Countdown to Fitness

Weight issues, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, allergies of various types — including food, asthma, some cancers, and many other diseases have a common tie.  Inflammation.  Which is triggered by inflammatory foods in one’s diet.  The Inflammation Syndrome — “the cumulative effect of low-grade inflammation–including the aches and pains that we all experience–that grows into chronic, debilitating disease” — is a must-read book to create long-term good health.

I highly recommend The Inflammation Syndrome: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Allergies, and Asthma, a well-written book, to prevent or reverse these health issues.  It’s imperative to learn what causes inflammation and how to reduce it, and author, Jack Challem, does a fantastic job of describing the issues and laying out a fifteen-step diet to reduce inflammation.  He is a leading health and medical writer with articles published in several journals, and he’s also a contributing editor for two magazines, as well as consumer health publications. (more…)

Do you have high blood pressure, cholesterol, or triglycerides?  Are you diabetic?  Do you want to lose weight? Maybe you have arthritis or some other auto-immune disease.  Perhaps you are just looking to eat healthily.  Maintaining good health and a healthy weight is all about managing your insulin levels.  The master hormone insulin is key to regulating energy and glucose metabolism, which comes from eating carbs.  Insulin, when dominant in your body, tells your body to store food as fat, to make cholesterol, and to do other functions, which, when working properly is fine.  However, our Western diets, high in carbs, create an overabundant amount of insulin in the body, leading to health problems, like an overabundant amount of body fat, cholesterol, triglycerides, among the other health problems mentioned above.  Therefore, managing your carbs is key. (more…)

Plants Fight Back with Toxins

Anti-Nutrients and Toxins in Seeds (Grains, Legumes, Nuts, and Others)

Grains, legumes (beans, peas, lentils, soybeans, peanuts, etc.), nuts, and other seeds have developed anti-nutritional factors and toxins for various reasons.  These substances are used, in part, to prevent animals and insects from eating them. (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…)

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…)