WHAT IS HEALTH?

Saw this poster at a restroom wall today and couldn't help but take a snap with my blackberry:) 

A very good definition of health! The keyword being 'balance'. Its a state of dynamic balance between the body, mind and spirit! How many of us can say that we are truly healthy? Or, are we merely 'not sick'?

WACKY DIETS

So first we hear of the junk food diet and now we have this, the potato diet! Although not junk food, potatoes have a high GI (close to that of sugar) and were thought of being fattening. But this Washington state official went on a 60 day potato only diet as a means to protest and lost 20 lbs and cut his cholesterol by a third and lowered his blood sugar. The take away lesson from both these examples is that having a healthy weight is the most important factor in managing your blood sugar and improving your cholesterol profile more than any diet consideration, at least in the short run. I am sure in the long run such an unbalanced way of eating will have other harmful side-effects so I don’t promote any such drastic diet.

Speaking of diets, I found 7 of the wackiest diets in modern times. You will be amazed that people take such drastic measures to quickly lose weight. In my opinion, any weight loss should be a lifestyle change with healthy eating habits and moderate exercise. Before I delve into these diets and my version of these diets I would like to put in a disclaimer. I am in no way promoting these diets in their original form or in my versions of them. This is written for the sole purpose of humor so read on:

7 Wackiest Diets: 

The chewing diet: This method of dieting believed that if you chewed your food enough you would mix it with saliva which has many enzymes to pre-digest the food so it would get better assimilated in your body. The practice involved chewing a bite for more than 32 times and then tilting the head back and letting the food slide naturally through and any food that is not broken down by chewing is spit out and you move on to the next bite. The reason it could work is because one would lose patience with all the chewing and stop early. Plus all the food spitting would disgust others around the table which would limit their appetite so this could be a successful group weight loss diet.

My version: I suggest putting your food in a grinder and pushing the liquefy button for 32 seconds. This way you save your jaws all the work and your food wouldn’t be appetizing enough to eat in the first place. Liquefied pizza anyone!

The Tape worm diet: This diet involved eating capsules that contained strains of tape worm so the worms would eat all the food and you would lose weight this way. This does carry the risk of infection and diarrhea and so it’s possible it might have worked for a few.

My version: I suggest eating some salmonella infested spinach (locally grown of course) or eating a powerful laxative every night. This way the bouts of diarrhea will ensure you keep losing weight. Only one suggestion is that you drink plenty of fluids throughout the day because you don’t want to get dehydrated.

The sleeping beauty diet: This diet believed that if you slept most of the time you wouldn’t eat and lose weight as a result. This involved taking sedatives and sleeping as much as possible.

My version: Become an alcoholic! Drink all week and sleep and then stay awake for a day and eat and then repeat for the next whole week.

The Vision diet: this diet principle believed that if your food looked disgusting you would eat less of it. The promoters of this diet wore special glasses that gave their food a weird color so it wouldn’t look as appetizing and you would end up eating less.

My version: I suggest watching bug and insect eating episodes of The Fear Factor just before or during your meals. Do I need to say more?

Washing away the pounds: This method used a seaweed containing soap that was used for bathing. It was believed that seaweed could penetrate the skin and dissolve the fat.

My version: I suggest keeping some poison ivy handy, so you rub it all over your body before a meal. This way your hands will be busy itching your body. Every once in a while you will grab a bite but I am pretty sure your hands will get back to itching thereafter. Plus the constant itching action will burn additional calories.

Ear stapling: It was believed that stapling the cartilage of your inner ear suppressed your appetite. Many people claim its effectiveness but no one quite understands why.

My version: I suggest stapling your nose instead because most of our appetite is intensified through our olfactory nerves and when you can’t smell the appetizing aroma of your food you are less likely to eat it.

The cotton ball diet: In this diet you eat cotton balls either dry or coated with gelatin. The theory behind this is that cotton balls are very filling and have zero calories so obviously you will lose weight on this diet.

My version:  Instead of coating cotton balls with gelatin I suggest breading them and frying them in butter and then putting them in a tomato/onion soup. This way they will taste great (crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside) minimize carb calories and give you plenty of fiber. Organic Cotton Koftas anyone?

THE OBSOLETE FOOD PYRAMID

How many of us go by the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) food pyramid when planning our diets? The figure above shows the food pyramid and I think people pay too much attention to the top and bottom of the pyramid without much consideration to the middle. Too much importance is placed on carbohydrates (up to 11 servings) without regard to the type of carbohydrate consumed. On the other hand fats have been lumped with sugars and banned, without regard to the type of fat. Due to this the food pyramid is to blame for most of today's obesity problems. Just as all carbohydrates are not created equal, so is the case with fat. There are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates and by the same token there are good and bad fats. This low fat/high carbohydrate  dictum  has spawned a whole industry of low-fat foods. So we now consume low fat cookies, low fat ice-cream etc without regard to the calorie content, thinking that its healthy to do so. In one of my previous articles, I talked about how fat slows the absorption of sugars in your blood stream. Also good fats (MUFA) and omega 3 fats are healthy for your heart and mind. Fats are also necessary to transport important fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K).

A comparative study lasting 31 years (starting 1960) and spanning 7 countries (Italy, Greece, former Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Finland, United States, and Japan) looked at dietary habits of these populations and the incidence of deaths from heart disease and various cancers. 13,000 people between the ages of 40-59 years participated in this study. At the conclusion of this study 50% of the participants from Crete (island of Greece) were still alive while there were no survivors from the participants of the other 6 countries. In the Cretan diet, olive oil accounted for 33% of caloric needs apart from the fat from fish, eggs and some cheese. Their diet consisted of as much as 40% of total calorie intake from fat (29 percent monounsaturated fat, 8 percent saturated fat, and 3 percent polyunsaturated fat). The rest came from vegetables, fruits, whole grains and moderate amounts of cheese, fish and occasional red meat. Based on these findings researchers suggest rebuilding the food pyramid from the ground up with fat, vegetables and fruits occupying the bottom of the pyramid, with whole grains, fish, milk and cheese in the middle and sugars and simple carbohydrates on top. 

It is now argued that the USDA was the wrong organization to be building the food pyramid in the first place. The USDA is affiliated to the department of agriculture that is responsible for the productivity of grains for the most part and so has a vested interest in promoting grain consumption. On top of that the USDA is not a research organization with any ability to perform dietary research so it should have no role in the formulation of the food pyramid. I am just thankful that the American Sugar Alliance didn't have a role in formulating the food pyramid, otherwise we all would be looking like the Thanksgiving turkey!

CHOLESTEROL: VITAL FOR LIFE

Here is a good video! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awA2fsa94MI

HDL, LDL, ratios, all marketing buzzwords meant to scare you and put you on the mega billion $$$ generating statin drug machines. Like I mentioned in my earlier articles, its inflammation and too much high GI carb intake that causes heart disease, not cholesterol! Type II diabetes causes heart disease and not cholesterol!   Without cholesterol men wouldn’t be men and women wouldn’t be women. We wouldn’t even make new cells in the body. And guess what, the number one consumer of cholesterol in your body is your brain and the central nervous system because nerve and brain cells don’t regenerate like the rest of your body’s cells. So cholesterol provides them longevity and without which we would be literally ‘losing our minds’. So eat a diet rich in anti-oxidants, get plenty of exercise and reduce the stress in your lives and stop worrying about cholesterol.

WEIGHTLOSS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

Just to prove this simple point, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, put himself on a 2 month junk food diet consisting of twinkies, candy bars and other vending machine goodies and guess what? He lost 27 pounds! He set out to prove a simple point that loosing weight is simply a matter of consuming fewer calories than you burn. It proves that you don't have to go on a fancy diet of exotic berries or drink tomato juice for the next month, but just ensure that you reduce your caloric intake to a point where you burn more than you consume. This experiment brings forth an important point that health and weight-loss aren't necessarily synonymous and puts a big question mark on the conventional markers of heart disease risk, HDL and LDL cholesterol, because he lowered LDL and increased HDL eating this junk food diet. To read more about this experiment go to the CNN.com article here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

While I wouldn't call this diet healthy or balanced it does prove that you don't need to avoid any particular food group in order to lose weight as long as you spread out your meals into small portions through out the day. So while I advocate healthy eating habits it wont destroy your weight-loss goals if you indulge in some comfort food once in a while. I am reaching out for some brownies after this....

EAT FAT TO LOSE FAT

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis did a study with genetically engineered mice where they engineered the mice such that their liver lacked a fat producing enzyme. As we all know fat is processed and converted in the liver to form triglecyrides which is then used up as energy in the body. So a healthy liver is a major fat burning organ converting fats into fatty acids in the blood stream for use as energy. But when the liver is malfunctioning it can work in the reverse direction and become a fat storing organ. This is referred to as a fatty liver disease. A healthy liver is red in color but when the liver starts to accumulate fat it starts turning yellow and enlarging in size. A sign of fatty liver disease is a bulging midsection, an increased cholesterol level, stubborn weightloss and constant lethargy. Also remember the liver is capable of producing its own fat from carbohydrates so a zero fat diet can still lead to fatty liver disease. So why this lecture about fatty liver disease? Because the mice in this study were not capable of making any fat in their liver and the only fat they would get is from diet or from the body's own fat reserves. So guess what was the finding of this study? The researchers found that mice that were fed a zero fat diet developed fatty liver disease! So essentially the fat from the body moved into their liver but the liver didn't process that fat, but instead stored it! Mice that ate the normal fare didn't develop a fatty liver. So the researchers concluded that the liver needs new fat in order to metabolize old fat. In other words you have to supply new fat to the liver in order to regulate fat burning in the liver. Or as I say "Eat fat to lose fat!"

So we can see how we can mess up the liver's fat burning ability by eating a low or zero fat diet. So eat healthy fats found in nuts, sea food, flax, avocados and make sure you get 33% of your daily caloric intake in healthy fat. Folks, you need fat in your diet if you want to stay healthy and keep that stubborn fat off!

METABOLIC EFFECTS OF LIFTING HEAVY

I see many women in the gym ‘toning’ their bodies with little pink weights for hundreds of reps accumulated over an hour long workout. I just wonder why don’t they just jump on the tread mill and spend the hour there. I mean why delude yourself that you are weight training when you really are doing aerobic style workouts. Just to make it clear weight training is a weight bearing exercise that requires anaerobic pathways of energy breakdown which happens when you lift heavy for a few reps. Weight training shouldn’t make you go out of breath and panting for air. This is not the mode that builds muscle. For building muscle you need to lift heavy enough to perform the full range of motion for 10-15 reps and no more. If you are able to do a 16^th rep, then you need to increase the weight.  

A concern I hear from women (and many men) is that they don’t want to ‘bulk-up’ by lifting heavy. To address this I would say that women don’t have near as much testosterone as men do, to really bulk up. Testosterone is the hormone that burns fat and builds muscle and is responsible for sex drive in men (and women). This is why men are leaner than women and this is why teenagers (both boys and girls) lose baby fat as they enter puberty. And weight training has shown to boost the production of both, testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH). So even for women a little extra testosterone is a good thing as it burns fat and builds muscle (which burns even more fat). And HGH has been shown to be essential to prevent many age related degenerative diseases. Recently it has also been shown that intense weight training also increases insulin sensitivity that can prevent the onset of type II diabetes. So you see there are benefits beyond the obvious when you weight train. So if you really want to tone your body, weight train with the right amount of weight for 10-15 reps and if possible do compound movements that involve multiple joints (squats, lunges, dead lifts, bench press, lat pull-downs etc). Having one extra pound of muscle will burn 35 extra calories a day which may not sound like much but will add up to 12775 calories in a year or 3.5 lbs of fat burned. So imagine this! If you have 10 extra lbs of muscle, its equivalent to running for half hour (or 3 miles) every day, 365 days a year even when you are just watching TV. So what would you take, and extra 10 lbs of muscle (traded for fat) or running 3 miles everyday all year around? Its a no-brainer, eh! So even though aerobics has certain cardio vascular conditioning advantage it comes nowhere near weight training for permanently boosting your metabolism and building that firm toned body that you always dreamed of.  So dunk those pretty little pink weights and lift real weights instead. And don’t worry you will never look like those anabolic steroid freaks you see on the cover of magazines like muscle and fitness. No woman (or man) can achieve that kind of muscularity and definition without relying on synthetic testosterone derivatives. Also remember muscle is denser than fat so a 110lb woman with 15% body fat will be trimmer and better toned than a 110lb woman with 25% body fat!

GOOD LINK ABOUT FATS

Here is a good link about fats on MSN health:

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100256551

.

The take home points are:

1) Use vegetable oils sparingly.

2) Don't be afraid of butter. It has anti-oxidants that protect against cancer and hasn't been shown to increase cholesterol. Use it in omelets and baking.

3) Coconut oil is healthy in spite of its high saturated fat content. Use it in Thai cooking.

4) Eat olive oil and fish as they have the best fats that are good for your heart.

The bottom line is that your body need fat and it is an important component of a healthy diet so don't shy away from fat but only make sure its the right kind of fat.

FREE RADICAL GENERATION IN THE BODY

So now that we gathered how important antioxidants are to your body, let see what promotes the production of free radicals in our bodies. While many of the normal cellular processes produce metabolites that are free radicals there are certain foods that increase the production of these toxic metabolites. Eating food deep fried in vegetable oils (ghee is best for deep frying) produces a lot of free radicals as vegetable oils are unstable and breakdown at high temperatures. Hydrogenation of vegetable oils to produce shortening releases many free radicals, that's why any food with trans-fat or hydrogenated fat has a lot of free radicals in it. Eating a lot of processed foods with artificial preservatives and chemicals releases free radicals in the body. So one must avoid deep fried, processed and foods with trans-fat. Also exposure of skin to UV rays from the sun produces free radicals that attack the skin cells and destroy collagen, the essential protein that gives our skin the 'elasticity' needed to stay supple and young.This is what causes the formation of wrinkles in the skin. In the next article I'll discuss how to combat free-radical attack on the skin to prevent the formation of wrinkles. Stay tuned until the next time...

THE ROLE OF ANTIOXIDANTS

So we hear about antioxidants every other day in the media about how they help people lose weight and how it keeps them young. The discovery of Acai berry by main stream media and Oprah’s endorsement of the Acai berry diet and how it has helped her lose weight has everyone interested in this new berry. So what are antioxidants? And what are their benefits?

Antioxidants (AOs) have always existed in nature and in our food all along. Some foods have more AO’s than others, but pretty much any vegetable or fruit or bean or legume has it. So the word antioxidant itself suggests that it is an antagonist to something that is an oxidant and that is exactly what an AO does. During the normal cellular process the cells in your body release many metabolic wastes, some of which are toxic in the sense that they can damage the cell itself. These metabolic wastes or free radicals are unstable molecules that are hungry for electrons. As a result of this any cell it comes in contact with is stripped of electrons, making the cell unstable. This cell then goes on and finds another cell to attack. As a result of this a chain reaction is set in motion where unstable cells are attacking surrounding cells as they scavenge them in order to regain stability. This leads to cell aging as the cells become unstable and in some cases mutates the DNA of these cells to start causing abnormal cell growth, or cancerous tumors. So here in lies the utility of the AO in that it satisfies the free radicals so they don’t attack normal healthy cells. In this sense the AOs are ‘scavengers’ of free radicals that clean up the waste metabolites and help preserve the health of your cells. It’s immediately apparent that a food rich in antioxidants will prevent premature cell aging and help prevent many types of cancers. So now that you are convinced of the benefits of having AOs in your diet the next question is which foods are high in antioxidants?

Any natural food with a deep color is pretty much is high in antioxidant content. Acai berry, blue berries, black berries, red grapes are all high in antioxidant content. And guess which food has the highest AO content of all? No its not Acai berry but cocoa powder which has 40% more anti oxidant content compared to Acai. Other foods rich in AO are kidney beans, pinto beans, black eyed beans. By the way Kidney beans are as rich in AOs as blue berries. Vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, potatoes and cabbage are rich in AOs. In the next article I’ll talk more about AOs and the role exercise plays in anti aging. Stay tuned…

THE ULTIMATE BODY WEIGHT EXERCISE - BURPEE

Sounds like an aftermath of a full meal, eh? Actually burpee is a form of body weight exercise that recruits the most amount of muscle in a single exercise. If you recall from my earlier posts, I am a proponent of full body exercises or compound movements as opposed to isolation movements. An example of a compound movement is the squat. The squat recruits all the muscles of your legs (front and back) and your posterior chain (butt and lower back). Percentage wise it recruits almost 70% of your body’s muscles. On the other hand an isolation movement like the crunches only recruits the abdominal muscles which are about 15% of your body’s total muscles.


So here is a trivia for you: Which exercise do you think will burn more belly fat, the squat or the crunch? If you answered the crunch then you are wrong! Contrary to popular belief there is no spot reduction in the body, meaning no matter which body part you are exercising the body loses fat from the total body fat pool and not just from the part being exercised. So when you are doing crunches the body is losing fat from your arms and legs and other parts. Belly fat is the last place your body will lose fat from (and usually the first to gain). So if you want to burn belly fat stop doing crunches and start squatting! Now, compared to the squat the burpee recruits almost 90% of your body’s muscles, so it will be even more efficient at burning overall body fat (and belly fat). The burpee is a very simple but effective exercise for cardio and strength conditioning. It’s used extensively in the armed forces for building strength and endurance.

The way the burpee is performed is by starting with a standing position. First you drop down to a squat position and then bend forward and fall on your palms and kick your legs back. Then you perform a push up and as soon as the push up is done you bring back your legs under your chest and rise and perform a jumping squat. This one exercise alone will target your legs, butt, abdomen, chest, shoulders, triceps (the back of your arms) and partially your back. Here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYfNA_lmkHM

Start off by performing 20 of these in quick succession and it should take you less than 2-3 minutes to be done with the exercise. Slowly as your strength and endurance increases you will be able to add a few extra burpees every week. Burpees are the staple exercise in a lot of crossfit gyms across the country and the most I have ever seen anyone (myself included) do is 150. It takes about 15 minutes to do 150 of these and by the end you drop into a pool of your own sweat. It is by far more intense than any cardio exercise on the planet, in terms of building strength and endurance. And research has shown that short intense bursts of exercise are as effective as long duration low intensity cardio type exercises (http://www.naturalnews.com/024188_fitness_health_fat_loss.html). Considering the time savings of such an exercise plan, I'd say it’s a no brainer to do the high intensity type exercises. I mean why would you waste 2 hrs everyday on the treadmill when just 10-15 minutes three times a week will give you the same or more benefits?

So the next time you complain that you don’t have time and a gym membership to get in shape, stop making the excuses! All you need is 15 minutes, 3 times a week and a lot of determination and you’ll be in shape in no time. Want a 6 pack? No crunches required, just burpee!

FLAT BELLY DIET - INDIAN VERSION

I AM LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS FOR MY WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM. I AM WORKING ON A BOOK FOR LOSING BELLY FAT AND WOULD LIKE 15-20 PEOPLE THAT WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT. YOUR WEIGHT LOSS EXPERIENCE WILL BE A PART OF THIS BOOK. SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED PLEASE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME AT yogi4fitness@gmail.com. Now on to the article:

I am sure a lot of readers must have heard about the flat belly diet which promises to help you lose 15 lbs in a month. So what is the flat belly diet? And what can we Indians do to incorporate it in our eating plan so we can realize similar benefits. Well there is nothing secret about the flat belly diet. It’s based on sound eating principles and plain old common sense about what to eat at what times of the day. Here I am attempting to guide the readers on an Indian style flat belly diet that will make you shed belly fat. While I don’t claim that you’ll lose 15 lbs in a month, I can promise you that after the initial 3-4 days of insulin withdrawal symptoms that you will go through especially if you are used to eating high carb meals, your energy levels will sky rocket and depending on your starting weight you could realize up to 4-6 lbs of fat loss in a month.

In this plan I have divided the total meals into a 300 calorie average size portion with more calories consumed in the morning and less and less as the day goes on. A total of around 1600 calories will be consumed in 5 meals. Here is a sample meal plan (pick one of the options provided).

Breakfast:

•  One cup of oatmeal in whole milk topped with

o   Handful walnuts or almonds

o   Handful of blueberries or strawberries for sweetness.

• One toast spread with butter and a two egg omelet with a glass of tomato juice or coffee/tea (lightly sweetened).
• One whole wheat cauliflower or spinach (or any other vegetable except potato) paratha, pan fried in a small amount of butter with a glass of tomato juice or coffee/tea (lightly sweetened) and a handful of almonds or a whey protein drink.
• One cup of Upma with mixed vegetables and peanuts and two boiled eggs.
• Few Dhoklas (besan and semolina cakes) with 2 boiled eggs and coffee/tea (lightly sweetened).

Mid-morning snack:

• A handful of walnuts or almonds or an ounce of (60% or more) dark chocolate and a cup of coffee/tea (lightly sweetened).
• A pear or an apple or any other fruit (except mango, pineapple or cantaloupe) and a 8oz glass of whey protein drink.

Lunch:

• One whole wheat vegetable paratha light fried in butter with a bowl of daal and a serving of fruit.
• Two whole wheat rotis with cooked vegetables or beans (garbanzo, kidney, pinto or black-eyed) cooked in regular olive oil (never cook in virgin or extra virgin olive oil). 
• One cup brown rice with daal and a vegetable cooked in olive oil.

Mid-afternoon snack:

•  Same as the mid-morning snack.

Dinner:

•  A bowl of daal or chickpea soup with salad tossed in virgin olive oil.

•  A bowl of chaat made with:

o   Germinated green mung daal or black gram or a bowl of cooked chick peas lightly fried in olive oil with salt and pepper to taste.

o   Thin sev (made from gram flour not potatoes) sprinkled on top.

o   Finely chopped onions and green pepper.

o   Pudina or tamarind chutney (sweetened with splenda)

•  Plain salad with olive oil vinaigrette and topped with grated almonds or walnuts and boiled egg slices.

As you can see I have incorporated plenty of Mono-unsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFA) in the form of nuts and olive oil. MUFA’s have been shown to aid in belly fat loss and are an easy source of energy for the body to convert. All other ingredients I have chosen based on their GI values. Try to stick with items in green in the table below (click to see) and stay away from the red zone especially after 6 PM because you are most likely to store the carbs from those items as fat.

Eat breakfast within an hour or so of waking up as it’s the most important meal of the day to rev up your metabolism. Skipping breakfast will slow down your metabolism and make your body store fat.  Space out all the meals by 2 hrs or so and never go beyond 3 hrs without eating something healthy. Finish your dinner at least 3 hrs before bed time and if you find yourself hungry at bed time, have a handful of almonds or roasted peanuts. And finally drink plenty of water and keep yourself hydrated.

Please realize that this is only a sample meal plan and it’s possible to create countless combinations of healthy recipes from the table provided above. Although I have nothing against eating meat I have stayed away from any meats in this sample plan just because a lot of Indians are vegetarians. You can always substitute a bowl of daal or roti with a fillet of salmon or chicken breast. Meat has no carbs and so eaten by itself meat cannot promote weight gain. This is why Atkins works for people that want to lose weight fast. Although I have nothing against Atkins, I don’t think it’s a balanced way to eat. We need to have healthy portions of carbs from high quality (low GI) sources like fruits and vegetables to get all our antioxidants and vitamins. By the same token we need about 30-35% of our calorie intake from healthy fats (MUFA) so instead of avoiding carbs or fat it’s best to balance them as I have proposed in this plan. Protein is essential because it helps us preserve muscle mass which in turn keeps our metabolism high. It also helps our body regenerate from the daily wear and tear. Also protein and healthy fat in diet hinder the assimilation of glucose in the blood and slow the glucose to fat conversion mechanism.  Exercise is optional in this plan but will help you shed fat faster if you do choose to exercise.

On a final note, I would love to have volunteers for this diet plan and will work with you and guide you in planning alternative substitutes based on your taste. Please contact me at yogi4fitness@gmail.com if you want to volunteer. If not I would still love to hear comments based on your experience with this diet plan.

KIDS NUTRITION

I get quite a few calls on the show from parents that are worried about their kids being skinny and not liking any sweets and/or not eating a certain nutritious things. Here I would like to shed some light on kid’s nutrition. First and foremost, I would urge parents to shy away from low fat diets for the kids especially if they are cutting down on the essential fatty acids that are present in nuts, seafood and even dairy. I hear parents giving skim milk to their kid which is the worst thing you can do to a kid’s growing brain. The working surface of the brain is composed mainly of fatty acids and the protective Myelin sheath surrounding the neurons is 30% protein and 70% fat. This protective sheath is crucial for the longevity of the neurons because unlike the rest of the body cells the brain and neuron cells don’t regenerate. Studies of the ancient human fossils have found that the populations living near the oceans had a larger brain compared to the populations living inland. This was attributed to the diet of the costal people mainly consisting of seafood and shell fish both of which are high in DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and cholesterol. DHA is the essential building block of brain cells and mothers milk is rich in this essential fatty acid and it has been shown time and again that a baby fed on mothers milk has a higher IQ than a formula fed baby. Although DHA is abundant in seafood but it can be made in our brains from ALA (Alpha-linolenic acid) family of fats found in the omega-3 containing food groups like flax, walnuts, almonds and green leafy vegetables. So in a nut shell give your kids nuts, seafood, green leafy vegetables and whole milk for optimum brain development.

As far as kids being skinny, I would say one need not worry about the weight as it’s mostly genetic at that age and as long as the kid is otherwise healthy and active and has a robust immunity there is no cause for worry. So if your kid is on the skinny side, don’t worry after a certain age he will start putting on more weight as his metabolism slows down. I know this is hard to digest being Indians as we often equate chubbiness to health. But remember obesity in kids is on the rise, thanks to high-fructose corn syrup in most soft drinks, candy bars and cereals. And if your kid doesn’t enjoy fruits because they are sweet try giving him more vegetables as they are also rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants and if you are still worried then giving them a kids multi-vitamin pill everyday is a good idea.

GOOD LINK ON CHRONIC INFLAMMATION

Here is some good information on inflammation:

http://www.womentowomen.com/inflammation/default.aspx

While some inflammation is necessary in the body to invoke its immune response, a constant inflammation in the body at several levels has been linked to arthritis, allergic reactions and most recently to coronary heart disease. By incorporating a healthy lifestyle with exercise, good diet and plenty of rest, we can change the state of inflammation in our bodies and enjoy a long disease free life. Happy reading!

CORONARY HEART DISEASE: THE REAL CAUSE

Whenever someone speaks of coronary heart disease (CHD) people think of cholesterol. In the past decade or so people have become more conscious of the so called evils of cholesterol and even though on an average people’s cholesterol levels are declining thanks to the consumption of billions of dollars of statin drugs, the rate of heart disease is still on the rise.  Baffling isn’t it? Also half the number of people that die of a heart attack have either normal or low cholesterol. Again baffling? Studies all across the globe of dietary habits of the Italian (predominant cheese eaters), French (cheese and organ meat eaters) and most tribes in Africa (beef eaters) haven’t been able to correlate the intake of dietary cholesterol with the incidence of heart disease. Baffled again?  The consumption of saturated animal fats since WW II has fallen steadily, thanks to the low fat crusade and yet the rates of CHD have risen dramatically. Baffled yet again? So obviously something is wrong with the hypothesis (yes it’s only a hypothesis because it’s never been conclusively proven to any statistical significance) that saturated fat or cholesterol cause CHD. So what does cause CHD? What causes the plaque formation in the arteries if cholesterol isn’t the cause?

To understand this we’ll have to dig deeper into the mechanism of plaque formation. While cholesterol does deposit on the artery walls to form plaque, the mechanism and the reason behind it is a bit more complex. Just the simplistic assumption that high cholesterol in one’s blood leads to more plaque formation and vice versa is not true. The blood vessels are constantly bombarded by free radicals and other oxidizing agents in the blood. This causes inflammation in the micro capillaries that if not controlled would cause a micro pore or a lesion in the wall. This will cause blood to leak out of the artery if the lesion opens up. When a lesion like this forms on the artery wall the role of protein is to repair and regenerate the wall so the leak can be plugged, but in the case of diabetics and people that eat too many simple carbs, the excess blood glucose floating around binds to protein and doesn’t let it do its job of repairing the lesion. The body’s next line of defense is to deposit some cholesterol on the lesion as a stopgap or band-aid. But it doesn’t stop here since the integrity of the capillary is compromised at that location, the next free radical attack happens preferentially at the same site over and over again. Even though I have simplistically described this process in discrete steps, it happens continuously in our blood vessels, 24/7. Over a period of several years this little inflammation band-aid plug grows and grows until it forms hardened plaque that eventually ruptures and causes a complete clog and stroke.

So we can see that the real reason for the formation of this plaque is not cholesterol but the inflammation that is happening in our arteries and our body’s inefficiency to repair it. So in essence cholesterol is just a symptom of an underlying problem and not the problem in itself. To give an analogy it would be silly to label a certain part of the town, which has a lot of police on patrol, as bad and as an area of high crime rate. The police are not the cause of the high crime rate but rather a result of the high crime rate in that area. Similarly the presence of cholesterol as plaque is not the cause of the hardening of arteries but rather the result of inflammation in the arteries. So as long as you have inflammation in your arteries you will form a plaque no matter what your cholesterol levels are. This explains the other half of the puzzle with people dying of heart attack in spite of their normal or low cholesterol levels.

In order to address the problem of plaque formation one needs to address the root cause of inflammation.  Inflammation is caused by free radicals and oxidative agents in our blood and if we can reduce the intake and formation of these free radicals then we would prevent the inflammation in the first place. Some of the obvious things that cause inflammation are most synthetic food agents, trans-fats, food fried in vegetable oils (frying in saturated fat or coconut oil is best). Also people that are diabetic and people on a high GI carb diet are pro-inflammatory as their protein repair mechanisms are impaired. Also people with stress have been shown to have higher levels of inflammation in their bodies. Smoking is another high risk practice that constricts and hardens blood vessels and increases the likelihood of plaque formation.

So my advice is to consume plenty of anti oxidants to counteract the free radicals. Fruits are high in anti-oxidant content but be careful to watch out the GI of some of the fruits like pineapples that are also high in sugar. Also the omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and olive oil is a strong inflammation antagonist. So have plenty of it. Mono-unsaturated fat found in nuts and certain vegetables like avocados are also anti inflammatory. And lastly stay away from deep fried things that are fried in vegetable shortening, margarine or even plain vegetable oils as they either have free radicals in them or release free radicals at temperatures required for frying. If you have to fry something, try butter, ghee or coconut oil as saturated fats are stable at high temperatures and don’t oxidize. And lastly remember to keep your weight under control by eating small frequent meals of low GI foods. This way you can keep your sugar levels and hence insulin levels in check and that way you will ensure that any inflammation in the body is repaired with proteins. This way you will avoid developing type II diabetes which the research community is fast finding out to be the real cause of heart disease. A high carb low fat diet with a stressful lifestyle is a surefire way to develop CHD even if you never go near saturated fat and have record low cholesterol levels. Keep in mind though that if your cholesterol levels are rising from year to year then it’s a symptom of some underlying inflammation in your body. Doctors are now looking for markers of inflammation in the blood like C-reactive protein (CRP) that is a better predictor for the risk of CHD than cholesterol. So be sure to ask your doctor to check your CRP levels the next time you have blood work done. And lastly to all my smoking friends out there, please stop smoking ASAP if you love your friends and family.

VEGETARIANISM VS, NON-VEGETARIANISM

Following my shoulder injury and surgery, I switched to a vegetarian diet consisting of dairy, eggs, vegetables and fruits for about 8 months. Every time I refused to eat meat at a gathering I would be asked two questions? Did you switch because a vegetarian diet is healthier? And did you switch to a vegetarian diet for weight loss? My answer to both would be, no!

Based on my literature search on carbohydrates and weight gain, I would expect neither would apply to a vegetarian diet, i.e., a vegetarian diet would neither be more healthy nor be less fattening than an omnivorous (meat and vegetable) diet. Even looking at the demographics of obesity and diabetes it’s hard to come to such a conclusion. For example the Indian subcontinent has the highest concentration of vegetarians in the world and yet at the same time they have the highest concentration of type II diabetes and the fastest growing obesity trend. So why has this notion that a vegetarian diet is healthier and less fattening than a comparable calorie omnivorous diet perpetuated throughout the western world? In the following discussion I plan on dispelling this myth along with evidence that an omnivorous diet is as healthy if not more, than a vegetarian diet and in fact an omnivorous diet incorporating fish is even superior to an all vegetarian diet in terms of overall mortality from heart disease and other factors.

We have to understand some of the motivational background for vegetarianism in the east vs. the west. In India for example, most Hindus, Buddhists and Jains are vegetarian by religion as animal slaughter is considered inhumane. In contrast to that, people in the industrialized nations of the west are vegetarian by lifestyle choice mostly motivated by a desire for good health (again perpetuated by the notion that vegetarianism is somehow healthier). So in studies (mostly done in the west) on the health merits of vegetarianism, the vegetarian group is already practicing a healthy lifestyle in terms of regular exercise, not smoking and not drinking alcohol and watching what they eat. That is the most fundamental flaw in these studies because one group of the control population is already working towards biasing the result in a direction that the study intends to find. In a controlled clinical trail, say for example, the trial for a new drug to lower blood sugar. There would be a control group that will be given the sugar pill and there will be a second group that will be given the trial drug. But what if the trial drug group was already working on an exercise plan to lower weight and hence the blood sugar? Would you call such a study fair? I think not! I would bet my farm (if I had one) that the results would be in favor of the trial drug group even if that drug did absolutely nothing. So keeping that in mind let’s look at what research has been done to correlate health to a particular type of diet.

There are 5 famous studies ^{[1, 2, 3]} done all the way back from 1982 up until now where 8,300 deaths were analyzed among 76,000 men and women with respect to their diet. Frequent meat eaters were defined as people that ate meat more than once a week and occasional meat eaters were defined as those eating less than once a week and furthermore another category in the meat eaters was the fish eaters that didn’t eat any meat except fish. The vegetarians were sub divided into the vegetarians that also ate eggs and dairy and vegans that ate no animal products. I am not going to go into the details of how the study was performed or how the data was analyzed but readers are welcome to go through the references if they are statistically inclined. The distribution of the subjects sampled is summarized in table 1 below.

Table 1. The distribution of sampled subjects with respect to lifestyle and dietary habits.

The first thing that strikes us is that the vegetarians in all the studies were following a healthier lifestyle compared to the non-vegetarians. The vegetarians smoked considerably less, drank considerably less alcohol and exercised more than the non-vegetarian population. The Body mass index (BMI) was similar in both groups so neither group was more obese than the other. The results are summarized in table 2 and graph 1 below.

Table 2. Percentage deaths in both groups from various causes.

Graph1. Graphical interpretation of table 1.

It’s worth noting that the number of vegans in the study is an order of magnitude lower than any of the other groups, so anyone that knows statistics would know that the results for this group are not as accurate as the other groups. For example there were no deaths from breast cancer or from prostate cancer in the vegan group but that should not be interpreted as something that is a benefit of the vegan diet. It just means that in the time period of these studies no one in the (small) vegan population died of these two factors. This doesn’t mean that if the sample population of vegans was as large as the other groups in this study there would still be no deaths from these factors.

The percentage of deaths from heart disease was similar in both the regular meat eaters and in the vegetarian and vegan group. The occasional meat eater’s percentage was slightly higher. The non-vegetarians that ate fish had the lowest heart disease deaths. There was no statistically significant difference between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, or all other causes combined. The fish eaters were the ones that fared the best in almost all the categories. The regular meat eaters and the vegetarians fared comparably in almost all the categories except lung cancer but remember the meat eaters were smoking considerably more than the vegetarians.

Final thoughts:

The general trend is that meat eaters eat too little vegetables and get too little fiber and also consume alcohol and smoke, where as vegetarians are more health conscious and so exercise regularly and watch what they eat. I believe that a healthy diet has to have a balance between animal sources of food and plant sources of food. The caveman diet, or the Paleolithic diet, that consists of vegetables, fruits, nuts and organic meats is the healthiest diet and that is the diet that the humans have evolved with for hundreds of thousands of years before the modern grain diet was invented few thousand years ago. If you are averse to eating meat then more power to you but do realize that being a vegetarian doesn’t offer any health benefits over an omnivorous diet. In fact a diet predominant in grains without much fruit or vegetables might be worse than a meat and vegetable diet due to the GI value of the diet and the resultant weight gain and the health problems that come with weight gain. And if you are not averse to eating meat than incorporating 2-3 servings of fish a week along with vegetables and fruits will be even better than an all vegetarian diet for both weight loss and general health.

So the next time you see a person tout a vegetarian diet ask them if they are doing it for good health or weight loss.

References:

1. Animal product consumption and mortality because of all causes combined, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer in Seventh-day Adventists. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1988; 48(suppl):739–48.
2. Vegetarianism, dietary fiber, and mortality. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1982; 36:873–7.
3. Chronic disease among Seventh-day Adventists, a low-risk group. Cancer 1989; 64:570–81.
4. 3)Mortality among German vegetarians: first results after five years of follow-up. Nutr Cancer 1988; 11:117–26.
5. The GLIM system release 4 manual. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1993.
6. Mortality pattern of German vegetarians after 11 years of follow-up. Epidemiology 1992; 3:395–401.

THE SCOOP ON SOY

Most of us have heard that Soy protein is the most complete vegetable source of protein with all the 8 essential amino acids needed for proper assimilation and protein synthesis in the body. Also in recent years soy has been touted as a perfect milk substitute under the silk® brand name. Soy also contains isoflavones which are claimed to be beneficial to health. So is Soy really a super food or is it just another food fad headed for demise?

A little bit of history on soy first. Soy was first used as food as early as 1100 BC by the Chinese. The Chinese learnt to ferment soy beans to make tempeh, natto and tamari. Contrary to popular belief the Chinese and the Japanese eat soy sparingly as a condiment and not as a replacement for conventional dairy and meats.

Even though soy has all the 8 essential amino acids it lacks the sulfur containing amino acids, methionine and cystine. Also most soy processing denatures and destroys Lysine which is one of the most important amino acids for protein synthesis. So even thought soy is high in protein content, in most modern soy foods, it is not bio available. Soy foods also contain trypsin inhibitors that inhibit protein synthesis and pancreatic function. Lab animals fed a diet of soy exhibited stunted growth and pancreatic disorders. Soy also increases the body’s need for vitamin D which is needed for strong bones and growth. Also Soy hinders in the absorption of iron and zinc, both of which are essential for healthy brain development. Soy also lacks cholesterol (yeah the dreaded cholesterol!) which is essential for proper brain development in children.

In recent years, phytoestrogens present in soy have received widespread attention. What do these estrogen promoters do in the body? We all know estrogen is the female sex hormone responsible for sexual development in girls. High doses of these estrogen inducing compounds present in soy formulas are implicated in the current trend towards increasingly premature sexual development in girls and retarded sexual development in boys. Also it’s widely known that cancerous cells are very sensitive to the hormone estrogen. That’s the reason estrogen blockers are used in breast cancer therapy in women. So a diet rich in soy should be avoided by women that are predisposed to developing breast cancer. The other estrogen side-effect is the promotion of belly fat deposition. So a soy rich diet has been linked to hypothyroidism and weight gain in the mid section. Also estrogen production suppresses the production of testosterone in men leading to hair growth and a depressed sexual libido. So the men reading this article shouldn’t be disheartened if they love soy. They may not be able to perform but at least they will look good with a head full of hair!

To top it all off most soy products sold in the US are engineered with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in order to increase yields and many studies are now linking GMOs to the production of cancerous cells in the body. So is all soy damned? No, as long as it’s fermented (fermentation process destroys the natural toxins found in soy) and made from organic soy it’s relatively harmless in small quantities.

FAT FACTS

Try saying this 10 times as fast as you can! All jokes apart, in this article I would like to elucidate the difference between the various fat types and show which ones are good and which ones are to be avoided.

Edible fat can be categorized into four main types:

(i) Saturated Fat: The fat that is present in living cells and is derived mainly from animals and some plants. This type of fat has all the carbon atoms bonded to hydrogen atoms. These fats are abundantly present in animal sources and need no special extraction techniques and can withstand high heat without disintegration of free radicals. Mostly derived from milk and other animal sources. Some vegetable sources of these fats are coconut oil, palm oil and cocoa butter. These fats are solid at room temperature. These fats have received bad publicity in the recent decades due to bad research and good marketing by the vegetable oil and the pharmaceutical industry. Contrary to popular belief these fats haven’t been shown to increase long term cholesterol production in the human body. These fats are ideal for cooking at high temperatures due to their inherent stability at withstanding high heat.

(ii) Mono-unsaturated Fat: These fats are missing one hydrogen atom per C-C bond resulting in a double C=C bond. These fats are derived from nuts like walnuts and almonds and require no special processing techniques in order to derive as the nuts are rich in these types of fat. Olive oil is also rich in MUF and is derived by cold pressing olives which again are rich in oil. These fats have been found to be very healthy for the heart and for general well being. These fats cannot withstand very high heats like saturated fats. Best eaten raw or on salads.

(iii) Poly-unsaturated Fat: As it implies this type of fat has many more C=C double bonds and is mainly derived from vegetables and grains sources such as corn. Since these vegetables and grains are naturally low in fat a large quantity has to be processed in order to derive very little oil. These oils require a lot of processing with fancy chemicals and techniques such as hexane and supercritical carbon dioxide in order to remove impurities and prolong shelf life. In the process it loses most of the vitamins naturally present in the oil. These fats suppress immune response and are hence used in organ transplants. Believe it or not these oils were invented before human consumption for use in the paint industry, but after WWII and the post industrial revolution era the vegetable oil industry aggressively started promoting it as a healthy saturated fat substitute (based on an inconclusive study by Ancel Keys). Not suited for high temperature cooking these fats disintegrate to liberate free radicals that are the cause of a lot of modern aging ailments. Best used in salad dressings and low temperature cooking.

(iv) Trans-Fat: The only man-made fat that is derived by pumping hydrogen gas at a high pressure into poly-unsaturated vegetable fats at a high temperature in the presence of nickel catalyst. Contrary to popular belief repeated deep frying in vegetable oil doesn’t yield trans-fat due to the lack of a nickel catalyst to complete the reaction. This type of fat is to be avoided like the plague.

Contrary to popular belief the safest oil to cook in is saturated fat as it withstands high temperatures and doesn’t liberate harmful free radicals and hasn’t been conclusively shown to increase the body’s long term cholesterol production. Since the saturated and MUFs require the least amount of processing they are safest and healthiest to consume. PUFs are also safe to consume if not used for high temperature cooking and if they are balanced by an intake of saturated and MUFs.

Just remember one thing: saturated and mono-unsaturated fats are readily available in nature and have been consumed by humans for hundreds of thousands of years while the poly-unsaturated vegetable oils are a recent creation of the 20^th century. Our bodies have evolved over several hundred thousand years consuming saturated and mono-unsaturated fats and so these are most biocompatible with the human body.

Food for thought: there was little use of edible vegetable oil before 1940s and one person in a million died of a heart attack. Now, 60 years after the rapid adoption of vegetable oil one person in 500 dies from a heart attack. Coincidence? I think not!