Month: January 2015

514

Summary:

Increasingly larger numbers of people suffer from heart disease as a consequence of high blood cholesterol levels. There are many factors that enable the accumulation of cholesterol inside the organism, but the major cause is considered to be unhealthy diet. Unhealthy diet and bad eating habits can considerably increase blood cholesterol levels.

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cholesterol,high cholesterol,low cholesterol diet,cholesterol levels,low cholesterol recipe,low cholesterol food

Increasingly larger numbers of people suffer from heart disease as a consequence of high blood cholesterol levels. There are many factors that enable the accumulation of cholesterol inside the organism, but the major cause is considered to be unhealthy diet. Unhealthy diet and bad eating habits can considerably increase blood cholesterol levels.

Cholesterol is produced by the liver and it is required inside the body for fulfilling several roles: cellular protection, hormonal synthesis (testosterone and estrogen), vitamin synthesis and fat digestion. The organism needs very small quantities of cholesterol to sustain its normal activity and inappropriate diet can quickly enable cholesterol to accumulate in excess. The problem with cholesterol is that it can’t be dissolved by the body fluids and it is also difficult to eliminate. When in excess, cholesterol enters the bloodstream and deposits in different places inside the body. Cholesterol can form plaque inside arteries by adhering to the inner arterial walls, causing blockage. If cholesterol deposits inside the coronary arteries (heart arteries), there is a very high risk of heart disease.

A healthy diet and appropriate exercise are vital in reducing blood cholesterol levels. It is very important to eat properly, as high cholesterol food can quickly increase blood cholesterol levels. You should consume only low cholesterol foods and products that contain unsaturated fat. Many foods contain high levels of cholesterol: meats, eggs, dairy products, sweets. Also, foods that are rich in saturated fat can also facilitate the accumulation of cholesterol inside the body: organ meats, pork, poultry.

Low cholesterol foods should replace foods that contain high quantities of cholesterol and saturated fat. Sweets contain simple carbohydrates which increase body fat deposits and facilitate the accumulation of body cholesterol. It is advised to consume at most 300 mg of cholesterol a day. Considering the fact that a single egg contains around 300 mg of cholesterol, eating properly can be quite tricky. Not at all! You should note that only foods of animal origin contain cholesterol, while vegetal foods are cholesterol free. Although vegetables and fruits contain fat, they actually don’t have any cholesterol. Low cholesterol foods also contain less saturated fat and therefore they are a lot healthier for the organism.

It is very difficult to follow a diet based only on fruits and vegetables. To diversify your diet, you can consume low cholesterol foods such as: egg whites, lean meat, fish, chicken. Other low cholesterol foods are skim milk and low-fat yogurt. You should avoid eating fried foods, as they are very unhealthy. Bake or boil low cholesterol foods and eat plenty of vegetable soups. Home-cooked meals should be preferred over supermarket foods. However, if you don’t have time to cook for yourself every day, there are various low cholesterol food products available in supermarkets. It is important to understand that processed, low cholesterol foods available in convenience-stores can actually contain high quantities of saturated fat and they aren’t a very healthy option. Although you can consume such food products once in a while, your diet should be based mainly on healthy, cholesterol free or low cholesterol foods.

This article was originally written by Emmanuel SEGUI

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Your health is your responsability. As a human being, you have the choice to put in your stomach whatever you want. It is YOU and only you that can choose what you want or not to eat. In other words, it is YOU who chooses to be slim and fit or not. That is your choice. You need to take 100% responsability of the way you eat. That’s the beginning of your success.
Now, you’ll say: “I can’t, it is stronger than me” or “look at this cake, I can’t leave it alone. It needs to be eaten.” or “It is so good, another one please!”. The question is: “Why do you eat?” Is it for pleasure or for fuel? After all, food is just food, but the emotion we attach to food is so strong that we tend to eat for pleasure or for an emotional reward.
When you eat junk food, subconsciously you say YES! to it. Let’s learn another word: NO! Most of us said, “No!” quite well when we were two and we have grown up to be people pleasers and say “YES!” all the time. Most of us believe that saying “No” can cost us a lot in our adult life.
NO! is a powerful word when said at appropriate moments. One of the best moments to say that powerful NO is when you want to eat junk food. Dr. Bob Bodenhamer, co-developer of neuro-semantics said, “All change in essence boils down to saying ‘No’ to what you don’t want and ‘Yes’ to what you do want.”
If this statement is correct, each time that you say YES to junk food, you say, subconsciously of course “I want to be fat and don’t want to be slim and fit” even if consciously you really want to be healthy and full of energy.
Words are power and your language is a representation of your map. Let’s add some choice to your map. The more choices you have, the more success you will have.
Therefore, let’s learn or re-learn to say this powerful NO! The results of saying NO to certain foods are: you will have a sense of control over your own body (you don’t want to be controlled by it, don’t you?), you will feel more confident, more self-esteem and eventually you will feel at peace. It will reinforce your belief that you need to take 100% responsibility for your own health and nobody will do it for you
First, get a good strong representation of saying “No!” to something. It doesn’t need to be related to food. You will want to make sure that your No looks, sounds, and feels congruent and that it truly fits with your beliefs and values.
Second, to reinforce this powerful NO, find 4 other situations where you said NO!. It can be as simple “NO, it’s too late to go out now”. The most important is that it needs to be congruent. If you are a 100% people pleasers and can’t find any NO! situations, think of what it would be, how you would feel and what you would hear if you had the courage to say NO! to something or someone. This is this kind of NO! that you need.
Third, Say No! to the junk food. Re-access the “it’s stronger than me” feeling and once you have it, say No! Do it congruently, intensely, and repeatedly. And you can keep on saying No! until you begin to feel that it no longer has any power to run your programs. Notice how the feeling diminish and how the desire for the food is far and disappearing. To finish, picture yourself already slim and fit. You already know it’s not hard to do it. Now, say a big “YES! That’s what I want!”
As you know, you have the power of saying NO! Everybody does. But we are trapped with some limited old thinking that eating is for a reward or for pleasure. We are conditioned to eat for false reasons. When you keep repeating this pattern, you break some old belief and it comforts you: you can change, you can do it, can’t you?
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This article was originally written by Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.

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From the Stone Age until just a few generations ago, human infants’ only sustenance was mother’s milk, but modern infant formula seems to be an adequate substitute. After all, infant mortality in Western societies is at historic lows and growth patterns are normal. But is that all there is to it? Could there be other advantages to breastfeeding, both to the mother and to the infant?
Post-delivery stress discomfort. All those hours of labor may be natural, but they are exhausting and stressful for mom. It’s not so easy on baby, either! First, that cushion of fluid suddenly vanishes in a big gush as labor begins. Then comes the big squeeze as the infant is mashed against the opening of the uterus, and through a birth canal that is so narrow that the baby’s skull elongates just to fit through. It takes a day or so before a newborn’s head gets its normal rounded shape back.
Enter endorphins, morphine-like hormones that the body produces, and that relieve pain and stress. Beta endorphin appears in the early milk (colostrum) of mothers who deliver naturally, but there is much less in the breastmilk of mothers who undergo Caesarian section, and who bypass a stressful labor. Even higher levels appear in the colostrum of those mothers who deliver prematurely, and whose infants might have undergone even more stress before and during delivery. Nature thus helps to make the transition from the cozy, quiet womb to the outside world a little easier.
Baby’s suckling helps healing. After a successful delivery, the new mother feels the continued contractions of her uterus as it begins to return to normal size. That shrinking is critical in reducing blood loss after separation of the placenta. The baby that is put to the breast during the first hour or two gets nothing but a few drops of colostrum for its effort, but sucking on the empty breast increases the contraction of the now-empty uterus. That helps to limit the mother’s blood loss, and it could have been a critical factor in primitive humans.
A breast has to grow up. A woman that has never been pregnant may think that her normal-appearing breasts are fully mature, but from a biological point of view, they are not. The normal cycle of breast development begins with adolescent budding, but it does not end until the breast secretes at least some milk. During that interval, especially during the adolescent years, breast tissue is susceptible to toxic agents. That might explain two observations about breast cancer. First, women who smoke during their teen years have a greater risk of breast cancer than those that do not. Second, women who breastfeed are less likely to develop breast cancer, at least in their premenopausal years, as well as ovarian cancer.
Infant formula: how boring! The can of infant formula that Dad plucks off the supermarket shelf on the day of baby’s birth contains exactly the same ingredients as the formula that the infant will receive 2 weeks, 2 months or 12 months later (unless Dad switches brands). That’s not so for breastmilk. Colostrum contains antibodies and live cells that will protect the newborn from infection and help to develop its immune system. Day by day the mother will notice that her breastmilk becomes thinner and more bluish, until by 6 weeks it becomes consistently the same in appearance. Actually, the composition of breastmilk changes every single day until weaning occurs. That’s because the baby’s developing body, especially the brain, has different requirements every day. There are hundreds of components of breastmilk that vary according to the growing infant’s needs, in a sequence that was laid down by Nature hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Thanks, Mom. That was delicious! You won’t find mint-flavored infant formula at the local market, or any with a distinctive flavor. That would never get past the folks at Quality Control. But mother’s milk reflects mother’s diet. In years past, pediatricians advised breastfeeding mothers to avoid onions, garlic or spicy, highly flavored foods. That was the wrong advice, and I was guilty of it. Babies that are exposed to a variety of flavors that come through mothers’ milk take more readily to solid foods than formula-fed infants, for whom every food flavor is new and strange. Think of all the mealtime fussiness that would avoid!
And it will make you feel better. During the first year following delivery, mothers who breastfeed are only half as likely to suffer from depression as those who do not nurse their infants. That is not a minor issue, because approximately 10 percent of women become depressed within the first 6 weeks of delivery. This mental boost may be due to a hormone called oxytocin, which is released during nursing and also causes those contractions of the uterus that I mentioned earlier.
There were no feeding options back in the Stone Age, but the decision to not breastfeed may be unavoidable for some mothers. For those who are ambivalent, these benefits may provide a little incentive.
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