Monthly Archives: June 2014

food

Nobody says eat more meat

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NF-Nov14-Avoid-Carnitine-and-Lethicin-Supplements-140x135             download

Nobody says eat more meat, eggs, dairy-nobody except the meat, eggs and  dairy industry that is.   Try an experiment.  Imagine you have any chronic illness and go to the internet and look up what you should do to manage this condition.  Invariably, you will be told to eat more fruit and vegetables and exercise.   When you have a chronic illness, no-one says to you, eat more steak, eat more sausages, eat more ham.     Imagine having a heart problem and the Dr or the website telling you, eat more steak!  Drink more milk!  Eat more eggs! Sounds crazy doesn’t it?  That’s because it would be crazy.   They don’t tell you to eat more animal products,  as they know that eating these  will make your  heart condition worse.   The same food that will make our disease worse, is the food that will give us the disease in the first place.  In 2007-08 3.4 million or 1 in 6 Australians had heart disease.   One in three deaths in Australia in 2009 were from heart disease.  It would be worse now.   This is a completley preventable condition.

In the 2007-08 National Health Survey in Australia, nearly all people aged 65 years and over reported having at least one long-term condition (with more than 80 per cent of people in this age group reported having three or more long-term conditions)

Key findings Of Australia’s Health survey 2014

  • Chronic disease leading cause of illness, disability and death – accounting for 90 per cent of all deaths in 2011.
  • More than 3 in 5 adults (63 per cent) are overweight or obese (70 per cent of men, 56 per cent of women)
  • Nearly 3 in 5 adults (57 per cent) do not exercise enough
  • Only 8 per cent of adults eat enough vegetables
  • Only 49 per cent of adults eat enough fruit

The government tells you by its ad campaign(go for 2 &5-nobody knows what it means!) to eat more fruit and vegetable, but it doesn’t tell you to eat less meat and animal products (you could say that is the indirect message, but it is very indirect!)

Pharmaceuticals

Of the 234 million prescription medicines dispensed in 2005,  the two prescription medicines distributed most frequently
through community pharmacies, with the greatest cost to the government and with the highest defined daily dose per 1,000 population, were both medications prescribed for lipid
reduction (lowering of blood cholesterol).

The cost of these medications to the community is staggering and the suffering to the individual and their families is also staggering.

 There is only one reason to have high cholesterol and that is eating meat, eggs, dairy.     Some people reading this will say, but what  about my genes?   These are outside of my control.   Our genes are a very small contributor to the diseases which commonly kill Australians.    Most cancers and heart disease our  two biggest killers could be prevented by diet and exercise.     Even mainstream health information would say 70 -90% of these illnesses.   This is what makes our current technological fix we are pursuing by  pursuing our genetic make up, only make sense in terms of making money,  not good health.   No-one can make money out of you eating plants and exercising.

Genes react to the environment they are placed in and can be turned on or off by that environment.  The biggest environmental impact on us, is the environment we create in our bodies by what we put in our mouths.   Is it an environment that promotes sickness or health, inflammation or a balanced immune system, blocked blood vessels or flexible clean blood vessels, unregulated cell growth or regulated cell growth?   Eating plants is on the postivie side of that ledger every time.  Eating animals is not.

How the body functions is incredibly complex and T Colin Campbell author of that great book, The China Study, doesn’t think we will ever know the complexity of how it works.  As John McDougall says(see link in sidebar),  What do you care, which mechanism it is?  Just knowing that it works, is what’s important.  As he likes to say, “It’s the food!”

For example, do we get heart disease, because of the cholesterol blocking our arteries, the fat blocking our arteries or the TMAO blocking our arteries, with the TMAO being produced from  choline and carnitine in meat, eggs, dairy and fish as it is broken down by the bacteria we need in our gut to digest animals. (if we eat plants only we have different bacteria in our gut to digest plants).  All we need to know is the less meat  and other animal products you eat, the less likely we are to get heart disease (zero is best of course).

I am staggered by how many people have one of the inflammatory bowel diseases: irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colits, ulcerative diverticulitis or on another tack constipation.  A sure fire way to have easy, good consistency of bowel movements is to eat plants and exercise( no varicose veins, no haemorrhoids)

What a Dr will tell you is that if you are low in iron, you need to eat meat.  I am not sure how they explain away all of the people  who are eating meat and are low in iron?  There is plenty of iron in leafy greens for example.    Dr’s will tell  you, you must have dairy to stop osteoporosis because if you don’t eat dairy you will have weak bones.  The countries where people have the most fractures, eat the most dairy.  This has been known for decades, but that doesn’t stop the myth being perpetuated.  This fracture story is another example of the mechanism of action being complex.  It was thought for a long time that as animal foods are high in protein( protein is made up of amino acids) that animal foods create an acidic environment in the body and in an attempt to get the balance right, calcium was leached out of the bones, weakening the bones.  It turns out that wasn’t right.  Recent experiments with radioactive calcium in animal products have shown that the calcium that is coming out in the urine after eating animal products is the same calcium that was coming in-  not from the bones.

Where high protein and high calcium foods interrupt health and probably bone density is through blocking the activity of the enzyme in the kidney, which converts the vitamin D made in our skin via sunlight into the more powerful form used in the body.   As McDougall says what do we care about the mechanism?

T Colin Campbell in The China Study outlines eight principles of food and health.  These are:

  • Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances.   The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
  • Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health
  • There are  virtually no nutrients in animal based foods that are not better provided by plants
  • Genes do not determine disease on their own.  Genes function only by being activated,  or expressed and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad are expressed
  • Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals
  • The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages(before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis)
  • Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board
  • Good nutririon creates health in all areas of our existence.  All parts are interconnected.

So, Drs might say to you sometimes, you should eat more meat, but they are not basing this on science, just their own bias and cultural prejudices.    If you are unwell in any way, this is the time to make a change, take control of your health by taking control of what you put in your mouth.   The choice is to keep eating meat, eggs, dairy and fish and gradually get sicker over time and gradually have to take more and more medication or try out eating plants for three weeks to a month.   What have you got to lose?   Only ill-health!

If you are looking for ideas PCRM (sidebar) have a 21 day vegan kickstart programme starting on the 1st of every month.

 

Yours in good health

 

Gary

lifestyle

I’ve gotta die from something!

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This is true-we do have to die from something but hopefully it is old age!   You know, at about 100+ we have slowly rusted away on the inside from breathing and we cark it.  A lot of people take the attitude of, “I have to die from something, so while I am here, I might as well enjoy myself and I like steak, chips, coke and alcohol”(or whatever there particular poison is).  One of the problems of course is that there is not clear information for people about what to avoid for a longer healthier life and what to do for a longer healthier life.   Clear sustained information along with increase in price, does change behaviour-look what has happened with cigarettes.   The same thing could be achieved with processed and take away food, meat and dairy.

People are clear that  they have to die from something, but not so clear that they have to live with whatever they are going to die from for a very long time.  This can be very unpleasant, unless it is  healthy old age, that you are going to die from.  I am quite happy living with old age for a long time.  Not so happy living with heart failure, diabetes, arthritis, lung disease of various kinds, various bowel inflammatory diseases, alzeihmers or other brain disorders and so on.

The period of life that people are experiencing, where their quality of life is greatly diminished due to chronic illness is extending.   It is not much fun to be sick and restricted  in the possibilities for your life.  Simple pleasures are often lost to you.  For example, we went camping last weekend and I saw a man who couldn’t get down to the beach, where he wanted to take photos of the sunset, as he was unable to walk up and down the path to the beach.

He stated his knees were no good.  It was easy to see why they may be no good.  He was obese, so the pressure on his knees over his life would have been enormous.  They weren’t designed to carry that weight.  It is likely he was also eating inflammatory foods(arthritis is an autoimmune disease-inappropriate immune response causing inflammation.  This is true of  many of the diseases of the western world)

Along with food, sex is one of the great pleasure of life.  In America, 40% of men over 40 have trouble getting an erection because their blood vessels are blocked with cholesterol and fat and they can’t get enough blood flow.   This is why Drs are seeing trouble getting an erection as a sign of possible heart disease.

The good news is that you don’t have to become vegan or an extreme exercise freak to extend your life and  increase the quality of your life.  Being a vegan exercise freak, will be extremely good for you and you will feel great, but smaller steps will make a difference.     Four steps cut your chance of disease and extend your life.  These are:

  • don’t smoke(that is a no brainer)
  • don’t be overweight (bmi(body mass index) less than 30
  • 3.5 hours of physical activity/week
  • eat healthy where eating healthy is defined as eating lots of fruit and veggies, lots of whole grain bread and low meat (this is not the optimum diet for the human body, but in this study, this is what they were using as the benchmark)

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/turning-the-clock-back-14-years/

So, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  Any step in the right direction is good and as they say, “from little things big things grow!”

 

 

food

KISS(keep it smart special)

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In a nutshell, if you want to supercharge your basic garden variety whole foods, plant based diet you add more: – greens, spices,  nuts,    seeds and  berries.blueberries If you look at that list, you could just say, continue to eat a truckload of vegetables and fruits, but surprise, surprise, not all veggies and fruits were created equal!    Cucumber and iceberg lettuce do have some fibre, phytonutrients(good chemicals  from plants) and  anti-oxidants but they tail the field and are a long way away from the those foods listed above. In general, it is a good idea to eat the biggest variety of fruits and vegetable that you can get into your mouth.  This is becuase if we do this we are maximising the nutrients and the power of plants to heal our body, as different plants have different chemical balances  and different parts of plants have different chemical balances.  Sometimes eating different plants together makes these chemicals more available to our body, like in the case of pepper and turmeric.  Eating pepper with turmeric makes curcumin the helpful chemical to us in turmeric 2000x more available for us to use.  This is good as turmeric fights inflammation(chronic low level inflammation is at the root of  disease in our body) and it has anti-cancer properties(specifically turning back on the cell death process in cancer cells). I am just going to give you a ‘taste’ of the benefits of these particular foods.  If you want more information check out nutrition facts website in the sidebar.

SPICES

Spices are high in anti-oxidants and have many other useful properties as well.  For example, cinnamon lowers your blood sugar levels, but really the best way to keep blood sugar levels low is maintain a healthy weight.  This is because insulin can’t move the sugar from our bloodstream to the cells, as the cells already are too full of fat, if you are overweight.   If you are going to go out of your way to eat extra cinnamon, say a teaspoon a day  on your porridge then  make sure it is cinnamon from Sri Lanka(other cinnamons are often Sennas and are damaging to the liver in high quantities.)

NUTS

Nuts are a good source of fats in the diet and eaten in small quantities with your meal(small handful) increase the availability of nutrients from vegetables, as they aid digestion.   They can also be a good source of minerals, for example Brazil nuts for selenium.  We have three Brazil nuts for breakfast, taken like medicine.  Better than having to take 10-12 pills each morning.  I think the European average for a 60 year old, my age is 9 tablets/day.

SEEDS

Seeds are very good for mood, in fact eating vegetarian or vegan is associated with better mood than being an omnivore.  An amino acid, trytophan, which is high in concentration in some seeds, is a precursor to serotonin production.  The  appropriate level of serotonin in the brain is associated with good mood. One particular seed is especially good for you-flax seed.  Flaxseed is a good source of short chain fatty acids from which our body is able to make  long chain fatty acids.  The beauty of eating flax seeds is they are, like all plants, high in fibre and in the case of flax, have the precursor for the production of lignans in our gut, as the good bacteria in our gut digest it.  Lignans are known to combat breast cancer.  Getting long chain fatty acids for  your brain is much better by the flaxseed route than the fish route.  Flax has  no cholesterol, no excess protein, but most importantly not the high levels of mercury and PCB’s(carcinogenic plastics) found in fish.  If you are going to use flaxseed grind it yourself as you use it as pre-ground it deteriorates and without grinding, it just goes straight out the other end without digesting.

BERRIES

Berries are high in anti-oxidants and  have been found to have many other helpful functions as well, from anti-cancer and anti-inflammation to reducing muscle soreness after exercise(if you eat the berries prior to the exercise).  We have just added them to our diet, by adding them to our morning porride(frozen blueberries or fresh strawberries).  Berries, beans and greens may be the best things for us to eat on the planet! BREAKFAST PORRIDGE We eat a lot of porridge!  Rolled Oats and water(well actually, unstabilised organic oats and water) with lots of other stuff chucked in the bowl.  We add: – ground flaxseed(we don’t have a grinder at the moment so we are adding wheatgerm instead) – cacao nibs -blueberries – banana – sultanas – cinnamon -sunflower seeds -pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

IMGP8219Tastes great, lowers cholesterol from all of the fibre, shoots up anti-oxidants levels to counter DNA damage caused by free radicals which are created just by sitting around breathing, let alone doing anything, has  short chain and therefore long chain fatty acids for the old brain, seeds for mood and fat for digestion and slow release of energy from all of those complex carbs or starches.  What more could you want!! Lunch is rye bread and peanut paste, home made vegan cake and a couple of apples and dinner is some staple(pasta, beans, lentils, rice, potatoes) with a combination of veggies and herbs and spices.

A couple of other tips.  Broccoli  has great anti-cancer properties but it  needs to be cut up 20 -30 minutes before it is cooked to maximise this.  This is due to enzyme is able to do its work and assist chemical reaction to produce the anti-cancer substance.  Similar story for garlic: crush 10 minutes before use.

Enjoy food, enjoy life!