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…)

You may want to reconsider eating that piece of bread or sandwich. While most everyone knows that white flour is not healthy to begin with, the bleaching agent, itself, creates a dangerous by-product that actually causes diabetes.

It’s well known that refined flour is not healthy because it is bereft of most nutrients.  In the refining process, the bran — outer layer of grain, which contains dietary fiber, essential fatty acids, starch, protein, vitamins, and dietary minerals — is removed. Also, the cereal germ, or reproductive part of the plant that contains many nutrients, is also removed to prevent the flour from going rancid. What’s left, the endosperm, is a simple carbohydrate that quickly converts to sugar in the body, which spikes insulin.  It’s almost as bad as eating table sugar straight from the bowl. (more…)

Shrimp Is High in Cholesterol, But Is It Healthy?

This article is dedicated to my friend whom I was talking to today about her doctor’s visit.  Her new doctor wants her to go on a 1500 to 1600 calorie, low-carb diet.  Wow, I’m impressed that her doctor realizes that carbs cause major health problems!

I was discussing cholesterol with her.  So is it bad?  If you listen to conventional wisdom, you would think so; however, the truth is that cholesterol is not the problem.  Insulin (which is released into the blood during carbohydrate metabolism) is the problem.  It is responsible for synthesizing cholesterol. (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…)

Orange Juice - Could It Kill You?

“That orange juice will kill you,” said a French waitress to my husband’s boss years ago, when the boss was in Paris on business, eating his normal breakfast at the hotel. Later, the boss related the incident, and we all thought that was really funny.  How could orange juice kill people?  (The French have a lower incidence of heart disease.  Is there a connection?)

Well, the joke was really on us.  I related this incident about a week ago to a visitor as we talked about nutrition and she mentioned drinking orange juice and eating oranges, thinking she was eating healthily.  Yes, I used to think this way too, until I realized how much sugar and carbohydrates were in one orange 2- 7/8″ in diameter.  According to NutritionData.com, there are 18 grams of carbs, 3 grams of fiber, and 12 grams of sugar in that orange. If you ate it, you just consumed about 2 1/2 teaspoons of sugar.  OUCH!  The American Heart Association is suggesting no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar per day for women and 9 for men, although I now think these values are way too high, as these numbers will probably promote insulin resistance. (more…)