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Thursday, April 23, 2015
ALI SET TO FACE FRANCISCO SANATAN AS Klitschko-JENNINGS CO-MAIN EVENTLIVE ON HBO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING ®
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Two-time world champion Steve "USS" Cunningham signs with Al Haymon
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Tuesday, April 14, 2015
3 Ways to Tell If a ‘Natural’ Food Is Actually Good for You
Part of the shift is a movement toward foods that are real, rather than altered. As a fan of natural foods and clean eating, I’m all for it. But “natural” doesn’t inherently mean healthy. Here are three key points to consider when evaluating natural products, and some pitfalls to avoid.
You may be surprised to learn that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t developed a legal definition for the term natural. They allow its use if a product doesn’t contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances, but there is definitely a lot of gray area regarding the interpretation of natural. For example, carrageenan is an ingredient that can be derived from seaweed, but I bet you’ve never seen it sold at your local farmer’s market or supermarket.
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Just 5 days of eating fatty foods can alter how your body’s muscle processes food: Virginia Tech researchers
You might think that you can get away with eating fatty foods for a few days without it making any significant changes to your body. Think again. After just five days of eating a high-fat diet, the way in which the body’s muscle processes nutrients changes, which could lead to long-term problems such as weight gain, obesity, and other health issues, a new study has found.
“Most people think they can indulge in high-fat foods for a few days and get away with it,” said Matt Hulver, an associate professor of human nutrition, foods, and exercise in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “But all it takes is five days for your body’s muscle to start to protest.”
In an article published recently in the online version of the journal Obesity, Hulver and other Virginia Tech researchers found that the manner in which muscle metabolizes nutrients is changed in just five days of high-fat feeding. This is the first study to prove that the change happens so quickly.
“This shows that our bodies are can respond dramatically to changes in diet in a shorter time frame than we have previously thought,” said Hulver, who is the head of the department and a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate. “If you think about it, five days is a very short time. There are plenty of times when we all eat fatty foods for a few days, be it the holidays, vacations, or other celebrations. But this research shows that those high-fat diets can change a person’s normal metabolism in a very short timeframe.”
When food is eaten, the level of glucose in the blood rises. The body’s muscle is a major clearinghouse for this glucose. It may break it down for energy, or it can store it for later use. Since muscle makes up about 30 percent of our body weight and it is such an important site for glucose metabolism, if normal metabolism is altered, it can have dire consequences on the rest of the body and can lead to health issues.
Hulver and his colleagues found that muscles’ ability to oxidize glucose after a meal is disrupted after five days of eating a high-fat diet, which could lead to the body’s inability to respond to insulin, a risk factor for the development of diabetes and other diseases.
To conduct the study, healthy college-age students were fed a fat-laden diet that included sausage biscuits, macaroni and cheese, and food loaded with butter to increase the percentage of their daily fat intake. A normal diet is made up of about 30 percent fat and students in this study had diets that were about 55 percent fat. Their overall caloric intake remained the same as it was prior to the high fat diet. Muscle samples were then collected to see how it metabolized glucose. Although the study showed the manner in which the muscle metabolized glucose was altered, the students did not gain weight or have any signs of insulin resistance.
Hulver and the team are now interested in examining how these short-term changes in the muscle can adversely affect the body in the long run and how quickly these deleterious changes in the muscle can be reversed once someone returns to a low-fat diet.
The research was sponsored by the American Diabetes Association and the National Institutes of Health.
“Most people think they can indulge in high-fat foods for a few days and get away with it,” said Matt Hulver, an associate professor of human nutrition, foods, and exercise in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “But all it takes is five days for your body’s muscle to start to protest.”
“This shows that our bodies are can respond dramatically to changes in diet in a shorter time frame than we have previously thought,” said Hulver, who is the head of the department and a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate. “If you think about it, five days is a very short time. There are plenty of times when we all eat fatty foods for a few days, be it the holidays, vacations, or other celebrations. But this research shows that those high-fat diets can change a person’s normal metabolism in a very short timeframe.”
When food is eaten, the level of glucose in the blood rises. The body’s muscle is a major clearinghouse for this glucose. It may break it down for energy, or it can store it for later use. Since muscle makes up about 30 percent of our body weight and it is such an important site for glucose metabolism, if normal metabolism is altered, it can have dire consequences on the rest of the body and can lead to health issues.
Hulver and his colleagues found that muscles’ ability to oxidize glucose after a meal is disrupted after five days of eating a high-fat diet, which could lead to the body’s inability to respond to insulin, a risk factor for the development of diabetes and other diseases.
To conduct the study, healthy college-age students were fed a fat-laden diet that included sausage biscuits, macaroni and cheese, and food loaded with butter to increase the percentage of their daily fat intake. A normal diet is made up of about 30 percent fat and students in this study had diets that were about 55 percent fat. Their overall caloric intake remained the same as it was prior to the high fat diet. Muscle samples were then collected to see how it metabolized glucose. Although the study showed the manner in which the muscle metabolized glucose was altered, the students did not gain weight or have any signs of insulin resistance.
Hulver and the team are now interested in examining how these short-term changes in the muscle can adversely affect the body in the long run and how quickly these deleterious changes in the muscle can be reversed once someone returns to a low-fat diet.
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Hulver worked on this study with Associate Professor Brenda Davy, Professor Kevin Davy, Assistant Professor Madlyn Frisard, and Research Assistant Professor Ryan McMillan, all from the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise. Former graduate students Angela Anderson, Kimberly Haynie, Kristin Osterberg, and Nabil Boutagy also contributed.The research was sponsored by the American Diabetes Association and the National Institutes of Health.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Iron level is important to good health
President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Certainly, when something is feared, it is easy to become irrational about it.
Currently, a fear of iron stems from a theory proposed in 1981 by Dr. Jerome Sullivan that iron accumulation in the body increases the risk for coronary heart disease. A quarter of a century later, Sullivan's theory remains unproved, and several studies have refuted the theory.
Question: Should we fear iron?
Answer: Approximately one out of every 200 people carries a gene that can make them more susceptible to a condition called hemochromatosis, or iron overload disease. Too much iron for someone with this condition can lead to a variety of serious health problems.
In contrast to the fairly low prevalence of hemochromatosis, iron deficiency is one of the most common and serious nutrition problems in the world. Even in the U.S., the prevalence of iron deficiency anemia is reported to be as high as 29 percent among low-income women of childbearing age.
Q: How does iron deficiency affect people?
A: Iron deficiency can cause a type of anemia that reduces the capacity of blood to deliver oxygen to cells throughout the body. This results in fatigue among other possible symptoms.
Not fully appreciated is the fact that iron deficiency, even without anemia, can have serious consequences. Potential effects include sleeping problems; depression; inability to think clearly; memory and learning problems; restless legs syndrome; ridged, flattened or "spooned" fingernails; hair thinning and loss; dizziness or vertigo; abnormal heart function; decreased immune function; inability to tolerate drugs normally; reduced ability to produce thyroid hormone; etc.
Bruce Ames, a highly respected researcher from the University of California-Berkeley, has recently expressed concerns that chronically low iron status could cause many health problems throughout the body. He is particularly concerned about impaired brain function and accelerated aging processes resulting from low iron status. Interestingly, iron deficiency can cause oxidative damage to cells, and so can iron excess.
Iron deficiency is especially common in adolescent and pre-menopausal women. Due to monthly blood losses, these women have iron needs about twice those of men their age. Men also can develop iron deficiency, especially athletes with a diet short on good iron sources.
Our next column will explain daily iron needs and how to get enough from food. So, if you are not hopping like the Energizer Easter bunny, be sure to read our next article two weeks from today.
Alan Titchenal, Ph.D., C.N.S. and Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S.
are nutritionists in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences,
College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, UH-Manoa.
Dr. Dobbs also works with the University Health Service
are nutritionists in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences,
College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, UH-Manoa.
Dr. Dobbs also works with the University Health Service
© 2008 Honolulu Star-Bulletin -- http://starbulletin.com
http://www.nutritionatc.hawaii.edu/HO/2008/389.htm
http://www.nutritionatc.hawaii.edu/HO/2008/389.htm
Meditation and yoga’s mental health benefits documented in new Dutch study
The findings come from research carried out by PhD student Tim Gard at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He started with recent findings showing that mindfulness can attenuate pain, and set out to discover more about the underlying brain mechanisms that are involved.
The experiment produced surprising results, as it revealed that mindfulness practitioners were able to reduce pain perception by 22 percent and anticipatory anxiety by 29 percent during a mindful state.
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Monday, April 6, 2015
15 Ways Exercise Makes You Look and Feel Younger
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Of course, you can’t change your chronological age, but exercise can improve your health to the point where you look and feel younger than you are, says Frank Frisch, PhD, director of kinesiology at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. Behold the 15 physical and mental effects a sweat session can have on your brain and body.
A workout is like nature’s energy drink, firing up your brain and body so you feel more alert and alive. “Exercise puts your body in a state of arousal, which translates into more vitality and a greater sense of well being,” says Frisch. “Daily tasks become less strenuous and require less exertion.” It’s the kind of pep in your step that makes you feel like you’ve peeled off a decade or two.
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Thursday, April 2, 2015
Win A Trip to Las Vegas for Mayweather-Pacquiao
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Manny Pacquiao on May 2 at the MGM Grand. The grand prize winner will receive two tickets to the fight, three nights of lodging on the Las Vegas strip and a $700 travel allowance per person.
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