Diets
Back Clinic Diets. The sum of food consumed by any living organism. The word diet is the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight management. Food provides people with the necessary energy and nutrients to be healthy. By eating various healthy foods, including good quality vegetables, fruits, whole-grain products, and lean meats, the body can replenish itself with the essential proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals to function effectively.
Having a healthy diet is one of the best things to prevent and control various health problems, i.e., types of cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Alex Jimenez offers nutritional examples and describes the importance of balanced nutrition throughout this series of articles. In addition, Dr. Jimenez emphasizes how a proper diet combined with physical activity can help individuals reach and maintain a healthy weight, reduce their risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease, and ultimately promote overall health and wellness.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Athletes, Diets, PUSH-as-Rx
PUSH-as-Rx � fitness facility owner and exercise physiologist Daniel Alvarado gives insight into building muscle.
Inability to grow muscles may be associated with poor�diet and appropriate exercise. Adequate calories and protein are needed to build muscle.
There are a variety of body types than others and many people lose weight easier than others and a number of people put on weight simpler.
For along with doing weight training exercise those who are looking to pack on some muscle, after the correct eating system is crucial.
Here are the best tips on how to build muscle quickly if you’re planning to gain weight and muscle naturally.
Top Foods to Build Muscle Fast
Here are the best foods to add in a muscle development program:
- Whole eggs � A complete egg contains vital nutrients, protein and fats to help build muscle.
- Clean Protein � �Train for 5-8 ounces per meal of high-quality lean protein.
- Broccoli � And other cruciferous vegetables will assist with fat loss and also have essential nutrients for building muscle.
- Wild-caught fish � Omega-3s help reduce inflammation and are essential for muscle mass building.
- Almond butter � Almonds nutrition provide L-arginine to increase vitamin and NO2 E that will help reduce damage from free radicals after having a heavy workout.
- Sweet Potatoes � Yams and sweet potatoes are a superb source of carbohydrates which are gluten-free and alkaline and can help pack on some healthy pounds.
- Bananas � This sweet and smooth fruit is saturated in nutrients that support muscle health and is perfect for adding into smoothies for extra calories.
Foods to Avoid
- White Sugar � Will raise free radical damage from challenging workouts, leading to exhaustion.
- Alcohol�� Empty calories and will remove nutrients that are critical from your own body.
- White and Wheat products � Stay away from bleached white products like wheat products, white pasta and white bread. They include anti-nutrients that can slow muscle growth.
- Hydrogenated oils � Found in vegetable oil, soybean oil, corn oil, and canola oil cause inflammation which slows recovery of muscles.
Top 5 Natural Muscle Mass Building Supplements
Here are the best five nutritional supplements to assist you to naturally build muscle:
1. Whey Protein (1�2 scoops daily)
Helps increase protein intake and is rapidly absorbed by the body so it�s a perfect protein right before or after a workout.� Avoid whey protein powders that have artificial sweeteners. Look for undenatured whey protein preferably from grass-fed cows with natural sweeteners such as stevia.
2. BCAA�s (follow directions)
These amino acids are crucial for muscle formation and can help build muscles.
3. L-Arginine (1000 mg 2x daily)
Helps with blood vessel dilation and improves the flow of blood.
4. L-Glutamine (5�10 grams daily)
This amino acid helps with muscle recovery and preventing catabolism.
5. Creatine Monohydrate (1�3 grams daily)
Helps increase muscle strength increases so you can train harder. Be constantly aware that consuming more than 1�3 grams daily may be hard on kidneys.
Exercise Suggestion
Doing hefty weight training of 6�12 reps, five days weekly for 45�75 minutes is perfect if you are attempting to gain muscle. Also, limitation when you do cardio and traditional cardio, opt for burst training�instead.
Nutrition Tip
Try this recipe for the Superhuman shake � because in case you need to pack on muscle, ensure that you use up plenty of calories in liquid form. Consuming a milkshake a few times a day with uncooked eggs, almond butter, coconut milk, raw milk and protein powder will help you receive the extra calories you want.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
For men experiencing emotional distress like depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide, having high cardiorespiratory fitness may cut the risk of death in half compared to those in poor condition, researchers say.
“The prevalence of mental health issues is growing in the U.S. and globally,” said lead study author Mei Sui of the University of South Carolina in Columbia. “People are facing many stressors in their daily lives linked to depression, anxiety and other mental disorders.
“Medication to treat these mental problems is not only expensive but also comes with significant side effects such as weight gain,” she told Reuters Health. “Identifying modifiable factors that are beneficial to those with emotional distress has important clinical and public health applications.”
Mental health conditions cost the U.S. about $2.5 trillion in 2010 and are projected to cost the country $6 trillion by 2030, the authors write in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
To see how cardiovascular fitness might affect healthcare costs and outcomes for people with mental health disorders, Sui and colleagues analyzed data from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas, which conducted preventive health exams on more than 43,000 men between 1987 and 2002.
The researchers focused on 5,240 participants who reported a history of emotional distress, including 2,229 who reported more than one emotional distress condition. To measure cardiorespiratory fitness, participants ran on a treadmill until they were exhausted.
Among men who experienced emotional distress, 46 percent reported depression, 58 percent had anxiety, 51 percent had a history of mental counseling, and 8 percent reported ever having thoughts of suicide.
By the end of the follow up period, there were 128 deaths from any cause.
The researchers found that men with the lowest cardiovascular fitness tended to have higher weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels and were more likely to smoke and to be sedentary.
In addition, men who reported more than one type of emotional distress were more common in the low-fitness group.
Compared to the lowest-fitness group, men with moderate cardiovascular fitness were 46 percent less likely to die of any cause during the study, and those in the high fitness group were 53 percent less likely to die.
“This significant strong inverse association between high levels of fitness and longevity in men with emotional distress is particularly interesting,” Sui said. “Clearly lifestyle behavior interventions to increase fitness levels could help those with emotional distress.”
Even moderate levels of fitness were associated with a 46 percent lower risk of dying, she noted. This moderate level of fitness means 30 minutes per day of activity such as swimming, jogging or biking, and is the current level recommended under American sports medicine guidelines.
The study mostly included non-Hispanic whites, and Sui would like to see more research about fitness in women and minority groups.
“This was the missing piece of the puzzle. We know now that assessing fitness and treating it should be at the center of mental health care,” said Davy Vancampfort of the University of Leuven Psychiatric Center in Belgium. He wasn’t involved in the current study but recently published an analysis that found people with severe mental illness are at heightened risk for heart disease
“This adds to our call to include assessment of physical activity and treatment to the standard mental health care package,” he told Reuters Health by email. “Mental health care settings and primary care settings should work closely together on this.”
Future research could also look at older populations, follow people for a longer period of time and account for medication such as psychotropic prescriptions in particular, said Brandon Stubbs of King’s College London in the UK.
“One in four of us will at some point experience a common mental illness in our lives,” Stubbs, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Reuters Health by email. “We can no longer view mental health and physical health separately given that they are so inextricably linked.”
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Women in their early 40s with the highest intake of vitamin D and calcium from food sources may have a lower than average risk of starting menopause before age 45, a recent study suggests.
Taking vitamin D or calcium in supplement form had no benefit in the large study of U.S. nurses, the study team writes in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and there may be other substances in dairy foods that also contribute to their apparent protective effect.
“Early menopause can have substantial health impacts for women. It increases their risk of cardiovascular disease and early cognitive decline and osteoporosis,” lead author Alexandra Purdue-Smithe told Reuters Health.
In addition, as women are delaying having kids into their later reproductive years, having early menopause can have a substantial impact on their ability to conceive as they wish, which can have psychological and financial consequences, said Purdue-Smithe, an epidemiologist with the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“Given that (early menopause) affects roughly 10 percent of women in the U.S. and other Western populations, it felt like a worthwhile problem to start investigating and seeing if there are any potentially modifiable risk factors for it,” she said.
Menopause, when a woman stops menstruating and her levels of hormones like estrogen decline, typically happens between the ages of 45 and 55. Menopause before age 45 is considered “early.”
Vitamin D may be involved in some of the hormonal mechanisms of early menopause, but little is known about how dietary vitamin D and calcium affect the risk, Purdue-Smithe and her colleagues write.
They analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, a long-term study of more than 100,000 U.S. registered nurses who were 25 to 42 years old in 1989 when they began answering health questionnaires every two years.
The questionnaires were designed to assess the nurses’ lifestyles, behaviors and overall health. Questions about diet were asked five times over 20 years. Researchers followed the participants until 2011, by which time 2,041 women experienced early menopause.
“The women who consumed the most vitamin D from food sources had a 17 percent lower risk of having early menopause as compared to women who consumed the least,” Purdue-Smithe said. The researchers found this association only with dairy sources of vitamin D, like milk, not with non-dairy sources like oily fish.
Women who consumed the most calcium from food sources were also about 13 percent less likely to experience early menopause compared to women who consumed the least calcium, and once again, only dairy foods seemed to provide a benefit.
“Our next direction is to look at actual individual dairy foods and see if there’s something else going on with dairy itself,” Purdue-Smithe said.
The study team also found that taking high doses of calcium in supplement form was associated with a higher risk of early menopause. But the researchers speculate that these women might have been diagnosed with osteoporosis or other conditions that are also risk factors for early menopause.
“Most of what is known about the relationship between calcium and Vitamin D and women’s issues is related to bone health,” said Sandra Arevalo, a dietitian and director of the Nutrition Services and Community Outreach for Community Pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
Lack of Vitamin D and calcium in a woman’s diet, mainly as age progresses, increases her risk of low bone mineral density, osteoporosis and bone fractures, said Arevalo, who wasn’t involved in the study.
The top 10 food sources of calcium are low-fat yogurt, low-fat cheese, sardines, calcium-fortified soy milk, calcium-fortified orange juice, salmon, calcium fortified ready-to-eat cereal, turnips, kale and bok choi, she noted in an email.
The top 10 sources of Vitamin D are cod liver oil, swordfish, salmon, tuna fish, vitamin D fortified orange juice, low-fat vitamin D-fortified milk, yogurt, fortified margarine, sardines and liver, Arevalo said.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Taking a short break from an active lifestyle may do more harm than most people might think, a new study warns.
Just two weeks of sedentary behavior can cause healthy, young people to start losing muscle and develop fat around their organs. And this can increase their risk for conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes that could eventually lead to a premature death, British researchers report.
“What’s alarming about this study is that it was done in healthy volunteers. They were not patients or overweight or had risks for type 2 diabetes,” said lead researcher Kelly Bowden-Davies, from the Institute of Aging and Chronic Disease at the University of Liverpool.
“In 14 days we see small, but significant, changes in markers that predispose people to risk,” she said.
In the study, people were asked to limit their physical activity for two weeks. This included taking the elevator instead of the stairs, taking a bus instead of walking and staying at home more than usual, Bowden-Davies said.
After two weeks of a sedentary life, participants lost nearly a pound of lean muscle mass and gained body fat. The increase in body fat tended to be in the belly, a major risk factor for developing chronic diseases.
In addition, fitness levels dropped sharply, and participants were not able to run for as long or at the same intensity as they had before, the researchers found.
Mitochondrial function, which is the ability of cells to regulate energy, also dropped, but the change was not statistically significant, the study authors noted.
“Globally, people are becoming more and more inactive due to technology, public transport, escalators and elevators, and machines that do what we used to do day to day,” Bowden-Davies said.
The good news is that after going back to an active lifestyle, all these changes were reversed and returned to normal within two weeks, she said.
“The negative effect of an inactive lifestyle can be reversed when we become active again,” Bowden-Davies said.
Going to the gym a couple of times a week, however, won’t reverse the trends of an otherwise sedentary life, she said. Exercise is good, but you need to be active all day, which includes being on your feet and taking walk breaks, Bowden-Davies said.
The problem is more severe in older people who have a sedentary lifestyle and are probably in worse shape than younger people, she said. But it’s never too late to change your lifestyle and see improvements in your health.
The findings were to be presented Wednesday at the European Congress on Obesity, in Porto, Portugal. Research presented at meetings is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
According to Dr. Minisha Sood, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, “We’ve known all along that being sedentary will increase the risk of gaining fat and losing muscle, and overall poorer health.” Sood was not involved with the new study but is familiar with the findings.
“What’s novel about this study is that it emphasizes how little time it takes of a sedentary life to start to see those changes,” she added.
But Sood wasn’t sure that going back to an active lifestyle would reverse all of the damage a sedentary period causes. Some of these changes may be permanent, she said.
“If your goal is to be in optimal health, you shouldn’t have a sedentary lifestyle,” Sood said. “An active lifestyle is one where physical activity is built into the day, throughout the day.”
In addition, different types of exercise — like resistance training to counter the aging of muscle and cardio training to increase stamina — are important, Sood said.
“The point is not to hit the gym once or twice a week, but to build an active lifestyle where you are taking walks outside and not sitting all day,” she said.
For the study, Bowden-Davies and her colleagues collected data on 28 healthy, physically active people, average age 25, with a normal body weight. The participants walked an average of 10,000 steps per day and all wore an armband that kept track of their physical activity.
At the start of the study, participants were given a medical checkup that included measuring fat and muscle mass, mitochondrial function and physical fitness.
The exam was done two weeks later after the participants had reduced their physical activity by more than 80 percent, to around 1,500 steps per day.
In addition, the participants kept a journal of what and how much they ate to ensure there were no changes in diet throughout the study, Bowden-Davies said.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Weight-loss balloons swallowed rather than surgically inserted in the stomach were shown to be safe and effective in preliminary trials, according to findings unveiled Thursday at a medical conference.
So-called intragastric balloons have been used for decades to help obese patients shed unwanted pounds. Inflated with water, the devices curb hunger and make it easier to diet by inducing a feeling of fullness.
Up to now, however, they could only be implanted in the stomach surgically, a costly procedure requiring general anesthesia or sedation.
In a small trial led by Roberta Ienca, a researcher in experimental medicine at Sapienza University in Rome, 42 obese patients — 29 men and 13 women — were fitted with balloons that were swallowed before being inflated with liquid.
“A catheter is attached to the balloon, which is folded into a capsule,” Ienca explained to AFP.
A doctor fills the balloon via the tiny tube, which is then removed via the mouth with a tug. “This process takes just a few seconds,” she added.
The body-mass index (BMI) of the volunteers varied between 30 and 45. The threshold for obesity is a BMI of 30.
The balloons remained in the stomach for 16 weeks, during which time patients were put on a low-carbohydrate, low-calorie diet.
At the end of that time, an internal release valve automatically opens and drains the balloon, which is then excreted.
On average, volunteers shed more than 33 pounds, which amounted to 31 percent of excess weight.
No serious side effects were reported.
After the trial, patients were transitioned to a Mediterranean diet, heavy on vegetables and olive oil, and light on protein and starch.
The new technique “appears to be a safe and effective weight-loss method,” Ienca commented in a statement.
Because the swallowable balloon “does not require endoscopy, surgery or anaesthesia, this may make it suitable for a larger population of obese patients not responding to diet or lifestyle treatment.”
It could also lead to significant cost savings, she added.
“In itself, gastric balloons are not a long-term solution for weight loss,” Simon Cork, a researcher in investigative medicine at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study, commented after reviewing the results.
“Nevertheless, gastric balloons are still useful for some patients, and the introduction of a device which doesn’t require surgery to implant is a positive step forward.”
Developed by US-based Allurion Technologies, the system is already marketed in Europe in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Greece. It is also available in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The company intends to begin the FDA approval process in the United States soon, Ienca said.
The findings were presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Porto, Portugal, which runs through May 20.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Intermittent Fasting, Natural Health, Weight Loss
Proponents of intermittent fasting contend that this popular way to lose weight is better than conventional dieting. But this type of diet isn’t necessarily best for everyone, a top expert says.
“Fasting is currently one of the newest diet fads and, while there are studies showing benefits, there are also potential downsides,” Dr. Kent Holtorf tells Newsmax Health.
A recent University of Illinois at Chicago study finds intermittent, or alternate-day fasting, was equal in results to calorie counting when it came to weight loss, along with keeping off the excess pounds.
The study, which followed 100 obese people for a year, found that those who engaged in intermittent fasting lost 6 percent of their body weight, while those who ate a calorie-restricted diet lost 5.3 percent, not a statistically significant difference, the researchers say in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Holtorf is the Los Angeles-based medical director of the Holtorf Medical Group and a founder and director of the nonprofit National Academy of Hypothyroidism. He also has appeared as a medical expert on several TV shows, including “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” and “ABC News.”
Here are excerpts from his recent interview with Newsmax Health.
Q: What exactly is intermittent fasting?
A: The idea is to intermittently significantly reduce calories in a strategic way to reduce overall caloric intake instead of eating less per day. One common method is called the 5:2 diet, which involves significant caloric restriction two non-consecutive days per week while eating normally the other five days.
Q: How did this type of diet catch on?
A: Several studies were published showing that severe periodic calorie reduction had been shown to have many benefits including changing gene expression and stimulating cell repair, reducing the risk of Type 2 diabetes, improving cholesterol, lowering the risk of cholesterol levels, reducing heart disease and cancer risk and even extending lifespan.
Q: What do you think of intermittent fasting for weight loss?
A: There is a large amount of research supporting the safety and efficacy of intermittent fasting. If an individual fasts for a designated period of time, weight loss is to be expected as caloric intake has been reduced; however, research finds fasting offers long-term benefits including reduction of inflammation and improvement in mood. For example, a randomized, clinical trial of 71 people who followed intermittent fasting for three months lost an average of 5.7 pounds while the weight of the control group, which didn’t alter their eating habits, lost no weight. Those in the fasting group saw a reduction in blood pressure, body fat, and waist size.
Q: What effect does intermittent fasting have on mood?
A: Going without food for 10-16 hours causes the body to release fatty acids known as ketones. According to Mark Mattson, a senior investigator for the National Institute of Aging, who has done extensive investigation on the health benefits of intermittent fasting, ketones have been shown to protect memory and learning function as well as slow disease processes in the brain. Ketones are also shown to boost the body’s formation of particular stress reducing neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and GABA, which helps you stay calm under stress and have fewer cravings.
Q: What are the drawbacks of using this type of diet for weight loss?
A: While it can be a way to jumpstart weight loss and have health benefits, studies also show that it can permanently reduce metabolism (calories burned per day). The metabolism may not go back to normal when normal eating is resumed unless steps are taken to prevent or reverse the drop in metabolism. Thus, fasting or so-called “yo-yo dieting” can contribute to long-term weight gain, wiping out the short-term health benefits of fasting.
Q: Are there any groups for which this may be a particular problem?
A: This is shown to be more of an issue for women because women’s bodies appear to perceive fasting as more of a threat of starvation and respond by lowering metabolism to survive the perceived famine. This is especially true if a woman has any signs of low thyroid, including low body temperature, depression, cold intolerance, PMS, cold extremities or suffers with fatigue.
Q: So is there any one best diet out there for everyone?
A: Studies show that most diets are successful short-term but most suffer from equal long-term failure. But thyroid evaluation and optimization, if low, can increase the likelihood of successful weight loss whether via fasting or other diet plan.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Eating red meat increases your risk of death from nine diseases, according to a new study.
Researchers tracked the diet and health of more than 536,000 people, ages 50-71, for an average of 16 years, The New York Times reported.
Compared with the one-fifth who ate the least red meat, the one-fifth who ate the most were 26 percent more likely to die from cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, infections, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney disease and liver disease.
People who ate the most white meat were 25 percent less likely to die from various causes than those who ate the least white meat, according to the study in the journal BMJ.
“This is an observational study and we can’t determine whether red meat is responsible for these associations. But we have a 16-year follow-up, and we had the numbers to look at different causes, and we can see that it’s happening” said lead author Arash Etemadi, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, The Times reported.
