Entries Tagged 'Nutrition' ↓

In this article we are going to shed light on the major differences between the raw food and the cooked food. It is known that when the foods are cooked at high temperatures, the major ingredients of the foods (especially vegetables) such as essential enzymes and the nutrients are being destroyed. The animal meat and products are excluded from this. Both of the raw and the cooked foods have their pros and cons, let us see both sides of the coin to have a better look at the picture.

In raw foods, there are more Nutrients than the cooked foods. When the foods are cooked, there is about 80% of the vitamins and minerals that are destroyed in that process. It also shows that during the process of cooking, there is a loss of about 90 percent of B12 and about a 100% loss of enzymes and the phytonutrients. On the other hand, it is being said that an individual can absorb vitamin C better from the cabbage when it is cooked rather than eating it raw.

It is being said that the raw foods are easier to Digest than the cooked foods. The studies show that the enzymes contained in the raw foods help an individual to digest the food much more better than the cooked foods. This shows that the foods that have the enzymes in them are going to benefit the digestive tract and are going to allow better absorption of the nutrients. On the other hand, it is being said regarding the cooked foods, that the digestibility of the foods get better when they are cooked as they are tough and to get their nutrient value, one should cook them such as beans etc.

The body contains toxins and the raw foods help Detoxify the toxins present in the body. The foods that we eat these days that are conventionally grown contains pesticides, preservatives, hormones etc. and can cause hazardous effects on the body, whereas the raw foods can help the body to eliminate the existing toxins and prevents them from being created and helps the body to maintain the normal health overall. On the side of the cooked food, it is being said that the cooked foods can also help eliminate the toxins from the body such as the foods that contain vitamin C can be cooked on light heat and thus help detoxify the toxins present in the body.

The raw food can be a lot easier and Convenient to make and there is no mess of the oil and grease present on the plates and it does not require much soaking or scrubbing and takes less time on cleaning out the dishes and makes less mess. On the other hand, the people who support the making of cooked food say that eating raw food can be a whole lot boring and it does not bother them to clean out the dishes and plates and there are lot of techniques to cook foods in a way where they use a whole less oil and the food is a lot less greasy and oily.

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According to the latest research, it has been found that the grapefruit juice affects the absorption of different drugs in the body. This affect of grapefruit juice on the drug metabolism can be considered as positive as well as negative.

There is an enzyme in the intestine, which is known as CYP3A, which breaks down the drug, which was then partially absorbed. The grapefruit contains a component known as furanocoumarin, which interferes with the enzyme, CYP3A, which in turn would lead to the absorption of more drug.

This would help a lot of individuals who have problems with drug absorption due to the presence of the enzyme CYP3A and would hence be able to provide a lot of active drug to the system.
The active ingredient that is present in the grapefruit that degrades the enzyme CYP3A is furanocoumarin, which degrades the enzyme, and those people who are not being able to tolerate the grapefruit juice would be able to take the active ingredient present in the grapefruit juice to help provide the body with a good amount of drug available to the body, which otherwise would be degraded down due to the enzyme.

There was a study that was conducted to support this fact. In this study there was a group of people who have been on different medication for different conditions such as medicines for blood pressure control or birth control pills. The main object was to test the availability of the different drugs to the body system after furanocoumarin is being given.

The researchers extracted out the active ingredient and then the individuals who were taking part in the study were said to fast and then they were given the medicines such as felodipine for the regulation of blood pressure, the brand name of which is Plendil. The individuals were then given the furanocoumarin, the juice which is free of furanocoumarin, as well as orange juice randomly.

After that, the individuals just had their regular meals and then they took the blood samples to find as to the availability of the medicines and it was found that the individuals who had taken furanocoumarin had about 6-230 percent more availability of the drug Plendil to the body system, and the individuals who had taken the grapefruit juice without the furanocoumarin and orange juice had no such effect.

The individuals who take grapefruit on a regular basis must consult with their physicians so that they can get proper recommendation whether they should be taking the grapefruit or not so as to prevent any adverse effects on the body.

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According to a recent research there was found a strong connection between the food that we eat and the effect of the food on the aches and pains. According to the new researches it has been shown that you can literally feed your bones with ingredients that would prevent the further deterioration of joints, lessen the discomfort, and rebuild your joint architecture, which would help to improve your quality of life.

Joints are one of the major anatomical structures of our body. It is through these joints that we are able to move or else we would have been just a rigid board of wood. Joints are complex architectural structures that enable us to move around. The ends of one bone joins with the other bone by making a joint, therefore it is really important that the health of the bone is maintained so that we can prevent ourselves from the pains that we suffer through at the middle or later stages in life.

The medical sciences have found out the relationship between the foods that we eat and the health of our bones and joints and this relationship have been found out in the recent researches, which has provided a big breakthrough for a lot of people who are suffering from the problems of bones and joints.

We will in this paragraph mention the facts in which the relationship between the diet and the problems with bones and joints will be established. It has been a known fact that the joint problems exacerbate by the use of alcohol, ingestion of liver and other organ meats. Another very common problem of joints is gout that at first affects the joint of the big toe and then spreads further onto other joints. There is a relationship of gout with the ingestion of organs such as liver, but this has been repeatedly denied by the pharmaceutical companies because the gout can be prevented by the prevention of not eating such foods that trigger such problems.

It has been stated during the research that the people who are suffering from joint problems must use the different foods and assess as to what are the different foods that are helping you with your joint pains and what are the foods that are aggravating your pains of the bones and joints. This is really very important for you to determine and is something that you should determine on your own by utilizing the different food groups.

Another very important fact that comes here is that the increased weight can cause a worsened situation of the pain in the bones and joints and thus it is very important that the weight is curbed so that the increased weight can be taken off of the joints and thus cause protection of your joints from further deterioration and wearing off.

A proposed diet plan that can take the edge off of pain can be divided into the different meals throughout the day, which includes

Breakfast: A serving of fresh fruit; a piece of bread or a bowl of cereal; a portion of protein that includes egg or yogurt.

Lunch: Salad that is made from the fresh green leafy vegetables with carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, celery, with the addition of protein content to the salad such as fish, beef, as well as the addition of fruits.

After Lunch Snack: This can include salad or a fruit of your choice, along with a glass of milk.

Dinner: Protein serving of about four ounces, which includes fish, tofu, chicken beans, as well as baked potato, rice, vegetables and fresh salad.

After Dinner Snack: A cookie that is low in fat, a cup of yogurt to keep you away from the acidity.

It is really important that you try out the different foods and see as to what are the different effects that you are gaining from these foods and what benefits you are drawing from these diets in terms of preventing the aches and pains of bones and joints.

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There are a couple of wonderful health tips that would help you to have a healthy life.

1. You must eat a diet rich in organic foods. The fresh fruits and vegetables are the main source of protective phytonutrients and these are the compounds that are present in plants that help our bodily defenses that can reduce the risk of cancer and heart diseases, as well as other chronic diseases.

2. You must add color to your diet so that your appetite is boosted. As many colors you add to your diet, is as much your appetite will get good and you will definitely eat much better than before.

3. You must take a good multi-mineral vitamin. In order to have the right amounts of vitamins and minerals requires us to be very very specific in our diets and this is something really very difficult to achieve, so in order to get the right amount of vitamins and minerals, you must take a good multi-mineral vitamin.

4. It is imperative for the women to take care of the bone health at an early age. The bone health is mostly determined on the life that you have spent till your mid 30s and that is the time when the bone is being built. If you are eating right food as a teenager in your 20s and mid 30s, which means that you have been taking the right amount of calcium and vitamin D, and have gotten the exercise to be in shape, then this is going to help you a lot in your older years when you need that the most.

5. It is important that you eat well to protect yourself from the prostate cancer. There are a lot of studies conducted that have shown that the diet influences the prostate cancer. It is stated that the diets that are rich in animal foods, high fat levels, and are deficient in fruits and vegetables and are lower in omega-3 fatty acids are to cause prostate cancer. Therefore, the men should have more fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, which are a source of lycopene, which is a protective carotenoid, soy foods, less meat, diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids to make sure that you are getting enough anti-oxidants, which will be protective against the prostate cancer.

6. The best way to reduce the hypertension problems is to avoid eating or slowly reduce the consumption of the processed food or refined foods that are very high in potassium and increasing the amounts of fruits and vegetables that are high in potassium, which bears a relaxant effect on blood vessels. The supplement such as calcium and magnesium can also help lower the blood pressure. Along with these, you can also take a neurovascular relaxant.

7. You must get enough vitamin D. According to the new research, vitamin D has a key role in the prevention of cancer such as lung, colon, breast, prostate and our body makes this vitamin on exposure to sunlight, but since most people apply sunscreens these days due to the threat of the ultraviolet rays, you can always add it to the foods, as well as supplemental forms of vitamin D and that will help you a lot in the long term effects on health.

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There was a notification from the federal health advisers who voted and recommended that the sale of the weight loss pills should only be with a prescription.

The pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline are awaiting the final wording from the Food and Drug Administration to get approval on selling a nonprescription version of their diet pill, which is already being sell in the market under the brand name of Xenical.

It must be known that the Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug can take months before they can get to the shelves. The diet pills that were once available over the counter can now hit the shelves.

There were clinical trials that were run on the drug called orlistat and in that study there were people who were taking the placebo pills as well, it was found that the people who have been taking the placebo have not much difference in their weight, but the people who have been using orlistat have lost about 5.3 to 6.2 pounds more than what other categories lost who were taking the placebo. The company recommends that the people must take the pill only for about six months and not more than that.

Doctors state that the effect of the pill stops as soon as it is stopped and they also say that there is a very steep rise in weight of people who stop using the drugs. Therefore these drugs can be helpful but in the longer term they are not.

The specialists also added that people who use the drug to lose weight must also be on proper diet and exercise plan. The officials of the drug manufacturer company added that the effect of the drug is gradual, which is the best way of achieving the weight loss. It is also being said that this drug will help people control the calorie intake and modify their diet.

The nutritionist suggest that it is possible that we can diet and exercise and lose our weight in a natural way and that is the best route possible, though we can use the pills as an adjunct but not solely as a mode to lose weight without the diet and exercise regimen.

As a general estimate the orlistat costs the users of it about $12 to $25 a week and there was an estimate given by the company that there are about 6 million Americans a year who are buying the drug and there are about 22 million people who have used orlistat in the prescription form all over the world.

The mechanism of action of orlistat is that when it is taken with meals, this blocks the absorption of fat that is consumed and the fat just passes out of the body in stools and are loose or oily as a result of this medication. The side effects of this medicine includes gas, incontinence and oily spotting. The side effects were reported in about half of the patients that took part in the study.

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You must always remember that you must eat healthy and exercise. These are the basic factors that are going to ensure you live a healthy and a wonderful life, which will keep you stay away from a lot of diseases and problems.

Some people think that it is better that they should eat less in order to maintain their weight, but in actuality this thought puts their mind into a lot of questions as to what to eat, what not to eat, whether this food will help me take a grip on my increasing weight or not etc.

The basic fact is that you need to make choices, you need to see as to what is the right choice for you and what can help your body and help you to control your weight. For that matter, you need to understand that what are the right foods for you and how can you make choices on the different things.

If you have problem making decisions, you must visit a nutritionist referred by your family care physician and make an appointment with him or her and go over all your questions that you have and try to come up with a plan that is the best for you.

Once you have gone through the appointment with your nutritionist and designed the plan that is best for you, you must take your plan very seriously and must act on it very firmly. Just know that it would always be best that you stay in very close contact with your nutritionist and ask as to how you can keep yourself motivated to the goal of maintaining the diet that you have designed for yourself.

This is a clear fact that you are your best friend and you are your worst enemy. Just do not beat yourself inside and ask your family, friends and colleagues to motivate you to be compliant with your diet.

I believe that you can do it and I also believe that you will comply to every single step that you have designed for you. Best of Luck.

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This recent research has brought about a big breakthrough in preventing muscle loss. It states that a diet rich in the amino acid, leucine, might help prevent the muscle loss that typically comes with aging.

The study was conducted on rats and it was found that a leucine supplemented diet reestablished a more young pattern of muscle protein breakdown and synthesis. The researchers also added that the rats had shown a propensity toward increased protein breakdown before going on the leucine rich diet, but they were amazed to see that the amino acid appeared to remove that imbalance.

Just to discuss a few basic facts about leucine; it is an essential amino acid and this cannot be manufactured by the body and must be ingested through dietary protein. Along with other essential amino acids, leucine helps maintain muscle mass and that has made leucine containing supplements a favorite food for bodybuilders and athletes.

This is a well known fact that after the age of 40 or so, people gradually lose muscle mass, and it is thought that this is caused by the imbalance in muscle-protein synthesis and breakdown.
On the other hand, in younger people, this process is typically in balance. The research shows that after a meal, muscle protein breakdown slows, whereas synthesis rises up in response to the influx of amino acids from food.

According to this new research, the older rats did not show any evidence of the decrease in the protein breakdown after a meal, but when they got a diet supplemented with leucine, it restored the pattern of protein breakdown in the elder rats, which was the same as in the younger ones.
The question is whether this will go the same for older adults. If this works the same in the older adults then there is a great chance that their quality of life will be greatly improved, as preventing muscle wasting is of great importance because it leads to physical disability.
The sources from where we can get leucine is particularly from animal foods, it can also be consumed through meat, dairy, soy, beans and other protein-rich sources. One can get leucine from dietary supplements as well.

The researchers are speculating that the use of leucine in the adults would bring pretty good results and if such happens then this will be a great breakthrough to help the older adults to live a better and healthy life.

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A recent study suggests that people who have higher vitamin D levels in their blood can breathe a bit easier than others.

The researchers gathered the data from the health surveys and they found that adults with the highest vitamin D levels generally had better lung function than those with the lowest blood levels of the vitamin D. It also showed to enhance the lung capacity former smokers with the high level of this vitamin in their blood.

The difference may not be significant in people who are healthy, but it is quite significant in people who are suffering from serious respiratory conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The main function of vitamin D that is known is that it works in conjunction with calcium to make the bones strong and it also supports a healthy immune system and promotes normal cell growth and maturation throughout the body.

When the vitamin D concentrations are low in blood, then this links to elevated risk of diseases, which are high blood pressure, heart disease and certain cancers, but the link that it causes the said problems is not yet fully established.

The findings are just on the basis of information collected through the data, thus it cannot be said for sure that vitamin D clearly improves the respiratory health.

But because of the fact that the study accounted for other factors in lung function such as age, exercise habits and blood levels of certain other nutrients, it seems probable that vitamin D has some direct benefit.

The researchers added that the only way of knowing that for sure is to conduct a clinical trial in which people are randomly assigned to take either vitamin D or a placebo and then conducting lung function studies over time.

The findings that the researchers collected from a country wide study in America on 14,901 individuals with an age range of 20 or older, were about diet and lifestyle habits, and then the participants underwent lung function tests and had their blood levels of vitamin D and other nutrients measured.

After dividing the men and women into five groups based on their vitamin D levels, the researchers found that those with the highest levels scored significantly better on lung function tests than those with the lowest concentrations of the vitamin.

It was suggested that since vitamin D influences the growth of a variety of cell types, it may play a role in this lung repair process and this might be the reason that it brings positive outcome in the lung functions.

The sources of vitamin D are as follows: Sun exposure, as sunlight triggers the synthesis of the vitamin in the skin, multivitamins, foods such as fortified milk and cereals etc.

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Iron therapy is used in elderly patients to treat anemia, and the research says that low doses of iron therapy can improve the hemoglobin levels just as well as the higher doses can, and the best part of this research is that there are less side effects from the iron in lower doses, which can greatly prevent the patients from going through those effects.

Hemoglobin is a protein in the red cells that carry the oxygen to all the organs of the body, but when the hemoglobin level is impaired, then the capacity of the blood cells to transport oxygen to different cells of the body is affected. This low level of oxygen in blood causes anemia to develop. Formation of hemoglobin requires adequate amounts of iron levels.

The researchers then conducted a study in which they selected about 90 hospitalized patients over 80 years of age and they were randomly selected and were put on different medication regimen of iron, which was 15 milligrams, 50 milligrams of a liquid iron compound and 150 milligrams of iron tablets as a treatment for iron-deficiency anemia. As a comparison group, 30 patients without anemia received 15 mg of iron for 60 days.

The levels of the hemoglobin were assessed on the day the therapy was initiated and after every 30 and 60 days of treatment.

It was just after 15 minutes of the first dose that was given that a rise in blood iron levels were noted in the anemic patients, but not in the group who were non-anemic.
In the three groups of elderly who were given different dose regimens of iron, their levels of iron were the same after 60 days of treatment.

Just to mention a few of the side effects of iron that the individuals taking iron are abdominal discomfort, nausea, vomiting, change in bowel habits and black stools.

So the study suggests that even if iron is given in small doses up to one tenth of the recommended dose efficiently raises the hemoglobin levels and iron stores without giving substantial side effects.

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At this day and age there are many diseases that are solely related to the way we eat. Many people go through dieting and eat less, some become very very selective in eating and they start eating less healthy foods in order to avoid a gain in weight. This new research tells us that we should eat intuitively, which would allow us to have a better way to maintain our weight and reduce the risk of heart and other diseases.

People who follow their intuition do not diet, they have learned to respond to the responses of their body such as eating when feeling hungry and taking the hands off of food when they feel that their desire to eat is fulfilled. This in turn helps them to respond to their body’s natural responses and staying healthy.

A doctor who was the part of the team conducting the research adopted intuitive eating and lost about 50 pounds in the process thus proving his stance on the research.

The basic theme of eating intuitively is that we know the demands of our body rather than we go for the number of calories that we need to eat, the kinds of food, counting carbs, proteins or fats etc. What we need to do is to understand our bodily requirements and eat according to it based on the level of hunger and satiety.

To support their research, the scientists called for volunteers who were intuitive eaters and who were not, and then performed several tests on them to identify who were healthier than the other group. The women who were eating intuitively scored higher and were healthier than the women who were not intuitive eaters and scored low, with the major difference standing out as the low levels of triglycerides in their body, as well as high HDL levels than the women who were not eating intuitively.

So it proved that the women who were eating intuitively had a good blood workup and better cardiovascular risk profile, hence proving their study.

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