Health and Medical Information

Archive for March, 2010

A small amount of information about nutrient and food that you are convinced about is not right fully medically. That information is often just myth and bosh. The followings are 8 misleading myths about food:

1. Sugar can cause diabetes

If you have diabetes, you need to pay attention to your consumption of sugar and carbohydrate to keep your blood sugar level. If you do not have diabetes, the consumption of sugar will not cause diabetes. The truth is that high calorie diet, including drinking and eating the sweets a lot, fatness, and never doing sport are the main factors for you to have diabetes type 2.

2. All fats are bad

All of you need fat because it can help the absorption of vitamin A, D, E, K, nerve transmission, and also help to keep the integrity of cell membrane. However, if you consume it too much, it can increase your weight and increase the risk for you to get heart disease and cancer. The truth is that not all fats are bad. Choose the good fat (unsaturated fat) that includes single and double unsaturated fat in your daily eating pattern. You can find the unsaturated fat in fish and beans.

3. Brown sugar is better than white sugar

Indeed, brown sugar contains a small amount of minerals. However, you can get benefit from mineral if you consume it in great quantities. The truth is that the difference of mineral in your daily consumption is not too significant.

4. Brown egg shell is more nutritious than the white egg shell

The color of egg shell can be colorful, but it is not related to quality, taste, and nutritious contents.

5. Reduce cholesterol by avoiding to eat seafood

In this case, the key is consuming seafood sufficiently because it contains cholesterol. Mostly, cholesterol level in your body is influenced by saturated fat and trans fatty acid. You can find both substances in red meat and canned goods, while trans fatty acid itself is in snack, fried food, or margarine that contains hydrogenated oil.

6. Avoid carbohydrate to lose your weight

The main message of low carbohydrate diet is that carbohydrate can fasten the insulin production, so it can increase your weight. However, limiting its consumption excessively can make your body be lack of carbohydrate for your daily activity. As the result, your body will burn carbohydrate reserve to get energy by releasing water. That is why, you will lose much water when you get low carbohydrate diet.

7. Avoid beans because they contain fat

Indeed, beans have high calorie. But, if you do not consume them too much, they are good for your health. It is known that they contain single and double unsaturated fat.

8. Pregnant mother should eat for two

The need of energy for everyone is different. The additional nutrient that is recommended for pregnant mother is about 100 kilo calories for the first trimester and 300 kilos calories for the second trimester. For example: a pregnant mother can eat fruit, yogurt, and some biscuits before sleeping.

By eating the right foods you can burn body fat at an accelerated rate. I’m going to give you my top ten fat burning foods which are extremely good for you.

1. Apple:
This is my absolute favorite fat burning food since it’s something I can eat every day. You always hear the saying,” an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This is absolutely true as it may help reduce blood cholesterol, improve bowel function, help prevent prostate cancer, help prevent type II diabetes, reduce asthma, and reduce the risk of stroke.

2. Broccoli:
Broccoli is a close second fat burner and has high levels of antioxidants. Eating steamed broccoli reduces the risk of a heart attack by boosting the body’s ability to fight off cell damage. Broccoli is something you can eat three to four times a week since you can bag in a zip lock and eat raw.

3. Brussel Sprouts:
This fat burner is a natural cleans for your body. They contain vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, E and K, as well as omega-3 fatty acids, folate, phosphorous, protein, copper and calcium. They detoxify your body, make your skin healthier, and promote healthy colon and immune function. This is a food you can eat a couple of times a week.

4. Beans:
Beans are a good source of B vitamins, potassium, and fiber, which promotes digestive health, relieves constipation, and may even help prevent colon cancer and reduce blood cholesterol (a leading cause of heart disease). You can pretty much eat this fat burner with just about any meal since it’s quick and easy to make.

5. Cabbage:
I know cabbage is not a sexy food and some may not like how it taste. Cabbage does however have a reputation for fighting cancer and being a good source of Vitamin C, fiber, potassium and other nutrients. This is a fat burner you can fit into your meals at least once a week.

6. Eggplant:
Want a food that can actually make you smarter? Eggplant is high in fiber, potassium, vitamin B1 and magnesium, and it is low in calories. Great food for the heart and is actually called brain food. Try to fit this fat burner into your meals at least one a week.

7. Green Beans:
I probably should have rated this fat burning food higher. Especially since green beans are a great low calorie vegetable. One cup of cooked green beans has only 44 calories and is a good source of calcium, vitamin C, lateen, beta-carotene and potassium. This is a food you can fit into more meals since it’s easy to cook.

8. Celery:
The consumption of celery seems good for people who are already on medication to lower high blood pressure. This fat burning food is something you can eat as snakes daily.

9. Cauliflower
Here is another fat burner that’s not real sexy. Cauliflower can although lower the risk of several cancers that include prostate, bladder, breast, lung, ovarian, and colon cancers. I actually love this food but don’t eat it often enough. This food you put in with your meals at least once a week.

10. Spinach:
Besides being a good vegetable for heart disease, this vegetable is also believed to do a good job in fighting cancer. It is the fiber and other nutrients in the spinach leaf that is believed to protect a person from things like lung cancer and breast cancer. We all remember how slim and buff Popey always was. It’s because he ate his fat burning food. Spinach pretty much goes with anything as well and simple to make.

If you notice these great fat burning foods are full of vitamins, minerals and most are high in fiber. We have all spent time and money on diets that don’t work instead of going the all natural route. The funny thing is most diets preach to be all natural but don’t have all the vitamins, minerals and fiber of our simple fruits and vegetables.

A top priority with people who suffer from frequent bouts of heartburn is to find ways to keep it from happening again. Many of them merely suffer from the effects of eating the wrong foods which means that if they would avoid the foods that trigger heartburn, they could cut way down on the incidence of attacks. However, what foods are the culprits that cause heartburn in the most people? Without knowing what to stay away from, you aren’t going to be able to keep heartburn from happening. That’s why this article is going to outline the foods that are most often to blame for causing heartburn.

It can be hard to believe that some of the guilty foods are actually those you’ve always been taught are good for you. For example, you can probably remember your mother from babyhood admonishing you to drink your orange juice. However, oranges, orange juice, and grapefruit are all acidic, and all can bring on heartburn. After all, heartburn is also known as acid reflux and is caused when excess stomach acid backs up into the esophagus. The worst time to consume any of these citrus fruits is when your stomach is otherwise empty, so if you feel a need to eat them, make sure you do so as part of a full meal.

Another very acidic food to avoid is tomatoes. Once again, they’re filled with acid and can bring on heartburn. In addition, some people who experience heartburn have problems eating onions and garlic and need to eliminate them from their diets as much as possible. To find out if these are risky foods for you, keep a food journal, and mark in it your episodes of heartburn. Over time you should begin to see patterns that will help you narrow down the foods you need to avoid.

Not surprisingly, very hot, spicy foods are on the list of foods that cause heartburn. This doesn’t mean, however, that you need to completely eliminate them from your diet. Try to determine which foods are causing you the most problems, and then come up with a milder version of that same food. For example, you could exchange hot sauce in a recipe for a milder sauce without giving up the basic flavors of the dish.

One no-no that may surprise you is peppermint. Most people believe that peppermint is soothing to the stomach when it’s actually a major cause of heartburn. Although it doesn’t spark an overflow of stomach acid like some foods do, it does relax the sphincter muscle between the stomach and the esophagus which allows the acid to come back up into the esophagus where it causes heartburn. So skipping that after dinner mint may actually relieve your heartburn problem.

We’ve always heard the timeless adage, ‘you are what you eat’, but most people don’t realize that the foods we consume every day have a dramatic effect on the basic mechanism which controls our existence, our genes. The process of evolution has been a difficult journey for our species, and has required a keen ability to change along the way as the environment around us places new challenges on our ability to survive. Now that we have decoded the human genome, scientists have been able to discover the nimble ability of our genes to react to the foods we eat in a newly evolving field known as nutrigenomics, which has either a positive or negative impact on the way we live today.

Food Directly Controls Our Genes

Medical researchers now have the ability to watch specific genes and groups of genes which switch on and off based on external triggers such as pollutants, internally ingested foods and even factors such as stress. The surprising fact about nutrigenomics is the discovery that individual food items have an immediate effect on the regulation of our genes. Many had believed that our genes were static in nature, that is they required many generations to alter, and the genes we were born with were the genes we died with. But our genes really are dynamic. They are continually influenced by many factors and food is among the most powerful controlling mechanism. Using genetic material extracted from blood, scientists are able to see the changes to specific gene groups after eating a single meal. A Standard American Diet meal consisting of a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a shake have an instant and immediate negative effect on the body’s controlling mechanism. Conversely, a meal of raw, dark leafy greens, broccoli, lean protein and natural fats will have an up-regulating healthy impact on our genes. The fact that we are able to watch gene regulation in virtual real-time demonstrates to us the importance of nutrigenomics, as we understand that we can change our health through dietary modification in a very short period of time.

Diet Can Be Used as Medicine

While a small percentage of our genetic predisposition toward certain diseases is inherited, most forward-thinking people understand that lifestyle choices and diet can modify and positively impact our health. Many raw, natural vegetables, nuts, seeds and legumes contain phytonutrients which the body interprets as a trigger mechanism for the switching of our genes. As the body breaks down these foods, the thousands of nature-created vitamins, minerals and specific plant chemicals are released and absorbed by the cells. These compounds have been found to directly influence how the cellular DNA replicates and transcribes newly created proteins which are the building blocks for the cellular structure of the body. This is a critical step in disease proliferation if some part of the process goes awry. As more is uncovered about the power of different foods, and the specific organs which they may influence, the rapidly emerging field of nutrigenomics will be used as a form of medicine, with counselors ‘prescribing’ a very specific regimen to help prevent or even treat a specific condition.

Super Foods as Pharmaceuticals

Super-foods such as broccoli and the cruciferous vegetable family have been studied for their unique ability to affect cellular proliferation in the prostate and breast. The sulfur based compound sulforaphane is released when the vegetable is eaten, and small quantities have been found to have a significant impact on gene expression. Many foods have been found to contain nutrients which affects how our body functions. When we deprive ourselves of these natural food items, we set forward a cascade of potential health issues such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and stroke. As we learn to make natural, healthy dietary choices our body responds almost immediately. Results of these changes can be seen at the cellular level in as little as two weeks, and over the course of several months, people have been able to make life altering changes to their health. Now that the human genome has been mapped, we can determine the function of each gene and which food nutrients are best suited to provide an impact on a specific health concern. A diet of refined carbohydrates, wheat and corn products, sugar, high fructose corn syrup and trans fats (the Standard American Diet - SAD), is the course to a lifetime of disease. Foods eaten the way nature provides, raw vegetables, limited fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes and lean protein are the medicine of the future and can provide a miraculous new road toward your healthy lifestyle.