Natural tips for weight loss

Quick fix diets are just that – quick, but not necessarily healthy. Do you think eating salad will help? Well, it could but you would do better apparently by switching it for a nutritious soup before your main course. Medical researchers in Texas found that by giving their volunteers a bowl of a high-fat soup then sending them off to a pizza buffet – only in America would that be in a diet trial – the participants followed it by eating considerably smaller portions, and fewer calories from the buffet table. Apparently the reason it works is that when the small intestine absorbs fat it releases hormones that make you feel full, if you then wait 20 minutes before your second course – just keep talking, or read a book – then you will definitely eat less of a second course and so lose weight. Of course anyone on a limited budget discovered this all on their own without the benefit of a research grant. When I was at university, I made pots of homemade soup, which was cheap, so I wouldn’t need so much of the more expensive protein main meal that usually followed. I wasn’t trying to lose weight, but the end result was that I felt full by eating less. Ahead of my time, as usual.

Oh and the second tip? It’s often suggested you drink a glass of water before you eat, again to fool the stomach into thinking you are full before you start eating, but a more pleasant way to do it is include lots of water-rich foods in your diet and that means plenty of fruit and vegetables. Researchers from Penn State University found that those who did so on average ate 25% more food by weight but still lost more pounds than the control group. Again, it’s because you can eat lots of fruit and vegetables so you get the feeling of richness from the quantity, and the fibre fills you up but gives you far fewer calories.

Cholesterol and Exercise – getting it right

Being recommended to take more exercise is usually what happens if you talk to your doctor about lowering your cholesterol levels. However, what they may not tell you is that what makes the difference is not how hard you exercise, but how long you do it for. A Japanese study has shown that working out extra hard has no effect on cholesterol, but exercising for at least 40 minutes several times a week raised the levels of HDL (beneficial cholesterol) by 2.53 points. It’s particularly important for women as for each point the HDL level increases means that our risk of heart disease gets reduced by 3 per cent. And don’t think 35 or 39 minutes will do, apparently it takes a full 40 minutes to activate an enzyme called LPL, which helps raise HDL levels. Anyone for a long walk?

Extra health benefits for men

Over 16 million adults in the UK currently are affected by hypertension and it is certainly vitally important to control high blood pressure to help keep your heart healthy. However, now it seems that paying attention to your blood pressure can also bring other benefits, particularly for men and some of the concerns they might have around ageing. A study conducted by researchers from Harvard and the Veterans Association (VA) in the USA examined the medical records of more than 350 older men who were part of the VA Normative Aging Study, which included a range of neuropsychological tests. This is a way of looking at brain function by summarizing the results of a series of organized mental tasks such as ability to learn and retain information, problem solving ability and intelligence for example. The key finding was that as the men aged, their overall neuropsychological function declined.

That is something you might expect, but what was startling was that that decline was significantly more pronounced among men who had high blood pressure but were taking no preventive measures or treatment to control it. In particular this group showed a reduced ability to handle language so that their verbal fluency and word recall was significantly worse when compared to men who also had high blood pressure but who had it under control. So if you want to keep on having lively arguments using exactly the right words then make sure you monitor your blood pressure levels!

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