Health Articles

photo courtesy of iStockphoto / Thinkstock

Eating healthy is not always as easy as it may seem. Many foods that are pitched to us as “healthy” are anything but. As you look to improve your eating habits, be on the lookout for these Top 5 “Often Disguised As Healthy, But Harmful” Foods:

5. Frozen Yogurt – Some frozen yogurts can be okay, but you must look very closely at the ingredients list. Most of the tasty yogurts promoted as healthy alternatives to ice cream are pumped full of sugar or even aspartame and high fructose corn syrup.

4. Multi Grain Breads – When deciding to move away from white bread to a more healthy option, beware that multi-grain is not always healthier. That’s because multi-grain products try to pretend they are whole grain products. Whole grain can be good for you in moderation if you are not gluten sensitive.  It contains every part of the grain that provides health benefits – the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. Whole grains can be a good source of dietary fiber.  Multi-grains, on the other hand, are refined, meaning they have been milled. This refining process removes the bran, which is the part of the grain that is healthiest.  In some cases, multi-grain bread is little different from white bread.

3. Vitamin Drinks and Diet Drinks – TV commercials encourage us to replenish our electrolytes by purchasing vitamin drinks or to quench our thirst by choosing diet sodas as a lighter option, but the truth is these are just sales gimmicks. Popular vitamin drinks actually contain loads of sugar and some even contain caffeine. One popular producer of vitamin drinks has even been sued for trying to deceive consumers with their health claims. Even the diet sodas that claim to have eliminated sugar have only substituted toxic chemicals that may be even worse for you. Aspartame, a popular sugar substitute in many diet sodas, has been linked to brain tumors, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease.

2. Low Fat Fakers – We often see food labels touting “low fat” or “reduced fat,” but even when these labels are true, they can be deceptive. Read the label carefully.  Oftentimes, low fat “diet foods”are high in sugar, making them counterproductive for weight loss.  Also, keep in mind there are good fats and bad fats. Good fats, like in some oils, avocado and nuts, are part of a healthy diet.  

1. Soy Substitutes – While organic soy can be healthy, conventional soy like in many soy burgers or soy milk may increase the risk for thyroid problems, breast cancer, and brain damage.  Conventional and processed soy contains anti-nutrients that can interfere with the digestion of protein, hemagglutinin, which can clot your blood, and goitrogens that can damage thyroid functions. Soy is also packed with compounds called isoflavones that can mimic human estrogen and cause such complications as infertility, altered menstrual cycles, and even increased risk for breast cancer.

Perhaps you noticed the theme here:  many food makers are taking advantage of your desire to make healthy food choices by selling you “healthy” food options that are actually no better than the junk you are trying to abandon. To protect yourself, always read the labels and learn to separate facts from jargon.

Skipping Breakfast is Worse than Skipping Dessert by Dr. Brian Bartholomew

Your body has been working hard all night while you sleep to detoxify, heal damaged cells and rejuvenate you. You get to choose in the morning if you want to assist your inner doctor by consuming healthy, life giving foods or if you want to place a burden on your body by consuming processed, preserved, fake foods.  

It is essential for your metabolism, your sanity and your waistline that you start the day with a super healthy breakfast within the first hour after waking.

Skipping or delaying breakfast shifts your body into starvation mode, which burns muscle, stores fat and creates a situation where your hormones are thrown off setting the stage for thyroid problems, diabetes and a host of other problems.

Why not begin the day with one of these 3 light, mouth watering, super-fast recipes to revolutionize your morning and boost your energy?

Cancer Alert: Your Best Defense - Go Cruciferous

We may not have eaten so healthfully our entire lives. We may have a family history of breast, prostate or colon cancer. What should we do? Just wait until cancer is found?

Getting medical screenings is certainly a personal decision, but if you want to know what you can really do to protect yourself - eat lots of colorful vegetables, specifically including lots of green cruciferous vegetables. Eating a diet rich in cruciferous vegetables is your best defense for fighting and preventing cancer.

If we really want to win the war against cancer, we must improve the nutritional quality of our diet. We have all heard about the antioxidant effects our bodies derive from the phytochemicals in plant foods. However, the unique phytochemicals found in cruciferous vegetables offer superior benefits. 

Cruciferous vegetables contain phytochemicals that have unique abilities to modify human hormones, detoxify compounds, and prevent toxic compounds from binding to human DNA, preventing toxins from causing DNA damage that could lead to cancer. Studies have even shown that genetic defects that may lead to cancer are suppressed by the consumption of green cruciferous vegetables.

Certainly, many studies have shown that eating fresh fruits, beans, vegetables, seeds, and nuts reduces the occurrence of cancer. I plotted cancer incidence in 25 countries against unrefined plant food intake and found that as vegetables, beans, and fruit consumption goes up 20% in a population, cancer rates typically drop 20%. But cruciferous vegetables are different; they have been shown to be twice as effective. As cruciferous vegetable intake goes up 20%, in a population, cancer rates drop 40%.

Include them in both raw and cooked forms and eat a variety of them. These benefits cannot be duplicated by taking any one pre-formed compound or supplement.

The evidence is now overwhelming that cruciferous vegetables play a major and unique role in the widely recognized protective effects of natural plant foods against cancer—and are the most important players in this arena. 

The biologically active compounds from raw and conservatively cooked green vegetables enhance the natural defenses of the human body against DNA damage and they even fuel the body's ability to block growth and replication of cells that are already damaged. For those in the know, these foods are the most important nutritional factors to prevent common human cancers.

Selected References

Michaud DS, Spiegelman D, Clinton SK. Fruit and vegetable intake and incidence of bladder cancer in a male prospective cohort. J Natl Cancer Inst 1999; 91(7):605-13.

Link LB, Potter JD. Raw versus cooked vegetables and cancer risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2004;13(9):1422-35.

Miller AB. Nutritional aspects of human carcinogenesis. IARC Sci Publ 1982;(39):177-92.

Higdon JV, Delage B, Williams DE, Dashwood RH. Cruciferous vegetables and human cancer risk: epidemiologicevidence and mechanistic basis. Pharmacol Res. 2007; 55(3):224-36.

Steinmetz KA, Potter JD. Vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention: a review. J Am Diet Assoc 1996 Oct;96(10):1027-1039.

Lee SA, Fowke JH, Lu W. Cruciferous vegetables, the GSTP1 Ile105Val genetic polymorphism, and breast cancer risk. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008; 87(3):753-60.

Rose P, Huang Q, Ong CN, Whiteman M. Broccoli and watercress suppress matrix metalloproteinase-9 activity and invasiveness of human MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol 2005(10);S0041-008X.

Johnston N. Sulforaphane halts breast cancer cell growth. Drug Discov Today 2004;9(21):908.

Srivastava SK, Xiao D, Lew KL, et al. Allyl isothiocyanate, a constituent of cruciferous vegetables, inhibits growth of PC-3 human prostate cancer xenografts in vivo. Carcinogenesis 2003 Oct;24(10):1665-1670.

Finley JW. The antioxidant responsive element (ARE) may explain the protective effects of cruciferous vegetables on cancer. Nutr Rev 2003 Jul;61(7):250-254.

Seow A, Yuan JM, Sun CL, et al. Dietary isothiocyanates, glutathione S-transferase polymorphisms and colorectal cancer risk in the Singapore Chinese Health Study. Carcinogenesis 2002 Dec;23(12):2055-2061 

Can You Guess What McDonald’s Food Item This Is?

Nutrition for Babies

Posted By Dr. Axe On January 23, 2009 @ 4:32 pm In Nutrition | 18 Comments

Eat Satiating Foods

The food that promotes satiety most is protein. It yields satiety more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Out of all proteins, the one with the fastest satiety impact is whey protein – that's if the whey is whole and non-denatured (not homogenized or pasteurized).

Studies reveal that consumption of whey protein before meals can swiftly boost the satiety peptides CCK and GLP-1, which have been shown to decrease food intake and increase weight loss. Whey protein is also beneficial when consumed before exercise. Having a small serving of whey protein (with no sugar added) about 30 minutes before exercise seems to help sustain intense muscle performance and increase the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. A pre-exercise whey meal has also shown to boost the body's metabolic rate for 24 hours thereafter.

Other satiety-promoting foods are low glycemic plant foods including raw nuts, seeds, legumes, roots, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes, eggplants, grasses and green leafy vegetables.

Being low glycemic and fibrous, these plant foods are a great fit for your insulin and leptin as well as your whole satiety system. Nuts and seeds trigger PPY – a satiety peptide which is highly sensitive to dietary fat. PPY shifts your cravings from carbohydrates to fats and increases your metabolic capacity to convert fat to energy.

That action counteracts your hunger hormones, which typically shift your cravings towards carbohydrates. Note that it's the shift towards refined carbohydrates that has been linked to chronic cravings and excessive food intake. This is the reason why once you open a bag of potato chips and start crunching, you may find it difficult to stop.

And note that your muscle isn't programmed to do well on hunger foods; it rejects fructose and has a limited capacity to utilize high glycemic foods. But your muscle literally thrives on satiety foods. Combinations of whey protein and berries, eggs and beans or meat and nuts have unmatched muscle nourishing properties. Furthermore, being satiety oriented, these food combinations promote the right hormonal environment for muscle rejuvenation and buildup.

All that said, you can't fully benefit from your satiety food if you don't know what food to avoid.

Avoid Hunger Foods

Stay away from high glycemic foods including all refined carbohydrates, sugars, fructose products, baked goods, candies and sugary beverages. Fructose in particular has shown to cause leptin resistance, lipid disorders, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Studies reveal that the muscle rejects fructose as an energy substrate and the liver has a limited capacity to utilize it; excess fructose is converted into triglycerides and body fat.

But nothing is more damaging to your satiety than the combination of high sugar and high fat. This dietary combo packs on empty calories, causes insulin and leptin resistance and shatters your satiety along with your whole metabolic system. In fact, it has been found that the high sugar-high fat combo causes insulin and leptin resistance even prior to any change in body composition.

This means that all food products made with a high content of sugar and fat are poisonous to your satiety system. These include cookies, cakes, ice creams and chocolates, all of which set you up for serious metabolic setbacks associated with insulin and leptin resistance which may include excess estrogen, excess cortisol, low testosterone, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia and increased belly fat.

The good news is that both insulin and leptin resistance can be reversed by food restriction and weight loss. Hence, your insulin and leptin are restored by austerity and shattered by indulgence.

It has been suggested that insulin and leptin play important roles in times of scarcity but have a lesser role in times of plenty. To keep your insulin and leptin intact you must not indulge yourself with high glycemic treats, not even in moderation. Otherwise, your body will get the wrong signal and you'll pay the consequences with your weight, energy and state of health.

Now that you know how to choose your satiety foods, let's take a look at the other methods that boost your satiety hormones.