Sugar’s have an adverse affect on our health.  Here are some health issues that sugar creates in your body.  Due to blood type some people might see effects greater in some categories that others. These health effects of Blood-Sugar, Weight Gain, Increase in Free Radicals, etc. generally make us more susceptible to the flu, colds, cancer, etc. Therefore it is vital to understand the effect of sugars in our bodies and how by avoiding them can increase our quality of life. Read the rest of this entry »

HOME-COOKED MEALS VS CONVENIENCE FOODS
With the arrival of convenience foods in the 1950s and fast food in the 1960s, Americans were offered a cheap and convenient alternative to home cooking. It also began the American love affair with high-fat, salt-laden meals accompanied by soft drinks. Today more than 90 percent of Americans get less than two daily servings of fruits and vegetables.

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Before the industrial revolution, the human diet was still largely plant based. It consisted of foods that could be hunted (rabbit, fish, deer, etc), gathered (nuts, seeds, berries, etc) or grown (grain, vegetables, farm animals for meat, milk, and eggs). Foods were unprocessed and eaten while fresh.  However, with the industrial revolution a major shift began to take place. The population shifted from farms to factories and began to rely more on buying food than providing their own. Food was now grown, shipped, stored, prepared, and eaten. Food became a commodity, subject to mechanization and automation.

• Processed Foods – We all are familiar with refined flour: excessive processing has created this ‘new food’ that is actually highly deficient in valuable nutrients as the best parts of the grain was lost – the germ, the bran, and the fiber.
• Depleted Soil – In order to put nutrients back into the soil, techniques such as crop rotation and soil fertilization with organic matter (compost, manure, lime, etc) were used. Today, synthetic inorganic fertilizers are used which contain fewer and fewer nutrients to replenish the soil, eliminating nutrients vital to humans. Hence, we are seeing widespread deficiencies in trace minerals among our patients.
• Early Harvest – Most foods were ripened on the tree or vine before being picked or harvested.  These vine-ripened foods absorbed more nutrients from the soil. Today foods are often grown far from the point of sale. To preserve freshness, crops are picked before they are ripe or forced to ripen quickly under unnatural conditions. Other crops are sprayed, gassed, and fumigated in order to delay ripening during shipping. Either way, we are missing out on those last stages of ripening which allow for the formation of more vitamins and absorption of minerals.
• Chemical Warfare – The use of insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides on most of the crops grown in America has led to many insidious health problems. Traces of many carcinogens (cancer causing agents) in the food and water supply are derived from chemical insecticides.  Heavy metals, such as Mercury, Arsenic and Lead are often found in those chemical agents and hence end up in our foods.

Nutrition Basics Part 1

Is it time to fire your weight loss coach? If your dietitian, personal trainer, or doctor has told you that losing weight is limited to lots of exercise and eating less they need to be fired.

Statistics show that 90 percent of people who have lost weight by any dieting plan gain back all the weight within 5 years – often much sooner. There are many underlying causes of weight problems that must be addressed – otherwise any weight loss will only be temporary. Here are some of the factors that attribute to our modern society’s weight problems: Environmental toxins, brain chemistry disorder, adrenal and thyroid dysfunction, hormone imbalance, as well as food sensitivities? Read the rest of this entry »

When used appropriately HCG can be a useful adjunct to lose weight and keep it off!

Obesity has become the new social enemy. In Washington D.C. there is talk of adding
new taxes on fattening foods via the proposed health care reform and of penalizing
obese individuals with higher costs for their care. Regardless of government regulations
we want to achieve and maintain optimum body composition as part of our strategy for
health and wellness. In order to effectively achieve permanent weight loss the
underlying issues must be addressed. Read the rest of this entry »

Many women already in their mid-thirties will experience symptoms of peri-menopause and will put on extra pounds. In order to lose weight and keep it off, a woman’s sex hormones have to be balanced and replaced if lost. One size does not fit all.  Therefore, her treatment should be customized to her own individual needs.

Estrogen has 400 functions in the body. One of those is to make insulin work better, which helps to keep a woman’s blood sugar normal.  This aids in weight loss.  Estrogen also helps the formation of neurotransmitters in the brain, such as serotonin, which decreases depression irritability, and anxiety. Abnormal levels of serotonin and other neurotransmitter can lead women to eat “comfort foods” that also cause weight gain. The body has receptor sites for Estrogen everywhere, including the brain, muscles, bone, bladder, gut, uterus, ovaries, vagina, breast, eyes, heart, lungs and blood vessels. Read the rest of this entry »