But I have friends who’ve complained to me that they’ve really cut back and still have problems keeping their blood pressure closer to where their doctors want to see it.

The truth is, there’s something else that looks remarkably similar to salt, which can secretly sabotage your blood pressure readings in surprising ways.

I’m talking about sugar.

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Added sugar adds up to high blood pressure

Scientific studies are now linking the consumption of added sugar in the diet to an increased risk of high blood pressure.

They say that not only can sugar affect your blood vessels, but it can also exacerbate health conditions that drive blood pressure problems.

Three blood pressure issues caused by sugar include:

#1 – Narrow blood vessels

One way sugar leads to high blood pressure is by increasing levels of a waste product, called uric acid, in the body. When the level of uric acid goes up, the production of nitric oxide (NO) in your blood vessels goes down. That’s a problem in several ways…

For starters, NO is a compound the body produces that signals blood vessels to relax and allow normal blood flow. Without that signal, blood vessels constrict and blood pressure rises.

It also causes blood vessels in the kidneys to constrict. This sets off a cascade of actions, including the activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS), which regulates blood volume and electrolyte balance. This leads to the retention of sodium and water, which increases blood pressure.

You may be aware that uric acid is associated with the painful condition known as gout. But you may not know that people with gout have an increased risk of stroke.

#2 – Reduced insulin sensitivity

Additionally, a diet high in sugar can lead to insulin resistance. In turn, as cells become less sensitive to insulin, the body makes even more of the hormone to keep your blood sugar balanced. This increased insulin accelerates sodium and water retention, in turn raising blood volume and blood pressure.

If that weren’t enough, reduced insulin sensitivity is linked to inflammation, which can lead to high blood pressure by damaging blood vessel linings and causing arterial stiffness.

#3 – Weight gain and metabolic problems

Finally, as we’re all too well aware, eating too much sugar can cause weight gain, especially around the midsection. Sadly, belly fat is a key indicator of metabolic syndrome, increasing the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.

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Avoiding sugar isn’t so easy

While sugars that occur naturally in whole foods, like fruit, are far less likely to skyrocket your blood pressure, it’s the hidden added sugars that can get you.

The American Heart Association lists these foods as the most common sources of added sugar, so start by avoiding these:

• Regular soft drinks
• Sweetened tea and coffee
• Energy drinks 
• Fruit drinks
• Candy
• Ice cream
• Sweetened yogurts 
• Flavored and/or sweetened milk
• Breakfast cereals and bars

And remember, added sugars hide under many names, including the “ose” ones like high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose, as well as molasses, cane sugar, corn sweetener, raw sugar, syrup, honey or fruit juice concentrates.

Steady support for blood pressure

Who doesn’t have a sweet tooth? I’m a health researcher, but I’ll be the first to raise my hand.

I don’t indulge often, but there are times when it’s just not easy to turn down dessert or pass up the cream and sugar in my coffee. That’s why I have a secret antidote…

Beets.

I realize eating beets regularly is an acquired taste. But beetroot juice is pretty tasty. Drinking it regularly helps my body produce a steady stream of NO, even when I splurge on dessert.

In a 2008 study, drinking 8 ounces of beet juice lowered subjects’ blood pressure by 10mm Hg (a ten-point drop in blood pressure).

This is not surprising, since the dietary nitrate in beets breaks down into NO to signal my blood vessels to do the job they’re meant to do: support oxygenated, nutrient-rich vascular flow to every organ in my body.

Now, yes, beets contain sugar. However, it’s natural sugars, not added sugars. The antioxidants, fiber and nitrates content still make beets a healthy option for sustaining NO production. And concentrated beet powder generally has less sugar per serving than whole beets or beet juice.

Sources:

This Everyday Ingredient Could Be Raising Your Blood Pressure—and It’s Not Salt – Health

The post 3 ways this ingredient raises blood pressure—and it’s not salt appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Most low-carb diets recommend limiting carbs to less than 100 grams per day. A ketogenic diet restricts carbs even more, at 20-50 grams per day, depending on how strict you want to be.

With these limitations, I always assumed that fruit’s natural sugar content made it an automatic no-go on a low-carb diet. Turns out I was wrong….

It’s true that fruit naturally contains carbohydrates. However, some fruits actually fall low enough on the carb scale to serve as a nutritious addition to a low-carb diet.

Here are 10 fruits that clock in at or below 15 grams of carbs per serving…

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Strawberries

If you’re looking to get your vitamin C from fruit, skip the citrus and go for strawberries. Eight medium strawberries, or one cup of slices, have just over 7 grams of carbohydrates and almost as much vitamin C as an orange.

They’re also packed with phytonutrients, which help fend off cancer and inflammation, protect your heart and balance your blood sugar. Just remember to buy only organic strawberries, as most commercially grown strawberries are rife with pesticides and other chemicals.

Watermelon

It turns out that fruits high in water or fiber have fewer carbs than other fruits. That’s why watermelon, which is 92% water, is one of the lowest-carb fruits, with 7.5 grams of carbs in every 100-gram serving (about one cup). Watermelon also contains plenty of vitamins A and C for a nice antioxidant boost, and studies show it can help protect your cardiometabolic health.

Plums

Plums are a great low-carb snack, with one medium plum (roughly 100 grams) containing only 7.6 grams of carbs. That same plum contains 100 milligrams of potassium to help manage blood pressure and ward against strokes. However, be cautious of dried plums or prunes, which can contain a substantial 64 grams of carbs per 100-gram serving.

Cantaloupe

This mainstay of fruit salads is a great low-carb fruit snack, with every 100-gram serving (roughly one cup or one large wedge) costing only about 8 grams of carbs. Cantaloupe is also high in vitamins A and C and folate.

Peaches

This sweet summer treat is also a low-carb one. One medium peach (roughly 100 grams) contains 8 grams of carbs, a gram of protein, a half-gram of fiber and 15% of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C.

Avocado

You may think of avocado as a vegetable, but it’s actually classified as a berry. Every 100-gram serving of avocado (a little less than a cup of cubes or slices) contains 8.5 grams of carbs and about 2 grams of protein. Avocados are also high in fiber and monounsaturated fats (the “good” kind), and they outweigh the banana in terms of potassium content.

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Honeydew

Every 100 grams of this sweet melon contains 9 grams of carbs—that’s about one cup or a small wedge and a half. Honeydew also comes in strong on the nutrient front, with tons of copper, potassium and vitamin C.

Blackberries

One cup of blackberries has less than 10 grams of carbs, a good amount of fiber and plenty of disease-fighting antioxidants. Their fiber content, as well as lower fructose level, means blackberries are less likely to cause gas and digestive problems.

Pineapple

A half-cup of pineapple (roughly 100 grams) has 11 grams of carbs. Eating pineapple is one of the best ways to get manganese, an essential mineral necessary for the nervous system, hormones, blood sugar and calcium absorption. Pineapple also naturally contains bromelain, a mix of enzymes that digest protein.

Raspberries

As mentioned earlier, high-fiber fruits have low carb counts. And raspberries, at 8 grams of fiber per cup, fit the bill nicely. They also contain a high amount of vitamin C. One cup of raspberries equals one serving of carbs (roughly 15 grams). You’ll want to eat fresh raspberries right away since they spoil within a day or two of purchase.

Smart fruit consumption

It’s important to note that these carb counts and benefits all apply to plain fresh or frozen fruits that are unsweetened.

If you want to add canned fruit to the mix, try to find versions that are packed in 100% water — not sugary syrup. It’s best to drain and rinse the excess juice off the canned fruit before eating it.

All carbs are not created equal, and giving them up completely could come back to haunt you. Carbs contribute to healthy aging and better sleep, so make these and other healthy carbs part of a well-rounded diet.

Sources:

Low-Carb Fruits — WebMD

What to Eat on a Low Carb Diet Plan — Obesity Medicine Association

The post 10 fruits to eat when watching your carbs appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

However, despite mounting evidence, many of us are still hooked on soda and other sugary drinks.

Research has found clear links between sugar-added drinks and accelerated aging, liver cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

In addition, sugar and tooth decay go hand-in-hand… but bad teeth may be the least of your worries if you make a habit of consuming sugary drinks.

That’s because now research has linked them to a higher risk for oral cancer…

Higher risk than smoking and alcohol

Researchers at the University of Washington found that it doesn’t take much to tip the scales against you when it comes to sweet drinks and elevated risk of oral cancer.

They looked at records that covered the dietary habits of a group of women over a 30-year period. Of the 162,602 women,124 developed oral cancer during that time.

But here’s the kicker: women who drank one or more sugary drinks per month were nearly five times more likely to develop oral cancer than those who drank less than one per month.

Two sodas per month. It doesn’t seem like a lot, right? But it could be enough to multiply your risk of oral cancer by five.

And it gets even more serious…

You might be thinking, “Well, what’s one guilty pleasure when overall I follow most of the rules for living a healthy lifestyle?”

That may not be enough. Even among women who didn’t drink or smoke, the ones who drank two sugary drinks per day were at 5.46 times the risk of oral cancer than those who drank one or none per month.

Oral cancer is linked to papillomavirus (HPV) infection, but also to lifestyle habits, including smoking, chewing tobacco and heavy drinking. So, it’s really alarming that oral cancer is on the rise among people outside of those typical risk factors.

Reducing this latest risk for oral cancer

Oral cancer is a potent incentive to give up sugary drinks. But you might need to consider other dietary changes as well.

That’s because the researchers think an inflammatory diet may be part of the reason oral cancer is impacting people outside of those typical risk factors…

“A Western dietary pattern has increasingly been recognized as a risk factor for gastrointestinal tract cancers and is characterized by high consumption of saturated fats, processed foods and added sugars,” according to the researchers.

“Our hypothesis is that diets with higher added sugar may contribute to chronic inflammation, which may, in turn, contribute to the risk of OCC.”

If you make changes to reduce sugar, do it the right way. That means not reaching for artificial sweeteners. They don’t have the all-clear yet…

The researchers feel studies are needed to confirm whether soft drinks with artificial sweeteners would be just as harmful and could have the same cancer connection.

So, how can you kick the habit? Here are a few tips.

Drink water instead. Soda cravings are often really just thirst, and water is much better at quenching thirst. Keep a pitcher or bottle of water close at hand.

Keep soda at a distance. Don’t buy it or keep it in your home. But if you do and the craving hits, take a walk instead, putting actual physical distance between you and that drink.

Have a healthy sweet treat instead. Try fresh fruit. If you’re truly thirsty, try coconut water or fruit-flavored sparkling water.

If you drink a lot of soda, cut back gradually to avoid headaches, fatigue and irritability. If you feel like you miss the caffeine, try coffee. Coffee has many health benefits and is associated with a lower risk of head and neck cancers.

Be sure to stay hydrated with water throughout the day. You can do this!

Sources:

Oral Cancer Cases Are on The Rise, And Sugary Drinks Could Be to Blame — Science Alert

High Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Intake and Oral Cavity Cancer in Smoking and Nonsmoking Women — JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery

The post Sugary drinks linked to rising rates of oral cancer appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

This has long been confirmed. And sweetened soda is one of the worst culprits.

A typical 12-ounce can of soda contains around 39 grams of sugar, roughly the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. Enough sugary sodas and blood sugar spikes eventually make cells less responsive to insulin, and before you know it, insulin resistance sets in, followed eventually by type 2 diabetes.

It turns out there’s much more to it than that…

For the first time, a study has “connected the dots,” showing how drinking soda causes your gut to produce chemicals that are directly connected to the onset of type 2 diabetes.

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Drinking sugary drinks causes gut changes linked to diabetes

Scientists from nine different universities came together to examine data from more than 16,000 Hispanic/Latino individuals in the U.S. They chose to focus on this population because they have both high soda consumption and a high prevalence of type 2 diabetes.

They discovered that sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is linked to changes in nine species of gut bacteria and that these changes are linked to the onset of type 2 diabetes.

Four species of gut bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) were reduced among those who drank sweetened drinks and soda.

SCFAs improve insulin sensitivity and reduce blood glucose levels, so producing fewer SCFAs leaves a person more vulnerable to diabetes.

Other metabolic compounds affected by drinking sugary soda are glycerophospholipids, fats that build cell membranes and appear to be linked to diabetes, and branch-chained amino acids (BCAA), which are thought to play a role in insulin resistance.

“Our study suggests a potential mechanism to explain why sugar-sweetened beverages are bad for your metabolism,” according to senior author Qibin Qi, PhD, from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY. “Although our findings are observational, they provide insights for potential diabetes prevention or management strategies using the gut microbiome.”

He added that the sugar in soda “might be more easily absorbed because they’re just sugar and water.”

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How to support your gut microbiome

Now that you understand the profound connection between your gut microbiome and the risk of diabetes, it’s empowering to know that you can take steps to enhance your gut health and reduce this risk.

First of all, give up the sweetened beverages. A large study you can read about here determined the 2 worst ultraprocessed foods for our health. And you’ve probably guessed that sweetened beverages were one of them.

Next, try these steps:

• Increase your intake of inulin fiber, which boosts short-chain fatty acids in your gut. You can find inulin in garlic, leeks, asparagus, beans, legumes, bananas, apricots, carrots, oranges and chicory root. These are considered prebiotic foods.
• Eat fermented foods: Fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut and kefir all contain healthy bacteria that reduce inflammation and support healthy bacteria.
• Avoid or limit your intake of artificial sweeteners: Some evidence has shown that artificial sweeteners like aspartame increase blood sugar by stimulating the growth of unhealthy bacteria like Enterobacteriaceae in the gut microbiome.
• Eat whole grains: Whole grains contain beneficial carbs like beta-glucan, which are digested by gut bacteria, and help prevent diabetes.
• Eat fruits rich in polyphenols: Polyphenols are plant compounds that shield us from insulin resistance and diabetes. Think stone fruits and berries.
• Take antibiotics only when necessary: Antibiotics disrupt the gut microbiome, possibly contributing to weight gain and antibiotic resistance. Thus, only take antibiotics when medically necessary.

Sources:

How might soft drinks lead to type 2 diabetes — Medical News Today

Sugar sweetened beverage intake, gut microbiota, circulating metabolites, and diabetes risk in Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos — Cell Metabolism

Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, artificially sweetened beverages, and fruit juice and incidence of type 2 diabetes: systematic review, meta-analysis, and estimation of population attributable fraction — The BMJ

The implication of short-chain fatty acids in obesity and diabetes — Microbiology Insights

The post Soda, sugar and the other reason it leads to diabetes appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

They still do.

The fact is, if you’re getting more than 25 percent of your daily calories from sugar, you’re a heart attack waiting to happen.

But more recent research is telling us that what really matters is the source of that sugar.

Astonishingly, we’re learning that having a sweet treat once in a while may be better for you than having no sugar at all!

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Not all sugar is created equal

Six scientists at Lund University in Sweden set out to understand how sugar consumption affects cardiovascular disease risk, and whether consuming different kinds of sugar changes those risks.

To do this, they studied 69,705 people. After excluding other factors that could cause heart disease, they looked at three sources of the sugar these people consumed: toppings like honey, treats like pastries, and sweetened beverages like fizzy drinks.

The participants were monitored until they died or were diagnosed with one of the cardiovascular diseases. The follow-up period ended in 2019.

During this period, 25,739 participants were diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.  

The scientists then used this data to break down how different types of sugar intake affected the risk of different cardiovascular diseases.  

An occasional treat may be good for you

The study showed that sweetened drinks are worse for your health than any other form of sugar. They significantly increased the risk of ischemic stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and abdominal aortic aneurysm.

However, eating an occasional sweet treat was associated with better outcomes than eating no treats at all.

“This might reflect underlying dietary behaviors — individuals consuming very little sugar might have very restrictive diets or might be limiting sugar due to pre-existing health conditions,” suggested Suzanne Janzi, corresponding author of the study.

In other words, people who eat little sugar may already be eating healthier diets because they have a health condition that necessitates this.

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Avoid the sugar trap

Adults and young adults in the U.S. consume on average about 17 teaspoons of added sugar every day — more than 2 to 3 times the recommended daily allowance for men and women respectively.

Since sweetened fizzy drinks, like sodas, contain an average of 9 grams of added sugar, it’s easy to see why it’s so easy to consume way too much.

Avoiding cardiovascular disease should be incentive enough to cut down on the amount of sugar you consume, and allow yourself the occasional treat.

Of course, start by excluding the worst offender — sweetened drinks.

Then, work on eating fewer of the foods you don’t consider sweets or treats, yet can contain high amounts of added sugars (or problematic non-nutritive sweeteners), like condiments and sauces, protein bars, yogurt, milk and coffee creamers, breakfast cereals and instant oats and nut butters.

I’d rather eat much less of these foods to enjoy a piece of cake, a homemade cookie or a chocolate bar!

The American Heart Association has put together a few helpful tips for cutting down on sugar. And the first shouldn’t surprise you…

1. Swap out sweetened drinks for water. Try squeezing a little fresh lemon to taste.
2. Cut the use of table sugar in half. We’re all guilty of adding a spoonful or two to cereals and beverages like tea and coffee. Cut your usual amount by half for a few days and keep making small adjustments to add less and less.
3. Become a label reader. Choose products with the lowest amounts of added sugars. Dairy and fruit products will contain some natural sugars (avoid fruit packaged in syrup!). Added sugars can be identified in the ingredients list.
4. Halve the sugar in recipes or try swaps, like no-sugar-added applesauce.
5. Spice things up. Try ginger, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg to tantalize the tastebuds.

Sources:

Sugary drinks significantly raise cardiovascular disease risk, but occasional sweet treats don’t, scientists find —Eureka Alert

Added sugar intake and its associations with incidence of seven different cardiovascular diseases in 69,705 Swedish men and women — Frontiers in Public Health

An occasional treat could be better for your heart than no added sugar at all — Science Alert

The post The occasional sweet treat may be healthier than none appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

FODMAP is an acronym for fermentable oligo-di-monosaccharides and polyols. A low FODMAP diet involves decreasing the consumption of FODMAP foods, which can linger in the gut where they ferment and cause the uncomfortable and unpleasant symptoms of IBS.

Foods to avoid include:

• High fructose corn syrup
• Dairy items that are high in lactose like milk, ice cream, buttermilk and sour cream
• Grains that contain gluten like wheat, barley and rye
• Certain fruits like apples, mangoes, peaches, pears, plums and watermelon
• Some vegetables like artichokes, cauliflower, mushrooms and sugar snap peas
• Beans and lentils

The low FODMAP diet was confirmed to work better than medication, but I do get frustrated with how limiting. So I was excited to read about a Swedish study indicating there may be a much simpler way to manage IBS…

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A genetic link to sugar and starch

Bodil Ohlsson, a professor at Lund University, has been investigating the role of sugars and starches in IBS. Her choice is linked to a geneticist’s discovery that more IBS patients tend to have a genetic variation that hinders the breakdown of sugars and starches in the gut.

“‘Let’s try giving these patients less sugar and starch,’ we thought,” Ohlsson says.

A few years ago, she led a study in which 105 people with IBS ate significantly less sugar and starch for four weeks. This diet, known as the starch and sucrose-reduced diet (SSRD), called for avoiding sweets and highly processed foods, including ready-to-eat meals.

The results showed that SSRD greatly reduced IBS symptoms such as recurring pain and tightness in the abdomen and diarrhea and/or constipation.

A more recent study compares SSRD to the FODMAP diet, which is a stricter, more regulated diet than SSRD. The study involved 155 IBS patients who were randomly assigned to follow either SSRD or the low FODMAP diet for four weeks. Before the trial, they were not allowed to have been on any specific diet.

Participants in both groups had to follow the basic principles of each diet; however, they chose how often or regularly they ate.

Results showed that in both groups, regardless of diet, IBS symptoms improved in 75 to 80 percent of the patients. This was even better than the researchers had expected.

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A nice bonus was that in the SSRD group, not only did sugar cravings decrease the most, but weight loss was greater. This is positive because IBS patients tend to weigh more on average than healthy people, Ohlsson says.

 “We wouldn’t really even call SSRD a diet,” she says. “It’s how everyone should eat, not just those with IBS. And unlike low FODMAP, SSRD is easy to understand and easier to follow.”

Ohlsson adds that on SSRD, it’s not necessary to be super-strict at all times. “You can eat everything when you are invited to dinner, just less of certain things,” she says. “If you rest your stomach for the rest of the week, you can indulge a little one day!”

One less thing to stress about

Because stress can be an IBS trigger, having one less thing to stress about, like a super strict diet, is a huge plus.

But omitting sugar and starch is another way that less stress is also built into the SSRD…

That’s because when we eat sugar, our blood glucose rises. The more sugar (or starchy foods) you eat, the faster it rises. This kickstarts the adrenal glands to start pumping out cortisol, the stress hormone.

When our cortisol levels are raised often and for prolonged periods, the adrenal glands can malfunction and begin producing insufficient levels of cortisol, which can be just as problematic.

To help balance cortisol, in addition to avoiding sugar and starch, it’s a good idea to include stress and anxiety-reducing practices as part of your self-care routine.

Sources:

Cutting out sugar and starch is as effective for IBS as current recommendations — EurekAlert!

A Starch- and Sucrose-Reduced Diet Has Similar Efficiency as Low FODMAP in IBS—A Randomized Non-Inferiority Study — Nutients

Digestive symptoms in daily life of chronic adrenal insufficiency patients are similar to irritable bowel syndrome symptoms— PubMed Central®

The post Ditch IBS symptoms when you ditch just 2 foods appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Of course, some things can take that risk even higher, like a diet high in saturated fats, not getting enough exercise, drinking alcohol and smoking. All of these could be lumped together as unhealthy lifestyle habits.

But all of us know someone seemingly hit by a stroke entirely out of left field. Or was it?

As time passes, science is revealing more about things we assume are inconsequential, but have a surprising impact on stroke risk.

This will have you watching what you put in your cup much more closely…

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Soda and fruit drinks strongly linked with increased stroke risk

An analysis of findings from the INTERSTROKE project shows that frequent consumption of fizzy drinks and fruit drinks and too much coffee are associated with an increased risk of stroke.

INTERSTROKE is one of the most significant international studies of risk factors for stroke, involving almost 27,000 people in 27 countries, including nearly 13,500 people who have already experienced their first stroke.

An international group of scientists looked at the consumption of these drinks as it relates to stroke risk. Here are their main findings:

• Fizzy drinks (think soda), including both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened options, were linked with a 22 percent increased chance of stroke. After two or more of these drinks a day, that risk increases even more sharply.
• Fruit juice drinks were linked with a 37% increase in the chance of stroke due to brain bleeding (intracranial hemorrhage). With two of these drinks a day, the risk triples. This risk was greater for women than for men.

Too much coffee also increases risk

As far as coffee consumption, their findings showed that drinking more than four cups of coffee a day increased the chance of stroke by 37 percent, although there was no risk associated with lower intakes of coffee.

Drinking tea was found to have the opposite effect. It was associated with decreasing stroke risk by 18 to 20 percent.

And the results were even more specific in terms of which tea you drink and what you put in it:

• Drinking 3-4 cups of black tea daily (think Breakfast or Earl Grey teas) was linked to a 29 percent lower stroke risk.
• Green or herbal teas were found to be almost as effective, reducing stroke risk by 27 percent.
• Adding milk may reduce or block the beneficial effects of antioxidants found in tea. In fact, the reduced chance of stroke from drinking tea was lost for those who added milk.

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How to recognize a stroke

One of the risk factors for stroke is older age. But in recent years, strokes in people under 65 have increased by 15 percent. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the fastest growing group with type 2 diabetes are those aged 45 to 64.

The connection could be that when insulin doesn’t function properly, blood sugar levels rise, damaging blood vessels and making them stiff and ripe to form blood clots.

But turning to foods and especially drinks sweetened with sugar alternatives is not the answer. Those sweeteners, like xylitol and erythritol, promote blood clot formation.

It’s a safe bet to reach for water and safer options, such as modest amounts of coffee and tea, as pointed out in the INTERSTROKE study.

Remember, when a stroke strikes, minutes really do count. Every minute could spell the difference between recovery and permanent disablement, or death.

To remember the signs of a stroke with the acronym B.E.F.A.S.T.:

B – balance – trouble with balance or coordination

E – eyes – sudden blurred, double, or lost vision in one or both eyes

F – face – one side of the face is drooping

A – arms – weakness in one arm, which drifts down when both arms are raised

S – speech – slurred or hard-to-understand speech, or the inability to speak at all

T – time to get help – if you notice any of these symptoms, call 911 immediately

Sources:

Frequent fizzy or fruit drinks and high coffee consumption linked to higher stroke risk – Eureka Alert

Carbonated Beverage, Fruit Drink, and Water Consumption and Risk of Acute Stroke: the INTERSTROKE Case-Control Study – Journal of Stroke

B.E. F.A.S.T. to Spot a Stroke – universityhealth.com

The post The good and the bad: Drinks that impact stroke risk appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Other times, the research just adds to the pile of proof that already exists about something.

This one is the latter.

Over the years I’ve read and written about the dangers of sugar. Research has revealed that sugar…

• increases the risk of dying with heart disease, per Harvard
• makes tumors more aggressive
• encourages your body to produce kidney stones

… just to name a few.

So it didn’t surprise me in the least to hear that cutting out sugar helps slow your body’s aging process.

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Biological vs chronological age: what’s the difference?

We have our actual age — the number of years we’ve been alive — and then we have our biological age, which in simple terms is the wear and tear on cells and organs.

Your healthspan is more than just how many years you live. It’s the length of time you get to live a healthy, disease-free, productive life.

And it shouldn’t come as a surprise by now that eating sugar shortens your healthy years on this earth.

Now we know one way that does that is interfering with how your body ages…

Sugars impact on your body’s rate of aging

“We knew that high levels of added sugars are linked to worsened metabolic health and early disease, possibly more than any other dietary factor,” says UC San Francisco professor Dr. Elissa Epel. 

“Now we know that accelerated epigenetic aging is underlying this relationship, and this is likely one of many ways that excessive sugar intake limits healthy longevity.” 

In other words, sugars cause diseases, but the real cause of those diseases is sugar’s impact on the body’s rate of aging.

The researchers scored the diets of 342 women, both Black and white, against a measure they created called the “Epigenetic Nutrient Index (ENI)”, which is based on nutrients (not foods) that have been linked to anti-oxidative or anti-inflammatory processes and DNA maintenance and repair.

These include Vitamins A, C, B12 and E, folate, selenium, magnesium, dietary fiber and isoflavones.  

They also scored their diets to see how they compared to a Mediterranean-style diet rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant foods and then to a diet linked to lower risk for chronic disease.  

Sticking to any of these diets was significantly associated with lower epigenetic age — the degree of aging based on patterns of DNA methylation (a biological process that helps determine how quickly the aging process moves along).

But the addition of sugar sped everything up…

This study found that eating foods with added sugar was associated with accelerated biological aging — even when someone ate an otherwise healthy diet.

In other words, eating too much sugar can undo the benefits of sticking to an otherwise healthy diet, sabotaging all your efforts toward a long healthy life.

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Cutting down on sugar: where to start

Added sugars are just that. They are added to increase the sweetness of foods or drinks, usually at very high amounts, and almost always in processed foods. That’s why eating fruits or vegetables that are on the naturally sweet side doesn’t have the deleterious effects that added sugars do.

Obviously, reducing sugary treats, like ice cream, cake and cookies is the easiest place to start.

But there are plenty of sneaky sources of sugar that could have you making all those other sacrifices and still getting too much. Here are some of the sneakiest according to the National Kidney Foundation:

Condiments: Ketchup, sweet pickle relish and barbeque sauce may have as much as 4-5 grams of sugar per each 1 tablespoon serving.

Breakfast cereals: Most cereals can contain as much as 32-40 grams of sugar in just a ½ cup serving! Some healthier options may take that down to 4-10 grams per serving.

White bread: Not only is white bread stripped of whole wheat grain and almost all of its fiber and nutritional value, it contains high levels of sugar that spike glucose levels.

High Fructose Syrup: Because it’s so cheap, processed food manufacturers love it. You’ll find it in baked goods, but even in less obvious places, including pizza, bread, salad dressing and one you’d think is healthy — yogurt. One tablespoon of HFCS contains over 14 grams of sugar.

Soft drinks: Yes, you already know they are full of sugar, but giving up this one thing can make a huge dent in your sugar consumption. One soft drink has about seven teaspoons of sugar! That’s probably why a 30-year study recently named sodas and processed meat as the 2 worst ultraprocessed foods for our health.

Milk: You can drink about 12 grams of sugar in a glass of dairy whole milk. Some brands of whole milk that are ultraprocessed and ultrafiltered contain half that amount — and more protein.

Lean towards fresh fruits and vegetables (sweet potatoes are one of my favorites). They will be sweet but have the fiber your body needs to process the natural sugars.

But whatever you do, avoid artificial sweeteners and alternative sweeteners, like xylitol and erythritol that have been linked to blood clots.

Sources:

Healthy diet with less sugar is linked to younger biological age — Eureka Alert

Essential Nutrients, Added Sugar Intake, and Epigenetic Age in Midlife Black and White Women: NIMHD Social Epigenomics Program — JAMA Network

5 Sneaky Sources of Sugar — National Kidney Foundation

Here are the ultraprocessed foods you most need to avoid, according to a 30-year study — CNN

The post Accelerated aging: the downside of sugar you can slow appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Previous research has noted associations between the consumption of added sugars and 45 negative health outcomes — among them diabetes, obesity, gout, cancer, high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke.

Some people substitute artificial sweeteners for sugar. But those sweeteners carry their own health risks, including type 2 diabetes, weight gain, dementia, heart disease, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease and even colon cancer.

Now, investigators may be adding another condition to those lists….

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Drinking sweetened beverages could cause AFib

Atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat, increases the risk of stroke by five-fold. According to the American Heart Association, more than 12 million people are expected to have AFib by 2030.

A team of researchers in China reviewed genetic data and data from dietary questionnaires for more than 200,000 adults who were free of atrial fibrillation (AFib) at the time they enrolled in the UK Biobank. During the nearly 10-year follow-up period, 9,362 cases of AFib occurred among the study participants.

The researchers observed that people who drank two liters or more of sugar-sweetened beverages per week had a 10 percent higher risk of AFib. And those who drank a similar amount of artificially sweetened beverages saw their risk of AFib increase by 20 percent.

If you think two liters a week sounds like a lot, it’s the equivalent of drinking one 12-ounce can of regular or diet soda each day for 6 days a week.

And if you smoke, you can see the AFib risk go even higher…

Smokers who consumed more than two liters per week of sugar-sweetened drinks had a 31 percent increased risk of AFib. There was no significantly higher risk for former smokers or people who never smoked.

By contrast, people who reported drinking one liter or less of pure juice, such as 100 percent orange or vegetable juice, each week had an 8 percent lower risk of AFib.

Those who consumed more artificially sweetened drinks were more likely to be female, younger, have a higher body mass index (BMI) and a higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes. Those who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages were more likely to be male, younger, have a higher BMI and prevalence of heart disease and lower socioeconomic status.

Also, those who consumed sugar-sweetened drinks and pure juice were more likely to have a higher intake of total sugar than those who drank artificially sweetened beverages.

Lead study author Dr. Ningjian Wang, a researcher at the Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, China, says the mechanisms linking sweetened beverages and AFib risk are still unclear. However, there are several possible explanations, including insulin resistance and the body’s response to different sweeteners.

Wang cautions the study’s findings can’t definitively conclude that these beverages pose more health risk than others because of the complexity of people’s diets, including the fact that some people may drink more than one type of beverage.

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Quench thirst, not your sweet tooth

This study adds to the body of evidence that both sugar and artificial sweeteners are risky for heart health.

“We still need more research on these beverages to confirm these findings and to fully understand all the health consequences on heart disease and other health conditions,” says Kris-Etherton, an emeritus professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State University who was a co-author of the AHA’s science advisory on artificial sweeteners. “In the meantime, water is the best choice, and, based on this study, no- and low-calorie sweetened beverages should be limited or avoided.”

If you have difficulty drinking plain water, try water infused with fruit and/or herbs.If you miss the carbonation from soda, you can drink plain sparkling water instead.

Remember that the body responds to most natural sweeteners like honey, maple syrup and agave the way it responds to sugar, so switching to those likely won’t make a difference health-wise. And if you choose the natural sweetener stevia, make sure it’s 100% pure stevia extract. Otherwise it likely contains erythritol, which is linked to increased blood clotting.

Unsweetened tea is another option. If you prefer a little flavor, consider herbal teas like peppermint, ginger, hibiscus or rooibos tea. I enjoy them iced with a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime. No sweetener needed!

Sources:

Sweetened drinks linked to atrial fibrillation risk — EurekAlert!

Sweetened Beverages, Genetic Susceptibility, and Incident Atrial Fibrillation: A Prospective Cohort Study — Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology

The post Real or artificial: The sweet drinks linked to AFib appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But soon after the regret sets in, and I head for the treadmill and walk, and walk …

Chances are I haven’t done too much harm in the weight department.

But if you’ve been reading here for any length of time, you know other more serious risks come from sugar.

And if sugar-sweetened drinks are something you indulge in on a regular basis,  beware…

There are heart health risks associated with that diet habit that no amount of exercise can undo…

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Deceptively dangerous

Too much sugar is bad for your heart.

But in 1954, the Sugar Research Foundation paid $50,000 in today’s dollars for a study that tried to discredit this well-researched fact.

Why?

If Americans could be persuaded that eating a lower-fat diet was good for their health, they’d eat less fat and more sugar. It’s easy to see the economic gains.

But sugar has many indirect connections to the heart.

One is how the liver metabolizes sugar the same way as alcohol and converts dietary carbohydrates to fat. This leads to a greater accumulation of fat which may turn into fatty liver, a contributor of diabetes which raises the risk for heart disease.

Can exercise undo the effects of sugary drinks?

In a word… NO.

We know that the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

But the sugar industry would have you think otherwise.

“The marketing strategies for these drinks often show active people drinking these beverages. It suggests that sugary drink consumption has no negative effects on health if you’re physically active.

“Our research aimed to assess this hypothesis,” says Jean-Philippe Drouin-Chartier, professor at Université Laval’s Faculty of Pharmacy and co-author of a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study followed about 100,000 adults for a period of thirty years. The resulting data showed that people who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages even just twice a week had a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, regardless of their level of physical activity.

Drink them daily? The cardiovascular risk goes even higher.

So you may be able to exercise away some of those excess calories from soda and other sweetened drinks, but exercise won’t reduce the risks to your heart.

And if you think artificial sweeteners may be a safer bet, think again. Both sugar and the fake stuff have been tied to AFib.

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Giving up sugary drinks turns things around fast

This research included carbonated drinks (with or without caffeine), lemonade, and fruit cocktails. The study did not specifically consider energy drinks, but that doesn’t mean they don’t contribute to the problem.

To get an idea, a 12 oz soda can contains from 39 to 77 grams of sugar. A 20 oz bottle of Minute Maid lemonade contains about 67 grams. And that Red Bull? 27 grams in 8 oz.

Sure, added sugar is everywhere from bread to sauces and soups to peanut butter. But giving up these drinks is where you should start.

And the good news is, you can see an improvement in metabolic health in a relatively short period of time when you do…

Along the path to sabotaging your heart, sugar drives fatty liver. Worst-case scenario, one sugar-sweetened beverage a day skyrocketed the risk of liver cancer in women.

But researchers have seen that when people cut back on sugary drinks for 9 nine days, they reduced liver fat and lowered blood sugar. The ripple effect was nothing but positive on heart health either.

Now some people may take this news as an all-clear just to switch to artificially sweetened drinks, but you’d only be switching from one poison to another.

Sources:

Physical activity is insufficient to counter cardiovascular risk associated with sugar-sweetened beverage consumption — Eureka Alert

Sugar-sweetened or artificially-sweetened beverage consumption, physical activity, and risk of cardiovascular disease in adults: a prospective cohort study — American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Eating too much added sugar increases the risk of dying with heart disease — Harvard Medical School

The post The diet habit exercise can’t save your heart from appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

That’s why breast cancer survivors (really, all cancer survivors) look to take back as much control as they can and want reliable recommendations for how they can minimize their risk of a recurrence.

So it was a relief when the American Cancer Society and the American Institute of Cancer Research (AICR) came out with their updated “Ten Recommendations for Cancer Prevention” in 2018.

But even better, research has now confirmed the positive impact of these recommendations before, during and after treatment…

7 recommendations that reduce recurrence by 37 percent

A prospective cohort study of 1,340 high-risk breast cancer patients was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

A prospective cohort study is one that focuses on a group of people (a cohort) over a period of time, collecting data on a particular factor of interest — in this case, adherence to seven of the ten cancer prevention recommendations.

The study focused on the following seven recommendations:

• healthy weight
• physical activity
• a diet rich in fruits and vegetables
• not smoking
• limited alcohol consumption
• limited consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages
• limited consumption of red and processed meat

Using both questionnaires and statistical analysis, the study authors determined that strong adherence to these guidelines was associated with a 37 percent reduction in recurrence and a 58 percent reduction in all-cause mortality.

“These are impressive numbers, especially considering that this was a high-risk breast cancer population,” says lead author Dr. Christine Ambrosone.

This study builds on previous research showing that a healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce the risk of cancer. For example, a 2020 systematic review of studies found that a healthy diet, normal body weight, physical activity, limiting alcohol, and not smoking were associated with more than a 58 percent reduction in the risk of many types of cancer including breast, colon, and lung.

Diet and breast cancer: A major factor

You’ll notice that five of these seven recommendations have to do with diet (I’m including normal body weight since that will come more easily if you follow the other four).

And the American Cancer Society and the American Institute of Cancer Research offered recommendations about what to eat and what to avoid. But if you need specifics, a couple of diets have been studied for their potential effects on decreasing cancer risk.

In 2017, researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands found that following a Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of ER-negative breast cancer by up to 40 percent. ER-negative breast cancer is a dangerous form of breast cancer that’s particularly hard to treat, so anything that can prevent women from getting this cancer in the first place is a huge deal.

A Mediterranean diet is high in nutrients such as omega-3s, B vitamins, vitamin D, zinc, folic acid, selenium and iron. Vitamin D is one of the most studied supplements for cancer prevention and treatment. Foods that can help include:

• mushrooms
• eggs
• yogurt
• cheese
• salmon
• canned tuna
• fortified cereal
• fortified orange juice

Milk and soy milk, good vitamin D sources, have had mixed reviews when it comes to cancer.

Christie Siebel, breast cancer survivor and senior clinical dietician at MD Anderson Cancer Center feels soy is a great alternative to animal protein and that there’s no reason to avoid eating it.

As far as milk goes, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine warns naturally occurring hormones and compounds in dairy products may play a role in increasing not only the risk of breast cancer but also ovarian and prostate cancers, according to a new narrative review published in the International Journal for Disease Reversal and Prevention.

Supplementing is always an option. Since vitamin D deficiency has been reported to be as high as 72 percent among cancer patients, talk to your doctor about adding vitamin D3 to your daily routine if you’re a cancer survivor.

Sources:

Lifestyle Recommendations Make a Difference for Breast Cancer Survivors Before, During, and After Treatment — Integrative Practitioner

Adherence to Cancer Prevention Lifestyle Recommendations Before, During, and 2 Years After Treatment for High-risk Breast Cancer — JAMA

The post 7 habits proven to reduce breast cancer recurrence appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

For that reason, I can’t say I’ve ever been more excited for fall to come and cool things down. In fact, I’m even looking forward to the colder temperatures winter will bring.

But I’m not looking forward to the “comfort food” struggle — that desire to seek out high-energy foods to make the long winter ahead bearable. For our ancestors, it may have been a necessity to help keep warm, but for us, it’s an invitation to trouble…

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From sugar high to hibernation

Fructose is the natural substance that makes fruit sweet. But in today’s Western society, most fructose is consumed as table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. These two ingredients are very different from the nutrients ingested by our ancestors as they prepared for the lean winter months.

Researchers believe that fructose works differently than other nutrients by lowering the body’s active energy, damaging mitochondria. Studies show fructose stimulates food intake and lowers resting energy metabolism in much the same way it does in an animal preparing for hibernation.

That means it leads to weight gain and obesity. But that’s not all. Insulin resistance, high blood pressure, fatty liver and other metabolic-related issues are more likely when we consume too much fructose.

While fructose’s contribution to obesity is well-known, a team of researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus decided to use a large amount of research to explore in depth the exact role fructose plays in developing obesity by looking to nature. And what they discovered was fascinating…

The impact of fructose on our “survival switch”

The researchers found the effect of fructose mediates this “survival switch.” Unlike glucose, which primarily serves to provide immediate fuel to the body, fructose’s primary function is to aid in the storage of fuel.

“We determine a recently discovered function of fructose in survival that stores fuel in case resources become scarce,” says Dr. Richard Johnson, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and study lead author. “This is known as the ‘survival switch.’”

The study also suggests that two events occur that convert fructose’s fuel-protective pathway into one that causes disease. The first is the inhibition of “thrifty genes” that may significantly amplify the ability of fructose to induce metabolic syndrome. And the second is the marked increase in foods that either contain or produce fructose.

The researchers propose that these two events have led the “survival switch” to become overactivated, which is driving both obesity and many of the metabolic diseases affecting people today.

“This work puts together in one place the full argument for how a particular carbohydrate, fructose, might have a central role in driving obesity and diabetes,” Johnson says.

“This is a very exciting, new hypothesis that unites other hypotheses to point to the specific role fructose plays in the onset of obesity,” he adds. “And we can trace it back to our ancestors, as well as learn from hibernating animals, exactly how fructose causes this ‘switch’ within us.”

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Fruit isn’t the problem

Often when we talk about fructose and avoiding sugars, we get questions about fruit.

So let me clarify here that fruit is not the problem. In addition to naturally occurring fructose, fruit comes with antioxidants and fiber that make them essential to a well-rounded diet.

Plus, the phytonutrients in fruit help inhibit the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream, so you don’t get the sugar spike you do from industrial forms of fructose like sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

But fructose in the absence of those special nutrients found in fruit, supersizes the way your gut absorbs fat and calories.

So, the change that needs to be made is in the number of sugar-sweetened beverages and processed foods and snacks we consume. These are sources of added sugars.

By cutting out all sodas and other beverages sweetened with added sugars or high-fructose corn syrup, you’ll go a long way toward bringing down your fructose consumption. Also, try to skip candy, ice cream, sweetened yogurt and processed baked goods — or else keep them only to very special occasions.

But it isn’t just the obvious sources we need to watch for. I’ve become an avid reader of labels so that I can avoid the hidden sources of sugar on grocery shelves.

For instance, did you know that ketchup can have as much as a teaspoon of sugar in a single serving? And even many supposedly healthy “organic” ketchup brands contain sugar.

Other unexpected sources of sugar include salad dressings, pasta sauce, premade soups, frozen meals and pizzas, bread, barbecue sauce and baked beans.

Next time you’re shopping, keep an eye out for the words “added sugar,” “high fructose corn syrup,” and “fructose” so you can dodge this health destroyer.

Sources:

Fructose Intake Can Lead to Obesity in Humans, Just Like in Hibernating Animals, CU Researchers Say — University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

The fructose survival hypothesis for obesity — Philosophical Transactions

If Fructose Is Bad, What About Fruit? — NutritionFacts.org

The post The ‘survival switch’ fructose flips to make us fat appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Add it up, and we’re consuming a staggering 60 pounds of sugar a year. That’s the equivalent of lining 12 five-pound bags of sugar up on your counter and digging in.

Clearly, given the rising rates of diabetes and obesity, we’re eating way too much sugar. And unless you’re a stickler for avoiding processed foods, cutting down on added sugars can seem almost impossible.

But to help you understand just how imperative it is to try — and how much is too much — researchers reviewed existing data and came to a daunting conclusion…

Excess sugar intake has been linked to no less than 45 serious health conditions, including stroke, heart disease and cancer…

Six is the magic number

In what’s called an umbrella review — involving 73 meta-analyses and 8,500 articles — researchers found significant harmful associations between the consumption of added sugars and the following health outcomes:

• 18 endocrine or metabolic outcomes including diabetes, obesity and gout
• 10 cardiovascular outcomes including high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke
• 7 cancer outcomes including breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer
• 10 other outcomes including tooth decay, asthma, depression and death.

Though the strength of the evidence varied, with some of the analyses considered stronger than others, the review authors suggested that people try to limit the amount of added sugar they consume daily to six teaspoons —  and only consume one or fewer sugar-sweetened beverages a week.

To come to these conclusions, the researchers combined these findings with guidance from the World Health Organization, World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research.

Check those food labels

When it comes to avoiding added sugar, label reading is your friend. But first, it’s helpful to know how many grams of sugar are in the recommended six teaspoons. The answer: between 24 and 25 grams.

One thing I’ve noticed about labeling is they now break out the amount of added sugars in the products you buy. For instance, the frozen pad Thai dinner I have in my freezer right now has 18 grams of sugar total, with 13 grams of that being added sugar. But the frozen cheese enchilada dinner only has 6 grams of sugar, zero of which is added sugar.

That’s because some ingredients contain natural sugars. But the amount of sugar identified on the label as “added” is additional sugar added during food processing — and this is the number we need to cut down on.

As always, your diet should include as many whole, unprocessed foods as possible. But if you’re busy and need to fall back on some prepackaged meals, make sure to check that label and go for the meals that have little to no added sugars.

As far as “natural” sweeteners go, remember that the body responds to honey, coconut sugar, agave, maple syrup or turbinado sugar the same way it would regular sugar. And I’d stay away from stevia as well. Unless it is 100% pure stevia extract, it contains erythritol, which is tied to increased blood clotting. Erythritol is used in many low-fat or no-fat processed foods.

Sources:

Limit added sugar to six teaspoons a day to improve health, urge experts — EurekAlert!

Consuming over 6 teaspoons of added sugar a day linked to stroke, depression, asthma — Medical News Today

Dietary sugar consumption and health: umbrella review — The BMJ

How much sugar is too much? — American Heart Association

The post Stroke, cancer and 43 other conditions linked to sugar appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s a given at this point that exercise is crucial for a healthy heart. It also helps prevent liver disease.

Regular physical activity slows brain aging and improves appetite control.

Exercise is also intimately related to cancer prevention. One study showed that moderately intense exercise can reduce the risk of invasive breast cancer.

Recently, we’ve gotten dramatic proof that upping your exercise game and sweating a little more can save your life…

High-intensity exercise robs cancer cells of glucose

A new study has found that aerobic exercise can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by 72 percent.

Metastatic cancer is cancer that spreads from its original site to other parts of the body.

Two researchers from Tel Aviv University, Prof. Carmit Levy and Dr. Yftach Gepner, have built upon what is already known regarding exercise and cancer, to explain why high-intensity exercise prevents cancer from metastasizing.

They note that former studies have shown how exercise reduces the risk of many cancers by as much as 35 percent. 

But high-intensity exercise keeps it from spreading from one organ to another.

“In this study we added new insight, showing that high-intensity aerobic exercise, which derives its energy from sugar, can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by as much as 72 percent.”

Apparently, high-intensity aerobic exercise causes internal organs to need and consume more glucose, which means that less glucose is available to give energy to tumors. Thus, tumors don’t have the energy to metastasize.

Keep exercising for ‘permanent protection,’ says the expert

You may have read about sugar’s cancer-fueling secret before. It’s known as the Warburg effect, named for the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist and biochemist, Otto Warburg, who first hypothesized that cancer cells prefer sugars for energy.

Cutting down on sugar isn’t always so easy, so Professor Levy presents a convincing argument for including high-intensity exercise as a regular part of your regular fitness routine.

“We assume that this [increased glucose intake] happens because the organs must compete for sugar resources with the muscles, known to burn large quantities of glucose during physical exercise.

“Consequently, if cancer develops, the fierce competition over glucose reduces the availability of energy that is critical to metastasis. Moreover, when a person exercises regularly, this condition becomes permanent: the tissues of internal organs change and become similar to muscle tissue.”

In other words, enough glucose-burning exercise will make your organs burn glucose just like muscles do, and help protect them from invading cancer cells that need that glucose to survive.

This is astounding! Exercise can actually change the tissues of your body in such a way to provide cancer protection.

How to get into high-intensity exercise

It’s simple: get some high-intensity exercise into your life!

If you’re like me, that sounds about as difficult as taking up mountain climbing. But it doesn’t have to be.

High-intensity interval training, or HIIT, allows you to alternate between short bursts of intense exercise and low-intensity recovery periods.

Here, Dr. Mark Wiley explains how to create an HIIT workout for yourself using no special equipment (or an exercise bike if you’d like).

And here, Dr. Adria Schmedthorst explains how combining HIIT with swimming can not only protect you from cancer, it can help you drop some weight and feel fitter.

If you’ve tried to get into the exercise routine in the past and hit the proverbial wall, consider a safe and natural performance and endurance enhancer like the amino acid dimethylglycine, or DMG for short. It’s safe and actually supports heart health, something that other performance enhancers can’t say.

Remember, if you’re not in the habit of exercising, take baby steps — but be consistent and you’ll be there before you know it.

Sources:

Aerobic Activity Can Reduce the Risk of Metastatic Cancer by 72 percent — Neuroscience News

An Exercise-Induced Metabolic Shield in Distant Organs Blocks Cancer Progression and Metastatic Dissemination — Cancer Research

The post How intense exercise starves cancer and stops the spread appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

For instance, coffee boosts brain health by improving concentration and memory and giving you sharper thinking skills. Over the long term, coffee can also protect against neurological diseases like dementia, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Other benefits from drinking coffee include better bone health and lower odds of developing type 2 diabetes, liver disease and heart disease. And coffee can also reduce your risk of dying from all causes.

But most of these studies don’t distinguish between unsweetened black coffee and coffee with sugar and/or milk added. It only takes a few minutes of hearing orders in a coffee shop to realize there are still an awful lot of people who add one or both to their daily cup of joe.

That’s why researchers from Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China were curious to see whether sweetening coffee changed certain benefits associated with the beverage. This is what they discovered…

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Coffee with sugar shows same health benefits

The researchers examined data from over 170,000 participants in the UK Biobank who had no known cancer or cardiovascular disease. The average age of the participants studied was 55.6 years.

The participants were asked several dietary and health questions to determine their coffee consumption habits. The questions took into account whether they drank instant, ground or decaffeinated coffee, and whether they drank it unsweetened, sweetened with sugar or artificially sweetened.

The results show that during the 7-year follow-up period, participants who drank any amount of unsweetened coffee were 16 to 21 percent less likely to die than those who did not drink coffee.

But that’s not the most surprising part. The researchers also found that participants who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee sweetened with sugar every day were 29 to 31 percent less likely to die than participants who did not drink coffee.

The same could not be confirmed for participants who used artificial sweeteners in their coffee.

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No more than a spoonful

The researchers observe that those who drank sugar-sweetened coffee added only about a teaspoon of sugar per cup of coffee on average. That’s a lot less sugar than can be found in a lot of the presweetened coffee beverages sold at popular coffee chain restaurants. Some of these drinks can contain as many as 18 teaspoons of sugar in the largest sizes.

Given that the recommended maximum daily servings of sugar are 9 teaspoons for men and 6 teaspoons for women, it’s probably a good idea to avoid these higher-calorie, highly sweetened specialty coffees. Instead, stick with plain coffee with a small teaspoon of sugar added.

Even though a lot of coffee shops do have sugar-free syrups, the artificial sweeteners used in these syrups have health risks of their own. So you may want to skip them as well.

If you absolutely must have your flavored coffee drink, there are ways to make it yourself while scaling way back on the sugar. For instance, here’s a recipe for a vanilla latte that uses maple syrup and pure vanilla extract in place of the sugar-laden vanilla syrup most coffee shops use. And you can use this recipe for a mocha latte that includes cocoa powder and natural sweeteners like honey or maple syrup instead of chocolate syrup.

Sources:

Sweetened and unsweetened coffee consumption associated with lower death risk — EurekAlert!

Association of Sugar-Sweetened, Artificially Sweetened, and Unsweetened Coffee Consumption With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality — Annals of Internal Medicine

Do you know how much sugar is in your Starbucks drink? — CBS News

My Go-To Vanilla Latte Recipe (Ready in Less Than 10 Minutes!) — A Sweet Pea ChefVegan Low Sugar Café Mocha — 80 Twenty Nutrition

The post The sweet news about sugar in your coffee appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

In fact, foods and beverages laden with the sweet stuff – especially those sodas we all love – have been strongly linked to disease. Obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease are just a few of the deadly diseases that can be blamed on sugar.

Yet, a single soda can be packed with up to 13 teaspoons of it!

So is it any wonder that more than two in five American adults are obese, another one in two have diabetes or pre-diabetes, and nearly half are already living with cardiovascular disease?

And now a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital is driving home the cost of sugar and those sodas to your health with startling numbers and some much-needed insight.

Better sugar choices equate to fewer deaths

The team of researchers created a state-of-the-art model that not only simulated but also quantified the impacts reducing sugar intake could have — both on our health and our wallets.

So let’s get to the good stuff first…

Their model unequivocally showed that if we all were to simply cut out 40% of the sugar from the sodas we drink (plus 20% from other foods), in our lifetime alone we can prevent:

• 750,000 cases of diabetes
• 2.48 million cardiovascular disease events, including strokes, heart attacks, and cardiac arrests
• 490,000 cardiovascular deaths

That means if you give up soda and a little more sugar throughout your day, you could be one of 2.48 million lives saved from a stroke, heart attack or cardiac arrest.

Mind-boggling right?

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The key to your survival could be a simple as saying no to that next soda.

And this wasn’t the first time that sugary sodas have been proven to be killers…

For years, the sugar industry has been hiding research linking it to everything from high cholesterol to cancer.

And as for our wallets?

Well, although they aren’t nearly as important as our health, they can benefit too.

The researchers estimated that in just 10 years of consuming less sugar, people in the U.S. could expect to save $4.28 billion in healthcare costs and a whopping $118.04 billion over our lifetimes.

In other words, kicking those sodas could save your health and your bank account.

Sugar cutting strategies that work

So how can you cut down on the sugar in your diet in order to stay healthy and keep diabetes, heart disease, and premature death at bay?

Simple steps that help include:

• Skip the soda – This one is a no-brainer and a must since sugary beverages are the downfall of your health. And it gets you to that magic 40% sugar elimination number that is so vital. So just say no to sodas and don’t forget that there’s a lot of sugar hiding in fruit juice too.
• Eat freshly prepared meals – Pre-packaged foods are hiding high levels of sugar. To remove as much as possible from your diet, cook your meals from scratch. This could save you that extra 20% per day that comes with those life-saving benefits.
• Be a label reader – You never know where sugar is lurking, from ketchup to canned fruits. So always check the label before you buy.

Sources:

Reducing sugar in packaged foods can prevent disease in millions — EurekAlert!

The post Shocking number of lives could be saved by giving up this one thing appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

In fact, it’s estimated that the average American eats approximately 22 teaspoons of extra sugar each day. That’s more than double the amount recommended for men and a whopping three times the allowed amount for women!

And while we all know that having a sweet tooth can lead to Type 2 diabetes and other health problems, scientists and doctors have long been in the dark on exactly how sugar leads to metabolic disease.

Well, not anymore…

Now, thanks to research from scientists at the Van Andel Institute, we know more about the mechanism behind the sugar/diabetes connection at the cellular level…

Even better, we now have insights that may shape prevention and therapeutic efforts…

Surplus sugar and your mitochondria

The research leveraged a model to demonstrate how taking in too much sugar affects the powerplants in every cell in your body — known as your mitochondria.

And what it came down to was this…

When your mitochondria have plenty of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in their membranes, they can work efficiently. This means that they’re able to generate the energy your body needs to not only live but also stay healthy.

However, when you take in too much sugar, the excess glucose that’s coursing through your body gets turned into a different type of fatty acid, replacing those helpful PUFAs. It’s a fatty acid that is less efficient than PUFAs, and less flexible.

This upending of your mitochondria’s lipid balance puts stress on them, leads to damage and impacts their performance.

The result?

Powerplants that are less efficient and can’t send out as much energy to your body. And that’s when diabetes and other metabolic diseases can start.

“Although we may not always notice the difference in mitochondrial performance right away, our bodies do,” explained Ning Wu, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Van Andel Institute and corresponding author of the study. “If the lipid balance is thrown off for long enough, we may begin to feel subtle changes, such as tiring more quickly.”

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Getting more PUFAs

So what exactly are the PUFAs that are so vital to your mitochondria? And is there a way to increase them in your body to help your personal powerplants function optimally?

Let’s tackle one question at a time…

PUFAs are polyunsaturated fatty acids — or simply healthy fatty acids such as the omega-3s you can get from oily fish.

As for the second question, the answer is YES.

You can add fish rich in omega-3s to your diet. If you’re concerned about getting enough fish in your diet (or too much mercury), you might add in a PUFA supplement, specifically an omega-3 supplement, to support your mitochondrial function.

But one warning…

The same research that found why your sweet tooth could be leading you down the path to a metabolic disaster also found that the beneficial effects of PUFAs are greatly reduced if you’re also eating too many carbs.

So if you want to get the most from omega-3s, be sure to watch your carbohydrate intake as well as cutting out as much added sugar as possible.

Rolling back the damage of too much sugar

The study revealed one more therapeutic way that might halt the detrimental effects of too much sugar…

The keto diet.

The researchers say that when they fed their mouse models a low-sugar keto diet, they were able to restore normal membrane lipid composition in order to support healthy mitochondrial integrity and function.

But the Keto diet can be difficult to follow. However, you can take baby steps and cut down on sugar and carbs while increasing PUFAs by eating more oily fish, like salmon, to increase your omega-3s.

Sources:

An overactive sweet tooth may spell trouble for our cellular powerplants — EurekAlert!

The post How sugar drains our mitochondria and sets the stage for disease appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Drinking just one can of sugary soda per day can triple your risk of having a stroke.

For decades, the sugar industry has tried to get us to believe that fat is the killer behind heart disease when really, it’s sugar that puts a strain on the heart, even in otherwise healthy people.

And, of course, consuming too much is a direct cause of weight gain and obesity.

Now, there’s new evidence that even modest amounts of the sweet stuff in your diet will cause your body to produce more of its own fat, a development that could prove deadly.

Sugar makes your liver produce too much fat

Researchers at the University of Zurich and the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland have shown that even a small amount of sugar if consumed daily, will lead to changes in metabolism that cause fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.

Ninety-four healthy young men took part in the study. Every day for a period of seven weeks, they consumed a drink sweetened with either fructose (the sweetest kind), glucose (found in all carbohydrates), or sucrose (table sugar — a combination of fructose and glucose).

In the fructose group, the body’s own fat production in the liver was twice as high as in the glucose group. Particularly surprising was that the sugar we most commonly consume, sucrose, boosted fat synthesis slightly more than the same amount of fructose. Until now, it was thought that fructose was most likely to cause such changes.

While this is alarming, there’s something even more disturbing.

“… the overactive fat production continues for a longer period of time, even if no more sugar is consumed,” says study leader Philipp Gerber of the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Clinical Nutrition.

In other words, fructose and sucrose double fat production beyond food intake. So, even after you’re done drinking the equivalent of just one can of soda, your body is still at work producing excess fat in your liver — for up to 12 hours, they found!

This excess fat production is a significant first step in the development of both fatty liver disease and type-2 diabetes.

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How to cut back on sneaky added sugars

The World Health Organization recommends limiting daily sugar consumption to around 50 grams or, even better, 25 grams. But the American Heart Association says the average American consumes about 77 grams per day. A lot of that is added sugar “hidden” in products we think may be good for us or would not contain sugar as an ingredient.

Consider this: there’s sugar hiding in your pasta sauce, granola bars, low-fat yogurt, pre-made soups and even in that serving of coleslaw that comes with your sandwich!

Here are some tips for eliminating these hidden added sugars from your diet.

Read food labels. Look for the many names it hides under, including:

• Evaporated cane juice
• Fruit juice concentrate
• Brown rice syrup
• Barley malt
• Galactose

Opt for fresh fruit. Not all fruit is created equal when it comes to sugar. With the water removed, dried fruit has more sugar by volume than fresh fruit. For example, a small box of raisins has 25g, while a half cup of grapes has only 12g. Whole, fresh fruit also contains fiber that helps your body process sugar from fruit.

Skip the soda. Sweetened soda has recently been linked to breast cancer deaths in women. For a refreshing drink, try fruit-infused water, or water with a splash of unsweetened fruit juice.

Cook that fruit! Think baked apples, poached pears, or grilled pineapple. If it’s a sweet taste you’re craving, then cooking your fruit will bring out more of its natural sweetness.

Bake with applesauce. Use unsweetened applesauce in place of sugar when you bake muffins, bread or cakes. Since applesauce is watery, you’ll want to reduce the other liquids in your recipe by about a quarter-cup.

Watch that takeout coffee! Check the nutrition information for your favorite coffee shop beverage. Flavored and specialty coffee drinks are often loaded with sneaky sugar.

Sources:

Consumption of added sugar doubles fat production — Scieince Daily

Evidence Shows Some Sugars Are Worse Than Others; Fructose Tops the List — Healthline

How much sugar is too much? — American Heart Association

Surprising Sources of Hidden Sugar — Web MD

The post Sneaky added sugars double your liver’s fat production appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

About four years ago, we reported on research showing that sugar may over-activate proteins found in cancer cells, causing rapid and excessive cell growth.

Sugar is like a gourmet meal for cancer cells. They prefer to live off of sugar, since it breaks down very quickly — a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect.

And, over five years ago, you may have read here about research that connected sugar intake with breast cancer.

Now, a new study points to a specific and, unfortunately, quite popular sugary drink that puts women with breast cancer at increased risk of dying from the disease.

Sweet soda linked to breast cancer deaths

A team of researchers from the University of Buffalo’s Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health conducted a study that examined the connection between drinking sugar-sweetened soda and rates of death from breast cancer.

The study subjects were 927 women ranging in age from 35 to 79, all of whom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. All were enrolled in the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study and were followed for a median of nearly 19 years. 

Compared to women who never or rarely drank sugary soda, those who reported drinking it five times or more per week had a 62 percent higher likelihood of dying from any cause and were 85 percent more likely to die from breast cancer, specifically.

But why focus just on soda, you may ask?

Despite increased awareness of the downsides of drinking soda, half of the population consumes sugary drinks on a given day. One in four people gets at least 200 calories from soda, while five percent get at least 567 calories — the equivalent of four cans of soda — every day.

The huge amounts of sucrose and fructose in soda give them a higher glycemic load than other beverages or foods and increase cancer risk.

Just one example: one study found that a 100 mL per day increase in the consumption of sugary drinks was associated with an 18 percent increased risk of overall cancer and a whopping 22 percent increased risk of breast cancer!

What should you drink instead?

It’s pretty clear that all of us should be reaching for something better than soda to quench our thirst, but if you’re a breast cancer survivor, it’s certainly a necessity.

Of course, drinking water is a great option. According to Dr. Isaac Eliaz, “attempting to function without enough water is like trying to run a car that doesn’t have enough oil to lubricate its system.”

But if you want to take water beyond thirst-quenching and actually use it as an effective tool in a cancer-prevention lifestyle — drop a tea bag in it!

Green tea is well known for its concentration of catechins, believed to be behind many of its reported health benefits, but it’s not the only option…

Green tea and rooibos tea contain compounds called epigallocatechin, which prevent binding to receptor cells, reduce tumor volume, prevent DNA damage, decrease inflammation, strengthen cells, directly stop cell growth and cause cancer cell death, along with reducing recurrence rates in those who have had cancer.

And oolong tea gives green tea a run for its money. A research team at Saint Louis University examined the effects of oolong extract versus extracts of green, black and dark teas on six different breast cancer cell lines, including triple-negative breast cancer cells (a type of cancer that’s immune to many of the common treatments).

They found that both green tea and oolong tea stopped the growth of all types of cancer cells.

In fact, the researchers said, “Oolong tea, same as green tea, can induce DNA damage, play an inhibitory role in breast cancer cell growth, proliferation and tumorigenesis and [it has] great potential as a chemopreventative agent against breast cancer.”

If you’re a breast cancer survivor, the last thing you want is to make your odds any harder. Ditch the sodas for a soothing cup of tea and feel better about healthier choices and a healthier future.

Try this recipe for a cherry-lime rooibos tea cooler. Rooibos tea has a natural sweetness and is much less bitter than green tea can be.

Sources:

Not so sweet: increased risk of death among breast cancer patients who drink sugar-sweetened soda — technology.org

Sugar-Sweetened Soda Consumption and Total and Breast Cancer Mortality: The Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study — Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention

A Nine-Year Collaboration Has Just Shown How Sugar Influences Cancer Cell Growth — Science Alert

The post The one drink breast cancer survivors should avoid appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

These drinks are one of the biggest culprits when it comes to consuming too much sugar. After all, it’s easy to ignore the sugar you’re drinking when it’s a bottle of fruit juice (they’re just a bad as sodas!).

Like many, you may have switched to artificially sweetened drinks, but we’ve found they’re just as bad. In fact, a study of 5,158 adults over seven years found that people who consumed large quantities of artificial sweeteners gained more weight than non-users — the exact opposite of what you’re going for when you choose to use them.

If you’ve had a hard time cutting back, this recent study may give you some major motivation to ditch them for good…

That’s because sweet drinks aren’t just making us sick and fat — they’re making us old and frail — fast.

Sweetened drinks make women age too fast

An international team of medical and nutrition researchers is reporting that sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks are especially harmful to older women because they accelerate the aging process by increasing frailty.

Frailty is not just a byproduct of aging. It’s a standalone medical condition that is associated with a lower quality of life and a higher risk of death, hospitalization and institutionalization.

The data that connected frailty with sweet drinks came from the Nurses’ Health Study, a long-term health study investigating the risk factors for major chronic diseases. It included food-frequency and health questionnaires filled out periodically by 71,935 women from 1992 to 2014.

During that 22-year period, 11,559 of the women, or 16 percent, met the criteria for frailty — meaning they reported at least three of the following:

• Fatigue
• Reduced strength
• Low aerobic activity
• Five or more chronic illnesses
• Loss of at least 5 percent of body weight over a two-year period

Now, if you think these women may have been guzzling these sweet drinks, you’ll be surprised at these findings…

Just drinking two or more servings of sugar-sweetened beverages a day made women 32 percent more likely to become frail than those who drank none. For artificially sweetened drinks, the results were similar — a 28 percent increased risk for women who had two or more servings a day. 

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Other reasons to give up sweet drinks

If you’ve read up on free radical damage, all of this may have come as no surprise to you. Free radical damage is tied to premature aging and disease — and sugar is tied to free radical damage because it accelerates oxidative stress.

The more sugar you eat, the more oxidation occurs, and free radicals are a natural byproduct of this process. Supplementing with antioxidants, like the well-researched resveratrol, can help guard against free radical damage. But if you don’t give up the sweetened drinks, or at least cut down, it’s a never-ending battle.

If that’s not enough incentive to ditch the sweeteners, I’m not sure what is — except maybe all of these other reasons:

• If you’re getting 25 percent or more of your daily calories from sugar, you’re a heart attack waiting to happen. It’s sugar, not fat, that is the main dietary cause of heart disease.

• Are you worried about developing Alzheimer’s disease? A study in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia found that people who drink more than two sugary drinks of any type per day have reduced brain volume, including a shrunken hippocampus, and are at risk of Alzheimer’s in the long term.

• There’s even evidence that the younger and more pliable brains of adolescents are being damaged by too many sweet drinks. Studies show that daily intake of sugar will cause brain inflammation during this critical period of brain development, setting young people up for Alzheimer’s later in life. If you have a teenager or young adult in your life, you might want to encourage them to try these brain-boosting drinks as an alternative to soda.

And by the way, there is such a thing as being addicted to sugar. Luckily, you can rewire your brain to eat and drink less of it, and save your memory and your health. Here’s how.

Sources:

Sugary Drinks May Be Bad for Aging — NY Times

Sweetened beverages and risk of frailty among older women in the Nurses’ Health Study: A cohort study — PLOS Medicine

Here Are All the Scary Things Sugar Does to You — Medium: In Fitness and in Health

Frailty Not a Normal Part of Aging — Web MD

Sugary beverage intake and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease in the community — Alzheimer’s & Dementia

The post Those sweet drinks you love? They’re aging you faster appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

That’s because sugar is what can be called an antinutrient. It offers little to nothing but calories.

But we really like it, and that’s what makes eating less of it and the foods that contain it so very hard.

A new study, however, may change the way you think about sugar. You know the saying — “the hair of the dog” — used often when someone suffering a hangover needs a little of what got them that way to get over it?

It turns out that the sugar you probably have sitting on your table or in your kitchen pantry right now could be the key to increasing your feelings of satiety this holiday season — or anytime, really — making it easier to avoid overeating, kick the calorie coma and possibly even avoid the holiday weight gain we swear off at New Year’s.

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Your taste receptors and feelings of fullness

The research, performed by a team of scientists at the University of Vienna, investigated the role of the taste receptors that sense sweetness in regulating how full you feel.

To do this, the researchers decided to test two different types of sugars head-to-head: glucose and sucrose.

In case, you’re not sure which is which, here’s a quick breakdown…

Glucose is basically, the sugar that ends up in your bloodstream after your body digests carbohydrates. Sucrose on the other hand is the type we get from refined cane sugar. So, it’s the table sugar you use when you sweeten up your coffee or tea — and the source of sweetness found in most processed foods, like your favorite snack cake.

For the study, the scientists gave 27 healthy adult participants a solution of either sucrose or glucose on its own, or in conjunction with lactisole (a substance that keeps you from tasting how sweet sugar actually is).

This way, while all of the participants consumed the same amount of calories, some got a sweet rush to go with the calories, while others just took the calorie hit alone.

It’s the taste that tames

Two hours after drinking their test solutions, the participants were allowed to have as much at breakfast they wanted. Can you see where this is going?

While the sucrose group ate less, the glucose group and the group that consumed lactisole to block the sweet taste ate 13 percent more calories than the sucrose-only group.

Additionally, the participants who were given lactisole also showed lower body temperature (think lower metabolism) and reduce plasma serotonin concentrations. The second is important because serotonin is a neurotransmitter and tissue hormone that suppresses your appetite

“This result suggests that sucrose, regardless of its energy content, modulates the regulation of satiety and energy intake via the sweet taste receptor,” says Barbara Lieder, head of Christian Doppler Laboratory for Taste Research and also deputy head of the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry at University of Vienna.

Put simply, this means that having a little sucrose before a meal could help you feel full so that you naturally and effortlessly eat less.

So, with the coming holiday season, grabbing a little sweetness before enjoying a meal with your family could help guard against the kind of overindulgence that packs on those holiday pounds.

But if you think you’ll really have a hard time kicking the sweet habit, I’ll let you in on a secret: Gymnema sylvestre is a plant known as the sugar destroyer because it’s so effective at curbing sugar cravings. You can find it in plant-based Sugar Control Mints, developed by Sweetkicks, that help suppress the taste of sweetness in the sugary snacks and drinks you crave.

Sources:

Sweet taste reduces appetite? — ScienceDaily

The post How about something sweet to suppress your appetite? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Research shows that fructose triggers the accumulation of fat in the liver… and even the ancient Egyptians knew it. They used to feed ducks and geese dried fruit (which contains fructose) to make their version of foie gras (fattened duck or goose liver).

Of course, nowadays fructose from fruit is less of a problem than all the added fructose we get in our diets. Americans have been eating a ton of fructose since the 1970s when high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) started popping up in everything from cereals to soft drinks to ketchup to crackers.

And new research shows that this excessive dose of dietary fructose could be triggering a chain of events that leads to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which can then lead to liver damage, liver cancer or even liver failure.

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Fructose fuels leaky gut and liver fat

A recent study from researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine shows that fructose may cause leaky gut, which triggers non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

In the study, researchers fed mice an excessive amount of fructose to see what effect it had on their livers. The mice received an amount of fructose that was equivalent to the 95th percentile of relative fructose intake by American adolescents, who get up to 21.5 percent of their daily calories from fructose.

They found that this excessive fructose consumption caused the gut barrier — which prevents bacteria and other microbes from escaping into the blood — to deteriorate. When this barrier is compromised, those microbes escape and trigger a chronic inflammatory condition called endotoxemia. Endotoxemia has been found in animals and children with NAFLD in previous studies.

When the microbes from the gut (also known as endotoxins) reach the liver, they triggered the creation of more inflammatory cytokines in the liver. They also caused the liver to turn fructose and glucose into fatty acid deposits.

So, in other words, researchers believe fructose’s impact on the gut barrier is the main reason it fuels NAFLD. If it didn’t compromise the gut lining, it wouldn’t trigger those extra fat deposits that eventually turn in to fatty liver disease.

“It is very clear that fructose does its dirty work in the intestine,” said senior study author Michael Karin, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “and if intestinal barrier deterioration is prevented, the fructose does little harm to the liver.”

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Eliminate added fructose and get your gut barrier in shape

According to past research, fructose increases liver fat two to three times more than glucose does. So even though limiting all sweets is a good idea, if you want to prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, focusing on fructose is a great first step.

Like I said earlier, you probably don’t have to worry about the fructose found in fruit. As long as you’re not consuming a ton of fructose in processed foods, the fructose in fruit shouldn’t trigger any liver problems. Plus, fruit is filled with antioxidants, fiber and nutrients that support overall health.

So, start making a serious effort to avoid high fructose corn syrup and other forms of added fructose in the foods you buy. Based on this study, you’ll also want to take action to support a healthy intestinal barrier too.

One of the best ways to do that is to eat more fiber. One study found that eating more fiber strengthened the gut barrier by 50 percent. You may also want to try a spore-based probiotic. Research shows that it can reduce the number of toxins seeping into the blood from the gut by 42 percent.

Sources:

Excessive fructose consumption may cause a leaky gut, leading to fatty liver disease — EurekAlert!

Fructose and Sugar: A Major Mediator of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease — Journal of Hepatology.

The post How to keep fructose from setting off a chain reaction that leads to liver disease appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Brain fog isn’t an official medical condition, it’s a symptom of a wide variety of medical conditions including anxiety, depression, autoimmune disorders, chronic Lyme disease and hypothyroidism, just to name a few.

Of course, you don’t need to have another health condition to experience brain fog. It can happen if you sleep poorly or are under a lot of stress… or it may not have any obvious cause at all. And if that’s the case, you should take a closer look at what you’re eating. Because here’s the thing…

Research shows that the bacteria in your digestive tract produce compounds that circulate in the body and help your nerves transmit signals, boost the function of neurons in the brain and improve your ability to keep memories intact. So, if you disrupt this bacteria by eating the wrong foods, you could end up with a one-two punch to the gut and your brain…

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Sugar and unhealthy fats muck up your brain function

A study from researchers at Oregon State University shows that when you eat a diet high in sugar, the bacteria respond in ways that gum up your nerve networks, distort their communications and hamper the ability of brain cells to retain information. Foods filled with the unhealthy fats found in fast food (heavily refined vegetable oils) also slow things down, but not quite as seriously as sugar.

These researchers found that sugar strongly interferes with something called “cognitive flexibility,” the ability to improvise and adjust your behavior to a shifting situation.

“The impairment of cognitive flexibility in this study was pretty strong,” says researcher Kathy Magnusson. “Think about driving home on a route that’s very familiar to you, something you’re used to doing. Then one day that road is closed, and you suddenly have to find a new way home.”

This isn’t the first time sweets and other junk foods have been shown to mess with cognitive performance. A 2016 study published in Behavioral Brain Research found that a high-sugar diet triggers inflammation in the hippocampus, a part of the brain essential for learning and memory.

And a 2002 study found that a high-fat, high-sugar diet decreased the production of a brain chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is essential for learning and memory. So, without enough of it, your brain would definitely feel a little foggy.

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Eat your brain fog away

If you want to keep your brain sharp, keep your gut bacteria happy and healthy…

You can start by avoiding processed foods that contain a lot of sugar and refined vegetable oils. Instead, eat plenty of fibrous fruits and vegetables. Eat real potatoes, not potato chips. Eat an apple instead of drinking apple juice. Eat fresh strawberries instead of a sugary cereal made with, supposedly, “real strawberries.”

Fermented foods like sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi and tempeh contain probiotic bacteria that can improve your gut health, too. Or you can turn to a probiotic supplement. I recommend a spore-based probiotic because they’re proven to heal leaky gut syndrome, a condition that can definitely trigger brain fog.

Sources:

1. 6 Possible Causes of Brain Fog — Healthline.
2. Relationships between diet-related changes in the gut microbiome and cognitive flexibility — Neuroscience.
3. Negative Impact of Sugar on the Brain — Verywell Mind.
4. A high-fat, refined sugar diet reduces hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal plasticity, and learning — Neuroscience.

The post Ditch these foods to lift brain fog appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

This cluster of symptoms includes high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and too-high levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and triglycerides.

Heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are just some of the outcomes of having even a few of these symptoms.

Of course, your diet is key to whether or not you develop these symptoms. To that end, research into the specifics of which foods are best, and worst, at preventing metabolic syndrome is ongoing.

And the findings of a very recent study are interesting indeed…

Sugar sabotages cholesterol and increases heart dangers

Late last month, scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University published the results of a long-term study that confirmed the fact that sugar doesn’t just lead to metabolic syndrome by causing pre-diabetes and eventually full-blown diabetes…

It comes at you in another serious way…

These researchers found that middle-aged and older adults who drank sugary beverages daily were at greater risk of developing abnormal cholesterol and triglyceride levels, compared to those who rarely drank those beverages.

Over a period of four years, adults who drank at least one sugary beverage per day (soda or sweetened fruit drinks) had a 98 percent higher chance of developing low HDL (good) cholesterol and a 53 percent higher chance of developing high triglycerides.

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Drinking sugary beverages was not linked to the risk of higher LDL (“bad” cholesterol). However, high triglycerides (fat from calories your body doesn’t need) in combination with low HDL levels is enough to cause concern…

HDL absorbs cholesterol and carries it back to the liver so it can be flushed from the body. Without enough HDL, fat builds up in the artery walls.

In other words, high levels of HDL lower your risk for heart disease and stroke — so the last thing you need to do is let sugar lower it!

Time to send sugar packing

This latest research is yet another wake-up call to the detrimental effects of sugar.

That means it’s time to look closely at what you’re drinking and avoid drinks with added sugar, like sodas, lemonade or fruit punch…

You may already know that just one 12-ounce can of soda contains a whopping 10 to 13 teaspoons of sugar.

But you should also keep fruit juices to a minimum, even if it says “100 percent juice.”

Related: A can a day triples stroke risk

Even though a review published in the journal Nutrients last May found significant evidence linking the ingestion of added sugars in sugar-sweetened beverages with metabolic risk factors, it’s still unclear if the same consequences apply to drinking fruit juice.

But if you’re drinking glass after glass every day, there’s no doubt you’re getting much more sugar than your body can deal with… and your weight, blood pressure and cholesterol will pay the price.

According to the USDA, a 12-ounce glass of 100 percent:

• Orange juice has about 179 calories and almost 43 grams of carbs with 30.96 of those coming from sugar.
• Apple juice has 171.6 calories and 42 grams of carbs with almost 36 grams coming from sugar.
• And grape juice has them both beat with about 223 calories and almost 55 grams of carbs with 52.8 coming from sugar.

What about everyone’s healthy juice — cranberry? It falls most in line with grape juice!

You’re much better off drinking water and getting your fruit fix from the whole fruit, so the fiber content can help you manage healthier cholesterol numbers.

Remember, it’s not just about the food you’re eating when it comes to balanced cholesterol levels. So, give yourself some slack worrying about an egg a day, and get serious about sending all that sugar packing.

Sources:

1. Sugary drinks a sour choice for adults trying to maintain normal cholesterol levels — EurekAlert
2. HDL (Good), LDL (Bad) Cholesterol and Triglycerides — American Heart Association
3. Triglycerides: Why do they matter? — Mayo Clinic
4. Metabolic Syndrome Diet — Healthline
5. Juices With the Highest Sugar Content — Livestrong

The post Do you know what sugar’s doing to your cholesterol? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Alberta, that’s a huge problem — but not just for my waistline.

So, if like me, those holiday desserts are calling your name, here’s what you need to know about what they’re doing to your health and how to protect yourself, without giving them all up…

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Just 2 days of a high-sugar diet leads to serious damage

The study, published in Scientific Reports, looked specifically at how eating a high-sugar diet for even a short amount of time can result in major health issues — specifically inflammatory bowel disease.

You see, the researchers already knew that many people who live with colitis report that small changes in their diet can make their symptoms flare-up. But, the team wanted to know just how small (and for how short of time) those changes could be to lead to damage.

And, they got their answer…

They found that after only two days of a high-sugar diet, mice had an increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease compared to those who ate a healthy, balanced diet.

Yup, all it took was two days of sugar-rich foods to change their susceptibility to the disease!

In fact, the changes caused by the high-sugar diet were so extreme and fast that even the scientists were surprised…

“We wanted to know how long it takes before a change in diet translates into an impact on health. In the case of sugar and colitis, it only took two days, which was really surprising to us. We didn’t think it would happen so quickly,” said Karen Madsen, who led the study.

The antidote to sugar damage

But, what could drive such a significant change in such a short time — turning the sugar-rich holiday season into a minefield of inflammatory bowel dangers?

Well, according to the research team, it all comes down to your gut bacteria and the impact food has on them.

Madsen says that when you eat a high-quality diet, full of fiber-rich food, it acts as fuel for the “good” bacteria that live in your gut, producing short-chain fatty acids critical for an efficient immune response.

However, when you switch over to a high-sugar diet and decrease your fiber intake, you instead feed the “bad” microbes, such as E. coli in your gut, that lead to inflammation and a defective immune response.

Basically, you set yourself up for health failure.

But, the team found a way around the problem…

The researchers found that even when mice ate a high-sugar diet, as long as they were supplemented with the short-chain fatty acids their good bacteria would normally produce on a balanced diet, their immune response and intestinal tissue normalized.

That means instead of giving up all the deserts this holiday season in order to protect your intestinal health, you could instead simply eat more fiber. Just make sure you eat foods with inulin fiber which boosts your short-chain fatty acids.

“Changing someone’s diet is one of the hardest things to do, even if you tell them that it will fix their health problems,” said Marsden. “People want to eat what they want to eat, so short-chain fatty acids could possibly be used as supplements to help protect people against the detrimental effects of sugar on inflammatory bowel disease.”

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Where to find short-chain fatty acids

If you choose to go the more fiber route so that your body makes its own short-chain fatty acids, good options to include in your daily diet are these foods that provide inulin fiber:

• Garlic
• Leeks
• Asparagus
• Beans
• Legumes
• Bananas
• Apricots
• Carrots
• Oranges
• Chicory root

Sources:

1. Sugar binges increase risk of inflammatory bowel disease, study suggests — EurekAlert!
2. Short-chain Fatty Acids — NutritionFacts.org
3. Fermentation of Fructooligosaccharides and Inulin by Bifidobacteria: a Comparative Study of Pure and Fecal Cultures — Applied and Environmental Microbiology
4. Short-chain fatty acids and human colonic function: roles of resistant starch and nonstarch polysaccharides — Physiological Reviews
5. High dietary fiber intake linked to health promoting short chain fatty acids — BMJ

The post Sugar ruins your gut surprisingly fast — but there’s an antidote appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

I mean, come on… who can turn down homemade pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream? Or buttery, melt-in-your-mouth kolackies? Or warm apple crisp with ice cream? You’d need the willpower of a saint. Or a very good reason…

Like an intense desire to get in shape. Or a stubborn case of diabetes. Or even high blood pressure.

Surprised by the last one? Maybe you didn’t know that added sugar affected your blood pressure. It does.

In fact, a new study shows post-menopausal women in particular need to think twice about that piece of cake if they’re prone to high blood pressure…

The sugar that spikes blood pressure most

As a rule, blood pressure tends to go up after menopause. Many doctors think it has something to do with changing hormones. But there’s another factor adding to the problem — added sugar.

A new study from researchers at the University of Delaware shows there’s a strong link between added sugar and high blood pressure in postmenopausal women.

The study included 128 people (57 men and 71 women) between 65 and 80 years old. Researchers tracked added sugar intake and blood pressure. And guess what?

Related: The sugar danger you never hear about

Women who ate the most added sugar were more likely to have high blood pressure. This held true after accounting for other blood pressure factors like age, income, body mass index, physical activity levels, daily calorie intake, and blood pressure medication use.

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Here’s another piece of helpful information…

Researchers homed in on a few different types of added sugar to see which one affected blood pressure the most: sucrose (table sugar), glucose (found in candy, sports drinks, and desserts) and fructose (a fruit sugar and the source of high-fructose corn syrup). Guess which one was the worst for blood pressure?

Your old friend fructose. So, steer clear of foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, if nothing else.

Don’t fret: You can fight high blood pressure with fruit

At first, this study seems like bad news. No more desserts? That’s no fun. But look at the bright side…

If you’re a woman, reducing added sugar is a simple way to lower your blood pressure. Researchers estimated that cutting out 2.3 teaspoons of added sugar per day would result in an 8.4 mmHg drop in systolic BP and a 3.7 mmHg drop in diastolic BP.

And there’s was another bright spot in this study…

Researchers found a healthy way to satisfy your sweet tooth and lower your blood pressure. What was it?

Eating fruit.

Related: Eat this fruit to lower blood pressure in 2 hours

Men and women who ate more whole fruit had lower diastolic blood pressure. And past studies found that specific fruits (like grapes, tart cherries, and blueberries) lower blood pressure.

You may be wondering… why would fruit lower blood pressure? It’s full of sugar too.

Well, even though fruit contains sugar, it also contains fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and other healthy compounds. These compounds change the way your body processes the sugar from fruit and provide other health perks.

So, fill your plate up with fruit this season if you want healthy blood pressure. And if occasionally, that fruit comes with a little added sugar and a flaky pie crust, I won’t tell

Sources:

1. Study weighs impact of sugar vs. whole fruit on blood pressure — MedicalXpress
2. Added Sugar Intake is Associated with Blood Pressure in Older Females — Nutrients
3. Menopause and high blood pressure: What’s the connection? — Mayo Clinic

The post The connection between cake, cookies and high blood pressure appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Well, the answer is in your hormones – one hormone in particular in fact.

The name of the hormone is leptin. And, if you haven’t heard of it before, it’s the hormone that signals your brain that you’re full so that you stop eating and it increases the number of calories you burn… Both good things, right?

The problem comes in when you become resistant to leptin.

When that happens, it takes far more than willpower to keep you from gaining weight (or to take it off).

In fact, if you’re struggling with your weight, leptin resistance is very likely the culprit behind all of your troubles.

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What causes leptin resistance?

Leptin resistance can be caused by many factors (almost all of which are extremely common across our country).

#1 – Obesity

One more area of your health that is damaged by being overweight is your sensitivity to leptin. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven that despite the fact that obese people actually have more leptin circulating in their bodies, it doesn’t cross over into their cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) so it can’t signal the brain to stop eating.

#2 – High-fat diet

Researchers at the University of California – San Diego recently discovered that when mice are fed a high-fat diet they produce an enzyme named MMP-2 that clips receptors for the hormone leptin from their brain cells.

#3 – High triglycerides

Triglycerides are one of the things your doctor checks for when they do blood work for your cholesterol. They’re fats that can be found in your blood and if you have too much of them, it puts you at risk for heart disease and stroke. And, they’ve also been shown to stop leptin from entering your brain.

#4 – Too much sugar

Another mechanism of leptin resistance is eating too much sugar – especially high fructose corn syrup. And, if you combine a high sugar diet with the high-fat diet we talked about above, your leptin doesn’t stand a chance.

#5 – Stress

And, guess what…

If all of those don’t get you, stress will. That’s because the stress you live with day-to-day is a proven cause of leptin resistance leading to obesity.

Overcoming leptin resistance

The good news is that you can reset your sensitivity to leptin and overcome leptin resistance.

Here’s how…

#1 – Watch your diet

Avoid those high-sugar, high-fat foods that cause leptin resistance along with processed food that has chemicals that could negatively affect your feeling of fullness. Instead reach for whole foods with a focus on high fiber, high protein foods, and healthy fats.

It’s also important to reduce the number of carbohydrates you eat (especially refined carbs) since making the change can help lower your levels of leptin resistance-causing triglycerides.

#2 – Exercise

Regular physical activity can help decrease your leptin resistance and help you lose weight.

#3 – Get plenty of rest

Lack of enough sleep or not enough good quality sleep can add to your leptin problems so be sure to get plenty of the good stuff. Use a set sleep schedule, eliminate all sources of brain-awakening light (especially blue light) in your bedroom and take time for naps.

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#4 – Allow yourself to cheat

A cheat day once a week (where you can eat whatever you want) may also be beneficial since it can trick your brain into making more leptin. So, go for that piece of pizza or vanilla milkshake – but only on one day each week.

Remember, between diet, stress and other factors, leptin resistance has become one of the leading causes of weight gain today. Use the tips above to beat this hormone resistance driving your weight problems, burn more calories and feel full sooner and get back in the shape you want.

The post How to reset your hunger hormone for easier weight loss appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Because even though scientific studies keep demonstrating the connection between sugar intake and cancer, people are still eating more sugar than ever…

People in the U.S. are consuming about 66 pounds of added sugar per person every year. That’s 19.5 teaspoons per day — quite a bit more than what’s recommended (6 to 9 teaspoons).

The side effects of overshooting our recommended daily sugar intake by so much are serious…

Sugar-related health issues like diabetes and heart disease are on the rise. And then, of course, there’s cancer…

Sugar and cancer: Understanding the Warburg effect

When it comes to cancer, sugar intake is a problem because of something known as the Warburg effect… a phenomenon named for the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist and biochemist, Otto Warburg, who first hypothesized, more than 90 years ago, that cancer cells prefer to quickly break down sugars for energy — a process known as anaerobic metabolism usually reserved for rapid energy demand.

Researchers believe that due to the Warburg effect, sugar stimulates the growth of tumors. And thanks to a study from researchers from the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, the University in Brussels, Belgium and the University of Leuven, they believe they know why…

In their nine-year study, researchers examined yeast cells because they have a high, quick sugar metabolism, just like cancer cells.

More specifically, they examined something known as the “Ras” gene family in yeast cells, because this family of genes is present in all animal cells, including cancer cells. As a result, “Ras” genes in yeast have become an important part of cancer research.

Researchers believe what they observed in the “Ras” genes of these yeast cells could be the same mechanism behind the growth of aggressive tumors…

They noticed that “Ras” proteins became over-activated in yeast cells that received a rapid and excessive influx of sugar. And over-activated “Ras” causes cells to grow at a speedy pace.

This means, according to researchers, that sugar may over-activate “Ras” proteins and cause excessive growth in cancer cells as well.

“Our research reveals how hyperactive sugar consumption of cancerous cells leads to a vicious cycle of continued stimulation of cancer development and growth. Thus, it is able to explain the correlation between the strength of the Warburg effect and tumor aggressiveness,” said study researcher Professor Johan Thevelein. “This link between sugar and cancer has sweeping consequences. Our results provide a foundation for future research in this domain, which can now be performed with a much more precise and relevant focus.”

Slash your sugar intake, pronto…

So next time you sit down to snack on a sugary treat or drink a soda, think about the Warburg effect…

Hopefully, that will be enough motivation to drastically reduce your sugar intake. If it’s not, remember that eating too much sugar also:

• Suppresses your immune system
• Contributes to skin aging and a loss of elasticity
• Worsens anxiety
• Weakens eyesight
• Contributes to asthma and emphysema
• Causes diabetes

Now, all this doesn’t mean you should never indulge your sweet tooth. Just avoid saturating your cells with sugar daily. Stick to six to nine teaspoons of added sugar intake every day. Or do what I like to do… avoid added sugar altogether most of the time, and then every once in a while treat yourself to something decadent and sweet with a delicious cup of tea or coffee.

Sources:

Scientists reveal the relationship between sugar and cancer — MedicalXpress. Retrieved October 18, 2017.

Peeters, Van Leemputte, Fischer, et al. “Fructose-1,6-bisphosphate couples glycolytic flux to activation of Ras.” — Nature Communications, 2017.

A Nine-Year Collaboration Has Just Shown How Sugar Influences Cancer Cell Growth — Science Alert. Retrieved October 18, 2017.

Targeting Cancer’s Sweet Tooth — Ludwig Cancer Research. Retrieved October 18, 2017.

15 Terrible Things That Happen If You Eat Too Much Sugar — Business Insider. Retrieved October 18, 2017.

How Much Is Too Much? The growing concern over too much added sugar in our diets — University of California, San Francisco. Retrieved October 18, 2017.

The post Sugar’s cancer-fueling secret explained appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

You’ve heard this for so long — you know it like the back of your hand. But you know better now…

Fish oil, coconut oil, olive oil and the healthy fats in avocados and nuts contain fatty acids that support good health. These are the fats you’ve been encouraged to include in your diet to help fight against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and heart disease.

But here’s something you probably didn’t know…

It’s sugar that presents the real heart attack danger.

And for at least fifty years, the sugar industry has been footing the bill to make sure this sinister truth was hidden by its low-fat propaganda campaign…

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Putting profit ahead of health

In 1954, the president of the Sugar Research Foundation gave a speech describing a great business opportunity.

If Americans could be persuaded that eating a lower-fat diet was good for their health, he said, they’d eat less fat, and more sugar.

But research was already being published that suggested a connection between sugar and coronary disease. So, the SRF president commissioned a study of his own, one that would disprove this research.

Harvard scientists conducted the study. They looked at a variety of prior research into the dietary causes of heart disease.

Their conclusion: much of this prior research was badly flawed. Especially studies that named sugar as the problem. It seemed that dietary fat was the real culprit.

The Harvard study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967. One of the researchers was the chairman of Harvard’s Public Health Nutrition Department — and a member of the SRF board.

The SRF paid $50,000 in today’s dollars for their study. Of course, this funding source was never made public.

Today, the Coca-Cola company is following in these deceptive footsteps. They’re not happy that the amount of full-calorie soda Americans drink has dropped by 25 percent since the 1990s.

Coca-Cola supported the now-defunct Global Energy Balance Network, a non-profit that promoted the idea that lack of physical exercise, not bad diet, was primarily responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Another attempt to divert our attention from the real problem…

How much is too much?

Despite this type of deception, we’ve seen the light…

If you’re getting 25 percent or more of your daily calories from sugar, you’re a heart attack in the making. Studies show that this much sugar doubles your chances of dying as a result of heart disease.

This is true even if you’re eating an otherwise nutritious diet. Sugar puts such a strain on your heart, that even healthy people can fall victim to its effects.

A high-sugar diet causes your body to mimic the effects of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD. Your liver will produce compounds that cause plaque buildup in the arteries, making stroke and heart attack almost certain.

So, how much sugar is OK?

According to the American Heart Association, women should consume less than 100 calories of added sugar a day (about 6 teaspoons), and men less than 150 calories a day (about 9 teaspoons).

To put that in perspective, a 12-ounce can of soda has about 9 teaspoons of sugar. Just one can puts you over the recommended limit.

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Ways to avoid the sugar trap

Here are some great ways to limit your sugar intake, and protect your heart:

• Give up sodas. Just a can a day triples your stroke risk. But don’t make the switch to dementia-causing diet drinks.
• Cut back on the sugar you add to coffee or tea.
• Buy fresh fruits or fruits canned in water or natural juice. Avoid fruit canned in syrup.
• Instead of adding sugar to cereal or oatmeal, try fresh or dried fruit (beware: dried fruit often has sugar added).
• When baking cookies or cakes, cut the sugar called for in the recipe by one-third or one-half. Or, substitute unsweetened applesauce for sugar. You often won’t notice the difference!
• Try using spices in recipes, like ginger, allspice, cinnamon or nutmeg.
• Instead of sugar, try stevia. It’s a natural, safe sweetener derived from plant leaves.
• Learn to read package labels. There are more than seventy different names for sugar. Sucrose, barley malt, cane juice and brown rice syrup are just some of these. Find more here.
• Try plain yogurt. Instead of the sugary fruit-on-the-bottom version, try plain, and add your own fresh fruit.
• Fruit is better than fruit juice. It has more fiber, and usually fewer calories.
• Watch the condiments. Ketchup, barbecue sauce and some mustards have added sugar.
• Chew fennel seeds. They’re naturally sweet, but have no sugar, and curb cravings.
• Eat dark chocolate, not milk. Not only does dark chocolate have half the sugar content, it’s rich in minerals and antioxidants that protect your heart.
• Buy sugar-free versions of tomato sauce, peanut butter, salad dressing and other frequently used foods.

The post Your heart on sugar: The truth revealed appeared first on Easy Health Options®.