www.greensmoothiegirl.com Learn to use natural sweeteners as part of a whole foods diet with Robyn from GreenSmoothieGirl.com. In this video, Robyn explains the dangers of artificial sweeteners and processed sweeteners. She then explores the benefits of using natural sweeteners like sucanat, honey, agave, and fruit as part of a whole foods diet.

Drinking This “Popular Poison” is Worse than Smoking

Posted By Dr. Mercola | November 21 2011 | 206,111views | Disponible en Español

Story at-a-glance

• The soda industry engages in many of the same marketing tactics as Big Tobacco, including forming “independent” front groups, funding research to discredit links to health problems, and making large donations to health organizations
• Soda is linked to numerous health problems among children and adults, including obesity, liver disease and even violent behavior; frequent soft drink consumption is associated with a 9-15% increase in aggressive behavior, according to new research
• Processed foods and junk foods are heavily marketed to kids and promoted to schools; manufacturers of sugar-laden processed foods pay “rebates” (aka “kickbacks”) to food service companies that serve school districts across the United States
• You can fight back against soda and junk-food giants by purchasing healthy, locally grown organic foods instead of processed foods and beverages

By Dr. Mercola

Soda, which is loaded with sugar primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup, is a leading contributor to the rising rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases facing Americans.

So when I say that drinking a can of soda is just as bad for you as smoking a cigarette (and maybe even worse) it is not an exaggeration.

Drinking soda is in many ways worse for you than smoking, and it is only because of massive marketing campaigns from the industry that these sugary beverages are deemed acceptable for our most vulnerable members of society – our kids.

In the 21st century there would indeed be an uproar if tobacco companies attempted to target our kids, but the soda companies do it everyday.

It’s time to wake up and face the facts: the soda industry is out for your children, and the message they send is every bit as damaging (and manipulative) as the one spewed by Big Tobacco.

Striking Similarities Between the Soda Industry and Big Tobacco

If I asked you to quickly recall a commercial or slogan from leading soda companies, like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, could you do it?

Chances are you’d have no trouble recalling the friendly polar bear commercials or “the real thing” logo, and if you asked your kids, they’d probably come up with a few too.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for how beverage big-wigs have gotten their products firmly embedded into the homes of millions of Americans and others worldwide. Coca-Cola, for instance, spends close to $3 billion a year on advertising. With that amount of money it’s no wonder the company has managed to hold on to its wholesome reputation.

They, and other beverage giants, are also in the habit of forming strategic alliances with health organizations that make it appear as though they are looking out for your health, which is about as laughable as Big Tobacco sponsoring a marathon. And like Big Tobacco, they also create front groups to fight anti-soda legislation and science.

For instance, as Time magazine reported:

• The American Beverage Association, which represents Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other soft drink producers, has attacked suggestions to tax soda as “discriminatory.” Their organization is touted as a “neutral forum,” but in reality is devoted to discrediting negative press against soft drinks. For instance, in relation to obesity, ABA states, “All of our industry’s beverages can be enjoyed as part of a balanced lifestlye.”
• The soda industry has created the front group Americans Against Food Taxes, which runs anti-tax campaigns. As Kelly Brownell wrote in Time:
  

  “The name of the group implies a patriotic, grass roots movement, not a highly financed entity initiated and organized by industry.”

• Another industry-created front group, Foundation for a Healthy America, recently donated $10 million to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to research and prevent childhood obesity! Diet Coke has also teamed up with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to raise awareness for women’s heart health programs and was the official “Beverage of Choice” for the 2010 winter Olympics.
• The soda industry funds research to discredit links between soda drinking and health problems. Brownwell writes:
  

  “The tobacco industry paid scientists who did research disputing links between smoking and lung cancer, the addictive nature of nicotine, and the dangers of second-hand smoke. The soda industry funds scientists who reliably produce research showing no link between SSB [sugar-sweetened beverage] consumption and health. The tobacco industry bought favor from community and national organizations by giving large donations. In an ironic twist, Coca Cola and PepsiCo are corporate sponsors of the American Dietetic Association.”

The Coca-Cola Company Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness (isn’t that name an oxymoron?) even creates continuing education courses for registered dietitians!

The Top Reason to Give Soda the Boot …

Some of you reading this are undoubtedly thinking, how bad could soda really be? From my perspective, there is absolutely NO REASON you or your kids should ever drink soda. If you were stranded in the middle of a desert with no other fluid available, then maybe, but other than that … none, nada, zip, zero. No excuses.

From a health perspective, drinking Coke or any soft drink is a disaster. Just one extra can of soda per day can add as much as 15 pounds to your weight over the course of a single year, not to mention increase your risk of diabetes by 85 percent. The primary reason why soda is so dangerous to your health?

Fructose.

The fructose content of the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) used in many popular soda brands has been sorely underestimated. Around 100 years ago the average American consumed a mere 15 grams of fructose a day, primarily in the form of fruit. One hundred years later, one fourth of Americans are consuming more than 135 grams per day, largely in the form of soda.

Fructose at 15 grams a day is harmless (unless you suffer from high uric acid levels). However, at nearly 10 times that amount it becomes a major cause of obesity and nearly all chronic degenerative diseases. Instead of consisting of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose, many soda brands, including Coke, Pepsi and Sprite, contain as much as 65 percent fructose, nearly 20 percent higher than originally believed.

According to one study, the mean fructose content of all 23 sodas tested was 59 percent — higher than claimed by the industry. When you consider that Americans drink an average of 53 to 57 gallons of soda per year (depending on the source of your statistics), this difference in actual fructose content could make a huge difference in your health.

The Down and Dirty About Fructose

The American Beverage Association and other front groups will try to persuade you that fructose in high fructose corn syrup is no worse for you than sugar, but this is not true. ABA also claims there is “no association between high fructose corn syrup and obesity,” but a long lineup of scientific studies suggest otherwise.

For example:

• Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital did a study of the effects of sugar-sweetened drinks on obesity in children. He found that for each additional serving of a sugar-sweetened drink, both body mass index and odds of obesity increased.
• The Fizzy Drink Study in Christchurch, England explored the effects on obesity when soda machines were removed from schools for one year. In the schools where the machines were removed, obesity stayed constant. In the schools where soda machines remained, obesity rates continued to rise.
• In a 2009 study, 16 volunteers were fed a controlled diet including high levels of fructose. Ten weeks later, the volunteers had produced new fat cells around their hearts, livers and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. A second group of volunteers who were fed a similar diet, but with glucose replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

Fructose is also a likely culprit behind the millions of U.S. children struggling with non-alcoholic liver disease, which is caused by a build-up of fat within liver cells. Fructose is very hard on your liver, in much the same way as drinking alcohol.

• Liver burden number one: After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver—ONLY your liver can break it down. This is much different than consuming glucose, in which your liver has to break down only 20 percent, and the remaining 80 percent is immediately metabolized and used by the rest of the cells in your body.
• Liver burden number two: Fructose is converted into fat that gets stored in your liver and other tissues as body fat. Part of what makes fructose so bad for your health is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar. For example, if you eat 120 calories of fructose, 40 calories are stored as fat. But if you eat the same amount of glucose, less than one calorie gets stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!

Fructose metabolism is very similar to the way alcohol is metabolized, which has a multitude of toxic metabolites that, if consumed in excess, can lead to non-alcoholic liver disease. For a complete discussion of fructose metabolism, see my comprehensive article about this.

Diet Soda is NOT a Safe Alternative to Regular Soda

If you think you’re better off drinking diet soda, think again. In fact, if I had to choose between the two, I’d take regular soda over diet. Instead of fructose, diet soda contains artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame or sucralose (Splenda). With all the research now available on aspartame and its various ingredients, it’s hard to believe such a chemical would even be allowed into the food supply, but it is, and it’s been silently wreaking havoc with people’s health for the past 30 years.

Just to refresh your memory, aspartame has been linked to the following health concerns, and Splenda is associated with many similar problems:

Lymphomas, leukemias, and brain cancer
Asthma

Neurological symptoms including headaches, depressed and anxious mood, seizures, memory loss, hallucinations, and dizziness
Visual changes

Weakness and fatigue
Joint pain

Sleep disorders
Weight gain and diabetes

Abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea
Rashes and hives

Does Soda Actually Cause Violence?

It’s a well-known fact that poor diet, particularly one high in sugar, exacts a toll on your emotional health.

For example, one recent study published in the journal Psychology Today found a strong link between high sugar consumption and the risk of both depression and schizophrenia. It’s also a well-known fact that chronic inflammation plays a major role in heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer. So consuming excessive amounts of sugary beverages can truly set off an avalanche of negative health events — both mental and physical.

A diet high in sugar, fructose and sweetened beverages like soda also causes excessive insulin release, which can lead to falling blood sugar levels, or hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia, in turn, causes your brain to secrete glutamate in levels that can cause agitation, depression, anger, anxiety and panic attacks.

One 1985 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that reducing sugar intake had a positive impact on emotions. And another, the Los Angeles Probation Department Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Analysis of Six Institutional Settings, published in 1983, documented the results when juvenile delinquents were given a reduced-sugar diet. They saw a 44 percent reduction in the incidence of antisocial behavior during the subsequent 3 months, after the implementation of the revised diet.

So can drinking soda affect your child’s behavior?

Yes, it can.

A new study further supported this point, and revealed that frequent soft drink consumption was associated with a 9-15% point increase in the probability of engaging in aggressive actions, even after controlling for gender, age, race, body mass index, typical sleep patterns, tobacco use, alcohol use and having family dinners.

Researchers concluded:

“There was a significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence. There may be a direct cause-and-effect relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression.”

The effect is not a new finding, as in 1979 the now notorious “Twinkie Defense” was used in a murder trial for the first time.

As Discovery News reported:

“In a notorious 1979 San Francisco murder trial, lawyers blamed the killer’s actions on his recent switch from a health-food diet to one filled with Coca-Cola and other junk food. Their argument worked. Instead of a homicide ruling, the defendant was convicted of a lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter. The legal strategy became known as the “Twinkie Defense,” and the precedent raised a number of questions that persist, despite years of research on the subject.”

Processed Food “Rebates” Dominate School Cafeterias

Soda manufacturers are not the only ones scheming for a permanent share of your child’s diet. In an article published on La Vida Locavore, Ed Bruske revealed, possibly for the first time, that manufacturers of sugar-laden processed foods pay “rebates” (aka “kickbacks”) to food service companies that serve school districts across the United States.

Bruske obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act that revealed more than 100 companies paid rebates to Chartwells, a food service management company hired by D.C. Public Schools. As you might suspect, the “rebates” present a conflict of interest that could prompt Chartwells to order food for your children based on the amount of rebate it will receive, versus the food’s nutritional value.

The end result?

School lunches that contain heavily processed foods like muffins, pizza, tator tots and flavored milk in lieu of fresh produce.

According to Bruske:

“Manufacturers pay rebates based on large volume purchases — literally, cash for placing an order. Rebates are said to be worth billions of dollars to the nation’s food industry, although manufacturers as well as the food service companies who feed millions of the nation’s school children every day — Chartwells, Sodexo and Aramark — treat them as a closely-guarded secret.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that food service companies engaged in “cost reimbursable” contracts with schools credit any rebates they receive to their school clients. For more than a year, attorneys for D.C. Public Schools refused to make public an itemized list of rebates collected by Chartwells, claiming the information constituted “trade secrets.” The schools were overruled by Mayor Vincent Gray’s legal counsel after I filed an administrative appeal.

John Carroll, an assistant New York State attorney general investigating rebating practices there, has said rebates pose “an inherent conflict of interest” in school feeding programs because they favor highly processed industrial foods. In cases where schools pay a food service company a flat rate to provide meals, the companies are not required to disclose the rebates they collect. In those cases, Carroll recently told a U.S. Senate Panel, rebates tend to drive up the cost of food, cheating children out of nutrition they might otherwise have on their lunch trays.

Carroll also described cases where rebates discouraged the use of local farm products in school meals. Produce vendors can’t afford to pay a rebate for local apples. But in at least one case, a produce distributor raised the prices of his goods so that he could pay a rebate to a food service company. A Homeland Security sub-committee in the U.S. Senate is investigating possible rebate fraud in contracts across the entire federal government.”

The top contributors to Chatwells’ rebate dollars included Performance Food Group, which paid more than $400,000 over the last three years, followed by General Mills, Kraft Foods, Country Pure Foods and Jenny-O Turkey. Other companies who made the list include:

ConAgra
Otis Spunkmeyer
Kellog’s

Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, 7-Up
FritoLay
Tyson

Nestle
Cargill Meat Solutions
Campbell’s Foodservice

Raising a Life-Long Healthy Eater

Food and beverage companies spend $2 billion a year promoting unhealthy foods to kids, and while ultimately it’s the parents’ responsibility to feed their children healthy foods, junk food ads make this much more difficult than it should be. As a result, the state of most kids’ diets in the United States is not easy to swallow.

As The Interagency Working Group on Foods Marketed to Children (IWG) reported:

• Nearly 40% of children’s diets come from added sugars and unhealthy fats
• Only 21% of youth age 6-19 eat the recommended five or more servings of fruits and vegetables each day

This is a veritable recipe for disease, and is a primary reason why today’s kids are arguably less healthy than many prior generations. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure — these are diseases that once appeared only in middle-age and beyond, but are now impacting children. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that by 2050, one in three U.S. adults will have diabetes — one of them could be your child if you do not take steps to cancel out the messages junk-food marketers are sending and instead teach them healthy eating habits.

Make no mistake, the advertisers are doing all they can to lure your child in, just as Big Tobacco did generations ago.

So you need to first educate yourself about proper nutrition and the dangers of junk food and processed foods in order to change the food culture of your entire family. To give your child the best start at life, and help instill healthy habits that will last a lifetime, you must lead by example. Children will simply not know which foods are healthy unless you, as a parent, teach it to them first.

My nutrition plan offers a step-by-step guide to feed your family right, and I encourage you to read through it now to learn how to make healthy eating decisions for you and your children.

If you want to get involved on a larger scale, the Prevention Institute’s “We’re Not Buying It” campaign is petitioning President Obama to put voluntary, science-based nutrition guidelines into place for companies that market foods to kids. You can sign this petition now. I also urge you to go a step further and stop supporting the companies that are marketing junk foods and beverages to your children today.

Ideally, you and your family will want to vote with your pocketbook and avoid processed food and sugary sodas while instead choosing unprocessed raw, organic and/or locally grown foods as much as possible. These are the foods your child will thrive on, and it’s important they learn what real, healthy food is right from the get-go.

This way, when they become tweens and teenagers, they may eat junk food here and there at a friend’s house, but they will return to real food as the foundation of their diet — and that habit will continue on with them for a lifetime.

 

Source: Dr. Mercola, Organic Consumers Association (OCA)

What’s In Your Fridge?? This Is How I Shop For Health

GET YOUR KIDS INTO THE KITCHEN!

Source: Uploaded by PaulChekLive on Jul 25, 2008 to YouTube

Sean from http://www.undergroundwellness.com lets us into his pantry for a little show and tell. If you care about your meat suit then choose your meat carefully. Go against the grain and eat the best you can obtain cause disease is born of bodies carelessly maintained.

Children of the Corn Syrup: lecture by Dr. Stephen W. Ponder

Source: Uploaded by delmarcollege on Jun 24, 2009 to YouTube

Dr. Stephen W. Ponder , MD, FAAP, CDE is the director of the Childrens Diabetes and Endocrine Center of South Texas at Driscoll Children‘s Hospital. Dr. Ponder delivered his presentation on children and obesity, “Children of the Corn Syrup,” as part of the Friday Science Lecture Series at Del Mar College on March 7, 2008

HCG Drops: When Nothing Else Works

By: Rammoon Carrasiel

HCG drops are used when a simple diet is not enough to help you lose your undesired weight. Lots of people use HCG drops to lose fat and never gain back the weight.
HCG drops are based on a natural human hormone that helps mothers lose weight and metabolize during pregnancy. When combined with a low calorie diet HCG drops allow quick weight loss, helping you lose pounds of fat and improve your health.

HCG drops are a good alternative to other HCG methods, like injections. Since most people want to lost weight but don’t like shots HCG drops are a good idea.
Homeopathic HCG drops are easy and painless to use. You don’t need a prescription for HCG drops, and you don’t need supplies to go with the diet drops. Losing weight is as simple as taking the HCG drops and following a low calorie diet, like the HCG diet plan.

HCG drops contain a hormone that signals the body to release pounds of stored fat, helping you lose weight. Since HCG drops are paired with a low calorie diet you get double the fat loss effects. Using HCG drops and a diet also helps the metabolism adjust to burn calories and lose weight faster.

Using HCG drops comes with the HCG diet plan you must follow. The first few days involve a high fat diet with the HCG drops. This step fills the cells with fat and prepares your body to drop pounds. This HCG phase last until you start the low calorie diet.
Next the HCG drops are taken with a low calorie diet. The length of the low calorie phase depends on the amount of weight you want to drop. The HCG diet plan is specific on the foods and amounts that you eat. The HCG drops aid your body in losing the weight while you consume the HCG diet recipes.

During the next phase you continue the low calorie diet but stop using the HCG drops. The HCG drops need to be flushed out of your system. During this phase the low calorie diet centers on foods that help you lose weight but preserve your health. You may have extra HCG drops, but it is essential that you don’t take them during this phase. You have to rely on the HCG diet. You will see the pounds drop off every day.

Once you stop using the HCG drops you have to watch and insure that your weight begins to stabilize. You want to lose the fat, but you need to maintain your health. The HCG diet advises to stay away from carbohydrates for the weight loss diet. If the diet phase isn’t working you don’t need more HCG drops. There are HCG diet plan guidelines for that problem.

HCG drops help your body lose weight, but they don’t make you drop the pounds so fast that you lose your health. When you use the low calorie diet and HCG drops you are also unlikely to gain back the weight you lose. HCG drops are designed to keep you feeling full while you are on the diet. Because of the HCG drops it is much easier to lose weight than if you were just doing a low calorie diet.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

East Indian Plant Helps Diabetics Lower Blood Sugar, Weight

by: Robert P. Tracy

Type 2 diabetics in the United States have become wary of pharmaceutical companies.

When heavily researched and touted products, such as Avandia, are found to have serious and sometimes fatal side effects, a growing number of suffering diabetics have sought out alternative or holistic remedies.

Even the pharmaceutical companies themselves are considering natural foods and ingredients as remedies for serious illnesses such as diabetes.
 
In addition to pharma companies, if you Google the Internet, you’re sure to find numerous companies hawking the latest sure-cure, snake oil, promising to eliminate Type 2 diabetes and give you a happy life.
 
Unfortunately, few of these alternative remedies work. Some are even harmful. Which gives natural products that truly help a bad name. One such product is garcinia cambogia.
 
Drawing on ancient folk wisdom from India, a natural, wild-growing food garcinia cambogia, has been found by local Indians and American scientists to be highly effective in countering Type 2 diabetes conditions.
 
Dr. Harry Preuss, a professor at the prestigious Georgetown University Medical Center, has conducted multiple, double-blind placebo studies on this product and found it to be highly effective for restoring diabetic health.
 
Based on this research in which participants were given a supplement form of garcinia cambogia, Dr. Preuss found that it helped participants to lose weight (not muscle mass), lower blood sugar levels, reduce cholesterol and blood pressure.
 
In his book, The Natural Fat-Loss Pharmacy, Dr. Preuss notes the benefits of this natural food (its active ingredient, HCA, is found in the dried rind) and recommends its use for both healthy individuals and Type 2 sufferers.
 
Dr. Preuss also strongly recommends that any natural food or supplement be accompanied by a healthy diet and exercise regimen.
 
The plant and it history
 
The dried fruit rind of Garcinia cambogia is a rich source of HCA, and has been used for centuries as a spice, flavor-enhancer, preservative and digestive aid throughout Southeast Asia.
 
Thus, it has a long history of consumption in countries where the plant is native. Structurally, HCA is similar to the common food additive citric acid, which also occurs naturally in citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons. A high bioavailability form of HCA has been produced and studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in humans.
 
A primary mode of HCA action appears to be its ability to inhibit ATP-citrate lyase, an enzyme that helps to form the building blocks of fatty acids and cholesterol.
 
The dried fruit rind of Garcinia cambogia is a rich source of HCA, and has been used for centuries as a spice, flavor-enhancer, preservative and digestive aid throughout Southeast Asia.
 
Thus, it has a long history of consumption in countries where the plant is native. Structurally, HCA is similar to the common food additive citric acid, which also occurs naturally in citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons. But it is far more reaching in it benefits.

For more information visit us below.
 

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Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com
 

About the Author:
Diab-X, ProvenReusltshealth.com

Please visit us at:
 http://www.provenresultshealth.com/diab-x/diabetes/natural/supplement/studies.html

Helping diabetics and pre-diabetics discover healthier living through natural, herbal remedies. Key ingredients in Diab-X help by promoting normal blood sugar levels, healthy body weight BMI, proper insulin function, healthy cholesterol, and normal blood pressure.

For personal service call Toll Free: 888-600-6856.

Copyright 2005-2011 ArticleSnatch, LLC – All Rights Reserved.

African American Women and Weight

 by Ilana Diallo

Here she comes walking down the street. That beautiful, dark, shapely black woman. Shapely has become a term that describes the African American woman. However, statistics state that the highest percentage of overweight groups of people are African American women. Nearly 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, and of that 78 percent are African American women.

We have to face that fact that America is getting fatter each year. The dieting has caused a very pronounced dependency on their products that if aren’t used the individual regains the weight lost. Americans are on an overweight rollercoaster that pauses when it reaches the top and down she goes again.

What Makes the African American Woman Overweight?

African American women are becoming overweight for the same reason most Americans are. African American women are eating fast food, unhealthy cooking, with little or no exercise routine. These lifestyle habits have created a large problem literally. Women tend to have more body fat on them than men.

She is still beautiful as she walks down the street but she pauses every few feet to catch her breath. Being overweight can cause many different health issues such as; diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthmatic issues, and heart disease. These health induced illnesses can be crippling and even lead to untimely deaths.

Taking care of the body through better nutrition adds vitality to a person’s health and life. Illnesses like diabetes is on the rise amongst overweight and obese individuals. These individuals are primarily African American women as they are the leading population that is overweight.

Nutrition Tips

Many times the home cooked meal is the most unhealthy meal of the day. Here are some tips to gradually change the eating habits and still enjoy the food you cook.

Start each morning with a healthy breakfast. Eat healthy multi grain breakfast bars, oatmeal with a little brown sugar, low fat yogurt, a multi grain cereal with little milk (non dairy is the best).

Eat lots of fruits and vegetables throughout the day. Consume more whole grains such as; oatmeal, brown rice, and whole grain breads.

Try ordering the healthier options such as; grilled chicken instead of crispy chicken, plain hamburger with veggies only (no sauce), and ask for the salad on the side instead of the french fries.

Make it light when using mayonnaise, butter and other condiment products.

Eliminate sweets in the house. If sweets aren’t in the house it makes it harder to consume them.

Change cooking styles; bake chicken instead fried, use more herbs and less butter, and less salt always.

Adding Fitness to the Routine

Fitness is just as important as nutrition. Do little things to get fitness into your daily schedule.

Park further away from the door when going to the store or from the entrance to work.

Go window shopping at the mall and walk the entire mall.

Take the stairs when optional.

Begin to schedule in exercise into daily schedule. Walk around a local school track.

To look at alternative weight loss methods, take the time to visithttp://www.weightlosstriumph.com/does-medifast-work-find-out-what-medifast-customers-say.html

Even though African American women have been the most overweight population with lifestyle changes that can change. Taking the time to find small things to eliminate and others to add will increase your overall health.

Here she comes through the door and she is still beautiful, dark, shapely, and two sizes smaller and all she did was change her lifestyle one day at a time.

About the Author

Ilana began her career as a public speaker and motivational speaker in communities and schools. She has continued to educate and inspire those around her and in her community. Ilana is a professional freelance writer whom has been writing for 15 years.

Source: GoArticles.com © 2011, All Rights Reserved

Nutrition Facts Labels: How to Read, FAQ Parts 1 & 2

Part 1 of 2

Understanding Nutrition Facts Labels

Uploaded by psychetruth on Dec 19, 2007 to YouTube

Natalie explains;

Ingredient list, serving Size, fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fiver, sugars, proteins, vitamins and minerals and daily percents on a nutrition facts label placed on food. Know what you buy at the grocery store.

This helps you understand what you eat and make healthy choices for health and weight loss and fitness.

Part 2

Healthy Foods And Cacao: Part Two

By: Marilyn Reid

As was discussed in Healthy Foods and Cacao: Part One, our bodies need raw materials to fight off the side effects of living. Our bodies are, literally, under attack, either by the normal processes of living (oxygen) or the other things we encounter on a daily basis that leave our bodies open to attack (H1N1). What we feed our bodies will either help in the fight or tear it down further. There are other minerals and nutrients our bodies need to do that work effectively.

It is the sweet potato, not the carrot, that will have the greatest impact on your vision. Sweet potatoes outpower carrots. One carrot contains 203% of the daily recommended vitamin a, but a sweet potato weighs in with 262.2% of the daily recommended dose. Sweet potatoes also contain vitamin C and B6 are known to help the body fight off inflammation.

Tomatoes contain vitamin C and vitamin A, but they also contain potassium (8% of the RDA). Tomatoes real punch comes from lycopene, which is present when tomatoes are cooked. Lycopene made headlines because of its impact on prostate cancer, but research has indicated that it may also be beneficial in warding of stomach, colon, breast, and lung cancers. Regardless, tomatoes are incredibly high in antioxidants and should be part of everyone’s diet.

Mom was right about eating your broccoli. As with all the superfoods so far reviewed, broccoli is high in antioxidant vitamins, like A and C, but it is also high in fiber, folic acid and even calcium. Broccoli contains 178 milligrams in one cup. (Milk has 300 in one cup, but also the fat that goes with it and no fiber.) A diet high in good fiber has been shown to ward off rectal and colon cancers.

Dense in antioxidants, cacao nibs are packed with a whole host of nutrients, making it a great choice for brain health. As discussed in the article Organic Cacao, the Department of Metabolism and Nutrition, in Madrid, Spain, reported that cacaos the glucose retardation index of cocoa . . . were similar to other natural commercial insoluble fibres. In other words, the good fiber in cacao helped keep glucose levels down. The chromium in cacao nips is known to reduce ones cravings for sugary foods (http://healthyfoodrawdiet.com/cacao/cacao-nibs). It has also been shown to reduce the platelet levels in the bloodstream, inhibiting the formation of clogged arteries and reducing the risk of cardiovascular problems. While cacao nibs do contain fat, it is important to remember that our bodies need fat to process nutrients.

Salmon is more evidence that not all fats are created equally. The fat in salmon is essential for our bodies, but more so our brains. The omega 3 fatty acids in salmon have no equal. It must be noted that for salmons benefits to be maximized, it is critical that one consumes wild catch salmon, as farm raised salmon omega 3 are significantly lower. It is believed that farm-raised salmon does not enjoy the normal diet as salmon out in the wild and does therefore not contain the same benefits. The quality of the meat suffers and the salmon can in fact suffer from more infections and must therefore be treated with antibiotics, leading to a whole host of other issues.

You are what you eat. If you fuel your body with superfoods that are rich in nutrients and good fats, your body will be better able to ward off infection and perform the way in which it was intended. Salmon, cacao nibs, tomatoes, broccoli, sweet potatoes are some of the best foods for fueling our body to fight off expected invaders, like free radicals that lead to oxidization, and unexpected invaders, like cancer cells.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Flavonoids are a type of antioxidants, a superfood (http://www.healthyfoodrawdiet.com/cacao)

The Truth About Fruit! – Food or Candy?

Source: Uploaded by psychetruth on Apr 9, 2008 to YouTube

Nutrition by Natalie

The Truth About Fruit! Health Food or Candy?
Will the fruits basket make you fat or help you lose weight? Natalie, gives tips why fruit should be in your diet.

Healthy Foods And Cacao: Part One

By: Marilyn Reid

What makes a food a healthy food? What properties does it have to make it a nutritional super food? We age because our bodies break down and wear out. Why? From the moment we draw our first breath, we begin the, usually, slow process of dying. Every breath gets us a step closer. The unfair part is that the process of aging is initiated with breath. Oxygen, so vital for our living, brings us daily closer to death. Think of the aging process as rusting. That is why antioxidants are so essential. They help the body deal with the process of rusting and thereby help stave off aging and help the body function optimally.

Green tea is quite a powerhouse. In the last couple of years, dentists have been recommending green tea because it has been shown to kill the bacteria causing plaque. As we know, dental plaque is, indeed, related to cardiovascular plaque and those with oral issues often also have heart issues. Further, studies have shown that green tea is beneficial in treating mouth and throat infections, which might explain its connection to a decrease in esophageal cancers. Green tea has been linked in several studies with a reduction of cancer proclivities, probably because of its high levels of antioxidants.

Usually, when we think of cacao, we think of hot cocoa. Cacao, even cacao tea http://healthyfoodrawdiet.com/cacao/cacao-tea), however, has often been recommended as a substitute for other, more harmful drinks. While cacao does contain some caffeine, it tends to be less acidic than coffee or black tea and therefore tolerated more easily. Furthermore, cacao, especially unprocessed and unsugared, has loads of other health benefits. Containing such properties as Phenylethylamine, it is able to induce both a sense of calmness and alertness. Cacaos levels of flavonoids are unsurpassed by most foods and contain other minerals like magnesium and chromium provide the body with nutrients that will stave off sugar cravings.

Blueberries, like green tea, are loaded with antioxidant vitamins. Blueberries, cousins to cranberries and bilberries, have been shown to promote urinary tract health. Interestingly, the tartness associated with wild blueberries is one of the reasons blueberries are so potent. That tartness leads to helping the body in becoming more alkaline (and less acidic). Acidity, we know, makes our system work harder. Our body has to strip magnesium and calcium from our bones to reduce the bodys acidity and make it more alkaline. Over time, a high level of acid in the body will affect the kidneys that are under load from the acidity and are working overtime to neutralize it. Blueberries, on the other hand, help restore and maintain a good level of alkalinity.

It has been suggested by numerous studies that cancer itself may be the body’s reaction to being under the load of inflammation over time. Any time we force our bodies to work overtime and we do not give our bodies the raw materials it needs to deal with that level of stress, we invite a whole host of other issues. Superfoods, like cacao, green tea, and blueberries are generally high in antioxidants and help the body fight inflammation, while providing it with the nutrients it needs to function optimally.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

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Flavonoids are a type of antioxidants, a superfood (http://www.healthyfoodrawdiet.com/cacao)

Sugar Is A Drug: How to Overcome Sugar Cravings, Lose Weight & Stabilize Mood

Source: Uploaded by PaulChekLive on Apr 12, 2009 to Youtube

CHEK HLC, Sean Croxton of http://www.undergroundwellness.com explains why its better to see sugar as a drug rather than a simple food item.

5 FAKE Health Foods to Avoid

Source:  Uploaded by UndergroundWellness on Feb 3, 2011 to YouTube

Why American’s Can’t Afford to Eat Healthy

By David Sirota

The easiest way to explain Gallup’s discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being “Whole Paycheck.” Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.

It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point’s carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile — if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard — that’s because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.

As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism — the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.

In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses’ specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to “choose” the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.

Corn — which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat — exemplifies the scheme.

“Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop … artificially low,” reports Time magazine. “That’s why McDonald’s can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 — a bargain.”

Yes, it is a bargain, but one created by deliberate government policy that serves the corn industry titans, not by any genetic advantage that makes corn derivatives automatically more affordable for the budget-strapped commoner.

The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is “that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit.”

So while it may be amusing to use Americans’ worsening recession-era diet as another excuse to promote cultural stereotypes, the nutrition crisis costing us billions in unnecessary healthcare costs is more about public policy and powerful special interests than it is about epicurean snobs and affluent tastes. Indeed, this is a problem not of individual proclivities or of agricultural biology that supposedly makes nutrition naturally unaffordable — it is a problem of rigged economics and corrupt policymaking.

Solving the crisis, then, requires everything from recalibrating our subsidies to halting the low-income school lunch program’s support for the pizza and French fry lobby (yes, they have a powerful lobby). It requires, in other words, a new level of maturity, a better appreciation for the nuanced politics of food and a commitment to changing those politics for the future.

Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald’s feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It’s just a matter of will — or won’t.

• David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now.” He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Source: Organic Consumers Association/Salon.com News

7 Nutrition Fundamentals for Losing Fat

Source: Uploaded by DrClayFitness on Mar 15, 2007 to YouTube

Dr. Clay shares 7 fundamental nutrition tips that serve as the foundation of any good diet.

Are You Addicted To Food?

By Rachael Moeller Gorman, “Addicted to Food?,”March/April 2011 in Eating Well

Food can enslave the brain just like drugs can. Dr. Nora Volkow’s research may help you take back control.

Every morning, Nora Volkow walks past a vending machine on her way to her office. She barely notices it. One day, however, she’s hungry, so she stops and peers in. A chocolate bar grabs her eye. She inserts her money, takes the chocolate, munches, and moves on. The next day, Volkow walks to her office as usual, but this time as she rounds the corner, she has a sudden, intense craving for chocolate. She hadn’t thought about it since her last bite the day before. She isn’t hungry. “But my brain responded in this automatic way,” she explains in her melodic Spanish accent as she sits in her office at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), where she serves as director. Because the chocolate had given her so much enjoyment, just the sight of the machine made her want to eat more.

Volkow, a lithe woman with short blonde curls, provides example after example of instances in which she has succumbed to the food’s lure. Chocolate-covered raisins. Godiva at a bookstore. Chocolate-chip cookies. The woman really, really likes chocolate.

But is she an addict? People talk about being “addicted to sugar,” “addicted to potato chips” and, probably most commonly, “addicted to chocolate.” Volkow has been attempting to figure out whether we truly can be addicted to food by peering into people’s minds with high-tech scanners. She has already shown that obese people’s brains look similar to the brains of those addicted to drugs. She’s finding that food, especially the highly palatable fatty, sugary kinds that pack the inner aisles of American supermarkets, fast-food joints and, yes, vending machines, can enslave anyone and change their behaviors.

The more she can understand how “rewarding” substances, like drugs and yummy foods, can activate parts of our brains associated with addiction, the more she can help us learn how to take back control of our actions—or never lose our free will in the first place.

The Makings of a Pioneer

If you were to imagine a person whose pedigree and character destines her for a key leadership role, an NIH director, say, you might picture someone quite like Nora Volkow. Volkow’s great-grandfather was Leon Trotsky, the famous Russian revolutionary who defied Stalin, only to later be murdered in exile in Volkow’s childhood home in Mexico City. Her mother, a Spanish fashion designer, died several years ago, and her father is a chemist who still lives in Mexico. Nora Volkow herself graduated first in her class at the National University of Mexico medical school and received the Premio Robins award for best medical student of her generation. She speaks four languages fluently. She runs seven miles before work every day. She works an average of 80 hours every week.

Yet for the sake of science, she perpetually brings up her own weaknesses. Like chocolate. Which we keep coming back to.

“The other day someone gave me chocolate-covered raisins,” she says, swinging her ID chain with both hands, a twinkle in her eye. “They gave me two boxes, so I say, OK, I’ll eat half a box. Well, I ate one-and-a-half boxes!” This sort of compulsive eating, she says, is one reason that obesity has become an epidemic. Many people blame obese people for their condition, saying they simply eat too much. But it’s not that obese people lack willpower, says Volkow; there is something physical happening in their brains that prevents them from stopping. “Obesity is highly, horrifically stigmatized,” says Volkow. “It erodes your self-esteem, it interferes with social interactions, it affects your mobility. And yet so often people cannot stop it.”

The Dopamine Made Me Do It

Volkow’s interest in the chemistry and mechanisms of the brain began in Mexico City in 1981. She had just graduated from medical school and read an article in Scientific American about exciting new clinical applications of a technology called positron emission tomography (PET). PET allows scientists to see a three-dimensional image of the brain as it thinks, feels and works (previously, scientists could not watch the brain in action very well). Volkow was awestruck, and applied for a psychiatric residency at New York University to have a chance to work with nearby PET pioneers at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

She was particularly interested in the brains of people who lose the ability to control their actions rationally; people who, in essence, lose free will. At first, she studied schizophrenics. By the late 1980s, she started looking at the brains of alcoholics and drug addicts as well. She soon saw that the addicted brains looked decidedly different from brains of people without drug or alcohol addictions.

The most marked difference was in the dopamine cells of the reward circuit, a group of brain cells that communicate using the chemical dopamine. The circuit connects several regions in the brain involved in the feeling of reward, which has evolved to motivate us to do more of the things that make us feel good and are important for survival, like eating, having sex and taking care of children. Drugs like cocaine and amphetamines highjack this circuit, causing a flood of dopamine into the area between brain cells where messages are transmitted. And this dopamine surge produces a high. Take the drugs often enough and dopamine receptors can decrease in number or become less sensitive to dopamine. When this happens, a person needs more and more of the drug to get the same effect (this is called tolerance).

As a psychiatrist, Volkow noted a similarity between drug abusers and compulsive overeaters: they both seemed to lose their rational ability to control their behaviors (around drugs and food, respectively). She wanted to know how to intervene to help those who couldn’t stop themselves. She knew that antipsychotic drugs, which block the reward-registering dopamine system, often make people eat and gain weight (as a side effect), while drugs that increase dopamine in the brain cause weight loss. In 2001, Volkow and her colleagues began exploring whether dopamine played a key role in overeating and obesity in people not on drugs.

To find out, Volkow and her crew gave a radioactive chemical that binds to dopamine receptors to 20 people—10 obese, 10 normal weight—and then scanned their brains using PET, to see whether there were any associations between their dopamine systems and their body weights.

Turns out, there were. The obese people had significantly fewer dopamine receptors in a part of the brain called the striatum. Volkow and her team surmised that with fewer receptors, the people who were obese had to eat far more food than a normal-weight person to experience the same high.

Liking and Wanting

In 2002, Volkow published a study that investigated the link between dopamine and “wanting.” When people were presented with—but not allowed to eat—warm, tasty plates of their favorite food, dopamine increased in the striatum area of their brains. The subjects said they were hungry and desired the food. This is the “wanting,” or craving; it is not the pleasure (i.e., “liking”) they likely would have experienced if they had been allowed to consume it. The people’s responses in this study were quite similar to the experiences of drug abusers watching a video showing people using cocaine: the abusers experience a dopamine surge through the parts of the brain involved in habit.

In other words, really liking chocolate or potato chips, the pleasure that occurs when your reward systems fire, isn’t the whole story of dopamine and addiction. An intense want—the desire to eat, to do everything you can to get your hands on a food and put it into your mouth—is equally important. You taste creamy milk chocolate or a salty French fry. You really, really like it. So much so that you’re conditioned to the setting in which you ate the yummy food and the next time you’re in that environment, a shot of dopamine squirts into your brain and you want that food. You crave it. You’re motivated to eat it—and to keep eating it.

This idea is central to the obesity epidemic. “There is a certain reinforcement, almost like an arousal of wanting more,” says Volkow. “A person eats a gallon of ice cream. He is not even realizing the taste of the food anymore, he’s not enjoying the pleasure of the palatability and experience; it has become automatic. The drive to have more and more [fueled by dopamine] is what maintains that behavior, independent at that point of the pleasurable response that you get.

“It’s almost like they become a robot.”

You’ve Been Conditioned

No one would become a food-devouring robot, however, if they lived in a desert or on the moon or in the year 1850, according to David Kessler, M.D., former FDA commissioner and author of The End of Overeating (Rodale, 2009). We eat, he says, because we have constant, crippling access to rich, delicious foods packed with fat and sugars, both of which activate our dopamine systems. And those conditioned cues are everywhere—commercials, fast-food restaurants that we pass on our commutes, grocery stores. Kessler postulates that fat and sugar, plus salt, have triggered mass overconsumption in the United States.

“We took fat, sugar and salt and put it on every corner, made it available 24/7, made it socially acceptable to eat anytime. We’re living in a food carnival,” he says.

Volkow’s Bethesda offices are a perfect microcosm of this American food environment: Within one-third of a mile, a visitor can find a frozen yogurt place, a greasy-spoon diner, a Mexican restaurant and at least 10 other eateries. On the first floor of the NIDA offices is a cafeteria with a hot buffet and snacks. Vending machines, like the one Volkow has a hard time resisting, live on the office floors themselves. Bowls of candy lurk on desktops and in drawers. The scent of microwave popcorn pervades the office air.

The continual need to say “NO!” to these tempting foods requires the strongest will, and some people’s wiring seems to be working against them. In a 2008 study, Volkow found that having fewer dopamine receptors (as obese people do) was associated with less activity in parts of the brain responsible for self-control. In other words, these people not only have to eat more to achieve the same “reward,” they also have a harder time stopping themselves from eating once they start. Drug addicts similarly have fewer dopamine receptors, also associated with less activity in the self-control parts of the brain. In the brain of a compulsive, “addicted” eater, inhibition is like a picket fence trying to hold back an avalanche of reward and conditioning.

“Joanne,” 39, from San Francisco, a member of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, agrees, and says that sugar and flour are her drugs. Since she was a teenager, Joanne would compulsively eat for hours at a time; in high school she learned how to make herself sick, which “led to 15 years of insanity,” she says. “There was something in my brain that would light up, and it would turn into this massive craving that I could not control.”

Joanne’s food addiction manifested as bulimia, but others in the group became obese. When she wasn’t purging, she was “white-knuckling it” through the day. “If there was food somewhere in the vicinity, the constant conversation in my head was, ‘Should I eat that? No, don’t eat that.’ Back and forth, over and over, while trying to maintain a conversation, which was almost fruitless because I wasn’t really listening, I was focused on the food.” Studies have estimated that about 10 percent of the population is addicted to food like this, and many more of us probably fall elsewhere on the food-addiction spectrum.

“Everyone understands how critical taste is [to overeating], but what Nora has shown is the role not just of taste, but of the brain and brain circuits,” says Kessler. “We now know that the learning, memory, habit and motivational circuits of the brain are what drive eating, and Nora deserves a lot of credit for pulling back the curtain and showing us what’s really at the core of this [obesity] epidemic.”

Breaking the Cycle

But even though we are inundated with hyper-palatable food, not everyone becomes an addict. “At least 50 percent of that vulnerability is related to genetics,” Volkow says. And your ability to put on the brakes is a crucial factor. “Some people are [naturally] much better at controlling their desires than others.” After genetics, Volkow says the rest is environment—if you only have access to high-calorie, cheap junk foods, that’s all you can eat.

Not everyone in the field agrees that people can be addicted to food and they object to the excuse it provides. “Interest in obesity as a brain disease should not detract from a public health focus on the ‘toxic food environment’ that is arguably responsible for the obesity epidemic,” writes psychologist Terry Wilson, Ph.D., of Rutgers University in a 2010 paper. But those who study food addiction say it does bear striking similarity to drug and alcohol addition: Ashley Gearhardt, Kelly Brownell and William Corbin at Yale have created the Yale Food Addiction Scale to determine whether a person is truly addicted to food. They adapted it from the scale for substance dependence in the DSM-IV (the “Bible” of psychiatry), and it includes criteria like whether the subject has been unsuccessful in trying to quit, whether he or she spends a lot of time trying to obtain the food, whether he or she has given up other recreational activities for the food, whether there are adverse consequences of eating the food, whether the subject becomes tolerant to the food and whether they have withdrawal symptoms. When they surveyed 233 people, these three leading researchers found that 11.6 percent of them could be diagnosed with food dependence (consuming large amounts of food despite significant issues—obesity, health problems—associated with it and the desire to stop, as well as withdrawal or tolerance). The scale could be useful in determining treatment for addicts versus those who simply experience the occasional craving.

Back in her office, surrounded by sculptures and paintings, some from her own hand (yes, she’s an artist too!), Volkow talks about how addiction steals our free will and makes us a slave to the salient substance. So is Nora Volkow a chocolate addict? “No, I’m not. We use the word way too much.” The distinction, she says, is when eating the food impairs your life, when you lose control, like when a person consistently eats so much they only eat in private out of embarrassment and spend much of their time thinking about food. “Most people [who] take drugs are not addicted to drugs, like most people who eat chocolate, even if they eat more than they should, are not addicted to chocolate.

“I may have that vulnerability, perhaps, for compulsiveness, but I am lucky enough to also have the control that leads me to plan ahead and say, I’m not going to do these things.” In other words, you can extend a hand from a present moment of strength to a future instance of weakness and wrestle your free will back from the dopamine master within.

Source: Rachael Moeller Gorman, an award-winning science writer, is a contributing editor for EatingWell.

About the Author:

An award-winning journalist, Rachael Moeller Gorman is a contributing editor at EatingWell and has written for such publications as Scientific American, Good Housekeeping, Discover, Proto, Cooking Light and The Boston Globe Health/Science section, among others. She loves learning about all things science, from the environment to anthropology to medicine, and enjoys translating dense jargon into elegant prose for a variety of audiences. Profiles are her favorite, and traveling to a research site for a story is always ideal.

Rachael has her bachelor’s degree in biology and neuroscience from Williams College and a master’s degree in environmental studies from Brown University. She has also conducted research in various genetics and neuroscience laboratories and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Association of Science Writers. Please see the Articles section for a selection of her work.

How to Start The Raw Foods Diet

This is a short and simple video that offers suggestions on how you can start to transition your diet from cooked foods to raw foods. Discover how you can change your life and level of health by consuming a 100% RAW FOOD DIET.

Source: letsgetraw on YouTube

Natural Cures For Diabetes –Treat it the Natural Way

By Marilyn Reid

Frequent urination, unquenchable thirst, weakness, fatigue, tingling, numbness of extremities, and sudden weight loss. These are the common symptoms that a person suffering from diabetes experiences. Are you experiencing the same thing? If you are, then it’s high time you pay your doctor a visit and have your blood sugar checked.

What is diabetes? Diabetes is a disorder on which the body is not able to regulate the amount of sugar, particularly glucose, in the blood. Glucose plays a vital function in the body as it provides you with the energy to perform daily activities like brisk walking, working, jogging, and many others. It is regulated by the insulin, the hormone produced by the pancreas, and allows it to move from the blood to the muscle, liver, and fat cells to be used for fuel.  Now, if a person’s body does not produce enough insulin, also known as type 1 diabetes, or produce enough but does not use it properly, referred to as type 2 diabetes, then he or she should find diabetes treatment at once.

What are some natural cures for diabetes? When you are diagnosed with diabetes, perhaps the first thing that comes to your mind is to know what medications to take in order to treat it. Although it’s true that there are prescribed medicines for this disorder, you can always treat it the natural way just by knowing what the natural cures are. Natural cures for diabetes could range from regular exercise, good eating habits, and including raw foods in your diet.

Make sure that you get enough physical exercise to burn off the extra energy producing glucose. It can also help prevent complications that may arise from diabetes like poor circulation in the feet and legs and nervous disorders. Good eating habits, on the other hand, means managing what you eat, how much you eat, and when during the course of the day you sit down to eat. People suffering from diabetes should commit to keeping their diet varied and include a large amount of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains and they should see to it that they do not eat too much or too little during every meal.

A raw food diet can also do a lot to treat diabetes the natural way. People who have tried a diet of raw and organic foods revealed that it had helped reverse diabetes without the need for pharmaceutical medication. Although it can be difficult to change your diet, especially from cooked meals to raw, the little sacrifice can be worth it in the end as it helps you achieve a healthier you.

Diabetes may be a serious disorder but it can be easily managed and treated if done the right way. Regular exercise, good eating habits, and eating raw foods can certainly do a lot. The first two may be easy for you to follow, but the third could be not. Why not learn more about rawfood nutrition and sunfoods from David Wolfe for you to be enlighten further as to what it can do to treat diabetes?

For the past 10 years Marilyn Reid has been active as an advocate for Alternative Health Therapies, with an emphasis on healthy living and raw food diets. Marilyn has been fascinated with the work of the Healthy Lifestyle Nutritionist and Guru, David Wolfe and has a blog which keeps up with the latest in the world of Healthy Lifestyles. See more facts about Diabetes.

Source:www.isnare.com

The Truth About Sugar – Parts 1 and 2- Time: 18:36

Nutrition by Natalie

Sugar Shock

How much sugar do you consume? You might be surprised just how much sugar there is in everyday food. In this video, Natalie shows you the shocking truth about how much sugar you’re consuming.

You will be surprised just how much sugar there is in common things like a soft drink, McDonalds Value Meal, fast food, Starbucks drinks, etc.

Natalie shows you how much sugar there is in certain food items including; blueberry muffins, orange juice, a poptart, Lucky Charms cereal, barbecue sauce, a Coke, Gatorade sports drink, a Starbucks Chocolate Frappuccino Mocha, a chocolate cake dessert and others.

Natalie also talks about the relationship of sugar and high fructose corn syrup to weight gain, energy, diabetes and health.

This video is an eye opener even if you aren’t on a diet.

Part Two

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