Chocolate Reduces Stroke in Women, Study Finds
naturalnews.com
Originally published October 26 2011
by Mary West
(NaturalNews) Swedish researchers have contributed the latest glad tidings to a growing number of studies indicating chocolate is beneficial for the cardiovascular system. According to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, scientists found that women, who ate the most chocolate, had a 20 percent reduction in their stroke risk: USA Today reports. In this case, the quantity consumed was approximately two candy bars per week.
Author Susanna Larsson explains that the healthful components of cocoa are compounds called flavonoids, which have antioxidant activity and the ability to impede the harmful oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), known as “bad cholesterol.” Since the oxidation of LDL leads to the formation of plaque that causes cardiovascular disease, the hindrance of this process reduces the risk of stroke. In addition to this advantage, previous studies have shown dark chocolate consumption can lower blood pressure and insulin resistance, as well as help prevent the formation of blood clots.
In spite of the positive findings, Larsson cautions against eating too much chocolate. She advises that it be consumed in moderation, due to its high content of calories, fat and sugar. Larsson also states that dark chocolate is superior to milk chocolate because it has more cocoa and less sugar.
The researchers at Karolinska Institute studied 33,000 women between the ages of 49 and 83 over a 10-year period. Scientists compared data from the participants’ questionnaires about their chocolate consumption with their stroke risk to determine if a correlation existed. Results revealed the more chocolate the women consumed, the less stroke incidence they incurred. The findings were significant because those who ate 2.3 ounces of chocolate per week had a 20 percent reduced stroke incidence compared to those who seldom ate chocolate.
Although the study does not prove chocolate was responsible for the reduced incidence, after controlling for other stroke risk factors, the results persisted: Larsson relayed to CBS News. Additionally, she expects the results to apply to men also. Regardless of the suggested benefit, experts are advising people to keep the results in perspective and not substitute chocolate for vegetables.
About the author
Mary West is the creator of a natural healing website where she focuses on solutions to health problems that work without side effects. You may visit her website to learn more at http://www.alternativemedicinetruth.com.
Source: NaturalNews.com
The Truth About Chocolate – Health Food, Junk or Drug
Source: psychetruth on YouTube
Truth About Chocolate – Health Food, Junk or Drug? Nutrition by Natalie
You constantly see news articles promoting health benefits of chocolate such as antioxidant content.
This video discusses both the health benefits and risks.
Is Chocolate a super food, fast junk food or a drug?
Jameth Sheridan Discusses Superfoods Cacao and Raw Chocolate
Jameth Sheridan Interviewed by Kevin Gianni
To read the rest of this transcript as well as access Rawkathon experts just like Jameth Sheridan please click here! Kevin Gianni is an internationally recognized health advocate, author & film consultant. He has helped thousands of people take control of their own health naturally. For more information visit raw food diets and holistic nutrition.
View all articles by Kevin Gianni This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Rawkathon, which can be found at http://www.Rawkathon.com. In this excerpt, Jameth Sheridan shares on superfoods including cacao and raw chocolate.
Rawkathon with Jameth Sheridan. Jameth Sheridan is the co-author of Uncooking with Jameth and Kim and the co-founder of the superfoods company HealthForce Nutritionals.
Kevin: Let’s move into, there’s a bunch of superfoods and a bunch of stuff I want to talk about. When we were in the car on the way over here, we started talking about chocolate.
Jameth: Yes.
Kevin: And cacao. And so, I want to kind of, I just want to get your scope on it. What’s the deal, what’s your experience with it?
Jameth: Sure.
Kevin: Maybe that can instruct some people.
Jameth: Sure. As far as for flavoring of things, chocolate has replaced carob over the years on the raw foods community. The whole idea is that raw, cacao is what raw chocolate is really called, and the whole idea is because it’s raw, it’s healthy. Just like I talked about earlier, there are two categories of food, raw and cooked. So chocolate, that has negative effects on people, that actually kills a lot of animals, all of a sudden because it’s raw, now it’s good for you. I wouldn’t call it a half truth, it’s maybe like a quarter truth or a fifth truth..
If you have a regular chocolate bar, it’s got pasteurized milk, it’s got hydrogenated oil, it’s got white sugar, it’s got artificial flavorings. None of it is organic. It’s got pesticide residues. It’s absolute crap. I would consider that poisonous for the body. In addition, it’s got caffeine and theobromine from the chocolate. And the chocolate’s probably been heated up to a temperature that’s not raw for sure.
You then can move into, let’s say, a whole food vegan chocolate bar where you have organic cocoa butter, organic cacao, sweetened with some sort of organic, more whole food natural sugar and no flavorings whatsoever. That is much healthier than a regular chocolate bar.
When you move into a raw chocolate-type product, you’ve got cacao and cacao butter, almost always of which are organic. The sweetener, instead of let’s say a refined sugar or a less refined sugar, in the vegan chocolate bar, is now something like agave nectar, or yacon, or lucuma, which are whole food sweeteners. Vastly healthier. And, if there’s vanilla in it, it’s actually vanilla bean. If there’s coconut in there, it’s not coconut flavoring or coconut flakes, it’s actual coconut. So, the raw chocolate bar is much more whole foods. It’s much more blood sugar balanced. Everything in there is, for the most part, a healthy ingredient.
But, you still have a cacao in there. And, cacao still has, it’s either caffeine or theobromine or both in there, they’re almost exactly the same chemicals. And, caffeine is not good for you. Whether it’s in the form of yerba matte or cacao. Caffeine artificially increases your heart rate. It can give you heart palpitations, it artificially increases your respiration. If you take enough of it, you actually can die. You can induce death if you take enough of it because your heart won’t be able to beat that fast. And, I’ve seen it mess a lot of people’s health up. If you take cacao before bed, you cannot sleep, period, because it’s going to keep you awake. It’s similar, we also talked about it in the car, people take No-Doze, they take caffeine to keep themselves up, like a whole food version of that. I consider cacao a whole food medicinal, recreational drug. And I don’t think any evidence suggests anything otherwise than that, it’s just it has this cache it has this thing that because it’s raw we can have it in any quantity and just pound it in and I’ve seen people really mess up their health and their lives by following that advice and I think it’s actually reckless.
Kevin: And you had mentioned in terms of antioxidants, I mean it’s good compared to some things.
Jameth: It’s up there, it’s one of the higher whole food type antioxidants. But when you compare it to lots of herbs like sage or oregano or rosemary or even if you start to get into herbal extracts or some fruit and vegetable extracts like resveratrol from grapes has about 40 times more antioxidants than cacao in it. Cacao is an OK antioxidant but if you are looking to take cacao to increase you antioxidant levels it’s a bad way to do it because cacao increases your metabolism, in an artificial way, it makes your heart beat faster and creates, actually, adrenaline in your body. It actually uses up more antioxidants than it provides you.
I use cacao what I call ceremonially. If I’m going to work out and I’m tired anyway, and I figure you know, I’m not going to work today at all, I will take a little bit of cacao or other things sometimes or green tea or other things with caffeine to just kind of kick myself in the ass and actually go out and do an hour or two workout. But just a little bit. If it’s already late at night and my wife and I want to stay up and watch a movie we’ll have a little bit of cacao. But we use it very, very carefully because its unbalanced power can easily be upset.
Kevin: Yeah.
Interesting. Let’s talk about another staple in the raw food diet which is nama shoyu, even tamari, for those people who find raw tamari, let’s talk about that.
Jameth: Sure. If I can start with that by talking about salt in general.
Kevin: Yeah, good.
Jameth: There’s the idea that some people think you should be on a completely low sodium diet because so much research has shown that low sodium diets lower blood pressure, it lowers your risk for kidney disease, for heart disease and so forth. Now that research is based on regular white table salt which is heated anywhere from 300 to 1200 degrees. It has chemicals added to it, it has inorganic iodine added to it, and inorganic iodine is toxic and can kill you if you have enough of it. Regular table salt is absolutely abysmal for your health and that should never be. Because that is so bad some people have thrown the baby out with the bath-water and say all salt is bad.
When you have no salt in your diet, or for example let’s talk about when you water fast, you have large amounts of water, no salt in the water and you would thing you would be extremely hydrated but when you water fast you’re actually slightly dehydrated. Because when you have too much salt from any source you hold too much water in your body, there’s too much water held in solution in your body you become puffy and retain fluids. If you have too little salt, salt is what allows you to hold on to fluids, you can’t hold on to enough fluids and no matter how much water you drink, in fact the more water you drink when you don’t have enough salt, the more dehydrated you become and the more work your kidneys have to do to maintain the salt you have in your system. So salt balance is essential.
Now you would think that on a natural diet you should be able to get enough salt from salty vegetables like celery or tomatoes and in some cases I think that’s accurate. But for anyone sweating or doing anything athletic or people who genetically have low blood pressure or most people in my experience need to have additional sources of organic sodium. If you look to animals in nature whenever there is a salt-lick around the animals flock to it and start consuming that salt- lick. Even animals in nature, you even find predator and prey near each other at salt-licks licking the salt because the prey is so drawn to that salt that they’ll risk getting eaten by a predator just so they can have that salt. There’s something very valuable about it.
The best form of salt in my opinion by far in any community is miso, because miso used to be considered cooked which was completely wrong because miso starts out cooked but it’s aged for two years. Usually it’s in wooden casks like they used to do in the old days and its treated with probiotics and enzymes and by the time miso comes out every square molecule of that miso has undergone enzymatic and probiotic action and miso actually has a huge life force field around it. It’s anti-cancer, it’s anti-radiation, it’s a tremendous antioxidant, it’s a tremendous healing food and only a small part of it is salt. To me it’s the number one, I actually consider miso a superfood. A hardcore superfood up there with any other superfood and it compares statistically and with research. It’s a live, living salt.
The next salt, the next things you would go to I think would be a shoyu type or tamari soy sauce. Years ago there was a mistake in the raw food community that someone thought or was led to believe that nama shoyu was raw soy sauce and tamari was not. People said tamari is poisonous crap, it’s cooked, and nama shoyu is the way to go. And let me tell you the truth on that, I’ve done a lot of research on this. Tamari is the world’s original soy sauce, made in Japan, back to recorded records. Miso was made, and the liquid that floated to the top of the miso was tamari, that was what was tamari. It was aged. It was fermented in a good way with bacteria and enzymes and no wheat was ever added to this there was no such thing as wheat in Asia. And today tamari is made on its own and fermented on its own.
Nama shoyu is very recent, thousands and thousands of years there was tamari and the ingredients are soy beans, water and salt, enzymes and probiotics that treat this. Nama shoyu is made differently whereas today they add westernized wheat to nama shoyu. The wheat actually when it ferments forms a large amount of alcohol. So it has a less full bodied flavor than tamari and it has a larger alcohol content which isn’t necessarily a problem but there’s less flavor to it and since it has wheat in it people with wheat allergies and people with gluten intolerance which is a big percentage of the population cannot consume it. And tamari, unless someone actually went out of the way to pasteurize, it is not cooked. Tamari is raw, so is nama shoyu. They’re equally as raw, but tamari is made the traditional healthy way, has a stronger better flavor than
nama shoyu and is completely gluten free.
Nama shoyu has destroyed, I mean absolutely reeked havoc, destroyed raw food cuisine for anyone who is wheat sensitive or anyone who has celiac disease which means they can’t have any gluten whatsoever. It’s just eliminated that for them and it’s less healthy for them than tamari. There’s no reason you need to be having wheat in your tamari, in your soy sauce. So to me, tamari, excuse me nama shoyu’s time has come due to an error, someone thinking it was raw and tamari was not and it’s now time for it to go. It has no place in the raw food community, I don’t think whatsoever, because we have superior alternatives and that would be gluten-free tamari.
Source: Kevin Gianni
Acne Treatment – Homemade
Posted June 29, 2009
By Kirkland Kipnis
When most people think of homemade acne treatments, they think of things like cocoa butter, shea butter, aloe vera and so on. But these types of remedies are temporary. You see. It’s like taking a pain medication for a backache. The pain may dissipate but the reason for the pain is still there. Same for homemade acne treatments. You may clear up the problem temporarily, but the cause is likely to still be there.
That likely cause is usually your diet. Most people don’t think of diet when it comes to their skin problems. But it is the most likely reason for your acne problems. In fact, there are many acne programs that focus only on what you are putting into your body, OR, your DIET. But for now let us focus on your use of drinking water to help clear up your skin.
Water is oh so important when it comes to having clear skin. The only way your body can get water is if you intake it. Whether it be from drinking or from food. Your body relies on water to do all of its functions. Your body knows how much to use, store and then eventually get rid of. So if you don’t drink a lot of water, your body will store more and you will sweat and urinate less. But that can lead to problems because then your body is using the same old water over and over. Therefore that water can be considered to be dirty. Hence, if the water your body is using is dirty, your sweat pores will clog and produce acne. So drinking water is one of the most important things you can do in r fight against acne. You also need water if you have acne scars.
If you aren’t getting sufficient water (1 oz / per body weight a day) the process of rebuilding the scar tissue you have is much slower. So realize that diet plays a very significant role in how clear your skin is and how fast you get rid of your scars.
Aside from drinking the proper amount of water everyday, you need to make sure you aren’t sabotaging your skin by eating the wrong foods. For example, let’s talk about milk. Specifically cow’s milk. About 80% of humans are allergic to milk or dairy and don’t even know it. The traditional allergy symptoms like hives don’t show up. But acne will. Now milk does other things to the body that aren’t good for you as well. But for the purposes of this article, we won’t get into that. Just know that cutting cow’s milk out of your diet can go a long way toward clearing up your skin.
The good news is that the myth about chocolate causing acne is not likely to be true. In fact chocolate makes the brain raise its serotonin levels which in turn releases stress. And stress oftentimes leads to pimples. Just make sure it isn’t milk chocolate you are chowing down on.
Make sure to visit my blog Acne System for helpful tips and advice on what foods to avoid in order to help get rid of acne, treating acne scars, and much, much more.
Source: Kirkland Kipnis
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