Surprise: Antibiotics May Be Contributing to the Obesity Epidemic

Surprise: Antibiotics May Be Contributing to the Obesity Epidemic

LET FOOD BE THY MEDICINE - Hippocrates

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

Hippocrates the father of modern medicine said this about 2,500 years ago and it was practiced by our ancestors to stay healthy. However, in the past 200 years the new modern life style has made it difficult for us to follow this old adage. With intelligent reasoning and common sense it is possible to follow Hippocrates’s advice and preserve our health

.

The measures we need to take are simple but its positive effects on our health can be tremendous.

Whole grains food: Our ancestors ate whole grains. For longer shelf life of foods our industries are processing foods, thus removing vital nourishments and fiber from the grain by removal of bran and endosperm. Remaining processed grain contains very high percentage of starch. This is claimed to be the higher incidence of diabetes, heart diseases Alzheimer’s and cancers. Starch turns into glucose that spikes insulin secretion, which increases triglycerides and plaques in our arteries.

Fresh vegetables: Eat as fresh vegetables as best as possible. The veggies should be green, leafy and colorful. More color will usually mean better antioxidants. If you can consume raw, well washed vegetables, it is better still. To increase the yield the agriculturists have been using excessive fertilizers and pesticides. Many chemicals are new, untested and even totally unknown causing diseases.  

Meat form grass fed animals: Grass fed animals provide better omega 3 essential fatty acids. Meat from animals fed on corn and artificially fattened animals provides fewer omega 3 and also contain inferior quality of micronutrients. Such foods also cause inflammation in body, which is touted for many modern illnesses.

Poultry products: These are also different in quality when compared to farm raised versus poultry raised chickens. Free range raised chicken eggs provide better omega 3 and nutrition than overcrowded poultry farm raised birds. Poultry farm also has problems of possibilities of infections. A lot of discussion is also taking place about the unhygienic and unacceptable conditions of poultry farms.

Fish consumption: Try and eat fatty fish once or twice a week. This also should be preferably from wild stock instead of farm raised. Fish is rich in anti-inflammatory essential fatty acid like Omega 3. Water pollution from industrial wastes contains a lot of PCB and high levels of mercury, which gets to us through fish and we should be mindful of this.

Ultra violet rays of sun for Vitamin D: Almighty has made sun available to the universe. Ultra violet rays of sun light makes Vitamin D in our skin. Recently we are getting habituated to live in air conditioned homes and indoor offices all day resulting to our exposure to sun to minimum. It is estimated that half the population of the USA is Vitamin D deficient because of this. It is claimed that vitamin D is not only a vitamin but a hormone because unlike other vitamins it is produced in our body. It is said to affect every cell of the body

SUMMARY:  

In the name of modernization and conveniences we have either overlooked the importance of quality of our food. . Some experts believe that high incidence of cancer, ADD, Alzheimer’s, depression, diabetes and heart diseases is partly attributed to our attitude to the quality of food.  We need to learn some simple hints to follow the healthful advice Hippocrates. These are as follows:

10 simple hints to keep ourselves healthy and avoid diseases:

1      

11. Eat fresh vegetables, preferably raw.

22. Consume only whole grains.

33. Stay away from Starch, Salt and Saturated fats.

44. Consume Mono and Polysachurated fats and only sparingly Saturated fats.

55. Consume a lot of antioxidants from Vit C, fruits and vegetables.

66. Consume a lot of nuts containing anti-inflammatory Omega 3.

77. Consume enough micronutrients and vitamins.

88. Put in habit daily exercises, cardio and weight lifting both.

99. Keep your weight to ideal level.

110.  Stay away from radiation, ionizing and electromagnetic both.

Hara Hachi Bu - Confucius; Eat less and live longer

Secret of longevity: “Hara Hachi Bu” is a 2500 years old famous adage of Confucius (551 – 479 BC), the legendary Chinese philosopher. It literally means “stomach 80%” or “eat food until your stomach is 80% full”. This is a greeting that the people in Okinawa Island in Japan use at the start of a meal to each other. And this is considered to be the secret of 29% population of that island reaching over 100 years of age. (Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical “religion” developed from the teachings of Confucius).

Eat Less and Live Longer: Longevity has been always a fascinating subject. Everyone wants to live as long as possible, may be forever. If possible no one wants to die at all. Secret of long life seems to be consuming fewer calories and living a simple life. They all have lower incidence of diabetes, heart diseases, Alzheimer's and cancers. No one is overweight.

National Geographic research: In 2005 National Geographic commissioned a study to find where in the world people live the longest and what is their secret of longevity? Their researcher Dan Buettner, author of “Blue Zone, Lessons of Living Longer from the People Who Have Lived the Longest” identified four such geographical areas he named as Blue Zones. They are namely, Sardinia, Okinawa, Costa Rica, and Loma Linda in California. These places have maximum percentage of centurions (persons living more than 100 years) in the population. Top position is claimed by Okinawa Island. They remain active until the end. The common denominators for the longevity were then compared. The results are interesting and many articles are available on websites about this and similar subjects, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.
Most important commonalities: The study found the following:

• Eat fewer calories: In Okinawa Island when people start to eat, they greet each other with “Hara Hachi Bu”. With this reminder they eat less. In 1930 Prof. Clive McCay of Cornell University also deduced from animal experiments that calorie restriction prolongs the life.
• Stay active and use more calories: Our sedentary life style is the cause of many ills. Even sitting on floor, as in olden days, is considered to be better than sitting on chair because you need to use more calories to stand up from floor. Walking is even better. Many thousand years old Chinese medicine believes in acupressure on soles of feet and hands where the body organs are represented. Walking and working with hands continues such acupressure with all its benefits.
• Eat predominantly plant based diet: Most of these people are found to eat leafy veggies grown in their own gardens. They eat little meat, fish tofu and dairy. Because mostly it is plant based, the quantity is large but calories are few. Hence they stay lean.
• Have a purpose to live: Again in Okinawa a word "Ikigai” is often referred to. This means "that which makes one's life worth living." For some it may be family for others it may individual spirituality or community service.
• Live a balanced life in all different ways: It may be eating, drinking, exercising or resting. Anything that stands to common sense is good. Sardinia's local vine containing three times antioxidants may also be an explanation.
• Get involved in your people: In all these blue zones the community is well knit and stay involved with one another. It is almost tribal society.
• Meditation and prayers: Californian Seventh Day Adventist centurions perform communal prayers and walks. Meditation is their way of life.

Bottom line: It is simple and straight forward. Live a clean, simple and involved life. Use common sense. Do all that our ancestors have done to stay healthy. Make the community your family. Do all that helps each other. Feel happy doing what you do. You will surely live longer and that too with good health. It makes sense. Let us all follow this.

Refrigerators and Freezers are Conveniences; Use With Care to Preserve Health

Home refrigerators and freezers are great conveniences: Everyone will want to enjoy its use. However, as these appliances have become almost standard use items in affluent societies, we need to look at their possible downside also, since this has substantially changed our eating habits and life style. We need to ponder over usage of these appliances to ensure that while we enjoy such conveniences we do not hurt or harm our health by its use. Let us look at some of these risks one by one.

Risk of accidents: Risks of accidents are rare but they do happen. The examples of such risks are, accidental tipping the fridge by young children and crushing them when they try and hang on to its handle. Accidental trapping of very small children in the abandoned fridge is also known to happen while playing. Occasional risk of fire due to electrical accident is also known. These are all avoidable by taking appropriate precautions.

Environmental risks: These appliances use chemicals like hydro-chlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) or hydro-fluorocarbons (HFC) as coolant. These cause environmental hazard by depletion of ozone layer. These chemicals may also seep into drinking water if not dumped properly.

Short term health hazards: Only until about a hundred years ago or even less, our ancestors were used to cook the food fresh everyday and consume it promptly the same day.  Keeping cooked food for more than a day or two was considered unhealthy. Leftover food at room temperature will grow food borne bacteria and fungus, will go rancid and will become health hazard. Bacterial growth may also collect toxins and cause the consumer to have intestinal and systemic problems. Listeria bacteria are known to remain alive in food at fridge temperature of 40 degree F (4 degree C), causing indigestion and intestinal problems, particularly in pregnant women, sick patients, children and old people with weaker immune system.

Long term health hazards due to loss of nutrition: Until a few decades ago the seasonal vegetables were locally grown and were available to people. With communication revolution and distances becoming smaller, these days the vegetables and pre-cooked foods come from afar. Sometimes such foods travel a few thousand miles by ship or by air, deep frozen for days or months and sent to other countries. It is a great blessing that whole world can enjoy fruits and vegetables any time during the year and not necessarily only during its season. But such deep frozen foods lose their nutrition value due to loss of micronutrients and vitamins being destroyed, caused by elapse of time and use of preservatives. Every so often we hear about recommendation of supplements of vitamins and minerals, which mostly is result of such long time between the production and use.

Change of Life style: The refrigerators and freezers have changed the way we live. Freezers have added to the convenience of doing grocery in bulk every few days and keeping it frozen at home. Our ancestors used to eat only fresh because there were no fridges then and hence no leftover foods. I remember my father’s generation would eat their food immediately after it was cooked. In fact the home maker women will wait to cook Chapatti until the bread earner men will come home from work and feed them with freshly cooked meals. Even one day's stale food was usually not used. Now we eat food from fridge cooked even a week old and consume gradually over a few days. This has distinct risk of bacterial growth and loss of nutritive substances.

Precooked ready to eat food: In Western world, where the home maker is also working and there is not enough home help to cook fresh every day, stale food is warmed and offered as a routine. Readymade food from super markets are cooked at times in some different country, deep frozen, marked as "fresh before" such and such date and we buy them all the time. We put in it our fridge at home and consume it within the given time on the label. Such foods must be stored at zero degree F (-18 C) or lower.

Here are some simple recommendations:

·        Eat fresh and raw food ONLY, if possible.

·        Clean fridge every so often.

·        Keep thermometers in fridge and freezers to monitor temperatures.

·        Eat the food left in fridge as soon as possible and discard if in doubt.

·        Keep the food in fridge covered and keep space between foods.

·        Heat food to boil when using food from fridge to ensure bacteria are killed.  

Remember what Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) said; “Let Food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.

Modern Life Conveniences Causing Damage to Our Health?

Life styles of human being have changed hugely over the past two centuries. This started about two hundred years ago with industrial revolution. Use of oil and energy created another big change because these changed the pace of life fto very fast. These changes provided a lot of conveniences and luxuries but they have also changed our eating habits, which has adversely affected our health because our genes have been used to what our ancestors were used to for thousands of years. These conveniences have caused unintended consequences because of sedentary life style hence increasing risks to human health.

Let us see some of the changes that have damaged our health:

Over Abundance of Calories and Carbohydrates:
Few thousand years ago our ancestors lived on hunted food and gathered wild plants vegetables. This consisted mostly of protein and fat. Agricultural revolution brought us abundance of carbohydrate in our diet. High fructose corn syrup was added only 50 years ago. This is causing increased disease load in people with diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome.

Lack of Exercises:
Cars and means of communications are added to our lives just about 100 years ago. Fastest means of transport was horse or camel until then. Now we have become sedentary and non-active with cars and airplanes. Remote-controls fax and internet has made us even worse. Our daily walking used lot of calories in past, which has disappeared and those who are conscious of it now need gyms to work out.

Lack of sunshine and Vitamin D:
With facilities of air conditioning and fast transport our exposure to sun has been severely curtailed. In developed world a substantial percentage of us are hence Vitamin D deficient. This is causing a number of illnesses like depression, Alzheimer’s and cancers. Pundits say that Vitamin D is not only a vitamin but an enzyme that works on every cell of the body.

Radiation:
Our experimentation with radiation is also only about a century old when we started finding the radioactive isotopes. Our experience of radiation started with bombing of Japan in WWII and then three accidents in nuclear reactors since then. With such minimal experience we are thinking to embark on having major part of our need of electricity with nuclear power plants, which is frightening.

Genetically Modified (GM) foods:
We have embarked on this without enough experience and we do not know how it may hurt us. We need to know its long term implications before it is allowed universally.

Hormone supported animal rearing:
Major part of our meat and chicken now comes from farms where hormones and unknown chemical feed stocks are used to fatten the birds and animals. These substances are consumed by us every day with our food.

Chemicals and fertilizers:
These are now major industries to provide us food. The chemicals in the form of fertilizers and pesticides are ingested by us with our food on daily basis. Aside from that the chemicals produced in industries as by-products are disposed in water channels eventually consumed by humans through fish meals.

Possible ways to avoid damage to our health:

1. We should avoid excessive calories and carbohydrate to avoid diseases.
2. We all need to exercise regularly to keep fit, burn calories and avoid insulin resistance.
3. We need to make our own natural Vitamin D by exposing ourselves to sunlight for a few hours a day.
4. It is wrong to allow something in our food like GM foods, about which we do not know enough. We must discourage its use until we are sure.
5. Natural and synthetic chemicals are growing in number by millions. We should restrict use of unknown chemicals and of those known to hurt.
6. Radiation is a new issue from last century. We have accepted its use despite that we know it causes cancer. We need to have more information about it.

Our addiction to sweet taste (Carbohydrates and Sugars) 

“Let Food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

We must use logic, reasoning and common sense to stop hurting our health.
Let us look at a few facts: Mankind has been living on this planet for many millions of years if you believe in theory of evolution or about ten thousand years if you believe in religious scriptures, from Adam and Eve until now. Either way, we see first mention of sugar in history 500 AD and not before. People used to eat all that was available on daily basis, hunted animals and birds to berries, plant leaves and berries.

So it seems that for thousands of years our ancestors must have had a moderate amount of carbohydrates in vegetables and berries but sugar from sugar cane  started only about 1500 years ago and that from beet just over a hundred years ago. Separated fructose is yet more recent innovation of 1960s from Japan and very quickly picked up by beverage industries because it is sweeter than sugar and yet cheaper than that.
Beverage and fruit juice industries made fructose so prevalent that sweet taste has not become only human weakness but probably turned into an addiction also. Hence sugars, which was not part of our diet for most of our existence on this planet has relatively suddenly become the main component of our calorie consumption.

Yet another fact is lost in history is that in 1931 Otto Heinrich Warburg was awarded Nobel Prize for the discovery of the fact that cancer cells thrive on glucose. Since then a number of alternate therapies of cancer have been tested with this discovery in mind with some success. Using Laetrile (bitter almonds and apricot pits), which contains Nitriloside is one of them. It is claimed that Nitriloside combines with Beta-Glucosidase, an enzyme within cancer cells and create Hydrogen Cyanide and Benzaldehyde, both of which are poisons. As these are released within the cancer, they kill the cancer cells. Nitriloside rich foods include apricot kernels, lima beans, sprouts, lentils, black-eyed peas, walnuts, brown rice, black berries etc. Another is Hydrazine Sulfate (HS) promoted by Dr Joseph Gold a research scientist of NASA. He promoted HS to stops glycogenesis (formation of glucose from protein) to starve cancer cells.

Despite that we know this relationship of cancer and glucose, our sugar consumption has grown four times per capita in the past one hundred years; some literature puts this increase to almost 400 times in last 200 years. Fructose syrup, which is recent innovation of 1960s, has taken up half of sugar's place in our intake.

All the serious diseases like Diabetes, Obesity, Cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer, ADD and Cancers seem to be increasing in same proportion as the increase of sugar and Carbohydrate consumption. And increased sugar consumption is directly related to our new life style indulging in fast foods, processed grains, Vit D deficiency, increased exposure to various chemicals and man-made radiation.

We must plan seriously to prevent the increasing disease load. We may not have a direct proof but there are no doubts that all the circumstantial evidence points to the increased sugar consumption as primary reason for increasing diseases load along with other factors for our present dilemma.

Sedentary life style taking toll of our health

ALL ABOUT EXERCISES AND THEIR BENEFITS

Consult your doctor before embarking on any exercise program

Modern Life Style:
One of the prices that we are paying for the modern life style is profound inactivity in our daily life. Industrial revolution brought in the system wherein people work for large industries and their corporate offices. Those who worked for themselves or in industries preserved the manual activities to some extent. But those people working in offices and shops gradually have gotten used to sedentary life styles. Other facilities like remote controls, garage door openers, and pilot lights in stoves etc went further in people taking to chairs and becoming couch potatoes.

 Our Genetics:
Our bodies are used to activities. In olden days there were no gyms and they were not necessary either because people would do enough activities during the day. They used hands and body muscle to do hard work. They walked long distances because the fastest ride was horse or camel. As the sedentary life set in late 1800s, people got used to inactivity. This probably has become the cause of many diseases like cardio vascular diseases, diabetes, obesity etc. We need to correct our life styles and get back to activities through sports or exercises to maintain our health.
 Popularity of Fitness clubs:
It seems that the fitness gyms started sometime around 1950s. By that time the sedentary life styles started creating adverse effects on the health. Public awareness increased with the medical advice. Those who were used to doing a lot of manual work did not need this. But those who were working in offices needed such facilities.
 Benefits of any exercises;
Exercise of any kind will help circulation of blood in the body and make you feel good. If nothing else a stroll or a walk in the neighborhood for about half an hour a day will help. If you are overweight or have tendency to be obese, or have diseases like coronary artery, blood pressure, diabetes, burning calories by cardio exercises and resistance exercises are important and makes your muscle better tuned for insulin by reducing insulin resistance.
 Objectives of work out and fitness activities:
To keep body active
To lose weight
To increase heart rate to a maximal level
To replace fat in muscle with protein
To reduce insulin resistance in muscle for utilization of glucose
 To meet above objectives usually two different types of workouts are suggested; Let us try and understand the details of such exercises.
 Cardio exercises
Purpose of this exercise is twofold,
a)      To burn calories: You need to have some goal of burning calories every day. I burn about 150 calories in about 20 to 30 minutes on a trade mill.
b)      To increase heart rate safely: This is important to understand thoroughly, because, you may do more harm than good. You must have a pulse meter on the machine and keep the heart rate checked. There is a generic formula that can be used by almost all. However, those with heart conditions must check with their doctors for their ideal maximum heart rate. Formula is 220 – your age = Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) that you may go to. With heart conditions you may want to stay below 90% of the MHR. If you are starting cardio now perhaps it is safer that you do not go beyond 80% of the MHR. For example I am 70, so 220 – 70 = 150 id my MHR. I stay at 120, that 80% to 135 that is 90% of 220.

In my personal case, while doing cardio exercise, after a little warm up, I start on the tread mill with maximum incline (which is usually 15) and a slow speed of 3 miles per hour. As my heart rate rises to my MHR of 120 to 135, I reduce the speed to 2.5 miles and then if necessary also reduce incline to keep the heart rate within that range.
I see many persons running at 5 or 6 miles an hour with zero incline. They may be training for marathon run. I do not intend to run any marathon and joints are vulnerable at high speeds of running. So, if 2.5 miles raises my heart rate to my MHR range with proper incline, I do not see any reason to run faster.

 Resistance exercises or weight training exercises:
Purpose of such exercises is to build muscle by replacing fat with protein in them. It is claimed that protein keeps on burning calories even when at rest. Whether that is true or not, good muscles surely make you look good and make you feel nice. More important though is the fact that the muscle fibers are made more sensitive to insulin and hence help you control your blood sugar and diabetes.
Objective: Build and Develop Muscles, Push weights, Pull weights, Lift weights: Any activity that you normally do for a little while is stretched over longer period becomes generally resistance or muscle building exercise.
PRECAUTIONS:
1. You must ensure that you do the activity only long enough to make your muscle ache or burn and no more. If it is prolonged it may cause tear of muscle fiber and hurt you.
2. You must also not to exercise the same group of muscles for about 48 hours, so that they have enough time to repair and regenerate the injury of stress from exercises.
 To achieve this you need to use maximum weight and do 10 to 15 repetitions in each set and do 3 to 6 sets depending on your fitness.
 Do you need to join the fitness clubs? ;
To accomplish your objective of becoming active, burn calories and have muscle training you do not need to join the fitness club, unless you are planning to be an athlete and compete in championships. However, it is true that if you go to gym, people working out there will motivate you to do your exercises daily. Same or similar beneficial exercise can be done at home with stretch rubber bands, dumbbells, weights, pushups and similar exercises.