Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
CurlyManu
Source: http://www.truthaboutabs.com/hard-body-nutrition.html

Coconut milk is another staple in my fridge. I like to use it to mix in with smoothies, oatmeal, or yogurt for a rich, creamy taste. Not only does coconut milk add a rich, creamy taste to lots of dishes, but it's also full of healthy saturated fats. Yes, you heard me right... I said healthy saturated fats!  ...Healthy saturated fats such as medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), specifically an MCT called lauric acid, which is vitally important for your immune system.

  • Walnuts, pecans, almonds - delicious and great sources of healthy fats.  Try to get raw nuts if possible as the roasting process can oxidize some of the polyunsaturated fats in some types of nuts making those damaged fats slightly more inflammatory.  Overall, nuts are still healthy even if they are roasted, but raw nuts are optimal. 
  • Cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and yogurt (grass-fed and organic if possible) - I like to mix cottage or ricotta cheese and yogurt together with chopped nuts and berries for a great mid-morning or mid-afternoon meal.
  • Chia seeds and/or hemp seeds - I add these highly nutritious seeds to yogurt, smoothies, or salads for a great nutty taste and loads of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins and minerals. Don't use pre-ground versions of these seeds as the omega-3 polyunsaturated fats are highly unstable and prone to oxidation, creating high levels of free radicals if you use pre-ground seeds.  No grinding is necessary to properly digest these seeds. 
  • Whole eggs - one of natures richest sources of nutrients (and remember, they increase your GOOD cholesterol so stop fearing them).
  • Salsa - I try to get creative and try some of the exotic varieties of salsas.
  • Avocados - love them...plus a great source of healthy fats, fiber, and other nutrients. Try adding them to wraps, salads, or sandwiches.
  • Butter - don't believe the naysayers; butter adds great flavor to anything and CAN be part of a healthy diet... just keep the quantity small because it is calorie dense... and NEVER use margarine, unless you want to assure yourself a heart attack.  Most important -- choose organic butter only, since pesticides and other harmful chemicals accumulate in the fat of the milk which is used for butter, so choosing organic helps avoid this problem.  Also, choose grass-fed (pastured) butter if you can find it as it will contain higher levels of healthful omega-3 fats and the fat-burning conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). 
  • Nut butters - Plain old peanut butter has gotten a little old for me, so I get creative and mix together almond butter with pecan butter, or even cashew butter with macadamia butter...delicious and unbeatable nutrition!  Using a variety of nut butters gives you a broader range of vitamins and minerals and other micronutrients, and gives you variety instead of boring old peanut butter all the time.
  • Leaf lettuce and spinach along with shredded carrots - for salads with dinner.
  • Raw honey - better than processed honey... higher quantities of beneficial nutrients and enzymes. Honey has even been proven in studies to improve glucose metabolism (your efficiency in processing carbohydrates).  I use a small teaspoon every morning in my teas.  Yes, I know that even honey is pure sugar, but at least it has some nutritional benefits... and let's be real, a teaspoon of healthier raw honey is only 5 grams of carbs... certainly nothing to worry about, and a better choice than refined sugar.


  • Cans of black or kidney beans - I like to add a couple scoops to my Mexican dishes for the fiber and high nutrition content. Also, beans are surprisingly one of the best sources of youth enhancing antioxidants!  Did you know that black beans and kidney beans have more antioxidants than blueberries...it's true!
  • Dark chocolate (as dark as possible - ideally more than 70-75% cocoa content) - This is one of my treats that satisfies my sweet tooth, plus provides loads of antioxidants at the same time. It's still calorie dense, so I keep it to just 1-2 small squares after a meal... but that is enough to do the trick, so I don't feel like I need to go out and get cake and ice cream to satisfy my dessert urges.

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CurlyManu
This is a perfect example of how confused most people are about nutrition. In a world full of misinformation about nutrition, somehow most people now mistakenly think that the egg yolk is the worst part of the egg, when in fact, theYOLK IS THE HEALTHIEST PART OF THE EGG!  It's a shame at how many restaurants you can walk into these days and see that the "healthy" breakfast menu always has egg white items instead of whole eggs.  Are we really still in the "fat-phobic" 80's? 
By throwing out the yolk and only eating egg whites, you're essentially throwing out the most nutrient dense, antioxidant-rich, vitamin and mineral loaded portion of the egg. The yolks contain so many B-vitamins, trace minerals, vitamin A, folate, choline, lutein, and other powerful nutrients... it's not even worth trying to list them all.
In fact, the egg whites are almost devoid of nutrition compared to the yolks.
Even the protein in egg whites isn't as powerful without the yolks to balance out the amino acid profile and make the protein more bio-available. Not to even mention that the egg yolks from free range chickens are loaded with healthy omega-3 fatty acids.
Yolks contain more than 90% of the calcium, iron, phosphorus, zinc, thiamin, B6, folate, and B12, and panthothenic acid of the egg. In addition, the yolks contain ALL of the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K in the egg, as well as ALL of the essential fatty acids (EFAs).



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CurlyManu
Pomegranates: The New Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy?: "How do pomegranates work their magic?

An 8 ounce glass of pomegranate juice contains about 40% of the RDA of vitamin C, and also is rich in vitamins A and E and folic acid.

The pomegranate fruit contains antioxidants called phytochemicals, which protect plants from harmful elements in the environment. These same phytochemicals when ingested protect the cells in our body.  The juice has been found to contain higher levels of antioxidants than most other fruit juices, including cranberry or blueberry, and more even than red wine or green tea."

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CurlyManu
Brain discards voices to cope with cocktail party 


When the subjects successfully focused their attention, their brain activity showed that they were processing only that voice. It was “as if the other one was not even heard”, says Chang.
When listeners failed to pick a voice out of the mix, their brain activity was smudged and unfocused. When they attended to the wrong voice, the data showed a clean representation of that voice.
The finding fits with a growing body of evidence that sound is processed as soon as it enters the brain. “The early areas of the cortex don’t just represent a stimulus, but what the subject does with it,” says Andrew King, an auditory neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK.
King would like to see the experiment run in more realistic surroundings, with voices coming from different directions. “It would be interesting to do the same study by presenting two sources, one to each ear, or from different locations in space,” says King.
It would also be intriguing, he says, to see how the brains of hearing-impaired people direct their attention when handling multiple voices.

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CurlyManu


When the young of large animals start out small, they must grow through a large size range before reaching adulthood, and compete with species of many different sizes as they do so.
Codron and his colleagues developed a model that suggests that there was intense competition among small and medium-sized dinosaurs, so that it was difficult for medium-sized adults to make a living, and adults had to keep growing until they reached very large sizes to gain a competitive edge. In comparison to mammals, relatively few dinosaurs are known with adult sizes between 1 kilogram and 1,000 kilograms.
But being big also has drawbacks. When an asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago) wiped out most large-bodied animals, there were so few small dinosaur species that the group was almost obliterated, with only the birds surviving. However, the many small mammals alive at the time were well suited to a world that favoured diminutive species.
“I love the idea that egg-laying led dinosaurs to engage in such different niche occupation from mammals and that this played a part in their eventual extinction,” says John Hutchinson, an evolutionary biologist at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK. “But we are going to see a lot of debate over how accurate these models really are,” he adds.

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CurlyManu
Statins, Chronic Disease -- and the Definition of Insanity - Health Stew - Boston.com:

First, on Feb. 28, the FDA announced the development of new warning labels for cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, warning of the risk of type II diabetes and memory loss from taking the drugs. 


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CurlyManu
The Dangerous Truth Behind Microwaves | Natural Society:


Robert O. Becker, author of The Body Electric, stated the following on page 314 in his book:
It’s [Microwave sickness] first signs are low blood pressure and slow pulse. The later and most common manifestations are chronic excitation of the sympathetic nervous system [stress syndrome] and high blood pressure.
This phase also often includes headache, dizziness, eye pain, sleeplessness, irritability, anxiety, stomach pain, nervous tension, inability to concentrate, hair loss, plus an increased incidence of appendicitis, cataracts, reproductive problems, and cancer. The chronic symptoms are eventually succeeded by crisis of adrenal exhaustion and ischemic heart disease [the blockage of coronary arteries and heart attacks].

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/the-dangerous-truth-behind-microwaves/#ixzz1sDPhSwF0

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CurlyManu
What I learn watching The Biggest Loser / Peso Pesado (Portuguese version stupidly called Heavy Weight) - well not from the show itself but from the commercials - is:
(1) XLS pills to go from a size XL to a size S;
(2) Bio Active Slim Duo to lose weight while you sleep;
(3) Depuralina anti-cellulite to lose 30% fat, -4.5cm and get rid of the trash your body accumulates;
(4) Alli to help you lose 1kg for every 2kg you lose for yourself;
(5) Antistax for healthy legs, pain free and stronger blood vessels.

I wonder what the hell they do so much exercise for... In fact why do we bother dieting/exercising at all?