Archive for January, 2008

How Lap Band Surgery Promotes Weight Loss

Are you obese and all your efforts through diet and exercise ultimately result in higher numbers on your scale?

Undoubtedly, you have heard that the best weight loss results are achieved with healthy eating behaviors and regular physical activity. However, for some, this best results program is much easier said than done.

Severe obesity is a chronic condition. It is difficult to treat with diet and exercise. Gastrointestinal surgery is an option for those who cannot lose weight by diet and exercise means alone.

Lap band surgery promotes weight loss by restricting food intake. How it essentially works is that the less calories in, the less calories absorbed for overweight maintenance.

Normally food moves along the digestive tract and calories and nutrients are absorb along the way. First stop in this absorption route is your stomach. Amazingly, your stomach can hold about 3 pints of food at one time.

Lap band surgery reduces the amount your stomach can hold at one time. Simply, you will be unable to eat large amounts of food in a single sitting. Or for those that try, they may find their chewed up food right back at them, vomiting.

Adjustable gastric banding is a procedure wherein a hollow band is placed around the stomach near its upper end, creating a small pouch and a narrow passage into the rest of the stomach. The band is then inflated with a salt solution through a tube that connects the band to an access port placed under the skin.

This lap band can be tightened or loosened to increase or decrease the size of your surgically created “first stop” upper stomach pouch.

The advantages of this food quantity restrictive operation is the ease to perform and is generally safer than the alternatives. It is usually done via laparoscopy, which uses smaller incisions, creates less tissue damage, and involves shorter operating time and hospital stays than open procedures.

The “beauty” of this type of surgery is the ability to reverse it if necessary.

The disadvantages of lap band surgery is less weight loss than other weight loss surgery alternatives, and less likelihood for maintaining weight loss over the long haul.

Frankly, the success of this laparoscopy surgery strongly depends on your willingness to adopt a long-term healthy eating and regular physical activity plan.

One of the most common risks of lap band insertion is vomiting, which occurs when too much eaten or the narrow passage, created by the band, is blocked.

Although lap band surgeries are the safest, complications have resulted in death for less than 1 percent of all cases.

Calcium Rich Food Sources for Lactose Intolerance

If you are avoiding milk because of lactose intolerance, or otherwise, your most reliable way to get its calcium benefit is to choose lactose-free alternatives, such as cheese, yogurt, or lactose-free milk.

Powerful alternatives for calcium rich food include calcium fortified juices, cereals, breads, soy beverages, or rice beverages. Check out these and other food labels to discovery if calcium has been added (fortification).

Also, canned sardines, salmon with bones, soybeans, soy products, some dried beans, and leafy greens such as collard, turnip greens, kale, bok choy are other calcium food sources.

Tips for Your Healthy Diet with Vegetables

Vegetables are integral part of a well-balanced healthy eating plan. And because of their limited shelf life, they are also the most difficult aspect to regularly keep in stock for your healthy diet.

Here are some vegetable maintenance strategies to help incorporate vegetables into your regular consumption program.

Buy fresh vegetables in season, not do they cost less, but are likely to be at their peak flavor.

Stock up on frozen vegetables for quick and easy cooking in the microwave or stove top.

Buy pre-washed bags of salad greens, then add baby carrots and grape tomatoes for a quick salad. Fresh vegetables that are easy to prepare are time savers, with more likelihood for consumption.

Use a microwave to quickly “zap” vegetables, most taste great this way and add warmth to your meal during the cold months.

Plan your meals around a vegetable main dish, then add other foods to complement it. This is the opposite of what most people do.

Add cooked pureed vegetables such as potatoes to thicken stews, soups and gravies, adding flavor, nutrients, and texture.

Shred carrots or zucchini into:

  • muffins
  • meatloaf
  • casseroles
  • quick breads

Try including chopped vegetables in your pasta sauces or lasagna. Buy packages of veggies such as baby carrots or celery sticks for quick snacks.

Include a green salad with your dinner every night, and routinely change the tossed in vegetables ingredients for nutrient balancing.

These vegetable inclusion tips will take you a long way in your quest for a healthy diet with vegetables.

Healthy Weight Loss Diet Includes Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are a major part of a well-balanced healthy eating diet. There are many different ways to lose or maintain a healthy weight, but consuming more fruits and vegetables is a healthier way.

Diets rich in fruits and vegetables help in controlling your weight, but this is not their only benefit. This type of diet may also reduce your risk of some types of cancer and other chronic diseases.

Fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals, fiber, and other substances that are important for your good health.

Watching what you eat, and not how much you eat, is the healthiest plan for weight loss. Create a lower calorie version of your favorite dishes by replacing higher calorie ingredients with low calorie fruits and vegetables.

Including more fruits and vegetables adds water and fiber content to your favorites dishes, so you eat the same amount with fewer calories.

Antioxidants Benefits with Cancer Prevention Evidence

Antioxidants are substances that may protect cells from the damage caused by free radicals (unstable molecules). Some examples of antioxidants are:

Antioxidants stabilize free radicals and may prevent some of the damage they would otherwise cause, like cancer and heart disease.

Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, natural byproducts of normal cell processes. Free radicals are molecules with incomplete electron shells.

In humans, the most common free radical is oxygen. When an oxygen molecule (O2) becomes electrically charged (radicalized) it goes around trying to steal electrons from other molecules. This taking causes damage to that molecules of DNA and over time, such damage may become irreversible and lead to disease.

Antioxidants “mop up” free radicals by neutralizing their electrical charge, this stops them from taking electrons from other molecules.

Exposure to various environmental factors can also lead to free radical formation.

Considerable laboratory evidence indicates that antioxidants may slow or possibly prevent the development of cancer. However, clinical trials are less clear.

Discover Some Common Food Sources of Antioxidants

Antioxidants are receiving a tremendous amount of healthy press lately, so you might wonder where you might find them. Well, they abundant in common food sources, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, some meats, poultry and fish.

Some examples of antioxidants are beta-carotene, lutein, lycopene, vitamins C, E, and A. The following gives you a breakdown of common food sources for each example.

Beta-carotene is in many foods that are orange in color, such as sweet potatoes, carrots, cantaloupe, squash, apricots, pumpkin, and mangos, and some green leafy vegetables including collard greens, spinach, and kale are also rich sources of beta-carotene.

Lutein, associated with healthy eyes, is abundant in green, leafy vegetables such as collard greens, spinach, and kale.

Lycopene is a potent antioxidant you’ll find in tomatoes, watermelon, guava, papaya, apricots, pink grapefruit and blood oranges.

Foods rich in vitamin A include liver, sweet potatoes, carrots, milk, egg yolks and mozzarella cheese.

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) can be found in high abundance in numerous fruits and vegetables, cereals, beef, poultry and fish.

Vitamin E is found in almonds, mangos, nuts, broccoli and in many oils including wheat germ, safflower, corn and soybean oils.

Selenium is not an antioxidant nutrient, but a mineral. However, it is a component of antioxidant enzymes, and plant foods like rice and wheat are the major dietary sources. The meat from animals that eat grains or plants grown in selenium-rich soil have higher levels of selenium in their muscle. Brazil nuts also contain large quantities of selenium.

Difference Between Dietary and Herbal Supplements

The difference between dietary and herbal supplements is one of intent.

Dietary supplements are defined in U.S. as a product that contains vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, enzymes, and/or other ingredients intended to supplement the diet.

There are special labeling requirements for dietary supplements and they are treated as foods, not drugs. Dietary supplements must be:

  • is labeled as being a dietary supplement
  • intended to be taken in tablet, capsule, powder, softgel, gelcap, liquid form
  • is not represented for use as a conventional food, as a sole item of a meal or the diet
  • a product intended to supplement the diet, which contains one or more of the following: vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, or any combination

Since dietary supplements are regulated as foods, and not drugs, there may be quality issues in their manufacturing process. The use of the term Natural does not automatically mean safe or effective.

Supplements can interact with prescribed or over-the-counter medicines, and other supplements, so always ask your doctor before taking them.

Herbal supplements are a type of dietary supplement that contains plant or part of a plant used for its flavor, scent, or potential therapeutic properties. Many herbs have a long history of use and of claimed health benefits. Today, many intended use is for health purposes.

An herb (botanical) includes flowers, leaves, bark, fruit, seeds, stems, and roots, either individually or in mixtures.

It’s important to know that just because an herbal supplement is labeled natural does not mean it is safe or without any harmful effects. Take the examples or kava and comfrey, which have been linked to serious liver damage.

Herbal supplements can act in the same way as drugs, they can cause medical problems. In some cases, people have experienced negative effects despite following the instructions on the supplement’s label.

It is important to consult your health care provider before using an herbal supplement because some are known to interact with medications that cause health problems.

In the U.S., dietary and herbal supplements are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as foods. What this essentially comes down to is that they do not have to meet the same standards as drugs and over-the-counter medications for proof of safety, effectiveness, and good manufacturing practices.

Supplement users need to be aware and take precautions, at least until science catches up!

Iodine Deficiency Causes Anxiety

Iodine directly affects your thyroid gland secretions, which controls your heart action, nerve response to stimuli, rate of body growth and metabolism.

Every body needs iodine for their thyroid to function normally. If you have an iodine deficiency, your thyroid cannot make a sufficient amount of its hormone. So your body goes into a thyroid deficit, which is a cause for anxiety.

During periods of iodine deficiency, your anterior pituitary secretes its thyroid-stimulating hormone and your thyroid increases in size in a vain attempt to produce more hormones. The result is what’s referred to as a goiter.

Iodine is a trace mineral that is also an essential nutrient for normal cell metabolism. Metabolism is the process of converting food into energy.

Iodine deficiency is rare in the U.S. due to its inclusion is many salt products.

Zinc Links to Diarrhea, Alcoholism and Immune System

Zinc is an essential mineral that is in almost every cell of your body. It promotes biochemical reactions by stimulating the activity of about 100 enzymes.

Zinc supports a healthy immune system, it’s needed for wound healing, it helps with your sense of taste and smell, and it’s needed for DNA synthesis. Zinc also has a supporting role in normal growth and development during:

  • pregnancy
  • childhood
  • adolescence

Oysters are the best source of zinc per serving, but red meat and poultry provide the majority of zinc in our American diet. Other good sources are:

  • nuts
  • beans
  • whole grains
  • dairy products
  • certain seafood
  • fortified breakfast cereals

The immune system is adversely affected by a zinc deficiency. Diarrhea results in a loss of zinc and a deficiency is consider with:

And symptoms of impaired growth in infants and children.

Vegetarians may need to increase their intake of zinc due to the lower absorption of zinc from plant foods.

Currently the effect of zinc treatments on the severity or duration of common cold symptoms is controversial.

Caffeine Boost and How Long to Elimnate Caffeine Caused Dopamine Effects

Caffeine is in coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate, some nuts and certain medicines. It has numerous effects on your body’s metabolism, including the “much sought after” stimulation to the central nervous system.

Why the boost? Because caffeine blocks the action of adenosine receptors. And in various brain regions, this class of receptors also interacts with dopamine receptors to counteract the effects of dopamine.

By reducing the activity of adenosine receptors, caffeine increases dopamine activity, resulting in higher dopamine levels.

Dopamine is a natural neurotransmitter that controls:

  • emotion
  • movement
  • motivation
  • feelings of pleasure

That’s why you may find caffeine makes you more alert and gives you a boost of pleasurable energy.

Caffeine is well tolerated in most common doses, although high doses, like energy drinks, may cause:

  • agitation
  • jitteriness
  • insomnia
  • increase in heart rate
  • increase in blood pressure

It takes about 5 hours to eliminate caffeine’s dopamine effects.

Fast Acting Carbs Cause for Macular Degeneration

A recent study seems to confirm earlier findings linking high consumption of fast-acting carbs over time with age-related macular degeneration.

Fast-acting carbohydrates are carbs that are quickly digested and absorbed, resulting in a rapid rise in blood sugar level. Examples are:

The whole-grain versions of bread, rice and pasta fall into the slow-acting carb category.

Consuming a diet high in fast carbs is also suspected of being involved in the vision loss that sometimes occurs in people with diabetes.

The study concluded that it was too early to recommend dietary slow carbs as a preventive strategy, or slow its progression, for age-related macular degeneration. Why wait for this proof some day?

Replace your fast carbs with whole grains today and take a healthy step toward preventing the preventable.

Phytochemicals: Reduce Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, Etc.

Phytochemicals are natural plant compounds that seem to offer disease protection to those who consume these plants. Research is discovering a broad range of potential health benefits that these chemicals may provide, from reducing cancer and heart disease risks to defending against the natural process of aging.

Various fruits and vegetables are found to contain different phytochemicals. So in order to get the full phytochemicals’ health benefits, focus on eating a variety of colors and kinds daily.

Prevent the preventable with fruit and vegetable’s phytochemicals.

Food Allergies or Intolerance Cause for Tightness in Throat, Itching, Hives, Vomiting, Diarrhea Symptoms

A food allergy is your body’s immune system’s abnormal response to a food. Allergic reactions to food can cause serious illness and, sometimes, death.

For those with an adverse reaction to food, it is extremely important to find out if and what foods may be causing your potentially allergic reaction.

Sometimes a reaction to food is not an allergy at all, but a food intolerance. And it is more common than food allergy. Those with food intolerance may experience symptoms that look and feel like a food allergy, but the immune system is not the cause.

If you are allergic to a food, your reaction to it can happen within a few minutes to an hour.

At first you may feel itching in your mouth when you start eating the food. Once the food hits your stomach, you may experience:

When the food allergen is absorbed into your bloodstream, it might cause your blood pressure to drop. As the allergen travels out to your skin, hives or eczema may appear. Throat tightness and trouble breathing also may accompany a response to a food allergens.

In adults, the most often causes of allergic reactions are:

In children, eggs, milk, peanuts and tree nuts are the most common foods that cause problems. Peanuts and tree nuts are the leading causes of the potentially deadly food allergy reactions.

Other factors that may cause similar reactions to food as food allergies symptoms are:

Bottom line is that it is extremely important to work with your doctor to discover which foods cause you an allergic reaction, or differentiate between whether you are intolerant or allergic.

How to Decide Which Calcium Citrate, Phosphate or Carbonate Supplement to Use

Calcium is a mineral found in many foods. Getting enough of it is important because your body can’t make it.

No matter your age, adequate intake of calcium remains a priority because it’s lost daily through your skin, nails, hair, and sweat, urine and feces. Therefore it needs replacement. If not, your body will mine it out of your bones to perform its other crucial functions. Thus, making your bones weaker and easier to break.

Experts recommendation for adults is 1,000 to 1,200 mg per day. Foods containing calcium naturally is your best source, and calcium-fortified foods like orange juice, bread, cereals, etc. is a good food source alternative. Additional calcium supplementation helps ensure you meet your daily requirement.

Calcium exists in nature only in combination with other substances. You may notice that several different calcium compounds are used in supplements, such as:

  • calcium citrate
  • calcium carbonate
  • calcium phosphate

These compounds contain different amounts of the actual calcium in the supplement. As such, it is important to read the label carefully to determine how much elemental calcium is in it.

Calcium supplements come in an extensive range of preparations and strengths. The “best” supplement is the one that meets your needs.

Some other key factors about calcium supplements to consider are:

  • Purity: Look for labels that state “purified” or have the USP symbol. Avoid calcium from unrefined oyster shell, bone meal, or dolomite without the USP symbol, because it may contain high levels of lead or other toxic metals.
  • Absorbability: You can discover how well it dissolves by placing it in a small amount of warm water for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. If it doesn’t dissolved here, it probably won’t where its needed, in your stomach. You can save yourself this trouble by purchasing a chewable or liquid type because these are broken down ahead of stomach entry.
  • Tolerance: Some calcium supplements may cause gas or constipation. If building up to your desired supplementation amount and/or a dietary fiber increase do not resolve this problem, then you may want to head back and get another form of calcium. It might take several tries to get it right, so test run with smaller bottles.
  • Calcium Interactions: It is important to consult your doctor or pharmacist about possible interactions between your medications and calcium supplements.

Calcium, whether from food or supplements, it’s absorbed best by the body when taken several times a day in amounts of 500 mg or less. However, taking it once is better than not at all.

Calcium carbonate is absorbed best when taken with food. Calcium citrate can be taken anytime. Calcium and vitamin D do not need to be taken together in order to be absorbed.

Getting enough calcium, by diet or by supplement, is only the start for protecting your bones. Exercise and a healthy lifestyle fall into this equation as well.

Antioxidant Benefits of Vitamin E

Fat soluble vitamin E is important in the formation of your red blood cells, and helps your body use vitamin K. It also has powerful biological antioxidant benefits.

Antioxidants act to protect your cells from free radicals’ affects, which are a potentially damaging by-products of energy metabolism. Free radicals can damage cells, and may contribute to the development of heart disease and cancer.

Vitamin E has also been shown to play a role in immune function, in DNA repair, and other metabolic processes.

The synthetic form is only half as active as the natural form. Vitamin E supplements which are sold in the synthetic form are labeled “D, L”, while the natural form is labeled “D”.

Common food sources of vitamin E:

  • vegetable oils
  • nuts
  • green leafy vegetables
  • fortified cereals are

Recommended daily intake is around 15 mg.

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