The Toronto Sun has an article on Halle Berry and how she has adopted a ketogenic diet to help control her diabetes. Another source suggests she’s had type 1 diabetes since 1989. A snippet:
Halle Berry credits her ketogenic diet with keeping her fit.
The Monster’s Ball star, 50, is known for her enviable physique and she explains not eating any sugars or carbohydrates – because she is diabetic – has helped her maintain her figure.
Filed under ketogenic diet
That’s a guacamole deviled egg
They’ve always been good recipes—with all-important nutrient analysis—but they’re even better now.
From DietDoctor:
“Our low-carb recipe site is probably already the most popular one in the world, with over 100,000 daily pageviews, several hundred recipes and gorgeous images. Now we’re adding even more great functions.You can now change the number of servings for recipes – the ingredient amount will correspond to the number of servings – and you can now also choose between the US or the metric measurement systems for ingredients. All to make it simpler to use our recipes.
We’ve also added a function for members so that it is now possible to save your personal favorite recipes. To activate the latter feature you need to be logged in, so that your selections can be saved for later.”
Source: The World’s Best Low-Carb Recipes Just Got Better – Diet Doctor
Comments Off on DietDoctor’s Low-Carb Recipe Section: Not New, But Improved
Filed under Uncategorized
Women, don’t worry about getting big and bulky with weight training. You don’t have enough testosterone.
I am a huge advocate of weight training (aka resistance or strength training).
Folks new to weight training, or simply thinking about starting a program, are often intimidated by the jargon and contradictory information available. P.D. Mangan clears up a lot of the confusion in a brief article.
I quote:
Misconceptions and wrong ideas abound in weight training, probably because so many enthusiastic amateurs are involved in it. In this article, I’ll try to clear up some of the misconceptions with a look at at science-based weight training.
In recent articles, we saw that brief workouts, at 15 minutes, done infrequently, at twice a week, can produce significant strength gains. We saw that compound lifts, not isolation lifts, are the most effective strength exercises, and are essential for the serious strength trainer. And we saw that hard weight lifting causes muscle damage, which necessitates recovery time.
Here I’ll focus on what science has to say about additional aspects of weight lifting (resistance training). These come from “Evidence-Based Resistance Training Recommendations” by Fisher et al.
Source: Science-Based Weight Training – Rogue Health and Fitness
Filed under Exercise
Dead whole fish aren’t very appealing to many folks
Probably so. Mercury is the key pollutant people think about when considering polluted fish. Mercury toxicity isn’t on the list of top 10 killers in the U.S., but heart disease is.
Heart disease is #1 on the list of top causes of death, followed by cancer and chronic lower respiratory tract disease. “Heart disease” is a broad category; the primary killer is heart attacks. (Following heart disease as leading killer is cancer. Sadly, suicide is tenth leading cause of death. If you’re considering it, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline now.)
Eating fish regularly seems to reduce your risk of heart attack. I favor the cold-water fatty fish like salmon, trout, herring, and sardines.
I quote the New York Times:
“Numerous studies have found that people who eat fish on a regular basis are less likely to die of a heart attack than those who don’t eat it or eat it less than once a month, and a 2006 Harvard review concluded that eating one to two servings of fish rich in omega-3s every week cut the risk of dying of a heart attack by one-third.”
Source: Why Is Fish Good for You? Because It Replaces Meat? – The New York Times
Filed under Fish
Italian seaside tangentially related to this post
The Telegraph has the details:
“Some 20,000 lives could be saved each year if Britons switched to a Mediterranean diet, according to a new study.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) and Cambridge University followed nearly 24,000 people in the UK for up to 17 years to see how their diet affected the health of their heart.
They discovered that people who followed a diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fish and olive oil lowered their risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 16 per cent. The researchers estimate that 12.5 per cent of cardiovascular deaths, such as heart attacks and strokes, could be prevented if everyone switched to the Mediterranean diet. There are around 160,000 heart deaths each year so 20,000 deaths could be avoided just by eating more healthy foods.”
Source: Mediterranean diet could prevent 20,000 deaths in Britain each year
I’ve been a proponent of the Mediterranean diet for over a decade. I’m not alone.
Filed under Health Benefits, Heart Disease, Longevity, Mediterranean Diet, Stroke, Uncategorized
I recently developed fine scratches on my eyeglasses that were so bothersome I was ready to fork over another $500+ for new glasses. Watch the video to learn how I got rid of the scratches. My glasses are more expensive than most because I need progressive lenses (different prescriptions for near and far vision) and I pay extra for light lenses.
If you have a better way to remove scratches, please share in the comment section.
PS: Another way to save money on eyeglasses is to re-use your frames when you just need new lenses. Luxottica has a near-monopoly on frames and the mark-up is incredible.
Filed under Uncategorized
To improve your odds of success, read my series on preparing for weight loss.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Filed under Weight Loss
Seems to be, at least for some folks who are overweight. Nine of 10 T2 diabetes are overweight or obese
The “cure” at hand involves reduction of daily calories to 800 for four weeks. Average weight loss of those in the experimental group was 10 kg (22 lb). I look forward to the published scientific journal report. I bet the drop-out rate was high.
Filed under Weight Loss
Carcinogenic cows?
The idea that heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases are caused by dietary saturated fats is losing credibility. I lost faith in that theory in 2009.
Instead, cardiovascular disease is now linked to high consumption of carbohydrates, particularly those carbs that are rapidly absorbed and turned into blood sugar.
Unfortunately, the diet that reduces risk of cardiovascular disease may increase your risk of cancer. Keep reading.
If you’re a nutrition science nerd, here’s a pertinent report from researchers at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic:
“The results of our study show that high-glycaemic carbohydrates or a high overall proportion of carbohydrates in the diet are the key ecological correlates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. These findings strikingly contradict the traditional ‘saturated fat hypothesis’, but in reality, they are compatible with the evidence accumulated from observational studies that points to both high glycaemic index and high glycaemic load (the amount of consumed carbohydrates × their glycaemic index) as important triggers of CVDs. The highest glycaemic indices (GI) out of all basic food sources can be found in potatoes and cereal products, which also have one of the highest food insulin indices (FII) that betray their ability to increase insulin levels.The role of the high glycaemic index/load can be explained by the hypothesis linking CVD risk to inflammation resulting from the excessive spikes of blood glucose (‘post-prandial hyperglycaemia’). Furthermore, multiple clinical trials have demonstrated that when compared with low-carbohydrate diets, a low-fat diet increases plasma triglyceride levels and decreases total cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol, which generally indicates a higher CVD risk. Simultaneously, LDL-cholesterol decreases as well and the number of dense, small LDL particles increases at the expense of less dense, large LDL particles, which also indicates increased CVD risk. These findings are mirrored even in the present study because cereals and carbohydrates in general emerge as the strongest correlates of low cholesterol levels.
In light of these findings, the negative correlation of refined sugar with CVD risk may seem surprising, but the mean daily consumption of refined sugar in Europe is quite low (~84 g/day), when compared with potato and cereal carbohydrates (~235 g/day), and makes up only ~20% of CA energy. Refined sugar is also positively tied to many animal products such as animal fat and total fat and animal protein, and negatively to % PC CARB energy and % CA energy. Therefore, a high consumption of refined sugar is accompanied by a high consumption of animal products and lower intakes of other carbohydrates. Furthermore, the glycaemic index of refined sugar (sucrose) is rather moderate (~65).”
Elsewhere in this long article:
“Current rates of cancer incidence in Europe are namely the exact geographical opposite of CVDs. In sharp contrast to CVDs, cancer correlates with the consumption of animal food (particularly animal fat), alcohol, a high dietary protein quality, high cholesterol levels, high health expenditure, and above average height. These contrasting patterns mirror physiological mechanisms underlying physical growth and the development of cancer and CVDs. The best example of this health paradox is again that of French men, who have the lowest rates of CVD mortality in Europe, but the highest rates of cancer incidence. In other words, cancer and CVDs appear to express two extremes of a fundamental metabolic disbalance that is related to factors such as cholesterol and IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor).”
I wish these researchers had looked at over death rates associated with various ways of eating. Perhaps that will be in a future paper.
I’d rather die of a heart attack than cancer.
Filed under coronary heart disease, Heart Disease
Click the pic to purchase at Amazon.com. E-book versions also available at Smashwords.com.
Bible Verse of the Day
Diabetic Mediterranean Diet 