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 | Diets, Fitness
Local bans on artery-clogging trans fats in restaurant foods led to fewer heart attacks and strokes in several New York counties, a new study suggests.
The study hints at the potential for widespread health benefits from an upcoming nationwide ban, the authors and other experts say. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2015 gave the food industry until next year to eliminate artificial trans fats from American products.
New York City enacted a restaurant ban on the fats in 2007 and several counties in the state did the same. Hospital admissions for heart attacks and strokes in those areas declined 6 percent starting three years after the bans, compared with counties without bans. The results translate to 43 fewer heart attacks and strokes per 100,000 people, said lead author Dr. Eric Brandt, a Yale University cardiology fellow.
His study was published Wednesday in JAMA Cardiology.
Trans fats, also called partially hydrogenated oils, enhance food texture and structure. They were once commonly used to make restaurant fried chicken, French fries, doughnuts and other foods and found in grocery items including cookies, crackers and margarine.
These fats can boost blood levels of unhealthy cholesterol, increasing risks for heart problems. The FDA in 2006 required them to be listed on food labels and the food industry has been switching to healthier oils.
The researchers examined hospital admissions data from 2002 to 2013 in 11 New York counties that adopted bans and in 25 counties that did not. Admissions for heart attacks and strokes declined in all counties, going from more than 800 to less than 700 per 100,000 people, but the drop was steeper in counties that enacted bans.
Alice Lichtenstein, a heart and nutrition specialist at Tufts University’s Boston campus, said the results are encouraging but that other changes could have contributed, such as smoking bans and mandatory calories on menus.
Dr. Mark Creager, former American Heart Association president, said the results echo previous studies “and are consistent with the thinking of most scientists” on potential benefits of these bans.
“Policies such as these when adapted on a nationwide level will be good for our entire population,” said Creager, director of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s heart center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Parkinson’s disease can cause tremors, stiffness and trouble with walking. But a new study suggests that regular exercise can slow the progression of the disease.
Even those with advanced Parkinson’s can benefit from activity, the study authors said.
The research included more than 3,400 patients in North America, the Netherlands and Israel who were followed for more than two years. During that time, Parkinson’s-related changes in mobility were assessed by timing how long it took patients to rise from a chair, walk about 10 feet, turn and return to a sitting position.
The results were published online recently in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease.
“We found that people with Parkinson’s disease who maintained exercise 150 minutes per week had a smaller decline in quality of life and mobility over two years compared to people who did not exercise or exercised less,” said lead investigator Miriam Rafferty, of Northwestern University and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
“The smaller decline was significant for people who started the study as regular exercisers, as well as for people who started to exercise 150 minutes per week after their first study-related visit,” she said in a journal news release.
The study didn’t look at what specific types of exercise might be best for people with Parkinson’s disease. But the findings suggest that at least 150 minutes a week of any type of exercise offers benefits.
“People with Parkinson’s disease should feel empowered to find the type of exercise they enjoy, even those with more advanced symptoms,” Rafferty added.
The study also found that people with more advanced Parkinson’s disease saw the greatest benefit from 30-minute-per-week increases in exercise. This finding could prove important in making exercise more accessible to these people. Currently, their increased disability may limit their independent participation in community and group exercise programs, according to the researchers.
“The most important part of the study is that it suggests that people who are not currently achieving recommended levels of exercise could start to exercise today to lessen the declines in quality of life and mobility that can occur with this progressive disease,” Rafferty said.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
With your Easter feast or Passover repast just around the corner, we’ve asked top nutritionists and dietitians for suggestions on how to make these holiday meals healthier.
“Passover and Easter mark the start of the spring season,” Leah Kaufman, a New York City-based nutritionist tells Newsmax Health. “They traditionally symbolize ‘Rebirth’ and ‘Rejuvenation.’ What better time to think about your diet and health goals than right now, at the beginning of a new season?”
Kaufman notes that both Passover and Easter bring families and friends together for holiday meals that often feature traditional foods that may not be healthy choices.
“Creating healthy meals and snacks even when serving traditional foods can be a creative challenge,” she notes. “Many times these foods may not align with your nutritional goals, but by making simple adjustments, you can continue to eat your favorite holiday foods and not compromise your health.”
For example, Easter is one of the biggest times of the year for ham, market statistics show. But, buyer beware: Many store-bought hams are chock full of sodium and other unhealthy ingredients.
In fact, a single four-ounce portion of the most popular brands contains a whopping 1,700 grams of sodium. That’s 85 percent of the recommended daily intake.
Prepared hams also contain sodium nitrite, a potential carcinogen — as well as sodium phosphate to keep the meat moist, corn syrup, and dextrose, a simple sugar used as a sweetener.
“The takeaway message is that if you don’t want a lot of sodium and preservative as well as extra sugar in your ham, you may want to make your own from scratch or try a healthier main dish such as salmon,” Tara Gidus, an Orlando-based dietician tells Newsmax Health. “That way you’ll be reaping the nutritional benefits of high quality, complete protein with omega-3 fatty acids and important essential vitamins.”
Kaufman suggests another popular Easter favorite may be a better choice: Roast a leg of lamb.
“You’ll still get a lean protein, but without the extra salt and preservatives,” she suggests.
Amy Shapiro, founder of Real Nutrition NYC, tells Newsmax Health that the same caveat applies to a Passover favorite meat: Brisket.
“Lean meats like ham and brisket are great sources of iron, protein and your B vitamins, but be cautious on how they are prepared,” she says. “Brisket can tend to be cooked in heavy sauces which may contain a large amount of salt and sugar.”
On the other hand, eggs are a traditional part of both Passover and Easter — and are a nutritional powerhouse, notes Shapiro.
“Everyone loves a good Easter egg hunt,” she says. “And eggs are great from a nutritional standpoint because they provide a low fat source of protein and contain many vitamins in their whites. For Passover, have an egg to start during the Seder and it will help satisfy your hunger so that you won’t over indulge in heavier fare later in the meal.”
Easter eggs made with dark chocolate provide a sweet treat after the meal that also provides heart-healthy antioxidants.
Matzo bread is a Passover staple for the eight days Jews need to eat “Kosher Passover” food. Although it appears to be a simple cracker, matzo actually contains as many calories and carbs as a normal piece of bread, says Shapiro.
“Try to find a whole wheat brand to increase the nutritional value,” she suggests.
Potatoes are also an important part of traditional Easter meals, says Gidus.
“No Easter brunch is complete without a nice side dish of breakfast potatoes or a hash brown casserole,” she notes. “Potatoes are naturally fat free and surprisingly low in calories if you don’t smother them with high fat sauces.
“White potatoes have more potassium than a banana and contain vitamin C and fiber. Russet potatoes are high on the antioxidant vegetable list and have resistant starch, giving you lasting energy.”
Haroset is a delicious sweet side dish in the Passover meal, typically made with raisins, honey, apples, nuts, cinnamon, and wine.
“This is a great way to eat something sweet without going for candy, cake and ice cream,” notes Shapiro. “But it can have a lot of sugar, so don’t go overboard!”
Gidus recommends adding lots of roasted vegetable side dishes to offer low-calorie options to holiday meals. Asparagus and carrots are excellent, colorful choices.
“Asparagus is an excellent spring vegetable to use in salads or as a side dish,” she says. “Carrots can be also used to make a wonderful carrot cake or carrot muffins to serve as a healthy dessert. You’ll get the benefits of beta carotene, fiber, potassium and iron.”
Kaufman offers this final piece of advice:
“Overall, the holidays are a time to spend with family and friends. Focus on the company you are with rather than the next meal you’ll eat. By engaging in conversation, you’ll decrease the likelihood of over eating.”
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Just a bit of vigorous exercise each day could help some children and teens reduce their risk of developing heart problems and diabetes, researchers say.
The new study looked at nearly 11,600 kids, aged 4 to 18, in the United States, Brazil and Europe.
The investigators found that replacing light exercise with as little as 10 minutes a day of intense activity may provide significant cardiometabolic benefits for young people who have relatively large waists and elevated levels of insulin in their blood. These are factors that put them at risk for developing heart problems and metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.
“The results suggest that substituting modest amounts of vigorous physical activity for longer-duration light exercise may have cardiometabolic benefits above and beyond those conveyed by moderate activity and the avoidance of sedentary behavior,” lead author Justin Moore said.
Moore is an associate professor of family and community medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. He noted that more research is needed because additional factors that contribute to disease risk — such as diet and genetics — need to be taken into account.
“If such studies provide robust results, a relatively brief but intense dose of physical activity — perhaps as little as 10 minutes day, which is certainly feasible for most youth — could turn out to be part of a ‘prescription’ for children to achieve or maintain cardiac and metabolic health,” Moore said in a medical center news release.
The study was published recently in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
The types of cooking oils you eat may be sabotaging your health, making you lazy and setting you up to develop Type 2 diabetes, says a Canadian researcher.
Consuming high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) but not monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), can make you lazy and fat, especially if you’re a woman, says Sanjoy Ghosh, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus
For decades, heart disease was linked to saturated fats, which are found in meats and in full-fat products such as whole milk and butter. That belief caused the deliberate removal of saturated fatty acids from our diets, replacing them with MUFAs, found in avocado, nuts, seeds, and olives, and PUFAs, found in commonly used oils such as corn, sunflower, cottonseed, soybean, and canola. PUFAs are found in almost all convenience foods, including potato chips, cookies, cakes, and crackers.
Ghosh and his collaborator, UBC biologist and data analyst Jason Pither, examined data from 21 European countries. First, they studied pre-teen girls. Second, they examined the blood glucose levels of adult women. They also included other details such as the amount of time they spent watching television.
They concluded that there was a clear connection between the consumption of polyunsaturated fats and an increase in sedentary behavior, especially in the pre-teens, and an increase in diabetes among women.
“This data is extremely significant,” says Ghosh. “Nobody has made this connection and it’s time for an intervention. And if someone is beginning an exercise program without taking a close look at the fats, especially PUFA they are consuming, or changing what they’re eating, then it might be doomed to failure.”
The study was published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.
Recent studies have found that switching saturated fats for polyunsaturated fats didn’t lower the risk of heart disease — in fact, it may have raised it. A 2016 study examined the records of more than 9,400 people and found that while swapping saturated fats for vegetable fats like corn oil reduced cholesterol levels by 14 percent, it didn’t improve survival. In fact, those whose cholesterol was reduced the most had the highest risk of dying when compared to a control group that ate a diet high in saturated fats.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Being physically inactive raises the risk of losing the ability to perform activities of daily living – both before and after a stroke – according to results from a long-term U.S. study.
“Physical activity reduced the risk of dependence in both basic activities of daily living (for example, dressing and getting across a room) as well as instrumental activities of daily living (for example, managing money or grocery shopping), which are considered to be more cognitively demanding,” said lead author Dr. Pamela M. Rist from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
“These instrumental activities of daily living can be important determinants of quality of life among stroke patients, so it is important to find factors which reduce the risk of dependence in these activities as well as in basic activities of daily living,” she told Reuters Health by email.
Rist’s team studied 18,117 individuals participating in the national Health and Retirement Study in an effort to find out whether physical activity and body mass index (BMI), a common measure of overweight and obesity, could predict disability.
During 12 years of follow-up, the amount of physical activity people did was not associated with the risk of stroke, but it was associated with the likelihood of being independent three years after a stroke.
Those who were physically inactive at baseline were significantly less likely to be independent at that point, compared with those who were physically active at baseline.
Somewhat surprisingly, this difference between inactive and active stroke survivors was also evident three years before their strokes, researchers report in the journal Neurology.
Obesity, in contrast, was associated with an increased risk of stroke, but it was not associated with loss of independence during the follow-up period, regardless of whether an individual suffered a stroke.
“Individuals can reduce their risk of dependence before and after stroke events by being physically active, which in our study was defined as participating in vigorous physical activity at least three times per week,” Rist said.
The researchers recommend further study to clarify whether increases in physical activity might also improve outcomes after a stroke.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Nutrition, Wellness
When most people think of injury or inflammation, they think of a sprained ankle or injured low back due to acute trauma.
However, inflammation is a far more serious health issue.
In fact, it can be said that inflammation is the root of all disease.
One may not even notice the immediate affects of chronic inflammation, but it can be there, particularly if you don�t eat properly or exercise constantly.
That�s because inflammation is actually the body�s natural response to stress�be it physical, dietary,� environmental and/or even emotional. Once your body starts to become inflamed, it places you at risk for everything from weight gain, allergies, migraines, and susceptibilities to more serious illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, gout, diabetes, Alzheimer�s disease and even cancer.
Even the healthiest among us will have some type of inflammation�if you live in today�s fast and toxin-filled world, you have inflammation. The real question is what do you plan to do about it?
Where Does Inflammation Start?
The process of inflammation actually begins in your gut!
People tend to overlook their digestive system as a source of disease, but it makes sense when you consider that our guts are home to about 70 percent of our immune system and where 80 percent or more of our IgA cells (immune cells) live.
Where inflammation comes in is when the permeability of this organ starts to vary depending on different chemicals and conditions.
This, in turn, allows things like toxins, viruses, and bacteria, even undigested food, to enter your bloodstream through the larger holes in this lining. This condition, known as a leaky gut syndrome (LGS), is key to inflammation and where things can start going downhill�fast.
Constant damage to your intestinal lining from the leaky gut syndrome eventually will destroy the essential microvilli � tiny projections that exist in, on, and around the cells in your intestine and help with absorption and secretion.
When damaged the microvilli are unable to process and utilize the necessary nutrients and enzymes for digestion, which means your digestion eventually becomes disabled. When this happens, your body essentially sends out an alarm and starts an attack on the foreign bodies, such as the undigested food particles or viruses, yeast, etc.
And as part of this response, it becomes inflamed, causing allergic reactions and eventually other symptoms (diseases).
Common Inflammation Triggers
More and more, research is linking food to disease. We know that certain foods are clearly not healthy, while others have shown to promote healing.
But there are also some foods�mainly the majority of those that make up the standard American diet�that can be considered �inflammatory foods.�
Today, there are food additives in basically anything that isn�t organic. And now, we are starting to realize that even some foods that would otherwise seem �natural� can also be triggers.
These inflammatory triggers include such things as refined sugar, chemical additives, GMOs, artificial dyes and anything processed. All of these essentially trigger inflammation in your gut and can lead to devastating health issues.
The Biggest Cause Of Inflammation
Food and chemicals are not the only triggers.
Stress is also one of the biggest causes of inflammation.
Probably one of the reasons we don�t always link stress to disease is that it takes time for it to wreak havoc on our bodies. But anyone who has been under long-term stress will tell you that is can be deadly.
Eventually, your body starts to give out and break down. But now that you know this, you can limit the damage by recognizing the 14 most common signs of inflammation before they get out of hand.
14 Warning Signs Of Inflammation
1. Chronic fatigue
2. Acne
3. Food cravings
4. Binge eating
5. Unexplainable weight gain (not associated with eating more)
6. Bloating
7. Water retention
8. Diarrhea or constipation
9. High blood pressure
10. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
11. Joint pain
12. Stiffness
How To Treat Inflammation Naturally
Diet is the most important stuff to look at when addressing inflammation. Before the invasion of drugs to treat everything imaginable, the food was considered medicine.
Hippocrates said, �Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.� These are words to live by, literally.
The only caution is that the food must be fresh, unprocessed and as natural as possible. The type of food you eat also determines the types of microbes that will grow and live in your gut.
Good microbes are necessary for proper digestion and absorption of the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in your food. Processed foods are the main cause of inflammation, so you will need to start by eliminating all of these from your diet.
Refined sugar and wheat are also big contributors. And if you have food sensitivities, which is highly likely if you have inflammation, foods such as gluten, and cow�s milk can trigger further inflammation.
A diet based on fresh, mostly raw vegetables, salads, good sources of protein, such as eggs, seafood, organic or grass-fed meat and poultry, as well as healthy fats that include omega-3 fats, fresh fruit and plenty of nuts and seeds (again raw is better) and plenty of probiotics, is what is going to heal inflammation for good. As a good rule of thumb, try to avoid any food that comes pre-packaged.
There are also many foods that have been shown to be especially good for fighting inflammation. Choosing as many of these as possible will help to speed the healing process.
Proven Anti-Inflammatory Foods:
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Whole and cracked grains
- Beans and legumes
- Healthy fats (organic coconut oil, cold pressed olive oil
- Flaxseed and hempseed
- Fish and seafood
- Mushrooms
- Grass-fed lean meats, organic cheese and yogurt
- Spices (turmeric, ginger, curry, garlic, chili peppers, cinnamon, etc.)
- Probiotics and fermented foods (kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, yogurt)
Inflammatory Foods To Avoid Completely:
- Processed foods
- Certain dairy
- Processed meats
- Refined sugars
- Trans fats
- Gluten
- Soda
- Lard
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
Other Tips
Drink plenty of filtered water as water helps flush toxins out of your body and keeps you hydrated. Try to reduce, if not eliminate all stressors in your life as much as possible. Make sure to get regular exercise and try things like meditation, aromatherapy, massage, and soothing music to relax your mind and body. And above all else, get enough sleep!
Bonus Recipe
The #1 Anti-inflammatory� smoothie
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup frozen pineapple or mango
- 1 banana
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 1 teaspoon chia seeds
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- � teaspoon turmeric powder
- 1 teaspoon maca root powder (optional)
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