Keeping Your Water Intake Healthy – Without Using Potentially Hazardous Plastic Bottles

I have mentioned often enough the dangers of plastics, particularly water bottles and Bisphenol A. It is a common conflict that faces us in that we want to carry water around to keep our fluid intake up, but we don’t want to resort to getting in containers that can be harmful to health. Lo and behold, SIGG has come up with a solution and it is a healthy, practical and – though I know you don’t really care about this – a stylish and fashionable one too with their reusable and 100% recyclable aluminum water bottles.

Worldwide, over 60 billion tons of plastic waste is produced every year and plastic is particularly damaging because it is not biodegradable and plastic particles eventually become part of the food chain – as they have for example in our oceans. In some parts of the sea, there is five times more plastic than plankton. So avoiding plastic water bottles helps our planet, but it not just the health of the ocean that is affected.

So what is the risk to you? Well, plastic polycarbonate bottles releases the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). 90% of US government studies found harmful health effects on children and it has impact on both male and female sexuality and reproduction. Basically, BPA acts as a xenoestrogen, so it mimics the effect of natural oestrogen, but is foreign to the body.

High levels of xenoestrogens are linked to breast cancer, birth defects and miscarriages, disruption of beta cell function in the pancreas, which creates a pre-diabetes type condition of high blood insulin and insulin resistance.

The dangers of plastic water bottles also include producing another xenoestrogen called phthalates which leach into the water and this is increased if the bottle is exposed to heat – such as being in the sun or in the car. Also if you are using the same bottle over and over and refilling it then you will probably have noticed the fine line scratches that occur with frequent use. These increase the surface area exposed to the liquid inside and release more of the xenoestrogens into the water so it is time to ditch the plastic and go for a healthier alternative.

One stylish one is made by SIGG, a company founded in Switzerland over 100 years ago and that I have been fully converted to using because it is beautifully and seamlessly shaped from a single piece of pure aluminium, one of the most environmental friendly packaging materials that is easily be recycled and loses none of its high qualities when reused, and shallow that I am, it looks great.

SIGG bottles have plenty of high profile users such as stars like Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher and for the artistically minded they launch a new design collection of SIGG bottles, every year. They are certainly beautiful, in fact two designs are on permanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and include 19 designs to choose from, including one by Vivienne Westwood for the fashionistas among you and the intriguingly named Wuthering Polka – never knew Heathcliff was a dancer, did you?

You can buy direct from the website at www.sigg.com

B+ for Broccoli – Especially the Sprouts

A Healthy Sugar?

Drug Free Treatment for Crohn’s Disease for 95% Relief

Inflammation in the bowel is not just painful, it is also the gift that keeps on giving. Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are two of these relapsing conditions and affect millions of people worldwide. Now it seems that a simple, everyday, supplement could actually treat the disease without the need for drugs.

The debilitating symptoms of inflammatory bowel conditions include weight loss, diarrhoea, severe abdominal pain and cramping and gastrointestinal bleeding. This results in ongoing tissue inflammation that alters the functioning of the intestine, and is usually treated with immune suppressive drugs including steroids. The latter have a number of side effects from minor discomfort to potentially more serious conditions so anyone on regular steroid medication must ensure they are given frequent and regular health checks by their doctor.

The main drawback to all the medication for inflammatory bowel conditions is that they are not totally effective so after initial relief most patients relapse and get their symptoms back again.

Now there is some real hope for self treatment that is totally drug free in a recently published report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Northwestern Medicine researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. They have genetically tweaked a version of a common probiotic found in yogurt, sauerkraut and cheese. In their new animal study they have shown it is an effective treatment for inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis.

You may already be taking a probiotic as they are recommended for maintaining a healthy gut, especially after any form on digestive upset, to replace the “friendly bacteria” you will have lost. Indeed a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) concluded that probiotics may shorten viral infections and diarrhoea in otherwise healthy children if administered at the beginning of the illness and may prevent diarrhea in children who are taking antibiotics, which often destroy good intestinal bacteria along with whatever infectious bacteria they are meant to combat. This of course also applies to adults!

Probiotics are live microorganisms (in most cases, bacteria) and you will find them in yogurt and they can be also be taken as supplements as well. The one most commonly found one in yoghurt is Lactobacillus acidophilus and the Northwestern team deleted a gene in the probiotic and fed this version to mice with two different models of colitis. After about 2 weeks of treatment, the new probiotic strain had virtually eliminated colon inflammation in the animals.

Moreover, it halted progression of the disease by a staggering 95 percent. This is hopeful not just for treating various autoimmune diseases of the gut, including inflammatory bowel disease, but also potentially for colon cancer as all these conditions can be triggered by imbalanced inflammatory immune responses.

In the study, the modified Lactobacillus acidophilus was found to calm over stimulated immune cells in the gut by mobilizing messenger immune cells, called dendritic cells. These cells then enhanced the production of other functional immune cells, known as regulatory T-cells. This resulted in a healthy new balance in the intestine and systemic inflammation was soothed away.

Dr Mansour Mohamadzadeh, associate professor of medicine at Feinberg and the lead investigator of the study, explained that the next step will be a trial testing the new form of Lactobacillus acidophilus in humans. In the meantime, keeping your gut healthy with a regular probiotic containing Lactobacillus acidophilus would probably be a sensible addition to your health regime.

The Positive Side of Coffee

If you have forsworn the beverage as part of your New Year healthy eating plan you may want to rethink as new research is showing some benefits you won’t want to pass up on. Personally coffee, like butter, is something I have never given up on but have cut down to two cups a day because my health philosophy has always been everything you want in moderation.

Coffee is actually one of the richest sources of antioxidants there is and remains so however you drink it as its high antioxidant content of the coffee is still absorbed easily by the body. Antioxidants help to protect our cells from free radical damage caused by oxidative stress – a fact that is backed up by hundreds of intervention studies on polyphenols and polyphenol-rich foods including coffee.
According to Gary Williamson, Professor of Functional Food, School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds, “Coffee is in my top 20 lifespan essential foods.” Many people can’t start their day without it and if you want a quick and high oxidant boost then look for Nescafe have even developed a special blend that is higher in antioxidants than their standard coffees so look for their Green Blend in supermarkets.

Other Caffeine Benefits:
A new review has indicated that antioxidant supplements may benefit couples who have difficulty conceiving naturally. The review provides evidence from a small number of trials that suggest the partners of men who take antioxidants are more likely to become pregnant so coffee could well play a part in that antioxidant increase.

Another new study also shows that caffeine energizes cells, boosting virus production for gene therapy applications. Now why would that concern you? Well it helps move research forward faster because if you give caffeine to cells engineered to produce viruses used for gene therapy then those cells can generate 3- to 8-times more virus, according to a recent paper published in Human Gene Therapy.

Lentivirus vectors are commonly used for transferring genes into cells for both research applications in the laboratory and, increasingly, for gene therapy procedures in clinical testing. The addition of caffeine should significantly decrease the cost of lentiviral production for research and clinical uses and James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, and Director of the Gene Therapy Program, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia can certainly see the advantage. “It is ironic that the ingredient in beverages like colas and coffees that helps keep us awake and alert is also useful in jazzing up cells to produce more gene therapy vectors. An increase in vector production of 5-fold may prove critical in establishing the commercial viability of lentiviral based products.”

Cura Romana – Leslie Kenton’s Weight Loss Plan

Any book by Leslie Kenton is always worth looking at as her views on health are always practical and usually at the cutting edge. She has done it yet again with her Cura Romana weight loss plan which is accurate, well researched and as you would expect highly practical and the possibility of losing up to 7lbs a week doesn’t sound bad either.

The actual diet plan itself was something that she was introduced to 20 years ago when it was only available through a small number of exclusive clinics and since then she has worked to find a way to bring it to a wider public. Interestingly the research and clinical procedures behind Cura Romana were the work of the brilliant British researcher and clinician, ATW Simeons, who in the 1950’s claimed to have discovered the cause and cure for obesity.

He published papers on his findings in many medical journals including The Lancet and the basis of his argument was that obesity was nothing to do with a lack of willpower but a metabolic disorder. This research led him to identify where in the brain weight control might be located — which turned out to be the diencephalon – and his conclusion was that weight gain was the result of abnormal functioning in that area.

His revolutionary discovery, and the basis of Leslie Kenton’s diet book, was that by injecting overweight patients with minute quantities of human chorionic gondotrophin, (hCG), a glycoprotein found exclusively in the bodies of pregnant women would correct functioning of the diencephalon to bring about safe and rapid fat loss. In pregnancy hCG enables a pregnant woman’s inessential fat stores to be converted into energy to nourish the developing child. When combined with his highly specific diet program he claimed results that were able to turn unwanted fat deposits into usable energy at a rate of between 1500 and 4000 calories a day, with little or no hunger pangs being experienced.

Leslie Kenton spent many years researching Cura Romana and working with doctors worldwide who were using it, particularly in America. The drawback to offering the programme to a much wider audience was that of overcoming the difficulty of hCG injections. Then two years ago, working with a few pioneering doctors and naturopaths, she discovered a simple, easy to use at home, homoeopathic form created from the original substance and which had the same effect on promoting weight loss.

The book shares her wide-ranging experience of working with this weight loss program herself, and with the many clients she has now monitored and mentored personally through her associated website. I have been fortunate enough myself to try out the programme and it certainly does promote rapid weight loss with the dietary element being very clearly spelt out and adhering to the high protein and no carbohydrate philosophy that has been very popular over the last few years. I can’t say I always found it easy, as my natural tendency to not want to read instructions made the first couple of weeks rather tricky, but it is certainly clearly laid out and I lost over the 28 day period the weight that I had stated I want to lose.

It is a system that has been endorsed by many happy clients, and if you want to read testimonials then you will find those on her website which was developed with her son Aaron. It offers a truly interactive program based on daily videos, audio, written materials, tools and spiritual practices led by Leslie herself.

If you want to make a start on changing the way you approach your weight as a life changing exercise, and not just a quick fix, then reading this book would be an excellent place to start.

The Cura Romana Weight Loss Plan is available from Bantam Press and for details of leslie Kenton’s exclusive mentoring program please visit the website at www.curaromana.com

How ‘Negative Eating’ Can Help You Lose Weight – Without Being Hungry

Sounds too good to be true, but apparently there are a number of so-called negative-calorie health foods that burn fat while making you feel full. My fear is that they are all going to be things I don’t want to eat anyway, but in the spirit of magicking away those last slices of Christmas cake, here goes.

The concept here is that certain foods actually take more energy to digest than they deliver to your body. You can eat unlimited quantities of them because although they are an important source of phytonutrients, they are not high in calories. The theory is that
your stomach senses when it is physically full, and it will trigger your brain to stop eating when you can’t handle more food so what you have to do is get your body to give you that signal clearly by eating foods that fill you up, but don’t make you fat.

The key to many of these negative calorie foods is that they are rich in water. In fact one of the oldest ‘tricks’ that we can use to fool our stomachs is simply to drink a glass of water before each meal. This way the water takes up the space you might otherwise try to cram with food so it takes less food before your stomach signals that is full.

Any food that contains a lot of water, and fibre, is ideal. So what you need to be eating are lots of apples, grapes, watermelons and a really good one is celery. All of these foods take more energy for your body to process than they actually contain in themselves, and that is how you get a ‘negative’ bonus.

Plain and simple water is the most effective appetite control substance in the world and once you start thinking in terms of water content of your food you will make a great difference to your weight. Other ‘water-filled’ items for your shopping basket are lettuce, cucumber, onions and most salad greens but don’t diminish their goodness by using a rich salad dressing as that will just add the calories back in.

On the fruit front, grapefruit is valuable as it contains naringenin, an antioxidant which triggers the liver to break down fat. Pink and red grapefruit in particular are a valuable as they get their colour from the antioxidant lycopene which is a rich source of carotenoids which are known to help to fight free radicals and believed to help (along with green tea) with prostate problems.

30 Days to Better Health

There is no better time of year to start thinking about getting healthier, but many people are put off because they see it as beyond them, or will take too long. The good news is that only 30 days of eating a naturally better diet can improve your health and guard against many of the leading chronic diseases that take the lives of millions worldwide each year. The less good news is that even one unhealthy meal can have a negative effect on hundreds of your genes.

The results of a study performed at Lund University in Sweden have shown the link between healthy food combinations and reduced disease risk. Their research focused on forty-four adults aged 50 to 75 who were fed a diet that included high antioxidant, low glycaemic sources including oily fish, barley, blueberries, almonds, cinnamon, vinegar and a high fibre wholegrain bread for a period of 4 weeks.

They were able to demonstrate the influence of food on our genome as a single unhealthy meal can negatively impact hundreds of individual genes. The usual suspects I am afraid: processed foods packed with sugar, refined carbohydrates and hydrogenated fats. These all lead to a continual state of inflammation throughout the body and metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer`s are all fuelled by the release of dangerous chemical messengers that are the result of inflammation.

Blood samples taken at the end of the test period showed that a natural diet exerted a powerful effect on all key biomarkers associated with inflammation, blood sugar and blood clotting. Results included:

• Oxidized LDL cholesterol was reduced by 33%
• Blood pressure dropped 8%
• Total blood lipids improved 14%
• Blood clotting marker fibrinogen dropped 26%
• Systemic inflammation was greatly reduced
• Memory and cognitive function were improved

Previous and extensive research has shown that eating a diet that was consumed during the course of human evolution is the best way to prevent and treat diabetes and heart disease. Basically that means you think natural and unprocessed so focusing on fruit, vegetables, nuts, lean meat and fish as these food sources regulate blood sugar and insulin response as they are low in fast-releasing carbohydrates, and eating a minimum of grain-based foods such as breakfast cereals and pasta.

So let’s hear it for the good news, which is that even small changes in diet over a short period of time like 30 days have been shown to significantly lower your risk of diabetes, heart disease and dementia. A diet of unprocessed foods can provide protection from disease and reverse the progression of serious illness and also seriously improve your quality of life.

The Benefits of Fish Oil in Avoiding Complications of Diabetes

There are 2.8 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK and it’s estimated that there are a further 850,000 undiagnosed people with the condition. Unfortunately, there are many serious complications associated with diabetes including nerve damage, amputation, blindness or heart disease and new research currently being funded by leading health charity Diabetes UK aims to determine if regular doses of medication derived from fish oil could be used to improve this situation.

Keith McCormick at the University of Southampton is to conduct an 18-month clinical trial on 100 people at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes to determine whether taking high-doses of purified n-3 long chain fatty acids can improve the function of nerves and small blood vessels in the feet of those with a higher chance of developing the condition.

This will be done by giving them a medication derived from fish oil found in Norwegian sardines (named OMACOR) but whether that is each individual sardine or their family name isn’t quite clear – at least to me. The object of the study is to use the data obtained to improve our knowledge of the link between nerve function and blood vessel damage.

People with diabetes are susceptible to develop serious health complications as previously described and this is as a result of neuropathy where the nerves and small blood vessels become damaged. Sensory neuropathy is the most common form and mainly affects the nerves in the feet and legs. The loss of sensation in these limbs can make people with diabetes vulnerable to foot wounds and these complications can develop even before diabetes is diagnosed.

Apparently those OMACOR sardines have already proved to be extremely successful in the treatment of high triglycerides (a type of fat) in the blood, so I sincerely hope there are plenty of such fish in the sea and they don’t fall fall foul of fishing quotas.

This is a valuable area to explore as diabetes is one of the biggest health challenges facing the UK today. It takes approximately 10 per cent of NHS spending, £9 million a year, and neuropathy and blood vessel damage are behind many of the complications of diabetes, which ultimately lead to 100 amputations each week in the UK.

Because Type 2 diabetes can go undetected for up to ten years, 50 per cent of people already have complications, such as neuropathy, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke, by the time they’re diagnosed. The research being funded at the University of Southampton therefore has the potential to identify a readily available treatment to prevent some of the serious complications of diabetes and protect those at risk.

If you would like more information on diabetes, then The Diabetes UK Careline offers information and support on any aspect of managing diabetes. The line is a low cost number (0845 120 2960) and opens Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm. Recorded information on a number of diabetes-related topics is also available on this number 24 hours a day.

The Benefits of Chocolate for Older Women

Now how could I resist telling you about this, particularly as we approach Christmas when you are bound to be given the odd box or two? My mother used to give me a tin of Roses, a ‘chest’ of Terry’s Old Gold and a box of Black Magic which started me on the road to a sweet tooth, but from which she also got to eat more chocolate than my father approved as she was only helping me out by eating at least half!

So in that spirit back to the benefits of chocolate for older women, which was studied in a controlled trial over 10-years by researchers at the University of Western Australia. Their findings were that women over 70 are less likely to die or be hospitalized due to heart disease if they are regular chocolate eaters. This is the first study in older women that demonstrates a link between chocolate intake and reduced atherosclerotic plaque, which causes ASVD (Arteriosclerotic Vascular Disease).

Of the subjects involved in the research, more than 47% had less than a serving of chocolate per week; about 36% consumed one to six servings per week; and the remaining 17% had more than seven servings. A single serving in this case was equivalent to the amount of cocoa found in one cup of hot raw cocoa – or perhaps a tenth of the top tray of Black Magic (dark chocolate being healthier than milk).

The group that consumed the most chocolate had the least incidence of heart-related death or hospitalization (42 incidents); the group that had six servings or fewer had 90 incidents of cardiovascular-related problems; and the group that rarely consumed chocolate had the highest rate of heart-related problems (158 incidents).

Everyone in the trial regardless of how often they ate chocolate had similar overall results, which suggests that one serving per week could have significant benefits – if you can manage to keep it to that level!

This is not the only study to extol the benefits of chocolate: raw cocoa, the principal ingredient in chocolate, is rich in flavonoids. Previous studies have found that flavonoids have been associated with a 50% lower risk of heart-related deaths and in 2008 Italian researchers found that regular consumption of dark chocolate may reduce inflammation linked to heart and blood vessel disease.

If chocolate isn’t to your taste, then you can get the same benefit from foods rich in flavonoids, such as apples, apricots, blueberries, pears, raspberries, strawberries, cabbage, onions, parsley, and of course red wine as all have been shown to be helpful in postmenopausal women to prevent coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.

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