minutes to make.  My wife’s braised Kale took about 15 to 20 minutes to make.  Making a sweet slaw drink with the VitaMix from the same ingredients would take more like 10 minutes.  And, making a kale soup would take about 10 minutes with the VitaMix would take 10 or an unheated version as a juice would take about 5 minutes.)

Also, since last month, I found a second set of ways to eat a style about 98% the same as a Weston Price composite style.

Adopting it however, is at least twice as doable! 

It’s in a new book called, “The Wahls Protocol” by ms Terry Wahls, MD.

She had literally been put into a wheel chair and prevented from working by MS.

It occurred to her that if she evolved and ate a set of foods with ZERO harmful ingredients that might help reverse this set of affairs. 

She discovered that real foods have hundreds of micronutrients and complementary nutrients in addition to the things like vitamin C and beta carotene, etc.

So, Dr Price realized that it might be possible to not only get all the known nutrients from foods only with no supplements needed; but that by working until she had ALL the known nutrients completely supplied she might get enough better nutrition for it to have curative powers on her MS too.

With some help at first and extremely high motivation, she worked at it until she got it done!

She went from being quite ill and physically limited and feeling unwell to being completely mobile and virtually cured from the MS AND feeling unusually healthy and energetic even compared to herself before she became ill!!

WOW!

How does that help me or us eat that way?

IN two ways:

She did NOT have to fish or hunt or get ingredients only available a hundred years ago and half the world away.

She got all almost all her foods at her grocery stores!  She lives in Iowa.  So I seem to remember she had to buy her seaweed online.

(I’ve just scanned her book at the store but will buy and study it this week.)

The second way that her book helps make this way of eating more doable is that, the recipes she developed were mostly foods she also fed to her family also.  So she has found versions and recipes that taste good or OK to people not eating them for the health value!

That’s great!

It’s beginning to look as if a combination of using a VitaMix and recipes like hers and my Sweet Slaw begin to be an eating style even I can do every week and virtually every day!

And, other people who want permanent fat loss or dramatically better health can do them too!