However, making certain dietary changes may bring a measure of relief and offer protection against this widespread health issue.

Dr. Mark Hyman is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, the Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, an eleven-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for the Institute for Functional Medicine

A few years ago he authored The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet, a book explaining that autoimmune diseases, which include celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, thyroid disease, psoriasis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, can be maddeningly hard to deal with. For me, it’s sort of a bible…

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Misbehavior leads to inflammation

Hyman notes that when your immune system misbehaves, even if the immune alteration doesn’t result in full-blown disease, it can still lead to “weird, hard-to-classify syndromes like inflammation, pain, swelling, and general misery.”

He promotes 10 tips for dealing with autoimmune issues that fit into a paleo way of living, which is of personal interest to me since I attribute the diet to helping me overcome many health issues.

He says these tips grew out of his philosophy of following functional medicine: “An approach (that) is a fundamentally different way of solving medical problems, one that allows us to decipher the origins of illness and identify the disturbances in biology that lead to symptoms.”

Lifestyle strategies to blast inflammation

The strategies Hyman advocates include to:

1. Eat real foods, not packaged, processed, nutrient-deprived products. Hyman recommends wild-caught fish, plenty of berries, leafy vegetables, nuts and sweet potatoes. He further recommends consuming herbs that fight inflammation like rosemary, ginger and turmeric. Avoid refined, processed cooking oils like soy, corn, cottonseed and safflower oil. Those oils lead to extra inflammation in the body.
2. Have your body examined, preferably by a functional medicine practitioner, for infection. Have tests for Lyme disease, viral disease, bacterial infections and yeast.
3. Be checked for food allergies. Hyman recommends having what’s called IgG food testing. Blood tests can detect your IgG antibody response to various foods.
4. Get tested for celiac disease, the autoimmune reaction to the gluten contained in wheat, barley and rye.
5. Get tested for heavy metals in your body. These metals, which include mercury, can lead to autoimmune difficulties.
6. Make sure your digestive tract is functioning properly. Hyman explains: “About 60 percent of your immune system lies right under the single-cell-layer lining of your gut. If this surface breaks down, your immune system will get activated and start reacting to foods, toxins, and bugs in your gut.” Keeping your gut healthy should include eating fermented foods rich in friendly, beneficial probiotic bacteria – items like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi and pickles. You should also eat real, whole foods and avoid processed foods. The dietary fiber in fruits and vegetables helps feed the good bacteria in your intestines.
7. Take supplements that fight inflammation. Hyman recommends vitamins C and D, fish oil and probiotics. He also says you should consider nutrients like grape seed extract, rutin (a plant pigment) and quercetin (also a plant pigment).
8. Get frequent exercise. He explains that exercise reduces inflammation. You don’t have to go to a gym or use exercise equipment to stay in shape. Just make sure you don’t sit too long every day, go for plenty of walks and just generally stay active. Gardening is good exercise, as is general yard work. Find yourself a physical activity you enjoy — whatever it is — and keep doing it day after day.
9. Keep yourself relaxed by controlling stress. Hyman says that stress plays havoc with the immune system and can lead to uncontrolled inflammation. He advocates doing yoga, deep breathing exercises, massage and/or biofeedback.
10. Get eight hours of sleep every night. Missing out on sleep distorts your metabolism, throwing off your appetite and making you more prone to binge eating. When you overeat sugary processed foods (that also often contain damaged fats) your risk of immune problems escalates.

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Big health changes

My health took a dramatic turn for the better when I went on the Paleo diet and ate foods similar to the ones Hyman recommends. The condition of my skin, which tended to frequently develop strange rashes, improved immensely. Even my tendency to suffer dramatic inflammation in reaction to insect bites calmed down significantly.

I believe the brunt of my problem was gluten intolerance. It’s important to note, that while Dr. Hyman suggests testing for celiac disease, a very serious condition, it’s widely accepted that you can have a negative reaction to gluten, even if you don’t have celiac disease. The Paleo diet is essentially a gluten-free diet, eschewing grains.

Eating the Paleo diet or, perhaps, the Pegan diet, which combines principles of the paleo and vegan diets, and following recommendations like Hyman’s 10 anti-inflammation tips can be very helpful for keeping your immune system on track. And that’s vital for staying healthy: A poorly functioning immune system not only makes you more vulnerable to infection, the system itself can become a problem when it begins to grow too prone to inflammation.

The post 10 best ways to blast inflammation from your body appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And I was taking exactly zero medication.

I periodically measure my blood pressure at home. She’s right. It’s vanished.

She didn’t know why, but I did. I had given up grains. And a few years later, I began following a paleo diet devoid of grains.

No wheat. No barley. No rye. No corn. No oats. No quinoa. A tiny bit of rice occasionally… particularly black rice since it’s a gluten-free gain and is reported to fight cancer.

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More dangerous than sugar

Sugar has a terrible reputation. It contributes to obesity, diabetes, coronary disease, and more. Still, I’m pretty sure there’s no food group more dangerous than grains. They endanger your waistline while threatening your heart and pancreas more than almost any other item you can eat.

Think about this: I didn’t give up grains and go on the paleo diet for my heart health. I did it to improve my memory and deal with digestive issues. But it resulted in heart benefits I didn’t expect.

As I was losing weight, enjoying clearer skin, experiencing less arthritis in my hands and losing about 20 pounds over the course of two years, my high blood pressure went away.

Blood pressure just wouldn’t go down

I’m sure the weight loss helped my blood pressure. But years ago, when I was at about the same weight I am at now, my blood pressure had remained stubbornly elevated.

I now blame my long-standing blood pressure problem on grains. I don’t know how else to explain why it is now gone.

About 20 years ago, when I was in my 30s, I was an addicted runner. I ran about 50 miles a week. I took part in marathons, triathlons and other road races. My weight seemed to be about as low as it could get and still be at a healthy level. (I weigh about 3 pounds less now.)

But my blood pressure was stuck at hypertension — no matter how much I exercised or tried to eat what I considered a healthy diet.

My doctor’s non-explanation explanation for my hypertension was that it was due to genetics. In his view, there was nothing that could be done for it except to take medication, which I did: ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, beta blockers.

The anti-grain movement

I’m not alone in my desertion of grains. An aversion to grains has gained traction among various experts and proponents of the paleo diet.

According to Mark Sisson, who writes the blog marksdailyapple.com, “Apart from maintaining social conventions in certain situations and obtaining cheap sugar calories, there is absolutely no reason to eat grains.”

As David Perlmutter, M.D., notes: “It may seem draconian,” he says, “but the best recommendation I can make is to completely avoid grains.”

Perlmutter, whose book Grain Brain warns about the negative effects grains produce on your memory and learning abilities, says: “Most grain foods, whether we’re talking about quinoa, amaranth, the very popular grains of the day, the reality is they still are associated with a carbohydrate surge. They have a fairly high glycemic index, meaning that after 90 to 120 minutes, your blood sugar is going to go up, and that is detrimental to the brain.”

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Your belly or your life

Cardiologist William Davis, author of the New York Times best-selling Wheat Belly Books, has focused most of his anti-grain writings on pointing out the problems with wheat in our diets.

He has observed that, “Over 80% of the people I meet today are pre-diabetic or diabetic. In an effort to reduce blood sugar, I asked patients to remove all wheat products from their diet based on the simple fact that, with few exceptions, foods made of wheat flour raise blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods.”

He also points out that whole grains cause just as many health problems as refined grains: “Yes… even whole grains (increase your blood sugar). More than table sugar, more than a Snickers bar. Organic, multigrain, sprouted–it makes no difference.”

There are a lot of reasons to give up grains. For me, the drop in my blood pressure offers constant reassurance that after a lifetime of searching for the right diet, I’m finally on the right track.

The post I gave up ONE food and my high BP vanished appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It was one of the best decisions I’d ever made. And for quite a long time, I credited my rejuvenated health to that one thing.

But in the years since I changed my eating habits, research has shown me that it was only the beginning of a cascade of improvements that were about to occur in my body… metabolic changes that were likely just as effective for not only helping my blood pressure, but for resolving a health problem I didn’t even know I had.

See, when I went paleo (the right way, and I’ll explain what I mean shortly ), my diet also became much more alkaline. Here’s why that may have ultimately been what truly turned my health around…

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Ripe for acidosis

My colleague Dr. Mark Wiley explains it simply, “Acidosis is when your body’s internal environment — meaning all its blood, cells, tissues and organs — is in an acidic state. Healthy humans are alkaline humans. An alkaline state is the opposite of an acidic state.”

One of the most common misconceptions you’ll hear about alkalinity is that your body can maintain its own perfect pH balance. That may have been true once, but there are many reasons it doesn’t hold weight today.

Let me explain why, using research from The Journal of Environmental Public Health titled, The Alkaline Diet: Is There Evidence An Alkaline pH Diet Benefits Health, a review of decades of published medical literature on the subject.

According to the study author Gerry K. Schwalfenberg, when it comes to the pH and net acid load in the human diet, there’s been a considerable change in the food the hunter-gather civilization ate more than 10,000 years ago and what we generally eat today.

He explained that starting with the agricultural revolution and, more recently, with industrialization, our modern diet has seen a decrease in potassium compared to sodium and an increase in chloride compared to bicarbonate.

You don’t have to have a medical degree to know that potassium is an extremely important nutrient. It’s a nutrient deficiency that can lead to bone hard arteries.

But not only are we getting less potassium from food — the ratio has actually reversed! The ratio of potassium to sodium was previously 10 to 1, but in the modern diet, the ratio is 1 to 3! Americans are eating a diet high in sodium, chloride, saturated fats and simple sugars and low in fiber, potassium, magnesium and quite a few other important nutrients.

According to the research referenced, this “results in a diet that may induce metabolic acidosis [too much acid in the body] which is mismatched to the genetically determined nutritional requirements.”

As well, our bodies do not have the bicarbonate levels they need and once had. That matters because bicarbonate is key to regulating your body’s pH. This information makes it clear that we can no longer leave pH balance up to chance and expect to be healthy.

Aligning your diet for alkalinity

It’s not a reach to assume that most Americans are walking around in a state of metabolic acidosis… or are close to it. No wonder heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and many other chronic metabolic diseases are rampant.

Perhaps a change in diet is in order?

That’s where I started. All those years ago when I switched to a paleo diet, that “entire food group” I ditched was grains… and they just happen to carry a relatively high acid load.

When my health improved, particularly my blood pressure, I gave all the glory to releasing myself from the painful grasp of gluten intolerance. Little did I know then that it was my first step in balancing my body’s pH levels.

You may know meat carries a high acid load, but you may not know that following the paleo diet correctly means not overindulging in meats. That’s why my diet consists of meat only twice a week at most and plenty of fruits and vegetables, which carry a negative acid load. In other words, fruits and vegetables, especially greens, are alkalizing.

But there’s one caveat… buy organic as often as you can. Pesticide residue is acid forming. It can make buying produce a little more expensive, but you just might have fewer reasons to pay to see the doctor.

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Can you expect miracles?

I won’t make a promise that broad, but I will tell you what the study review found to be credible improvements based on eating an alkaline diet:

1. Increased fruits and vegetables in an alkaline diet would improve the potassium/sodium ratio and may benefit bone health, reduce muscle wasting, as well as mitigate other chronic diseases such as hypertension and strokes.
2. The resultant increase in growth hormone with an alkaline diet may improve many outcomes from cardiovascular health to memory and cognition.
3. An increase in intracellular magnesium, which is required for the function of many enzyme systems, is another added benefit of the alkaline diet. Available magnesium, which is required to activate vitamin D, would result in numerous added benefits in the vitamin D apocrine/exocrine systems.
4. Alkalinity may result in added benefit for some chemotherapeutic agents that require a higher pH.

The study author added, “From the evidence outlined above, it would be prudent to consider an alkaline diet to reduce morbidity and mortality of chronic disease that are plaguing our aging population.”

Let me be the one who said I told you so… food is medicine. There’s no doubt in my mind.

The post 4 evidence-based benefits of eating alkaline foods appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

People use it to lose hundreds of pounds, reverse serious autoimmune disorders like Hashimoto’s disease and multiple sclerosis, overcome misunderstood illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic Lyme disease, improve ADHD in their children.

Basically, the paleo diet helps people reclaim their lives against all odds. And that’s not something to take lightly. I’m an example…

There are more than a few studies that show the paleo diet’s effect on health is purely positive. It helps balance blood sugar, improve insulin sensitivity, and even shed stubborn pounds.

But the results of a new study throw a scary question on the table for passionate paleo eaters…

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Does the paleo diet increase heart disease risk?

A recent study from researchers at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia found that people on the paleo diet are more likely to have a major heart disease warning sign…

High levels of trimethylamine-n-oxide (TMAO).

TMAO is a compound produced in your gut when it breaks down certain nutrients. A few recent clinical studies show that higher blood levels of TMAO increase the risk of major cardiovascular problems.

In this latest study, researchers found that people who ate a paleo diet had more TMAO in their blood than people who ate a diet that followed official Australian nutritional guidelines.

“Many paleo diet proponents claim the diet is beneficial to gut health, but this research suggests that when it comes to the production of TMAO in the gut, the Paleo diet could be having an adverse impact in terms of heart health,” said head researcher Dr. Angela Genoni.

Researchers turned up another finding that pokes a hole in the paleo diet’s health benefits. People on the paleo diet had less beneficial bacteria in their gut than people following Australia’s national nutritional guidelines too.

What causes these potential paleo problems?

Well, researchers suspect it’s giving up whole grains that caused TMAO to spike.

“We found the lack of whole grains were associated with TMAO levels, which may provide a link between the reduced risk of cardiovascular disease we see in populations with high intakes of whole grains,” said Genoni.

Should you ditch the paleo diet?

There are a few important points to mention here…

This was a small study. It only included 91 people (44 people on the paleo diet with 47 following a traditional Australian diet). And there’ve been other studies that show the paleo diet improves cardiovascular disease risk factors like HbA1c (a 3-month measurement of blood sugar levels), HDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

As well, the foods that cause your gut to produce more TMAO are foods that are not restricted to the paleo diet. Red meat, eggs, and dairy (dairy is not even allowed on the Paleo diet!) — the main culprits at boosting TMAO — are eaten a-plenty in the Standard American Diet… and much has been published about how unhealthy that is.

In fact, another study that ran in the European Heart Journal in February this year, found high intakes of red meat to increase TMAO — and that study didn’t mention any association with grains or the paleo diet at all.

Now, we all know that some people jump on the paleo bandwagon just to have an excuse to eat nothing but the meats (sorry, if I sound like an Arby’s commercial).  And that, in my opinion, is the problem — not omission of grains, but an over-inclusion of red meat.

Related: The five most common mistakes the modern paleo eater makes

As long as you’re eating a well-rounded Paleo diet, which includes fish and chicken and less red meat (as cardiologists have recommended for years), and plenty of vegetables and fruits (and there are many allowed on the Paleo diet), I don’t think this study should necessarily turn you off the paleo diet.

If a paleo diet makes you feel more fit, energetic and healthy, trust the messages your body is sending you. I’m all the better for switching (and all my numbers back that up), so I don’t intend to look back.

However, if a paleo diet is too strict for you, give yourself permission to eat whole grains and other healthy whole foods that aren’t included in the paleo diet. These days, really the biggest disservice you can do yourself is to eat processed and over-processed foods. With real whole foods, it’s hard to go wrong.

Sources:

1. Heart disease biomarker linked to paleo diet — MedicalXpress
2. Long-term Paleolithic diet is associated with lower resistant starch intake, different gut microbiota composition and increased serum TMAO concentrations — European Journal of Nutrition
3. 5 Studies on The Paleo Diet– Does it Actually Work? — Healthline
4. New Study Says Paleo Diet Could Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease — CookingLight
5. Implication of Trimethylamine N-Oxide (TMAO) in Disease: Potential Biomarker or New Therapeutic Target — Nutrients
6. TMAO and Heart Disease: The New Red Meat Risk? — JAMA
7. The Gut, the Heart, and TMAO — Cleveland HeartLab

The post The major heart disease warning this diet sends your gut appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But even though there are plenty of people who would rather sit on their insurance company’s customer service hold line for eternity than give up their cauliflower rice and egg-filled avocados, there’s still skepticism about whether the caveman lifestyle really works.

You’ve probably heard some of the arguments against it…

“Cavemen only lived to 30, why would you want to eat like them?”

Or…

“Paleo food is high in cholesterol. You’ll clog your arteries!”

Then again, lots of people who follow a paleo-inspired lifestyle say they’ve never felt better… like Easy Health Options’ own Margaret Cantwell who tackled brain fog, arthritis, and high blood pressure by going paleo or Dr. Terry Wahls who reversed her secondary progressive MS by following a paleo-inspired diet.

But anecdotal reports aren’t enough for the paleo haters. Only scientific data will do… and lots of it.

It’s just too bad there aren’t cavemen around we could study to see if modeling our lifestyle after them really makes sense… and if we’re doing it right.

Unfortunately, the last caveman died about 40,000 years ago. But Duke University researchers think they found an acceptable stand-in — the Hadza people of Tanzania.

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Modern-day “cavemen” show the caveman diet isn’t set in stone

The Hadza people of Tanzania have a lifestyle that’s very similar to how ancient people probably lived.

They’re hunter-gatherers who walk four to seven miles per day. They hunt wild game, harvest honey, dig up tubers, pick berries and collect water and firewood — a life that’s as close to a paleolithic man as you can get.

And they experience a lot of benefits as a result…

• Obesity is practically nonexistent (even as they get older, the Hadza’s waistlines stay slim).
• Heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure are foreign concepts to them.
• And most live into their 60s, 70s or 80s without the help of prescription medications or emergency care.

So, paleo dieters are probably on the right track. But there are few facts about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that get mixed up in the modern-day interpretation…

Modern-day paleo eaters cut out grains and eat very little carbs. But that’s not necessarily how hunter-gathers do it… at least not the Hadza people.

Herman Pontzer, Duke University associate professor of evolutionary anthropology, says hunter-gatherer diets aren’t as meat-heavy and low-carb as paleo peeps believe.

“Contrary to the Paleo diet evangelists, hunter-gatherers eat a lot of starchy, sugary, carbohydrate-rich foods: tubers, honey, and even grains,” said Pontzer.

In a recent scientific review, Pontzer studied over 250 hunter-gatherer populations, and their diets varied quite a bit by region and season. But despite varied diets, all these hunter-gatherers had one thing in common — excellent metabolic health.

So, if you follow the paleo diet, it will have health benefits. But if the paleo diet’s not for you, don’t fret. There’s not ONE diet that everyone needs to eat to stay healthy. Humans can stay healthy through a variety of diets, Pontzer says.

Why exercise won’t help you lose weight

Besides revealing that the paleo diet might not be as strict as many make it out to be, Pontzer uncovered another compelling takeaway from his time studying the Hadza…

He learned that even though the Hadza exercised more in one day than most Americans do in a week, they didn’t burn more calories. How is that possible?

Pontzer says it’s because the human body adapts to your physical activity level. Your body doesn’t want to burn too many calories. That would threaten your survival. So, it spends fewer calories on other physiological processes. It learns to economize, just like you learn to clip coupons when cash is tight. It’s a matter of survival.

That’s bad news if you’re trying to lose weight by exercising, though. In fact, trying to lose weight through exercise alone may be impossible. In the words of Pontzer:

“You’re never going to run off your Krispy Kremes.”

Applying caveman principles to modern-day living

So, what’s the lesson here?

Well, that the paleo diet does have solid health benefits. Those benefits, however, may come from eating whole foods more than following a strict protein-to-carb ratio or the exclusion of all grains.

So, follow your heart… and stomach when it comes to what you eat. Go Paleo… or choose another whole food diet that works for you. Most importantly, find a diet that makes you feel good and that you can maintain for the long haul.

Another key takeaway?

If you really want to lose weight, focus on your diet, not your exercise routine. Keep exercising, of course, but for different reasons, like better brain health, a happy mood, a lower cancer risk, a healthy heart, sturdy bones and strong muscles.

Sources:

1. Living like a caveman won’t make you thin — but it might make you healthy — MedicalXpress
2. Hunter‐gatherers as models in public health — Obesity Reviews
3. Why did the Neanderthals die out? — The Guardian

The post 2 surprising health tips modern-day ‘cavemen’ can teach us appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It increases your risk for heart problems, intensifies joint pain and sets you up for diabetes.

But, there’s one organ most people forget about that’s especially vulnerable to a heavy load…

Your liver.

In fact, obesity is a major factor for a condition known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or NAFLD.

That’s when more than five percent of your liver’s total weight is made up of fatty tissue. This excess fat leads to scarring (or cirrhosis of your liver) and can significantly increase your risk of both liver cancer and liver failure.

And, if that weren’t bad enough, having NAFLD also makes it more likely that you’ll develop type 2 diabetes. In fact an estimated 70 percent of people with type 2 diabetes also have a fatty liver.

So, there’s no doubt that losing weight is imperative to avoid NAFLD and the bad stuff that comes with it. But you don’t have to starve…

A new study reported in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism has found a way to combat fatty liver disease using only protein.

Here’s what they discovered…

More protein following weight loss nixes NAFLD

Previous studies have found that short-term protein supplementation helps to reduce the fat content in the liver, but there have been few studies on the long-term effects of protein on NAFLD.

Until now…

Researchers conducted a two-year study to determine the long-term impact of dietary protein on a fatty liver after weight loss as part of the PREVIEW study — which aims to identify the most efficient lifestyle pattern for the prevention of type 2 diabetes in people who are pre-diabetic and overweight or obese.

They took 25 volunteers — 15 of whom had been previously diagnosed with NAFLD — and put them on a low-calorie diet for eight weeks to lose up to 8 percent of their body weight.

After the weight loss, the volunteers were told to maintain their weight for two years and to follow either a moderate or high-protein diet averaging from 0.8 to 1 grams of protein per 2.2 pounds of body weight.

For example, a person who weighed 180 pounds and was in the moderate protein group would consume approximately 65 grams of protein while the same person would take in almost 82 grams of protein if they were part of the high protein pack.

And, the results were impressive…

After two years maintaining their weight loss, the increase in dietary protein in both groups was associated with reduced liver fat content in the volunteers.

Even better, more than half of the participants who were previously diagnosed with NAFLD no longer had a fatty liver.

“These findings stress the clinical implications and potential benefits of increased protein intake after weight loss for people with NAFLD at risk to develop diabetes,” the researchers wrote.

Beat fatty liver with weight loss and protein

This means that the two most important steps to overcoming fatty liver and preventing the blood sugar problems it leads to are to lose weight and up your protein intake. A paleo-styled diet may be something to consider… more protein, less sugar and carbs.

Additionally, it’s important to support the health of your liver. Certain supplements have been studied over the years for their liver benefits:

• N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC)
• Milk Thistle
• Turmeric
• Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA)

Sources:

1. More protein after weight loss may reduce fatty liver disease — American Physiological Society
2. Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease — American Liver Foundation

The post More protein could be the answer to defeating fatty liver disease appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you’re not careful, for example, a vegetarian or vegan diet can cause nutrient deficiencies that contribute to depression…

Gluten-free diets can cause you to consume high levels of arsenic…

And problems can arise for people on the paleo diet too.

Research shows that, despite its many benefits, the paleo diet can contribute to a mineral deficiency that can mess with your thyroid, cause weight gain and lead to depression.

But if you’re a paleo enthusiast, don’t worry. There’s a simple way to avoid this paleo pitfall, and stay on the path to better health…

Paleo eaters get less iodine

Researchers from five Swedish universities found that older women who follow the paleo diet may be missing out on an important mineral… iodine.

The study included 70 older women who were overweight or obese. Half of the women followed a paleo diet, where they got 30 percent of their calories from protein, 40 percent from fats and 30 percent from carbohydrates. The other half followed a Nordic diet, where they got 15 percent of their calories from protein, 25 to 30 percent from fats and 55 to 60 percent from carbohydrates.

When the study started, women in both groups had similar iodine levels. But after six months of following different diets, women in the Nordic diet group had stable iodine levels, while women in the Paleo diet group saw their iodine levels dip.

As you may know, your iodine levels play a huge role in your thyroid health. If you’re not getting enough iodine, your thyroid hormone levels could take a dive too, leading to hypothyroidism, depression and weight gain.

Now, researchers said that the iodine levels of paleo dieters in this study hadn’t gotten low enough to impact their thyroid… yet. But they believe that could eventually happen to paleo dieters who don’t go out of their way to get enough iodine.

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The path to a pitfall-free paleo diet

If you’re a fan of the paleo diet, don’t worry. There are simple ways to stick to your diet and still get all the iodine your thyroid needs. But first, you have to understand why paleo eaters have trouble getting enough iodine to begin with…

Paleo eaters are more prone to iodine deficiency because they stop eating iodized table salt and start eating something more natural and healthy: sea salt. Sea salt is much better for you in a lot of ways. It has more minerals and fewer additives. But unfortunately, it contains little iodine. Paleo eaters also cut out two of the biggest dietary sources of iodine: dairy and grains.

So how do you solve your iodine dilemma without abandoning your paleo diet?

Well, some paleo eaters will include grass-fed dairy in their diet on occasion. If you’re open to that, it may be a good way to keep iodine levels up. You can also include more seafood and seaweed in your diet since both of those contain iodine. Other paleo-friendly foods that contain iodine include eggs, cranberries and bananas (although bananas don’t contain that much).

You’re supposed to get about 150 mcg of iodine per day, which you can easily achieve by eating seaweed, seafood and eggs daily. You could also turn to a kelp supplement to get your daily dose of iodine — whatever you need to do to keep your iodine levels optimum and your thyroid healthy.

The post How to avoid this Paleo pitfall appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

You’re not thinking about how those foods influence the lining of your intestines.

Nope. Once it’s gobbled down, it’s gone from sight. And as the saying goes — out of sight, out of mind!

But just because your daily indulgences are out of your mind, doesn’t mean they aren’t having a big impact on your health…

How does your food make you feel?

After you eat do get an immediate reaction from your body? Or do you generally just feel “off your game?” Or worse, have you been hit recently with an illness you doctor can’t quite put his finger on?

Because what you can’t see is that the lining of your intestines may be leaking food particles back into your bloodstream.

That’s right. The tight junctions that hold the cells together along the intestinal wall can become loose and allow food particles to pass the barrier.

When these particles, such as bacteria, gluten, food additives and even bits of undigested food pass through your intestinal barrier, your body sees them as foreign invaders and starts an immune cascade to fight them off.

And when this happens, your health suffers…

You’ve heard us talk again and again about the inflammation abomination at the center of most disease. And the truth is, your leaky gut could be one of the greatest contributors to the increased inflammation in your body — and the cause of all your health woes.

Leaky gut making you sick?

How can you know if you’re suffering the effects of a leaky gut?

You might have frequent headaches and make frequent trips to the restroom — or not. You might feel gassy. Or maybe it affects you a little more subtly…

Gaining weight? Yep, if you’re packing on the pounds or can’t lose them, it’s probably your leaky gut.

Then there are the signs you can’t always see, like your fatty liver or insulin resistance — until it turns to full-fledged type 2 diabetes. The list of health conditions goes on…

The point is, instead of waiting for external signs, and instead of popping pills to mask the symptoms — take care of your gut.

An easy way to do that is to just remember the 5 foods to stay away from — and 5 foods to eat more of…

The 5 sinister foods to avoid are:

1. Sugar – all forms of sugar are enemy #1. Sugar, and other simple carbohydrates, feed yeast organisms that can overgrow in your gut, disrupt digestion and damage your intestinal walls, making them more permeable.
2. Refined and processed grains –A group of proteins known as amylase-trypsin inhibitors (ATIs) may be just as bad as the infamous gluten when it comes to triggering inflammation, digestive problems and chronic health conditions. You’ll find ATIs and gluten in wheat products, white flour, white bread, pastries, cakes, and so forth.
3. Cheap cooking oils and unhealthy fats – safflower, soy, corn, cottonseed, peanut, rice bran, vegetable oil, canola oil, and all types of margarine — to put it plainly, omega-6 fatty acids cause inflammation.
4. Trans fats – fried foods, fast foods, commercially baked goods, and items prepared with partially hydrogenated oil, margarine and vegetable oil.
5. Artificial sweeteners, food additives, preservatives – aspartame (aka Equal and Nutrasweet), saccharin (aka Sweet N Low), and acesulfame K (aka Sweet One), MSG (monosodium glutamate), hydrolyzed vegetable protein, food coloring, glutamate, parabens, yeast, plus the long list of preservatives — these are not substances that promote health.

When you look at the list above, you see the makings of a sad Western-style diet. And that’s the big issue. The fake processed diet most of us eat in modern times is literally killing us.

Instead, a good place to start to fix leaky gut is eat a paleo diet. Because the paleo diet eliminates all the nasty, harmful foods and zones right in on eating fresh whole food sources, it has the potential to create the perfect digestive environment.

But whatever particular diet you choose to follow, for optimal gut health you should include the five soothing foods that can help repair leaky gut:

1. Bone broth – broth contains amino acids and collagen that help heal the damaged lining of your gut. Check out Kelley Martin’s bone broth recipe.
2. Green leafy veggies – these top nutritional powerhouses provide potent amounts of nutrients, enzymes, and compounds to decrease inflammation and promote faster healing.
3. Fermented foods – sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, miso, and apple cider vinegar are powerful prebiotic foods that encourage beneficial bacteria in the gut, along with encouraging short chain fatty acid production in the large intestine.
4. Sprouted seeds – are full of life force and ample amounts of fiber that help promote beneficial gut bacteria.
5. Omega 3 fatty acids – omega-3 fats help calm inflammation and rebuild healthy cell walls. Omega-3 sources include chia, flaxseed, salmon, sardines, walnuts, and tuna.

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The post How leaky gut makes you sick and how to stop it appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Lately all the posts are so politically heavy that, if you want to keep your blood pressure from soaring, it’s best to avoid it!

But sometimes I hop on to see what friends are up to, and when I do I get caught up in those silly quizzes. You may know what I’m talking about… the ones that claim to determine your personality based on which pattern or color you like best… and perhaps the very popular, “What’s your true age” quiz.

That last one really gets me. Of course, it’s just a game. Otherwise, I’d be quite upset to know it found me to be 10 years older than I actually am!

But I know better… that’s because as part of my paleo diet I’ve given up the one food that’s been shown over and over again to make you old.

The wrong food makes you old

Refined carbohydrates are found everywhere in the standard American diet.  The usual suspects include white bread and rice, pasta, breakfast cereals and sugars that are almost inescapable in today’s processed foods.

A carb-heavy diet has serious health consequences. Not only do these foods make you fat and insulin resistant over time, setting you up for diabetes and a plethora of chronic disease that comes with that one diagnosis, but they cause you to age faster in myriad ways.

Foods with a high glycemic index lead to the formation of advanced glycation end (AGEs) products in your body, and AGEs do some pretty nasty things…

Inside the brains of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, it’s been shown that AGEs localize with certain cells, further driving the progression of plaque formation and cognitive decline. Overall, these AGEs promote cellular dysfunction through multiple mechanisms.

Now, the brain is an energy-hungry organ and it runs pretty well on glucose, which is what most carbohydrates end up as once you consume them.

But since many people consume way too much carbohydrate in their diet, the body has an oversupply of glucose, which means very high blood sugar levels. This drives the formation of AGEs, which accumulate in different regions of the brain — the regions that influence learning and memory.

Lowering carbs and increasing the intake of healthy fats leads to the conversion of fat already in your body into ketones, molecules that can be used by cells throughout the body, especially the brain, as an alternative ‘fuel’ source to glucose.

The brain, however, isn’t the only victim of advanced aging due to AGE formation…

Advanced aging, inside and out

AGEs have help from inflammatory messenger cells called cytokines.

Processed sugars trigger the release of cytokines that break down collagen and elastin, and result in sagging skin and wrinkles. In addition to damaging collagen, a high-sugar diet also affects what type of collagen you have — another factor in how resistant skin is to wrinkling.

But just like fats can help your brain, it’s also helpful at taking years off your face.

What happens on your face however is just scratching the surface of AGE damage…

AGEs are also implicated in most age-related diseases, and if I had to guess, inflammation is a huge part of the reason why.

Cancer seems to be the most prominent. Cancer incidences increase exponentially with advancing age with 60 percent of new diagnoses and 70 percent of cancer deaths occurring in people aged 65 and older. In fact, the incidence of cancer in those over 65 is 10 times greater than in those younger than 65.

Over and over again studies show that sugar metabolites — foods, like carbohydrates that metabolize to sugars — cause protein damage, abnormal cell signaling (like increased inflammation), increased stress responses and DNA damage.

So when anyone asks why in the world I’d give up grains and most sugar by switching to the paleo diet, I think I have a pretty good argument… I don’t want to age any faster than I have to, and I definitely don’t want to be old and diseased.

But it’s important not to make the mistake than many new paleo-dieters make… and that’s eating an abundance of meat and fewer fruits and vegetables. The cardinal rule is “well-rounded.” Fruits and vegetables are vital for valuable nutrients, especially the one’s containing indoles that counter the effects of aging. Avoid processed meats like the plague or you can undo all the benefits of a paleo diet.

If you think you might want to follow my “anti-aging” diet of preference, read here about some important elements of the paleo diet.

The post What’s making you “old?” appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And this is big. Big enough it should have made the nightly news on every major channel and some major headlines too.

But not in the U.S., though… where mainstream medicine would prefer you keep paying their doctors to perpetuate the biggest (and most lucrative) medical myth modern “healthcare” and Big Pharma have ever conspired regarding your heart health…

I’m a hound, though, when it comes to natural health, and I found this lifesaving news tucked away on a British news site…

Weird thing is… no one needs to hear how a group of 16,000 people have managed to keep their hearts clear of coronary artery calcium (CAC) — through age 75 — more than Americans.

Because in America, where heart disease is a prolific as biased news reporting, by the time we reach the ripe age of 75, more than 80 percent of us will have plenty of CAC — the tell-tale sign of clogged blood vessels that lead straight to a heart attack.

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Meet the people with the world’s healthiest hearts

It turns out that researchers have been spending a lot of time with the Tsimane people (pronounced “chee-may-nay”) — a 16,000-member strong community of hunter-gatherers living a life in the Amazon rain forest similar to the way all of our ancestors lived thousands of years ago.

And after years of research, scientists say, without a doubt, the Tsimane have been found to have the healthiest hearts in the world. Not only that, but their hearts are so healthy, it’s hard to even draw a close comparison to another group of people.

Now, first off, there are a few things that stand out about the Tsimane that probably have a lot to do with their exceptional heart health…

They are very active. While most of us struggle to reach 10,000 steps on our Fitbits, Tsimane men average 17,000 steps a day — and women, 16,000.

But, and this is very odd at first glance…

According to Dr. Gavin Sandercock of the University of Essex, who is involved in the research, the Tsimane get 72 percent of their energy from carbohydrates.

Surprised? You’re not alone… so was Dr. Sandercock, “The fact that they have the best indicators of cardiovascular health ever reported is the exact opposite to many recent suggestions that carbohydrates are unhealthy.”

Americans get 52 percent of our energy, or calories, from carbohydrates and as a nation we are living a metabolic syndrome nightmare — that includes diabetes, hypertension and obesity — we’ve been told, as a result.

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So what gives?

Remember last week when I wrote about what happens when you give up gluten, sugar and diary and explained that even though our ancestors ate most of the same foods many of us still eat today, the modern versions bear no resemblance to the ancient foods?

I used wheat as an example, explaining that everything is different about modern wheat — from the way we grow it (drenched in pesticides) to the way we process it by milling out portions of the wheat kernel that hold the nutrients… to the way we eat it — with additives galore, including sugar (a proven cancer generator).

In other words, what might have been healthy then is definitely not now.

Well the same thing can even be said of the meat and the fish we are eating, both important staples of the Tsimane diet. And the carbs they’re eating are not the carbs you’re likely eating.

What give is this: the Tsimane are real-life, living, breathing proof that eating like your Paleolithic ancestors can promote great health — and that the paleo diet — done right, is the closest you can come to having one of the healthiest hearts in the world… without moving to the Amazon and living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

I feel so strongly about this that in the second half of this post, I’m going to break it down so you can see the subtle differences that can boost — or take — your heart health…

Eating like a true ancestor

The first thing I want to tackle is the grain issue.

The modern paleo diet excludes grains because they are anti-nutrients — the opposite of good nutrients your body needs. Anti-nutrients increase inflammation and lead to chronic fatigue and myriad random symptoms that make autoimmune diseases hard to diagnose. I think modern grains are the most dangerous food in your kitchen.

Now, the Tsimane do include some grains in their diet. They grow some rice and consume maize (corn). I can understand the need for a sure-thing to fall back on when the wild pigs, tapir and capybara, or even the freshwater fish that make up a lot of their diet, may be scarce at times.

But you can bet their rice and maize is far from what you’ll find at your grocer. Our modern corn is the poster child of “GMO” grains… ultra-processed and adulterated… milled of any nutritional value… used as a filler and feed staple… and a sweetener (high fructose corn syrup) that, according to the Childhood Obesity Research Center, the human body isn’t designed to process.

Our rice? If you can be sure it’s not plastic, be careful of the arsenic levels which seem to be on the rise — which can be especially problematic if you’re going gluten-free the wrong way. But just like wheat and corn, the processing of rice removes any trace of nutrient value.

If you have access to healthier food, why would you eat a food that offers nothing but starch and sugar? But grains are carbohydrates, so let’s talk about that…

The Tsimane carb paradox

The fact that carbs make up 72 percent of the calories in the Tsimane diet seems paradoxical to the fact that these people have the healthiest hearts in the world.

That is until you understand where the bulk of their carbs come from: fruits, vegetables and nuts.

One of the Tsimane’s favorite vegetables is manioc root, which is very similar to the sweet potato. Potatoes are off limits on the modern paleo diet because of their high starch/sugar content, but sweet potatoes are allowed.

Plantains, a fruit much like bananas, are also a regular part of the Tsimane diet and are also a fruit allowed on the modern paleo diet. Now, people who are aiming to lose weight may want to eat berries more often than bananas, but the reason it works for the Tsimane is because they are quite active.

Nuts, the tastiest paleo snack, are woefully lacking in the American diet despite their heart-healthy, cancer-fighting, nutrient-rich reputation.

So you see, if 52 percent of the carbs Americans ate came from eating more fiber-rich fruits and vegetables, I could guarantee metabolic syndrome would not be the American epidemic it is. But the disease-causing carbs Americans consume are coming from breads, pastas, ultra-processed junk food (and so-called health foods, like energy bars), fast food, quick-fix boxed meals and a diet heavy in grains.

That grain problem even extends to your meat…

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The right meat for the healthiest heart in the world

The modern paleo diet is a meat lover’s dream. But if you’re filling up on processed meats you are in for a nightmare. If you’re eating commercially-raised meat, well, you’re not going to sleep any better after this…

I’m going to skip going on about the growth hormones and antibiotics that meat is pumped full of, and go straight to what your meat is eating. And that’s grain.

If grain isn’t great for you — remember, it’s an anti-nutrient — it’s not any better for the cow or pig or chicken eating it that may end up on your table. You are what you eat, and so is your food.

The Tsimane eat meat. Looking at things side by side, just like us, the Tsimane get 14 percent of their energy from protein.

One of their favorite meats is wild pig. So why are Americans filling up on bacon and pork chops and getting heart disease while the Tsimane have the healthiest hearts in the world?

Wild pig is a much, much leaner meat. It’s a free-range animal allowed to roam and forage on grasses — not ultra-processed GMO grains — and I hear they taste better too.

But one of the most significant new benefits researchers are linking to the consumption of organic meat is a powerful boost in essential heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Meat from grass-fed animals, they’ve learned, has 50 percent higher concentrations of omega-3s than that which is produced by commercial livestock operations. And you are what your beef eats…

It also turns out that organic animal products are simultaneously lower in myristic and palmitic acid — two saturated fats linked to heart disease. This may account for the fact that the Tsimane diet overall is much lower in saturated fat.

Buying grass-fed, free-range or organic meat takes effort. There are few grocery stores where you can go and just find it pre-packaged and waiting on you.

But the Tsimane’s healthy hearts provide compelling evidence that one of the best ways to have a healthy heart into old age is by eating grass-fed or wild-caught meat and fish.

Is it all about the food?

As I pointed out earlier, the Tsimane are very active people. And being rather secluded they are less likely to take part in the bad habits that many Americans do, like smoking or drinking alcohol regularly. Those two things carry significant weight.

But the diet is the biggest part of the puzzle. As Professor Naveed Sattar, from the University of Glasgow said about this real life study, “Simply put, eating a healthy diet very low in saturated fat and full of unprocessed products, not smoking and being active life long, is associated with the lowest risk of having furring up of blood vessels.”

That means you’d need to ditch the ultra-processed foods and their disease-causing calories that make up 60 percent of what most of us eat on a regular basis — which, by the way, accounts for 90 percent of the added sugars causing blood sugar spikes that teach your body to store fat and leads to diabetes and heart disease.

The paleo diet I follow is about meat and fruits and vegetables — grass fed meats and wild-caught fish, fruits and vegetables on the low carb side — like the Tsimane — but  no grains.

Will it help you get the healthiest heart in the world? Aside from giving up your modern lifestyle to adopt a real hunter-gather way of living, I think it’s the surest route to keep your heart going strong for decades to come.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-39292389

The post How did they get the healthiest hearts in the world? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

What do these health issues have in common? A couple of things…

For starters, they disproportionately affect more women than men. Women are two to three times more likely to receive a diagnosis for MS and celiac disease, while CFS targets women as much as four times more often. Some studies believe it’s even higher.

Lupus is practically a “girls club,” with only 4 to 18 percent of diagnoses going to men. And depression and IBS lean towards women about two to one.

Secondly, most of these conditions are considered autoimmune disorders or diseases…

According to my colleague, Dr. Terry  Wahls, “Autoimmunity is an epidemic affecting more Americans than either cancer or heart disease.  Twenty-five million Americans have an autoimmune diagnosis. Another 50 million have autoantibodies, fatigue, pain and other symptoms but no clear diagnosis.  That makes 75 million people that are suffering from autoimmunity, a disease where the immune cells are busy attacking the “self” and leading to worsening fatigue, pain, brain fog and more.”

And lastly, most of these conditions can be relieved, some say even cured, by a change of diet.

The diet/disease connection

Dr. Wahls herself was a victim of MS. A self-professed vegetarian, she was diagnosed with MS in 2000. Her health deteriorated quickly and she found herself wheel chair bound. In 2002 she discovered the paleo diet, eventually creating her own protocol. Last I checked, she was riding a bicycle to work.

She credits her dramatic turn-around from a debilitating autoimmune disease — remember, MS is one — to an anti-disease diet that provided her body with the correct building blocks required for the chemistry of life: vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and essential fats. But that was just the first step…

She also removed the foods that provided “anti-nutrients.”

The opposite of nutrients that your body needs, anti-nutrients increase inflammation in the body (the root cause of disease) and lead to fatigue (chronic fatigue, often), brain fog, and myriad other random and difficult to pin down symptoms. It’s those random and varied symptoms that make autoimmune diseases extra hard to diagnose.

Three anti-nutrients Dr. Wahls recommends you should steer clear of are phytates, leptins and sugar.

Phytates will act to bind minerals making them less absorbable. This can markedly increase inflammation. Lectins similarly can make minerals less absorbable and cause inflammation as well. They “stick” to your intestines and keep nutrients out. Lentils, beans, eggplants and again, grains, contain lectins.

The foods highest in phytates are grains and legumes.

These foods are excluded from the paleo diet. This is exactly why the paleo diet is so helpful for suppressing inflammation and increasing the power of your immune system. And I believe it just may be the perfect anti-disease diet.

Carbs, grains, sugar

Our old “friend,” sugar… the third anti-nutrient. Some say it’s the root of evil. That may be stretching it but sugar definitely leads to inflammation and sickness in the body. And it most definitely has a direct effect on your immune cells.

And any time you eat grains, like wheat, your body converts it to glucose—a simple sugar.

According to the research, macrophages (immune cells) generally fall into two broad categories: The helpful ones — M2 macrophages — are like construction engineers, nibbling cellular debris, releasing factors that encourage new cell growth and stimulate blood flow, and otherwise overseeing tissue repair.

It’s the M1 macrophages, on the other hand, that are inflammatory: They attack invaders using biohazardous chemicals called free radicals. And they produce proteins that act both locally and systemically to ramp up the entire immune system to high-alert status. In doing so, they recruit other types of immune cells to participate in this unhealthy behavior.

The researchers pinned the excessive free-radical production in the mitochondria of patient-derived macrophages to excessive uptake of glucose by those cells attributable to a faulty overproduction of proteins responsible for importing glucose into cells. Namely, IL-6 — an immune-signaling protein that drives inflammation.

Macrophages take up glucose at a higher rate than other cells. That causes them to break down faster and stop working correctly. The next step is an immune system that attacks itself.

Celiac sufferers have to steer completely clear of gluten-containing grains. Grains worsen their disease symptoms and can be detrimental. Several notches on the severity level down from Celiac is gluten intolerance. Truth be told, people who suffer from both of these conditions are often, for years, misdiagnosed with IBS.

Of course every autoimmune disease or disorder is not the same, but it’s very plausible they are all affected by the dual enemies, grains and sugar, and the impact they have on the immune system.

Does all this make the paleo diet “the” anti-disease diet for women? In my book it does, and I’ll take it a step further. I think it’s the diet for anyone who wants to keep their future disease-free.

For tips on going paleo, these posts will be most helpful:

• If food is health, this is the jackpot
• 5 Common mistakes the modern paleo eater makes
• The paleo path to lose weight and live longer

Sources:

1. http://easyhealthoptions.com/sugar-sweetest-ingredient-makes-recipe-for-disaster/

2. http://easyhealthoptions.com/removing-anti-nutrients-better-immunity/

The post Why women, especially, need this anti-disease diet appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

After all, they come hand in hand with celebrations, holiday parties and family gatherings. Not to mention gifting. When friends show up to my house with a lovely gift of wine, of course I’m going to partake and show my appreciation.

But many people, especially the new folks following a paleo-styled diet, have a lot of questions this time of year about what they can or can’t have. “Can’t” is a strong word. And no matter what type of diet you may follow, exceptions should be allowed, unless doing so causes a severe or allergic reaction. Just be smart about them.

Of course alcohol should always be consumed in moderation. Safety first — for yourself and others. And if alcohol has negative impacts on you physically, don’t give in to holiday party pressure and consume more than you know is safe for you. I learned many years ago that I have two drink maximum. The effects on my stomach just are not worth that third glass. I don’t feel like I miss out on anything, and I feel so much better in the morning.

But to make it easier, especially on those who are paleo dieters like me, I decided to put together some lists for easy reference. Come to think of it though, no matter what diet you follow, these are sensible, part-time health nut tips anyone can benefit from. And I’ll start with alcohol…

What alcohol would our ancestors have consumed?

Wine is probably the closest form of alcoholic beverage that could occur naturally and likely was discovered by our ancestors when stored fruit started to ferment.

So if you want to be true to your paleo diet but include alcohol in your celebration, wine is a good choice, especially red. Also you can feel good about wine’s reported health benefits when consumed moderately, including:

• A lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
• Improved insulin sensitivity.
• Healthier gut bacteria.

The spirits you may want to avoid because of grain — and gluten — content (not OK for a paleo diet) are:

• Beer
• Bourbon
• Gin (some brands are processed with grain-based alcohol)
• Grain-based vodka
• Whiskey

If wine is not your thing, potato vodka and tequila are grain-free alternative spirits, and there are some gluten-free beers on the market.

It’s best to stay away from cocktails and mixed drinks. Most include fruit juices that are off the charts high in sugar content. Instead, mix spirits with water and fresh lime juice.

What about chocolate?

It wouldn’t be the holiday season without tons of delectable desserts, would it? And my, how chocolate abounds. I think it must be the world’s favorite sweet indulgence. I know it’s one of mine. But again, it’s one of those guilty pleasures that should be enjoyed in moderation — unless you’re eating the right chocolate…

Chances are that your non-paleo friends and relatives will be using milk chocolate in many of their dessert preparations. Full of sugar, milk solids and soy lecithin, steer clear of this very unhealthy choice if you have the willpower — and go for the dark chocolate, even if it means you always have to prepare and bring your very own dessert — like this one.

Dark chocolate, a product of the fermented and processed cocoa bean (seeds of the cacao tree), has a distinctive strong flavor and much more to offer including:

• Nutrients — dark chocolate is a good source of iron, magnesium, copper and manganese.
• Antioxidants — that repair free radical damage.
• Cocoa butter — a healthy fat.

Dark chocolate also provides heart healthy benefits you can read about here.

By preparing ahead of time, and following these tips, you’ll find that your holiday celebrations can be just as joyous and delicious as anyone’s — but all the healthier! What a wonderful gift to yourself — and a great way to ring in the New Year.

The post A sensible guide to treating yourself to holiday treats appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

I have to admit I was taken aback — by my friends ideas of what I ate. I have followed a paleo diet many years now and I don’t consider processed meats — or any processed foods — part of my paleo way of eating. The meat I eat is grass-fed, pasture-raised and comes to me in its most natural state. So I have no intentions of changing the way I eat. My health has improved far and above what it ever was before I became a paleo fan.

But it’s a common misconception that eating paleo means consuming mass quantities of meat. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I advocate a well-rounded diet that includes vegetables and fruits. Meat is part of that diet, including chicken, fish and some red meat. However, I know there are some people who went paleo as an excuse to eat meat, meat and more meat. And they’re the ones who need to change their ways — somewhat.

As far as the cancer claims, let’s look at some facts…

Past study shows lower cancer risk for paleo eaters

Consider dietary research performed at Emory University in Atlanta. In their study, the researchers decided to test the idea that the processed food most of us eat is a key reason colorectal cancer has become such a huge health problem. In the U.S., this type of cancer kills about a thousand people a week and is the second leading cause of cancer death.

In the three-year study, the researchers looked at the bowel health and diets of more than 2,300 people ages 30 to 74. The results showed that eating a paleo diet — sticking to fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, meat and fish — offered the best protection against colorectal cancer. Compared to people eating a typical western diet, the cancer risk for women eating paleo was cut by 29 percent. For men, the paleo diet reduced risk by 51 percent.

The researchers found that eating a Mediterranean diet helped too, but to a lesser extent: For women, eating a Mediterranean diet (eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and not much meat, drinking moderate amounts of wine, whole grains and dairy) dropped the colorectal cancer risk by 26 percent. For men, it shrank the risk by 42 percent.

The Emory scientists conclude: “The Western dietary pattern is associated with higher risk of colorectal neoplasms. Evolutionary discordance could explain this association.”

In other words, eating foods that are closer to the diet humans evolved to consume can help the body stay cancer-free. But the “Western dietary pattern” — a diet filled with grains and sugar that have had their beneficial nutrients removed during processing — makes the body more likely to fall victim to disease.

And most of the processed meats eaten in the Western diet fit this bill. Paleo Way expert nutritionist Nora Gedgaudas criticized the World Cancer Research Fund and said there was a “potentially huge” difference between McDonald’s hamburgers, hot dogs and nitrate-laced bacon, and grass-fed meat.

“Red meat consumption was not separated in any way from whatever else anyone was eating or doing to their health (alcohol intake, sugar consumption, grains etc. or other lifestyle factors),” she said.

She also added, and I agree, that red meat should only come from 100 percent pasture fed animals, and not from commercially processed meat.

About these “new” cancer classifications

The overview of this evidence of a link to bowel cancer comes from a 2011 analysis by researchers at the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), who combined results of several studies.

Data was grouped according to those who ate the most red meat and processed meat and those who at the least. According to Cancer Research UK, a key finding from the WCRF was that red meat and processed meat aren’t equally harmful. Processed meat was much more strongly linked to bowel cancer than red meat, and that those who ate the most processed meat had around a 17 percent higher risk of developing bowel cancer, compared to those who ate the least.

Their evidence suggests that it’s most likely the processing of the meat, or the chemicals naturally present within it, that raises the cancer risk.

But still you need to know what your RISK is if you eat processed meats like salami, bacon, sausages and hot dogs that have been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen. That seems really scary, but while other substances in this same classification include alcohol, asbestos and tobacco smoke, they do not all share the same level of hazard. As Dr. John Ioannidis, chairman of disease prevention at Stanford University, said in a New York Times interview, “The risk attributed to smoking, for example, is many orders of magnitude greater than the risk associated with eating red meat.”

Red meats, like beef, pork and lamb, were given a Group 2a classification, meaning these meats are considered a “probable” cause of cancer.

I found a great visual at Cancer Research UK that helps explain the risk levels quite well:

Now these stats are based on the number of cancers in the UK , but people are people, so I think it gives you a pretty good idea of risk. Compared to the big scary cancer risk from smoking, the risk of cancer from processed meats does not seem as scary.

So what would I tell you? Stay away from processed meat anyway (and all processed foods!), and if you eat red meat, do so in moderation, which is what we’ve been advised to do for years. Add more free-range chicken and cold water fish to your diet. There’s no strong evidence linking fresh white meats such as chicken, turkey, or fish to any types of cancer. And don’t forget the all-important fruits and vegetables which are chock-full of anti-cancer properties.

The post Dissecting the “scary” meat announcement appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Why?

She had decided to follow a paleo way of eating after learning about the success I had in turning my health around when I first converted all those years ago. So, after two weeks on the diet, and feeling a bit sluggish, she aimed her dissatisfaction at me — and I was partially to blame.

I forgot to warn her about the “low-carb flu.” Of course it’s not really a flu-like illness, and not everyone experiences it, but it can leave you feeling rather ill. Symptoms vary, but can include:

• Digestive distress
• Impaired fat burning
• Low energy
• Mood swings
• Carb and sugar cravings
• Feeling even more sluggish than before

Following a paleo diet is not meant to mirror a low-carb diet, at least not in the way the Atkins diet intentionally does. It’s just a consequence (a positive one in the long run) of eliminating grains, legumes and sugars from your diet.

But here’s the problem: When a diet is heavy on high carb food, as the Standard American Diet (SAD) is, your body gets very used to functioning on carbs for energy.

As Mark Sisson (of Mark’s Daily Apple) explains:

“If your body is used to employing easy glucose carbs and now must create glucose from fats and protein (a slightly more complex but entirely natural mode of operation), it can take some time to get up to speed. Rest assured that our bodies can and are doing the job. It simply takes time to work efficiently. The transition actually shifts metabolic related gene expression, increasing fat oxidation pathways and decreasing fat storage pathways. (That’s nothing to shake a stick at!) Within a few weeks, the body should be fairly efficient at converting protein and fat for the liver’s glycogen stores, which provide all the glucose we need for the brain, red blood cells, muscles, etc. under regular circumstances.”

Skipping the grains and other carbohydrates — especially sugar — and eating a low-carb, paleo diet is a better way to lose weight. Time after time, studies ^[1] show that compared to a low-carb diet, a reduced calorie/low-fat diet doesn’t cut it.

So if you want to reap all the benefits of the paleo diet,  what can you do to ease through “low-carb flu” and stick to you guns (because cheating at this point can actually make your symptoms worse!)?

Eat more fat

That’s hard for some people transitioning to paleo to grasp. It’s pretty hard for anyone to grasp considering the wrong-headed information we were taught about fat for so long.

But saturated fat is a great source of clean, non-toxic energy. Omitting carbs switches your body from a glucose-burning engine to a fat-burning one.

So, try this… if you’re eating too much lean meat, try eating organ meats or chicken with the skin. But grass-fed beef, bison and lamb have a better omega-6/omega-3 ration in their fat than pork or chicken. And sustainable wild Alaskan salmon fits the bill as well.

Other natural sources of saturated fat include butter, lard and tallow. Coconut oil, even just a couple of spoonfuls a day, can help you get through low-carb slump by providing much-needed fuel.

Paleo.leap.com even suggests that those struggling to get enough fat at first try heavy cream from grass-fed and pastured cows or goats.

The basic principles of the paleo diet can make just about anyone healthier. If you are new to it, I hope you can stick through to see a real difference in your health. I’ll be glad to help guide you as much as I can.

The post Watch out for this food-borne ‘flu’ appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Giving up grains can sometimes offer a solution.

For me, giving up wheat and other grains improved my health immensely while helping me lose weight. It was my first step toward adopting the paleo diet.

Giving up grains represents one of the central features of the paleo regimen. The reason: The negative consequences of grains are just too serious to ignore for anyone looking to eat healthier.

Now, if you’re like me, your immune system goes a little haywire soon after you’ve swallowed something made of wheat. And other grains can have similar effects. There’s no doubt grains are my trigger food.

Meanwhile, there’s good evidence that the grains most of us eat at every meal are making us overweight and sick.

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Problems with wheat

Consider what Dr. William Davis, an avid anti-wheat crusader, outlines as some of the health problems linked to wheat.

In discussing why people with diabetes should avoid wheat, Davis points out reasons that, in actuality, are reasons all of us should avoid these types of grains:

1. Wheat and other grains increase your blood sugar levels at a quick pace. They are classified as “high glycemic foods.” Digesting those kinds of foods causes significant blood sugar swings. Aside from wreaking havoc with your mood, those swings eventually may make you more vulnerable to diabetes.
2. It’s a mistake to think that “wholegrain” foods are healthy. They may not increase your blood sugar as much as refined grains, but they still produce undesirable effects.
3. Wheat and other grains can contain substances that increase your appetite and make you want to overeat. As Davis explains, they can convey “gliadin-derived peptides,” chemicals that affect the brain in an addictive manner. Gliadin can also make your digestive tract more permeable, allowing allergenic substances to infiltrate the body. Plus, phytates in wheat may block your absorption of important minerals like magnesium, zinc and iron.
4. Eating grains hurts the health of your mouth and teeth. Research on the introduction of grains into the human diet shows that eating grains leads to the crooked growth of teeth, gum disease, cavities and tooth loss.
5. Grains impact the makeup of the friendly bacteria that grow in your digestive tract. Researchers suspect that this change in probiotic bacteria can make you more susceptible to illness. In normal circumstances, those bacteria help your immune system protect the body against infectious diseases.

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Beyond gluten

By now, you’ve probably read about some of the problems gluten (found in wheat, barley and rye) can cause. I’ll be discussing more about gluten’s health effects in future articles.

But aside from gluten, wheat contains other individual substances that are suspected of doing serious harm to your health. In particular, a chemical called wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) is an indigestible part of wheat that can give your intestinal health a serious challenge.

According to Davis, WGA is “the complex, 4-part protein present in wheat, rye, barley, and rice… (that) penetrates intestinal barriers, causing direct intestinal toxicity and entering the bloodstream to activate antibodies, mimic insulin, and block leptin (the hormone of satiety).”

Robb Wolff, a paleo advocate, believes that WGA can keep the body from absorbing vitamin D while hindering your ability to lose weight and damaging the gut lining.

Wolff cites a study that shows: “Once the WGA enters the bloodstream, it is deposited in various cells and the blood vessel wall. WGA also causes an increase in the size of the pancreas and a decrease in the size of the thymus.”

I agree with Wolff when he advises people trying to improve their health to give up wheat for a month and see what happens. That’s how I started.

And I’ve never stopped.

The post Don’t blame your tummy — blame that food appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Unfortunately, many folks suffer from what is called “leaky gut syndrome.” That can take place when spaces between the cells of the intestinal wall become leaky, allowing foreign substances to breach the barriers meant to keep them out.

That, in turn, can lead to infections from pathogenic attack, allergic reactions to proteins that enter the blood or autoimmune problems when your immune cells attack the body instead of focusing on foreign invaders.

Wide range of problems

Research into leaky gut has uncovered a surprising collection of illnesses connected with leaky gut. For example, scientists at the California Institute Technology (Caltech) have discovered that many cases of autism are connected with a malfunctioning digestive tract.

In this lab study, the researchers found that the probiotic, beneficial bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract play a key role in preventing leaky gut and possibly easing autism problems.

“Traditional research has studied autism (ASD) as a genetic disorder and a disorder of the brain, but our work shows that gut bacteria may contribute to ASD-like symptoms in ways that were previously unappreciated,” says researcher Sarkis K. Mazmanian. “Gut physiology appears to have effects on what are currently presumed to be brain functions.”

The Caltech scientists found that, in lab animals, they could quiet many autism symptoms by improving the bacteria in the gut.

The researchers emphasize that there is still a lot of work to be done to develop effective probiotic therapies for autism. But they say that their work demonstrates one of the serious problems linked to leaky gut.

Cancer connection to leaky gut

A study at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia shows that leaky gut may be connected to cancer.

These scientists found that a hormone receptor called guanylyl cyclase C (GC-C) plays a vital role in keeping the intestinal barrier intact and that when C (GC-C) is missing from the intestines, the resultant leaky gut can lead to inflammation and cancer-causing toxins to enter the bloodstream. The result: damaged DNA and potential cancer in the lung, liver and lymph nodes.

“If the intestinal barrier breaks down, it becomes a portal for stuff in the outside world to leak into the inside world,” says researcher Scott Waldman. “When these worlds collide, it can cause many diseases, like inflammation and cancer.”

3 in 1 protection

There are three things absolutely vital to keeping your gut healthy enough to keep you disease free:

1. Organic fruits and vegetables
2. Dietary fiber
3. Probiotic supplements

That’s why a well-planned paleo diet, together with probiotic supplements, may be your best bet to keep you free of leaky gut and the problems it causes.

When you emphasize plenty of organic fruits and vegetables on a paleo diet, you provide your probiotic bacteria with the dietary fiber it needs to stay healthy. And since the paleo diet also stresses the avoidance of grains (especially no wheat), as well as the banishment of processed food, you deprive undesirable pathogens of the simple carbohydrates they depend on.

A study at the University of Illinois shows that the dietary fiber supports a favorable increase in beneficial bacteria growing in the intestines. According to these researchers, eating plenty of fibrous fruits and vegetables can help reduce your risk of diabetes, colon cancer and autoimmune problems (like rheumatoid arthritis) when you support your probiotic bacteria.

“Unfortunately, people eat only about half of the 30 to 35 grams of daily fiber that is recommended. To achieve these health benefits, consumers should read nutrition labels and choose foods that have high fiber content,” says researcher Kelly Swanson.

But if you eat the paleo diet, consuming organic meats and fish along with fruits and vegetables you cook at home, and avoid common trigger foods, you don’t have to read many food labels. Instead, you can be secure that you’re keeping your gut free from leaking.

The post 3 ways to strengthen your gut to fight disease appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Yes, I exercise daily, but I include weight-training to prevent sarcopenia, or muscle loss with age. For better blood sugar, I keep an eye on what I eat, not how much.

And since changing over from the standard American, or Western diet, I have lower blood pressure, fewer skin problems, and less frequent digestive issues. Plus think clearly, have more energy and am never moody.

But none of this is unique to me. It’s what anyone can achieve simply by eating the way our ancestors ate.

Consider a study performed at the Steno Diabetes Center in Gentofte, Denmark.

The Danish researchers investigated the effects of eating fast food from McDonald’s to see how it influenced metabolic events inside the body after a meal.

The results were unsettling.

The scientists compared the foods’ effects on genetically identical twins. In each case, one twin was overweight and the other twin was slender. But after consuming fast food, the metabolites (chemicals the body makes from food) circulating in the blood of the twins showed that both were having physiological difficulties that made them more susceptible to type 2 diabetes.

So even if you keep your weight down by restricting calories, eating processed foods and grains can cause physiological harm.

A calorie is not just a calorie

In their analyses of metabolites in the blood, the researchers found that in each pair of twins, the heavier twin had more circulating branched chain amino acids (risk factors for diabetes) in between meals. But right after eating a fast food meal, both twins had the same amount. And when the scientists analyzed the bacteria in the gut, they found evidence that the friendly bacteria living in the intestines may have been harmed by processed food.

“When someone is overweight and at risk for diabetes, the conventional wisdom is to say ‘lose weight,’” says Gerald Weissmann, M.D., the editor-in-chief of The FASEB (Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology) Journal, where the study was published. “This report, however, shows that a calorie is not just a calorie as some would contend. Exactly what we eat and drink, and not just the number of calories, may be the most important factor in our health.”

On the paleo diet, most people give up grains, soy, dairy, legumes (beans) and processed foods and limit sugar intake. Even if you don’t want to go full-fledged paleo, avoiding grains like wheat, corn, barley and rye can make a huge difference in your wellbeing.

Unfortunately, if you look at the primary foods Americans are eating, you find that the top 10 are almost all items that paleo forbids:

1. Grain-based desserts (things like cookies, cakes, and donuts).
2. Yeast breads.
3. Chicken and chicken-mixed dishes (fried chicken or wings).
4. Soft drinks, energy drinks and sports drinks.
5. Pizza.
6. Alcoholic beverages.
7. Pasta and pasta dishes.
8. Tex-Mex dishes (true Mexican dishes are mostly vegetables and meat!).
9. Beef and beef-mixed dishes.
10. Dairy desserts (ice cream, etc.).

If those foods are the major part of your diet, limiting and counting calories won’t save you. You’re missing the vital nutrients from fruits and vegetables, and eating too many foods that build blood sugar to ever avoid becoming diabetic or pre-diabetic. So even if you have a will of iron and can limit your meals to tiny amounts, you will only be benefiting your health a tiny amount if at all.

Here is what you need to know today: Most of your success will be what and how you eat, not how much.

Why? Because when you eat paleo, you are reprogramming your metabolism by affecting how your genes are expressed.

Did you know that you can reprogram your genes? They are not just immutable strands of DNA. You can decide how these genes “express” themselves through what you eat. You can turn on and turn off different risk factors, like those for diabetes, through the foods you choose, and what you choose to do.

Give your body the right signals be avoiding grains and sugars and other processed foods, and you’ll prevent any propensity toward diabetes from ever expressing itself in your body.

So stick with foods that have lots of healthy fats. They burn for longer, and burn more evenly, than carbohydrates, and don’t cause spikes in blood sugar. It will only take a couple of weeks to reprogram your body to get used to the change.

If you want to eat carbs, eat fruits and tubers. We human beings did pretty well for ourselves when that was what we ate, and before we started farming grains. We programmed our bodies for diseases like type 2 diabetes when we started basing our meals on “daily bread.”

The post Eat <em>more</em> to beat diabetes forever appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

While the article criticizes Paleo eating, the author appears not to understand the principles of Paleo diets or the research that has been done comparing how Paleo diets impact blood lipids, blood pressure, or other biologic markers that scientists and physicians associate with risk of disease. Let me review some of the challenges in doing nutrition research and what studies examining Paleo diets have shown.

Does RDA matter?

Dietitians agree that nutrient density — that is, the amount of vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant content per calorie consumed — is key to improving health outcomes. Many believe that the best way to get maximal nutrient density is to follow governmental dietary guidelines and dismiss other dietary approaches that have not been studied in large clinical trials.

Unfortunately, governmental guidelines have not been shown, through large randomized clinical trials, to be effective. These types of trials are enormously expensive. Some epidemiological studies have shown that consuming more vegetables and whole grains and less sugar and white flour, as in the Mediterranean diet, is associated with lower risk of developing heart disease, which is why so many are reluctant to remove grains from their diet.

The studies

Before we label Paleo diets as dangerous, we must look at the data. A randomized cross-over study by Jonsson showed that eating a Paleo diet conferred better control of blood sugar, lower hemoglobin A1c, better lipids, and lower blood pressure than eating the American Diabetes Association Diet. A study by Boers examined the effect of a Paleo diet on obese people with metabolic syndrome. Participants were randomly assigned to follow the governmental dietary plan or a Paleo diet for two weeks, and then had their blood biomarkers assessed. The Paleo group had larger improvements in their lipids and blood pressure than the governmental dietary group, suggesting the Paleo diet was more effective at restoring healthier blood lipids and blood pressures for those with metabolic syndrome. Another study by Jonsson showed that the Paleo diet was more satiating, or filling, per calorie than the Mediterranean diet.

The results

I have developed a structured Paleo diet that maximizes the 36 vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fats recognized in articles on the macronutrient and micronutrient requirements for the brain and noted in a study by Bowman to be associated with superior cognition and brain size in older adults. Using Paleo principles, my diet provides the nutrients science shows brain cells need and provides 2 to 5 times the nutrient content of the standard American diet.

The diet is described in detail in my book, The Wahls Protocol. Furthermore, we are conducting clinical trials to test the effect of the protocol on progressive multiple sclerosis. I use this diet to treat people with complex chronic health problems, many with a combination of neurological, psychiatric, and autoimmune problems, quite successfully.

Paleo diets have not damaged the health of the patients in our clinic or our trials. Quite the opposite. Those who have implemented the protocol have seen their pain diminish to zero, mood improve, weight melt away without hunger, and both blood sugar and blood pressure normalize. They are able to reduce and then stop medication after medication, including immune-suppressing drugs. To learn more about my work and how diet and lifestyle changes could stabilize and even regress your chronic health diseases, impacting your brain and your body, visit www.terrywahls.com.

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For instance, a common misconception about the paleo diet is that it is heavy on meat and skimps on fruits and vegetables.

Yes, many paleo proponents trumpet the benefits of eating a low-carb diet that includes plenty of protein. When you dine on paleo-friendly free range, organic poultry, wild-caught fish, pastured beef and wild game, you consume protein sources that contain more substantial amounts of omega-3 fats and fewer residues of pesticides and antibiotics.

But eating voluminous amounts of meat doesn’t mean you should skip the produce altogether.

For one thing, the beneficial bacteria in your digestive system depend on nutrients in vegetables to prosper and boost the function of your immune system. Plus, vegetative fiber can speed elimination of waste products and reduce the amount of time those waste products stay in the digestive tract and expose the lining of the digestive tract to toxins.

The benefits don’t stop there, of course. The vitamins, minerals and other natural chemicals in vegetables and fruits are crucial for the body to build stronger bones and keep all of your organs doing their jobs adequately.

As Loren Cordain, who has done pioneering work in establishing the precepts of the paleo diet writes in The Paleo Diet Revised: “Fruits and vegetables — with their antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber— are some of our most powerful allies in the war against heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis.”

Eat at the right times

Another aspect of the paleo diet that often doesn’t get enough attention is the timing of your meals and snacks. Research into the health effects of eating at certain times of day show that if you can restrict your food intake to about eight hours during daylight hours, you can make it easier to keep your weight down and improve your health.

Eating late at night, however, even if you are sticking to paleo foods, can produce unwanted effects. It can mess with your metabolism, make you more prone to diabetes and lead to problematic weight gain.

Another food timing mistake involves skipping breakfast: Research shows that breakfast omitters run a higher risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease.

Don’t be a paleo-obsessive

You also shouldn’t get caught in a stressful attempt to be too perfectly paleo. Unless you have a serious food sensitivity, autoimmune issue, allergy or other condition that necessitates a strict adherence to a stringent diet, you can occasionally allow yourself to stray from the paleo menu now and then. Especially if that helps you stick to the diet the majority of the time.

“… built into The Paleo Diet is the 85:15 rule which allows people to consume 3 open meals per week, so that they don’t have to forgo favorite foods forever,” says Cordain. “A little bit of cheating is a good thing if, in the long run, it behaviorally helps people to stick to the diet.”

Don’t overdo paleo packaged foods

One thing I’ve noticed during the past two years is that more and more food companies are trying to cash in on the rising popularity of eating gluten-free and following the paleo diet. So they have begun marketing items they claim fit these dietary restrictions.

My advice: Be skeptical if you see a package that proclaims it contains foods that are OK on the paleo diet. Yes, there are some packaged goods that are acceptable. But, in my experience, there are just as many processed goodies that claim to be made of paleo ingredients but which actually have too much sugar or other ingredients that make them of questionable quality. So read those labels!

As I’ve often said before, to experience a successful paleo diet, you’re going to have to do some cooking in the kitchen. You can’t rely on packaged foods.

Another issue with packaged foods: As you’ll probably notice when you shop, packaged paleo items will often cost you much more than conventional foods. But if you principally buy meats, fish, fruits and vegetables that you can cook at home, the paleo diet shouldn’t be that much more costly than what most people eat.

Plus, in the long run, spending a little more to cook and eat paleo may improve your health enough to save money from not visiting the doctor as often.

The post Avoid these four mistakes to stop obsessing over food appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Like me, many followers of the paleo diet have turned their health around… overcoming obesity, ditching diabetes, curing chronic fatigue syndrome, shedding serious autoimmune disorders and coming back from the depths of chronic Lyme disease.

So if food really is health, and I believe it is, I’d say we’ve hit the jackpot.

But if you’re already lean and healthy, you may be wondering if there is any reason to limit yourself to a diet that consists primarily of meat and specific vegetables? (Believe me–there are some veggies you should drop from your table ASAP!)

Well, truthfully, there hasn’t been much research on how the paleo diet affects healthy people. But one recent study shows that the paleo diet has the potential to help healthy people just as much as people who are chronically ill and overweight…

That’s because this study suggests that a paleo diet can reduce your risk of a heart attack — and healthy people have heart attacks too.

That’s right. Even if your doctor gives you a clean bill of health, you’re not out of the woods for a sudden and deadly heart attack. It can happen as a result of family history, ethnicity, stress (especially women), over-exercising or a variety of other factors. But, the fact is, it can happen.

The latest study from the University of Houston and Chatham University in Pennsylvania, however, suggests that a paleo diet can slash this risk. The small study involved only eight participants but was a good first step in understanding how the paleo diet affects healthy people.

Researchers asked these participants to switch from a traditional Western diet to a paleo diet for eight weeks. During these eight weeks, participants could eat as much food as they wanted as long as they practiced paleo eating habits.

At the end of the eight week study, researchers found that participants experienced a 35 percent increase in levels of interlukin-10 (IL-10) — a molecule released by the immune system. Low levels of this particular molecule are associated with higher levels of inflammation and increased heart attack risk. In fact, researchers believe this molecule may even fight inflammation and protect the blood vessels in your heart.

Researchers also found that study participants lost weight, even though that wasn’t a goal of the study. All in all, an eight-week paleo diet had a seemingly positive impact on participants’ already good health.

“This study’s findings add to the possibility that short-term dietary changes from a traditional Western pattern of eating to foods promoted in the Paleo diet may improve health — or, at the very least, the diet does not have negative health implications in terms of the parameters we studied,” said study author Chad Dolan, a graduate student researcher at University of Houston Laboratory of Integrative Physiology. “If our research continues to show that the Paleo diet produces detectable changes in healthy individuals, it will substantiate claims made by those supporting this diet for the past few decades and provide preliminary evidence for another therapeutic strategy for cardiovascular disease and coronary artery disease prevention.”

If all this talk about the health benefits of the paleo diet has piqued your interest, you can try it for yourself by:

• Eating a diet heavy in organic meat, poultry, fish, eggs and vegetables.
• Eating fruit, nuts and seeds in moderation.
• Avoiding sugar, grains, legumes, dairy and processed foods.
• Adapting the diet to your needs and goals. There are more and less extreme versions of the paleo diet.
• Following my posts.

Sources: “Could the Paleo Diet Benefit Heart Health?” The American Physiological Society. http://www.the-aps.org. Retrieved August 30, 2016.

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Megan Kimble, a writer who focuses on health and food in Tucson, Arizona, spent a year researching how to eat an unprocessed diet on a tight budget and has written a book about it entitled Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food. She is also the managing editor of Edible Baja Arizona, a Tucson food magazine.

Technically, Kimble didn’t eat a pure paleo diet in her year of eating unprocessed food, but in her efforts at consuming these types of items, she came pretty close.

She says her motivation to go a year without eating processed food was motivated by the thought: “Today, many of us are stuck between knowing what we should do and feeling like we don’t have enough time or money to do it. Eating unprocessed was my attempt to find another way in, unburdened by ‘should do,’ focused instead on ‘can do.’”

Eight tips for affordable, unprocessed meals

Kimble found that a basic technique for helping you eat a less processed diet – and this also generally applies to eating a paleo diet – is to figure out what new habits you need to incorporate into your daily routines to make this change easier. In this effort, you should:

1. Constantly read food labels: Don’t buy any packaged food without reading the ingredient list. And if the ingredient list includes words you don’t recognize, the food is probably unacceptable in an unprocessed or paleo diet. Other additives to avoid, says Kimble, include added gums, sugars, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup and soy lecithin. (Although I allow myself a few foods with lecithin, such as dark chocolate.)
2. Buy foods that have no additives. Aside from fruits and vegetables, these include things like honey and oats – although if you’re eating strictly paleo, grains such as oats are not allowed.
3. Buy brands of food that you know are reliably gluten-free or unprocessed. Kimble says she relies on Lara bars — bars that consist of dried fruits and nuts. I often eat the Ozuke brand of kimchi (spicy fermented vegetables) that I know helps my digestion and is paleo-friendly.
4. In your kitchen, cook up additive-free treats and desserts that can replace the processed foods that you might otherwise buy. Don’t buy yogurt with added sugar and flavorings. Instead, if you’re a yogurt eater, buy plain yogurt (or make your own) and add honey and fruit. For dessert, instead of buying cookies, you can have something like almond butter with chocolate chips added. Instead of purchasing French fries, you can cook sliced potatoes, or sweet potatoes, in the oven with coconut oil on them.
5. In the kitchen, prepare large lots of vegetables on the weekend. Then refrigerate or freeze portions and have them available to defrost for meals throughout the week.
6. Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in your neighborhood. CSA’s are organizations located around the country that can help you connect with a local farmer to buy fruits and vegetables.
7. Before you go on a trip, pack unprocessed foods to take, and research what sources of unprocessed and paleo foods are located at your destination.
8. Don’t be a fanatic about eating unprocessed foods or staying on a paleo diet 100 percent of the time. But there’s an important caveat: If you have serious food issues, like celiac disease or other sensitivities or autoimmune problems, you should stay on the diet to avoid health complications.

Automatic pilot

Kimble tells Health.com:  “… I found that once I got going and formed new habits and figured out favorite meals, (eating unprocessed) became automatic.”

Your paleo diet or unprocessed eating plan may never become exactly automatic, but it should become easier with practice. And it will indubitably lead you to improved health.

The post 8 ways to eat for health without breaking the bank appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

For example, last week I pointed out that an article reprinted on the Yahoo website gave the misguided tip that tuna should be a frequent dish in a paleo diet. But tuna, in general, is too high in mercury to be safely eaten very frequently. And there’s plenty of research to back my rebuttal.

Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of wrong-headed advice on the internet so you should always be wary of anything you read that can affect your health. I want to discuss another such article in just a minute, but before I do I want to clarify something.

You’re probably asking yourself why you should trust my advice. After all, I’m putting it out there on the web, just like the person who wrote the tuna story, and the hot weather one I’ll get to in just a minute.

Firstly, all I can say is trust your gut instinct. If you read something and it just doesn’t sound quite right, maybe it isn’t and you should research it further. A good writer will back up what he’s saying and put the research right there for you.

Secondly, whether the information you are getting is on the web or in print, you should always ask questions: What is the writer’s field of expertise? Where is the research? Is the writer writing from experience? Is he telling me to do something he’s actually done? Before I provide any diet advice, you can rest assured I’ve researched it, followed it, and experienced the effects of it.

And that’s what I’ll share. The rest is up to you. Because – thirdly — you can take all the advice I or anyone else can give, but in the end it’s your choice to do what’s best for you.

Now let’s get to this article on staying hydrated during hot weather exercise that contradicts the research I’ve read…

Choose water over salty O.J. every time — no matter what anyone says

I came across a well-known site, where a fitness expert suggested that drinking orange juice with some salt added to it would help you stay hydrated while exercising in the summer heat. But a recent study shows that when you’re out in the sun, natural chemicals in citrus fruit called furocoumarins can up your risk for melanoma, the most dangerous type of skin cancer.

And as for adding salt to drinks to help restore electrolytes — minerals your heart needs to behave properly — that’s an old myth that’s been disproven many times. Advice from the Texas Heart Institute points out that salt can make you dehydrated when you sweat on a hot afternoon. All you need to drink is plain water.

And when you work out, just use your own thirst as an indicator for how much water you require to rehydrate. Don’t overdo your water intake: Research shows that over-hydrating can cause more serious health issues than slight dehydration.

Advice you can feel good about

In the world wide web where anyone with a computer and WordPress can put all kinds of advice out there, one thing to consider is where they get their information from.

Even so-called experts need sources. Just because someone knows enough about nutrition to write about it doesn’t mean they’re familiar with all the research or have a team of researchers ready to back up what they say. That’s why once you find a health writer or writers, or a site you trust, it’s a good idea to keep them in mind to validate other information you come across.

Now that I’ve got all that off my chest, I’d like to discuss some basic paleo guidelines I would feel good about sharing with you. And one reason I do is because of the source.

If you’re looking for reliable information on eating a healthy paleo diet, “8 Tips,” based on advice from Mark Hyman, the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, is a fairly good place to start.

The tips include:

• Limit sugar. This is essential advice for anyone trying to eat a healthy diet even if you are not going to eat paleo style. The list of health concerns linked to sugar is practically endless.
• Eat mostly vegetables. Unless your meals and snacks mostly consist of vegetables, you are doing your health a disservice. Focusing on vegetables keeps your weight down, can reduce your risk for illnesses like cancer and heart disease, and improves your digestion.
• Consume good fats like coconut oil, olive oil and avocados. These fats are crucial for better health. However, to get the best omega-3 fats, fatty acids that limit inflammation, you need to consume fish and fish oil.
• Include eggs in your meals. Eggs contain a wealth of important nutrients and I eat at least one a day — though the Cleveland Center Clinic suggests eating as much as you can. Eating a variety of foods daily provides a better supply of nutrients than over-relying on one food, I believe.
• Eat beans every once in a while. Technically, beans, which are classified as legumes are excluded on the paleo diet. But eating them occasionally is OK. Before cooking them, you should soak them overnight and then cook them thoroughly for several hours.
• Avoid grains. Although some people consider gluten-free grains OK to consume (the “8 Tips” article lists a few), I have generally not had good experiences eating any grains. They can disrupt digestion and may make it harder to control your blood sugar. They may also be linked to leaky gut syndrome.
• Eat plenty of nuts and seeds. The nutrients and fiber in nuts and seeds support better heart health and bone health.

Despite the fact that many commentators on the Internet continue to derogate the paleo diet, researchers are starting to catch up with what we paleo eaters know – it improves health drastically. A recent example: A study at the University of California San Francisco that put more than two dozen people with type 2 diabetes on the paleo diet found that it improved blood sugar control and heart disease parameters very quickly.

Can the paleo diet improve your health? There’s no way to discover what this diet can do for you until you try it.

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In my article last week, I detailed how Michael Pollan, a celebrated food writer who is critical of the paleo diet, and someone with whom I usually agree, seeks the same goal, with only a slightly different approach. But for those with autoimmune disease and other chronic conditions, those slight differences spell the difference between just surviving and actually improving and restoring health. Let’s look at those differences a little more closely.

Primal, paleo and standard American diets

Pollan recommends whole foods and cooking. Excellent. But he does not advocate the elimination of grains, legumes, and dairy products — foods that are excluded when following a diet that adheres to paleo principles. Any logical person knows that just because humans didn’t do something in early history doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it now. Maybe the relatively recent addition of huge amounts of grain and dairy into the human diet are just fine for us? Let’s consider.

There has been a lot of research into the modern incarnation of a hunter-gatherer type of diet, and the conclusions of that research are generally that the diet isn’t just good in theory. For example, in one study, when healthy volunteers adopted a hunter-gatherer diet, rich in animal protein, non-starchy vegetables, and berries, there was a significant improvement in multiple biological markers of health status with subjects experiencing improvements in blood pressure, blood cholesterol values, and improved sensitivity to insulin. ^{[1] [2]}

In another randomized crossover trial, subjects were given a standard diabetic diet or a hunter-gatherer diet for three months and then switched to the other diet. Again, scientists found that the hunter-gatherer diet was associated with better blood sugar control, better blood pressure, better cholesterol values, and more weight loss than the standard diabetic diet. ^[3]

In an effort to compare the modern paleo diet with the standard American diet, Dr. Jayson and Mira Calton did a micronutrient analysis of several current diets including Diane Sanfillipo’s Practical Paleo Diet and Mark Sisson’s Primal Diet for their book, Naked Calories, Revised Edition, and discovered that those diets were much more nutrient dense than the standard American diet and were among the most nutrient dense diets that they analyzed. Great news!

However, both the paleo and primal diets were still only meeting the RDA for 15 of 27 micronutrients and would have required more than 14,000 calories to meet the all the RDAs (still far better than the standard American diet, which would have required more than 27,000 calories ^[4] to meet the RDA for all micronutrients!).

Micronutrients essential against chronic disease

These paleo-style diets are obviously far superior to the standard American diet, but without specific guidance to maximize the micronutrient content, anyone following these diets is still at risk for missing key brain and key mitochondrial vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and antioxidants. If you have chronic health issues, this is a critical factor to consider. The Wahls Diet is specifically designed to hit the RDA targets and exceed them in every category.

And what each level of the Wahls Diet plans seeks to replicate, in an attempt to avoid or repair these detrimental processes, is the original human diet. I do it in a very structured way, so you can fill your plate with foods that will ensure you get the maximum nutrition possible using agriculturally available products.

Few of us actually hunt and gather our food from the wild, nor do we have the exact knowledge our ancestors had about how to get the most nutrition from the foods growing in our locale. However, if you eat a diet heavy in leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables, and berries, as well as animal protein (without including any of those more recent troublesome dietary additions, like gluten grains or dairy products), you have the best possible chance at optimizing your health. And I speak from personal experience not only as a doctor, but as a patient.

Healing fad?

I had been dependent upon a tilt recline wheelchair for four years due to secondary progressive MS. I am a physician scientist, and based upon on my review of the latest research on the nutritional needs of the brain and traditional societies, I created a diet and lifestyle program, based on paleo principles, to try and slow my decline.

The results stunned everyone, including my physicians. One year after adjusting my diet and lifestyle, I was walking easily throughout the hospital and even able to bike 18 miles with my family. It changed how I view the world of disease and health. It changed how I practice medicine. And it changed the focus of my research, which now tests the power of a modified, specifically nutrient-dense paleo-style diet to treat multiple sclerosis and other chronic diseases. I teach the public and the medical community and have written a book, The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine, that describes in detail the diet and lifestyle changes that I used to heal myself and that I am studying in our clinical research.

Paleo may seem like a fad right now, but the reason it has become such a popular way of eating is because for many of us, grains, legumes, and dairies have a detrimental effect, and intensive nutrition based on natural plant foods, meat, and fish makes us feel better than we ever have before. Energy soars, brain fog clears, and in many cases, declines in mobility reverse. We have so much more health and vitality by excluding grain and dairy and severely restricting legumes, eating vegetables, berries, and meat instead.

It is the nutrient density combined with the elimination of detrimental foods that determines whether the diet is health promoting. The diet we use in our clinical trial, a structured paleo diet that we call the Wahls Diet, has 1.5 to 8 times the levels of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids in it as compared to the standard American diet. In the end, I believe the only real measure of the worth of a diet is nutrient density and the elimination of detrimental components. Held up to that standard, the modern version of the paleo diet is among the most health-promoting diets available to humans today.

References

[1] Frassetto LA, Schloetter M, Mietus-Synder M, Morris RC, Jr., Sebastian A. Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet. Eur J Clin Nutr 2009;63:947-955.
[2] Osterdahl M, Kocturk T, Koochek A, Wandell PE. Effects of a short-term intervention with a paleolithic diet in healthy volunteers. Eur J Clin Nutr 2008;62:682-685.
[3] Jonsson T, Granfeldt Y, Ahren B et al. Beneficial effects of a Paleolithic diet on cardiovascular risk factors in type 2 diabetes: a randomized cross-over pilot study. Cardiovasc Diabetol 2009;8:35.
[4] Calton, Mira, Calton J, Sanfilippo D. Naked Calories: Calton’s Simple 3 Step Plan to Micronutrient Sufficiency. Changing Lives Press, 2013.

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The paleo diet is very popular, I believe for many worthwhile reasons, and there is no shortage of nutritionists and health writers who put their own spin on it, posting online for the world to see — including me. But I’d advise caution when reading these articles, especially the ones that argue for the necessity and frequency of consuming certain paleo-acceptable foods.

For example, my husband brought a recent article from Men’s Fitness to my attention that he had read on Yahoo. And it offers up some ideas I can’t agree with. The piece lists nine foods that, the headline says, “You Have to Eat If You’re Going Paleo.” But I beg to differ.

High on the food chain

The worst advice on this Men’s Fitness list is the number four food: tuna, an item you can certainly consume in moderation but which shouldn’t be a “must-have” or a very frequent food on anybody’s menu.

Although tuna is a dependable source of healthy omega-3 fats, it is a large fish that is high on the ocean’s food chain. A tuna’s diet includes a large number of other fish and, as a result, it can accumulate problematic amounts of pollutants that are circulating in seawater — especially the contaminant mercury.

Mercury is bad news for your body, especially your immune system.

A study at the University of Michigan shows that being exposed to mercury in fish, even in amounts that have traditionally been considered safe, is linked to an increased risk of developing an autoimmune condition like multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, Sjögren’s syndrome, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.

These conditions arise when the immune system becomes overly inflamed and starts to attack the body’s own tissues and organs instead of fighting off pathogenic invaders.

Autoimmune diseases, which mainly strike women, currently afflict about 50 million Americans. Plus, they are among the top ten leading causes of death for women. Unfortunately, the causes of these diseases elude researchers.

“We don’t have a very good sense of why people develop autoimmune disorders,” admits researcher Emily Somers.

Increased sensitivity

Somer says: “… we believe studying environmental factors will help us understand why autoimmunity happens and how we may be able to intervene to improve health outcomes. In our study, exposure to mercury stood out as the main risk factor for autoimmunity.”

Somers’ research shows that the more mercury in seafood you devour, the more autoantibodies you have in your blood. Those autoantibodies are proteins produced by the immune system that can eventually cause the immune system to attack the body’s tissues.

Along with tuna, fish with the highest levels of mercury include tilefish, swordfish and king mackerel.

Wild caught salmon has lower mercury levels and a higher level of beneficial omega-3 fats. Smaller fish, like shrimp, sardines and anchovies are also much lower in mercury.

If you do eat tuna, it is safer to eat tuna from a can. Canned tuna has a lower level of mercury than a tuna steak. Chunk light tuna in a can contains less mercury than canned chunk white tuna.

Fish choices

Generally, my go-to fish choices are sardines, wild-caught salmon and scallops. These fish are relatively high in omega-3 fatty acids that are crucial for heart health and can help reduce inflammation in the body.

If you want to see how your favorite seafood ranks on mercury, you should consult the seafood calculator created by the Environmental Working Group.

And don’t believe every piece of advice you read, especially when someone tells you to eat a particular food regularly. Do some research and see what other paleo proponents have to say about it. Listen to your gut as well. It knows far better than anyone how food affects your body and your health.

What’s that saying, “If you see it on the internet, it must be true…” Far from it!

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I don’t think he has taken the time to understand the paleo diet, which is quite common among those who are critical of paleo eating. I would like, therefore, to take this opportunity to discuss his comments and explain why his criticisms are misplaced.

Don’t copy your ancestors—just follow their lead

First of all, he argues (as many do) that there is no single Paleolithic diet. This is true. The original hunter-gatherers ate over 200 different plants and animals over a year’s time. How many different species does the average westerner eat in a year these days? Probably less than 30.

What’s more, the foodstuffs our ancestors consumed were highly adapted to the specific regions they lived in and each local society learned over hundreds of generations which plants and animals were associated with providing vitality for or bringing sickness to the clan.

Also, studies have shown that traditional diets are radically different between societies. For example, the arctic hunter-gatherers ate a pure animal product diet 10 months out of the year. The Amazonian rain forest dwellers and the African hunter-gatherer ate more insects, amphibians, and lizards, and hundreds of different plants. The Native Americans ate a mix of fish, meat, and hundreds of different plants and animals unique to their environment.

All these diets were extremely local and seasonal, and people generally thrived on all of them. There are likely many thousands of diets created by humans that maximize their vitamin, mineral, essential fat, and antioxidant intake per calorie based on the food available. Humans are amazingly omnivorous creatures. We can thrive on a wide variety of just about anything nature provides.

However, all these diets have some commonalities, and this is the notion which the modern paleo diet works with. Traditional diets are all packed with many more vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids because they rely on natural whole foods.

The typical westernized diet is filled with processed foods, like white flour, high fructose corn syrup, and other refined sugars. It contains minimal vegetables and fruits, as well as far fewer vitamins and minerals in comparison. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]} It is not a “natural diet” because most of the foods in it have been processed and are no longer in whole-food form. Many critics of paleo-style diets miss this point.

Modern paleo diets are not meant to replicate ancient diets. They are meant to emulate ancient diets, and this is a critical difference—it is what takes the paleo diet from the realm of theory into a practice in reality. The paleo diet emulates as closely as possible in our contemporary world the foodstuffs and manner of eating practiced by our Paleolithic ancestors, and this in itself, apart from quibbling about how accurate it may or may not be, is a great improvement over what most people are doing now. Accuracy is not the point. Health is the point.

The earth has changed—but basic food sense has not

Another argument against the paleo diet is that our world has changed and no food we currently eat resembles any of the foods our Paleolithic ancestors ate. It’s true that many of the foods we eat today have been altered through intensive plant breeding into foods that are much sweeter and richer in carbohydrates than they once were (not to mention more disease-resistant, weather-resistant, herbicide-resistant, and therefore more generally suitable to the conditions necessary for industrial farming). Also, even natural, organic foods cannot escape containing some level of toxins because the world is now so polluted.

Additionally, our soil is widely depleted of the nutrients it once contained, and selective breeding and genetic modification aimed at a higher number of bushels per acre (not at improving vitamin or mineral content per bushel) have certainly resulted in plants that are less nutrient-dense than they once were. We can never go back to a planet as pure as it was in the Paleolithic era, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t eat the best foods available to us. It only means we may need to eat even more vegetables and fruits, to compensate for diminished nutrient levels (this is a crucial aspect of the Wahls diet).

Another popular criticism of the paleo diet is that eliminating grains and dairy eliminate important sources of nutrition. Pollan implies this when he says that people in some cultures have depended on bread for survival. However, not only is the bread widely available in the United States as far removed from the whole grain fermented bread our European ancestors ate as an ear of sweet corn or a stalk of wheat is from its ancient form, but it is simply untrue that grains and dairy are necessary for health.

Many cultures over many centuries have survived without (or with only minimal, nutritionally insignificant) grain and certainly without dairy products. You can easily get all the nutrients you need without eating grains, dairy, or legumes, and in addition you will be free from the toxic effects of these modern foods. A hunter-gatherer-style diet packed with natural plant foods and natural meats (grass-fed and/or game meat, wild-caught fish) contains all the nutrients you need to thrive.

Our ancestors lived longer than you think eating that way

Finally, another common criticism is that people didn’t live very long in the Paleolithic era. This is also true, but shortened lifespans of our ancient ancestors had nothing to do with their diets. In the Paleolithic era, the mean age of death was somewhere in the mid-30s, but this is because there was a 38% to 45% mortality rate for those under the age of 15. Those who survived childhood actually did quite well. Gurven and Kaplan studied this question extensively and published their findings in 2007.

The results might surprise you. Hunter-gathers historically (and now in the current hunter-gatherer societies that have not yet adopted western lifestyles) often lived past 60 years of age. ^[6] These people were and are physically and mentally fit without medication, and many thrive into their 70s and even 80s. The transition from hunter-gatherer societies was associated with loss of height, increased risk for degenerative arthritis of the spine, and tuberculosis. Fertility increased, leading to an increase in population, but it was a less healthy one. ^{[7] [8]}

Those populations who converted to western diets continued to do worse as “progress” marched on. The next major transition came with the industrial revolution in 1850 with the wide availability of sugar, white flour, and a steady decline in breast feeding. This was associated with another decline in health and an increase in chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and obesity⁹.

Now, as societies move from developing economies to developed economies, the early mortality due to infectious disease has been replaced by chronic diseases related to lifestyle, that is diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. ^[9] Sweetener consumption has risen from an average of less than 10 pounds of sugar per person per year in 1900 to over 100 pounds plus per person per year in 2000. In addition, modern populations have steadily grown in size. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2010, 69% of Americans were overweight or obese. ^[10]

Put more simply, the extension in the average age of life from the Paleolithic era to the current era has occurred because of the decrease in infectious causes of death, lower childhood mortality, and increased use of medical technology — not because we as a society are enjoying more vitality and vigor related to any sort of dietary improvement. Quite the contrary, in fact.

An epidemic of chronic diseases has plagued humans since the agricultural revolution. And many of the foods to blame spell the difference between just surviving and actually improving and restoring health.

Next week I will explain how those foods harm the body and your health, and how avoiding them has equated to a near miraculous healing for myself and others.

Reference List

[1] Adams KM, Lindell KC, Kohlmeier M, Zeisel SH. Status of nutrition education in medical schools. Am J Clin Nutr 2006;83:941S-944S.
[2] Cordain L. Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. Eaton SB, Sebastian A, Mann N, Lindeberg S, Watksins BA, O’Keefe JH et al., editors. Am J Clin Nutr 81[2], 341-345. 2-2-2005. Ref Type: Journal (Full)
[3] Cordain L, Eaton SB, Miller JB, Mann N, Hill K. The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic. Eur J Clin Nutr 2002;56 Suppl 1:S42-S52.
[4] Cordain L, Eades MR, Eades MD. Hyperinsulinemic diseases of civilization: more than just Syndrome X. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol 2003;136:95-112.
[5] Eaton SB, Konner M, Shostak M. Stone agers in the fast lane: chronic degenerative diseases in evolutionary perspective. Am J Med 1988;84:739-749.
[6] Gurven M, Kaplan H. Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review 2007;33:321-365.
[7] Mummert A, Esche E, Robinson J, Armelagos GJ. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: evidence from the bioarchaeological record. Econ Hum Biol 2011;9:284-301.
[8] Sajantila A. Major historical dietary changes are reflected in the dental microbiome of ancient skeletons. Investig Genet 2013;4:10.
[9] Egger G. Health, “illth,” and economic growth: medicine, environment, and economics at the crossroads. Am J Prev Med 2009;37:78-83.
[10] Obesity and Overweight. 5-30-2013. 1600 Clifton Rd. Atlanta, GA 30333, USA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 8-18-2013.

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By avoiding grains, the paleo eating plan saved me from gluten and other elements of cereals that might cause my body to attack itself – an autoimmune problem that causes serious aches and pains and which can lead to serious illness.

The autoimmune disease, when it is caused by gluten, is called celiac disease.

In my case, the foods that were causing many of my health problems that have cleared up since going on the paleo diet can’t always be precisely pinned down to gluten. I changed my diet so drastically, that a number of dietary elements may have contributed to my previous difficulties.

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Arthritis relief

For example, the painful arthritis I suffered in my hands has receded almost completely. Although it still lingers in one finger on my right hand, that’s a vast improvement from the hurt I was suffering in both hands and all of my fingers.

Some of the arthritic problems I endured were definitely linked to inflammation caused by gluten, even if gluten wasn’t entirely to blame.

When I gave up gluten, some of my friends ridiculed the idea that going gluten-free could clear up arthritis.

But mainstream medicine caught up to the idea that gluten can set your joints on fire.

A report by the Arthritis Foundation quotes Alessio Fasano, director of the mucosal biology research center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and an expert on the health effects of gluten: “The most accredited theory is that gut inflammation triggered by gluten causes activation of T lymphocytes (immune cells) that can eventually migrate to joints, causing local inflammation and, therefore, joint pain. This theory is in line with the fact that celiac disease is now defined as a systemic disease that can affect any organ or tissue, including joints.”

The key point recognized by Fasano and his fellow researchers is that gluten can have a body-wide effect. Once inflammation stimulated by gluten begins in the digestive tract, that immune response can migrate to each and every part of your body.

Memory fade

One of my worst problems before changing my diet was the destructive effect gluten had on my brain and memory. At the time I changed what I was eating, my memory was like a sieve. When I had conversations in the morning, I had entirely forgotten them by the afternoon. When I had appointments to see people, unless I wrote them down and constantly checked my notes, they too were forgotten.

I had trouble driving. I was becoming more and more disorganized in all areas of my life. Writing coherent sentences became an almost impossible chore.

When I gave up gluten and went paleo, the fog slowly lifted. It also made me realize that, even before my memory crisis, my brain and memory had been malfunctioning at some level for my entire life.

I’m not alone in that experience.

A study at Monash University in Clayton, Australia showed that gluten frequently fogs the brain.

In their test the Australian scientists found that in folks with celiac disease, as the gut heals, the brain heals as well. That relieves brain fog and, as the researchers say, your “cognitive performance improves,” as does your performance of everyday tasks.

Many people, like me, who do not have celiac disease, can still suffer from what is called gluten sensitivity, a condition that medical folks are still having a problem coming to grips with.

The only dependable way right now to know if you have a gluten sensitivity, but not celiac, is to go on a gluten-free diet and see how it makes you feel. It means avoiding foods made with wheat, rye and barley. It also can mean giving up oats which can produce autoimmune reactions.

When I gave up gluten, my naive thought was that I was just giving up bread for a while to see if my brain improved. Since then, going paleo has turned my world upside down as I have dealt with vast changes in my diet and outlook on how I live my life.

But you know what? I like the view.

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Sure, there are some who may use it as an excuse to over indulge in a love affair with bacon, but for the most part, a paleo dinner plate won’t look too unlike the average American’s dinner plate. The difference is subtle to the eye, but quite major in other ways…

If you’re paleo, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, let me stress one of the major differences…

If you get close enough to my chicken dinner to take a few sniffs, you’ll notice something different about the meat I eat.

To paraphrase something I read recently, you won’t notice a slight aroma of ‘kiddie pool’ coming from my chicken. Can you say the same about the chicken you’re feeding your family?

My chicken won’t smell like the pool at the ‘Y’ because I don’t buy it commercially. That’s because I have a problem with chicken that’s soaked in chlorine… and you should too.

The Europeans definitely do. In fact it may be one of the biggest hesitations European countries have to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP). The T-TIP is trade agreement the U.S. is currently in negotiations with Europe over. The idea is to open opportunity for American businesses — including farmers and ranchers — to European markets for made-in-American goods and services.

I’m not that into politics, but this hits home for me because it’s about food. Perhaps one day the history books will refer to it as the Great Chlorinated Chicken Debate (GCCD).

All joking aside, the Europeans don’t want anything to do with our food — especially our chlorinated chicken… or our hormone-treated beef… or our genetically-engineered crops… because they are concerned that it would degrade their food standards.

Can you imagine if America had food standards?

The big food manufacturers that spew out ultra-processed garbage would be out of business and the great majority of our citizens wouldn’t be suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity.

Our kidneys and livers wouldn’t need detoxing from all the additives, preservatives, fillers, pesticides, growth hormones and other chemical preparations used in food processing that may be impacting climbing autism and autoimmune disease rates — cancer even.

I don’t blame the Europeans one bit.

In American the most important consideration by the Big Food Giants is cost. To process chicken in this country — which includes a cap full of chlorine per gallon to chill chicken carcasses and help kill bugs like salmonella — the cost is about 80 cents per pound. In Europe, where a farm to table way of farming is practiced, chickens are raised cleaner and kept bug-free before slaughter, and the cost is around a dollar a pound.

So it may cost a little more to buy the chicken, beef or asparagus there, but can you imagine the money you could save on doctor visits eating cleaner food like they do?

According to a post by my friend and colleague Bob Livingston, author and researcher Hulda Regehr Clark, Ph.D., found in her studies that all cancer patients studied over a five-year period had traces of common household bleach (chlorine) in their tumors and in their drinking water. Researchers have also determined that drinking five glasses of cold chlorinated water a day increases the risk of spontaneous abortions. And chlorine is a definite causative factor in atherosclerosis. So do you really want it in your chicken too?

Then there’s the obesity epidemic. There’s no deep dark French secret as to why the French can eat fatty cheese and drink wine and stay slim. It’s a fact they they’re not eating the endocrine (hormone) disrupting chemicalized junk and disease-causing calories that you find in the standard American diet.

Europeans are not better than us. They’re not more sophisticated or any more knowledgeable about food and health than we are. That’s not the message I’m trying to convey here.

No, my message is clear: More Americans should feel strongly about the food farmed, raised and eaten in this country–for our health’s sake. You can accept a lifetime of chlorinated chicken and chronic illness or you can change what you put on your plate.

Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/30/351774240/european-activists-say-they-dont-want-any-u-s-chlorine-chicken

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Fruity goodness

If you’re looking for a fruit treat, the trio you should focus on, according to research at Harvard, consists of blueberries, apples and grapes. A study that included about 190,000 people and covered about 25 years showed that people who eat these fruits twice a week or more reduce their risk of diabetes by 23 percent compared to those who eat less or none of the fruits. The research was pretty thorough, examining consumption of grapes, raisins, peaches, plums, apricots, prunes, bananas, cantaloupe, apples, pears, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries and blueberries. They researchers also analyzed consumption of apple, orange, grapefruit and other fruit juices. In the study, people who consumed one or more servings of fruit juice each day increased their risk of type 2 diabetes by more than 20 percent. “While fruits are recommended as a measure for diabetes prevention, previous studies have found mixed results for total fruit consumption., says researcher Qi Sun. “Our findings provide novel evidence suggesting that certain fruits may be especially beneficial for lowering diabetes risk.”

Beneficial components

The two compounds found in blueberries, grapes and apples that researchers think are especially good for you are resveratrol and quercetin. Resveratrol, which has received a lot of publicity because it is also found in red wine has been shown to:

• Fight inflammation and gum disease.
• Help defend against gout.
• Lower your risk of cancer.
• Help promote healthier muscle tissue.

At the same time, concentrated forms of quercetin, in lab tests, are being being investigated as a way to increase life expectancy. Other benefits of quercetin include:

• The promotion of liver health in older women.
• Increasing the body’s defenses against skin cancer.
• Protecting retinal tissue in the eye.
• Boosting the body’s defenses against ovarian cancer.

A matter of taste

Now I know that to someone accustomed to snacking on chocolate chip cookies, cake or candy bars, the idea that blueberries, grapes and apples are sweet treats may seem unappealing. But that’s because your taste buds have become accustomed to the sugar that’s been loaded into just about every processed food sitting on a supermarket shelf. Worse, you might have become desensitized because artificial sweeteners are hundreds of times sweeter than natural sugars. To reverse this, eat these three fruits and avoid processed sugar for a while and your taste buds will return to normal. Since I’ve switched over to the paleo way of eating, I have found there’s no turning back. After you’ve feasted on paleo a while, those processed goodies that are intensely sweet just taste sickly sweet. And good health feels better than refined sugar ever tasted.

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Inside each of your cells are tiny structures called mitochondria which produce energy for the body. When they were originally discovered, back in the 1890s, they were called “bioblasts,” an apt name given that they are responsible for powering so many bodily functions.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the typical American diet that most of us eat today sabotages our mitochondria. Matter of fact, as research shows, our endless penchant for processed food disrupts how mitochondria go about their invaluable tasks.

The problem starts with refined and grain-based foods that play havoc with blood sugar. Along with making you more prone to diabetes, higher blood sugar levels depress the energy activity of mitochondria.

A study at Johns Hopkins sheds new light on why this is a big problem…

“Sugar itself isn’t toxic, so it’s been a mystery why high blood sugar can have such a profound effect on the body,” says researcher Gerald Hart, who directs the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Biological Chemistry. “The answer seems to be that high blood sugar disrupts the activity of a molecule that is involved in numerous processes within the cell.”

In lab tests, the Hopkins researchers found that an enzyme that helps move proteins around was higher in heart muscle mitochondria when diabetes caused blood sugar to be higher.

“We expected the enzyme levels to be different in diabetes, but we didn’t expect the large difference we saw,” says researcher Partha Banerjee.

They also found that the enzyme had been relocated to a different area of the mitochondria.

The end result of these changes are like a car engine that is overheating and starting to smoke. The mitochondria begin to throw off excess heat and start producing free radicals that cause oxidative damage to the cells.

Pretty soon, in an effort to deal with these destructive free radicals, the liver goes into action to produce more antioxidants. But in so doing, the liver releases extra glucose – and, you guessed it, that increases blood sugar which in a vicious cycle, causes even more problems for the mitochondria.

But part of that process that no one ever addresses is how it affects your body’s master mediator – insulin – and its direct impact on disease. But this powerful hormone does not just regulate your glucose levels. It protects you from:

• Cancer: Insulin regulates cell division and when that goes wrong, tumors can grow out of control
• Alzheimer’s: Without insulin telomeres get short, cells stop replicating and age-related diseases take over
• Heart disease: The medical establishment would have you believe the problem is cholesterol, but it’s improper metabolic signals

Paleo benefits

Eating a paleo diet can go a long way in eliminating these mitochondrial complications. When the paleo diet eliminates foods made from grains, it improves your chances of keeping your blood sugar under control and damps down your chances of developing diabetes.

I know that in my life, until I started to eat paleo, my waistline was slowly but surely expanding in middle age, my personal energy was flagging and my exercise sessions felt like difficult, uphill slogs.

I thought I was eating healthy foods when I snacked on whole grains. But when I gave up grains altogether, I realized that my snacks that had included whole wheat bread hadn’t been doing me much good. When these snacks were banished, much of my daily fatigue vanished.

Controlling blood sugar

According to Chris Kresser, who has intensively studied the effects of the paleo diet, the paleo diet effectively addresses blood sugar issues when it “…emphasizes the real, nutrient-dense foods our ancestors ate. It features meat and fish, vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds, and some starchy plants like sweet potatoes.”

Research shows that eating paleo can reduce your diabetes and heart disease risk by helping you lose weight, control your blood sugar, reduce your triglycerides (blood fats), shrink your waist, reduce your body mass index (BMI) and bring down your blood pressure.

Along with eating paleo, you can keep your blood sugar under control by getting plenty of exercise, taking breaks from sitting during the day, getting eight hours of sleep a night and keeping your stress under control.

You should quickly find that changing your lifestyle to a more paleo-friendly routine, pays big benefits. Remember: Every minute of every day, another three Americans are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Don’t be part of that statistic. Instead, be among those who have switched to the paleo diet.

The post Fast fix for your body’s energy crisis appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Then we started farming, and in so doing we began consuming foods that had to undergo processing before we could eat them — grains like wheat, barley, and hops, and dairy products like milk and cheese.

From that point forward, according to the theory, we were off track. If we just got back to eating the way we did in pre-agrarian days, we’d all sport rippling deltoids and six- packs, just like our ancestors did (didn’t they?).

I have no beef with the basic premise that cutting highly refined, ultra-processed foods from our diet is a great idea. And I fully agree that vegetables and good-quality proteins should form the bulk of what we eat. But let’s not romanticize the cavemen: They lived incredibly difficult, short, arduous lives, and they basically ate anything they could get their grubby hands on — including, as some anthropologists have pointed out (to the consternation of the Paleo crowd), grains of various kinds.

Also, there never was a unified “Paleo” diet. Some Paleolithic cavemen survived mostly on seal blubber. Others on chia seeds. But whatever they ate, it bore little resemblance to anything you can get at Whole Foods today. Ancient broccoli, among other Paleo-friendly foods, looked nothing like the broccoli you see in your local produce department.

Finally, cavemen weren’t ripped: the chiseled abs and twenty-inch arms we see today are pretty much an invention of twentieth-century exercise, medicine, and pharmaceutical science. Our close genetic cousins the Neanderthals carried significantly more bulk than we do — but they needed to choke down about five thousand calories a day (about what you probably eat on your most gluttonous days) just to survive, and probably died off because of it. Eating for them was a full-time job — and when food got scarce, they did too.

So though I agree with some of the basic principles of Paleo eating, I’m not down with it as a whole. That much meat, and that many animal products generally — especially of the inorganic, readily available kind most of us are unwittingly consuming — just aren’t good for you. And, conversely, grains like oats and wheat just aren’t that bad for you (unless you have been clinically diagnosed with a gluten intolerance).

The one good thing about the Paleo concept? It’s a convenient reminder of the “clean eating” idea: If it doesn’t come from nature, don’t eat it.

You can read more about my nutrition secrets in my book: Your NewPrime: 30 Days to Better Sex,Eternal Strength, and a Kick-Ass Life After 40

The post Should we be eating like cavemen? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

A big part of my digestive insanity was a condition known as “leaky gut.” Although the digestive tract is supposed to keep allergens and pathogens from entering the body, when you eat grains almost every day, you open up the possibility of spaces opening up in the walls of the intestines. That allows the undesirables in your food to breach the digestive barrier and cause all sorts of maladies.

Plus, for me, my sensitivity to gluten just made my discomfort that much worse.

Inflammatory complications

The results of leaky gut can include intestinal inflammations like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome. You can develop skin rashes and endure complications to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease.

If you suffer any of these difficulties, chances are you need to heal the walls of your digestive tract. You need to alter your diet. Continuing to eat the refined, grain-heavy foods that most of us devour, doesn’t help.

The most problematic foods that contribute to leaky gut are:

• Grains like wheat, barley, rye and corn.
• Dairy foods such as milk and cream.
• Legumes, including beans, alfalfa, peanuts and soy.
• Refined sugar – especially high fructose corn syrup.
• Heavily processed vegetable oils like cottonseed, corn and soy oil.
• Processed food in general. Food manufacturers can add ingredients not listed on packaging. Also, processed foods can be cross-contaminated with wheat, other grains and allergens.
• Beverages containing alcohol, caffeine and/or sugar.

For some people recovering from leaky gut, nuts and seeds may also cause digestive problems. And if you are allergic to certain foods, you should avoid those items.

The susceptible people

Researchers are only beginning to understand why some people are more susceptible to leaky gut than others. Research at Emory University shows that some of us possess immune systems that are better able to cope with a leaky gut and dodge the inflammation issues that result from a porous intestinal wall.

But the Emory researchers note that stressful events and inflammatory foods can cause digestive difficulties in just about anyone.

“Breakdown of the intestinal barrier can occur as a result of intestinal infections or stress,” says researcher Charles Parkos. “The normal response involves several components of the immune system that help to heal the injury while controlling invading bacteria. When this normal response is defective and there is a leaky barrier, the risk of developing IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) is increased.”

Food to heal by

Healing your gut may take time. An important first step is to take probiotic supplements that supply beneficial bacteria that help the health of the intestinal wall. Fermented foods that contain probiotics are also important. These include:

• Sauerkraut
• Kim chi
• Pickled fish
• Kombucha (a fermented form of tea)

You should also eat foods that contain the fiber (prebiotics) that the good bacteria feast on. These include a wide variety of fruits and vegetables including bananas, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, leeks and apples.

In addition, many paleo experts recommend preparing organic bone broth to nurture the intestinal walls.

In my journey to better digestion, I have found the paleo diet to be indispensable. To some people, I know I seem obsessive about my fussiness over what I eat. But after suffering through years of digestive distress, painful arthritis, strange rashes, mental fog, persistent high blood pressure and other never-ending annoyances I can’t obsess about annoying other people with my food focus.

I’m just thankful I found a diet that delivers better health.

The post The paleo diet’s answer for perfect digestion appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And if you’ve been reading me for a while you know I’ve chosen to follow a paleo-styled way of eating.

Of course, the paleo diet centers on eating foods that our early ancestors ate, and that includes meat. It doesn’t include carbohydrates (except for a very few, like the sweet potato) and that is a little off-putting to some people.

I understand that giving up pasta and baked potatoes can be hard, but how would you feel about giving up your lung cancer risk?

Yes, some studies link meat to cancer — but it’s the worst offenders — processed meats like hot dogs, lunch meats and so on. And there are things you can do to decrease that risk.

But there’s little you can do to avoid the multiple disease dangers behind carbohydrates. Let me explain…

Type 2 diabetes can develop when your body experiences an onslaught of blood sugar spikes over and over and over until finally, your pancreas can’t keep up. It can’t produce balanced amounts of insulin to keep you safe.

But the truth is — insulin resistance can lead to a litany of chronic illnesses, even cancer — in people without any indication of diabetes.

Case in point: Carbohydrates are notorious for spiking your blood sugar levels. If we were discussing diets — primarily for weight loss — there would be a lot of information to bring up, some of it conflicting, about carbohydrates and glycemic index. But unfortunately, we’re talking about something a little more grave than meeting your goal weight…

That sinister reason you should heavily consider your carb intake is lung cancer.

When non-smokers get lung cancer

A study published recently in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, is the largest to link high glycemic index — a classification of how rapidly carbohydrates elevate blood sugar levels — with lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women but is by far the leading cause of cancer mortality, with over 150,000 deaths from lung cancer expected in the U.S. in 2016, according to the American Cancer Society.

While tobacco use is the leading cause of lung cancer, there are numerous cases of non-smokers getting the disease—and accumulating evidence points to dietary factors according to Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and senior author of the study.

Previous studies have investigated associations between GI and glycemic load (GL), a related measure of carbohydrate quantity, and risk of numerous other cancers.

“Diets high in glycemic index result in higher levels of blood glucose and insulin, which promote perturbations in the insulin-like growth factors (IGFs),” said Stephanie Melkonian, a postdoctoral fellow with Wu’s team and lead author of the study. “Previous research suggests increased levels of IGFs are associated with increased lung cancer risk. However, the association between glycemic index and lung cancer risk was unclear.”

So, in this latest study, researchers sought to clarify that association. To do so they surveyed 1,905 newly-diagnosed lung cancer patients and 2,413 healthy individuals. These participants provided information on their past dietary habits and health histories.

“We observed a 49 percent increased risk of lung cancer among subjects with the highest daily GI compared to those with the lowest daily GI,” said Wu. “The associations were more pronounced among subjects who were never smokers, diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma or had less than 12 years of education.”

Among non-smokers, those in the highest glycemic index group — those who reported eating the foods most notorious for affecting blood sugar spikes and insulin levels — were more than twice as likely to develop lung cancer as those in the lowest group.

The truth hurts… and causes disease

Can the reason that non-smokers get lung cancer truly be tied to diet, carbs and insulin? You just read the research, but I know the idea seems extremely foreign to anyone reading this because our doctors won’t discuss an insulin-disease connection to anything other than diabetes.

So let’s consider chronic low-grade inflammation, then. Numerous studies have shown it fuels disease, including cancer. And you know that nothing fuels the rate of inflammation in your body as significantly as carbohydrates…

Consuming sugar (a simple carbohydrate) or a high-carb diet increases glucose in the bloodstream, along with increasing the production of insulin and insulin-like growth factor, all of which increase inflammation and insulin resistance.

It’s a vicious cycle that chronic conditions, like heart disease, cancer, obesity — even Alzheimer’s — are only symptoms of.

And correcting it may be the key to not only living healthier but living longer…

According to Dr. Ron Rosedale insulin may be the silver bullet behind why some people live to be one hundred years of age. In numerous studies on centenarians, a common denominator emerged: The great majority of them had low insulin levels — balanced and under control.

The post Can this food lead to lung cancer? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

I’m not just talking about the need to eat a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables if you want to improve your health and nutrition. Although that’s important: Every fruit or vegetable you consume contains valuable natural compounds that endow it with its individual hue. And those pigments make essential contributions to the body’s ability to fight off illness.

I’m talking about the influence color and packaging makes to your food purchases at the supermarket. Even the plates and cutlery at your favorite restaurant can subvert your choices of what to eat.

Mouth-watering cartoons

I started thinking about some of these ideas last week when I was jogging at lunchtime through my local neighborhood. It was recycling pickup day and as I plodded along, I noted the kind of brightly colored, cartoon-covered food packaging various people had in their recycling bins. I contrasted that with the rather plain bottles and cardboard that was in my bin.

And it occurred to me that perhaps part of the benefit of eating a paleo diet, and cooking most meals from scratch, is that avoiding processed food insulates you from the persuasive marketing pitches concocted by the big food companies.

You can bet your last M&M that the food companies employ a bevy of researchers running focus groups, surveys and test marketing projects that are trying to figure out the best way to make you buy and eat foods that are high-profit/low nutrition.

Studies by Brian Wansink, who is now at Cornell, show how all kinds of hidden cues that you might never suspect shape what we eat and how much we eat.

The colorful art of over-consumption

In one study, Wansink compared how shifting the varieties of colors in junk food changed what people ate.

“People eat with their eyes, and their eyes trick their stomachs,” Wansink says. “If we think there’s more variety in a candy dish or on a buffet table, we will eat more. The more colors we see, the more we eat.”

In one test, Wansink found that if people are offered jellybeans that come in six different colors and flavors, they eat about 70 percent more when the colors are mixed together in a single bowl than they consume when the colors are all distributed in separate bowls.

And the more different colors, the more food gets swallowed. In another test, Wansink showed that if folks are offered 10 different colors of M&Ms, they eat 43 percent more of the candy than when they are offered seven different colors.

“Many of us are reasonably diligent about what we eat, but we don’t put that much thought into how much we eat,” Wansink says. “If we ate 100 fewer calories a day, instead of gaining 10 pounds at the end of a year, maybe we’d lose 10 pounds. Small factors, like the type of candy bowl in your office, might add five more Hershey’s Kisses a day to your diet.”

Knives and forks

Wansink has also studied how our plates and cutlery influence our eating habits. He’s found that eating in high contrast – having food with red sauce on a white plate or an entree with white sauce on a red plate – leads us to eat less, about 20 percent less food than when we eat low contrast (like white sauce on a white plate or red sauce on a dark plate).

The same research shows that larger plates also lead us to eat more food than we would consume from smaller plates.

Thinking about this, it’s obvious that there are other hidden persuaders lurking in supermarket aisles and fast food restaurants ready to lure the unwary (and even the wary!) into making poor food choices and eating too much.

It’s a problem that is only bound to get worse as food labs get access to machines that can scan people’s brains to measure the effects on neurons of different marketing messages and packaging designs.

And that’s a good reason to stick to the basic food of the paleo diet. Let your body make the metabolic choice of how much to eat with less input from food advertisers. You’ll be healthier even if their profits shrink a bit.

The post What color is your paleo diet? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

OK, I’m not talking about randomly spoiled food like an everyday piece of fruit with mystery mold emerging from its innards. And not that cantankerous piece of meat in the back of the fridge that smells so questionable your dog wouldn’t touch it.

I’m talking about foods that have been intentionally spoiled in a special way: fermented foods. These foods that are home to healthy bacteria that can help your digestive tract function better and which provide a wide variety of nutrients that your cells need.

And the spoiled food included in the paleo diet may be the healthiest food on your plate.

Think of foods like sauerkraut, yogurt, pickled onions or just plain pickles. All of these are produced by the action of beneficial (probiotic) bacteria.

In other words, these bacteria “spoil” the food, but in a good way that can make you healthier.

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Desirable digestive developments

Studies of the duties these probiotic bacteria perform in your intestines have turned up some surprising results. When you consume fermented foods, these microbes:

• Increase your absorption of minerals that are important for the health of your heart and bones.
• Produce vitamin K2 which directs calcium away from your arteries (where it can cause disease) and into your skeletal bones where it provides strength.
• Help the immune system function more effectively and avoid harmful inflammation.
• May reduce your cancer risk.
• May shrink your chances of depression.
• Can help you lower your risk of diabetes and weight gain.

Better skin

Another great benefit of the probiotic bacteria in fermented foods includes better-looking, possibly younger-looking, skin.

A study in Japan found that a bacteria called Lactococcus lactis H61 which can be used to ferment milk and is used to make buttermilk, can help keep your skin better hydrated and healthier. It has been found to help protect the skin from unsightly infections.

Unspoiled foods

Another thing to remember about fermented foods – these items have a long, wonderful history in the annals of human cuisine and health.

Compare that back story to the additives that food companies add to packaged food that keep it looking fresh and unspoiled for years at a time on supermarket shelves.

Recent revelations about hidden food ingredients (including preservatives) that corporate food scientists have been sneaking into processed food reveal a dark and unsavory side to the snacks and “goodies” beloved by so many.

Turns out that because of a giant loophole in the types of chemicals allowed into food, no regulator is even keeping track of what additives and preservatives are lurking in chips, cookies, candy bars and other processed items.

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The food companies are putting in substances they say are “generally recognized as safe.” (GRAS) That designation, effectively allows additives untested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be put into food. And nobody knows what these concoctions can do to your health.

GRAS is supposed to cover traditional foods that would be a waste of time to test for safety. But the spirit of the GRAS regulations is being distorted in the name of profit. (By the way, GRAS allowed wood pulp in your Parmesan cheese).

“Consumers are being exposed to potentially dangerous chemicals that industry self-certifies as safe for use in foods, with little or no scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration,”  according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

CSPI, and three other consumer groups – Consumers Union, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Working Group — want the FDA to crack down on this continual adulteration of food sold in the U.S.

According to a report in the Huffington Post, “Over the years, companies have added over 1,000 ingredients to their products to “improve their product’s texture, taste, appearance or extend their shelf life” without ever letting the FDA know. And while most of these additives are considered safe, others have caused allergic reactions and long-term health effects.”

As the Natural Resources Defense Council has noted, GRAS should now stand for “generally recognized as secret.”

In the end, the choice of what to eat is yours: You can choose the fermented foods that have stood the test of time and that convey known health benefits or take a chance on processed food that are associated with disastrous health outcomes.

I know which ones I choose. And I’ve got trillions of friendly little bacteria in my gut that approve of my choice.

The post 6 desirable benefits of fermented foods appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

I expected to be bedridden and befuddled by now due to my “incurable” disease – secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. For seven years, I’d been going steadily downhill, despite taking the latest and greatest drugs. In 2007, I could only walk short distances using two walking sticks and could sit up for only a few minutes. Yet just one year later I completed an 18-mile bicycle ride with my family. The year after that, I did a trail ride in the Canadian Rockies.

How did that miraculous transformation happen? I am a practicing physician, former athlete and clinical researcher. I “knew” that once functions are lost due to progressive MS, they are gone forever. Ten years ago, when I first got my wheelchair, I began studying the research myself. I saw that our DNA accounts for less than 30 percent – often less than 5 percent – of our risk of getting a chronic disease, including autoimmune problems. The vast majority of our risk is due to the interaction of our DNA and the foods we choose to eat (or not eat), the toxins to which we are exposed, and our exercise levels and other lifestyle choices.

My research into diet and lifestyle intensified. In 2007, I used what I had learned about brain biology, ancestral health and functional medicine to design a diet specifically for the optimal health of my brain cells. The result was stunning: I halted the progression of my “incurable and progressive” disease and dramatically improved my mental and physical function. Simply by changing my diet and lifestyle, I achieved the unthinkable.

As a result, I have been transformed like Paul on the way to Damascus. I now see the world of health and disease very differently. I understand at the cellular level and the intellectual level what cells need to have to function optimally and how they react when they are starved for what they need to thrive. This knowledge has changed how I live my life and how I instruct my patients to live theirs.

Now, instead of just treating disease symptoms in my clinics, I teach people how to restore health and vitality. I teach the public and my patients how to eat for the optimal health of their cells, for if our cells become healthier, our organs become healthier. If our organs become healthier, our bodies become healthier. That is why maximizing the nutrition for our cells is the bedrock of reversing the decline associated with many so-called “incurable” diseases.

For our cells to properly function, they need the correct building blocks required for the chemistry of life. We must also remove toxins from our cells. To achieve both goals, we must eat a diet that provides the most vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and essential fats per calorie possible.

We must also remove the harmful anti-nutrients that increase inflammation and lead to more fatigue, brain fog and worsening symptoms across many diseases. Most people I know do not pour sugar into the gas tank of their car.

The mitochondria inside are cells are engines that create the energy in our bodies. And sadly, the modern diet has us pouring sugar into them. But if we give our mitochondria and brain cells the building blocks – that is the vitamins, minerals, essential fats and antioxidants they need to conduct the biology of life properly – our cellular engines will run like high-output supercars.

The foundation of my Wahls Diet plans is 9 cups of vegetables (3 cups greens, 3 cups sulfur-rich vegetables, 3 cups of color) and grass-fed meat daily, and organ meat and sea vegetables.

In the U.S., half of us do not meet even the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for water-soluble vitamins (that includes C and B vitamins) and two-thirds do not meet the RDA for minerals like magnesium, calcium, and zinc. That’s the very least we need, and we’re not getting it.

Is it a coincidence that we have an epidemic of “incurable” diseases, including autoimmune diseases, here in America? Even if you aren’t “sick,” you may be among the 50 million or so who “don’t feel well.” Did you know that this could be due to having auto-antibodies showing that your immune cells are attacking themselves but are not causing enough damage to make an official autoimmune diagnosis?

People suffering from this won’t be diagnosed for several more years, after their bodies have sufficiently attacked themselves enough to demonstrate measurable damage. Some scientists are now classifying diseases like atherosclerosis, asthma, and allergic rhinitis as types of autoimmune disorders.

All autoimmune disorders are an interaction between the genetic (DNA) risk factors and the environment. While we can’t change our DNA, we can change our environment by modifying our eating habits and adopting health-promoting lifestyle choices.

In my book, “The Wahls Protocol,” I provide detailed guidance on how to maximize nutrition and remove anti-nutrition present in most U.S. diets, foods that deprive our bodies of the nutrients that they need, causing inflammation and eventually disease. I see it over and over in our clinics: as people learn to eat for the optimal health of their cells, excess weight falls away without hunger, energy improves, mental clarity improves, and disease symptoms diminish, no matter what the underlying health challenges are.

I teach people how to shift their current diet to one that provides optimal nutrition for their cells. I also provide a nutrient density analysis of a week’s worth of each of the various Wahls Diet plans, which provide two to eight times the RDA of the 31 key brain nutrients I identified in my research. “The Wahls Protocol” also provides a week of menus and recipes for three food plans, allowing you to choose the plan that best suits you and your family’s health concerns, health goals and food preferences.

In addition to seeing patients, I do clinical research. To change clinical practice, we must publish clinical research in peer-reviewed journals. I am one of the few researchers doing clinical trials that test the impact of structured Paleo diets (in the form of the various Wahls Diet plans) on patients with secondary progressive MS.

In another year, we anticipate completing our current clinical trial, Wahls Paleo Diet and Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, and knowing more about the nutrient density of these diets as well as their effect on disease progression, blood vessel health and cellular health.

If you want to start improving your immune health today, here are two things I have people who come to me at my practice do: Avoid phytates and lectins.

Phytates will act to bind minerals making them less absorbable and for some people. This can markedly increase inflammation

Lectins similarly can make minerals less absorbable and cause inflammation as well. They “stick” to your intestines and keep nutrients out.

The foods highest in phytates are grains, which is why the Paleo diet I recommend is so helpful for suppressing inflammation and increasing the power of our immune systems.

Lentils and beans, which do have quite a few nutrients, also have anti-nutrient lectins in them, as do eggplants and most grains, to a certain degree.

The post Removing “anti-nutrients” for better immunity appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

They’re missing the real purpose of the paleo diet.

The more things change

Of course food today isn’t the same as it was 10,000 years ago when farmers started to grow grain in large fields, altering civilization and the human diet. Food isn’t even the same as it was thirty years ago.

Paleo enthusiasts avoid wheat and the other grains that have become well-established staples for most people. No one seriously argues that the foods hunted and gathered before farming arrived can be resurrected for a modern food plan.

The real establishing principle of the paleo diet, the way I see it and live it, is that it centers on the real foods that are available today. The whole point is to eat the foods that are natural to the human body and eschew the ones that are not. That’s why we focus on organic fruits, vegetables, pasture-raised meat, wild-caught fish, seeds and nuts. You forgo the colorfully packaged processed snacks and fast food because they are not natural to us. They resemble nothing that grows in nature.

Interestingly, while a lot of dietitians apparently object to the paleo diet because they think it’s too faddish, when they look at the details of the diet – its wealth of nutrients along with its paucity of foods that contain too much sugar, damaged fats and calories – they usually admit that it isn’t the peculiar, cultish activity they presumed.

Paleo adventures

Consider the experience of Holly Layer, a fledgling registered dietitian, who discusses her paleo experience on the website of The Buffalo News.

Initially, in her discussion, she’s a bit snarky about paleo: “We don’t live anything like cavemen used to live (can we say indoor plumbing, driving cars and Netflix?), so why should we EAT the way early man ate?  I’m willing to bet they’d gladly give up foraging and hunting in favor of raiding a well-stocked fridge and pantry.”

Personally, I wouldn’t bet that people from 10,000 years ago would be so quick to trade in their way of life for what’s become of the planet today. But that’s another story.

However, when Layer and her husband do a three-week tryout of paleo eating, she changes her tune.

First off, after a few days of eating paleo, she was “surprised at how much we liked it” even though “as a soon-to-be RD, it also pains me to give credit to a ‘fad diet’ of any sort.”

Fortunately, it’s a pain she and hubbie are able to quickly shrug off: “We both lost a few pounds, felt great and had fun.”

Gee, that sounds awful for a faddish diet that is healthier than the over-processed foods that 98 percent of Americans eat. (OK, I made up that 98 percent figure. But I would bet that it’s pretty close to the truth, given the long lines I always see at fast food emporia.)

As Layer explains: “…the ‘Standard American Diet’ contains upwards of 20 teaspoons of added sugar per day, which equates to about 350 extra calories and is about 25 percent of our daily intake. Whoa.”

Layer’s article make it pretty plain that despite her initial reservations, she has put aside her qualms about the “faddish” paleo diet and has recognized its benefits.

Layer wrote, “…be sure to eat real food.  Focus on lean proteins, healthy fats, and load up on fruits and veggies.”

She’s not exactly right, because as you know, eating the natural fats that go along with animal proteins are an important part of the paleo diet. The modern diet tells you to fear fat, as if it’s going to congeal in your arteries like it does in a pipe. But that’s not how the body works. Fat is a source of energy and one of our three macronutrients. It’s essential. The paleo diet is the opposite of fat-free modern eating advice.

But aside from that, she gets the general point – the most important aspect of eating paleo is the fact that you are eating real food, not food company nutrient-free formulations that resemble food.

And if those fruits and veggies aren’t exactly identical to what men and women were devouring 10,000 years ago? That hardly matters. What matters is that they are natural to your body. Your body was designed to eat them and we have evolved to use those nutrients for our health.

The post How to eat the real paleo diet appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

You can learn how to cook your own meals.

And if you want to follow a paleo way of eating, this is going to be a necessity. There’s no way around the need to make most of your meals at home. Yes, I know, that means more time in the kitchen than most Americans want to spend. But this type of meal preparation time is well worth it. And it’s the only way to truly control the nutrients in your meals and make sure you are eating the kind of diet that keeps you at your best.

The problem with “natural” flavors

One of the chief problems with packaged foods, even if they’re not junk food, is that you have no control over their ingredients. That’s true even if the packaging claims that the contents are “all-natural.”

For more than 30 years, since the mid-1980s, both the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission have refused to define the word “natural” as it pertains to foods.

The term, as used by food companies, is essentially meaningless.

At one point, food companies were even trying to claim that the artificial sweetener aspartame was “natural” because it was “made from natural ingredients.

Who stopped them? That grand arbiter of health food, the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

Meanwhile, the term “natural flavors” that appears on so many food packages can indicate the presence of all sorts of chemicals cooked up in laboratories as long as the food manufacturer can also cook up reasons that those chemicals can be considered “natural.”

For example, instead of using plant oils in many “natural flavors” companies are now getting them from special bacteria and yeast that can produce similar substances that can be added to food.

Eat at home for better health

A study at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that people who frequently prepare their own meals in the kitchen eat healthier and consume fewer empty calories that have zero nutrition or are high-glycemic.

“When people cook most of their meals at home, they consume fewer carbohydrates, less sugar and less fat than those who cook less or not at all – even if they are not trying to lose weight,” says researcher Julia A. Wolfson.

Wolfson says she recognizes that all of us are pressed for time. But her research shows that the health benefits of cooking your own food presents significant rewards.

And I’m with her. My health didn’t improve significantly until I started cooking my own food and ditching added sugar and unhealthy, over-processed vegetable oils from my meals.

“Obesity is an escalating public health problem that contributes to other serious health issues, including diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease,” says Wolfson. “The evidence shows people who cook at home eat a more healthy diet.”

Stay away from the TV

If you do decide to cook at home, though, be warned, the cooking shows that are so popular on television do not, as a rule, offer healthy recipes.

Research at Cornell and the University of Vermont show that people who follow the directions offered on these shows weigh, on average, 11 pounds more than folks who watch the shows without making the recipes.

“One reason for this phenomenon may be that often the recipes portrayed on TV are not the healthiest and allow you to feel like it’s OK to prepare and indulge in either less nutritious food or bigger portions,” says researcher Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

Instead, look for paleo recipes on Nom Nom Paleo, Paleo Grubs and PaleoPlan.

If you start preparing your own dishes from scratch, you’ll quickly learn that cooking paleo isn’t difficult. And the meals taste better than anything you can heat up that comes in a box.

The post The paleo way to get your health under control appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Mistake No. 1

Swapping gluten-containing grain products for gluten-free products.

Going gluten-free has many health benefits, and I am big supporter of removing gluten. But many people simply swap their 6 to 10 servings of gluten-containing grain-based products for gluten-free grain-based products.

If you do this you are still probably still eating 6 to 10 grain servings a day. All those starch-based products are filled with sugar and white starchy flour, which is quickly broken down to glucose (sugar) and released into the bloodstream.

Insulin levels spike, driving up inflammation, and competing with the enzymes that remove the harmful tau proteins in the brain. This is a big deal because tau proteins are linked with Alzheimer’s disease and are thought to contribute to the development of dementia! If you eat gluten-free products, I suggest limiting them to one serving a day, meaning one piece of bread or one half-cup of rice or pasta.

Mistake No. 2

Assuming that a modern paleo diet will naturally contain as many vitamins, minerals, essential fats and antioxidants as a traditional hunter-gatherer diet.

It is true that the diets of traditional societies exceed the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamins and minerals two to tenfold, depending on the specific nutrient. It is also true that modern paleo diets (Practical Paleo and Primal Blueprint) are among the most nutrient dense (as studied by Dr. Jayson Calton).

But in their studies, they found that modern Paleo diets still missed 40 percent of RDAs!

Why the difference between traditional Paleo and Modern Paleo? Traditional societies eat wild plants and wild foods, while modern Paleo eaters consume agricultural foods, which have been bred to maximize carbohydrate content and taste appeal (sweetness).

Also, remember that crops are now grown using chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, which reduce bacteria in the soil. Having fewer bacteria in the soil is associated with less vitamin, mineral and antioxidant content in plants.

Not to mention that fact that crops are grown so fast, and on so much less land, that they are not able to take up as much mineral content from the soil as in the past.

The USDA, which has monitored the vitamin and mineral content in apples, chicken and hamburgers since 1914, released a report in 1992 that showed a 20 to 100 percent reduction in vitamin and mineral content since 1914 for apples and since 1963 for chicken and meat.

Traditional societies also have cultural food knowledge they have accumulated over hundreds of generations. They know what food choices maximize the health of the clan. That means that different societies ate very different foodstuffs according to locale and availability. Analyses of various hunter-gatherer society diets show that regardless of location and diet specifics, they all consume two to 10 times the RDAs, depending on the particular nutrient.

The modern paleo eater does not have that cultural wisdom as a guide any longer because it’s been lost or forgotten. There is no guide toward eating for maximal micronutrient density. as a result, the modern Paleo eater rarely eats things like organ meats (when was the last time you ate an animal heart, or even a liver?), or even green leafy vegetables because of the strong flavors of both.

This partially explains why the modern Paleo eater is at risk for missing 40 percent of the established RDAs for vitamins and minerals. And remember, that’s just a minimum. It’s nowhere near what you actually need for your best health.

Mistake No. 3

Assuming that alternative sweeteners such as honey, agave syrup and maple syrup are healthful.

Do you know how they damage animal livers in order to study fatty liver, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes? They give the animals fructose. Many of the sweeteners that seem to be favored in the paleo community contain fructose: honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, agave syrup.

I recommend limiting fructose-based sweeteners to no more than one teaspoon a day or eliminating entirely. Using those sweeteners freely can be nearly as harmful as consuming high fructose corn syrup.

Mistake No. 4

Assuming that “paleo-friendly” cookies, cakes, and desserts are healthy.

They certainly can be tasty, but many paleo desserts contain fructose or alcohol-based sweeteners and a lot of white flour, though it may not be a grain-based flour.

Those tasty desserts have a high­ glycemic load, which means they also lead to more insulin production and inflammation as well as a higher risk of earlier cognitive decline and dementia. For a sweet treat, I eat a bowl of berries with a chia seed pudding made of chia seeds, spices and full fat coconut milk. It’s tasty, filled with antioxidants and healthy fats, and will not lead to a spike in glucose or insulin.

Mistake No. 5

Eating mostly meat and few or no vegetables

Many paleo eaters can’t afford organic meat and so eat a lot of conventionally grown meat and no or almost no vegetables. Unfortunately, conventionally grown meat contains pesticides and chemical residues. We live in a world filled with chemicals; our babies are born with more than 200 synthetic chemicals in their tiny bodies. Eating conventionally grown meat means taking in more synthetic chemicals that will interfere with the normal biochemical processes in our cells.

Those chemicals are processed and eliminated by our liver, kidneys and sweat glands. The phytochemicals in plants speak to the DNA in our cells, turning genes on and off. This greatly influences whether our chemical processes shift toward efficient processing of toxins or toward storing toxins in our fat.

The more plants we eat, the more we are preparing our body to eliminate the toxins it encounters, promoting our overall health and vitality. Our ancestors ate more than 200 different species of plants each year and yet most paleo eaters consume relatively few species.

My advice is to eat sufficient protein (6 to 12 ounces) and then eat 6 (women) to 9 (men or tall women) cups of leafy green, sulfur-rich, and deeply colored vegetables.

If you want to achieve the greatest energy and vitality possible, you need to eat a maximally nutrient-dense diet.

I created a food plan that does just that and then tested it using research-quality analysis of the menus and recipes to confirm that the food plan delivers the vitamins and minerals that science has said our brain cells need. My book, “The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine,” is a tremendous resource that provides specific guidance on how to create a maximally nutrient-dense diet.

In it, I describe in detail how to design a diet that provides the 31 vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and essential fats that your brain cells and mitochondria need to create full health and vitality. I had seven years of steady decline due to progressive multiple sclerosis and I spent four years in a tilt-recline wheelchair.

In 2002, after 20 years of a vegetarian diet that included lots of vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, I adopted a paleo diet and removed grain, legumes and dairy entirely from my diet. I continued to decline until 2007, when I created a structured paleo diet based upon my own research and paleo principles.

Within three months, my fatigue was gone. After six months, I could walk easily throughout the hospital without a cane, and at 12 months I was able to complete an 18-mile bicycle tour with my family. The following year, I did a trail ride in the Canadian Rockies with my family. And the next year, I began clinical trials, testing my interventions in others with progressive MS.

We have published the initial results, which show that others can successfully implement the same diet and lifestyle interventions that I used for my recovery, in the Journal for Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

The largest side effect we saw in the study was that those who were overweight lost weight and got back to a healthy body weight without being hungry. The Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) Score, which goes from 7 to 1 (1 = no fatigue), dropped 2.38 points, from 5.7 to 3.32 in 12 months. This is the largest reduction in fatigue ever reported in the MS literature. By contrast, other interventions have had a much smaller effect sizes. Exercise interventions have been associated with only a 0.6 point FSS score reduction, and the medication studies are mixed — some studies show no benefit, while others show a reduction of 0.75 FSS score. We have more studies underway and continue to apply for grants to expand our research program.

The post The five most common mistakes the modern paleo eater makes appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Of course, the paleo diet can’t reproduce what humans ate during the Paleolithic era. We no longer live in caves, lean-tos or tents—thank goodness. Most of us live in a modern urban or suburban environment, so the way we get food has totally changed—albeit not in a good way for the most part.

The point here is there’s no way most of us are going to hunt and gather the way our ancestors did. But instead of worrying about historical accuracy, critics of the diet should focus on its amazing health benefits.

Still I realize it can be a little confusing. Take potatoes for example…

One of the most important paleo dietary changes is the elimination of grains. Foods like bread, pasta, beer, rolls, cakes, cookies and breakfast cereal not only contain problematic gluten, they also include large amounts of sugars and starches that can lead to weight gain.

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Just as important—maybe even more so—is the elimination of potatoes from a paleo diet.

The potato has been a food crop for thousands of years. The Inca Indians were cultivating potatoes around 5,000 B.C. And it can be eaten in its natural state as opposed to grains which are processed in some way to make it to your table.

So why are the paleo folks against them?

The potato is a starchy, sugary nightmare that will set you up for a lifetime of chronic disease. So you see, the key point of eating like our ancestors is not nostalgia—it’s to avoid the health plagues of modern times.

Potatoes are very high on the glycemic index chart—higher than table sugar or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Because potatoes maintain one of the highest glycemic index values of any food, they cause your blood sugar levels to rise rapidly. That, in turn, causes your blood insulin concentrations to simultaneously increase.

When these two metabolic responses occur repeatedly, even just over the course of a week or two, you start to become insulin resistant. Before you know it, you’re well on your way to full-blown diabetes.

There’s no doubt potato consumption is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. And the more often you eat potatoes, whether mashed, baked, boiled or fried, regardless of other dietary factors or weight, the danger becomes more imminent.

A study ^[1] that looked at the potato-eating habits of over 100,000 people and accessed their health for several years found that participants who ate less than two to four servings of potatoes per week had a 7% increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

Those who ate seven or more servings per week had 33% increased risk! And if you think about it, it’s not unheard of to eat potatoes that often in the typical American diet…

Maybe you start the day with hash browns or potato cakes for breakfast, followed by French fries or potato soup with lunch, and you wrap it up with mashed potatoes or a baked potato for supper. Do that just two days a week and you are in real danger. Have just one serving of potatoes a day and you’re in the danger zone too.

I have given up the white, starchy dangerous potato for good. Now I get my potato fix occasionally by enjoying a sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes are starchy vegetables that are high in carbs, but their benefits outweigh the negatives. For starters, they don’t affect your blood sugar to the extent that white potatoes do.

Sweet potatoes are also low on the glycemic index, they contain high amounts of fiber (you need this much), potassium, vitamins (particularly vitamin A and beta carotene), and minerals, and low amounts of sodium.

Here’s is my favorite recipe using sweet potatoes. Reward yourself with this potato treat sure to totally rid you of your desire for white potatoes ever again.

[1] http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2015/12/09/dc15-0547.abstract

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