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Visit your local supermarket, drugstore or health food store and you will find rows upon rows of vitamins and supplements. Each is minutely measured giving you the RDAs,DVs, IUs, milligrams and so on. It’s enough information to make your head swim!

Some studies suggest that specific vitamin and mineral supplements can help reduce your risk of heart disease by 30 to 40 percent and even slow the progress of the disease. They are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain over the counter.

Vitamins are also credited with boosting the immune system and it is believed that older people who take vitamin and mineral supplements do have stronger immune systems. The immune system becomes less efficient as we age. The belief is that if your immune system can’t protect you, the door is thrown wide open for cancer and other serious diseases to waltz right in.

So, the answer is yes, supplements can help but don’t expect them to work miracles. You can’t continue to do the steak and eggs or burger and fries thing and think that popping a pill will be a cure-all because it isn’t! Vitamin supplements will help prevent disease even though it may take at least six months to a year to register the improvement. That’s not an excuse to put it off, because the sooner you begin, the better the results.

Let’s take a look at weight for instance. If you take in too many calories and gain weight you increase the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke. But, cutting the calories to either lose or maintain your weight may result in deficiencies in vitamins and minerals. You can replace key vitamins and minerals lost by dieting with carefully selected supplements.

Another challenge is compensating as the body’s systems begin to slow down. As we age, our systems are not working as efficiently as they once were. For example, you don’t have as much stomach acid that helps to get nutrients from food. That means that as much as 40% of the nutrients you ingest may go unused resulting in deficiencies of vitamins D, B6, B12, riboflavin, folate and calcium.

Your body’s system for storing the nutrients isn’t as efficient either because the percentage of body fat increases with age. While your metabolism keeps you alive and healthy, it also produces by products that can be harmful including free radicals and other compounds that cause damage to cells’ DNA and can lead to many of the effects of old age.

As we get older, the body reduces the amount of antioxidants it produces and it will become more difficult to get enough antioxidant protection just from your food. Although you can get most of the nutrients you need from a multi-vitamin, you may want to take extra supplements of certain vitamins and minerals to promote optimum health.

As a cautionary measure, however, make certain that you are not exceeding the recommended ranges. You can get too much of a good thing. It is also advisable to consult with your physician regarding any supplemental regimen as some supplements may have adverse interaction with certain medications you are taking.

Here are a few suggestions we would like to share with you.

Avoid multi-vitamins with time release formulas. By the time they dissolve they may be too far down the intestinal tract where absorption is poor.

Store your vitamins away from hot or humid places. It is better to keep them with your spices rather than the bathroom or near direct sunlight or heat.

Take your vitamins with a meal. Some nutrients are only released with fat so taking them with your low-fat meal is optimum.

Check the expiration date on the bottle. Buying a large amount just to save a few dollars isn’t a bargain if you won’t be using them before their effectiveness expires.

If you drink even moderately, take extra vitamins and minerals.

If you want to lose weight, take more calcium. If you don’t consume enough calcium your body will over produce calcitriol. This hormone promotes fat storage in the body. But, calcium supplements won’t be as beneficial as dietary calcium. Have four daily servings of nonfat or low-fat dairy products instead.

About The Author: Wan Ibrahim is the Editor of Healthy 4Life eNewsletter.
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There are scores and scores of sports nutrition companies marketing “metabolism boosters” to help athletes reduce body fat. The products range from simple herbs such as Ginseng, to chemical derivatives of thyroid and adrenal hormones. The theory is constant: by increasing the body’s natural metabolism, it will burn more calories and thus, more fat. On paper this looks good. The basic science behind metabolism and body composition makes for slick advertising, and plenty of products sold. The trouble is there is little education regarding how to use metabolites effectively, and when to use them in the first place.

For athletes—and in fact, for the general public as well—body composition is a much more accurate measure of fitness than body weight. The leaner an athlete, the greater the force he or she will be able to generate per pound. With a leaner structure, the longer it will take to fatigue the system. All crucial issues to peak performance. It seems to make sense that active metabolism supplements would be of benefit. But this is rarely the case.

First, the body’s metabolism has a set point. It’s quite similar to a thermostat—a good metaphor since one of the main jobs of metabolism is to produce body heat. When you crank up metabolism by dietary means, the body will turn off it’s own production in order to restore the set point. This means that any long term use of herbs and metabolites serves only to deregulate your system. That’s going the wrong direction from teaching the body to perform at a higher level.

Second, the increased caloric utilization that goes with higher metabolism is not all good from an athletic standpoint. Burning more calories and more fat causes the body to store less glycogen, the main energy source for muscles. If athletes can’t store maximum amounts of glycogen between workouts, their subsequent training and performance will likewise be sub-maximal.

So for athletes, the best bet is to steer clear of active metabolism altering supplements. The body’s set point can be slowly altered, but only through training over time rather than mucking with it ergogenically. That way it will be a lasting, natural change, and it won’t interfere with glycogen replenishment. If a body composition change is required in getting to peak performance, herbs and amino acids can be used, but never continuously for more than a week or two to avoid systemic metabolism deregulation, and only the empirically supported supplements such as L-Carnitine or standardized G115 Ginseng.

JOHN F. ELIOT, PH.D., is an award winning professor of management, psychology, and human performance. He holds faculty appointments at Rice University and the SMU Cox School of Business Leadership Center. He is a co-founder of the Milestone Group, a consulting firm providing training to business executives, professional athletes, physicians, and corporations. Dr. Eliot’s clients have included: SAP, XEROX, Disney, Adidas, the United States Olympic Committee, the National Champion Rice Owl’s baseball team, and the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Eliot’s cutting edge work has been featured on ABC, MSNBC, CBS, ESPN, Fox Sports, NPR, and highlighted in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Entrepreneur, LA Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times. Dr. Eliot serves on numerous advisory boards including the National Center for Human Performance and the Center for Performing Arts Medicine. His latest book is Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance. For more information, visit Dr. Eliot’s site at http://www.overachievement.com

Female and male athletes respond to training in a fairly comparable way. As volume and intensity of training increases, so does aerobic capacity and hence performance. Body composition tends to change, whether male or female, indicating that physiologically, we are all actually quite similar.

Nutritionally speaking, fuelling of training is similar too. Regardless of the sport in question, energy intake must match energy output in order to fuel training and recovery. For endurance athletes, carbohydrate intake needs to equate to approximately 7-10g per kg/bwt (or 4g per lb/bwt). If it doesn’t performance tends to suffer, and fatigue creeps in.
It is important for any athlete, regardless of gender, to train and compete with optimum fuel reserves, and, of course be well hydrated.

Despite seemingly parallel training responses and “fuel” requirements between males and females, women engaged in regular exercise, and especially those with demanding training and competition schedules have quite unique nutritional needs.

These special needs often mirror a particular time in a female’s sexual development, or during one of the many hormonal changes, which govern a women’s life. Dramatic hormonal shifts initiate quite unique metabolic and chemical changes within the body that demand specific nutrients. Needs change as a female enters her pubertal years (onset of menarche), during her reproductive years and during pregnancy, and then at the stage that marks the end of reproduction (menopause). Disruption in a female’s normal menstrual functioning (e.g. amenorrhoea) may create increased requirements in macro and micronutrients (e.g. calcium, magnesium, vitamin K, protein and essential fatty acids). The BNF’s briefing paper, Nutrition and Sport, reports increased calcium requirements in amenorrhoeic women, and advises all female athletes to pay attention to energy, calcium and iron intakes (1). Vitamin K supplementation has been shown to improve markers of bone metabolism in a small group of amenorrhoeic female elite athletes (2). Vitamin K functions in the synthesis of calcium-binding proteins.

Iron and calcium requirements of the female athlete
The two main nutrients that require most attention are the minerals iron and calcium.

Levels of iron in the body are particularly important given iron’s role in many enzyme functions and it’s fundamental role in the formation of haemoglobin (75% of total body iron is in this form) and as a constituent of myoglobin (the O2 carrying material that functions inside the cells).
Iron performs the overwhelming activity of transporting oxygen from the lungs to the mitochondria within muscle cells – vital for the athlete.
Females have a higher rate of iron loss than men mainly via blood loss through menstruation, as well as during pregnancy and childbirth. This creates a higher iron requirement in women generally.

An athlete’s iron status (measured by levels of blood haemoglobin, haematocrit concentration and plasma ferritin levels) may further be compromised due to a number of factors directly related to training. These have been identified as bleeding within the digestive system, inadequate diet and poor iron absorption, loss of iron through heavy sweating, red blood cell breakdown due to trauma created by certain high-impact activities (e.g. long-distance running), and even over-frequent blood donation.

Iron-deficiency anaemia (haemoglobin levels below 12g/dl) has a major impact on performance and immune status. It decreases aerobic capacity and endurance, induces fatigue, and lowers resistance to infection.
It has not yet been clearly established whether iron depletion (low ferritin concentrations and reduced bone marrow iron) negatively affects performance, but certainly low ferritin is not something to be ignored. Many however, suggest changes in plasma ferritin concentration are due to either heavy training, or as a response to inflammation, and low blood haemoglobin in some athletes is simply due to plasma volume expansion.
Assessment of iron status in athletes is clearly not straightforward. Taking into account measured indices of iron status, individual dietary habits, digestive function, menstruating patterns and other significant factors should help determine the impact iron status may be having on a particular individual’s performance. It is fair to say that in some cases, borderline measurements or those at the lower end of “normal” are often clinically significant, and iron supplementation produces noticeable improvements in iron status and performance (3).

The use of iron supplements at this point may also prevent the development of full blown iron-deficiency anaemia in some female athletes, which is often when “re-pletion” is most difficult, especially via diet alone.
Inorganic forms of iron (e.g. ferrous sulphate, ferrous gluconate) are notoriously poorly absorbed, and often cause gastrointestinal problems such as constipation. More importantly, they often fail to raise Hb levels. Where iron supplementation is deemed appropriate (i.e. anaemia), serious consideration should be given to using new “food-form” iron supplements. Food-form iron is a version of iron that has been grown into yeast cells, and the absorbability of yeast-based iron is much closer to haem-iron. It also produces little or no uncomfortable side effects.

Calcium

National surveys have consistently reported low calcium intake is young and adult females (4, 5, 6), as well as female athletes (2, 7).
This is normally due to low energy intakes, fad diets, or poorly planned vegetarian and vegan diets. Inadequate calcium intake and consequently poor calcium status is compounded by diets that contain high phosphorous, high salt and high caffeine food and drink. These have a negative impact of calcium balance, due to an increase in urinary calcium excretion (8).

Calcium and bone health

About 60% of adult bone is laid down during adolescence (9), when calcium deposition is at it’s highest (10). This is due to increases in the hormones oestrogen, growth hormone and calcitriol. Mechanisms are put to work that lead to an overall stimulation of bone cell production and maturation. Bone resorption is out-weighed by bone deposition, leading to an increase in overall bone mineralisation. There seems to be a critical 4-year period during teenage years, from the ages of about 11-15 years, during which time most of the total gain in bone mineral density (BMD) and content (BMC) is accumulated (9).

Peak bone mass is a major determinant of osteoporosis in later life, so building the largest bone mass possible is one of the most important strategies to protect against osteoporosis in later life (11).
Females in the UK, aged 19-50 years, are thought to need at least 700mg calcium daily in order to meet the demands for calcium deposition in bone. Recommendations are lower than in most other industrialised countries and it has been suggested that 11-18 year olds require 1200-1500 mg/day to optimise peak bone mass (12).

Numerous well-controlled longitudinal studies have produced consistent positive effects of calcium supplementation on BMD in adolescent females (13, 14, 15), which suggests that our UK reference values are sub-optimal.

Female athletes are a different sub-class all together with regard to calcium needs. Up to 400mg of calcium has been shown to be lost (in males) via sweat alone, from a 2-hr training session (17), and although Ca losses in females are unlikely to be that high, any female athlete such as marathoners or triathletes training twice a day… could be at risk of not getting enough calcium in the diet to achieve a positive Ca balance.
Dr Michael Colgan, renowned New Zealand research scientist believes athletes (both male and female, and especially females with amenorrhoea) need to supplement between 1000-2000mg Ca daily.

Supplementation needs should always be assessed in relation to what is actually being obtained from the diet. Dietary intake should therefore always be assessed, along with identifying factors that could potentially increase calcium excretion – e.g. high sodium and phosphorous diets, high protein diets, and an overall high “acidic” load. Knowledge should also be sought as to the types of calcium available and their rates of absorption.

The female athlete triad

A major focus in recent years within nutrition and sport for women has been with respect to the “female athlete triad”. Components of the triad are disordered eating, amenorrhoea (absence of periods), and osteopenia (as opposed to osteoporosis).

A review paper on BMD data in athletes found osteopenia (as defined as BMD scores between 1 and 2.5 SD below the mean of young adults) to be significantly prevalent in those at risk of the female athlete triad. Interestingly, osteoporosis (BMD above 2.5 SD below the mean) was relatively uncommon, even in this selected “athletic” population (16). This by no means relegates the problem as any less significant. A diagnosed case of osteopenia in a young female athlete may actually be a worse scenario in terms of long-term bone health, when compared to a diagnosed osteoporotic in her 60’s. An athlete with osteopenia is at greater risk of developing osteoporosis than is an athlete who has normal bone mass.

There is indeed much concern amongst sports dieticians and nutritionists, who are commonly faced with various subclinical eating disorders, or “disordered eating” (a significant risk factor for female athlete triad).

Disordered eating disrupts menstrual function, and together with intense training schedules, often leads to amenorrhoea, or cessation of periods. A lack of oestrogenic stimulation of bone cells leads to decreased calcium uptake, and over time, loss of bone mass.

Cases such as these do tend to be sport-specific, being confined to sports that either require a low body mass (martial arts, rowing), where a low body weight is thought to improve performance (long-distance running, triathlon) and in those sports that requests athletes to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye (ballet, figure skating, diving).

Of course, any female, athlete or non-athlete, under stress, or with low self-esteem, a tendency toward perfectionism, or family problems is at risk for “disordered” eating, and a down-regulation of sex hormone production, in favour of stress-hormone production.

Decreasing training intensity and optimising energy and nutrient intake must be the key strategies to dealing with any component of the female athlete triad.

Although calcium intake in the diet cannot make up for a lack of oestrogen due to menstrual irregularities, it should be optimised in the diet and by supplementation if necessary, especially if a contributory cause of osteopenia is lack of dietary calcium.

Practical suggestions to increase intake of calcium and iron

· Eat low-fat dairy foods such as skimmed milk and natural yogurt daily

· Add 100g of tofu and sunflower seeds to stir-frys and salads

· Add almonds, dried figs and seeds to breakfast cereals

· Add blanched spinach to scrambled or poached eggs

· Use Tahini (sesame seed spread) on bread and crackers or add a tsp to natural yogurt

· Eat plenty of dark green leaves and leafy vegetables such as kale, broccoli, watercress and spinach- always steam or lightly cook brocolli, kale, cabbage and spinach

· Try soft-bony fish (tinned salmon, sardines, pilchards) as a topping on baked potatoes or wholegrain toast

· Eat vitamin-C rich foods to enhance the absorption of iron (i.e. plenty of fresh fruit and colourful vegetables)

· Be aware of substances that interfere with iron absorption (e.g. phytates found in bran, and tannin in tea).

Try NOT to drink tea and coffee with food

References

1) Briefing Paper (2001) Nutrition and Sport. British Nutrition Foundation.

2) Craciun AM, Wolf J, Knapen MHJ, Brouns F, Vermeer C (1998) Improved bone metabolism in female elite athletes after vitamin K supplementation. International Journal of Sports Medicine 19, 479-484.

3) Matter M, Stiffal T, Graves J et al. (1987) The effect of iron and folate therapy on maximal exercise performance in female marathon runners with iron and folate deficiency. Clinical Science 72, 415-422.

4) Department of Health (1991) Dietary Reference Values for Food, Energy and Nutrients. Report on Health and Social Subjects 41. London: HMSO

5) MAFF, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1994) The Diet and Nutritional Survey of British Adults-further analysis. London: HMSO

6) HEA, Health Education Authority (1995) Diet and Health in School-age Children. London: HEA

7) Van Erp-Baart AMJ, Saris WHM, Binkhorst RA, Vos JA, Elvers JWH (1989) Nationwide survey on nutritional habits in elite athletes Part 2. Mineral and vitamin intake. International Journal of Sports Medicine 10, 11-16.

Matkovic V, Ilich JZ, Andon MB et al. (1995) Urinary calcium, sodium and bone mass of young females. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62, 417-425.

9) Bonjour J, Theintz G, Bertrand B, Slosman D, Rizzoli R (1991). Critical years and stages of puberty for spinal and femoral bone mass accumulation during adolescence. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 73, 555-563.

10) Weaver CM, Martin BR, Plawecki KL, Peacock M, Wood OB, Smith DL, Wastney ME (1995) Differences in calcium metabolism between adolescent and adult females. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 61, 577-581

11) Christiansen C (1991) Consensus Development Conference on Osteoporosis. American Journal of Medicine 5B, 1S-68S.

12) National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Panel on Optimal Calcium intake (1994) Optimal Calcium intake. JAMA 272, 1942-1948.

13) Johnston CC, Miller JZ, Slemenda CW, Reister TK, Hui S, Christian JC, Peacock M (1992) Calcium supplementation and increases in bone mineral density in children. New England Journal of Medicine 327, 82-87.

14) Matkovic V, Fontana D, Tominac C, Goel P, Chestnut CH. Factors which influence peak bone mass formation: a study of calcium balance and the inheritance of bone mass in adolescent females (1990) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 52, 878-888.

15) Lee WTK, Leung SSF, Wang S, Xu Y, Zeng W, Lau J, Oppenheimer SJ et al. (1994) Double-blind, controlled supplementation and bone mineral accretion in children accustomed to a low-calcium diet. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 60, 744-750.

16) Khan KM, Lui-Ambrose T, Sran MM, et al. (2002) New Criteria for female athlete triad syndrome? British Journal of Sports Medicine 36,10-13.

17) Kiesges, RC, et al. (1996) Changes in bone mineral content in male athletes. J Amer Med Assoc 276:226-230,

Lucy-Ann Prideaux has an MSc degree in Human Nutrition and Metabolism, and a BSc (Hons) degree in Sports Science. She is a registered Nutritionist with The Nutrition Society.
Aside from her own private practise and consultancy work, she is the resident Nutritionist at the Sussex Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine with Dr Nick Webborn.

The eating binge is something that’s well known to most of us – especially those of us who are struggling to lose weight. In extreme cases, binge eating is even a disorder – people seem to lose control of their eating, concentrating on a single food group and consuming literally thousands of calories in a very short period of time. Afterward, the result is a feeling of guilt, or that you have ‘blown it’ – and, of course, the intake of that many calories at a time is disastrous to weight loss.

However, many experts have commented that dieting or restricting food intake can actually trigger binging for those who have that tendency already. It’s almost as though the restriction of food makes us feel so deprived that we respond by binging, and the guild that follows a binge can derail the diet for an even longer time that necessary. Many of us would give anything to be able to control the impulse to binge – eliminating it altogether would be ideal, in fact. In this way, we would really be able to control food intake and lose weight.

Most people look upon binging as a ‘problem’ behavior – an expression of some sort of distress, or even a type of neurotic behavior to be cured. After all, this type of eating is extreme – during a binge, people consume many times their ideal calorie intake for the day, and there seems no way to avoid weight gain if this becomes a habit. However, there is also evidence that indicates binging may just be a fact of life for all humans, a leftover from the way in which we obtained our food early on in human development. Think about it. Before agriculture came on the scene and regulated the food supply throughout the year, humans spent many millennia as hunters and gatherers. In fact, we should all remember that this pre-civilized, hunting and gathering existence went on for much longer than civilization had. Humans have practiced agriculture for little more than six thousand years, but humans (or advanced pre-humans) have been around for about 35 thousand years. So for the vast majority of human history, we were hunters and gatherers, and in that state, believe it or not, binging was a really good idea.

Think about it. This was before refrigeration or any other organized means of food preservation. People moved around constantly, and sometimes food was plentiful, while other times it was scarce. When food was scarce, there was no way to get more. Humans just had to do without, or survive on very little. That meant that when a hunt was successful, or when the early humans stumbled upon a grove or fruit trees, binging was the most reasonable, well-adapted response. The food was there at that moment, and who knew when it would be there again? So the early humans would have eaten as much of it as was humanly possible – in short, they binged. They had to. It had to keep them going until the next lucky find.

Our bodily drives are stronger and more primitive than what our minds tell us. So, while we might know, intellectually, that binging is not a good idea and that we should eat a pre-approved number of calories per day, the urge to binge is still as strong in us as it was in early humans. The difference, of course, is that our food environment is not self-limiting – there are no natural restrictions. We have access to almost all types of food at all times, unlike early humans. So, though our environment doesn’t necessitate binging, the behavioral drive is still strong.

That also explains why dieting can bring on a binge. A diet is like a period of scarcity or famine – biologically, this makes us want to binge, to make up for it, as soon as food becomes available. And the more you restrict your eating, the stronger your impulse to binge will be, because for early humans (physiologically identical to us) that was good survival behavior. That’s why the behavior is so hard to overcome – at one point, it was not just acceptable – it was necessary to human survival.

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If you ask most adults why they don’t get the vitamins they need as part of their daily food intake, they’ll likely tell you that they just don’t have the time to eat like they should. It’s true that eating right does take some time and effort, but it’s also true that you can develop and maintain healthier eating habits without any drastic changes. Take a look at some facts and some alterations that can make a big difference in how you eat, and how you feel about what you eat.

Think the only healthy food is food that’s served on a plate that you eat with a fork? The truth is that many foods that are very rich in vitamins that your body needs everyday are available for your consumption on the go. And with some minor changes, even your fast foods can be healthy choices when you’re considering vitamins.

A cheeseburger from your favorite fast food place doesn’t have to be something you only indulge in now and then. While there are some other issues to consider (the amount of grease and salt, for example), a cheeseburger can provide you with many of the vitamins you need. A regular cheeseburger with a double patty gives you about 30 percent of your body’s B12 needs for the day and the dill pickles are a source of Vitamin K.

Instead of ordering French Fries to go with your burger, choose a salad. That doesn’t mean that you have to stop what you’re doing and sit down to eat the salad. Pile those veggies on the burger! The tomatoes are a source of Vitamin C, and the lettuce and mayonnaise has Vitamin K. Add it all up and a cheeseburger isn’t a bad choice when you’re trying to get the daily requirement of some necessary vitamins. Even a fast food taco can be a good source of Vitamin B12.

Sandwiches are generally not associated with healthy eating, but the same “cheeseburger rule” applies to any sandwich. Pile on the jalapeno or bell peppers for Vitamin C. Oils are also a good source of vitamins. Sunflower oil is very high in Vitamin E, for example.

Many foods that aren’t naturally high in vitamin content are fortified with vitamins. Most dairy products are fortified with Vitamin D. Taking just the time for a bowl of vitamin-fortified cereal in the morning can provide you with all the vitamins you need for the entire day. The next time you’re ready to dismiss a particular food as just empty calories, take a minute to evaluate what you’re really eating. You may be surprised to find the vitamin content is higher than you thought, or you may find that some simple changes can rectify the vitamin-poor choices.

Bob Benson is the founder of Furniture online. You can check out our website at http://www.vitamins-nutrition-supplements.info

There’s a good bit of medical lore that says that caffeine will increase your blood pressure. It’s true in the sense that there are short-term clinical studies that show that caffeine intake can raise blood levels of stress hormones associated with hypertension, but these studies have all been only up to a week or so in length. Recently a team of researchers at Harvard published the first study of the effects of long-term caffeine intake among women (JAMA. 2005;294:2330-2335 ).

The study followed two groups of female registered nurses:

1. 53,175 women, 32-55 years of age, between 1990 and 2002
2. 87,369 women, 25-42 years of age, between 1991 and 2003

Any woman who was diagnosed with hypertension was excluded from the study.

Each woman filled out a questionnaire every four years, answering questions about diet, exercise, and caffeine intake. The relevant beverages on the questionnaire were:

• low-calorie cola (e.g., Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi with caffeine),
• regular cola (e.g., Coke, Pepsi, or other cola beverages with sugar),
• tea with caffeine,
• tea without caffeine,
• coffee with caffeine, and
• decaffeinated coffee.

The researchers adjusted their analyses for other risk factors, like family history of hypertension, BMI level, alcohol use, amount of exercise, and use of oral contraceptives. Their results are very interesting: those women whose caffeine intake was in the midrange of the study (between 144mg and 297 mg per day) had a 14-15% HIGHER risk of hypertension than those whose caffeine intake was less than 45mg per day. But here’s the interesting part: those women whose caffeine intake was at the high end of the study (over 417mg/day) had almost the same risk of hypertension as those women in the low end of the study. These results were so surprising that the researchers went on to analyze the results according to what kind of caffeine the women in the study were drinking: coffee, tea, or soda?

Although there was some slight difference between the two groups of women, those women who drank four or more cans (or glasses) of caffeinated soda (regular or diet) had between 37% and 60% greater risk of hypertension than those who drank one or less.

By comparison, those who drank coffee had an increased risk of hypertension of only 6% for those who only drank one cup per day (Those who drank more had no increase in risk or their risk actually decreased.) Those who drank tea had increased risk with four or more cups per day—but only for the women in the second group. For the first group, risk was about the same across all levels of intake.

The good news: There’s no need to cut down on your caffeinated coffee intake just to avoid hypertension.

The important news: Looks to me like a good reason to give up caffeinated soda!

Additional Information: Caffeine levels:

Coffee: 137mg per cup
Tea: 47mg per cup
Cola beverage: 46mg per can or bottle
Chocolate Candy: 7mg per serving

A practicing, board-certified Internist in northern Virginia, Tim’s love of food preparation began as a teenager working in the restaurant business. Starting as a dishwasher, by age twenty-two he opened his own restaurant: a small country-French café. After three years as chef-owner, Dr. Harlan decided to return to school. He’d originally intended to pursue a degree in hotel and restaurant management, but events led him toward medicine and the decision to become a physician. In medical school, Dr. Harlan wrote _It’s Heartly Fare_, a book best characterized as a food manual for patients with cardiovascular disease. His latest book, _Hand on Heart_, is a healthy cookbook.

Dr. Gourmet has been an on-air consultant to the TV Food Network show “Cooking Thin” as well as a host on the DIY network show, “AskDIY”. In 2002 “The Dr. Gourmet Show” won an Emmy award.

Dr. Gourmet is a natural outgrowth of Dr. Harlan’s interest in good food and good health: “Eating well and eating healthy are the same thing,” he says.

There are so many topics to discuss which affect our health that it is hard to choose just one at a time. My motto is Unhealthy Soil = Unhealthy Plants and Animals = Unhealthy People. With that in mind, let’s discuss meat, fish and meat substitutes. I just read an article by some well meaning person who was bragging that chicken and soy are good for you – WRONG!

If you consider how our ancestors developed in the last 10,000+ years, you will realize they ate non-chemical meats, berries, and nuts – things that they could forage. They ate deer, buffalo, birds and other types of meat. The common thing all these meat sources shared was that they were grass fed and loaded with Omega III’s and other beneficial fatty acids. However crude it was, they also caught fish. If they were inland it was fresh water, but if they were close to the ocean it was sea food.

The land was also untouched and the grasses and other plants grew and died and went back into the soil year after year. Because of this, the meat from the animals and fish in the streams (or sea food) were loaded with trace minerals. The nuts and berries were also loaded with trace minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and enzymes. With this combination, we had healthy soil, healthy plants and animals, and healthy people.

Fast forward to the present - what do we have today? Grain-fed chemical beef, chemical chicken, cancerous fish from fresh water, toxic sea food, no trace minerals from fruits and vegetables, and genetically engineered grains grown with toxic fertilizers,herbicides, pesticides and fungicides.

We see all kinds of articles suggesting that chicken is healthier than beef. Before you get all warm and fuzzy with this thought, think about the things that go into the average cattle and chicken diets before they get to your grocery shelves.

Are you ready for a picture of the preparation of cows and chickens before they make it to your dinner table?

The calves are born to mothers who have pesticide tags stuck in their ears for flies. They eat grass from land that has toxic fertilizers and is probably sprayed with herbicides to kill the weeds. (If the soil was healthy and fertile, you wouldn’t have weeds). The calves are supplemented with grains from fields without trace minerals and exposed to herbicides, pesticides and fungicides – unhealthy plants.

They are weaned from their mothers and put into a feed lot. There they have steroids and/or hormones injected into their ears, are fed a very concentrated grain diet with a little fiber, and ingest antibiotics which are added to the food to prevent disease because they stand around without exercise putting excrement on each other.

They have chemical wormers sprayed on from their heads to their tails to prevent parasites. Their feed also has to be sprayed with Arm and Hammer (TM) baking soda to prevent gas (from the grain diet) that can kill them. Because of the super-acid stomach, they produce E-coli in their guts that if leaked into the meat can kill us. I need to add here that because of the grain diet these animals have no essential beneficial fatty acids – the good stuff for our health.

Now, measure chickens against beef. Chickens have been bred to grow and mature quickly. With their diet (50% chemicals and grains grown with toxic chemicals) they mature in 6 weeks. They have to be harvested at 6 weeks because if they go to 8
weeks, they will die of heart attacks (the heart does not grow at the same speed as their bodies).

They also have part of their beaks removed so they don’t kill each other. They are confined in houses (usually 100 feet by 40 feet wide), and walk on manure and shavings from previous lots. One of my favorite things about their diets is the arsenic (a heavy metal) put into their feed to make them eat more. They stop feeding the arsenic 5 days before slaughter, and want you to believe that there is no residual in their bodies – NOT TRUE!

Also, if you read on the label that store bought chicken is Free Range, don’t believe it. The latest deception is that they build a little sun room on the side of the industrial chicken house so the chickens can go into this room – hence Free Range. Real Free Range chickens are allowed to graze on grass, eating bugs, and allowing their manure to fertilize the land as nature would normally allow.

Just in case you think that substituting soy beans for protein is a good thing, let me dispel that idea. Soy beans are for the most part (85%) genetically engineered. This means they can tolerate more herbicide, which you get to eat. Herbicides are a leading cause of cancer.

They are GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) because the large corporations who invented them did so to make money, not to feed the world or make a new nutritious food source. GMO foods have almost no nutrition. These corporations are trying to destroy our God-given plants, so we have to eat their dang foods! We still have no idea of the diseases that will crop up in people and animals because of these unnatural foods.

If the GMO is not enough, then think of the other toxic chemicals used to grow the crops. Remember that soy is also loaded with phytoestrogens. These estrogens can increase a woman’s breast size. Is that so they can get larger and then have a better chance of breast cancer?

As long as we are talking about phytoestrogens and soy, we need to consider soy milk for infants. If you have a new baby, would you go to the doctor and say “Doc, I feel strongly that my baby needs estrogens. Can you give me a script for the little tyke”? As silly as this sounds, that is what happens to babies on soy.

So I ask, what does the estrogen do to these babies? Does it make little girls mature at 7 and 8 years old? Does it make little boys more likely to become homosexual? I don’t have an answer – just questions.

I also need to add that seafood can provide beneficial fatty acids, but how many PCB’s (polychlorinated biphenyls) and how much mercury do you want with your diet? PCB’s are a very toxic chemical associated with cancer by being stored in the fat of animals, fish and humans. This was banned in 1976, but has been dumped in our rivers and oceans. It doesn’t biodegrade easily and persists in the environment for many years. Mercury is a heavy metal from many sources, but is a common pollutant from smoke stacks of electric generating plants. Michigan has more falling with rain than the EPA says is safe.

The only salmon readily available that is free from chemicals (we have been polluting the oceans for years) is salmon from Alaskan waters.

Beef from the store is unhealthy. The plastic wrap and styrene containers leak gas and chemicals which cause cancer and depression. Even the organic beef from health stores is not healthy because the grain diet destroys the beneficial fatty acids – no Omega III’s, CLA’s, etc. This being said, you can buy grass fed non-chemical beef from farmers all over the US, if you just take time to do learn how to find them.

The chicken in the stores is also unhealthy, but you can learn how to find pastured poultry. These are chickens that live on grass, bugs, and live healthy lives in the sunshine. You can find pasture chickens that produce healthy eggs. These eggs are wonderful with their bright orange, upright, great-tasting yellows.

It is hard to eliminate GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) like soy and corn, but it can be done. We don’t need grains in our diets. Grains are unhealthy for cows (they are grass eating machines) and they make them fat. Grains do the same to humans. They make us fat and unhealthy, particularly when grains are striped of all nutrition (white bread), pesticides and herbicides are left behind, and toxic fertilizers are used to grow the crops.

You might think when you buy a bag of fertilizer that you are getting 100% fertilizer, but that isn’t true. Fifty pounds of fertilizer will be made up of 1/3 to 2/3 industrial waste. The waste may be reasonably neutral, but it might be toxic with heavy metals – lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and/or other toxins. When toxic metals can be passed off as trace minerals, they can be given to fertilizer manufacturers, added to fertilizers, and spread on our farm land and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is not involved.

If the waste was to go into a land fill, the EPA would be involved and the disposal would be very expensive. Mercury is one of the most abused metals in the food chain. When the government tried to clean up our air, they required scrubbers on the smoke stacks to collect the mercury. After collecting the mercury, the electric utilities had to get rid of the waste, so “look out farm land, look out food”.

We need carbs, but not unhealthy non-nutrient carbs loaded with chemicals.

So, some of the solutions to better eating and better health are grass-fed, non-confined beef, chicken, lamb, and pork. No grains – particularly anything white. Buy as much organic food as possible and begin looking for “therapeutic food” (so healthful that it improves your health instead of hurting it) from producer networks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Robert Bard OD is a licensed optometrist and has been for many years. For the past 20 years, he has been researching the effects of toxic chemicals on the environment, animals and people. He has become an avid reporter and speaker covering topics on toxic chemicals as they relate to food, disease, medicine, water and land. Along with his wife Judy, he raises miniature Hereford and Lowline cattle, as well as goats, that are grass fed without drugs or chemicals. He also restores hay meadows and pastures with organic fertilizers. For more information, visit Dr. Bob’s site at http://www.drbobthehealthbuilder.com and sign up for his free weekly newsletter.

Are all vitamin supplements created equal? Much of the public is not aware that this is not the case. Many people have had an experience with knock-offs before; products that are like the real thing but are cheaply made. This same thing is happening in the vitamin market. Some of the vitamins that are sold in the stores have little to no nutritional value. In essence, there are three kinds of vitamins. Depending on which kind you choose will determine whether or not you are benefitting from all that pill-swallowing.

To run at maximum efficiency, our bodies need a certain amount of nutrients every day. Just like a car runs off gas, we live off of the food that we eat, it is our source of energy. However, when you give your body foods that are poor in nutritional value, it is just like putting regular unleaded in a jet engine, it just doesn’t have the octane available to run properly.

To keep our “engine” running, we must supply it with all the nutrients it needs. Since the food that we eat rarely lives up to this standard, it is a good idea to take a multi-vitamin to fill in the gaps. But how do you know if your multi-vitamin is actually delivering what it claims?

There are three kinds of vitamins sold to consumers: synthetic, natural, and live.

Synthetic vitamins are basically man’s attempt to do in the laboratory what God has done in the real world. We have not mastered the replicating process (far from it) and these vitamins are not very useful. They are relatively cheap to make though, which is why you will see them in your local super-market with the low price tags.

Natural vitamins are real, 100% natural vitamins. The only problem is that they are dead. The nutrients are destroyed in the production process of “natural” vitamins. This leads to cheaper creation, and almost no nutritional value is left when they are done.

Here’s an example: If you squeezed some orange juice into a pan, then boiled the water off and packaged it into a pill, you would have 100% natural vitamin C. But when you boiled it, you also killed the nutrients (in fact they started to die at 130 degrees Fahrenheit).

Live vitamins are what you should keep your eyes open for. These are completely natural and they are packaged without heating and killing the nutrients. Live vitamins are the next best thing to eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, they are more expensive to produce, so they will cost more than their counterparts. It is important to remember that while it may be tempting to go with a cheaper supplement, you are just throwing your money away if you don’t get live vitamins.

The problem is this: live vitamins are rarely sold in big super-markets or drug stores. This is because synthetic and natural vitamins are being sold at half the price. And since the general public is not aware of the difference, the low prices of the ‘knock-offs’ will out sell the real, live vitamins which will result in them being taken off the shelves.

To find the quality vitamins that your body needs, it takes some searching. But they are out there! The vitamins I personally take are from Health First Technologies. They do a great job of preserving the nutrients in their supplements. To find out more follow the link below.

Tyson J. Faulkner has been studying health and nutrition for 5 years. For more information about vitamins and supplements, go to http://Health-FoodVitamin.com

Nutrition as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in what we need to maintain our body’s healthy state. Nutrition has become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA in our daily food requirements, and the FDA’s involvement in determining what is and is not dangerous for us to consume.

But what is our responsibility in the nutrition game? Do we understand what our nutritional requirements are, how to fulfill those requirements, and how to look for real nutritional value in our foods?

I’m not sure that nutrition has been successfully addressed in its own right. We hear nutrition in relation to our vitamin intake, our fortified cereals and milk, and in the context that we need “nutritional value” from our food choices. But what really is nutrition when applied to our daily bodily functions?

Today, we must determine how much nourishment we need, how much physical exercise we need, and how best to accomplish those ends. Calorie needs, nutritional needs, physical needs, and education about those needs now is information we should all understand, at least as it applies to our individual self.

If you will visit your local doctor, library, or fitness center, there is massive amounts of information available to help educate and to help you make good health choices, no matter what the age group.

Nutrition refers to the nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it is supposed to do. Our ability to provide the body with all it’s necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we continue to thrive in our daily life processes.

If you were to take a cross section of the population, and check for adequate levels of the most used and fortified vitamins and minerals, you would probably find that as high as 80% or the population is lacking in a least one of the vitamins and minerals.

Now, that doesn’t sound too bad, until you stop to think, what if it’s calcium? A calcium deficiency brings on osteoporosis, a deteriorating of the bone. This disease alone costs millions in medical expense to the population.

Can you see how a little more cooperation and open-minded participation on the part of our medical field could result in far fewer health problems? It would also have provided the general population with a viable way to discern their nutrition, vitamin and mineral needs, accurately.

So how do we determine that we are providing the essential nutritional needs? That knowledge comes by educating ourselves about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family, and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.

Quite often, our vitamin and mineral needs outweigh our caloric needs. In those instances, we turn to manufactured vitamins and minerals to fill the gap. This is a part of our nutritional needs, also.

Nutrition is one of the most complex areas to gain useful knowledge about, because there are so many components, and because each person has their own individual needs.

Women needs differ from those of men, and older women’s needs differ from those of a young girl. As we age, our needs constantly change; therefore continual education about nutrition is a fact of life. The nutritional needs of a cardiac patient are different than those of a healthy, middle-aged hiker.

Can you see the complexity of the situation now? What we really need is to develop a scale that determines the nutritional needs of our bodies on a cellular level, so that as we age, as our physical condition changes, or our health changes, we can recalculate our needs, based on cellular changes and content in our body.

Individuality is the key to understanding each person’s nutritional needs, and then working to educate us is the key to fulfilling those nutritional needs. Good nutrition should be the ultimate goal of every person alive.

Nishanth Reddy, is an author and publisher of many health related websites. For more information on how to be fit and healthy visit his website at www.fitness-wellness-guide.com

Do you know anyone who can’t consume milk or milk-based products? The condition is not uncommon and these people are classified as lactose intolerant.

Lactose is the main carbohydrate or sugar found in milk, and in varying quantities in dairy products made from milk including yoghurt, ice cream, soft cheeses and butter. Lactose (milk sugar) intolerance results from an inability to digest lactose in the small intestine.

Back in the cave-days, the only time a person would ever ingest lactose would be when they were infants getting milk from their mothers. During their adult lives milk was never consumed. Only with the invention of agriculture has milk become readily available to adults. Lactose is unique in that only in milk does it exist as a free form, unattached to other molecules.

What causes lactose intolerance?

Lactose is digested in the small intestine by an enzyme called lactase. This enzyme allows the body to break down the lactose into two simple sugars, glucose and galactose. These are quickly absorbed by the intestine and provide energy for the body. The level of the lactase enzyme varies between individuals, as does the severity of the symptoms caused by lactose intolerance.

What are the symptoms of lactose intolerance?

Symptoms range from milk abdominal discomfort, bloating and excessive wind to sever abdominal cramps and diarrhoea.

Substitutes for lactose-containing foods

Lactose intolerance generally isn’t serious and can be controlled by some simple changes in your diet. The dietary changes for lactose intolerance should include the exclusion of those foods highest in lactose. There is now a wide range of fresh soy milks, yoghurts and ice creams which are lactose free and calcium enriched. Many dairy foods actually have little or no lactose so you can continue to enjoy them.

The power of soy protein

Soy-based products are on the rise for very healthy reasons. The humble soybean boasts some extraordinary benefits. Lactose-free, soy protein is a “complete protein” which contains all 9 essential amino acids in the right balance to meet your body’s needs. Soy protein is the only plant protein that is complete. This makes it a great substitute for many meats, allowing you to eliminate more saturated fat and cholesterol from your diet.

While soybeans have much to offer from a protein perspective, it is because they contain so many nutrients, such as isoflavones, that they are now the centre of so much attention. Soy protein enhances the body’s ability to retain and better absorb calcium into the bones. Soy isoflavones help by slowing bone loss and inhibiting bone breakdown.

Lactose-Free Soy Recipes

There are an abundance of wonderful soy recipes that enable you to get all the benefits of soy….without the traditional soy flavour. Further information available at the link below.

Kim Beardsmore is a weight loss consultant whose business operates across 60 countries. This world renowned, medically approved program will give you results you’ll love and all the support you need! Estimate your healthy body weight, tons of recipes, articles, ezine and more at http://weight-loss-health.com.au