As Michael Caine said in the film Alfie - “If you ain’t got your health, you got nothing”
Brothers and Sisters, it is time to start taking care of yourselves and each other.
Now as we begin to exit the shadow of Coronavirus is the time to be positive and pass on your years of experience and learning about all things health-related.
Post any health-related advice, podcasts, videos, research on any aspect of health from Arthritis to Zika Virus.
Diet, Exercise, Medicine, Old Wives Tales, New Research, Things that have worked for you, Remedies, Bizzare claims and cures, Snake Oil Treatments, absolutely anything health related…
*For discussion purposes only - anybody who takes anything written here as a valid replacement for professional medical advice is either drunk or a moron.
To kick it off -
This is a really interesting podcast about sleep - how lack of sleep seriously affects your mind, your reproductive capacity, and your body. Why we sleep, and how improving your sleep results in better physical and mental outcomes. The findings are pretty startling.
Entertaining Giles Yeo RI lecture about genetics and obesity. If you are looking to lose weight or want to help someone who does, there is some very useful information contained in this video
He has a new book out - Why calories do not count. Hoping to get it this weekend.
If you want to reduce your LDL cholesterol an Italian meta-analysis has concluded that eating Avocados and Tumeric are the most effective foods to eat to lower “the bad” LDL cholesterol. A good option if your LDL cholesterol is high and you are not trying to lose weight.
There is a lot of research underway regarding cholesterol - which has been demonised for the past 50 years. It seems that LDL cholesterol is only “bad” or harmful when it has reacted with sugar molecules and oxidized - termed glycation. It is the oxidised LDL that accumulates in arteries and causes problems. Non oxidised LDL transports and delivers its cargo into cells, just as it should be. Cholesterol is really a transport and delivery system for fat (energy) to fuel the cells.
Everyone on the planet produces cholesterol - the type of foods you eat and those food’s cholesterol content determines how much cholesterol each person makes. If you are shedding weight then you can expect an increased LDL count as stored fat is released and burned as energy within cells.
During weight loss fat cells open up their stores - the body produces more LDL to transport the released stored fat to cells for energy. So a high LDL count - if you are intentionally losing weight- is not necessarily a bad thing.
Want to lose weight and lower your risk of heart disease?
This from the Australian Diabetes Association
So what happens to our cardiovascular risk profile if we follow a low carbohydrate diet instead of a low-fat diet? Researchers examined this question in a 2015 meta-analysis of nearly 2000 patients. Compared to low fat diets, low carbohydrate diets were associated with significantly greater reduction in weight and significantly lower risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease events. Although weight loss often improves to a greater extent in response to a low carbohydrate diet, the improvements in atherogenic dyslipidemia are a primary result of carbohydrate restriction, as opposed to weight or fat loss. The consistent and significant reduction in these biomarkers in response to low-carbohydrate diets supports the view that carbohydrate restriction lowers the risk for heart disease.
The question is though is it advantageous to shed weight quickly?
I can not help thinking that these things encourage extremes which aren’t generally good in the long run. It’s like the good protien and poor protien arguement which was proposed by an American idiot and has no scientific value what so ever or the low salt thing (which causes immense problems).
My point is is ‘what is the point of an extreme diet to loose weight?’ if once you loose weight you go back to your initial extreme diet. surely the way forward is the promotion of a ‘balanced diet’ (what ever that is ). Yes replacing fat in foods with carbohydrates (as is done for food stuffs labelled ‘diet’ such as yogurts etc) is nuts. What we need is education, if something that should contain fat is labelled fat free we need to be able to thing yes but it’s still the same weight so ‘what have they added to replace the fat?’.
The title above is encouraging people to eat fat, that’s nuts, as is a candy diet.
The problem really is the enormous quantities of refined ‘sugars’ in our modern diet, the question is how to reverse this.
The problem with trying to eat healthily all the time is that there are just tooooooo many sweet and biscuit temptations out there to tempt you otherwise. The downside is that an awful lot of it boils down to money making tactics by the manufacturers…
Having worked in the cereal and biscuit industry throughout the UK for many years, it simply comes down to extracting as much money from the customers, for the ‘shady’ ingredients used, and obviously, overhead costs of production.
Simply put, in analysing the cheaper end of food additives, if a 1000kg of salt as a raw material costs £50 per metric ton, sugar also very similar… It is in the money making interests of the biscuit company to turn that £50pmt into £2000pmt (profit), which they do by selling a half kg packet of biscuits for £1 per packet.
The more salt (bitter taste) that goes into the mix, the more sugar (sweet taste) goes in to balance out your taste buds… It is left to the baker to produce a ‘saturated’ recipe that will suffice these (cheap) ingredients to meet with, and encourage public demand.
To disguise these unhealthy additives on the package wrappers to any health conscious public, the marketing replace the salt/sugar combination with little more than chemical additives so the word salt/sugar* tag-team are reduced or omitted altogether from the recipe ingredients…
Our personal health well-being, is our own responsibility… So thinks, in generic terms, the multi-national biscuit and cereal manufacturers
We should remember what we are actually eating, next time we crack open a packet of shortbread or digestive type biscuits with our cup of tea in front of the TV at half-time in the game! :0)
Yes, it is encouraging people to eat fat. But no that is not nuts.
If you read the article I posted, and there are many more recent scientific findings backing this up, eating saturated fat does not raise cholesterol and has no markers for increased risk of heart disease. In short the (American) scientists of the 70s/80s got it badly wrong - demonising fat and ignoring sugar as the true culprit of obesity and heart disease. (Oxidised cholesterol is the danger and oxidised chloesterol occurs when it picks up sugar from the bloodstream).
Sugar also raises insulin levels in the blood - constant raised levels of insulin cause many health problems - obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and on and on.
I appreciate we have been fed a diet (intentional pun) of “fat is bad” for 50 years, it is a very hard message to overcome, but more and more evidence is accumulating that this is simply the wrong and frankly dangerous message. Look around and you will see the product of 50 years of the low fat diet - a western world obesity epidemic.
Two last points - The Native Americans lived on Buffalo and fruit when in season - thats it, nothing else - there was no heart disease, diabetes, obesity - they were as fit as could be. Same with the hunter-gatherer tribes of Africa - meat, fat and fruit, with very occasional honey if it could be found. No heart disease, no obesity…
I heard a good rule of thumb regarding food and shopping last week - “If it has a barcode on it - don’t buy it” Seems like pretty good advice to me. The food companies as Sandsoftime mentioned give not one damn about your health, just about capturing your money.
it is nuts, it’s as nuts as the messaging that fat is bad and we should eliminate it.
As I said the way forward is the promotion of a balanced as natural as possible diet, it’s just agro-alimentaion industry doesn’t want this and nor does the medical institutions.
Nowhere did I say fat was bad and I did understand the article and the points but encouraging people to eat plates of streeky bacon is taking the piss.
So what you are advocating is a balanced diet like me, no?
P.S could have a long discussion of what hunter gatherers acually ate and eat lots of insects and ‘processed’ starch (came about and was even turned into alcohol). Another debate I know).
Native Americans or African tribes also weren’t sitting at a desk for 8 hours and then going back home to watch the TV for another 5.
Neither sugar or fat is the cause of obesity, consuming an excess of calories is. If I’m lifting weights in the afternoon and playing footy in the evening is a bit of extra sugar a bad thing? Of course not. Whether saturated fat is inherently bad or not is one matter, but a diet that is extremely high in saturated fat might not be nutrient dense or satiating enough for a lot of people.
Diet isn’t complicated - eat at least a small/moderate amount of fat and protein as both are essential, carbs are up to you. If you want to maintain weight there are calculators which will help you ballpark the amount you need to consume per day. Eat a variety of nutrient dense foods, and foods that are minimally processed tend to be better for you than those with an ingredient list as long as your arm. If eating a certain food makes you feel bad, don’t eat it.
The males did/do sit around a lot on the whole though. Also we have to consider whether they lived long enough to be affected or even had the opportunity to ‘over’ consume (though successful tribes surely had times of plenty and times of scarcity).
i’m not sure it’s saying that, nowhere does it say metabolic rate doesn’t differ between subjects.
From what I know an individuals metobolic rate is determined principally by the thyroid gland and the steroids it produces. So starting point imo oppinion when it comes to metabolism is insureing you have a sufficient intake of iodide (so principally taking iodide spiked salt in your diet).
Lost 6kg in two weeks. Down to 100kg, dream is 80kg but little by little.
Had held my weight for most of corona virus pandemic but slipped up in 2021. Went up to to 120kg about two months ago. Grew stretch marks which pissed me off. Like they are burst vein looking, but yeah that’s annoying as I think they can’t be healed much. But the weight gain was ‘unnatural’ weight so it was quick to come off.
Worked out 5/6 times a week, once or twice a day. Ate 3 meals a day, scrambled eggs, a generally healthy dinner and two slices of toast at night as I love a midnight snack which stopped the craving. Pushed my first meal of the day to 3pm which is hard but helps. That let me push my dinner back to 8pm then the final snack at midnight. I’m drinking 2/3 litres of water a day which is clearing my skin up (have little spots anyways but still noticeable, makes me feel better anyways having water).
In the gym I’m doing weights like shoulders, back, biceps, triceps, chest etc. But I’m trying to get 45 mins on the bike and a 30 minute walk. Cut beer out aswell.
Not sure if this is the appropriate area to say it but I need to vent my progress as I live on my own here in Korea and when I’m home at Christmas I wanna come in a new man lol hence why I haven’t told family
Doing great, keep it up! I had a successful weight loss starting last September and maintaining now what was my target weight.
Intermittent fasting really helped and I still dont eat anything until 1pm. Used to get quite a lot of migraines but since I changed the way I eat and lost the weight I haven’t had one.
For cardio I have found skipping (jump rope) to be good for fitness and mental health.
Interesting research on the use of Saunas - I know there is another US study being completed soon regarding Sauna use as an aid to good health.
A previous 2015 study by Harvard Medical School found similar results. Check first that sauna use is good for you - especially if you have a heart condition. There are some interesting results when using saunas as a therapy for pneumonia and may possibly become an ancillary treatment for Long Covid sufferers - although the research is yet to be completely proven.
Also, you may want to ensure the sauna you go to is a reputable establishment - “The Blue Oyster Sauna and Massage centre” is probably not too concerned with your health and wellbeing.
). Yes replacing fat in foods with carbohydrates (as is done for food stuffs labelled ‘diet’ such as yogurts etc) is nuts. What we need is education, if something that should contain fat is labelled fat free we need to be able to thing yes but it’s still the same weight so ‘what have they added to replace the fat?’.