Thursday, July 25, 2013










Obesity and Inflammation: Doorways to Disease

by Darlyn Britt

The Centers for Disease Control defines obesity as having a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher. (BMI is a ratio of your weight to your height. For most people, this number correlates to their amount of body fat.) Obesity is associated with a litany of health issues, including high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, stroke, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes and depression.

Consider these facts:
• More than one-third of U.S. adults (over 72 million people) and 17% of U.S. children are obese.

• During 1980–2008, obesity rates doubled for adults and tripled for children. This affects all population groups—regardless of age, sex, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education level or geographic region.

• About 80–90% of the people diagnosed with type II diabetes are also clinically obese. Being overweight makes it difficult for your body to maintain proper blood glucose levels, which can cause your body to become resistant to insulin. Diabetics need to take even more insulin to get sugar (energy) into their cells. And for obese people who don’t have diabetes, the prolonged effects of insulin resistance can eventually cause you to develop the disease.

• Obesity is associated with increased risks of various cancers: esophagus, breast (postmenopausal), endometrium, colon and rectum, kidney, pancreas, thyroid and gallbladder.

Inflammation is the body’s normal response to a stimulus. For example, when you smash your finger in a closing door, it swells and becomes inflamed. Swelling is the body’s mechanism for healing a wound or fighting infection. Temporary inflammation is natural and normal.

But when a stimulus is repeated over and over, such as damage to a joint, inflammation often leads to chronic pain and possible infection. Over time, the inflammation cycle breaks down organ function, tends to weaken the heart and can trigger deadly diseases, including type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease, stroke, lupus and congestive heart failure. It can also usher in other unwanted conditions like arthritis, fibrosis, anemia, asthma and fibromyalgia.

Inflammation is a key to the aging process, and like a key, it can “unlock” or turn on disease genes we may carry. So if you have a family history of heart disease, and you experience chronic inflammation, your heart disease switch may get turned on.

Inflammation is compounded by diet. Unfortunately, the average American diet does not help at all.
• High blood sugar, brought on by repeated blood sugar spikes from a high-sugar or high-carb diet, leads to inflammation.

• Acidity also incites inflammation. Acidity occurs when pH is too low. Eating lots of meat, sugar, simple carbs and most junk food makes your body more acidic. Consequently raw foods like colorful vegetables, fresh fruits and some nuts help to neutralize acidity.

• Oxidation is a condition where pollution, radiation, environmental chemicals and other stressors attack cells and can damage tissues. The body tries to combat this with inflammation.

Controlling chronic inflammation can help reduce the risk of disease and perhaps help slow the aging process.

Sources
www.cdc.gov
http://www.diabeticcareservices.com/diabetes-education/diabetes-and-obesity
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/obesity

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Friday, July 19, 2013

Blood Pressure: Three-in-One Natural Remedy









Posted: 19 Jul 2013 04:46 PM PDT
High blood pressure affects approximately 25 percent of the adult population in developed countries such as the United States and Canada. In up to 75 percent of these cases, hypertension manifests in a mild form that is highly sensitive to nutrition, supplementation and lifestyle practices. Hawthorn has been prescribed by European doctors for years to treat various heart conditions including hypertension, ischemic heart disease (angina) and congestive heart failure.

Hawthorn's cardiovascular benefits are primarily due to the unique complement of flavonoid compounds found in its leaves, berries and blossoms, particularly anthocyanidins and proanthocyanidins. These active constituents help reduce high blood pressure, and clinical studies have proven that supplementation with hawthorn extract can be a safe, natural method to treat mild to moderate hypertension. Hawthorn has been shown to provide three distinctive physiological effects [ACE inhibition, calcium-channel blocking, and nitric oxide release (vasodilator)], each of which contributes to its anti-hypertensive properties.  Read the entire article.

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Small Choices Can Reduce Inflammation & Chronic Disease










Posted: 19 Jul 2013 04:07 PM PDT

Dr. Travis Stork stood at Nature’s Sunshine Products’ National Convention and presented his solution to better health. It was based on two messages:

• Inflammation is the biggest health threat today
• Good health comes from making small, simple choices every day.

Those simple messages encompass a lot, and can have far-reaching effects on one’s quality of life.

Inflammation: A Health Care Dilemma
It’s no secret that inflammation is a major health issue for many people. Stork thinks it alone is responsible for the majority of illnesses, and it’s something that can be prevented by taking responsibility to make health a habit.

“One in in two of us have a chronic illness, and seven out of 10 deaths are caused by chronic disease, which means we have chronic inflammation,” Stork said. “A lot of these diseases are preventable.”

Those diseases, he said, start with a poor diet, which leads to inflammation, which leads to a variety of problems. Some include:

• Obesity causes inflammatory processes in the body, that if not addressed, will lead to other illness

• Inflammatory conditions can lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer, strokes and major depressive disorders

• Kids who eat three or more fast food meals a week have increased risk for asthma and hay fever.  More of these kids are diagnosed with Type II diabetes.

“It’s truly become a health care dilemma,” he said.

Not surprisingly, fast food is a main culprit. The cycle of eating fast food, however, can be difficult to break. Here’s what Stork says happens when you eat fast food:

• Dopamine pleasure hits a high
• The body produces insulin
• Fat cells multiply in number, releasing cortisol.
• Blood pressure rises
• Inflammation rises
• The only thing that makes you feel better is the next meal
• All the sugar, fat, and salt is designed to cause addiction

Good Health Comes from Small Choices
Stork really drove home the point that consistent, small choices are what will drive a healthy life.

“We are in control of our health. In so doing, we become role models for others,” he said. “We make these subtle, seemingly inconsequential decisions every day that affect our health.”

Some of those decisions he mentioned are eating a healthy breakfast every day, flossing teeth, putting on sunblock, regular exercise, and of course, making wise decisions on the food we eat.

“Eighty percent of Type II diabetes are thought to come from lifestyle choices,” Stork said.

Healthy Living Starts in Two Places: the Kitchen and Movement
Stork said we currently live in a health care system that is focused on treating diseases instead of preventing them; that we take care of problems after they happen and not before.

"Let food be thy medicine. Hippocrates was onto something,” Stork said. “Healthy living starts in the kitchen and studies show that lifestyle (exercise and diet) can decrease your chance for many cancers and can decrease the recurrence of cancers.”

He told the story of his father who was 60 pounds overweight and on medication for much of his life. The medication he took was to treat his symptoms.

“Not once did he ever have a conversation with anyone about how he could reverse his condition. "Sometimes we overprescribe when the best thing to do would to write a grocery prescription," Stork said.


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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Sitting: Is It Silently Killing You?









Posted: 17 Jul 2013 08:22 AM PDT


Written by: Nathan Daley, MD, MPH

If you've heard that life is movement, it's true. If you've heard that just sitting around can kill you, it's also true. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide!

Most people know that exercise is critical for health and preventing disease, but the issue of physical activity and inactivity is much bigger than exercise. Regardless of the amount of exercise one performs, the level of aerobic fitness one exhibits, or whether a person is thin or overweight, stillness still kills.



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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Survey Reveals Keys to Happiness

From Huffington Post

If you want to be happy, focus on health, relationships, simple pleasures and achieving a sense of control of your well-being, according to a survey of more than 4,000 adults age 35 released today by the AARP.

The study looks at how happiness changes over time and how age impacts the factors that are most important to well-being. The survey confirmed two decades of research suggesting that happiness is U-shaped over the life cycle: It peaks in one's 20s and begins to decline, bottoming out in the mid-to-late 40s and rising again in old age.

A study by David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, leading researchers in the field of subjective well-being, found that after controlling for factors such as income, education and marital status, "happiness bottoms at age 49 for American males and 45 for American females, and ages 44 and 43 respectively for male and female Europeans." Read the entire article.



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