Probiotics during pregnancy and its benefits for your child...

Probiotics During Pregnancy Tied to Lower Eczema Risk for Kids

(Reuters Health) - Women who take probiotics while they’re pregnant and breastfeeding could be less likely to have children with eczema than mothers who don’t, a research review suggests.

Probiotic use during pregnancy and lactation was associated with a 22 percent lower risk of young children developing eczema, the study found. This is the equivalent of preventing 44 cases of eczema for every 1,000 children.

While the study wasn’t designed to prove how probiotics might prevent eczema, it’s possible that taking these supplements changes the composition of breast milk and influences the way a child’s immune system and skin develop, said senior study author Dr. Robert Boyle of Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham in the UK.

“There was already some evidence that probiotic exposure in early life may reduce risk of eczema in an infant,” Boyle said by email.

“But this study makes it clearer that maternal probiotics during pregnancy and while breastfeeding seem to protect infants from eczema, whereas probiotics added to an infant's diet directly do not seem to protect infants from developing eczema,” Boyle added.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 400 studies including a total of about 1.5 million people.

There were 28 trials of probiotic use during pregnancy that involved about 6,000 women. Most of the trials focused on the bacteria lactobacillus, a common probiotic in yogurt and other fermented foods.

The studies found a reduced eczema risk for kids when their mothers took probiotics during the final weeks of pregnancy and the first six months of breastfeeding.

Avoiding potentially allergenic foods like nuts, dairy and eggs during pregnancy didn’t appear to influence a child’s risk of eczema, the study also found.

Another supplement, fish oil, was associated with a lower risk of egg allergies in kids.

Researchers looked at 19 trials of fish oil supplements during pregnancy, involving about 15,000 people. They found fish oil supplements associated with a 31 percent lower risk of egg allergies in kids, or an absolute reduction of 31 cases out of every 1,000 children.

These fish oil supplements contained omega-3 fatty acids, and women took them throughout the second half of pregnancy and the first three to four months of breastfeeding. Omega-3 fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties and may be transferred from mothers to babies in breast milk.

One limitation of the current study is that the small trials in the analysis varied in duration, how they assessed mothers’ diets and supplement use, and how they determined whether children developed allergies or eczema, the authors note in PLoS Medicine, online February 28.

Even so, the results add to evidence that dietary exposures may influence the development of allergic and autoimmune diseases, said Dr. Ola Didrik Saugstad, a pediatrics researcher at the University of Oslo in Norway who wasn’t involved in the study.

Breastfeeding duration also plays a role, however, Saugstad said by email.

“There are many factors which may interplay with diet such as breastfeeding and whether it is exclusive, and how long it continues.”

Reducing the risk of eczema, food allergies and wheezing or asthma is one of the many reasons doctors advise women to exclusively breastfeed babies for at least four to six months, Saugstad added.

While some women may want to consider taking fish oil or probiotics to lower the risk of allergies and eczema in their children, studies to date don’t offer a clear picture of the ideal formulation and dose of these supplements for use during pregnancy, said Maria Jenmalm, an allergy researcher at Linkoping University in Sweden who wasn’t involved in the study. Jenmalm has received payments for lectures and consulting from BioGaia AB and Nutricia/Danone.

“I believe further research is required to be able to translate these findings into practice guidelines,” Jenmalm said by email.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2oI9qm7

PLoS Med 2018.

The Ketogenic diet for weightloss and Type 2 Diabetes

January 16, 2018

Interest in the Ketogenic Diet grows for weightloss and Type 2 Diabetes

Jennifer Abassi

JAMA. 2018;319(3):215-217. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.20639

This summer, 25 overweight and obese adults participating in a tightly controlled feeding study will take up full-time residence for 3 months at a wooded lakefront center in Ashland, Massachusetts. However, before checking in at Framingham State University’s Warren Conference Center and Inn, they will have to lose 15% of their body weight on a calorie-restricted diet with home-delivered meals.

Those who pass this hurdle will be invited to the inn, where they’ll be randomly assigned to 1 of 3 equal-calorie diets: a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet that’s either high or low in added sugar or a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet that causes the body to switch from burning carbohydrates to burning fat.

The group will be the first of 5 that will participate in the trial over 3 years. Changes in body fat mass and energy expenditure will be assessed to determine if any of the diets have a unique effect on metabolism, while controlling calorie intake, in people who have already lost weight.

“It’s hard to lose weight, but it’s much harder to maintain that weight loss because of well-described physiological adaptations,” said coprincipal investigator David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, a professor of pediatrics and nutrition at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. After most diet-induced weight loss, “hunger goes up and metabolic rate goes down, and tendency to restore fat increases.”

But there are hints that the ketogenic diet may be different. A meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials suggested that people on ketogenic diets tend to lose more weight and keep more of it off than people on low-fat diets. People placed on these diets often report decreased hunger, according to Amy Miskimon Goss, PhD, RD, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Nutrition Obesity Research Center. The appetite-suppressing powers of the diet aren’t fully understood but could have to do with the satiating properties of fat and protein, changes in appetite-regulating hormones on a low-carb diet, a direct hunger-reducing role of ketone bodies—the body’s main fuel source on the diet—or other factors.

Additionally, the ketogenic diet may not affect metabolism the same way other diets do. In a previous study, Ludwig found that metabolism slowed by more than 400 kcal/d on a low-fat diet while there was no significant decline in metabolic rate on a very low-carb diet.

“The quality of calories consumed may affect the number of calories burned,” he said. “If this apparent metabolic benefit persists, it could play an important role in improving the success of long-term weight-loss maintenance.”

Weight Loss on a High-Fat Diet

Despite decades of dietary guidelines promoting low-fat eating, around 40% of US adults and 19% of US children are now obese. What’s worse, more than half of today’s children are expected to be obese by age 35 years, according to recent modeling at Harvard.

With the runaway train of obesity and the growing recognition of the role of sugar and other high glycemic index carbohydrates in metabolic syndrome, some researchers and clinicians are shifting their attention to a very low-carb ketogenic approach like the one Ludwig and his collaborators at Framingham State University, UAB, and Indiana University are testing.

Carbohydrates comprise around 55% of the typical American diet, ranging from 200 to 350 g/d depending on a person’s overall caloric intake. Clinical ketogenic diets restrict daily carbs to somewhere between 20 g and 50 g, primarily from nonstarchy vegetables.

Deprived of dietary sugars and starches on the very low-carb diet, the body reduces insulin secretion and switches to primarily burning fat within a week. In this metabolic state—called nutritional ketosis—the liver converts fatty acids into compounds called ketone bodies that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and provide fuel to the brain, as well as the body’s other tissues.

Previous low-carb diets, like the original Atkins diet, emphasized protein and limited fat. But amino acids in protein can be converted to glucose, kicking the body out of ketosis. Therefore, a well-formulated ketogenic diet limits protein to adequate amounts to maintain lean body mass but doesn’t restrict fat or overall calories.

Despite being allowed to eat fat to satiety, people on a ketogenic diet often experience rapid weight loss—up to 10 pounds in 2 weeks, noted Goss, who researches the diet and uses it to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes at UAB. The diet has a diuretic effect, and some of those initial pounds are water weight. But as insulin levels decline and the body switches to fat-burning mode, it draws on fat depots, leading to further reductions in weight, Goss said.

Meanwhile, because many people feel less hungry on a ketogenic diet, they often naturally reduce their overall caloric intake, which could aid in their weight loss, said Bruce Bistrian, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of clinical nutrition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Just how much they may lose depends on many factors, including the amount of calories they spontaneously reduce, as well as their starting total fat and lean mass, age, sex, ethnicity, and activity level, he said.

In a recent 8-week randomized trial including 34 obese men and women 60 through 75 years old, those who ate a ketogenic diet lost 9.7% of their body fat, while those on a low-fat diet lost just 2.1%. The ketogenic dieters also lost 3 times more visceral adipose tissue than the low-fat dieters, according to Goss, who presented the data at last year’s meeting of The Obesity Society.

Beyond Weight Loss

There’s also increasing interest in the ketogenic diet for diabetes management. Insulin sensitivity improves on the diet—although the mechanisms are not entirely clear—along with glycemic control.

“It seems to help people not only lose weight but reduce their requirement for [diabetes] medications, and they get improvements in their hemoglobin A1c [HbA1c], which is an end point for diabetes management,” said Steven Heymsfield, MD, a professor in the department of metabolism and body composition at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center and president-elect of The Obesity Society. “Those are all the good things that happen over the relatively short-term—6 months perhaps to a year. I think that the question is, is this a diet you can tolerate long-term?”

Stephen Phinney, MD, PhD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of California, Davis, is investigating just that. In 2015, he launched a telemedicine-based type 2 diabetes clinic called Virta Health. Virta’s physicians and dieticians coach patients on safely using a ketogenic diet to treat their condition.

The 10-week results of an ongoing 5-year Virta Health study demonstrated HbA1c-level improvements (an increase from 19.8% to 56.1% of participants with levels lower than 6.5%), diabetes medication reductions and eliminations (56.8% of participants), and body mass decreases (7.2% on average). Of the 262 patients who enrolled in the study, 238 stayed in the program for at least 10 weeks. In 6-month data, the average weight loss from baseline was 12%, with an 89% retention rate. Phinney plans to publish 1-year data soon.

Beyond helping people reduce their weight and get control of their blood glucose, ketogenic diets may also be heart-healthy, thanks to improvements in triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels, abdominal circumference, and blood pressure.

Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels increase for some on the diet. Emphasizing unsaturated rather than saturated fat could help ward off these increases, but experts disagree on the ideal fat composition of the diet. An important caveat is that there appears to be a shift from more harmful small, dense LDL particles to less-harmful large, nondense particles on the diet.

Rick Hecht, MD, is research director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he studies nonpharmacological approaches to chronic disease. He said more data are needed on long-term outcomes of the LDL level increases resulting from a ketogenic diet. But, he adds, “For people with type 2 diabetes, I think the risks of poor glycemic control from excessive carbohydrate intake far outweigh the risks of saturated fats, and most people with type 2 diabetes should focus on limiting carbohydrates—particularly simple carbohydrates—as a greater priority than saturated fat.”

A diet that lets a person eat fat to satiety—even saturated fat—without relying on calorie counting and still lose substantial weight, treat diabetes into remission, raise HDL levels, and lower triglycerides and blood pressure? It could be game changing for the field of chronic disease—if the benefits pan out in large-scale trials and can be sustained by many.

“Anecdotally, individuals have lost hundreds of pounds on the ketogenic diet and kept it off long-term by adopting the diet as a permanent diet change,” Goss said. “Our lab suspects it works particularly well in individuals with an underlying metabolic phenotype characterized by relatively high insulin secretion.”

Eric Westman, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, has been using the ketogenic diet as the first-line therapy for obesity and type 2 diabetes at the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic for a decade. Like Goss, Westman has seen many patients stick to the diet long enough to lose 100 or more pounds, which can take over a year. For him, the ketogenic diet is a food-based treatment alternative to weight-loss drugs and bariatric surgery.

He said the very low-carb diet can be a challenge, especially for patients with a strong sweet tooth. But about a third of his patients find it surprisingly easy to make the switch.

Safe, With Caveats

In addition to being the standard fare for populations at northern latitudes that historically had very few, if any, plant products for most of the year, ketogenic diets have been used without adverse effects over the past century to treat drug-resistant epilepsy in children.

“Generally speaking, it’s safe,” Heymsfield said.

The most common adverse effects of the diet, collectively referred to as the “keto flu,” include lightheadedness, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty exercising, poor sleep, and constipation, which tend to pass in a few days to a few weeks. Getting protein from whole foods rather than purified protein products helps ensure adequate intake of sodium, potassium, and magnesium on the diet, which can help counter some of these effects.

That said, for both safety and efficacy reasons, “this is not a do-it-yourself diet,” according to Bistrian. People taking insulin or oral hypoglycemic medications for diabetes can experience serious hypoglycemia on the ketogenic diet and should therefore consult with an experienced clinician to safely adjust medications when initiating it. Blood pressure medications may also need to be adjusted. Bistrian also emphasized that “continued participation with an organized program with monitoring is much more likely to lead to long-term good results.”

Hecht is also cautious about people doing the ketogenic diet on their own for weight loss, particularly if they have diabetes. In addition to the medication considerations, he said most patients need significant training to follow the diet. Additionally, although some people—especially those with insulin resistance—need to drastically cut carbs to lose weight and improve glucose levels, others can get good results from a Mediterranean diet.

“I don’t think everyone should be carbohydrate restricting to the level of a ketogenic diet just because they want to lose weight,” Hecht said. “We need to understand better the predictors of who’s going to benefit from this diet.”

The carbohydrate restrictions may not need to be life-long. Once a goal weight is reached, some people may be able to add back a limited amount of carbs, cut back a bit on fat, and still keep their weight down, Phinney and others said. The amount of daily carbs a person on a maintenance diet can eat before their weight starts to creep back up will depend on their individual carb tolerance.

People with type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, may need to stay on the diet to control their disease.

For now, Ludwig said the evidence for very low-carb-diets for weight loss and diabetes management is still preliminary, but funding for high-quality research could change that. His weight-maintenance study is funded by a $12 million philanthropic grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

“We know from epidemiology and public health that the majority of chronic disease in this country is lifestyle-related, and primarily nutrition-related,” he said. “It should be among our highest scientific priorities to invest in top-quality, long-term, rigorous nutrition research, so we can answer questions that have befuddled us for a century or more regarding low-fat versus low-carb diets.”

Why pregnant women should be taking additional high quality nutritional supplements

Do you need another reason to recommend or use a multivitamin? 

We all know that is a good idea for pregnant women to add nutritional supplementation during pregnancy and here is an article explaining one of the benefits we were not aware of:


Maternal Supplementation with Multivitamin Protective against Autism in Offspring
 

A population-based cohort study found that maternal use of multivitamin supplements in early pregnancy was associated with lower risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in offspring [1].

Previous studies suggest that ASD develops before birth. As maternal nutrition can influence the neurodevelopment of the fetus, researchers speculate that maternal nutrition may influence the risk of ASD in offspring.

An international collaboration led by the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University (Philadelphia, USA) set out to investigate the association between mothers’ use of supplementation during pregnancy and risk of ASD in their offspring who were aged 4 to 15 years.

They analyzed data from the Stockholm Youth Cohort, which included 273,107 mother-child pairs living in Stockholm County (Sweden). Mother’s use of multivitamin, iron, and folic supplementation was reported at the first antenatal visit. Diagnosis of ASD with and without intellectual disability in children was obtained from register data.

The researchers found that the prevalence of offspring ASD with intellectual disability was 0.26% and 0.48% in the maternal multivitamin use group and the non-use group, respectively. This meant that mothers who used multivitamin (with or without additional iron or folic acid, or both) was associated with an average 31% lower risk of ASD in child compared with mothers who did not use supplements. After adjusting for potential confounders and using other analytic methods, similar estimates were found.

However, the association study does not prove that multivitamin use caused lower risk of developing ASD in child. Due to limitations of the data, the study cannot answer how type, timing, and dose of supplement influences the ASD risk. Also, it remains to be determined whether there is a critical window for multivitamin use by mother and whether certain combinations of specific nutrients are responsible for the prevention of ASD.

The study results were published in the journal BMJ (October 2017).

Why is this Clinically Relevant?

• Maternal nutrition during pregnancy is essential for the wellbeing of offspring. This study indicates it is also associated with lower risk of ASD
• Clinicians may recommend multivitamin supplement for women who plan to become pregnant or are in early pregnancy
• It is important to select supplements that are manufactured according to GMP which ensures quality standard

References

[1] DeVilbiss, E.A., et al., Antenatal nutritional supplementation and autism spectrum disorders in the Stockholm youth cohort: population based cohort study. BMJ, 2017. 359: p. j4273.

Who is listening?

I have recently listened to a seminar regarding listening and I found it very educational and thought provoking and it has made me more diligent in my awareness of my own listening.

My initial response when listening is skepticism. I was surprised to realize this. Where does this come from, is this really who I am?

I invite you to explore a few of the following ideas with me. Listening and some of the distinctions of listening, like the "I can't hear this", or cynical listening, or resigned listening.
Most of us have polluted listening and we are not even aware of it. We relate to listening from our own point of view. We listen from our own assumptions....(that's just the way it is) When we are trapped in this listening, when the listening is you and you are the listening, it is almost impossible to see or hear the miraculous wisdom around us.

The listening that we are, colors our world. How we listen and who we are is indistinguishable and shapes our world and is all pervasive. When we start paying attention to who (the who your are) is listening and being aware of the listening that you already are (cynical, skeptical, resigned etc), we can get behind the thoughts and listen from our source and not our ego.

Here's an example of the listening that some of us already are...."I already know this, something is wrong here, what does this have to do with me, how can I fix this or what is my response going to be"
We listen from our cynical selves, our judgmental selves, our fixer, healer selves. The key is to get present to who and what is listening, to have a listening instead of the listening having you. Our limits to what is possible in our world comes from our listening.

I am spending this week distinguishing who (the who that I am) is listening...
Is it the cynical Heidi? Is it the judgmental Heidi? Is it the "I can fix this" or "something is wrong here" Heidi? Is it the "I already know this" Heidi or even the "when is this over", Heidi?

To delve a little deeper into why we listen the way we do, we may need to delve into who we think we are. Who we think we are comes form our past. It comes from what we know about ourselves and our world and it really isn't who we are.  Our past and who we think we are is colored by our "stories", our interpretations of what actually happened and NOT what truly happened. I say this to allow you to consider that some of the things you think you are, are illusions.

Our past experiences may have led us to believe that we don't matter, that we are not enough, that we don't deserve affection, people or things. We therefore may think we are negative, cynical, self absorbed, a perfectionist etc. Some of these qualities may describe us and we have bought into it and now wear it as a badge of identity.

Let's be clear, who you are, does not come from your past or what you think or know about life. You, at the source, are a totally different being.

To discover who that is, you must let go of all of the past and be willing to consider that it has nothing to do with who you are. Discovering who you are means being present. Being in this moment and paying attention to who is listening? Who is feeling and who is doing? Is it the past, wounded and resigned you? Interrupting the who is listening and bringing it back to the present allows for a miraculous change in your life, your world and your being.

I really hope you could follow this and if nothing else just start paying attention to your listening and try to get behind your thoughts and be present.

Listen for the miraculous....listen for the wisdom that is going to impact your life and change it in ways you could only imagine before. Or at least listen as if the words being expressed are something precious such as gold or water to the thirsty.

Internal bleeding and heart attacks caused by abuse of Ibuprofen and NSAID drugs

Many People Take Dangerously High Amounts of Ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs

(Reuters Health - February 9, 2018) - Many adults who use ibuprofen and other so-called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs take too much, increasing their risk of serious side effects like internal bleeding and heart attacks, a U.S. study suggests.

About 15% of adults taking ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) or other NSAIDs like aspirin, naproxen (Aleve), celecoxib (Celebrex), meloxicam (Mobic) and diclofenac (Voltaren) exceeded the maximum recommended daily dose for these drugs, the study found.

“NSAIDs are among the most commonly used medicines in the U.S. and worldwide,” said lead study author Dr. David Kaufman of Boston University.

“These drugs can have serious side effects, including gastrointestinal bleeding and heart attacks, and are often taken without medical oversight because many products are available over-the-counter,” Kaufman said by email. “The attitude that users can choose their own dose regardless of label directions, along with poor knowledge of dosing limits, is associated with exceeding the daily limit.”

For the study, 1,326 people who reported taking ibuprofen in the previous month completed online medication diaries every day for one week.

All of the participants took ibuprofen during the diary week, and 87% of them only used over-the-counter versions, researchers report online January 26 in Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety.

Overall, 55% of participants took ibuprofen at least three days during the week, and 16% took it every day.

In addition to ibuprofen, 37% of the participants reported taking at least one other NSAID during the week, most often aspirin or naproxen. Less than half of them recognized that all of the products they were taking were NSAIDs.

One limitation of the study is that researchers only focused on recent and current ibuprofen users, which may not reflect what doses might be typical for sporadic or new users, the authors note.

Even so, the findings highlight a potential downside of making NSAIDs widely available without a prescription, said Dr. Gunnar Gislason, director of research for the Danish Heart Foundation in Cophenhagen.

“I believe that the message sent to the consumer when these drugs are widely available in convenience stores and gas stations is that these drugs are safe and you can use them safely for pain relief - thus no need for reading the label,” Gislason, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

Even when people do read the label, they may still ignore it.

“If the recommended dosage does not give sufficient pain relief, it is easier to take more pills than seeking professional advice from a healthcare person or doctor,” Gislason added.

While doctors may prescribe NSAIDs for some muscle and joint disorders and certain other health problems, these drugs aren’t appropriate for many of the reasons that patients may buy them at the drugstore, said Dr. Liffert Vogt of the Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

“In my opinion NSAIDs should not be available as an over-the-counter drug, because of all their deleterious effects,” Vogt, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

“For occasional use, acetaminophen (again in the right dose) is a much safer option and very efficacious as a pain killer,” Vogt added. “But we know that many people use NSAIDs for indications other than pain, such as flu, allergies, fever - and there is no medical base that indicates that NSAIDs or acetaminophen are of any use under these circumstances.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2sgT6hr

Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Safety 2018.

Are all calories created equal?

This is a question that most people debate and most of the health practitioners and fitness experts will tell you that the type of calories (foods) you consume either help you lose weight, build muscle and produce better health, or not.
Food really is medicine and the wrong foods are promoters of dis-ease in the body.
The amount of calories in speciality Starbucks coffee is pretty high and a whole meal of clean protein and vegetables with probably have the same amount, if not less, calories and will definitely leave you more satiated and for a longer period of time....not to mention the fact that it is lower in sugar (causes inflammation) and higher in antioxidants and other health promoting nutrients.

Here is an interesting excerpt on calories from several studies, including the study in the Journal of American Medical Association:

Are All Calories Created Equal?

Most people who are on a quest for weight loss have all heard, “a calorie is a calorie” and that it doesn’t matter if the calorie is a carbohydrate calorie, a protein calorie, or a fat calorie. 

In fact, all calories do have the same amount of energy: one kilocalorie contains about 4184 Joules of energy, which is the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. While technically the statement about all calories being the same is true, metabolically speaking it is not. Each macronutrient we consume goes through different biochemical pathways in our bodies and utilizes energy differently.

Carbohydrates and proteins contain only 4 calories per gram while fats have 9 calories per gram. Therefore, it was thought that the only way to lose weight to was to reduce caloric intake from fat. If the “calorie is a calorie” approach were true, everyone would be very successful at achieving weight loss by following a low-fat diet.

However, recently, we have seen several studies disputing the myth of the effectiveness of eliminating all fats from the diet. One such study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association[1] found that lower carbohydrate diets resulted in greater energy expenditure than low fat diets during weight-loss maintenance. In this study, researchers enrolled 21 participants who lost weight prior to the study and separated them into three diet groups, all consuming 1600 calories per day. The diets were low-fat, low glycemic index, and very low carbohydrate. The participants followed the assigned diet for one month.

The objective of the study was to evaluate how energy expenditure differed with varied macronutrient distribution following weight loss. Those consuming a low-fat diet ate food consisting of 60% carbohydrates from whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, 20% fats, and 20% proteins. The low-glycemic index diet consisted of 40% carbohydrates from minimally processed grains, legumes, vegetables, 40% fats, and 20% protein. And the very-low carb diet consisted of 10% carbohydrates, 60% fats, and 30% protein.

The researchers found that those participants who consumed the very low-carb diet that was higher in fat expended approximately 300 calories more per day, and those who ate the low-glycemic index diet expended about 150 calories more per day compared to those following the low-fat diet.

While this study has some limitations, including the small number of participants, controlled meals, and a short-term study period, it gives us insights into how macronutrients are metabolized and utilized by the body. Evidence from this study, current research on healthy fat consumption and the new dietary guidelines indicate that in order to improve our health, we need to stop being afraid to eat fats. All calories do not have the same effect on our bodies. Consumption of healthy fats such as avocados, nuts/seeds, olive oil, and salmon should be encouraged and consuming poor quality calories from refined and processed carbohydrates such as white bread, white pasta, refined cereals, fruit juices, and desserts should be discouraged and avoided.

Reference:

[1] Ebbeling C, Swain J, et al. Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance. JAMA. 2012; 307(24):2627-2634

Nobody bites the hand that feeds them..

Lying the the tub after a long day of reports, clients, JAMA research article and social media, I realized that the whole word is ruled, knowingly or unknowingly, by this law. Nobody bites the hand that feeds them...

It is time for us all to really investigate what we read and the motivation of what we are being "fed"
Health related research articles have become so tainted by who is benefitting from the results, and do not kid yourself that it is the greater public because it is not. Big Pharma holds many doctors, politicians and industries hostage by being the hand that feeds them. When you follow the money or who is paying for the research, who is advertising etc. you will quickly see that the findings will be skewed and tainted towards the hand that feeds.

Your personal trainer will certainly promote the services,  products and supplements their gym sells as that is the hand that feeds them. Your Medical Doctor gets paid by the Insurance companies and they have a standard of care that is drugs and more drugs, that is the hand that feeds most of the medical industry. Why do most Functional Medicine practitioners charge cash....well, then they can take care of the hand that feeds them and that is you, the client. Then your best interests and your health is going to be the priority. You will also then get the best and highest quality nutritional products and supplements in accordance to that particular practitioner. We do not get incentivized or paid by the companies who's products we sell.
You are the hand that feeds us and we will certainly take care of you.

We are all however driven by this whether self employed or not. I look to social media to illustrate this. We do not honestly comment on our Facebook pages or the facebook pages of our friends and clients, because the general public is the hands that feed us and one does not wish to offend them or anyone that may be a client or future client, so we post general information or only like certain posts.
We don't really advertise our real views in every instance or we refrain from comments on any controversial social issues. Why....because we don't bite the hand that feeds us and another motivation is no one wants to look bad. We always strive to look good.

This musing is all about reminding us all to really investigate and question what we are being "fed" and what we feed others, socially and through advertising and the medical money machine, this includes the FDA. They certainly will NEVER bite the hands that feed them. BIG Pharma, Politicians and Monsanto, to name just a few.

Who feeds you and how are you being compromised to keep that hand happy????

Choices and decisions and how we confuse them

We often think that we make choices about things when in actual facts they are decisions.
Madison Taylor states that we should make choices from a place of balance and it is really just saying make a choice and not a decision. When we decide upon something, it usually comes from a place of consideration, therefore it is a decision and not a choice. We consider how we feel, or what color we like or flavor, etc.

Here is a short excerpt from Madison's article:

"Balance within and balance without go hand in hand. When you are called upon to choose between two or more options, whether they are attractive or distasteful, you should understand all you can about the choice ahead of you before moving forward. If you do not come to the decision from a place of balance, you risk making choices that are irrational and overly emotional or are wholly logical and don't take your feelings into account" .....for me, this means you are not choosing but deciding?
"In bringing your thoughts and emotions together during the decision-making process, you ensure that you are taking everything possible into account before moving forward. Nothing is left up to chance, and you have ample opportunity to determine which options are in accordance with your values. 

Though some major decisions may oblige you to act and react quickly, most will allow you an abundance of time in which to mull over your choices. If you doubt your ability to approach your options in a balanced fashion, take an extended time-out before responding to the decision. This will give you the interlude you need to make certain that your thoughts and feelings are in equilibrium. As you practice achieving balance, you will ultimately reach a state of mind in which you can easily make decisions that honor every aspect of the self."

Even in this article the line between choice and decision seems blurred to me.

A choice is when all the considerations have been examined and you chose something because you chose that something.

An example in life may be, you get fired, your choice is....I am fired and I chose that because that is what happened...Now I can decide what to do about it and even how to feel about it....decision!

Choice is choosing after all the considerations have been examined and we still make the same choice, when we embrace what happened and not try to change that. It may even appear (illusion) as if we had no choice in the matter.
Chose from a place of balance, without being swayed by considerations, emotions, prejudices etc. It is only then that you are truly choosing.