Wellness

Sources:

NutraIngredients.com May 19, 2009

Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases April 7, 2009

Dr Brian Liebovitz, editor of the Journal of Optimal Health - comments -

“There is not a shred of evidence thar diet alone can supply enough micronutrients to attain any level of health above adequate.  I’ve never seen a single study to support the concept that you can get everything you need for optimal health from a well-balanced diet.  This is due in part, to our asking the wrong questions.  Instead of nutrient deficiencies, as we’ve studied for so long - and as many nutritionists still study - we need to focus on supplemental nutrients. For only though supplemental nutrients can we achieve optimal health.”

“Consumers should demand evidence of success.  If it consists primarily of testimonials or other anecdotal evidence, view the program with suspicion?  - THE FDA Consumer

www.youlesucceed.mtexpro.com

Extract by Gary Taubes

“The problem is is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and this the hormonal regulation of homeostatasis - the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body.  The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and well-being…Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter..expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long term weight loss.. Fattening is caused by an imbalance—a disequilibrium in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism..Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage.

When insulin levels are elevated, we accumulate fat in our fat tissues. When insulin levels fall we release fat from our fat tissues and we use it as fuel. By stimulation insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat..The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.”

www.youlesucceed.mtexpro.com/goland3

From our earliest days, we as a society have learned how to binge on certain foods.  As hunter-gatherers we had to be opportunistic for certain foods were only available for short periods of time.  Our heritage was to eat whatever was currently available, for it would often disappear shortly. Once there was a period of lack, if a windfall materialized our ancestors would gorge themselves on the windfall.  Although we are not advocating binges and our first priority is to eliminate them from our behavioral pattern if we suffer from them, because binges do seem a natural part of our heritage, perhaps the goal is to learn how to deal with them.
Today food binges are typically triggered by stress in our lives and can be controlled by regaining control over our emotions and reactions to life events so calmness pervades.   However, this could require a long process of spiritual and personal growth.  Meanwhile, if you cannot seem to avoid weight-gaining food binges, I suggest that you try for yourself a binge with two limits:
1.   eliminating non-binge foods while in a binge (in other words, stop eating other things as well so you limit yourself on calorie intake),
2.   adding low-calorie “rabbit food” at or near the beginning of each binge session.  High fiber is the best choice in that it will help promote satiation so the binge will be significantly shortened.
Again, your first choice is to eliminate food binges altogether, but if you can’t, criticizing yourself is not helpful, but making a new choice is.  The above methods are worth trying.

Lydia Stasiak

There are more gyms and personal trainers than ever before, yet our society has never been fatter.

Content based on Geoff Jowett (B.Sp.Sc)

Based on Geoff’s personal experience after 10 years in the fitness industry. He suggests that that 90% of the people who join gyms and hire a personal trainer, do so with the number 1 priority of losing weight and toning up. He remembers when he owned a personal training studio he could always preempt what the new client was going to select in the pre-exercise questionnaire.  You guessed it - lose weight/tone up.

Thirty years ago it was different. Back then prior to the to the introduction of the new “healthy eating food pyramid”  people went to the gym with the primary objective of increasing their fitness, strength and overall health…but thanks to the “Healthy Food Pyramid” now 90% go to loose weight.

There is just one problem: the weight loss equation is not about exercise - its about food.  That’s right 90% of your success is about food and day-to-day exercise.  Only 10% is about the planned exercise you do at the gym and personal training sessions.

Geoff quotes statistics from BMRB  suggesting that 67% of people who have gym membership don’t use it at all. (I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time - wonder what the figures are for home gym equipment useage - EY)

http://www.squidoo.com/shapeup

http://youlesucceed.mtexpro.com/goland3

• 7.5 million of Australian adults        (1 in 2) are overweight or obese. An increase of 42% since 1990
• Baby Boomers - 72% men 58% of women are overweight or obese
• 1.8 million children under the age of 18 are overweight or obese - that’s almost 25%

Australian bureau of statistics 2005

“The reason we are stacking on the kilos isn’t because we are a lazy, fast food and television dependent society.  On the contrary, we’ve followed the advice of health authorities, and eaten the exact foods which are making us fat.”

Zoe Bingley-Pullin             leading nutritionist

I could not resist this article from Spa-Life

Have we become slaves to progress? Isn’t it about time we got back to basics and enjoy simplicity?

Is it just me or has technology made our lives a little too complicated? I don’t just mean the personal computers and mobile phones that are so jam-packed full of stuff that you need a degree in nerdism to use them. I mean finding the time for the simple things, like walking, face-to-face communication and finding a healthy balance between food, work, exercise and health.

We have become so disconnected from our health - whether you’re a professional fat person or a professional skinny person - that it’s become acceptable to practice to the extreme the very things that cut our lives short. Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, gluttony of highly processed foods, high stress levels, excessive dieting and exercise, little or no exercise, consumption of pharmaceutical products for the mildest of pain, technology-based products that emit dangerous radio frequencies…. the list goes on.

Just Keep it Simple When was the last time you simply walked, instead of using the car or dialling up for services to come to you?

Just Keep it Fun When was the last time you got together with some friends to have some fun without the obligatory alcoholic beverage? (disguised by the paper-thin veil of ‘drinking to be sociable’)

Just Keep it Healthy When was the last time you looked closely into your everyday food to see what it’s made of? If you knew what was in a lot of what you eat, you wouldn’t put it anywhere near your mouth.
Well consider this: “You are What You eat” is now “You have Become What You’ve eaten”! research suggests that the myriad of diseases from which we suffer - from diabetes to cancer to alzheimers - can be directly attributed to our highly processed diet.

Indigenous people around the globe enjoyed good health, free from the cardiovascular nightmare that is the 20th century, for more than 60,000 years. Their diets were based on food that they hunted and gathered from the land, and they used natural remedies refined over the centuries. These natural remedies, plant extracts and phytonutrients are only now beginning to reveal to scientists the true nature of their effectiveness and how inextricably we, as biological beings, are still linked to the land.

60,000 years ago, processed food did not exist and Western products, such as alcohol and petrochemical-based consumer products, were yet to be conceived. Indigenous people moved around the land to find food, competing with more powerful, aggressive animals. They were very lean, tough, fit and free of ‘lifestyle-related’ disease. Hunger was commonplace because food could be scarce. research shows that our ability to store fat, and slow down our fatIs it just me or has technology made our lives a little too complicated? I don’t just mean the personal computers and mobile phones that are so jam-packed full of stuff that you need a degree in nerdism to use them. I mean finding the time for the simple things, like walking, face-to-face communication and finding a healthy balance between food,
work, exercise and health.

We have become so disconnected from our health - whether you’re a professional fat person or a professional skinny person - that it’s become acceptable to practice to the extreme the very things that cut our lives short. Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, gluttony of highly processed foods, high stress levels, excessive dieting and exercise, little or no exercise, consumption of pharmaceutical products for the mildest of pain, technology-based products that emit dangerous radio frequencies….the list goes on. Just Keep it Simple When was the last time you simply walked, instead of using the
car or dialling up for services to come to you?

Just Keep it Fun When was the last time you got together with some friends to have some fun without the obligatory alcoholic beverage? (disguised by the paper-thin veil of ‘drinking to be sociable’)

Just Keep it Healthy When was the last time you looked closely into your everyday food to see what it’s made of? If you knew what was in a lot of what you eat, you wouldn’t put it anywhere near your mouth.
Well consider this: “You are What You eat” is now “You have Become What You’ve eaten”! research suggests that the myriad of diseases from which we suffer - from diabetes to cancer to alzheimers - can be directly attributed to our highly processed diet.

Indigenous people around the globe enjoyed good health, free from the cardiovascular nightmare that is the 20th century, for more than 60,000 years. Their diets were based on food that they hunted and gathered from the land, and they used natural remedies refined over the centuries. These natural remedies, plant extracts and phytonutrients are only now beginning to reveal to scientists the true nature of their effectiveness and how inextricably we, as biological beings, are still linked to the land.

60,000 years ago, processed food did not exist and Western products, such as alcohol and petrochemical-based consumer products, were yet to be conceived. Indigenous people moved around the land to find food, competing with more powerful, aggressive animals. They were very lean, tough, fit and free of ‘lifestyle-related’ disease. Hunger was commonplace because food could be scarce. research shows that our ability to store fat, and slow down our fat-burning processes during periods of hunger or famine, may well have developed genetically over tens of thousands of years.

Let’s think that through. Imagine, if you will, 60,000 years ago: You’ve just got home to your cave after a hard day’s running around trying not to get eaten by something bigger than you and with far more teeth. Your feet are killing you because shoes – and portable foot spas – have not yet been invented. You’re exhausted and absolutely starving.

What to do? The supermarket won’t be open for another 60,000 years or so. Your best bet is to get back out there, perhaps with a few brutish looking mates, brandishing your sharpest stick and rustle up some local game.

Now herein lies the next problem. Do you risk being torn to shreds or mashed into a pulp by another carnivore? Or do you simply eat grass? Yes, grass! The botanist who cross-pollinated a few unlikely looking plants to end up with the juicy fruit and veg we see today is yet to be born. Hmmm, that gurgling noise from your stomach is really getting to you now! But it’s getting dark and you’re not sure what that thing that comes out at night is…OK! Let’s call it a day and head for that succulent grass we’re all looking forward to eating! are you tired yet? or hungry? and that was just day one!

The New Era of Discrimination.

To quote Economist Paul Zane Pilzer
“The effects of obesity and poor health go far beyond a person’s mere appearance. In our new millennium we have replaced racial and gender discrimination with a new kind of discrimination based on a person’s weight and appearance. Whereas in the past poverty was associated with thinness and obesity with wealth, most people who are overweight today occupy the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Rich fat man has become an oxymoron, and poor and fat have become synonymous.

Incredibly, despite the fact that we are enjoying the greatest economic prosperity ever known to humankind, 61 percent of the U.S. population is overweight, and a staggering 27 percent are clinically obese. Both of these figures increased 10 percent in just five years (from 1994 to 1999), and obesity has almost doubled since the 1970s.

Weight and appearance now define social and economic opportunities just as family name and birth did in the nineteenth century. When a person is fat-not just 15 pounds overweight, but clinically obese-it is hard to find a job, a relationship, or the energy to stay on top of the everyday demands of even a simple life.

Even most people of normal weight are unhealthy, although they often don’t know it. Modern medicine tells them to accept headaches, stomach distress, body pain, fatigue, arthritis, and thousands of other common ailments as inevitable symptoms that afflict an aging population. Yet these ailments, like being overweight and obesity, are the direct result of a terrible diet.”

Addendum there are statistical studies for the USA which show a significant relationship between income and obesity. But interestingly the difference is narrowing, I guess even the more affluent can’t insulate themselves from the environmental challenges. Looks as though in the future only the pro-active and people lucky with their genes will avoid the overweight problem.

In the previous post I introduced the problem of Excess Body Weight, which is a major global issues growing worse by the year. The problem is clearly one related to lifestyle, lack of exercise and increasingly unhealthy and inappropriate diet.

Unfortunately the culprit lifestyle is shall we say addictive and its unlikely that, even with education and government intervention (should there be any inclination to do so) it seems unlikely that major changes can be made. Except at the personal level it seems doubtful that a return to a suitable diet is sustainable on a massive scale - it would require too much of a change in agricultural and manufacturing practices.

Individually many people, particularly in the developed world seek solutions for themselves which has
created the largely ineffective and hugely lucrative diet industry.

Here is a short list of common diets: cabbage diet, grapefruit diet, lazy diet, Atkins diet, 3 day diet, 7 day diet, 30 day diet, chocolate diet, fruit juice diet, low fat diet, South Beach diet, negative calorie diet, six times a day diet, one good meal diet, Hollywood diet, The Zone, Sugar Busters, Carb Addicts, Sugar Addicts, Jenny Craig, Dr. Phil, metabolism diet, protein power, fast food diet, Alien diet, etc.

The issues with such diets are many, including

• Promote an unhealthy, unbalanced diet
• Are largely impractical in the real world and are not sustainable
• Require special meals, or ongoing monitoring
• Can be expensive
• Equally reduce lean muscle and fat (so when the diet is abandoned the body re-bounds by adding fat and over successive diet cycles shows a deteriorating lean muscle to fat ratio)
• Not to mention they can require considerable discipline and will power, and do little to enhance ones quality or enjoyment of life.

I can’t find any reliable statistics on the success of such diets. The one most bandied about suggests a failure rate of 95% for people attempting to diet on their own - a figure used to demonstrate the need for one of the commercial diets. However, this figure is very old and relates to a small sample size.

A representative situation is perhaps this -

A survey from Norwich Union Healthcare suggested that just one month after pledging to be “firmer, fitter and healthier”, half of Britain’s new year resolution makers are - unsurprisingly - still in the same shape.

The good news for the diet industry is that in the process these would-be slimmers have shed £335m on their attempts.

Norwich Union describes the result as a “will power deficit”, blaming lack of motivation, busy lifestyles and expense as reasons for their downfall.

However, research indicates that it is not will power, so much as having the odds stacked against them.

No industry actually benefits from us actually eating healthily for a sustained period of time.

It seems clear that whilst success is possible the rates are not high and is likely to take multiple attempts before success is achieved.

In general diets tend to achieve weight reductions in the 5-10% of body weight range. But such reductions are not often retained when the diet is stopped and over time the lost weight, and more is regained. Additionally after such a failed cycle it is likely that the body is in a less favourable shape that at the start of the diet, viz the lean muscle to fat ratio is worse, because more of the regained weight is fat.

It would seem vital when considering a diet to assess not only its likely effectiveness in the short to medium term but also can the diet and reduction be sustained indefinitely, viz is the diet regime - easy and comfortable to use day after day, in all situations, does it give one an enjoyable life, rather than a constant battle and importantly does it provide a health balance of nutrition, to maintain health rather than just control weight.

Nest my choice of diet…….

I guess that there is little dispute over the deleterious effects of being overweight and even more so being obese.

The World Health Organisation has this to say –

Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A crude population measure of obesity is the body mass index (BMI), a person’s weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of his or her height (in metres). A person with a BMI of 30 or more is generally considered obese. A person with a BMI equal to or more than 25 is considered overweight.

Obesity and overweight pose a major risk for serious diet-related chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer. The health consequences range from increased risk of premature death, to serious chronic conditions that reduce the overall quality of life. Of especial concern is the increasing incidence of child obesity.

I have covered this in more depth in my Squidoo Lens Shape Up

Over the next post or two I plan to cover a possible solution to the issue, at least at the personal level. So more to come…..