Healthy Diet Recipes Are the Way to Overall Health

Paleo Diet To Lose Weight :

The number of people who are currently overweight or clinically obese continues to grow every day, and if you find that you have joined the ranks of the millions of Americans who are trying to control their ever-growing girth, then it may be time to try healthy diet recipes in your own kitchen.

Healthy Diet Recipes Are the Way to Overall Health

One of the worst things that has happened over the past two generations it that fast food is now an accepted dining choice for most families. What used to be a treat that a family would have once a month is now a normal meal, and often times it is a daily meal. What makes matters worse is that the average portion size served at the major fast food restaurants has literally doubled over the past ten years.

If you find that you don't have time to cook, you might want to re-think this. There is always time to make healthy diet recipes, many of which you can make at the beginning of the week and refrigerate or freeze for a later date. This is actually a less time-consuming and certainly a lot more affordable option to sitting in a fast food drive-through line.

Of course, eating healthy diet recipes is not just about losing weight. Yes, you will find that when you start eating natural foods at home that everyone in your house begins to lose weight, but you will also notice an increase in energy and overall fitness. The advantages of eating foods that aren't highly processed, deep fried, or saturated with artificial colorings and flavorings go well beyond your waistline.

Cooking natural, healthy, and fresh food is much easier than you think and with the help of a good recipe book, you will find that it is some of the tastiest food you or your family has ever eaten.

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Food Lectins in Health and Disease: An Introduction

Paleo Diet To Lose Weight :

In recent years it appears there is a rising epidemic of people suffering from chronic digestive and autoimmune conditions. Food intolerance or sensitivities may lie at the root of the problem. Most people, including doctors, have little clue how foods they eat may be contributing to their chronic illness, fatigue and digestive symptoms.

Food Lectins in Health and Disease: An Introduction

There are, however, a lot of clues in the medical literature and the lay public's experience about how foods are causing and/or contributing to the current epidemic of chronic illness and autoimmune disease. There are several diets being used by many people with varying success to improve their health despite a general lack of iron clad scientific proof for their effectiveness. One of the clues to the cause and relief of food induced illness may lie in proteins known as lectins that are present in all foods.

Animal and plant sources of food both contain complex proteins known as lectins. These proteins typically have the ability to attach to sugars or carbohydrates on the surface of human cells. Some of these proteins can cause clumping of human red blood cells, a process that is called agglutination. The process of agglutination occurs when someone receives the wrong blood type during a blood transfusion. In fact, red blood cell agglutination specific to each person or groups of people is the basis for testing for blood types. There is some data that blood types may influence how people respond to certain foods though a blood type specific diet appears to have been disproven. The attachment or binding of certain food lectins can initiate a variety of cell specific effects. These reactions may mimic hormones or cause changes in cells. This is termed molecular mimicry.

Most plants contain lectins, some of which are toxic, inflammatory, or both. Many of these plant and dairy lectin are resistant to cooking and digestive enzymes. Grain lectins, for example, are quite resistant to human digestion but well suited for ruminants like cattle who have multi-chambered stomachs. Therefore, lectins are present in our food and are often resistant to our digestion and some have been scientifically shown to have significant GI toxicity in humans. Others have been shown to be beneficial and maybe even cancer protecting. Either way plant and animal proteins are foreign proteins to the body and are dealt with by digestion and our immune system in a positive or negative manner.

The human digestive system was created to handle a variety of plant and animal proteins through the process of digestion and elimination. Some plant and animal proteins or lectins are severely toxic to humans and cannot be eaten without causing death like those in Castor beans and some mushrooms. Other foods must be prepared before they are safe to be eaten. Preparations may include pealing, prolonged soaking and cooking like kidney beans. Other foods may be poorly tolerated because of a genetic predisposition or underlying pre-existing food allergy or intolerance. Others are tolerated to some degree or quantity but not in large amounts or on a frequent basis. People who are intolerant to the milk sugar lactose, because of inherited or acquired deficiency in lactase enzyme, may tolerate small amounts but may have severe bloating, gas, abdominal pain and cramps with explosive diarrhea when a large amount of lactose containing foods are eaten. Foods can become intolerable to some people after their immune system changes or gut is injured from another cause.

Of the food lectins, grain/cereal lectins; dairy lectins; and legume lectins (especially peanut lectin and soybean lectin) are the most common ones associated with reports of aggravation of inflammatory and digestive diseases in the body and improvement of those diseases and/or symptoms when avoided. Recent research by Loren Cordain PhD., has suggested that these lectins may effectively serve as a "Trojan horse" allowing intact or nearly intact foreign proteins to invade our natural gut defenses and enter behind the lines to cause damage well beyond the gut, commonly in joints, brain, and skin of affected individuals. Once damage occurs to the gut and the defense system is breached the result is what some refer to as a "leaky gut". Moreover, many people who develop a "leaky gut" not only have gut symptoms such as bloating, gas, diarrhea, and abdominal pain but also other symptoms beyond the gut, or extra-intestinal symptoms. Commonly affected areas are the brain or peripheral nerves, skin, joints, and various body glands. With continued exposure of the gut by these toxic food lectins a persistent stimulation of the body's defense mechanism in a dysfunctional manner, occurs, i.e. autoimmune disease.

Wrong types or levels of good and bad bacteria in the gut, or intestinal dysbiosis, may contribute to this process of abnormal stimulation of the immune system. Research supports the strong possibility that such stimulation may be accentuated by interaction of the bacteria with food lectins. It is believed by some that this may further worsen gut injury and autoimmune disease. This latter concept is gaining acceptance and recognition by doctors in one form as the hygiene theory. It is speculated that our gut bacteria have become altered by increased hygiene and over use of antibiotics and that this phenomenon may be playing a significant role in the rising incidence of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, and chronic intestinal diseases like Crohn's disease and irritable bowel syndrome.

Lectins as a cause however are largely being ignored in the U.S. though the field of lectinology and lectins role in disease is more accepted internationally. Avoidance of certain food lectins may be helpful in achieving health and healing of chronic gut injury. Healing of a "leaky gut" and avoidance of ongoing abnormal stimulation of the immune system by toxic food lectins and bacteria in the gut is the basis for ongoing research and probable success of several popular diets such as the paleo diet, carbohydrate specific diet and gluten-free/casein-free diet. More research is needed in this exciting but often neglected area. The Food Doc, LLC features a website http://www.thefooddoc.com that will provide physician authored information on food intolerance, sensitivity and allergy such as lectin, gluten, casein, and lactose intolerance with dietary guidance that will feature in the near future an online symptom assessment and diet-diary.

Copyright 2006, The Food Doc, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.thefooddoc.com

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How the Power of Prevention Can Help Your Health Savings Account Grow

Paleo Diet To Lose Weight :

A majority of medical expenditures in this country pay for treatment of chronic conditions that are mostly preventable. Unfortunately, most people don't take their health seriously until after they get sick. Simply by eating well and exercising, you can avoid the medical conditions and expenses that affect the majority of Americans, allowing the money in your Health Savings Account to continue growing tax-free.

How the Power of Prevention Can Help Your Health Savings Account Grow

Only You Can Prevent Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes...

Most of us go through our lives stuck in our lifestyle patterns, with no idea of the power we have to positively influence our own health. And so by the time we're in our 40's most of us are on at least one regular medication. By the time we're in our 60's over 85% of all Americans have at least one degenerative disease. And by the time we are in our 70's we're dead.

But in fact, a majority of the diseases people suffer from as they age are almost totally preventable.

- Cancer: Researchers from the National Cancer Institute believe that 80-95% of all cancer cases are due to environmental and lifestyle causes, and are thus preventable. Diet may be involved in at least half of all cancers, and one third of all cancers are linked to obesity.

- Dementia: Mark Houston, M.D., Medical Director at Hypertension and Vascular Biology Institute at Saint Thomas Hospital and Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, estimates that 95% of all dementia is preventable with a lifestyle approach.

- Heart disease: Numerous studies indicate that 90% - 99% of all heart disease may be preventable.

- Diabetes: One of the nation's most renowned health researchers, Harvard University's Walter Willet, has estimated that 92% of type-2 diabetes is preventable.

How to Eat

Probably the very most important factor that can positively affect the health of most people is changing the way they eat. There are many, mostly conflicting theories about what kind of diet is the healthiest. In my opinion, the only one that really makes sense is to eat according to the way we evolved to eat.

The idea of "Paleolithic Nutrition" was first published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985 in an article by Dr. S. Boyd Eaton. Since then it has been popularized by Loren Cordain, Ph.D., in his book, The Paleo Diet, and studied by nutritional scientists all over the world. The premise is simple: Our genes determine our nutritional needs.

For over 2.5 million years, humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, and the selective pressures of their lifestyle and diet determined the genes that we have today. Our genetic make-up is exquisitely tuned to function best on the foods that we evolved to eat.

A mere 500 generations ago the Agricultural Revolution brought sudden and dramatic change to our diets, and the changes are continuing to this day. But our genes haven't managed to keep pace with the change.

Today approximately 2/3 of the foods we eat were those never encountered by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The result is high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and a host of other ills that we should not have to suffer.

While most of us do not have access to large wild game and wild-harvested organic produce, the more closely we can mimic the foods that our ancestors ate the better health we will have. So simply base your meals around a lot of fruits and vegetables, along with some lean protein.

You could start by eating eggs and cantaloupe for breakfast. Lunch could consist of a large salad with grilled chicken. For dinner have some wild salmon, asparagus, and salad. Finish off the meal with a big bowl of fresh blueberries.

Exercise

Everyone knows that exercise is good for them, but who wants to spend an hour jogging everyday. (Some people do, but most don't have the time or desire to go out jogging for an hour every day). What does work to give you the maximum benefit for the least amount of time is exercise with intensity.

So if it's okay with your doctor, go out and exercise like you mean it. Run wind sprints, lift weights, and exert yourself. And get it done in 30 minutes or less. Combined with the right diet, this kind of exercise will get the most results for the least effort. You will gain more muscle and lose more fat than if you were going out for long slow jogs, and you'll feel great!

There are of course other factors that affect your health, including stress, sleep, clean air and water, and even genetics. But there's nothing you can do that will have more impact than eating a good diet and being active.

So be proactive, with both your money and your health. Take advantage of the incredible tax and wealth-building benefits of a Health Savings Account (HSA) by funding it fully every year. And take the right lifestyle measures to avoid the preventable diseases that affect most people as they age. Then in your retirement, you can enjoy the good health and accumulated wealth in your HSA that you so rightly deserve.

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The Paleo Solution For Weight Loss, Health And Better Skin Tone

Paleo Diet To Lose Weight :

What is the Paleo solution? Well the Paleo diet is a better way of eating that keeps us healthier and at a weight that is natural. It is no secret the many of the foods we eat contribute to many of the health problems we have today. There was a time way back in history when there was no diabetes, cancer, heart disease or high blood pressure. Studies have show that in the Paleolithic era these disorders did not exist.

The Paleo Solution For Weight Loss, Health And Better Skin Tone

You have to ask yourself, why? Further studies showed that these disorders didn't start showing up until we started introducing dairy and grains to our diet. Add to that today's processing of food and you get a lot of stuff that our bodies were not made to ingest. Because our bodies can't digest or process these foods properly they tend to poison our system, which comes out in different ways.

The Paleo solution takes us back to the days when man lived off of Mother Nature by eating the natural foods Mother Nature produced. However, the Paleo diet plan is more then just the fruits and vegetables you might think of when natural foods are talked about, it also includes lean meats, and organs like liver, beef heart and others. Nuts, seeds and seafood can also be had on this diet so you can see there is a large variety of foods for you to choose from, which gives you a large variety of meals you can prepare from them.

Eating the Paleo foods will not only keep you healthy, it will also help with your weight loss if you're trying to lose weight. Since these foods are what we are supposed to be eating in the first place they are easy for our bodies to digest and process so you don't get a build up of fat and eventually you get down to a weight that is natural for you.

You also don't get a build up of the poisons that our body tries to expel through the skin, which causes acne and other skin blemishes and disorders.

I'm not trying to tell you that the Paleo solution is the total solution to all of your health and weight problems, but it sure is a big help on the way to solving many of them. If you break it down to the basics you see that this diet is a healthy way to lose weight without having to starve yourself in the process and with the right Paleo cookbook you can do it deliciously.

Are you ready to take the Paleo challenge?

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