Countdown to Fitness

Cancer - Lymphoma

I’m dedicating this series of articles to a friend  — who just went through cancer surgery and is undergoing chemotherapy — because much of the mainstream wisdom on diets and their effects on cancer, just like other Western diseases, isn’t true or is so vague as to be useless.  While I couldn’t possibly cover the broad range of information in just a few articles, I will cover a few important areas to look at because I want to help wade through all the confusing and overwhelming information to get to the important topics for people to consider.

My personal philosophy is to understand nutrition as best as possible, so I can make informed choices about my health.  I may know what I should do but am not ready to do it at that time, but at least in the future I have the option to choose the most healthful path as I become ready to accept the change.

High-fat diets, low-fat diets, high-carb diets, low-carb diets, I’ve heard various information about how these diets may contribute or prevent cancer, but how accurate is the information?  (more…)

A friend and I were emailing each other, and she said her fibromyalgia was making her feel horrible. My first thought about the fibromyalgia was that it was a nutrition-based health problem, like so many other health problems that I’ve been reading about.  (This article is dedicated you, my friend.  I hope you find some relief from your very painful condition.) (more…)

Raw Sugar

Thank goodness scientists are finally looking at the dangers of sugar consumption!  It sounds counterintuitive: cut back on added sugar if you want to lower your cholesterol levels, but new research is finally supporting what a few people already knew.

For years, mainstream thinking was to cut back on red meat and saturated fat to lower cholesterol because it seemed reasonable to believe that the fat one eats in the diet is directly related to cholesterol.

It also seems intuitively obvious that two objects of different weights will fall at different speeds, or so Aristotle thought.

What do long-held ideas for high cholesterol have to do with Aristotle’s hypothesis of falling objects?  Lack of rigorous experimentation and incorrect conclusions.

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I haven’t eaten beets since I was a kid because I didn’t like them.  However, I got some from our organic farm, Three Rivers Community Farm, to try.  I knew I’d like the greens because we eat other greens; however, the beets turned out to be very good, too.  See Roasted Beets with Orange-Herb Butter.

I’ll be substituting Swiss Chard and kale for the beet greens tonight since I used up my beet greens.

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When you eat whole grains, you may not be eating what you think you are.  The term “whole grains” is essentially meaningless because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created a definition friendly to food companies that misleads the consumer. (more…)