Diet.

I hate that word.

Diet implies feeling deprived and a “quick fix.”  You think, “I’ll go on a diet for two months, lose weight, and go back to eating the way I did before.”  It won’t work.

Your body chemistry won’t let it work. Most of us were told “calories are what count.”  Cut calories and you lose weight. Now that is changing. The leading edge of diet research is showing that it’s not about calories, it’s about chemistry. Blood sugar chemistry. Brain hormone chemistry.

When you go on a quick-fix diet, you are messing with your chemistry – and your chemistry will mess back. Adaptive thermogenesis, for a start. That means the less you eat, the slower your metabolism gets. You could gain weight eating broccoli. The sad truth is that your body is more afraid of starving than of getting fat, so when you starve yourself your body maximizes every calorie.

Uh-Oh. It gets worse. Breaking news…

Why Diets Don’t Work: Starved Brain Cells Eat Themselves, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2011) — A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it’s so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don’t eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits of themselves. That act of self-cannibalism turns up a hunger signal to prompt more eating.”

Here’s the truth. In order to maintain a normal weight, the most important thing you can do is maximize your sugar management.

Drinking sodas and eating carbs and sugars wreck our hormones that suppress appetite. (Monash University (2008, August 21). Killer Carbs: Scientist Finds Key To Overeating As We Age. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 30, 2011)

The Top Health Story of 2011 is not diet, it’s sugar management. How you manage the amount and quality of sugar you put in your body will determine how your body’s blood sugar levels respond, and how your weight hormones respond.

All Calories Were Not Created Equal

The soda manufacturers and many conventional nutrition scientists and doctors say “a calorie is a calorie.”  I say, “That’s a bunch of hooey.”

It is simply not true that eating 300 calories of wild-caught salmon plus 100 calories of brown rice has the same effect on our body chemistry as drinking 400 calories of soda. The effect on our crucial blood sugar balancing hormones is completely different.

The fat and protein in salmon will be metabolized slowly in the body. Blood sugar levels will not spike and then crash. Insulin levels will stay steady. Normal levels of blood sugar from the fiber-rich brown rice will be burned in muscle and fat cells for energy. Your cells will trigger leptin which sends the message to your brain that you’re satisfied.  Glucose will not be packed into fat cells for storage and turn into belly fat.

Here’s approximately what happens when you drink 400 calories of pure sugar:

• In the first 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system all at once, without being slowed down by protein, fat or fiber. Your body normally has ONE teaspoon of sugar circulating in your entire blood supply. It now has 10 times a normal amount.
• 20 minutes: Sugar alert!  High levels of insulin burst out of your pancreas trying to shove 10 teaspoons of blood sugar into muscle and fat cells to be burned up as energy.
• 30 minutes:  There’s too much sugar to burn all at once, so the excess sugar is stored.
• 40 minutes: The stored sugar triggers a liver response that dumps more sugar into your bloodstream.
• 45 minutes: High levels of sugar trigger the brain chemicals adrenalin, cortisol  and dopamine. Sugar high! Wheeeee! You feel great!
• >60 minutes:  Your insulin fails to shove enough excess sugar into your muscle and fat cells and your blood sugar levels continue to rise. More insulin.
•  Toxic levels of sugar start infiltrating fragile eye, kidney, blood vessel, pancreas, heart cells. Protective antioxidants are overwhelmed. Damage may  occur. Holy cow!
• Insulin finally gets excess sugar stored in fat cells where it sits (and sits … and sits) instead of being burned for energy. You start getting a fat belly.
• Two hours: Insulin keeps pumping and pumping and finally gets blood sugar levels down … down … down … and crash. You start shaking. You can’t get up off the couch. You are ravenously hungry. You grab a donut or another soda.
• And here we go again.

All the quick-fix diets in the world will not fix broken sugar/insulin/brain hormone balance.

If you have made a New Year’s resolution about your weight this year, I strongly suggest that instead of resolving to go on a diet, you resolve to manage your blood sugar. Do whatever it takes to keep blood sugar levels stable after you eat. I guarantee it will pay off big time in supporting a normal weight and good health for the rest of your life.

Recommended reading:

Why We Get Fat  by Gary Taubes. http://garytaubes.com/works/books/why-we-get-fat/

One of the most misunderstood words in the English language – cholesterol. Get your cholesterol down! Your cholesterol’s too high! Eggs are bad for your cholesterol. Watch your cholesterol. Many people think all cholesterol is bad. Bad, bad, bad.

Here’s the truth. Every cell in your body must have GOOD cholesterol to stay healthy. Cholesterol is not evil, it’s just misunderstood.

Cholesterol is a fat in your blood that bathes every cell in your body. Maybe the second most misunderstood word in America. Fat. Bad.

No, no, no.

Every cell membrane in your body is composed of fat.

Good fat = good cells. Bad fat = bad cells.

Good cholesterol = good.  Too much of the wrong kind of cholesterol = bad.

There. Fixed it for you.

Since most of you have already heard tons about “bad” cholesterol,” I’m going to talk about the other kind – good cholesterol. Because good cholesterol has an almost magical ability to make up for the bad kind.

Your doctor doesn’t talk too much about good cholesterol. Why?  There’s not much a doctor can do about good cholesterol, so why bother?

That’s all about to change. I can’t remember when I’ve been so excited about a new supplement coming on the market.

First, there’s a great story. In a remote part of Italy called Calabria, grows a very strange fruit. It’s a type of citrus fruit called bergamot. Bergamot is very rare. It doesn’t grow naturally anywhere else in the world. It’s extremely bitter, so it’s not a fruit that you just pick off the tree and munch on. However, the rind of the fruit makes an interesting essence and it has been used as the flavoring in Earl Gray tea and in perfumes for several hundred years.

However, a few years ago synthetic bergamot began to threaten the livelihood of the villagers who have cultivated this fruit for centuries. The Italian government sponsored research on the fruit to see if it had any other uses. After several years of research, the scientists discovered bergamot juice has powerful antioxidants that RAISE GOOD CHOLESTEROL by an astonishing amount, with no side effects.

The villagers call bergamot “The Lord’s Pear” (well, that’s a name translated from the Turkish; it’s not a pear, it’s a citrus, but never mind…), and the scientist who discovered its ability to improve cholesterol levels called it “a miracle.”

A double-blind clinical study showed that taking 500 mg a day of Bergamonte™, an extract of the bergamot fruit, for 30 days :

• Lowers “bad cholesterol”  LDL – 24.1%
• Raises “GOOD CHOLESTEROL” HDL – 22.9%
• Lowers Triglycerides – 29.9%
• Lowers Blood Glucose – 18.8%
• Lowers Total Cholesterol – 20.69%

At a Double Dosage of 1,000 mg day, Bergamonte taken for 30 days:

• Lowers bad cholesterol  – 36%
• Raises GOOD CHOLESTEROL — 40.1%
• Lowers Triglycerides — 38.8%
• Lowers Blood Glucose –   22.3%
• Lowers Total Cholesterol — 26.53%

Hallelujah!

Bergamonte is the key ingredient in Nutri-Health’s new BG-Cor™ Advanced Heart Health formula. 

A tall, blond, gorgeous young woman friend of mine is in her late teens and just started college. While bicycling around one day she fainted and collapsed on the sidewalk. She was diagnosed as anemic, not having enough iron.

This young woman’s mother is a well-known author in alternative healing, and the girl grew up eating an excellent natural foods diet. Her mom was practically stuffing iron pills down her throat, but she wasn’t being very reliable about taking them.

Why not?

“Mom, taking supplements is just not my lifestyle.”

And then there’s my own son – tall, handsome, an executive sous chef in one of San Diego’s best restaurants. Raised on the best natural foods. I’ve given him my Vitamin D missionary speech half a dozen times and I give the family bottles of Vitamin D3 for Christmas.

On my last visit, I ask, “So, are you still taking Vitamin D?”

“Uh, no.”

Not his lifestyle either.

And then there’s my nephew in his 20s. Tall, dark, handsome, modeled in college, and was a Navy SEAL. His dad, my brother, was visiting this week and told me… “Oh you and he need to talk. He’s totally into SUPPLEMENTS!”

Yea!! Ding Ding Ding!! We have a winner here, folks. Did I mention he was a Navy SEAL? J

The ‘Just Eat a Balanced Diet’ Hoax

Why supplements? Why not just get all the nutrition you need from eating a balanced diet?  Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I wish.

To quote from an excellent article by John M. Berardi,  a “balanced diet” for most people means “eating whatever I want to eat… It’s vague enough to convince folks that no changes are necessary in their daily intake… yet it’s also vague enough to be utterly useless and void of all utility or meaning.”

I heartily agree. And just about every dietary analysis I’ve ever read agrees with Mr. Berardi and me. In real life, there’s no such thing as a “balanced diet” from which you get all your nutrients.

He actually did one of those analyses. For three years he collected dietary data on nutrition and exercise habits of more than 500 college students – the cream of the crop,  people who were studying nutrition! – and what did he find? About 85-90% were deficient in one or more key nutrients like zinc, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids, or protein.

He references a study in the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2006. Same thing. Many of the people in the study were athletes and “healthy.” Yet, the men were RDA deficient in 40% of the vitamins and 54.2% of the minerals and women averaged deficiencies in 29% of the vitamins and 44.2% of the minerals.

In this study, 70 different personal diets were analyzed and guess what? Not one of them contained all of the Recommended Daily Amount of micronutrients from food. NOT ONE! So much for getting all your nutrients from a “balanced diet.”

The MV Supplement – It’s not new and it’s not ‘sexy’ – but it works

What are the best supplements for someone under 40 to take? Well, that’s a big question I don’t think I can answer in one blog. However, just as with folks over 40, the old-fashioned multivitamin is a good place to start. MVs aren’t especially new or sexy, but a good one will contain a strong dosage of the B vitamins, iron, zinc, calcium, magnesium and vitamins D3 and C, all of which are commonly low in all age groups.

Feeling Tired, Blue and Brain Fogged?

And one more thing. As I was researching about why it’s important to have enough iron, here’s what I found:

Low iron levels slow your reaction time to stimuli. That means you feel slow and sluggish in class or at work. Plus, you need iron to make all the “feel-good” brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin and GABA. Not enough iron and you could feel unhappy, moody, and blue and out of focus. You need iron for energy too … so you don’t collapse on the sidewalk.

So for those of you under 40, consider making a good MV part of your lifestyle. (Don’t you think MV sounds snappier and hipper than multivitamin?)

This one simple step might actually make a difference in how you feel, how you age, and whether you’ll continue to keep up with those of who’ve already passed 40 and intend to be around for a long, long time!

__________

Berardi John M. Chances Are, You’ve Got a Deficiency: A Balanced Diet Isn’t Enough, July 7, 2008