The Health Blog: Free Health & Nutrition Information

I was at the gym last night with my wife and I glanced at a Reader’s Digest. The cover article was called “The New Way to Lose Weight Forever.”

Naturally, I was curious. So I flipped to the article and began reading.

The purpose of the article was to list out the things “naturally” thin people do to keep the pounds off. The result? A list of 50 different ways for you to eat fewer and burn more calories.

I didn’t read this article in depth, but I scanned all 50 suggestions. And they were absolutely pitiful! Here are two that I thought, I can’t believe you’re even suggesting this as “the new way to lose weight forever!”

You ready for this?

Now I’m paraphrasing here, but you’ll get the gist.

Reach for the bacon instead of the sausage. Choose 3 strips of bacon over 2 sausage links, and blot the grease off the bacon before you eat it. Saves a few calories.

Put the remote out of reach. When you watch TV, put the remote control out of your reach. That way you’ll have to move a little bit when you want to change the channel or the volume. Burns an extra few calories.

C’mon! These suggestions are for wimps. People who are in love with the idea of losing weight, but who couldn’t be bothered to make any real changes in their lives.

Not only that, how are you going to remember and implement 50 different diet and activity suggestions? That seems way too complicated to me. (Of course, you would need 50 different changes if they were all as feeble as the ones I’ve listed above…)

If you’re really serious about losing weight, why not pick just one or two things and stick with them? For instance, stop eating refined sugar. Follow through on that one suggestion and you’ll lose WAY more weight than if you take Reader’s Digest’s advice.

Here’s something not a lot of people understand.

Organic food can be highly processed, just like normal junk food. Sometimes organic food is not highly processed. It just depends.

The main point is that “organic” and “processed” are independent of each other. One does not affect the other.

There is this belief that, if I buy Newman’s Own organic cookies, I’m eating healthy. And I don’t believe that’s true. A Newman’s Own organic cookie may use organic ingredients, but it’s just as processed as an Oreo. And it’s still loaded with sugar.

Remember… organic foods can still be highly processed. And just because food is organic does not mean it’s healthy.

Wow, it feels like a ghost town around here. I suppose that’s a good thing. You should be spending time with your families… not reading blogs!

It’s good for me because I’ve got some time to catch up on email and miscellaneous details that I often intentionally ignore.

It’s only a few days until we’re beyond Christmas and New Years… which means it will be time to get back on track with regard to diet and exercise. (I’m hoping the gym doesn’t get too crazy. I really love how slow it is during November and December.)

I include myself in getting “back on track.” While I’m fairly disciplined during the rest of the year, I tend to eat quite a bit of chocolate between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And… some good news… I think my wife may be supporting me in some of the diet changes I’d like to make. She said she wouldn’t start until after the holidays, but at least she’s now willing to give it a go!

When she was pregnant, I couldn’t get her to buy into what I wanted to do. Now she’s only got another 3 or 4 months of nursing… and she’s mentally and emotionally ready to make some changes. So, we’ll see…

More news and health posts after Christmas. :-)

Achieving total health is a lot like bundling up for cold weather. Because it’s all about layers.

First you learn that you should be eating more vegetables. Then you learn that you should be taking Omega-3 oils. Later, you learn that you should cut out refined sugar. Still later, you learn about the improtance of enzymes. Etcetera.

And so you implement one new practice in your life… then another… then another.

It doesn’t matter so much what comes first, second, and third. What matters is that you are becoming healthier and healthier by adding layers.

One layer of health at a time… and your body will be humming like a well-oiled machine before you know it!

I’ve recently begun reading MicroMiracles: Discover the Healing Power of Enzymes. So far it’s an excellent book. Just the introduction and first chapter alone provide plenty of enlightening information.

Here’s an excerpt from the book, reprinted with permission from the publisher, Rodale Press:

These days, everyone seems to be climbing on the nutrition bandwagon. Books and articles offering dietary advice abound, and health food stores are thriving. The trouble is, much of the available information is contradictory at best and inaccurate—and potentially harmful—at worst. Too often, it overlooks one very important fact: What we digest is just as important as what we eat.

Proper digestion can’t occur without the necessary enzymes. If they aren’t present in foods, they must be synthesized by the body, a process that requires tremendous metabolic energy and machinery. When we evaluate the healthfulness of any diet, we must consider the magnitude of the burden that it will place on the body through the digestive process. This burden is what’s known as digestive stress.

The issue of stress figures prominently in our current understanding of health and disease. Stress involves the gradual depletion of the reserve capacity to respond and adapt to challenges to the body’s systems. The more reserve capacity the body has, the better able it is to cope with stressors that it encounters. By the same token, depleted reserve capacity means that the body is highly vulnerable to the damage that stress can cause.

To better understand the interplay among stress, reserve capacity, and damage, think of the tires on an automobile. Driving causes stress on the tire treads, gradually removing rubber and depicting the reserve capacity of the tires—that is, the thickness of the treads. The resulting loss of traction increases the risk of structural damage, especially in the presence of extreme challenges such as uneven road surfaces or sudden maneuvers. Reducing the wear and tear on tires through regular maintenance and driving safely on paved roads minimizes the stress on the treads and extends their longevity.

To reduce digestive stress, your best bet is to build your meals and snacks around foods that are rich in enzymes and don’t overtax your digestive system. Then your body can extract and utilize the necessary nutrients with minimal energy and effort.

The Low-Stress Diet

Simply stated, a low-stress diet is one that minimizes digestive and systemic stress. The ideal diet would consist of organically grown, pesticide-free foods, with substantial amounts of raw foods in at least two meals per day, since only raw foods contain active enzymes.

Consider what happens when a freshly picked apple remains uneaten for several days. The “meat” of the apple becomes soft and liquefies due to the action of enzymes—the same ones that help your body digest the apple when you eat it. The work of the enzymes reduces the burden of enzyme secretion on the pancreas, and thus digestive stress.

While eating nothing but raw foods would be a challenge, incorporating them into your meals and snacks whenever possible can minimize the workload for your digestive system. When you add enzyme supplements to help digest cooked and processed foods, you’ll improve digestive function and nutrient absorption.

The High-Stress Diet

Unfortunately, the typical American diet is almost entirely cooked or processed fare, with very few raw foods and therefore very few food enzymes. Responsibility for picking up any slack in the digestive process falls to the digestive system and, on a larger scale, the entire body, increasing the likelihood of digestive and systemic stress.

In general, a high-stress diet has one or more of the following characteristics.

• It contains foods that cannot be adequately broken down because they are loaded with preservatives or are highly processed.
• It triggers an immune response in a susceptible person.
• It contains too much or too little carbohydrate, protein, or fat, so the nutrients are substantially out of balance with the body’s metabolic requirements.
• The nutrients are not available to the body because the necessary enzymes are in short supply.

All of these factors cause the digestive system to work even harder to squeeze whatever nutrients it can from the foods that are eaten. Over time, the combination of poor nutrient absorption and digestive system overload can trigger a host of symptoms, including:

• Lack of energy
• Bloating, indigestion, and gas
• Poor elimination (constipation or frequent loose stools)
• Poor weight control (underweight or overweight)
• Hormone imbalances
• Dry or oily skin
• Thin and/or brittle bones, as in osteoporosis
• Frequent illness resulting from a poorly functioning immune system

In our opinion, persistent digestive stress is a leading contributor to many of the chronic health problems that are on the rise in this country. The body does its best to keep up with nutritional demands without adequate enzyme support, but it can tolerate these conditions for only so long. Eventually, your health begins to falter, and illness sets in—the long-term consequence of enzyme and nutrient deficiencies.

What’s Best For You

When considering the ideal diet for optimal digestion and nutrient absorption, please keep in mind that what’s “ideal” can vary from one person to the next. It depends on a number of factors, including metabolism, current health status, and any existing food sensitivities.

The vast majority of our patients are either carbohydrate intolerant or protein/fat intolerant. Often, these intolerances are behind the symptoms that bring people to the office in the first place. Steering clear of the offending foods—including some that they may consider healthy—can go a long way toward minimizing digestive stress.