Insulin resistance is a modern day problem that is the result of eating modern day foods. What insulin resistance means is that the cells in your body are resistant to insulin. While this may not sound like a big deal, it is. The more insulin resistant your cells become, the high your blood sugar rises (and your body hates high blood sugar). Let’s take a look at just how insulin resistance happens in your body.

How Insulin Resistance Forms

If your blood sugar shoots up high occasionally, there is really no problem. The problem comes when your blood sugar is high over a long period of time or high blood sugar happens every day. To understand this, you have to understand what is happening in the cells of your body.

The cells in your body only want so much sugar; they just want enough sugar to do their jobs. When there is constantly too much insulin and too much sugar in the blood stream (like when you eat sugar at every meal) the only response that the cells have is to remove the doorways (receptors) from the outside of the cell. This process is called down-regulation of receptors. When insulin receptors disappear throughout the body, it creates a whole-body effect called “insulin resistance,” meaning the cells of the body become “resistant” to insulin.

Let’s take a look at what happens to the cell when the body removes receptors, in the following diagram the yellow represents the cell and the blue thingies are the receptors.

A cell goes from having this many receptors (normal):

To having, say, this many:

Now, this is a bit tricky to understand, but imagine if all the cells in your body began to respond to too much sugar by removing their insulin receptors. If every cell in the body removed its receptors, the doorways to sugar, what would happen? The end result would be that you’d have more sugar in your blood.

Why?

Remember that insulin used to be able to push sugar out of the blood stream and put it into the cells. The cells, though, are now getting rid of receptors because there is too much sugar around most of the time. The cells are becoming resistant to insulin. So, even though there is sugar in the blood stream and a lot of insulin, the sugar has no where to go because the cells won’t allow it in. So, now, where does the sugar go? It stays in the blood stream.

But you also have to remember, more sugar in the blood stream creates what? The answer is more sugar in the blood stream leads to more insulin. When your body becomes insulin resistant, the next time you eat a meal, you have a higher amount of sugar in your blood because the cells are refusing to take on that sugar. So, more sugar in the blood stream means that the body will now release more insulin. Do you see the vicious cycle that is starting to develop? More insulin circulating in the body will eventually lead to fewer receptors on cells, which will lead to more sugar in the blood, and more insulin, and fewer receptors and…you get the idea.

Cells will eventually look like this as they get rid of even more receptors:

Now you understand how insulin resistance can develop from eating a high amount of sugar every day. The association between eating sugars and the creation of insulin resistance is, however, far from being a proven phenomenon in human beings. Animal studies demonstrate a relationship between eating sugars and foods that act like sugar and the development of insulin resistance,[i]^,[ii] but the medical community is far from convinced. Like much of the scientific study on sugar and health, much more research is needed.

Over Time

Okay. Let’s see if we can pull this all together. Watch what happens over time, not to the individual cell, but in the whole body. The following chart shows how blood sugar and insulin react to each other and how insulin resistance builds over time when you are consuming sugar foods. (click on the image below to see full size).

What happens over time with insulin resistance is that the body can no longer produce enough insulin and, eventually, insulin production fails. When the body can no longer produce enough insulin or the cells have become resistant to insulin, your body is no longer able to keep blood sugar within a narrow range. This is called diabetes, a situation where the blood sugar is very high.

What Can You Do?

There is a lot that you can do to avoid insulin resistance, the chief among these is to stop eating sugar and foods that act like sugar. I have program called the 30 Sugar Free Days Program where you can join with other people who are giving sugar the boot.

Besides stopping the sugar feast, you can exercise, lower the amount of saturated fat in your diet and eat as many vegetables as you can. Insulin resistance is not a death sentence, but a wake-up call. There is a lot you can do to stop and reverse insulin resistance, but you have to get moving today.

[ii] Daly M: Sugars, insulin sensitivity, and the postprandial state. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Oct;78(4):865S-872S.

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How do you feel these days? If you feel a bit sluggish, tired, bloated, fuzzy in the head, have headaches, belly aches, or just don’t feel right then it may be time for a sugar detox. Sugar is everywhere (even in foods you don’t suspect, see: Hidden Sugars) and it is hard work doing a sugar detox and avoiding the white stuff all together. But a sugar detox is well worth the effort if you want to lose a few pounds and get back to feeling like your old self again.

Why is Sugar a Problem?

Oh sugar, you cause so many problems, let me count the ways:

1. Addictive: As you might have guessed, sugar is addictive. But what you may not have guessed is just how addictive sugar can be. When scientists test rats addicted to sugar they find that the addiction to sugar is just as strong as other addictions (like cigarettes, alcohol and even hard drugs). If you doubt this, try staying away from all sugar for just one day and you will see what a powerful hold that white stuff has over you. When you do a sugar detox you have to battle your addictions.
2. Health Problems: While many people in the medical community think that eating even large amounts of sugar is no problem, research is now showing that sugar is at least partially responsible for diabetes, heart disease, obesity and maybe even some cancers.
3. Weight Gain: The more sugar you eat, the more you are going weigh. The reason for this is that your body doesn’t want to waste the energy that you eat. Your body only needs so much fuel and when you eat too much sugar it is going to store all that extra energy as fat. Most people who go on a sugar detox lose a lot of weight.
4. Hurts Your Brain: Sugar is responsible for that fuzzy thinking you get in the middle of the day and can lead to headaches, problems focusing and maybe even depression. (see: What Sugar Does to Your Brain)

How to do a Sugar Detox

Going on a sugar detox is easy, right? All you have to do is stop eating all sugar. Well… it is easy to say you should do a sugar detox but much harder to actually do.

There are two obstacles that you have to overcome when you do a sugar detox.

• The first is the addictive nature of sugar. The bad news about a sugar detox is that the cravings that come when you stop eating sugar are incredibly powerful. But here is the good news: it gets easier. It really gets easier if you have support from friends and family. Most people who go through a sugar detox find that the first few days are hard and then they feel better than they have in a while.

• The second is that kicking sugar alone is not enough, you also have to stop eating the foods that act like sugar. The reason for this is that many foods you eat raise your blood sugar more than eating table sugar; so to truly detox from sugar you have to avoid the foods that act like sugar to (see: Foods that act Like Sugar).

I have created a program called the 30 Sugar Free Days Program that will help you with your sugar detox. The program includes daily e-mails and has a group on Facebook for the support that you need. The program is designed to help you stay away from both sugar and the foods that act like sugar.

Yes, a sugar detox is not easy, but it is well worth the effort and you will feel better than you have in a while once you given sugar a kick out the door.

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I often get the question about why fruits and vegetables are good for you and the short answer is that they are good for you because they are what you are supposed to be eating. That sweet tooth you have is not meant to lead you to white sugar or refined carbohydrates it is meant to lead you to the natural sweetness found in fruits and vegetables. Let’s take a look at exactly why fruits and vegetables are good for you.

High Nutrition, Low Calories

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I’m not a big fan of the calorie concept (see: When it Comes to Weight Loss, Forget Calories), but calories can be useful when talking about certain food concepts and understanding the goodness of vegetables and fruits is one of those times.

There are many ways to measure the value of the food you are eating. Measuring food by weight and nutrients is called a Nutrient Adequacy Score and is a common way to measure the quality of food, but it is very inaccurate. You can also measure the quality of food by calorie (how many nutrients does a food supply per calorie) and this is much more accurate. When you compare the nutritional value of foods by calories (called a Nutrient Density Score) you see that nothing stacks up to fruits and vegetables.

When you calculate the Nutrient Density of Foods then foods such as Kale, spinach, Brussels sprouts score really high (you get a lot of nutrients per calorie) and foods like grains, beans and meats are much lower (not many nutrient per calorie).

There are many different nutrient density scoring charts, but the most user-friendly is Dr. Joel Furhman’s (see ANDI Scoring System). Using this system show you that there is nothing as good for you to eat as fruits and vegetables.

You might be shunning fruits and vegetables for their cost, but take a closer look. When Turns out vegetables may seem expensive, but they provide the best nutrient per calorie of any food[i]

Anti-Everything

Fruits are vegetables are the anit-everthing foods (anti-cancer, anti-heart disease…) There are no better fighters of disease to put in your mouth than fruits and vegetables. Let’s take a look.

Anticancer

• Fruit consumption seems to be protective against cancers of the esophagus, oral cavity, and larynx.[ii]
• Eating more fruits and veggies protects against cancer of the stomach and pancreas as well as colorectal, prostate,^[iii] and bladder cancers. Even lung cancer risk is lower for smokers who eat their veggies.^[iv]
• For women, cancers of the cervix, ovary, and breast,^[v] and endometrium are all lower when they consume more fruits and vegetables.
• Women who consume a large amount of fiber are at lower risk for breast cancer in women (fiber “sweeps” cholesterol and bad estrogens out of the body).^[vi]
• Clinical trials are ongoing with many individual fruits and vegetables:
  • Cruciferous vegetables (such as cabbage and broccoli).[vii]
  • Allium vegetables (such as garlic and onion).[viii]
  • Tomatoes.[ix]
  • Berries.[x]

• Compounds found in fruits and vegetables are also being tested:  lycopene (from tomatoes), sulforaphane (from asparagus), brassinin, (from cruciferous vegetables), indole-3-carbinol (from broccoli), and resveratrol (from grapes and peanuts). [xi]

• John Hopkins School Of Medicine has been studying the benefits of Brassica vegetables for over 20 years.
  • High fruits and vegetable consumption reduces your risk of high blood pressure.^[xii]
  • A high-fiber diet lowers cholesterol,^[xiii]
  • You also reduce your overall risk of heart disease when you eat fruits and veggies.^[xiv]
  • Consumption of fruits and vegetables—particularly leafy green vegetables and vitamin C-rich fruits—appears to have a protective effect against coronary heart disease.^[xv]
  • Eating more fruits and vegetables helps you to lose weight; scientific research has shown that eating more fiber does help to lower your weight.^[xvi]

  Heart Disease

  • High fruits and vegetable consumption reduces your risk of high blood pressure.^[i]
  • A high-fiber diet lowers cholesterol,^[ii]
  • You also reduce your overall risk of heart disease when you eat fruits and veggies.^[iii]
  • Consumption of fruits and vegetables—particularly leafy green vegetables and vitamin C-rich fruits—appears to have a protective effect against coronary heart disease.^[iv]

Weight Loss

• Eating more fruits and vegetables helps you to lose weight; scientific research has shown that eating more fiber does help to lower your weight.^[v]

Other Diseases

• The risk for Alzheimer’s, ^[xvii] diabetes, ^[xviii] and many other diseases is lower with higher fruit and vegetable consumption.

Vegetables and Fruits are Good For You

There is no doubt that vegetables and fruits are good for you, the research above is only a tiny bit of what is out there. You should try to make fruits and vegetables as much of your diet as possible. You can feed your body what it needs by making sure every meal has some sort of fruit and vegetable in it.

[ii] Riboli E, Norat T. Epidemiologic evidence of the protective effect of fruit and vegetables on cancer risk. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Sep;78(3 Suppl):559S-569S.

[iii] Freedland SJ, Aronson WJ. Dietary intervention strategies to modulate prostate cancer risk and prognosis. Curr Opin Urol. 2009 May;19(3):263-7.

[iv] Block G, Patterson B, Subar A. Fruit, vegetables, and cancer prevention: a review of the epidemiological evidence. Nutr Cancer. 1992;18(1):1-29.

[v] Patterson RE, Cadmus LA, Emond JA, Pierce JP. Physical activity, diet, adiposity and female breast cancer prognosis: A review of the epidemiologic literature. Maturitas. 2010 Jan 22

[vi] Suzuki R, Rylander-Rudqvist T, Ye W, Saji S, Adlercreutz H, Wolk A. Dietary fiber intake and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer defined by estrogen and progesterone receptor status–a prospective cohort study among Swedish women. Int J Cancer. 2008 Jan 15;122(2):403-12.

[vii] Herr I, Büchler MW. Dietary constituents of broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables: implications for prevention and therapy of cancer. Cancer Treat Rev. 2010 Aug;36(5):377-83. Epub 2010 Feb 20.

[viii] Bianchini F, Vainio H. Allium vegetables and organosulfur compounds: do they help prevent cancer? Environ Health Perspect. 2001 Sep;109(9):893-902

[ix] Ansari MS, Ansari S. Lycopene and prostate cancer. Future Oncol. 2005 Jun;1(3):425-30.

[x] Gullett NP, Ruhul Amin AR, Bayraktar S, Pezzuto JM, et al. Cancer prevention with natural compounds. Semin Oncol. 2010 Jun;37(3):258-81.

[xi] Gullett NP, Ruhul Amin AR, Bayraktar S, Pezzuto JM, et al. Cancer prevention with natural compounds. Semin Oncol. 2010 Jun;37(3):258-81.

[xii] Alonso A, de la Fuente C, Martín-Arnau AM, et al. Fruit and vegetable consumption is inversely associated with blood pressure in a Mediterranean population with a high vegetable-fat intake: the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) Study. Br J Nutr. 2004 Aug;92(2):311-9.

[xiii] Brown L, Rosner B, Willett WW, Sacks FM. Cholesterol-lowering effects of dietary fiber: a meta-analysis. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999 Jan;69(1):30-42.

[xiv] Slavícek J, Kittnar O, Fraser GE, et al. Lifestyle decreases risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. Cent Eur J Public Health. 2008 Dec;16(4):161-4.

[xv] Joshipura KJ, Hu FB, Manson JE, et al.  The effect of fruit and vegetable intake on risk for coronary heart disease. Ann Intern Med. 2001 Jun 19;134(12):1106-14.

[xvi] Liu S, Willett WC, Manson JE, et al. Relation between changes in intakes of dietary fiber and grain products and changes in weight and development of obesity among middle-aged women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Nov;78(5):920-7.

[xvii] Giem P, Beeson WL, Fraser GE. The incidence of dementia and intake of animal products: preliminary findings from the Adventist Health Study. Neuroepidemiology. 1993;12(1):28-36.

[xviii] Barnard ND, Cohen J, Jenkins DJ, et al. A low-fat vegan diet and a conventional diabetes diet in the treatment of type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled, 74-wk clinical trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 May;89(5):1588S-1596S. Epub 2009 Apr 1.

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The reason why the history of health is interesting is that what people worry about has changed over time. Ask someone 200 years ago what health concerns they have and you would hear them say that they fear some sort of accident or infection. The reason why they feared accidents and infections is because most people died from infections or injuries 200 years ago.

What is remarkable when you ask that same question of people today is that, while infection is a worry for us to, it is a small concern compared to our fear of cancer or heart disease or a dementia like Alzheimer’s. This dramatic shift in our health concerns has happened in the last 100 years and I’m not sure most people are aware of it or what it means about where you turn for health care or how it should change the choices you make every day.

The Nobel Battle

For most of human history, the battle for health has been a battle over infection and sudden illness. This is a battle that modern medicine has waged well and has, for the most part, won. The introduction of wonder drugs like antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatories and more were a boon to our health and longevity. While there is a great debate about just how much these drugs have done for our health and longevity, it is pretty clear that the wonder drugs did play a role in the improvement of our health. Yes, improved sanitation and food handling have reduced infectious disease, but the drugs, too, have played an important role.

Combine the change in sanitation, the introduction of emergency medicine to deal with accidents, and powerful drugs and you change the average life expectancy from around 40 or 50 years old 100 years ago to around 78 today. Quite an accomplishment.

Out goes the era of infections and sudden diseases and in comes the modern age with new health challenges.

Enter the Era of Slow Diseases

Slow diseases are completely different from sudden diseases like infection and accidents. No longer are we terrified about getting the plague or other infectious disease, we are now mostly concerned about cancer, diabetes, heart disease. These new fears reflect the reality. Yes, there is AIDS, bird flu and other infectious diseases, but your risk of dying from one of those infectious diseases is small compared to the risk that you are going to die from a disease that slowly creeps up on you.

You currently have a 1 in 5 risk of dying from heart disease and about a one in seven chance of dying form cancer.

But these slow diseases are fundamentally different from the diseases of previous generations and require you to think and act differently.

To understand why you have to think differently, you have to remember the frog in the pot of boiling water. Many people have heard about the story of the frog in the hot water: If you put a frog in some very hot water, it will jump right out, but if you put him in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil he will die. The diseases we face are exactly like the slowly boiling water: they are slow that it is not apparent that we are in danger until it is too late.

Confusing the Role of Medicine

I  think the biggest problem people have when they have a slow disease is confusing the role of medicine and drug therapy. If you have an sudden injury, acute infection, then standard medicine is the way go. But when you have a slow disease, your approach has to be different. Yes, you can go to traditional medicine if you have something like arthritis, and they can help your pain go away, but the medicines they are giving you do nothing to address the underlying cause of the disease. You may feel better, but that feeling is not going to last, as the drugs either have side-effects that are worse than the disease, or they stop being effective.

Slow diseases require a different approach and a different attitude on your part. I’m sorry to say this to you if you don’t know it, but medicine is never going to find a cure for cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or diabetes, or heart disease or hundred of other slow-developing diseases. I know you want to believe that medicine will cure everything (and I would like to too) but these diseases do not lend themselves to being cured by a pill. The body is just too complex and the drug solution not helpful enough.

I’m not alone is saying this, even the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society would agree: you can prevent up to 70 percent of these diseases by changing your diet and your habits.

Change Your Approach

Since the chances you are going to be faced with a slow disease are much higher than an acute or sudden disease, you have to change your approach to health care. Your health is in your hands. The small little things you do every day are important. Taking the stairs instead of an elevator, choosing to avoid soda and sugars, getting enough sleep, maintaining a regular health regime… all these are important.

You cannot wait for medicine to cure the diseases you will have in the future; that help will never come. You have to pay attention to the temperature of the water around you and jump out of the pot before it starts boiling instead of waiting until tomorrow to start changing. There is no more powerful thing that you can do then to change your habits and improve your health.

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Health News:

HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY (HRT): HRT and the risks of breast cancer were reviewed in a recent symposium. It appears that even using HRT for a short time increased the risk of breast cancer. Which begs the question: why use HRT? The risks are not a small increase, but for some women constitute a doubling of their risk for breast cancer.

Dr. Scott’s Comments: Hormones are powerful and can create huge problems in our bodies. Estrogen, in particular, is a problem for women because of the risk of breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancers. Part of the problem lies in the fact that most HRT are synthetic hormones that are not natural to humans. Other problems have to do with the fact that many chemicals in our environment act like estrogens (including plastics, pesticides, and a host of other chemicals). The final question has to be should we be putting hormones in an aging person at all?

HRT is a travesty because there are many natural substitutes that work just as well, without the side effects.

original article

CANCER MUCH WORSE FOR DIABETICS: Cancer is currently the number two killer worldwide and is rapidly approaching number one. People with diabetes are more than 40 percent likely to die in the years right after a cancer diagnosis than people who are not diabetic.

Dr Scott’s Comments: There are no well-established links between sugar consumption and cancer — at least not yet. This new study sheds light on another horrible aspect of diabetes: it makes surviving a cancer diagnosis harder. For me, this adds to the destruction wrought by sugar. Not only is sugar toxic to our blood vessels (witness the kidney, eye and heart damage in diabetics), but it also leads to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Clearly we have to start avoiding the sugar and foods that act like sugar in our diets.

original article

LOW GLYCEMIC DIET FOR DIABETICS: The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association has published an article showing that diabetics eating foods that are low on the glycemic index had better sugar control than those that didn’t.

Dr Scott’s Comments: I’m going to borrow a word from my 10 year-old-daughter to describe the finding of this study: DUH! Medical science has come a long way, but they have yet to make any connection between what we eat and the diseases that we get. Maybe this study will change their minds. Yes, diabetes has something to do with the sugar and foods that act like sugar that we eat every day. I think that people eating Eating Below the Glycemic Index would fare even better… maybe even reverse their diabetes.

original article

STRESS INCREASES HEART DAMAGE: People who reported a high amount of stress in their lives increased the risk of a cardiovascular event by as much as 50 percent when compared to people who have a low amount of stress. The increase in disease was evident by the number of heart attacks, bypass surgeries, and strokes that high-stress people suffered from.

Dr. Scott’s Comments: This study shows the strong connection between our minds and our bodies. Stress is a big killer, but is often hard to define or understand. I personally feel the best treatment for stress is exercise. Whenever the world starts weighing too much on my shoulders, I know I have to get out for a run, or hop on my bike, or even just take a walk outside. It also helps to listen to other people’s worries: When you hear someone describe what they are worried about, you realize that many of their fears are ungrounded, maybe yours are too?

original article

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I have long said that exercise is a panacea and a cure-all, and recent research has backed up my claim. I find it funny to think that Ponce De Lion, the legendary explorer who went off in search of the fountain of youth, actually found the elixir to long life, only it wasn’t a fountain at all, but the exercise he was getting looking for the fountain. Ponce De Lion would have lived a long life if an arrow hadn’t cut it short.

Exercise is a powerful way to change how you feel and it can actually alter or reverse many diseases. If exercise were a drug, doctors couldn’t keep it on the shelf. Exercise is truly the best drug ever, and the incredible part about the exercise story is that this “drug” is free and it has virtually no side effects.

The importance of exercising is summed up well in this quote:

The Global Burden of Disease Study initiated by the World Health Organization included physical inactivity among the most important risk factors threatening global health. A sedentary life style may be as detrimental to health as smoking.(1)

Read that again! That quote is saying that not exercising has the same bad health effects as smoking. Clearly you have to get up off your butt and start moving it around some.

Let’s take a look and see just how powerful of a drug exercise can be.

Health Benefits of Exercise

The research supporting the benefits of exercise is enormous and the following are just a sample of what is out there.

• Cardiovascular Disease: Exercise improves heart function, blood flow to the whole body, nervous system control over the heart, and a technical measurement called endothelial function in patients with heart disease.(2) It appears from a large number of studies that exercise can help prevent heart disease. Exercise even helps people who have had a heart attack, reducing symptoms, complications, trips back to the hospital, and longer life. Not only that, but their quality of their life is better, they have lower depression, and they return to work or active life quicker than people who don’t exercise.⁽³⁾
  

• High Blood Pressure: The good news is that high blood pressure appears to respond best to moderate exercise (as opposed to strenuous exercise). With as little as 30 minutes of continuous exercise a day, patients are able to reduce their high blood pressure. It is important to note that the kind of exercise is important: continuous. Continuous exercise is walking, running, biking and not tennis, golf or even soccer or basketball.⁽⁴⁾ The jury is still out if weight training or high-intensity exercise will help high blood pressure.

• Rheumatoid arthritis: Moderate exercise has been shown to improve the symptoms (less pain) and the functional ability (they can do more) in people with rheumatoid arthritis.(5)

• Diabetes: Exercise has been studied in diabetics for a long time and has been shown to improve blood sugar control and reduce the need for medications. In a new study on the effects of exercise in diabetics, researchers were able to prove that long-term blood sugar control (by measuring hemoglobin A1c) is much better in diabetics that exercise than those that don’t, even when there they didn’t lose weight because of the exercising.(6)

• Weight Loss: As you can guess, exercise and weight loss has been extensively studied. A new study on overweight children showed that exercise helped them (more than adults) maintain their weight loss over a long period of time.(7) This study is so important and demonstrates that exercise can become a habit if introduced early enough in someone’s life. While normal-weight people should exercise at least 30 minutes (moderate intensity) on most days; overweight people should exercise 60 to 80 minutes a day.(8)

• Cognitive function: There is pretty good evidence that exercise will help maintain brain function, including memory, cognitive function, and attention in older adults. Since Alzheimer’s (and dementia in general) are becoming such a health disaster, it is good to know that exercise can be preventive.(9)

• Depression and Anxiety: A prescription for exercise often works better in people with depression and anxiety than taking a drug. New research suggests that this effect may be due to the ability of exercise to help us deal with stress.(10) Who couldn’t use a little stress and anxiety reduction?

What Else?

Exercise has been show to:

• Improve self-esteem, especially in children.(11)
• Reduce the risk for colon cancer.(12)
• Improves our quality of life, especially in older people.(13)
• Reduce back pain.(14)
• Prevent osteoporosis.(15)

Move Your Buns Around

Okay, I didn’t quite tell you the truth above, there are side-effects from exercise and you can hurt yourself; luckily, though, most of the damage you can do is only temporary (unlike some drug damage).

Here is what you need to know to get started on your own exercise program:

• Always check with your health care provider before starting an exercise program.
• You don’t have to kill yourself; moderate exercise is what has been shown to be the most effective for most conditions.
• Start slow and build up to 30 minutes every (or most) days. You’ll want to do more if you are overweight.
• Pick a continuous exercise: this means your heart rate is up for a sustained period. Choose exercise like running, walking, cycling, cross-country skiing and others.
• Consider adding weight lifting into your program.

Most of all, you want to have fun and stick with it. Yes, it can be a drag putting on clothes and getting out the door in the rain and snow, but most people love their exercise once they get going. If you can’t exercise outside, I recommend that you “pay” for the television that you watch by putting an exercise bike or a treadmill in front of the TV.

Take advantage of the best drug ever and start your exercise program today!

Citations

1. Erikssen G. Physical fitness and changes in mortality: the survival of the fittest. Sports Med. 2001;31(8):571-6.

2. Humphrey R, Bartels MN. Exercise, cardiovascular disease, and chronic heart failure. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2001 Mar;82(3 Suppl 1):S76-81

3. Ades PA, Coello CE. Effects of exercise and cardiac rehabilitation on cardiovascular outcomes. Med Clin North Am. 2000 Jan;84(1):251-65, x-xi.

4. Pescatello LS. Exercise and hypertension: recent advances in exercise prescription. Curr Hypertens Rep. 2005 Aug;7(4):281-6.

5. Metsios GS, Stavropoulos-Kalinoglou A, et al. Rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease and physical exercise: a systematic review. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2008 Mar;47(3):239-48.

6. Boulé NG, Haddad E, Kenny GP, et al. Effects of exercise on glycemic control and body mass in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials. JAMA. 2001 Sep 12;286(10):1218-27.

7. Sothern MS. Exercise as a modality in the treatment of childhood obesity. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2001 Aug;48(4):995-1015.

8. Leermakers EA, Dunn AL, Blair SN. Exercise management of obesity. Med Clin North Am. 2000 Mar;84(2):419-40.

9. Angevaren M, Aufdemkampe G, Verhaar HJ. Physical activity and enhanced fitness to improve cognitive function in older people without known cognitive impairment. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008 Apr 16;(2):CD005381

10.  Salmon P. Effects of physical exercise on anxiety, depression, and sensitivity to stress: a unifying theory. Clin Psychol Rev. 2001 Feb;21(1):33-61.

11. Ekeland E, Heian F, Hagen KB. Can exercise improve self esteem in children and young people? A systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Br J Sports Med. 2005 Nov;39(11):792-8

12. Trojian TH, Mody K, Chain P. Exercise and colon cancer: primary and secondary prevention. Curr Sports Med Rep. 2007 Apr;6(2):120-4.

13. Stewart KJ. Physical activity and aging. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2005 Dec;1055:193-206.

14. Hayden JA, van Tulder MW, Tomlinson G. Systematic review: strategies for using exercise therapy to improve outcomes in chronic low back pain. Ann Intern Med. 2005 May 3;142(9):776-85.

15. Hingorjo MR, Syed S, Qureshi MA. Role of exercise in osteoporosis prevention–current concepts. J Pak Med Assoc. 2008 Feb;58(2):78-81

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We do a lot of strange things, and unfortunately for our health, they often lead to illness. As a whole, our memories are short, we think that the things we do every day are the things that humans have always done, but this is just not true.

To determine what we should do, we often look to other people for help; scientists call this “social proof”. Social proof is fine when everyone around you is acting in accordance with their health and their happiness, but as you might guess from all the unhealthy people you see every day, this just isn’t the case. We have slowly moved from healthy living habits to destructive habits and the movement has been so slow we have barely noticed it. I’ve gathered together some of the weird things humans do that can seem perfectly normal because everyone else is doing them, but are not.

If you are looking to improve your health, you might want to steer clear of what everyone else is doing

1. Not Sleeping when we are Tired

Look around you: dogs, cats – even the mice in your walls – all lie down and sleep when they are tired. We don’t do that. What do you do if you are tired? If you are like a lot of us, you reach for coffee. Animals don’t do that, they lie down and sleep when they are tired. There are actually two issues here: the first is that amount of sleep you need and the second is sleeping during the day. It can be a bit hard to determine what is normal for the amount of sleep we need, but looking at animals, they are sleeping much more than we are and they tend to break up their sleep into smaller chunks. You might need eight hours of sleep, but maybe your number is six or ten hours. You should also consider adding a nap into your routine. Next time you think you need a pick-me-up from your coffee cup, try a short nap. I’m a big fan of the nap and try to catch one every day; it is the best way I know to “reboot” my brain for an afternoon in front of the computer. Here is a great page for information on napping and a no nonsense guide to napping.

2. Not Relaxing

You relax don’t you? You go home, sit in front of the television and relax. Right? That is not what I’m talking about. You, your body, your mind, and your soul need a time out. I’m not talking about sitting in front of the television, but true relaxing, just hanging out and doing nothing. To understand what I mean by relaxing, try picturing a day at the beach. The beach seems to be one place in our society where it is okay to just sit and do nothing (if you didn’t pack in toys, radios…). Try to set aside a small portion of your day for pretending you are on the beach. Just sit and stare at the clouds or your ceiling or whatever. Do nothing, just let your mind wander. If you are into prayer or mediation, this is a great time to practice that.

3. Eating Grains

I know what you are thinking when you read this: of course it is normal to eat grains; the government recommends that grains make up most of our diet, it has to be normal. But, once again, eating grains seems normal because everyone is doing it, but grains are not optimal food for humans. Humans have only been munching on grains – in any large amounts – for the last 7,000 years. Sure, that sounds like a lot of time, but it actually is not. Our bodies have not adapted to the large amount of carbohydrates we put into them. High blood sugar which results from eating grains is responsible for more ill health than smoking cigarettes (see my book Sugarettes). Try replacing grains with fruits and vegetables at every meal. You will be astonished at how much better you feel.

4.Wearing Shoes

Putting shoes on your feet seems pretty normal, right? Actually, your foot is incredible complex and wearing shoes all the time can be harmful to your feet. I suggest you spend at least part of the day waking around without shoes. A great trick is to get a plastic bucket and fill it with small stones (like pea gravel) spend ten or 15 minutes just standing in the gravel. It gives your feet a massage and rebuilds many of the muscles that have atrophied due to shoe wearing. There are also shoes from Terra Plana called Vivo Barefoot shoes that have a Kevlar bottom so that your feet can have the barefoot experience while still looking like a normal shoe.

5. Being Inside

We live most of our lives inside and this is just not healthy. Not only is the air pollution inside a home or office often much worse than outside, we are also not getting enough sunlight. We have grown afraid of the big bad sun and have forgotten that it has a lot to do with our health. Yes, you should not be out in the sun long enough to get a bad burn, but skin cancer has a lot less to do with our exposure to sunlight than previously thought. It appears that skin cancer may have much more to do with the lack of essential nutrients than sun exposure; some research suggests that it is the lack of sunlight that causes cancer. We get vitamin D from sun exposure and that vitamin is so essential to our health that you should consider supplementing if you are not getting enough (I like cod liver oil for vitamin D supplementation).

6. Drinking Calories

If you think, like I do, that eating foods as close to the way that they are presented to us in nature (non-processed) is the best way to eat, then you have to question consuming calories in liquid form. Think about it, if you go back 10,000 years, how many drinkable foods were available on the planet? Only water (okay, and, breast milk). Drinking calories only becomes a problem when those calories are mostly sugars. Sugars in liquid form are absorbed rapidly into our bodies and create all sorts of havoc including: weight gain, diabetes, heart disease and maybe even cancer. Our bodies are woefully unprepared for calories to come in a liquid form. If you are going to do only one thing for your health, I strongly urge you to stop drinking soda and fruit juice.

7. Stretching Before Exercise

Okay, I don’t count this as a major health hazard, but there is a great recent article that shows stretching is not such a good idea for athletes.

8. Not Moving Your Buns Around

We sit a lot! We sit in cars, we sit at work, we sit on the couch… humans are professional sitters. Our ancestors had far more muscle mass than most of us do today. Muscle mass is one of the keys to not only how long we live, but also to general health and weight loss. You need to get up and move your buns around every day and build up your muscle mass. Walking is perhaps the best exercise you can participate in, but swimming, cycling, running, hiking and anything that gets your heart rate up, are all great. Exercise is so important that you should prioritize it over everything else that you do: exercise is a vitamin, exercise is a drug, exercise is the fountain of youth. There are hundreds of research studies that show that exercise helps with weight loss, depression, anxiety, heart health and works as an anti-cancer activity. Get off your buns and move them around a bit every day.

9. Not Going to the Bathroom when we Need to Go

Once again, look to the animal world and find one animal that will stop its urges to go to the bathroom. Ignoring the urge to urinate has been associated with a higher rate of urinary tract infections, but it is especially harmful when you hold on to a bowel movement. Constipation is a major source of illness and increases the risk for hemorrhoids and even certain cancers. Constipation often leads to more constipation. I know it is hard, because of how we live our lives, but try and not ignore your body’s urges.

10. Cooking Foods

As I mentioned earlier, it is best to eat foods as close to the way that they are presented to us as possible. When we cook foods, they lose vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients. The most grievous of losses are the loss of essential fatty acids, or EFAs. Most of us don’t get enough essential fatty acids and EFAs are one of the few supplements that I think everyone should take (one again, I would recommend cod liver oil to get your EFAs).

Well, there they are: the Weird Things Humans Do. I’m sure I missed a few; feel free to add them into the comment section. When you look at all the strange things we do you start to realize just how un-normal normal can be. Health is a matter of breaking free of the things most people do and charting a way through the world that prioritizes your health.

Take the plunge and try the 30 sugar free days challenge:

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Have you ever watched a television show or movie where someone from our time traveled to the future? Inevitably, sometime during the episode, the character from our time encounters the future medicine. The future doctor proclaims medicine’s triumph over some illness we think of as incurable. Cancer, leukemia, heart disease, autism, along with toenail fungus and bad breath have all been banished by the miracle of science and medicine. The future doctor can perform miracles with a mechanical magic-wand of sorts that he waves over wounds and even broken bones and they heal in seconds.

The reason television and movie writers can write that scene is because we never really question the underlying assumption that is the root for all these time-traveling episodes: that medicine will uncover a cure for everything… it only needs time.

This assumption, that science will discover all the answers to our health problems, crops up in all sorts of areas. Our faith in medicine is, for example, the reason why some dying people are willing to undergo experiments that might not help them, but might help someone in the future. They are willing to sacrifice themselves because they believe that a cure for their illness will eventually be found. It is also the reason why we get so excited about new drugs that hit the market (stay tuned because I have much more to say about new drugs in a future post).

Scientific Scoreboard

The reason why we have such faith in science is that it has appears to have a pretty good track record. The problem is that we have short memories. The faith we have in medicine probably began in the early to mid 1900s. The discovery of antibiotics, steroid anti-inflammatories, anesthesia and other chemically-based drugs truly was a miracle. But while many of these drugs were initially extremely helpful, they have failed to live up to their wonder-drug status due to overuse (as is the case with antibiotics) or side effects (as is the case with steroid anti-inflammatories).

While these wonder drugs worked well on acute illnesses (infection, pain, inflammation), medicine has had a much harder time wrestling with chronic diseases.

Imagine for a moment that today is the year 1971. You just watched Richard Nixon on the television tell you that he was declaring a War on Cancer. Finally, you think, we are going to spend money on finding a cure for cancer. You have faith in medicine and know they will find a cure if we only focus and spend money on research.

Spend money is exactly what they have done since the 1970s to the tune of nearly 1 billion dollars a year for research and drug development.

What have we gotten for our 40 billion dollars? Not much.

Cancer rates actually grew larger from 1971 to around 1995. Since that time, the percentage of cancer death rates has been dropping about 1 percent per year. That sounds like great news until you look closer at the statistics. What miracle drug do we say accounts for this drop? Actually, it isn’t drug, but the reduction in the number of smokers that accounts for a large percentage of this drop. Some of the drop in cancer death rates can be attributed to early detection of certain cancers such as breast, endometrial and prostate cancer.

So, after 40 years and 40 billion dollars worth of research, it is simple measures such as stopping smoking and regular medical checkups that accounts for the drop in cancer death rates.

What is even more astounding is that cancer incidence (the number of people getting cancer) has actually increased for many cancers over the last 40 years. That means that even though we have held the percentage of people who die from a certain cancer relatively steady, more and more people are getting cancer.

Other diseases follow similar tracks, with the main improvements in death rates not coming from science but from changes in our diets or improving lifestyle choices such as smoking or exposure to chemicals.

Where to Put Your Trust

I’m not saying that science is not helpful; in fact I feel the opposite, but our complete faith that science will find a cure for everything that ails us, I think, is misplaced. There are some things that science will just not be able to cure. There is no magic wand to wave over our skin to heal a cut or a broken bone or to remove all cancer from your body.

Your trust and faith shouldn’t lay in the scientist’s hands, but yours. You have the ability to affect your own health in ways no machine or drug ever could.

Health advice is not hard to find (especially since we all have access to the internet) and much of it is the same: eat better, exercise, reduce stress and sleep better. I would add that a major source of injury we do to ourselves has to do with our food choices and I generally recommend a diet that contains little to no grains or sugars (see my book Sugarettes).

My Television Show

I see a television show or movie where the time traveler meets the doctor of the future and the future doctor laughs at him when he asks the doctor if they can now cure cancer. “Cure cancer?” the future doctor says, “We haven’t learned how to cure it, but we now know how to prevent it be eating better, avoiding toxins, sleeping better and reducing stress. That is how we eradicated cancer.”

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A picture pops into most people’s heads when they hear the words “heart attack.” That picture usually starts with an old man who is a drinker or a smoker. Maybe he’s outside working, or maybe he is having an argument and is really angry; either way, he stops what he is doing and grabs his chest. Soon, he is felling numbness or tingling down his left arm, eventually the pain intensifies (like an elephant sitting on his chest). Suddenly, grabs his chest and falls to the floor.

Heart attacks are considered the silent killer because the first sign of a heart attack is usually the heart attack itself. The hidden nature of heart attacks is made even more severe by the fact that most people (including doctors) have that exact picture of an old man in their head when they think of someone having a heart attack. That picture, while correct, doesn’t account for over 1/2 of the people who visit the emergency room with heart attacks.

What we and doctors need is a new picture that represents the most common heart attack victim.

Try this picture:

Instead of the old man, you need to put a woman in your picture, because since the mid 1980′s more women have died of heart attacks than men.

The woman in our new picture doesn’t smoke, but she might have high blood pressure or diabetes and she is often normal weight. She knows she doesn’t feel well, but cannot place what is wrong. Sometimes her neck or shoulder may hurt, but often she just feels sick to her stomach and may vomit. Occasionally she may feel short of breath.

All of these symptoms make her think she maybe ate something she shouldn’t have, but nothing a serious as a heart attack is entering her mind (because she too has the wrong picture in her head). She has no tingling down her arm, no elephant on her chest, no collapsing… just vague symptoms. Her chest may hurt enough that she calls or even stop by her doctor’s office, but she will often leave with a suggestion to take some antacids.

Even if she makes it to the hospital and they somehow think her problems may be heart-related, none of the common tests they run show anything wrong. For example, a common test for heart disease called an EKG is often normal looking even in a woman who has had a heart attack; other standard tests may also show nothing is wrong.

Women and Heart Disease

What doctors and the rest of the world are starting to understand is that heart disease is an entirely different condition in women than in men. Cardiovascular disease affects more women than men and is the leading killer of women in America.

Let’s look at why heart disease is such a serious problem for women:

• Most of the research done on heart disease has been performed on men.
  
• The leading cause of death of women 25 years and older is coronary artery disease (clogged arteries).
  
• While death rates from heart disease have dropped in men over the last few decades, they are increasing for women.
  
• More than 250,000 women in the United States die each year from heart disease (accounting for 40 percent of all deaths for women).
  
• Even if a woman reports chest pain, they are much more likely than men to have clear coronary arteries, this leaves researchers scratching their heads wondering what is going on.
  
• The standard treatments for blocked arteries are commonly balloon procedures or bypass and women are much more likely to have a poor outcome from these treatments than men. This may be due to the fact that women with heart disease are much more likely to have another disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol which makes any surgery more dangerous.
  
• Women, more than men, are likely to develop heart failure.
  
• Even blood tests that help diagnose heart attacks are often negative in women.
  
• Depression is a common in over 40 percent of women who have had a heart attack; depression typically occurs in only 20 percent of men.
  

It is obvious from the above that heart disease in women is different from heart disease in men.

The danger for women is threefold: They are more likely to have a heart attack than a man; they may not have typical symptoms if they do have a heart attack; and their doctors may not take them or their symptoms seriously.

Heart Health for Women

Remember, a heart attack can look like that picture of the old man, but other symptoms may include:

• Squeezing or feeling of fullness the chest
  
• Shortness of breath
  
• Nausea
  
• Sweating
  
• Dizziness
  
• Fatigue
  
• Paleness
  

The standard advice for heart disease applies to women, only more so: Remember to eat well, exercise, keep your weight normal, and don’t smoke. New research studies are starting to uncover the differences in heart disease in men and women, but taking control of your health is of vital importance for women.

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