Health Resolutions you can achieve, Part 2....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-5-2010

a) Since I value self-improvement and have a ways to go on some things, I read a few articles about New Year’s Resolutions to see if I could learn any tips that might help me on my two main resolutions.

Wow !! I am so glad I did.

I learned something incredibly valuable I had no clue was so.

At least according to the stories I read it’s true.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Caroline Zinko quoted research saying that 40 % of the people who set resolutions actually were still on track to achieve them 6 months later!

And, another article said that 65% of the people made at least some progress towards their goals in their resolutions. That includes the 40 % who basically succeed and another 25% of all the people who set resolutions who get at least some progress out of doing so.

This is about five times better than I thought was the case because of all the bad jokes about people who don’t get anywhere at all with their resolutions.

b) I already knew that you are more likely to achieve goals if you:

Write them down.

Have a deadline or target date by when you plan to achieve them.

Pick only the one, two, or three most important goals to work on.

And, perhaps most important of all, you make a list of things you can for sure do that will make your goal more likely to happen or even happen for sure –
AND, begin doing the items on your list within two or three days of writing them all down.

You actually have no direct control over achieving your goal. But you do have absolutely direct control over whether or not you take the steps to achieve it.

Part two, today’s post, is about improving your health. (Part one in yesterday’s post was about Fat Loss.)

It will include some information on fat loss also. But, it is mostly focused on ideas for improving your health.

I. The most important one is that we now know how to take a reading on various key aspects of your health.

If you take those readings & take action on those that are in the danger zone or not yet in the desirable zone, your health will be better, often dramatically better, you’ll age more slowly, you’ll live longer, and your later years will be less restricted and far more worth living.

Some of these tests do cost money. The often cost less in many medical plans since the are a preventive measure.

But they are critically important and can even save your life.

They can even prevent you from needing to spend even more money later on drugs.

A new friend got his measures tested and his doctor saw that his triglyceride level was 750. (That’s painless; but as dangerous as playing Russian Roulette with 5 of the 6 chambers loaded. It’s like a warning sign saying, “Expect severe heart attack soon!” He had a good doctor who explored what sort of junk he had been eating to cause this and was able to bring it down enough and soon enough by eating far better well enough that his doctor was able to avoid giving him 6 drugs to protect him from it. But he might well have died before I met him if he’d not gotten this test!)

In my own case, I was doing a lot of things right; but my doctor had me take a fasting glucose test when I had my heart health indicators checked. My reading was far too high but still short of having type 2 diabetes at 115. At that time I didn’t know that was too high myself. And I’d never have guessed I had that problem. Since he flagged it so early for me, I was able to take just a few steps to eat less sugar and take some supplements and brought it down to 87. But I might have type 2 diabetes now if I’d not been tested.

Dr Mehmet Oz said this about these tests: “You can’t fight a problem if you don’t know you have it.”

It’s like trying to drive on the freeway at rush hour without being able to see out of the windows. Ouch!

A. Some are of these measurements are easy to do.

1. Measure your waist at the navel.

If you are a man, and you measure less than 36 inches, that’s in the desirable zone. If it’s 40 or more, that’s in the danger zone. (If it is 40 inches or more, see yesterday’s post and read this one also.)

If you are a woman, and you measure less than 31.5 inches, that’s in the desirable zone. If it’s 35 or more, that’s in the danger zone. (If it is 35 inches or more, see yesterday’s post and read this one also.)

2. Get your blood pressure tested.

If it’s over 160 over 100, that’s the danger zone. And, despite their occasionally obnoxious side effects and even harmful side effects, you should probably try drugs to bring it down.
AND, you should also use the nondrug methods to remove the causes which will likely allow you to stay below that level and gradually stop taking the drugs.

(A low dose ARB plus a low dose Calcium channel blocker may be enough and will usually minimize side effects. Beta blockers work but do little to reduce the risks you take the drugs for and make you feel like hell. Diuretics work and are cheap but have both unpleasant side effects and sometimes have harmful ones. Only take those if you also have fluid retention or congestive heart failure or at least take them after you’ve tried the first two and then add a lower dose at first to the first two drugs. That will also minimize the side effects.)

If it’s something like 119 over 79 or a bit less, it’s much more desirable.

If it’s between about 135 over 85 and 155 over 95, it’s too high but short of needing drugs; but you should take action to lower it. And, take strong action if it’s in the higher part of that range.

(Eating dramatically better and cutting out excessive salt and taking certain supplements, &/or getting some form of effective stress release like doing Tai Chi will often do the job if you aren’t fat. Getting regular exercise, even walking, if you haven’t been doing it can help a lot. If you are too fat, fixing that is the best and most important way to lower your blood pressure.)

Many pharmacies and drugstores have a tester. And you can buy testers at Drugstore.com or Walgreens.com or at a local drugstore for about $60 or so. And, today most doctors will also test your blood pressure – or they’ll have their nurse do it.

B. But some of the most important tests are the key blood tests.

Triglycerides and fasting blood sugar are two of the more important ones.

Here’s a list and the danger and desirable levels for each.

1. HDL cholesterol is protective so high numbers are better. Over 60 is desirable. Under 45 is in danger zone. Under 40 is in the scary zone.

2. LDL cholesterol is better if it’s low. Under about 110 is desirable. 129 and over is not. Over 160 is in the danger zone.

3. Triglycerides are now recognized as extremely important. Under 150 is desirable. Under 100 is far better. Over 200 is in the danger zone. Over 300 is in the scary zone. (Small wonder the 750 my friend got scared his doctor on his behalf!)

4. Lp(a) is also a lipid that reveals heart attack risk. Recent studies found it likely is a direct cause of heart disease. So low is far better. 12 or more is beginning to be in the danger zone. Under 10 is safer. And, 6 or less is far better.

5. Fasting blood sugar is better if it’s below a certain level. 99 or less is important to achieve. 89 or less is better. 100 or more is risky. 115 that I had is borderline dangerous. At between 120 & 135, doctors diagnose you as having type 2 diabetes and you will be harmed if it isn’t lowered. And, it’s only successfully protective if you remove the causes by eating far better AND adding vigorous exercise even if you improve the reading with drugs also.

6. HBA1C is an even better blood sugar measure.

Fasting glucose can be too low or too high by 10 or 15 points. Since it’s a snapshot at a particular point in time, it may well be too high if you get it done right after you just ate too many holiday treats -- while it may well be too low if you just visited a friend for a week who eats healthier food than you usually do.

Since HBA1C measures the sugar on your red blood cells that live about 60 to 90 days it’s an average of every day over the last 60 to 90 days. So it’s extremely accurate.

5.6 and under is desirable. 5.7 to 5.9 is a bit too high. 6.0 to 6.9 will get you diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. And, 7.0 or more will begin to harm you primarily by beginning to destroy your capillaries and messing up your blood circulation which then can cause blindness, foot amputations, and every kind of cardiovascular disease.

And, it’s only successfully protective if you remove the causes by eating far better AND adding vigorous exercise even if you improve the reading with drugs also. Other than lower dose Metformin, the drugs to lower blood sugar have enough side effects you’re far better off if you don’t take them unless you get above about 8.0.

So get tested soon. Hopefully you’ll still be, as I was, at a low enough level to avoid going there in the first place.

But make it a priority resolution to get tested soon!


II. Other really important ways to protect and improve your health.

A. Take at least 1,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 in addition to the 400 iu in your multi. A total of 3,000 iu a day to 5,000 iu is better. This we now know prevents many cancers and autoimmune diseases. It protects your heart and helps prevent each kind of mental decline. And, it helps you get far fewer colds and flu sessions due to it boosting the effectiveness of your immune system.

B. Brush your teeth everyday at the gumline in addition doing the biting surfaces. And floss every time you brush your teeth. This helps prevent bad breath, having to get false teeth & gum disease treatments so it also prevents high dental bills. But the really important news is that it also prevents the inflammation that tends to cause some cancers and heart disease.

C. Get some kind of regular exercise each day even if it’s just 5 minutes of calisthenics or a 10 minute walk. If you can, do at least 15 minutes a day of strength training or interval cardio each day. And, try to get in a walk of 20 minutes or more each day also if you can.

Like taking vitamin D3, this has health results that are akin to taking a wonder drug.

It directly slows aging by preventing your telomeres from getting frayed, prevents most disease that aren’t caused by germs or viruses, it grows new brain cells, and even will improve your sex life.

The National Weight Control Registry studies people who lose 30 pounds or more of fat and keep it off. They almost all exercise; & 90% average an hour a day.

Last but far from least, since I just found out today from Jon Herring at Total Breakthroughs that building muscle with strength training or interval cardio has been found to increase your muscle mass which in turn increases your body’s immune system defense against germs and viruses too.

Exercisers get sick less from almost everything. They live longer and age more slowly. And they are much more likely to stay mentally sharp.

They also look better and enjoy sex more.

If you aren’t doing it yet, start doing some exercise this year even if it’s just a little & keep it up.

D. Stay away from tobacco smoke if you possibly can.

(Lot’s of second hand smoke is between about half as bad as smoking yourself and 100 % as bad depending on how much exposure you get.)

And, of course, if you smoke quit.

The “little” risks from smoking include that it causes 30 to 35 % of ALL cancers by itself; and it is the major cause of lung cancer. Heavy smokers only get lung cancer 25% of the time. So many smokers just assume they’ll be in the lucky group that doesn’t get it.

Oops!

Few smokers know it, unfortunately, but the big risk of smoking is that increases your rate of aging and is a direct and sufficient cause of heart disease and lung impairment. Worse, every single cigarette you smoke directly or by being near a smoker adds a measurable amount to your cardiovascular disease. Smokers tend to die young and die of heart attacks and strokes. Many of the rest of them die young of cancer.

And before that the cardiovascular effects often cause PAD, peripheral artery disease, that makes it hurt to walk and can lead to foot amputation. They also cause ED that can ruin your sex life even before they kill you with a heart attack or cancer.

If you smoke, check out your heart disease blood test indicators and your lung function. Even if you are a teenaged smoker, they’ll be far worse than healthy people get. A key test to get besides lung function is homocysteine. To stay healthy, it’s ideal that it be 8.9 or less. In smokers it tends to be well over 12.0 or even over 15.0. Whether your doctor believes it causes heart disease itself or is only an indicator similar to smoke for a fire, it’s clear that the high homocysteine readings of smokers show that their heart and blood vessels are being harmed.

For some people, quitting cold turkey works.

But if you try that and it doesn’t do the job, get your doctor to help you get a nicotine replacement and the drug Zyban, a kind of antidepressant that mostly turns off tobacco cravings by doing what the smoke did do. That will double or triple your odds of success.
And, include beginning a moderate amount of exercise each day if only for a few minutes each day. That will double your chances of success again. (The combination of both will increase your chances of success by six to nine times!)

Use other methods to lose weight or prevent gaining fat. As Jillian Michaels put it, smoking makes you ugly and even dead. That’s not a recommended kind of beauty method!

E. If you are too fat, eat better and exercise better.

(See yesterday’s post.)

The National Weight Control Registry studies people who lose 30 pounds or more of fat and keep it off. They almost all exercise; & 90% average an hour a day.

Here are three other methods, besides regular exercise, that the people they studied who kept fat off also do.

1. 78% eat breakfast every day.

(The ones that eat some kind of protein and avoid sugary foods and refined grains do better when they do.)

2. 62% watch less than 10 hours a week of TV.

(You burn more calories when sleeping than you do watching TV. Most commercial TV ads today are for foods and drinks that will make you fat and sick. So it also helps to see less of them. Lastly, exercising instead of watching TV is often the only way you can make time for exercise. So, watching less TV for that reason both stops an activity that makes you fat and replaces it with an activity that removes it.)

3. 75% weigh themselves once a week.

(Since it’s the fat, not your scale weight directly that counts, it may make more sense to measure your waist each week and your weight once a month. But it is clear that measuring so you can take action early if the measure goes in the wrong direction does help.)

We’ll also have some information for sale later this year that will help people manage the process of successful fat loss even better so keep checking our posts.

Five critically important health habits….

Today's Post, Thursday, 5-28-2009

These 5 critically important health habits work with the three basic strategies.

1. Avoid things that harm your health.

2. Do things that support and protect your health.

3. Do enough of each of the first two things to be effective.

That’s why some recent news on the 5 critically important health habits is scary.

You might be very well advised to do better than most people now are doing by making a special point to be one of the few people who manage to do all 5. Doing all 5 tends to prevent cancer, type 2 diabetes, and all kinds of cardiovascular disease -- & increases your life span by up to 25 years. That means that you not only live 20 to 25 years longer, your healthy years go up even more. The amount of a quality life you get to live goes up sharply

Yesterday, LiveScience.com & other news services reported on an article published in the June 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine based on a survey they reported of Americans from 40 to 79 in age at two different time periods.

LiveScience.com slightly mistitled it as “American Diets Getting Worse.”

The real story is that fewer people in the United States did most of the five key health habits they surveyed and fewer did all five of them. In fact the percent of the people who managed to do all five dropped from 15 % to 9 % between the survey of 1988-1994 & the one done 2001-2006.

The five habits were:

1. Get regular exercise or comparable physical activity each week—at least 12 times a month.

2. Eat a total of 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruit or more on the average.

3. Moderate alcohol consumption (14 drinks a week or less with more than two a day infrequent for men and 7 drinks a week or less with more than one a day infrequent for women.)

4. Maintain a healthy weight (staying at a weight unlikely to mean more than 10 or 20 pounds of excess fat) – normally a BMI of 26.0 or less -- & for sure less than 30.

5. Not smoking.

And, three of the five saw declines.

1. Get regular exercise or comparable physical activity each week, at least 12 times a month –
went from 53 percent to 43 percent.

2. Eat a total of 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruit or more on the average–
went from 42 percent to 26 percent.

3. Moderate alcohol consumption–
went from 40 percent to 51 percent.

4. Maintaining a healthy weight– adults aged 40-74 years with a body mass index less than 30 went from 72 percent to 64 percent. (The article doesn’t say so; but the percentage of people at 26.0 or less also dropped as we know from other reports that show more people are now in the 25.0 to 29.9 category and fewer are below that.)

5. Not smoking–
went from 26.9 percent to 26.1 percent.

Even though these findings may partly reflect the aging of the baby boomers, the trends are so bad, clearly there are other causes.

Incredibly, the study also found that people with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or risk factors for those conditions, were no more likely to do these 5 things than people without such risk factors.
These people literally were not taking action even when they began suffering because they had not done so.

(Part of that is due to the fact that their doctors simply have not been trained to ask them to, show them how, or help them do so or don’t even see that as their job or don’t find it doable given what they know and have time for.)

There are really only three things here.

Don’t smoke or stay where there is second hand smoke.

Follow the lifestyle that keeps you healthy, fit, and free of excessive body fat.

Follow the lifestyle that keeps you healthy, fit, and free of excessive body fat well enough that the scale and tape measure show you are doing it well enough to do the job.

A. Since Sunday, 5-31 is World No Tobacco Day 2009, tomorrow’s post will be on why to avoid tobacco smoke, second hand smoke, and tobacco with some tips on doing so. Of the habits it comes close to being the most important one to keep good health.

B. Here’s a few ways to follow the lifestyle that keeps you healthy, fit, and free of excessive body fat so that the scale and tape measure show you are doing it well enough to do the job.

1. Try to get in some walking each week; do at least two sessions of strength training each week even if you just do 20 minutes each with light weights; do at least 3 interval cardio workouts each week. And do the exercises with some extra effort and intensity once you get used to doing them.

2. Drink no soft drinks of any kind; discontinue ingesting any hydrogenated oils or high fructose corn syrup; stop eating virtually all refined grain foods; eat sugar or foods containing it a few times a week or less rather than several servings every day; follow the guidelines on moderate drinking or drink a bit less.

3. Eat at least 3 servings of green or nonstarchy vegetables each day and more than 5 if you can manage it; eat at least one serving of fruit each day; and drink a glass of real fruit or vegetable juice each day but not more than 2 glasses of fruit juice. And eat organic produce to the best of your ability instead of pesticide and herbicide treated produce.

4. Eat healthy fat and oils only, avocados, raw or dry roasted nuts, extra virgin olive oil, and omega 3 oils from purified supplements or wild caught fish.

5. Eat healthy protein foods only, beef fed only grass, pasture raised only poultry, whey protein supplements, wild caught fish and seafood from unpolluted waters of kinds that do NOT over-accumulate mercury AND only eat nonfat or extremely lean meats and poultry or dairy products to the extent you can.

6. If you find you are too fat or too heavy or both, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol, and ingest less sugar, or be more strict about eating only health OK things if needed, and increase the amount of exercise you get until you lose some of it. And keep track at least once a month to be sure you catch it if you start adding fat weight.

Even more exercise benefits....

Today's post: Friday, 3-6-2009

In case you missed them here is a summary of two recent online news stories on even more exercise benefits.

Yesterday we posted about how exercise can help you lose fat and keep it off by increasing the amount of food you can eat without gaining fat instead.

And, we’ve posted about how exercise helps you think better and grows new brain cells.

The improved circulation to your brain you get with regular exercise that helps you think better now also looks like it prevents vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease – which we posted on relatively recently.

Exercise also helps relieve stress and increases your tolerance for stress before you react to it. (That’s one of the more important ways it helps you to think better.)

We’ve posted on how exercise lowers your small particle LDL that causes heart and cardiovascular disease.

Strength training and interval cardio also work well to turn off insulin resistance or prevent it and help lower high blood sugar and prevent it.

And, we’ve even posted on how exercise has been shown to improve the sex lives of BOTH men and women.

Could there be even more benefits of regular exercise?

There ARE even more benefits to regular exercise compared to being totally sedentary.

Here are the ones that have been in the news in the last few days.:

1. The most recent one has the information that doing regular exercise increased longevity as much as NOT smoking or quitting smoking successfully.

Considering how damaging tobacco smoke is for your health. That is front page news!

This study also found that people who had been sedentary until at 50 who then exercised regularly for 10 years increased their longevity by as much as people who had always exercised.

We did a post on the study that found that people who do lots of vigorous exercise such as running lived far longer and in better health than sedentary people from the same socioeconomic background.

2. LiveScience had an article with four studies with different benefits from exercise.

a) The right exercises help prevent or reverse osteoporosis. Exercises that cause your bones to support weight or support strong muscle contractions or are “High-impact, dynamic, multi-directional” uses all tend to cause your bones to get stronger.

(Running, particularly when fast direction changes are needed as they are in playing basketball or soccer are “High-impact, dynamic, multi-directional” exercises. Some kinds of dancing also have this quality. So does jumping rope or rope skipping.

But progressive strength training, interval cardio, brisk walking, and working out on a mini-trampoline, such as the UrbanRebounder, also strengthen your bones as they support your bodyweight or have some impact or have multidirectional and strong muscle contractions.

The advantage those exercises have over running or playing basketball, etc is that for people over 30, it’s much easier to do them without getting acute or overuse injuries.)

b) Studies have also apparently found that lots of vigorous exercise “significantly reduced onset of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.”

Since the evidence for this one was taken from runners who ran enough to train for a Marathon, it may be the exercise or it might be from the extra sun-induced vitamin D from the runners being outside for such long and regular periods while they were lightly dressed. Or, it might have been because such runners eat more antioxidant fruits and vegetables or take more antioxidant vitamins. Or it might have been because these runners had dramatically better circulation because they had such high HDL and so little small particle LDL.

My personal guess is that it was ALL of the above. So to get similar eye protection, get as much exercise as you can; take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3; and make sure to keep your HDL high and your triglycerides very low – as we’ve often posted about ways to do.

c) Researchers at the University of Washington summarized 20 clinical studies and found that exercise is “one of the few successful remedies for those that suffer from low-back pain.”

"Strong and consistent evidence finds many popular prevention methods to fail while exercise has a significant impact, both in terms of preventing symptoms and reducing back pain-related work loss.”

From personal experience I can say that it also helps a lot to do the right exercises to accomplish this. But doing the right exercises can reverse some back pain within seconds. Others can gradually improve more challenging pain. And many can help prevent back strains and pain.

One California sports medicine practice that specialized in treating back pain with the correct exercises got a 96 % cure rate and virtually no occurrences of making the back pain or other problems worse while surgery, even when it looked to be indicated, had something like an
87 % cure rate and a 23 % rate of worse complications.

My understanding is that they began using exercise on everyone that it was clear did not HAVE to have surgery to recover and no one else after they found this.

d) The article also mentions that regular exercise has been shown to reduce the incidence of cancer. The specific study they quoted found that regular exercise reduced the incidence of colon cancer. But I’ve also seen studies reported that found similar results for breast cancer being lower in women who exercise.

As we’ve posted, you can get many of the benefits of exercise in just a few minutes of vigorous exercises you can do at home and many be just doing a small amount of walking each week.

So, if you don’t exercise yet, please consider it.

Truly the research is consistently finding that regular exercise does good things FOR your health while NOT exercising does bad things TO your health.

Proven long life strategies...

Today's post: Friday, 5-23-2008

A few days ago, I read that there is a new book out in which the author lists the factors he found in common in four parts of the world where a large number of the people live into their 90’s & to be over 100 AND where they tend to stay in good health in their later years.

So, when Early to Rise did a review yesterday including some of the strategies he found, I decided to post it here & add some of my own comments.

(As some of you know, we did a post on Friday, 3-14-2008 called 21 ways to live to be 100. And, as you’ll see many of those overlap this article & suggest similar strategies.)

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“Anti-Aging Strategies From the Longest-Lived People in the World

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

Recently, I interviewed Dan Buettner, whose latest book, The Blue Zones, is a veritable treasure trove of tips for living longer. Buettner is an explorer whose work for National Geographic led to the book. He investigated four parts of the world where there are more healthy centenarians than anywhere else - Sardinia, Italy; Loma Linda, CA; Okinawa, Japan; and Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula. Here's what we can learn from the folks who've done "anti-aging" better than anyone else on the planet.

1. Move. Longevity all-stars engage in regular, low-intensity physical activity, whether it be hiking, shepherding, gardening, walking, yoga, or something else. The data suggest that moderate, even easy, activity done on a daily basis will extend your life.

2. "Hara hachi bu." This Okinawan saying means "Stop eating when your stomach is 80 percent full." Clear enough? Cutting calories by a mere 20 percent will extend your life.

3. Go heavy on the plants. While readers of ETR know that higher-protein diets can be really healthy, that doesn't rule out a diet that's also loaded with vegetables. All of the long-lived peoples investigated by Buettner ate a plant-based diet with almost no processed foods.
4. Drink some alcohol. In Sardinia, it's wine. In Okinawa, it's sake. Whatever you prefer, alcohol in moderation seems to reduce both stress and inflammation. But remember that women who drink need to be getting plenty of folic acid in their diets. (Even moderate drinking raises the risk of breast cancer - but only for women who are folic acid deficient.)

5. See the big picture. Okinawans call it ikigai. Nicoyans call it plan de vida. In both cultures, the phrase translates to "why I wake up in the morning." Develop a strong sense of purpose, connection to others, and community. It's the best anti-aging "medicine" you can find.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden, a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health, is the author of the new book The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com.....]”

X * X* X* X* X* X* X*

1. We’ve done many posts on how regular exercise improves your health & slows aging. It seems it is even more critical to slow the aging of your brain than even our posts on the subject suggested. Our next post will be about that.

2. I haven’t read the book for the complete story on the other 3 cultures on purposely stopping eating a bit before you are completely full. Significant calorie restriction does seem to prolong life but can take some of the fun out it.
Fortunately, getting a lot of exercise, eating a lot of vegetables, & NOT eating processed or junk foods also help prevent you from being too fat. And, it looks like you can get the anti-aging effect of significant calorie restriction by taking Resveratrol.

And, it can be a LOT easier to eat moderately like this when you both are not under heavy stress & you have a good social support system. And, these four groups tended to have that going for them.

3. There are quite a good number of ways to eat that support & protect good health. The one thing they ALL have in common is stressing to eat a lot of vegetables both in amount & in variety. These groups seem to have that in common also.

In his recent book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan summarized his research in a way that summarizes the #2 & the #3 strategies this way: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”

(Most packaged food & snacks and some ice creams, bread & other foods that contain harmful or nonfood additions, do NOT make his list as food. He calls those food-like nonfoods.)

Another related point is that for people who are not allergic, eating nuts regularly boosts longevity by almost as much as NOT smoking – 5 to 10 years or more. And, while many of the Seventh Day Adventists do NOT drink alcohol, they do often eat nuts regularly as they are vegetarians. And they were one of the four groups he studied.

4. Drinking moderately, particularly if it’s combined with meals & socializing does seem to be protective.

The good social support & regular exercise the people he studied had does help avoid the excessive stress that drives drinking enough to overshoot moderate level of alcohol consumption.

5. Having religious faith or a personal guiding philosophy that live is worth living combined with strong family & community ties and social support not only sharply increases longevity, it makes it worth doing.

From the reviews I’ve read, this seems to be the most important take away from Dan Buettner’s book, The Blue Zones.

There are other sources for information the value of eating right and getting regular exercise. And, many people like the idea that moderate drinking has some health value. But this fifth point is significant & not stressed as often by so many different sources.

Hot cocoa STOMPS soft drinks healthwise....

Today's post: Friday, 4-4-2008

1. Up to 86% of Americans are overfat

“An estimated 129.6 million Americans, or 64 percent, are overweight or obese”

And, of the 36 percent who are of normal weight on the scale, a recent study by the Mayo Clinic found that 62 % of them had excess INTERNAL body fat & related bad health biomarkers to go with it. That shows that 22.32 percent of Americans are of normal weight but are still overfat inside.

Adding that 22% to the 64 % who are heavier than normal weight on the scale & it’s clear that up to 86% of Americans are overfat & as little as 14 % of us are actually lean enough for desirable health results.

The two biggest causes for this overfat train wreck are not exercising & ingesting foods that make us fat.

And, for the average American so far, the biggest cause of ingesting foods that make us fat is that most Americans still don’t know better than to drink a lot of soft drinks.

Regular soft drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Ingesting that tends to make you hungry. Then the calories you take in from soft drinks not only don’t make you less hungry, but maybe more hungry. That means that anyone who drinks more than one soft drink a week is fatter than they should be. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Amazingly, research shows that people who drink diet soft drinks are even fatter. We’ve posted on this once. Next week, we plan a post on the research that found that even when people who DO succeed in taking in less calories by drinking diet soft drinks they STILL get fatter. Yechh !!

And, the average American still drinks soft drinks by the six-pack most months.

The problem is that it’s nice to have something to drink when you want a rewarding experience from it -- & it’s sometimes even important to be able to drink something that picks up your energy level a bit.

Soft drinks, particularly the cola ones, DO do this job well. The problem is that they are about as good for your health & appearance as being in a fire where you get badly burned.

What to do?

If you like chocolate, you are in luck.

Ghirardelli & other companies sell unsweetened cocoa. (You have to be careful of the labels though, last time I was in a mainstream grocery store I found that Ghirardelli & other companies also sell hot chocolate mixes with added sugar & trans fats. THOSE aren’t much better than soft drinks.)

We’ve already posted that drinking unsweetened cocoa as hot chocolate with no added milk or sugar makes your blood vessels more pliable & healthy, increases effective blood flow, AND reduces your blood pressure if it’s high. (It does this better, research shows, & is less likely to be fattening, if you add no sugar. And, adding milk seems to turn off or block these effects. If you like chocolate & are OK with the extra caffeine, just use twice as much cocoa instead.)

Now last week I got information that a small cup of hot chocolate as unsweetened cocoa has an 82,000 ORAC score.

ORAC is a measure of a food’s anti-oxidant effects. And, blueberries have become famous because of their health benefits that come in part because they have a high ORAC score & one higher than most other fruits.

Believe it or not, a small cup of hot chocolate as unsweetened cocoa has an ORAC score that is higher than TEN servings of blueberries.

There you have it.

All soft drinks, particularly in any quantity, actively tend to make you fat & sick to consume.

And, drinking hot chocolate as unsweetened cocoa has astounding health benefits.

So, truly, Hot cocoa STOMPS soft drinks healthwise !!

21 ways to live to be 100....

Today's post: Friday, 3-14-2008

(The first 8 were in the Sunday, 3-9-2008 Parade Magazine supplement in my Sunday newspaper. The first 8 things to do are theirs. The commentary on each is mine.)

1. Eat a heart healthy diet. They say that the Mediterranean diet is the best according to research. That contains a wide variety of vegetables, raw & cooked garlic, tomato sauces, extra virgin olive oil, wild caught fish, & some nuts, fresh & whole fruit, whole grains, & wine – mostly moderate intake of red wine.

Note that it does NOT contain ANY soft drinks or packaged snack foods. And the amounts of sugar & refined grains are very low if any. It has virtually no hamburger from grain fed cattle. And, although it has some poultry in some regions, it tends to be quite low in fatty cuts of meat & dairy fat.

2. Read the newspaper. Be actively interested in current events & read about them in print – in newspapers; online; & in books & magazines. Staying connected & mentally active ( & educated ) tends to predict longevity.

3. “Go forth & multiply.” Women who have children outlive those who do not (with the proviso that they survive childbirth.)

And, studies show that men who have children in their twenties are unusually long lived. (That could be because saner & richer men are more likely to do this than men who are poor & mentally unstable. Or it could be that enduring the extra work of little kids is better for you when you are young enough to have extra energy reserves than it is when you are older.)

4. Drink up! People who drink things that tend to promote good health live longer.

Tea, green tea, moderate consumption of coffee, & moderate alcohol intake “(up to 5 ounces a day for women, up to 10 ounces a day for men)” -- of wine. Beer can be a bit more & stronger drinks less. It works out to a bit less than one drink a day for women & two for men—with a few days with one or none each week.

Tea, green tea, & red wine drinkers get less cardiovascular disease, particularly heart disease. And that level of alcohol intake increases your HDL.

Coffee may help prevent Parkinson’s disease & liver cirrhosis.

And, the people who get 100 to 400 mg a day from tea or coffee tend to be more alert & think better than people who don’t.

5. Watch Your Waist. Being fat in the waist area is more health dangerous & more indicative of health risks than fat elsewhere. And, people who have fat tummies are much less sexually desirable than people who don’t – for BOTH men & women,

And, having a fat waist is indicative of eating fattening, unhealthy foods, not exercising, & excessive stress.

6. Get married. “Singles don’t live as long as married people.” It’s pretty simple, failure & loneliness harm your health. And, teams that work even marginally well together can succeed better than individuals. They’ve even found that married couples who don’t get along well are happier than single people. You can improve your own ability in ways that improve your marriage. And, happy married people tend to live a long time.

7. Have Faith. Clergymen & nuns & people who regularly attend religious meetings & have some kind, any kind, of religious belief do tend to live longer than people who don’t have any religion at all.

(Some of this is a positive outlook on life, a giving orientation, & regular social interaction. And, studies show that “open-minded” believers AND nonbelievers are mentally & often physically healthier than more closed minded people. As a result, people who are Unitarian-Universalists, Quakers, Reform Jews, & open-minded members other beliefs -- & who get regular social contact tend to live longest.)

8. Buy the farm. “Studies show living out in the country extends life compared with city dwelling.”

Some of the research this reflects is because people who are 100 & up in recent years were more likely to live on farms as young people than young people are today. But it may also reflect getting more exercise, & in those days being less exposed to pollution, & being less exposed to dangerous communicable disease – or to being outdoors more often than city dwellers & thus getting more sunshine & vitamin D.

Here are the rest of the 21 # 9 to 21.:

9. Eat raw cruciferous vegetables – every day-- such as broccoli, cabbage, horseradish, kale, & watercress. This has been found to prevent cancer, prevent the more dangerous forms of cancer, & prevent damage to your DNA, thereby SLOWING aging. It also has been proven to help you keep off excess body fat—including fat on your waist.

10. Eliminate or come very close to eliminating ANY amount of ingesting by eating or drinking any refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, transfats, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, & both regular or diet soft drinks. And eliminate eating any foods or snack foods that contain them. This junk makes you fat & sick. Why spend money on it or harm yourself with it. You will live longer & there ARE other enjoyable foods, drinks, & good things in life without these horrible side-effects.

11. Develop personal interests. And keep learning new things that relate to them or are of interest to you or are useful. This is related to point #2 & others. People who enjoy life & are active mentally think better, keep their brains younger & their memories working much better than people who don’t. As a result they also live longer.

12 Spend time with your family. And do your best to be good to them, particularly in ways they like. Support them when they need it. People who manage to do this with all or part of their families are happier, have more social contact, & get more personal support than people who don’t. And they live longer usually.

13. Drink hot cocoa made from only from unsweetened cocoa -- & with no sugar or milk. This will help keep your blood vessels flexible, prevent or lower high blood pressure, increase blood flow & give you abundant antioxidants.
Eating dark chocolate with some sugar is almost as good if you only do it once or twice a week. But unsweetened cocoa works better & is far less likely to make you fat.

Adding milk tends to prevent most of these health effects.

14. Get regular exercise each week, including strength training. And be somewhat physically active at times each week also. This has been shown to both give you massive health benefits & help prevent many illnesses nonexercisers tend to reliably get. Doing this slows aging & even has been shown to grow new brain cells. And, if you do it safely, you WILL live longer AND be healthier each year you live.

15. Eat lots of vegetables each day – NOT including potatoes or French fries. Eating a variety of nonstarchy, cooked & raw vegetables from safe sources has multiple health benefits & is a secret to keeping off excess body fat. Eating vegetables such as sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, tomato sauces, broccoli, carrots, & many kinds of greens give you mixed carotenoids that tend to prevent cancer & have many other health benefits.

16. Get key health biomarkers, particularly those testable by blood tests, checked regularly. And, learn & use foods, supplements, & other lifestyle upgrades such as exercise that optimize any that are even somewhat too high or too low. Many of these other 20 methods have worked for thousand of years. This one is relatively new. But it’s extremely powerful. We’ve done many posts on it. Blood glucose, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, & homocysteine levels that are too high will age you rapidly; cause cardiovascular disease, tend to make you senile, & /or kill you. So will having too low a level of HDL. If you know these measures, know what levels you should shoot for, & optimize them, you WILL live longer & be healthier every year you live.

17. Socialize. Phone friends & spend time with your friends & family. Meet new people. Network in your work & areas of interest. Research shows this will make you happier & more long lived. In fact, recent research shows it also is a remarkably effective way to exercise your brain.

18. Find some kind of mental puzzles you like & spend some time on them most weeks.

Some people combine this with socializing by playing cards. Some like crossword puzzles. I happen to like solving the chess problems in the newspaper. Regardless of which one you like, doing it has been shown to extend longevity & help prevent senility and memory loss.

19. Avoid poisons. This one sounds like a no-brainer. And, to some extent it is. But some things many people think are safe expose them to poisons. And, doing this can be a good bit harder to do than it should be. (See yesterday’s post on safe water to drink for example.)

This specifically includes NOT smoking or staying around second hand smoke.

And, it also means eating mostly organic produce & avoiding excess animal fat from grain fed meat animals, poultry, & from farmed fish. (Most of the pesticide & herbicide exposure for most people comes from such fat where it is bioconcentrated – NOT from produce.)

It also means keeping away from pesticides, herbicides, & “household products” like air fresheners.

20. Take key supplements. Virtually everyone should take a good multivitamin/mineral supplement, a good B complex supplement, some extra vitamin C, & 200 iu of natural vitamin E each day. Many people need the supplements that optimize their health biomarkers. And, supplements such as CoQ10, Ubiquinol, Resveratrol, & DHEA slow aging -- &/or partially reverse it in older people.

21. Be prudent, proactive, & optimistic and build a worthwhile life. This set of things has been proven to help you be happier, less depressed, have more friends, think better, have more money, achieve more – AND be healthier & live a longer life.

Your health depends on your blood sugar levels...

Today's post: Monday, 3-3-2008

Every part of your body depends on proper blood flow to operate well. And, some parts can be harmed if your tiniest blood vessels, your capillaries, rupture or swell up too much.

Excessive blood sugar levels in your blood both cause that kind of capillary damage & can shut off blood circulation to key body parts.

Excessive blood sugar levels in your blood also tend to build up unstable plaque on your blood vessel walls. So, in addition to slowing blood flow & often causing high blood pressure, sometimes the plaque breaks loose. That causes heart attacks, strokes, & other life threatening & life taking events. People with high blood sugar levels get two to four times as many of such events than people with Ok levels.

The bad news is that your blood sugar levels may be too high right now as you read this.

The good news is that you can get your blood tested to find out if that’s the case. And, if it hasn’t gone too far, you can reverse the problem.

So, the most important thing is to get your blood glucose levels checked every 6 months or a year.

The other key thing is to follow the practices that keep your blood levels where they should be all the time.

Why be forced to reverse something after it’s started to harm you or be forced to take expensive drugs that only partly solve the problem & have side effects when you can prevent the problem in the first place?

Chances are many of you reading this haven’t gotten your blood sugar levels tested at all or within the past year.

So, make a strong effort to work with your doctor to have your fasting blood glucose & HBA1C levels checked soon -- & then at least once a year.

(Soon you will be able to test the more important of these two, your HBA1C levels, yourself. Bayer bought Metrika that was selling a self test HBA1C device to doctors to send home with their patients. Sometime in 2008 --- this year, they expect to release an Over the Counter Version.)

So you know how to read the results, your fasting glucose ideally should be 89 or a bit less. Between 90 & 100 suggests you probably need to exercise more & eat better. Between 101 & 119 means that it is imperative that you do so. And, over 120 means your doctor may well be advised to also put you on medication & most will do so.

HBA1C is even more important. Since it measures the sugar on your red blood cells which tend to die off & get replaced every two or three months, it is a superb & extremely accurate reading of your average blood sugar over the past two or three months.

This reading should be 5.7 or a bit lower. 5.8 or 5.9 suggests you probably need to exercise more & eat better.

6.0 to 6.2 is borderline type II diabetes which means that it is imperative that you do so. Some doctors will also prescribe a drug & classify you as diabetic at that level. So, if you take prompt action at lower levels, you can avoid this level of reading. And, if you get a reading of 6.0 to 6.2, & take massive action immediately, you can stay off drugs.

At 6.3 to much higher, you are in serious trouble; & your doctor will be well be advised to also put you on medication & almost all of them will do so.

To repeat, high blood sugar levels will do you serious harm from putting you on kidney dialysis to blindness to impotence to amputation of your feet to death by heart attack or stroke.

You can’t be safe if you don’t know what your levels are by getting them tested.

And, you can’t keep the levels in the safe zone unless you do regular exercise each week, ideally including strength training & eating right.

Eating right means eating much less sugar than the average person now does; never drinking soft drinks; never or almost never eating foods containing high fructose corn syrup; eating almost no refined grain foods at all; & eating lots of low starch vegetables; health OK protein; & some health OK fats each day.

This style of eating has a very low glycemic index & glycemic load. It tends to give you a smooth un-spiky flow of blood sugar & keep your body able to regulate itself with small amounts of insulin.

That lifestyle results in optimal to pretty safe levels of blood sugar.

And, if you have been eating the other way & not exercising, switching permanently to this life style will slash most of your excess fat off your body with it never to return.

You can also move your blood sugar a bit lower with 200 mg a day or a bit more of alpha lipoic acid.

You can also eat a teaspoon a day or so of cinnamon as a spice &/or almost every time you do allow yourself sugar. Another way to get cinnamon is to take the CinnamonForce supplement from a company called New Chapter.

But suppose you already eat better than most people & get regular exercise already. Is it still important to get your blood sugar readings regularly?

I can tell you YES, definitely !! from personal experience.

Before I learned this info, I was in that category. Mercifully when I got my cholesterol levels checked that I knew then to do, my doctor included fasting glucose. Mine was 115. Given my lifestyle, that was dangerously high.

I immediately switched back to no sugar added applesauce from the sugared applesauce I was eating; cut the amount of added sugar I was eating by about 60 percent; & began taking 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid. I also continued eating right otherwise & exercising. I was lucky. My readings since have been lower than 89.

I’ve also added more raw broccoli & cauliflower to my weekday lunches since then to help me lose some fat I wanted to get rid of. (These foods also prevent cancer about 10 times better than the cooked kind.)

My point is that no matter what, you do need to get your blood sugar levels tested regularly.

If you don’t, it’s about as safe as driving at normal speed on the freeway without being able to see where you are going.

To put it mildly, this is NOT a good idea.