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Lower Your CRP With Fiber

September 16, 2010 admin 2 comments

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Hi,

You can lower your CRP with fiber.

What is CRP? It is called C reactive protein and it is a measurment of the amount of inflammation in your body. It is also used as a predictor of heart disease and diabetes.

So you want a very low number on your CRP tests.

Fiber can help.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition evaluated the body composition, diet, physical activity and CRP levels of 524 participants.

The CRP levels were inversely related to the amount of fiber in the diet. The more fiber, the lower the CRP levels.

This is a simple way to fight inflammation in your body.

Just eat a variety of fiber foods. You should include both soluble and insoluble fibers in your diet.

Fruits and vegetables have fiber in them. Eating your 5-7 servings a day will pretty much give you all the fiber you need.

Oats, grains and beans also have fiber. Just make sure you are eating whole grain cereals and breads and natural oats in order to get the full benefits.

Thanks,

Mike Val

What is the Best Nutrient?

August 31, 2010 admin No comments

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Hi,

Just what is the best nutrient? First let’s define nutrient.

A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism’s metabolism which must be taken in from its environment.¹

If you knew what it was you could eat lots of it and improve your health quite a bit. Right? Not so fast.

It is not quite that easy.

As science has progressed it has been easier to isolate nutrients in the food we eat.

Once a nutrient is isolated, then someone in the diet or pharmaceutical industry trys to make it synthetically.

Then they market it as the next best thing.

Almost every vitamin, mineral, antioxidant, phytonutrient and so on has gone through this process.

So why aren’t we all healthy?

Because it is not that simple. Simply isolating a nutrient does not mean it will perform as well as it did in the food it was isolated from.

And sometimes putting these isolated nutrients in other products makes for some strange combos.

Would you have a glass of orange juice with a meal of fish? Maybe, maybe not.

But most would not think anything about drinking some orange juice with Omega 3′s in it (which you get from fish).

Maybe some things weren’t meant to be.

Sometimes initial studies show a great benefit with an isolated nutrient. This great benefit might have come from an in vitro experiment, or a study on other animals.

It might not have had the greatest controls. Further studies might not show the same benefits. This has happened with Vit C, Vit E, Vit D and the list goes on and on.

Yet, eating lots of fruits and vegetables has been proven time and time again to provide these great benefits.

So, if you can isolate the nutrients and increase them in a pill, why don’t you get the same benefits?

Because Mother Nature knows best. A fruit or vegetable is not made up of just one nutrient. It has many, sometimes hundreds of nutrients within itself.

This combination and synergy is what makes all the difference in the world.

That is why an eating plan with lots of variety of natural foods, including fruits and vegetables will provide a host of benefits that you will never get from an isolated nutrient.

This is true even if you could isolate every nutrient and take them individually.

We still don’t know every nutrient and we don’t know exactly how they work together.

So that simple apple is quite a complex nutrient machine.

So what is the best nutrient? All of them in a natural food.

Make the big majority of your meals with as many nutrients as you can. Then indulging in a chocolate sundae every once in a while isn’t going to wreck you.

Thanks,

Mike Val

1. Whitney, Elanor and Sharon Rolfes. 2005. Understanding Nutrition, 10th edition, p 6. Thomson-Wadsworth.

Fasting for Weight Loss Part 2

August 18, 2010 admin No comments

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Hi,

This is fasting for weight loss part 2. To see part 1 just

check the index for the last post.

It used to be that a fast meant not eating anything for a

period of time. This could be 24 hours or several days.

For fasts lasting more than 24 hours, people would drink

water, fruit juices, or some combination of fruit juices

and a sweetner such as honey.

Some fasts even allowed raw food, like fruits and

vegetables.

Now there are intermittent fasts and fasts that only last a

few hours. So the term has changed somewhat from its

orginal meaning.

There are a lot of claims about fasting. Some claim it is

a life saver. Some say it is easy and that they fast 2-3

days in a row or every other day.

But, if you study the science you will find that – as with

any type of diet – yes, you will lose weight.

Read that again. With any type of diet you will lose

weight.

The problem is that diets are only designed for short term

weight loss.

They will not help you keep the weight off permanently.

And the same is true of fasting. Fasting will help you

lose weight in the short term.

But, like any other diet, it does not work to keep the

weight off permanently.

There are a couple of popular programs on fasting on the

Internet.

They use research that shows that you do not eat more on

the days after fasting. So if you do not make up the extra

calories that you didn’t take on the fasting day you have

to lose weight.

They even quote the doctor that ran the study. (Cornell U.

study)

And this doctor, Dr. Levitsky did indeed find that people

that fasted did not make up the extra calories on the day

after fasting.

However, these popular programs did not read the whole

study or they just ignored the results of the study.

In Levitsky’s own words he said, “Since you weigh less

after fasting or dieting, your metabolism is slower, and so

you regain the weight with normal eating”.

In other words fasting, just like dieting lowers your

metabolism. As you continue fasting or dieting your

metabolism gets so low that any food you eat will go to

preserving your body.

You won’t be able to lose weight any more and you will

start gaining it back.

We will analyze this study a little more in the next post

on fasting for weight loss – and the results may surprise

you.

Thanks,

Mike Val

What is Junk Food?

August 5, 2010 admin No comments

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You would think that with 300+ million people in the US that there would be enough money made by the food industry in just feeding all of us 3 meals a day.

Turns out that is not correct. The food industry thinks we need junk food.

There is not enough money to be made in actual fruits and vegetables then there is to be made in fruit and vegetable juices, or fruit and vegetable flavored drinks, or fruit and vegetable chips, or fruit and vegetable syrups or fruit and vegetable candies, fruit and vegetable flavorings or to make a long story short just about any fruit and vegetable snack.

Eat an orange and the food industry can only be paid for the orange. Squeeze the orange and use all the parts and it can really jack up the profits.

Now add all those profits up and it barely even covers what these food giants make in government subsidized commodity crops.

Oh yes, you and I are paying these food giants millions and millions of dollars to grow corn, wheat and soybeans (for just a few examples) with our tax dollars.

The byproducts are in turn used to make fast foods, snack foods and beverages which are very high profit,very high caloric and very low nutritional value food items.

Isn’t it nice to know our tax dollars are going to work for us to make us fatter and less healthy.

At least it keeps the medical and pharmaceutical industry hard at work developing medicines and supplements to keep us healthy, trim and fit.

What a great Catch-22. Even though it is a negative Catch-22, it works like a charm.

Don’t you think it is time to get off this bandwagon and take charge of your own health and fitness?

Big Breakfast vs. Low Carb Diet?

July 8, 2010 admin No comments

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Hi,

What is better for you, a big breakfast or a low carb diet?

You have probably heard of the expression, “Eat like a king at breakfast, eat like a prince at lunch and eat like a pauper at dinner”.

Supposedly, that will help you lose weight. Is there any truth to that?

Turns out yes there is some truth to that, at least as far as the breakfast is concerned.

Just to let you know, I do have a bias here. I grew up eating breakfast as a kid and I have continued this through the years.

Now, if I don’t get something in me at breakfast time, then I feel hungry all day long. Turns out that those that most people that don’t eat breakfast are setting themselves up to also feel hungry all day long.

Some research done at Virginia Commonwealth U. wanted to find out the difference between weight loss with those that ate a big breakfast vs. those that ate a low carb diet.

Those that were on the big breakfast diet ate 1240 calories per day. 640 of those calories were eaten at breakfast. There were no restrictions on the amount of protein, fats or carbs.

Those on the low carb diet only ate 1085 calories per day. Their diet was mostly protein and fats.

At first it seemed the low carb diet was causing a greater weight loss. this makes sense because of the lesser number of calories eaten per day.

However, as time passed the low carb diet ceased causing a weight loss. This happened around month 4. The big breakfast diet people kept losing weight through the entire 8 month study.

The reasoning was that the big breakfast reduced the urges to eat larger mid day and afternoon meals. It also reduced the urges to eat more snacks throughout the day.

This pretty much correlates with how I felt if I skipped breakfast.

So what is a good breakfast? Try eating oatmeal with some protein powder mixed in (after you cook the oatmeal). Top it with cinnamon and some fruit.

Want more protein? Have 2-3 eggs any way you like them. Add in some vegetables with the eggs. Add some fruit and even a slice of whole wheat toast with butter.

What you don’t want to do is have a big breakfast with carbs only. Bagels, donuts and a frappacino is not a good breafast.

Maybe I should have title this post a nutritious big breakfast or a low carb diet:-).

Thanks,

Mike Val

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Lower Your CRP With Fiber

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What is the Best Nutrient?

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