4 Foods That Can Never Be Green


 

If you’re like me, you do what you can for the environment. While I haven’t progressed to giving up toilet paper or line-drying my laundry, I take public transportation, I compost and recycle at home, and I forego bottled water along with most disposable shopping bags. It’s the little things, right?

Fat Substitutes Linked to Weight Gain

Fat Substitutes Linked to Weight Gain


Drop the potato chip! Indulging in low-calorie snacks made with synthetic fat substitutes could actually pack on the pounds, according to new research.
The study was conducted by researchers at Purdue University and published bin the American Psychological Association’s journal Behavioral Neuroscience. Susan E. Swithers, PhD, the study’s lead researcher said:

10 Foods That Help Lower Cholesterol


In drugged America (or is it drunk America? Hmm, that’s a toss up), Americans are blindly medicating when really the answer is a simple change of diet and exercise. With 1 in 5 Americans testing high for cholesterol it’s no wonder cholesterol-fighting drugs are the most popular ones on the market. Lipitor is the most prescribed cholesterol lowering medicine world-wide; and though it is handed out like candy, there can be some nasty side effects when taking these kind of drugs including, aggression, hostility, headaches, muscle pain, and diarrhea.

Top 8 Sunscreen Excuses


69% of women lie to themselves, saying they don’t need sunscreen. Don’t be one of them. Arm yourself with the simplest and strongest weapon we have against wrinkles, age spots, and skin cancer.

15 Ways to Nourish Your Soul


 
It seems that we try to pack more things to do into our every day but few of these things improve our health or nourish our soul.  Here are 15 ideas to help you bring more joy into your days:
1.  Brew a pot of herbal tea, sit down with a book or magazine and just take a break from the world.
2.  Smile. Even if you don’t want to.  Smiling tricks your brain into thinking you’re happy.

Dr. Cook’s Top 8 Weight Loss Supplements


 
I am regularly asked which supplements are safe and helpful for weight loss.  While I maintain that healthyeating and exercise are essential for weight loss, there are some supplements that can help.
Here are my Top 8 Safe Weight Loss Supplements:
1.  A high-quality full-spectrum digestive enzyme formula that includes amylase, lipase, and protease, among other enzymes, is also beneficial. Take 1 to 3 enzyme capsules or tablets with every meal to help your body break down the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in your food into the natural sugars, essential fatty acids, and amino acids needed for optimal digestion and healing.
2. Other enzymes that aid weight loss include:  lipase, nattokinase, and superoxide dismutase (SOD), or a single product that includes some or all of these enzymes. Start with 1 capsule or tablet of your chosen enzyme(s) on an empty stomach 20 minutes before or at least 1 hour after meals, three times daily. You can gradually increase that amount to 3 capsules or tablets at a time, three times daily, or more with the guidance of a nutritional medicine practitioner who is experienced in systemic enzyme therapy.
3. Vitamin D3, 2000 to 4000 IU daily, to support healthy brain hormone balance—both of which are involved in maintaining or achieving healthy weight.
4. Multivitamin and mineral, to address possible nutritional deficiencies. See information above.
5. Probiotics, 2 capsules at bedtime, to ensure toxins are being eliminated through the colon and not reabsorbed into the bloodstream. See information above.
6. Fish or flaxseed oil, 3000 mg daily of either oil, or 500 mg of DHA and 360 mg of EPA, to support healthy fat-burning processes.
7. L-carnitine, an amino acid, to help turn stored fat into fuel; follow package instructions, since products vary greatly.
8. Milk thistle, 1 teaspoon of extract twice daily for 6 weeks, to support healthy liver function.

Why Do Vegetarians and Vegans Weigh Less?


Why Do Vegetarians and Vegans Weigh Less?

This is the first year ever that the USDA has embraced a vegetarian diet. In its 2010 dietary pyramid, the USDA gave vegetarianism an outright endorsement saying in addition to improved heart health, a vegetarian diet was associated with lower rates of obesity. Another study in 2009 by Oxford researcher Tim Key found that vegetarians and vegans had body weights 3 percent to 20 percent lower than meat eaters. So why are vegetarians and vegans thinner?
Comparing Numbers
First off, this isn’t true of all vegetarians and vegans. It’s usually those that eat a whole foods diet full of fruits, vegetables, soy, beans, nuts, seeds and free of processed foods, that enjoy the most weight loss. This results because the meat-free whole food choices tend to be less calorie dense. Animal proteins tend to be more calorie dense than plant-based proteins. For example, a 4 oz serving of garbanzo beans has 135 calories and 2 grams of fat while a 4 oz piece of filet has 232 calories and 10 grams of fat. A 4 oz serving of firm tofu has 88 calories and 5 grams of fat and a 4 oz serving of salmon has 237 calories and 29 grams of fat. While there are some less caloric choices like skinless chicken breast or a lean leg of lamb, when you break down the numbers, there tend to be more calories in meat than plant-based protein sources.
Healthy vegetarians and vegans also eat a lot more, you guess it, fruits and vegetables. Eating loads of fiber-filled fruits and veggies tend to fill you up faster with less calories.
Vegans Weigh Even Less
Vegans experience more dramatic weight loss when compared to vegetarians because they don’t eat any animal products like butter, cheese, and eggs. Not having cheese on that veggie sandwich or stinky bleu cheese atop your salad means less calories in the end. There are fewer calorie dense sources of food on a vegan diet and the foods that are fatty are loaded with healthful nutrients, specifically raw nuts, seeds, and avocado.
According to Glamour Magazine:
“I’m seeing more people going vegan because they’ve heard it can help them lose weight,” says Dawn Jackson Blatner, R.D., author of The Flexitarian Diet, who estimates that the average weight of a vegan is up to 15 percent less than that of someone who eats meat—which translates to 20 to 25 pounds for the average woman.
Cynthia Sass, R.D., agrees that a vegan diet can lead you to drop pounds. “If by going vegan, you end up eating more veggies, fruit, whole grains, beans and lentils than you were before, then it can be a way to reduce calories without feeling like you are,” says Sass, author of Cinch! Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds and Lose Inches.
Weight-conscience celebrities agree. Ellen DeGeneres, Alicia Silverstone, and Alanis Morissette have all slimmed down since starting a vegan diet.
While my reasons for enjoying a plant-based diet weren’t initially cosmetic, from my experience, it is easier to drop weight and keep it off. And in the end, you feel a whole lot better about where your foods are sourced.

5 Dangers of Excess Sugar



As kids, we were taught that too much sugar would rot our teeth, but today we know that the ramifications of a lifelong sugar splurge are scarier than a finger-wagging dentist. Yes, sugar can cause cavities, but of much greater concern is the sweet stuff’s link to bodywide inflammation.
7 Tricks for Taming Your Sweet Tooth
Sugar can contribute to cellular inflammation, which is like a continuing series of paper cuts that compromise cell function. Deep inside the body, these microscopic wounds fester below the pain threshold. Because many of us don’t see or feel the damage, there is little incentive to cut back on the inflammatory diet that is causing this constant cellular damage, so the party continues.
That is, until the body blows a gasket. Left unchecked, inflammation can unleash dozens of different diseases.

Heart Disease
Results of a 2010 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that people who got at least 25 percent of their daily calories from added sugars were 3.1 times more likely to have low levels of HDL (good) cholesterol than people who got less than 5 percent of their calories from sweets. People on the high end of the sugar spectrum were also more likely to have dangerously high levels of blood fats called triglycerides.
Cancer
Scientists have long known that cancer cells love glucose. A common scan used to detect cancer in the body, called a PET, starts with a person downing a sugary solution. After the sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream, the scan identifies possible malignancies by highlighting areas that gobble up the most sugar. “Data supports the general hypothesis that cancer cells are addicted to glucose and that, by restricting glucose metabolism, one can stop their growth,” says Don Ayer, PhD, a cancer researcher at the University of Utah and the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City.
Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes, a deadly disease that can cause blindness and nerve damage, and can lead to amputations of digits and limbs, is perhaps the most direct and serious repercussion of excess sugar in the diet. In the United States, nearly 24 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes and another 57 million suffer from insulin resistance or prediabetes. Some experts estimate that by 2050 one in three Americans will have the disease.
In the early stages of type 2 diabetes, cells stop responding to insulin. Unable to enter the cells, glucose builds up in the blood, triggering inflammatory health conditions. Left untreated, insulin resistance often escalates into type 2 diabetes. But long before that diagnosis, the inflammation associated with prediabetes (sometimes called metabolic syndrome) wreaks havoc on the body, setting the stage for heart disease and cancer, among other serious problems.
Can a Vegan Diet Cure Diabetes?
Candida
Yeast is a natural inhabitant of the gut. Healthy bacteria help keep yeast levels in check. But when antibiotics, illness or chronic stress kill off healthy bacteria, yeast can run amok. Sugar compounds the problem by feeding yeast growth. “Sugar enables yeast to go from a budding stage to a tissue invasion stage,” says Carolyn Dean, MD. Yeast overgrowth can cause problems ranging from yeast and fungal infections to rashes, thrush and leaky gut syndrome.
Immune System Snafus
Because a diet laden with sugar creates body-wide biochemical stress and inflammation, it can overstress and thereby weaken the immune system in a variety of ways. One way, as noted before, is by triggering leaky gut syndrome, which leads to undigested food molecules getting into the bloodstream. When that happens, the immune system has to finish the digestive process, an overwhelming and distracting effort. “In short, our defense forces get exhausted by the sugar,” says Teitelbaum, “so that when real trouble comes down the pike, the immune system can’t respond.” A leaky gut can also underlie disorders characterized by an overactive immune system, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and psoriasis.
As kids, we were taught that too much sugar would rot our teeth, but today we know that the ramifications of a lifelong sugar splurge are scarier than a finger-wagging dentist. Yes, sugar can cause cavities, but of much greater concern is the sweet stuff’s link to bodywide inflammation.
Sugar can contribute to cellular inflammation, which is like a continuing series of paper cuts that compromise cell function. Deep inside the body, these microscopic wounds fester below the pain threshold. Because many of us don’t see or feel the damage, there is little incentive to cut back on the inflammatory diet that is causing this constant cellular damage, so the party continues.
That is, until the body blows a gasket. Left unchecked, inflammation can unleash dozens of different diseases.
Here are just a few of the malfunctions related to a lifetime of sweet indulgence.
Heart Disease
Results of a 2010 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that people who got at least 25 percent of their daily calories from added sugars were 3.1 times more likely to have low levels of HDL (good) cholesterol than people who got less than 5 percent of their calories from sweets. People on the high end of the sugar spectrum were also more likely to have dangerously high levels of blood fats called triglycerides.
Cancer
Scientists have long known that cancer cells love glucose. A common scan used to detect cancer in the body, called a PET, starts with a person downing a sugary solution. After the sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream, the scan identifies possible malignancies by highlighting areas that gobble up the most sugar. “Data supports the general hypothesis that cancer cells are addicted to glucose and that, by restricting glucose metabolism, one can stop their growth,” says Don Ayer, PhD, a cancer researcher at the University of Utah and the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City.
Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes, a deadly disease that can cause blindness and nerve damage, and can lead to amputations of digits and limbs, is perhaps the most direct and serious repercussion of excess sugar in the diet. In the United States, nearly 24 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes and another 57 million suffer from insulin resistance or prediabetes. Some experts estimate that by 2050 one in three Americans will have the disease.
In the early stages of type 2 diabetes, cells stop responding to insulin. Unable to enter the cells, glucose builds up in the blood, triggering inflammatory health conditions. Left untreated, insulin resistance often escalates into type 2 diabetes. But long before that diagnosis, the inflammation associated with prediabetes (sometimes called metabolic syndrome) wreaks havoc on the body, setting the stage for heart disease and cancer, among other serious problems.
Candida
Yeast is a natural inhabitant of the gut. Healthy bacteria help keep yeast levels in check. But when antibiotics, illness or chronic stress kill off healthy bacteria, yeast can run amok. Sugar compounds the problem by feeding yeast growth. “Sugar enables yeast to go from a budding stage to a tissue invasion stage,” says Carolyn Dean, MD. Yeast overgrowth can cause problems ranging from yeast and fungal infections to rashes, thrush and leaky gut syndrome.
Immune System Snafus
Because a diet laden with sugar creates body-wide biochemical stress and inflammation, it can overstress and thereby weaken the immune system in a variety of ways. One way, as noted before, is by triggering leaky gut syndrome, which leads to undigested food molecules getting into the bloodstream. When that happens, the immune system has to finish the digestive process, an overwhelming and distracting effort. “In short, our defense forces get exhausted by the sugar,” says Teitelbaum, “so that when real trouble comes down the pike, the immune system can’t respond.” A leaky gut can also underlie disorders characterized by an overactive immune system, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and psoriasis.
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