Nutrition Tips Blog

There are hundreds of different enzymes but to simplify things we are going to talk about three of them.

Amylase;

This enzyme breaks down carbohydrates (sugars and starch in fruits, vegetables, wheat, dairy etc.) and converts them to sugars or glucose.

Digestion with amylase begins in the mouth with saliva when you chew food. This is why you can hear the echo of mother in the back of your mind telling you to chew your food 27 times before swallowing. But she was right. The more you chew, the more amylase you have breaking down carbs for better absorption.

Protease;

Protease is the enzyme that breaks down protein. This is an important enzyme and works with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach to convert protein into amino acids that can then be absorbed through the intestines.

It can also breakdown certain viruses and bacteria and this is an important function because a lack of protease can reduce the ability of the immune system.

Lipase;

Lipase is the enzyme that along with bile, breaks down fat into fatty acids and glycerol. This is a very important function because when fat cannot be broken down properly you can end up with elevated cholesterol and triglycerides and have difficulty losing weight. Although it is easy to consume too much fat, the other side of the coin is that the body needs a certain amount of fats to stay healthy.

These three enzymes breakdown the majority of the foods you eat and are necessary for proper digestion. A lack of any of them can cause problems with your body.

Sometimes symptoms of associated with lack of these enzymes can be confused with something else and you end up not getting the results you wanted.

Something as simple as taking enzyme supplements can resolve issues you may have with your body. Of course you want to check with your health care provider about any enzymes supplementation.

I have always loved the taste of cinnamon, especially around the holidays! So I was pleasantly surprised to come across some research on this delicious spice from the USDA Research Center in Maryland.

When they researched how some foods affected glucose levels in the body, they quite by accident discovered that cinnamon stabilized and even lowered the glucose levels in the body. They were conducting this study with apple pie. They had expected it to spike glucose levels but were baffled when that was not the case. Turns out it was the cinnamon!

The studies they did with rats were very telling. One group were given a low sugar diet and the other a diet high in high fructose corn syrup but with cinnamon. Both groups fared the same even though the high fructose corn syrup should have spiked glucose levels up.

A study done on diabetics also turned up some interesting statistics. The group given up to 6 grams of cinnamon had a reduction in glucose levels by almost 30%! There were no significant changes in the placebo group!

Another study I found on cinnamon was that it is a great anti-microbial! In a 2003 issue of International Journal of Food Microbiology, they did an experiment with carrot broth and a few drops of cinnamon oil. After 60 days, the cinnamon showed itself to be a fantastic preservative. The regular carrot broth was breeding food borne pathogens very quickly despite refrigeration.

So eat up! Cinnamon is good for you!

I found this great blog post on Nutrition Tips for Strength Training It outlines very well how to figure out the amount of carbs, protein, fat and water you as an individual need per your body weight.  There is lots of information on the net but this specific information is worth reading.  As always, one needs to check with their health care practitioner before any new exercise program, but this article is worth asking them about!

A good working digestive system is crucial for nutrient absorption, health and wellbeing. With the obesity epidemic, higher instances of diabetes, and heart disease, indications are that we are doing something wrong, and the need to address it is absolutely necessary now!

The entire digestive process begins when we think of food or see food especially when we are a bit hungry. Without realizing it we start the salivation process to prepare for the food that is to come.

The first stage of digestion, the mouth;

The first job of the mouth is to break down the food via the teeth. The second job is to use the saliva to begin the process of a further breakdown of food. This is accomplished by an enzyme called amylase. The longer you chew the food, the longer it allows the amylase to do its job.

Digestion via the stomach;

Acid is produced in the stomach. Between the acid and enzymes food is further broken down and made ready for the small intestines. The acid in the stomach also has the job of killing off bacteria and some viruses as further protection for the body.

The small intestine;

The small intestine is where most of the nutrient absorption takes place. The pancreas helps by releasing enzymes and the gallbladder helps by releasing bile salts.

The large intestine;

The large intestine takes the remaining mass and extracts the leftover nutrients, the remaining water, and electrolytes for the body to use. Whatever is left is for elimination.

Several things can go wrong;

If you don’t have sufficient enzymes for digestion then you can have a mass of food sitting in the stomach much longer than it should. This causes bloating and an uncomfortable feeling. It can then sit and ferment in the small and large intestine. Bacteria love this situation and feeds off of it. As a by product, the bacteria give off gas and this is also very uncomfortable. Unless addressed, the colon can get layers built up of muck and lays the person open to various diseases.

At this point a person really needs to look at detoxing the colon, liver, kidneys and gallbladder. Taking medication may help somewhat but does not necessarily relieve the underlying problem.

There are several different types of detox such as Hulda Clark method to detox all of these areas.

Once detoxing has been done on these areas, prevention is a necessity, and possibly further body detoxing of various organs.

- One way you can nip it in the bud is at the beginning of digestion, (the mouth) try taking a good digestive enzyme with your meals.

- Also consider taking pro-biotics as this replaces good bacteria that may otherwise be lost from detoxing.

- Electrolytes are also a good idea to keep hydrated.

- A great way to start the day is to drink room temperature water with fresh squeezed lemon. This gives your liver a boost.

- Fruits such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries etc., are great for detoxing and cleansing the body. Not only do they taste great, but they have a lot more fiber in them than eating bran muffins.

- Cranberries have lots of anti-oxidants, plus, bacteria doesn’t like it and will not survive well in it.

- Broccoli and spinach and kale are some of the super foods with their superior vitamin and mineral content. Eat these several times a week and not only will it help flush the colon, it will also supply many nutrients the body needs.

We live in a toxic environment and probably just about everyone may need a good cleansing inside to maintain good health. (Good health on the inside will show on the outside).

In the last decade, study in earnest has been done on a compound in red wine called resveratrol. This is due in large part because North America is dealing with higher numbers of heart disease, diabetes and obesity while our eastern counter parts, particularly France and Italy, have enjoyed the benefits of high fat, high calorie diets without for the most part, the consequences that Americans face when we eat this way. Although there are many factors involved such as MSG and GMO foods, there is one other common thread between the French and Italians that most Americans do not follow. They drink wine with their meals! Even children are allowed small amounts particularly on holidays or special occasions.

Wine has been the beverage of choice for thousands of years. Even today wine is served at the communion rail!

Red wine in particular has been not only a beverage of choice but has been used for medicinal purposes dating back thousands of years. But only in the last decade have scientist pinpointed why red wine is so good for you. It is the resveratrol in the skins of the wine grape, mostly the red because it is fermented longer then white!

Of the many studies done on resveratrol, here are some of the findings:

1. Resveratrol stimulates the longevity gene. In mans early days, they went through feast and famine depending on how the hunt went. It has been demonstrated that lean people can live longer lives. Reseveratrol mimics calorie restriction so even though you may feel satisfied from eating well, your body may be fooled into thinking it has not had much in the way of food. An example of this is the French consuming high calorie, high fat foods with much less damaging effects due to their red wine consumption.

1. Resveratrol in high doses (supplements) have demonstrated that not only can it inhibit cancer cells but that it can reverse the damage of cancer cells, particularly in studies done on breast and prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer, especially with resveratrol supplements taken before, during and after radiation treatments.

1. Reseveratrol has anti-viral and anti-fungal properties. In studies done it was noted that when used topically on skin tumors, they were reduced by a whopping 98%. Although this may be new and exciting in the scientific community, Italy’s grandmas and grandpas will tell you that this is an age old remedy. For whooping cough or trench mouth, a gargle of red wine was used, and for skin infections red wine was successfully used topically to address inflammation.

1. Resveratrol also has something in common with the drug, Viagra! They both relax muscles and allow blood flow. Viagra is a drug that has successfully treated restricted blood flow but it has been designed to work only on the smaller blood vessels in the male sex organ. Resveratrol however, has the ability to open blood flow to major arteries as well as smaller blood vessels.

The scientific findings of resveratrol are extremely promising and I am sure we will be hearing more about this in the future.

MSG, otherwise known as monosodium glutamate came to us compliments of a Japanese chemist named Ikeda Kibunae in 1890. At that time, a kelp like plant was used to flavor Japanese cuisine. He was able to isolate and patent the method used to produce what we know today as MSG. Since then, literally hundreds of controlled studies have been done that show the health effects of consuming MSG.

When I discovered how pervasive MSG is in today’s supermarkets, it really explained a lot of things for me.

If you were asked, “do you eat foods that have MSG in it?” your answer, I think, would most likely be NO. But if you are eating processed foods then there is the highest probability that you are in fact consuming it. Even organic foods are not necessarily exempt.

The food industry knows full well that MSG is a flavor enhancer but it is also said to be somewhat addictive. They also know that if the letters MSG appears on a label, then there is a good chance that people won’t buy it. But unfortunately for us, they have a loophole in labeling.

You see, MSG can have as many as 45 different names. Here is a list of ingredients you will see on labels that are always MSG:

Anything that says hydrolyzed, such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein

Anything that says autolyzed such as autolyzed yeast

Glutamate

Monopotassium glutamate

Monosodium glutamate

Glutamic acid

Sodium caseinate

Calcium caseinate

Textured protein

Anything yeast

Gelatin

Here are some ingredients that often have MSG due to processing:

Bouillon, beef, chicken or pork

Carrageenan

Barley Malt

Malto Dextrin

Malt extract

Malt flavoring

Pectin

Enzymes

Natural flavorings/flavor

Seasonings

Anything soy

Vegetable gum

Whey protein/isolate/concentrate

Barley malt

Anything fermented

Ultra pasteurized

This list compliments of truthinlabeling.org.

The reason the food industry can get away without saying their product has MSG is because the FDA states that an ingredient MUST BE LISTED BY THEIR COMMON NAME! So the above list must be labeled that way! Such trickery is great business for the food industry but not necessarily good for our health. If you do not have this information then how can you as a consumer make educated decisions on how to feed your family?

Even organic foods can have MSG. You must look at labels to determine if this is a product that you want to purchase. Probably the most common one you will see is “natural flavors”, but they don’t specify what those natural flavors are.

Some people are already familiar with sensitivity to MSG but there may be others that do not recognize some of the symptoms. It can be anything from headaches, weakness, difficulty breathing, fatigue, drowsiness, nausea or intense cravings not long after eating. If you get a headache 10 to 15 minutes after eating that fast food burger, it could very well be you are reacting to MSG.

The point we are trying to make is that you should know what you are eating and the food industry has failed to fully disclose that information. They may argue that all ingredients are listed and that it is up to the consumer to know what they are. Unfortunately, that is the truth. It is up to us to decode the labeling loopholes because they are not going to tell you. Their job is to sell as much food as possible.

If you know what these ingredients are, then you can at least make an educated decision about buying any product!

Chlorinated chickens you say? Your first reaction may be of disbelief or disgust, and it should be! Once again the food industry has hidden this from the public for more than a decade. Here is the low down.

As demand for food increases due to the vast population on this continent, the food industry looks for inexpensive ways around disinfecting food sources. In the case of chickens, its chlorine! Case in point, the large automated plant in California that treats thousands of chickens at one time in their enormous vats. There is approximately one gallon of chlorine per chicken being used to disinfect for salmonella, e-coli and other harmful bacteria.

Had I known all along that this was the case, I wouldn’t have eaten any chickens. The food industry knows that most people would react this way so it was not made public. Instead, they leave it to the FDA to let the public know if the food is in fact safe.

Excuse me, but there is an echo in here! Did you here anything about this? Not me, nor my family and friends. I only heard about it because of Obama’s visit to Berlin, where apparently the US is putting pressure on Europe to lift a long time ban on the US importing its chlorinated chickens.

So far, Europe has not buckle under the pressure and exposed their citizens to this bizarre practice as they have much stricter laws when it comes to all types of food sources.

There are other methods for disinfecting poultry such as using electrolyzed water or ozone therapy to name a few, which do an excellent job of disinfection.

One of my concerns besides consuming the harmful chemical chlorine, is that there is the potential for chickens of ill health possibly making it through the chlorine process and being sold to the public. I have in fact not purchased chickens recently from my super market because of a chemical and foul smell. I’m sure I’m not alone in this!

So where do you get un-chlorinated chickens? This is not necessarily an easy answer. You will need to do your homework and check with your local butcher or health food store, and if they don’t know then you need to insist they find out. It’s you and your family’s health that you need to look out for.

Now that you know, would you eat chlorinated chickens?

Salt is one of those things we take for granted and use daily. In an earlier article I wrote, “Sea Salt Versus Table Salt, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”, I talk discuss the difference between the two and why I recommend only using sea salt. But I continued to research the subject and was appalled to find out what is currently happening in our oceans.

Salt farmers in the past, especially the French salt farmers, hand raked the ocean water onto flats and then left it in the sunshine to dry. As the water evaporates, salt crystals with all their trace minerals intact (which regular salt manufacturers call impurities) become usable to our bodies and in fact are vital to our health. It’s not processed, heated or chemically treated the way table salt usually is. Sounds great right! But there is the problem.

Over the last hundred years man has ruthlessly and continuously polluted the oceans. One of the most frightening things I came across in my research has to do with the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. For those of you who may not know what that is, It’s a spot in the northern Pacific ocean that is devoid of wind. The winds and currents swirl around clockwise. The sailors avoid it and fisherman won’t fish there because it is nutrient deficient and there are no fish to catch! But what does go there is all the plastics and trash! Any plastic or debris that is in our rivers ends up in the ocean and into the void of the gyre. So far, the amount of plastic in the gyre is about twice the size of Texas. Plastic does not degrade the way other things do. Bacteria can’t utilize this as a food source, only the sun can break it down but that could take a hundred years. And to top it all off, the sun and the warm waters will release some of the chemicals from the plastic into the ocean which can adversely affect all marine life and humans.

This brings me back to the subject of salt. Today’s polluted oceans have caused the salt crystals to degrade somewhat. The crystal structures are broken. That means your body cannot readily utilize it. If you were to look under a microscope at today’s sea salt, you would be able to see the difference. This salt is what I call the new sea salt! This is today’s sea salt and for that reason should be to some degree processed, and it usually is.

There is however old sea salt, ancient salt that is pristine where the crystalline structure are still fully intact. This salt comes from ancient sea beds that are pure and untouched by human interference. There are a few places in the world where these ancient oceans can be mined for their superior salt. Utah is one of them, the Himalayas another good source.

These salts contain essential electrolytes like sodium, calcium, and magnesium, potassium, iodine, copper, zinc and many other trace minerals. Because the crystalline structure is intact, the human body can utilize it efficiently. This salt helps to keep your body hydrated because of its ability to electrically charge the body via the nerves, (hence the word electrolytes), in a way that the body can use the water efficiently and fully as nature intended it, unlike regular table salt that bloats and dehydrate us.

If the body is running efficiently then it can properly detox itself and you want that.

Optimal health is ultimately the responsibility we all share. We all have family and friends that count on us, so it behooves us to be informed enough to make the right choices.

Willie Jones

Folate is a water soluble B vitamin that helps metabolize protein, and is necessary for the proper production of red blood cells, and is vital for growth and development! A lack of folate can cause higher than normal homocysteines in the body which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Getting enough folate (or the synthetic version folic acid) is particularly important in growing children and women who are, or may become pregnant. Pregnant women who are consistently low in folate have a far greater chance of birth defects or premature babies.

Studies showed that a deficiency in folate was common in people that were depressed and that an increase in this vitamin helped relieve depression and anxiety. It was also noted that alcoholics and drug addicts have in common a deficiency in folate.

If you are a junk food addict that consumes very little fruit and vegetables, chances are you may be deficient. This can partly be the cause of mood swings and depression.

Foods that are high in folate are:

Lentils

Spinach

Broccoli

Peas

Romaine lettuce

Turnips

Avocados

Citrus fruits

Brown rice

Tomatoes

Fortified cereals

Whole wheat

You can also take supplements but wherever possible get it directly from organic foods.

There is plenty of info out there on diet and nutrition. We’ll try to weed through it for you, to see if we can narrow down what works best!