If you had to live to be 100, would you want to enjoy those years?

By Kevin DiDonato MS, CSCS, CES

Heart disease can affect anyone and at any time.  More recently, doctors have started to see the beginnings of heart disease in young children.  But there is another population that are grossly underserved when discussing heart disease.  And they are the women you know and love!  Women need the same protection as men.  Sometimes they need even more than men.  Ladies, you may benefit from increasing your intake of omega-3 fatty acids.

Women and Heart Disease - The statistics are scary.  In many cases, a woman’s risk for developing heart disease is INCREASED.  
Here are some statistics:

• There are over 42 million women living with cardiovascular disease.

• Out of those 42 million women, more than 8 million have a history of heart attack and angina.

• And the kicker: 200,000 women die each year from heart attacks.

Five times as many women die from heart attacks
than will die from breast cancer

And that’s not all!  Heart disease is THE leading cause of death of women in America.

More WOMEN die from heart attacks
 and heart disease than MEN

Women are less likely than men to receive appropriate treatment AFTER a heart attack.  This may INCREASE their overall risk for having another heart attack or dying from heart-related problems.  Do you think women have the same signs as men when having a heart attack?  Not always!  More often women do not experience the typical symptoms that men experience.  Common signs of a heart attack can vary from person to person.  But preventive treatment is the same for everyone!  Maintaining a heart-healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, exercising, and managing stress levels may be keys to reducing your risk factors.  Increasing omega-3 fatty acids may also help in the fight against heart disease.

Omega-3 Intake - A recent study shows the impact omega-3 fatty acids have on decreasing risk factors for YOUNG women and heart disease.  Women have been an underrepresented group in research on heart disease.  This study followed over 48,000 women, all free of cardiovascular disease and considered healthy, and were between the ages of 15 and 46.  They were followed for 8 years.  During the 8 years, there were 577 events of cardiovascular disease observed.  Researchers took detailed records of eating patterns, through the use of questionnaires and telephone interviews.

Their results may shed some light on a dark area in women’s health!  The researchers found women who consumed less omega-3 fatty acids (fish or supplements) showed an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease.

Conclusion:
Women with little or no intake of fish or omega-3 fatty acids
increased their risk for developing cardiovascular disease

Eat More Fish - Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death for women.  Women are five times more likely to die from heart disease than breast cancer.  Increased intake of omega-3 fatty acids may decrease your risk of heart disease.  By decreasing your total cholesterol, increasing HDL, and lowering your triglycerides, you may reduce your risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease.  Research shows a decreased intake of omega-3 fatty acids may increase your risk - even if you are CURRENTLY healthy.

Diet, exercise and increasing omega-3 rich supplements or foods may possibly reduce your risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease and may prevent premature death.


Exercise can help lower the risk of heart disease also.  If you or someone you know needs help with an exercise program, don't hesitate to contact me, it could save your life.

Increase Your Antioxidants To Reduce Your Risk Of A Stroke

By Kevin DiDonato MS, CSCS, CES


Every 45 seconds, someone has one.  It is the #1 leading cause of disability in the US.  160,000 people die from this each year, making it third behind heart disease and cancer.  What is it?

Stroke - If you take the right steps, you may reduce your risk factor for having a stroke.  And women, you are more at risk than you think!  Let me explain…  


What is a stroke?

There are two different types of strokes.  One is caused by plaque breaking off in your brain or other areas of your body.  This plaque then travels to your brain, where it cuts off the blood supply.  Lack of blood supply may result in the death of your brain cells.

The other type of stroke occurs when the vessels in your brain are weak or they rupture.  This causes blood to leach into your brain, causing damage.  Both types may lead to permanent disability, with paralysis primarily occurring on one side of your body.

Free Radicals and Stroke - Free radicals do a number on the cells in your body.  They create an environment where the free radicals may damage vessels, causing them to stiffen.  This may cause your vessels to not function optimally, resulting in your blood having a harder time moving through your body.  
Free radicals may also cause inflammation.  And inflammation may be the beginning to certain disease processes.  One disease caused by inflammation may be strokes and cardiovascular disease.  But you may be able to reduce your risk factors.

Antioxidants - Antioxidant-rich foods may reduce your risk factors for developing a stroke.  And this may happen with or without previous cardiovascular disease.  A study released recently, showed women who ate more fruits and vegetables, and drank more tea decreased their risk for having a stroke.  Powerful free radical fighters are found in fruits and vegetables.  Antioxidants, which are nutrients, may trap free radicals in their structure.

As a review…

Free radicals are unstable molecules.  They spend their time searching out stable molecules so they can steal one of their electrons.  This stealing enables the free radical to stabilize itself.  However, by stealing one electron from a balanced molecule makes that molecule unstable.  It then repeats the process.  When free radicals run into antioxidants, it steals a molecule to stabilize itself.  However, antioxidants maintain stability even when the free radical steals an electron.  Vitamins C, E, carotenoids, and flavonoids may all be able to neutralize free radicals, therefore reducing inflammation.

The Research - Researchers followed 31,035 women over the course of the study.  Women with the highest total antioxidant capacity (TAC) had a 17% less likely chance to have a stroke.

Women who ate more vegetables REDUCED their
risk of having a stroke

And if you had heart issues in the past…Women who had heart issues in the past, reduced their risk of having a stroke from 46% to 57%.

Women at the highest end of TAC showed
DRAMATIC decrease in risk

Antioxidants - Antioxidants are powerful fighters against free radicals and their associated damage.  One nutrient leading the way is Astaxanthin.  This nutrient is found in large amounts in fish, krill, and other marine animals.

Astaxanthin is a form of algae which many
different marine animals eat

This powerful antioxidant is able to bind to cell membranes and trap the free radicals in its unique structure.
Once trapped it transports it to the surface of your cell for other antioxidants, like Vitamin C, to destroy it.
Astaxanthin is found in EFA Icon and may help neutralize free radical damage.  EFA Icon is a potent source of omega-3 fatty acids and it has a total antioxidant capacity which may surpass some of the more powerful antioxidants.

What Is Your Next Step?

Having a stroke may lead to a lifetime of problems.  As the leading cause of disability and the third leading cause of death, strokes must be dealt with seriously.  Increasing antioxidant-rich foods into your diet may reduce your risk for developing a stroke.  There may be a new fighter on the scene in the form of Krill oil.
Having an oxygen radical absorption capacity which may rival most antioxidants, krill oil may potentially be a great antioxidant source.  A diet full of fruits and vegetables, and drinking tea may increase your antioxidant levels.  This may help reduce your risk for having a stroke.


If you or anyone you love needs help with an exercise program, don't hesitate to contact me.

26 of 30 Things to Stop Doing To Yourself and Start Doing For Yourself

Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life.  When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.


Blaming others will get you nowhere and no closer to changing.  We choose most of the situations we get ourselves into, therefore we can choose to get out of it.  Having said that, we don't always have control over the situation and it can take time to be able to move on.  Sometimes there are those who may make it quite difficult and there are people and agencies that can help in those type of volatile relationships.   WM of PBC


Start taking full accountability for your own life. – Own your choices and mistakes, and be willing to take the necessary steps to improve upon them.  Either you take accountability for your life or someone else will.  And when they do, you’ll become a slave to their ideas and dreams instead of a pioneer of your own.  You are the only one who can directly control the outcome of your life.  And no, it won’t always be easy.  Every person has a stack of obstacles in front of them.  But you must take accountability for your situation and overcome these obstacles.  Choosing not to is choosing a lifetime of mere existence.


There are those who have never encountered some of the experiences we have had in our past, so it may easy for them to say hey just get over it or move on already.  I have found that facing the truth about what you want in life, how you plan to achieve it and the people you surround yourself with can make or break your dreams.  Take a look at how you live your life and if it's not what you want, you are the only one that can change it.  It doesn't have to be an overnight change, especially if you feel that it may be impossible or too overwhelming.  Making a small positive forward change toward being the person you want to be is a great first step.  Take that step and if you trip, catch yourself and move on again.  WM of PBC

5 Steps to Releasing Resistance

Here is a great article by Joy Heartsong

At the dawning of this new year, you may be thinking you “should” be setting new goals. You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by all you have to consider: professional, family, health, spiritual and financial.  Here’s a new slant on the annual ritual. Review last year’s goals to see where you didn’t quite measure up to your desires. Then look at what went awry. To what do you attribute not getting what you wanted?
Now look for a common thread in those unmet goals. Are you hanging onto old ways, even though they’re not working, or stuck in your sense of “rightness”, making everyone else wrong? Maybe you lack motivation due to a past history of ”failure” or misperceptions about yourself or others. Are you resisting what is; determined to plow through it or hold your ground?
Where is your focus? Is it on doing what you’ve always done, or is it on releasing resistance to open up new insights and opportunities and heal body, mind and spirit? Perhaps, to your way of thinking, you are letting go of the old; and that’s a healthy goal. However, if you’re like me, sometimes I’m not aware of behaviors, feelings and thoughts that may be interfering with my well-intended efforts.
Old triggers that spur resistance can quickly thwart being at peace with what is. They’ll sneak up on you when you least expect them and blow those good intentions up in your face. Ka-boom! You didn’t even see it coming. Now what?
Isn’t it time to start creating what you do want instead of rehashing old grievances? You know what you want; so take a moment to consider where you are focusing your time, energy, thoughts and emotions. How often do you hear yourself saying: if only he didn’t…, if she wasn’t so…, if I didn’t have to…, or if I had more money, a better car or a new job? All of these are examples of resistant thinking or dissatisfaction with the way things are.
As long as we resist, protest, cajole, complain and control everything (or try to), we’ll get more frustrated and stressed, unhappier, and suffer more from the loss of our power. When we focus our attention on what we don’t want or the lack of what we do want, we create more of that (what we focused upon).
“Anytime you feel negative emotion, you are in the mode of resisting something that you want, and that resistance takes its toll on you. It takes its toll on your physical body, and it takes its toll on the amount of wonderful things that you are allowing to come into your experience.” —-Abraham
Let me see. I think I’ve got it! The more you push, try to get your way, express your unhappiness, your “stuckness”, and your insistence on your “rightness”, the more resistance you create in yourself and others and the less likely you are to get what you truly want. Wow, it’s amazing how easy it is to create more of what we don’t want!
Letting go of resistance is one of the most beneficial things you can do to stay on track with creating something better for yourself. Follow these five steps for releasing what you don’t want in your life and creating what you do want:

• Identify what you’re resisting.

Notice what you talk about, think about or feel bad about (regrets, limitations, the past, ‘coulda’, ‘woulda’, ‘shoulda’s). Abraham, speaking through Esther Hicks, says all it takes to manifest what you don’t want is 16 seconds of focusing on it. So how many seconds do you spend creating what you don’t want?

• Focus on what you DO want.

Whenever you sense old feelings of resistance kicking in, shift your attention gently back to what you do want. Exactly what does that look like for you? How much do you want to make? What type of work makes you smile? How do you expect others to treat you?

• See, feel, and believe in the changes you desire.

Know that it is happening now. Spirit (the Universe, Higher Power) is looking for ways to create what you want.

• Create, plan and implement changes that move you toward attaining your dreams.

Speak your truth. Communicate clearly. Take a picture of your ideal house or apartment. Update your resume. Research your area of interest. Ask for help. Make your own plan and take steps to put it into action.

• Give gratitude and reward yourself for the shifts you’ve made.

Feel good about yourself and your positive focus on what you desire. Celebrate and give thanks for your successes. Give yourself a pat on the back or a big hug. Treat yourself to a special activity: eat dinner with a friend, buy that new shirt or jewelry you’ve been wanting, plan a potluck or other get-together with friends or family, or explore in the mountains or on the beach. Let your imagination and your inner knowing be your guide.
Now about those goals…You can do it. Look at yourself with new, loving eyes. Try this new approach, and see how much easier it is to create what you really want.

You can do it! Celebrate your new you! Have fun and be happy!


If you are having a problem keeping your exercise resolution, its because you have to think of it as being a lifestyle not just another thing you start and stop at the New Year.  
Contact me if you are ready to do it differently this year.

25 of 30 Things to Stop Doing To Yourself and Start Doing For Yourself

Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while.  You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well.  You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears.  The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.


Holding in your feelings can lead to other health issues.  Look at the picture to the left, do you want to explode like that?  The more you hold the anger, fear, frustration or any other feeling in, the more stress you hold inside.  WM of PBC


Start being more open about how you feel. – If you’re hurting, give yourself the necessary space and time to hurt, but be open about it.  Talk to those closest to you.  Tell them the truth about how you feel.  Let them listen.  The simple act of getting things off your chest and into the open is your first step toward feeling good again.


A strong person is one who can show their feelings and talk to others if needed.  Don't continually tell everyone about what is going on, but trust in a few good people, get it off your chest and then move on.  Deal with the issue and get the feelings out and your day will start to look better.  Remember its not what happens to you, it is how you react to it.  WM of PBC

The Fat Trap

For 15 years, Joseph Proietto has been helping people lose weight. When these obese patients arrive at his weight-loss clinic in Australia, they are determined to slim down. And most of the time, he says, they do just that, sticking to the clinic’s program and dropping excess pounds. But then, almost without exception, the weight begins to creep back. In a matter of months or years, the entire effort has come undone, and the patient is fat again. “It has always seemed strange to me,” says Proietto, who is a physician at the University of Melbourne. “These are people who are very motivated to lose weight, who achieve weight loss most of the time without too much trouble and yet, inevitably, gradually, they regain the weight.”

Jen Davis for The New York Times

Anyone who has ever dieted knows that lost pounds often return, and most of us assume the reason is a lack of discipline or a failure of willpower. But Proietto suspected that there was more to it, and he decided to take a closer look at the biological state of the body after weight loss.

Beginning in 2009, he and his team recruited 50 obese men and women. The men weighed an average of 233 pounds; the women weighed about 200 pounds. Although some people dropped out of the study, most of the patients stuck with the extreme low-calorie diet, which consisted of special shakes called Optifast and two cups of low-starch vegetables, totaling just 500 to 550 calories a day for eight weeks. Ten weeks in, the dieters lost an average of 30 pounds.

At that point, the 34 patients who remained stopped dieting and began working to maintain the new lower weight. Nutritionists counseled them in person and by phone, promoting regular exercise and urging them to eat more vegetables and less fat. But despite the effort, they slowly began to put on weight. After a year, the patients already had regained an average of 11 of the pounds they struggled so hard to lose. They also reported feeling far more hungry and preoccupied with food than before they lost the weight.

While researchers have known for decades that the body undergoes various metabolic and hormonal changes while it’s losing weight, the Australian team detected something new. A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

“What we see here is a coordinated defense mechanism with multiple components all directed toward making us put on weight,” Proietto says. “This, I think, explains the high failure rate in obesity treatment.”

While the findings from Proietto and colleagues, published this fall in The New England Journal of Medicine, are not conclusive — the study was small and the findings need to be replicated — the research has nonetheless caused a stir in the weight-loss community, adding to a growing body of evidence that challenges conventional thinking about obesity, weight loss and willpower. For years, the advice to the overweight and obese has been that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. While there is truth to this guidance, it fails to take into account that the human body continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped. This translates into a sobering reality: once we become fat, most of us, despite our best efforts, will probably stay fat.

I have always felt perplexed about my inability to keep weight off. I know the medical benefits of weight loss, and I don’t drink sugary sodas or eat fast food. I exercise regularly — a few years ago, I even completed a marathon. Yet during the 23 years since graduating from college, I’ve lost 10 or 20 pounds at a time, maintained it for a little while and then gained it all back and more, to the point where I am now easily 60 pounds overweight.

I wasn’t overweight as a child, but I can’t remember a time when my mother, whose weight probably fluctuated between 150 and 250 pounds, wasn’t either on a diet or, in her words, cheating on her diet. Sometimes we ate healthful, balanced meals; on other days dinner consisted of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. As a high-school cross-country runner, I never worried about weight, but in college, when my regular training runs were squeezed out by studying and socializing, the numbers on the scale slowly began to move up. As adults, my three sisters and I all struggle with weight, as do many members of my extended family. My mother died of esophageal cancer six years ago. It was her great regret that in the days before she died, the closest medical school turned down her offer to donate her body because she was obese.

It’s possible that the biological cards were stacked against me from the start. Researchers know that obesity tends to run in families, and recent science suggests that even the desire to eat higher-calorie foods may be influenced by heredity. But untangling how much is genetic and how much is learned through family eating habits is difficult. What is clear is that some people appear to be prone to accumulating extra fat while others seem to be protected against it.

In a seminal series of experiments published in the 1990s, the Canadian researchers Claude Bouchard and Angelo Tremblay studied 31 pairs of male twins ranging in age from 17 to 29, who were sometimes overfed and sometimes put on diets. (None of the twin pairs were at risk for obesity based on their body mass or their family history.) In one study, 12 sets of the twins were put under 24-hour supervision in a college dormitory. Six days a week they ate 1,000 extra calories a day, and one day they were allowed to eat normally. They could read, play video games, play cards and watch television, but exercise was limited to one 30-minute daily walk. Over the course of the 120-day study, the twins consumed 84,000 extra calories beyond their basic needs.

That experimental binge should have translated into a weight gain of roughly 24 pounds (based on 3,500 calories to a pound). But some gained less than 10 pounds, while others gained as much as 29 pounds. The amount of weight gained and how the fat was distributed around the body closely matched among brothers, but varied considerably among the different sets of twins. Some brothers gained three times as much fat around their abdomens as others, for instance. When the researchers conducted similar exercise studies with the twins, they saw the patterns in reverse, with some twin sets losing more pounds than others on the same exercise regimen. The findings, the researchers wrote, suggest a form of “biological determinism” that can make a person susceptible to weight gain or loss.

But while there is widespread agreement that at least some risk for obesity is inherited, identifying a specific genetic cause has been a challenge. In October 2010, the journal Nature Genetics reported that researchers have so far confirmed 32 distinct genetic variations associated with obesity or body-mass index. One of the most common of these variations was identified in April 2007 by a British team studying the genetics of Type 2 diabetes. According to Timothy Frayling at the Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Science at the University of Exeter, people who carried a variant known as FTO faced a much higher risk of obesity — 30 percent higher if they had one copy of the variant; 60 percent if they had two.

This FTO variant is surprisingly common; about 65 percent of people of European or African descent and an estimated 27 to 44 percent of Asians are believed to carry at least one copy of it. Scientists don’t understand how the FTO variation influences weight gain, but studies in children suggest the trait plays a role in eating habits. In one 2008 study led by Colin Palmer of the University of Dundee in Scotland, Scottish schoolchildren were given snacks of orange drinks and muffins and then allowed to graze on a buffet of grapes, celery, potato chips and chocolate buttons. All the food was carefully monitored so the researchers knew exactly what was consumed. Although all the children ate about the same amount of food, as weighed in grams, children with the FTO variant were more likely to eat foods with higher fat and calorie content. They weren’t gorging themselves, but they consumed, on average, about 100 calories more than children who didn’t carry the gene. Those who had the gene variant had about four pounds more body fat than noncarriers.

I have been tempted to send in my own saliva sample for a DNA test to find out if my family carries a genetic predisposition for obesity. But even if the test came back negative, it would only mean that my family doesn’t carry a known, testable genetic risk for obesity. Recently the British television show “Embarrassing Fat Bodies” asked Frayling’s lab to test for fat-promoting genes, and the results showed one very overweight family had a lower-than-average risk for obesity.

A positive result, telling people they are genetically inclined to stay fat, might be self-fulfilling. In February, The New England Journal of Medicine published a report on how genetic testing for a variety of diseases affected a person’s mood and health habits. Over all, the researchers found no effect from disease-risk testing, but there was a suggestion, though it didn’t reach statistical significance, that after testing positive for fat-promoting genes, some people were more likely to eat fatty foods, presumably because they thought being fat was their genetic destiny and saw no sense in fighting it.

While knowing my genetic risk might satisfy my curiosity, I also know that heredity, at best, would explain only part of why I became overweight. I’m much more interested in figuring out what I can do about it now.

The National Weight Control Registry tracks 10,000 people who have lost weight and have kept it off. “We set it up in response to comments that nobody ever succeeds at weight loss,” says Rena Wing, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, who helped create the registry with James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado at Denver. “We had two goals: to prove there were people who did, and to try to learn from them about what they do to achieve this long-term weight loss.” Anyone who has lost 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year is eligible to join the study, though the average member has lost 70 pounds and remained at that weight for six years.

Wing says that she agrees that physiological changes probably do occur that make permanent weight loss difficult, but she says the larger problem is environmental, and that people struggle to keep weight off because they are surrounded by food, inundated with food messages and constantly presented with opportunities to eat. “We live in an environment with food cues all the time,” Wing says. “We’ve taught ourselves over the years that one of the ways to reward yourself is with food. It’s hard to change the environment and the behavior.”

There is no consistent pattern to how people in the registry lost weight — some did it on Weight Watchers, others with Jenny Craig, some by cutting carbs on the Atkins diet and a very small number lost weight through surgery. But their eating and exercise habits appear to reflect what researchers find in the lab: to lose weight and keep it off, a person must eat fewer calories and exercise far more than a person who maintains the same weight naturally. Registry members exercise about an hour or more each day — the average weight-loser puts in the equivalent of a four-mile daily walk, seven days a week. They get on a scale every day in order to keep their weight within a narrow range. They eat breakfast regularly. Most watch less than half as much television as the overall population. They eat the same foods and in the same patterns consistently each day and don’t “cheat” on weekends or holidays. They also appear to eat less than most people, with estimates ranging from 50 to 300 fewer daily calories.

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, says that while the 10,000 people tracked in the registry are a useful resource, they also represent a tiny percentage of the tens of millions of people who have tried unsuccessfully to lose weight. “All it means is that there are rare individuals who do manage to keep it off,” Brownell says. “You find these people are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.”

Janice Bridge, a registry member who has successfully maintained a 135-pound weight loss for about five years, is a perfect example. “It’s one of the hardest things there is,” she says. “It’s something that has to be focused on every minute. I’m not always thinking about food, but I am always aware of food.”

Bridge, who is 66 and lives in Davis, Calif., was overweight as a child and remembers going on her first diet of 1,400 calories a day at 14. At the time, her slow pace of weight loss prompted her doctor to accuse her of cheating. Friends told her she must not be paying attention to what she was eating. “No one would believe me that I was doing everything I was told,” she says. “You can imagine how tremendously depressing it was and what a feeling of rebellion and anger was building up.”

After peaking at 330 pounds in 2004, she tried again to lose weight. She managed to drop 30 pounds, but then her weight loss stalled. In 2006, at age 60, she joined a medically supervised weight-loss program with her husband, Adam, who weighed 310 pounds. After nine months on an 800-calorie diet, she slimmed down to 165 pounds. Adam lost about 110 pounds and now weighs about 200.

During the first years after her weight loss, Bridge tried to test the limits of how much she could eat. She used exercise to justify eating more. The death of her mother in 2009 consumed her attention; she lost focus and slowly regained 30 pounds. She has decided to try to maintain this higher weight of 195, which is still 135 pounds fewer than her heaviest weight.

“It doesn’t take a lot of variance from my current maintenance for me to pop on another two or three pounds,” she says. “It’s been a real struggle to stay at this weight, but it’s worth it, it’s good for me, it makes me feel better. But my body would put on weight almost instantaneously if I ever let up.”

So she never lets up. Since October 2006 she has weighed herself every morning and recorded the result in a weight diary. She even carries a scale with her when she travels. In the past six years, she made only one exception to this routine: a two-week, no-weigh vacation in Hawaii.

She also weighs everything in the kitchen. She knows that lettuce is about 5 calories a cup, while flour is about 400. If she goes out to dinner, she conducts a Web search first to look at the menu and calculate calories to help her decide what to order. She avoids anything with sugar or white flour, which she calls her “gateway drugs” for cravings and overeating. She has also found that drinking copious amounts of water seems to help; she carries a 20-ounce water bottle and fills it five times a day. She writes down everything she eats. At night, she transfers all the information to an electronic record. Adam also keeps track but prefers to keep his record with pencil and paper.

“That transfer process is really important; it’s my accountability,” she says. “It comes up with the total number of calories I’ve eaten today and the amount of protein. I do a little bit of self-analysis every night.”

Bridge and her husband each sought the help of therapists, and in her sessions, Janice learned that she had a tendency to eat when she was bored or stressed. “We are very much aware of how our culture taught us to use food for all kinds of reasons that aren’t related to its nutritive value,” Bridge says.

Bridge supports her careful diet with an equally rigorous regimen of physical activity. She exercises from 100 to 120 minutes a day, six or seven days a week, often by riding her bicycle to the gym, where she takes a water-aerobics class. She also works out on an elliptical trainer at home and uses a recumbent bike to “walk” the dog, who loves to run alongside the low, three-wheeled machine. She enjoys gardening as a hobby but allows herself to count it as exercise on only those occasions when she needs to “garden vigorously.” Adam is also a committed exerciser, riding his bike at least two hours a day, five days a week.

Janice Bridge has used years of her exercise and diet data to calculate her own personal fuel efficiency. She knows that her body burns about three calories a minute during gardening, about four calories a minute on the recumbent bike and during water aerobics and about five a minute when she zips around town on her regular bike.

“Practically anyone will tell you someone biking is going to burn 11 calories a minute,” she says. “That’s not my body. I know it because of the statistics I’ve kept.”

Based on metabolism data she collected from the weight-loss clinic and her own calculations, she has discovered that to keep her current weight of 195 pounds, she can eat 2,000 calories a day as long as she burns 500 calories in exercise. She avoids junk food, bread and pasta and many dairy products and tries to make sure nearly a third of her calories come from protein. The Bridges will occasionally share a dessert, or eat an individual portion of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, so they know exactly how many calories they are ingesting. Because she knows errors can creep in, either because a rainy day cuts exercise short or a mismeasured snack portion adds hidden calories, she allows herself only 1,800 daily calories of food. (The average estimate for a similarly active woman of her age and size is about 2,300 calories.)

Just talking to Bridge about the effort required to maintain her weight is exhausting. I find her story inspiring, but it also makes me wonder whether I have what it takes to be thin. I have tried on several occasions (and as recently as a couple weeks ago) to keep a daily diary of my eating and exercise habits, but it’s easy to let it slide. I can’t quite imagine how I would ever make time to weigh and measure food when some days it’s all I can do to get dinner on the table between finishing my work and carting my daughter to dance class or volleyball practice. And while I enjoy exercising for 30- or 40-minute stretches, I also learned from six months of marathon training that devoting one to two hours a day to exercise takes an impossible toll on my family life.

Bridge concedes that having grown children and being retired make it easier to focus on her weight. “I don’t know if I could have done this when I had three kids living at home,” she says. “We know how unusual we are. It’s pretty easy to get angry with the amount of work and dedication it takes to keep this weight off. But the alternative is to not keep the weight off. ”

“I think many people who are anxious to lose weight don’t fully understand what the consequences are going to be, nor does the medical community fully explain this to people,” Rudolph Leibel, an obesity researcher at Columbia University in New York, says. “We don’t want to make them feel hopeless, but we do want to make them understand that they are trying to buck a biological system that is going to try to make it hard for them.”

Leibel and his colleague Michael Rosenbaum have pioneered much of what we know about the body’s response to weight loss. For 25 years, they have meticulously tracked about 130 individuals for six months or longer at a stretch. The subjects reside at their research clinic where every aspect of their bodies is measured. Body fat is determined by bone-scan machines. A special hood monitors oxygen consumption and carbon-dioxide output to precisely measure metabolism. Calories burned during digestion are tracked. Exercise tests measure maximum heart rate, while blood tests measure hormones and brain chemicals. Muscle biopsies are taken to analyze their metabolic efficiency. (Early in the research, even stool samples were collected and tested to make sure no calories went unaccounted for.) For their trouble, participants are paid $5,000 to $8,000.

Eventually, the Columbia subjects are placed on liquid diets of 800 calories a day until they lose 10 percent of their body weight. Once they reach the goal, they are subjected to another round of intensive testing as they try to maintain the new weight. The data generated by these experiments suggest that once a person loses about 10 percent of body weight, he or she is metabolically different than a similar-size person who is naturally the same weight.

The research shows that the changes that occur after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about 250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

Scientists are still learning why a weight-reduced body behaves so differently from a similar-size body that has not dieted. Muscle biopsies taken before, during and after weight loss show that once a person drops weight, their muscle fibers undergo a transformation, making them more like highly efficient “slow twitch” muscle fibers. A result is that after losing weight, your muscles burn 20 to 25 percent fewer calories during everyday activity and moderate aerobic exercise than those of a person who is naturally at the same weight. That means a dieter who thinks she is burning 200 calories during a brisk half-hour walk is probably using closer to 150 to 160 calories.

Another way that the body seems to fight weight loss is by altering the way the brain responds to food. Rosenbaum and his colleague Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist also at Columbia, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to track the brain patterns of people before and after weight loss while they looked at objects like grapes, Gummi Bears, chocolate, broccoli, cellphones and yo-yos. After weight loss, when the dieter looked at food, the scans showed a bigger response in the parts of the brain associated with reward and a lower response in the areas associated with control. This suggests that the body, in order to get back to its pre-diet weight, induces cravings by making the person feel more excited about food and giving him or her less willpower to resist a high-calorie treat.

“After you’ve lost weight, your brain has a greater emotional response to food,” Rosenbaum says. “You want it more, but the areas of the brain involved in restraint are less active.” Combine that with a body that is now burning fewer calories than expected, he says, “and you’ve created the perfect storm for weight regain.” How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The problem could persist indefinitely. (The same phenomenon occurs when a thin person tries to drop about 10 percent of his or her body weight — the body defends the higher weight.) This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to lose weight and keep it off; it just means it’s really, really difficult.

Lynn Haraldson, a 48-year-old woman who lives in Pittsburgh, reached 300 pounds in 2000. She joined Weight Watchers and managed to take her 5-foot-5 body down to 125 pounds for a brief time. Today, she’s a member of the National Weight Control Registry and maintains about 140 pounds by devoting her life to weight maintenance. She became a vegetarian, writes down what she eats every day, exercises at least five days a week and blogs about the challenges of weight maintenance. A former journalist and antiques dealer, she returned to school for a two-year program on nutrition and health; she plans to become a dietary counselor. She has also come to accept that she can never stop being “hypervigilant” about what she eats. “Everything has to change,” she says. “I’ve been up and down the scale so many times, always thinking I can go back to ‘normal,’ but I had to establish a new normal. People don’t like hearing that it’s not easy.”

What’s not clear from the research is whether there is a window during which we can gain weight and then lose it without creating biological backlash. Many people experience transient weight gain, putting on a few extra pounds during the holidays or gaining 10 or 20 pounds during the first years of college that they lose again. The actor Robert De Niro lost weight after bulking up for his performance in “Raging Bull.” The filmmaker Morgan Spurlock also lost the weight he gained during the making of “Super Size Me.” Leibel says that whether these temporary pounds became permanent probably depends on a person’s genetic risk for obesity and, perhaps, the length of time a person carried the extra weight before trying to lose it. But researchers don’t know how long it takes for the body to reset itself permanently to a higher weight. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to happen overnight.

“For a mouse, I know the time period is somewhere around eight months,” Leibel says. “Before that time, a fat mouse can come back to being a skinny mouse again without too much adjustment. For a human we don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s not measured in months, but in years.”

Nobody wants to be fat. In most modern cultures, even if you are healthy — in my case, my cholesterol and blood pressure are low and I have an extraordinarily healthy heart — to be fat is to be perceived as weak-willed and lazy. It’s also just embarrassing. Once, at a party, I met a well-respected writer who knew my work as a health writer. “You’re not at all what I expected,” she said, eyes widening. The man I was dating, perhaps trying to help, finished the thought. “You thought she’d be thinner, right?” he said. I wanted to disappear, but the woman was gracious. “No,” she said, casting a glare at the man and reaching to warmly shake my hand. “I thought you’d be older.”

If anything, the emerging science of weight loss teaches us that perhaps we should rethink our biases about people who are overweight. It is true that people who are overweight, including myself, get that way because they eat too many calories relative to what their bodies need. But a number of biological and genetic factors can play a role in determining exactly how much food is too much for any given individual. Clearly, weight loss is an intense struggle, one in which we are not fighting simply hunger or cravings for sweets, but our own bodies.

While the public discussion about weight loss tends to come down to which diet works best (Atkins? Jenny Craig? Plant-based? Mediterranean?), those who have tried and failed at all of these diets know there is no simple answer. Fat, sugar and carbohydrates in processed foods may very well be culprits in the nation’s obesity problem. But there is tremendous variation in an individual’s response.

The view of obesity as primarily a biological, rather than psychological, disease could also lead to changes in the way we approach its treatment. Scientists at Columbia have conducted several small studies looking at whether injecting people with leptin, the hormone made by body fat, can override the body’s resistance to weight loss and help maintain a lower weight. In a few small studies, leptin injections appear to trick the body into thinking it’s still fat. After leptin replacement, study subjects burned more calories during activity. And in brain-scan studies, leptin injections appeared to change how the brain responded to food, making it seem less enticing. But such treatments are still years away from commercial development. For now, those of us who want to lose weight and keep it off are on our own.

One question many researchers think about is whether losing weight more slowly would make it more sustainable than the fast weight loss often used in scientific studies. Leibel says the pace of weight loss is unlikely to make a difference, because the body’s warning system is based solely on how much fat a person loses, not how quickly he or she loses it. Even so, Proietto is now conducting a study using a slower weight-loss method and following dieters for three years instead of one.

Given how hard it is to lose weight, it’s clear, from a public-health standpoint, that resources would best be focused on preventing weight gain. The research underscores the urgency of national efforts to get children to exercise and eat healthful foods.

But with a third of the U.S. adult population classified as obese, nobody is saying people who already are very overweight should give up on weight loss. Instead, the solution may be to preach a more realistic goal. Studies suggest that even a 5 percent weight loss can lower a person’s risk for diabetes, heart disease and other health problems associated with obesity. There is also speculation that the body is more willing to accept small amounts of weight loss.

But an obese person who loses just 5 percent of her body weight will still very likely be obese. For a 250-pound woman, a 5 percent weight loss of about 12 pounds probably won’t even change her clothing size. Losing a few pounds may be good for the body, but it does very little for the spirit and is unlikely to change how fat people feel about themselves or how others perceive them.

So where does that leave a person who wants to lose a sizable amount of weight? Weight-loss scientists say they believe that once more people understand the genetic and biological challenges of keeping weight off, doctors and patients will approach weight loss more realistically and more compassionately. At the very least, the science may compel people who are already overweight to work harder to make sure they don’t put on additional pounds. Some people, upon learning how hard permanent weight loss can be, may give up entirely and return to overeating. Others may decide to accept themselves at their current weight and try to boost their fitness and overall health rather than changing the number on the scale.

For me, understanding the science of weight loss has helped make sense of my own struggles to lose weight, as well as my mother’s endless cycle of dieting, weight gain and despair. I wish she were still here so I could persuade her to finally forgive herself for her dieting failures. While I do, ultimately, blame myself for allowing my weight to get out of control, it has been somewhat liberating to learn that there are factors other than my character at work when it comes to gaining and losing weight. And even though all the evidence suggests that it’s going to be very, very difficult for me to reduce my weight permanently, I’m surprisingly optimistic. I may not be ready to fight this battle this month or even this year. But at least I know what I’m up against.

If you or anyone you know needs help with an exercise program, don't hesitate to contact me.  Diets don't work long term and diets without regular exercise do not work long term.  Get help from the professionals to see long term, lifestyle changes.

Beanpot Season Greek White Bean Soup and Vegetable hash recipe

Available in a variety of colors and sizes, beans provide comforting nourishment.

By Lisa James

January 2012

The days are dark, full of wind, wet and cold. You don’t mind—your kitchen is cozy and fragrant thanks to a bean stew merrily bubbling on the stove.

Besides being easy to grow and dry, beans provide a protein/complex carbohydrate combination that sustained our ancestors through winters in which central heating and supermarkets were unheard of. Bean fiber helps curb cholesterol and normalize bowel function. Beans also supply various minerals along with B vitamins, especially folate and vitamin B1.

Dried beans come in hundreds of varieties: large white cannellinis from Italy, small red adzukis from Japan, speckled pintos from Peru. But “beans are more alike than they are different—the same basic cooking methods apply,” says Crescent Dragonwagon, author of Bean by Bean (Workman).

Almost all dry beans needed to be soaked before cooking. (Adzuki and mung beans, split and black-eyed peas, and lentils are exceptions.) “Soaked beans cook in about a third of the
time unsoaked and their texture is uniformly creamy,” says Dragonwagon. Pick through for small rocks and other debris, and rinse before soaking either overnight at room temperature or
in the refrigerator, using a pressure cooker or covered for an hour after a five-minute boil. (The soaking water washes out a lot of the gassiness.) Canned beans are useful when you’re in a rush. Dragonwagon cautions against adding salt or anything acidic until the beans are tender to avoid toughening the skins.

Let winter do its worst. With a pantry full of beans, your house will always feel like a home.

Fasolada

(Greek White Bean Soup-Stew)

1 1/2 cups white beans (gigandes, Great Northern, navy, cannellini or large limas),
picked over, rinsed, soaked overnight and well drained
2 bay leaves
8 cups water
2 carrots, sliced into
1/2-inch-thick rounds
1 large onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 stalks celery with leaves, chopped
1 can (14.5 oz) chopped plum tomatoes with juice
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp dried oregano (optional)
1-2 tsp dried mint (optional)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp minced fresh parley
salt and pepper, to taste

1. Place the beans, bay leaves and water in a large soup pot over high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Remove bay leaves.

2. Add carrots, onion, garlic and celery; simmer another 30 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, oregano and/or mint, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste (try starting with 1 tsp salt). Simmer until beans are soft and creamy, but not quite disintegrating (30 minutes more).

3. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly. Adjust seasonings to taste; serve warm or at room temperature, with parsley and drizzle of extra olive oil. Good with crusty bread and sautéed slices of haloumi cheese.

Serves 6. Analysis per serving: 326 calories, 13g protein, 13g fat (2g saturated), 16g fiber, 42g carbohydrate, 445 mg sodium

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM BEAN BY BEAN: A COOKBOOK BY
CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON


The Best Vegetable Hash

3 fist-sized potatoes, scrubbed well (peeled or not, as you desire), cut into 1/2” (or smaller) dice
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and diced
2 stalks celery, with leaves, diced
1 tomato, diced (optional)
1 stalk broccoli, head cut into small florets, stem peeled and diced
1 can (15 oz) red kidney beans, drained well
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese, for serving (optional)
Poached eggs (1 to 2 per person), for serving (optional)
Ketchup, tabasco or similar hot sauce, and/or salsa, for serving (optional)

1) Fill a medium-sized saucepan halfway with water and bring to a boil. Drop in the potatoes and lower the heat to a brisk simmer.

2) While the potatoes simmer, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and the moment it thins, add the onion. Sauté, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Lower the heat a tad, add the carrots, green pepper and celery, and sauté until the vegetables are slightly tender, another 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato, if using.

3) Taste a potato; it should be almost or just barely done. Place the broccoli in a colander in the sink (or over a bowl, if you want to catch the potato-cooking liquid for use in a stock—always a good idea) and drain the potatoes over the broccoli (thus precooking the broccoli slightly). Drain the broccoli and potatoes very well, shaking the colander, and add them to the skillet (which you have been continuing to stir at intervals).

4) Continuing to stir the sautéing vegetables regularly, place the kidney beans in a food processor and pulse-chop, pausing to scrape down the sides, until you have a textured puree. Alternatively, you can place the beans in a large bowl and mash them to this same texture with a potato masher.

5) Stir the mashed beans into the sautéing veggies, which will almost immediately thicken up and want to stick. Keep stirring until the mixture is thicker, thick enough so you could shape it into cakes if you were so inclined, 1 to 2 minutes more. Season it with salt and pepper to taste.

6) Serve immediately, hot; if you like, with a sprinkle of grated cheddar, a poached egg or two, and ketchup, hot sauce and/or salsa on the table.

Serves 4. Analysis per serving: 301 calories, 10g protein, 7g fat (1g saturated), 11g fiber,
53g carbohydrates, 310 mg sodium 

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM BEAN BY BEAN:
A COOKBOOK BY CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON

Vitamin D And Calcium. POTENT Fat Fighters

Are you fat, tired, and unhappy with your appearance?  When you look in the mirror, do you see a protruding belly and NO SIX pack abs?  Have you tried everything from exercise to eating right - all to no avail?  What may be happening is this: you may be lacking essential nutrients in your diet which may INCREASE your fat burning potential.

But more importantly, if you find yourself overweight, you may have some deadly tissue growing inside your body.  And it may be wrapping itself around your organs.  This may INCREASE your risk for developing chronic diseases.  And those nutrients may be a KEY to fighting this nasty type of fat.

What am I talking about?  The connection between vitamin D, calcium and visceral fat!  Give me a moment and I will open your eyes to the newest research that is sweeping the nation.  And it may help banish your BELLY FLAB forever!


There are two types of fat in your body: subcutaneous and visceral. 

One fat lies on TOP of your muscles, preventing you from seeing your six pack abs.  The other lies deeper, closer to your vital organs.  Chances are, if you have a protruding belly - then you may have MORE visceral fat.  Visceral fat may be deadly to your body’s fat burning potential, and also to your HEALTH.  In fact, the more visceral fat you have may increase your risk of developing CHRONIC DISEASES.

Visceral Fat is commonly referred to as intra-abdominal fat.  This type of fat may be found in between and around your organs - even wrapped around your heart!  And when it is wrapped around your heart, your risk for heart disease may increase.  The problem with visceral fat: it may consist of more than just one type of fat.  In fact, it may be made up of THREE different types!  And they may all reside in a “pocket” in your fat cells.

And these pockets may be FILLED TO THE BRIM with nasty FAT.  You might be asking yourself if there is a way to rid yourself of visceral fat.  I am here to say YES, you may be able to cleanse your body of this disease-causing fat!  But first…

Protein and Weight Loss - Protein may provide the building blocks you need to maintain lean muscle tissue on your body.  And lean muscle may BOOST your metabolism, possibly leading to a tone and lean body.

There are different ways to increase your intake of dietary protein:

• Lean meats

• Nuts

• Protein supplements

However, with a hectic lifestyle you may be TOO busy and have very little time throughout your day to make a chicken breast or some kind of lean meat.  And you may have forgotten to replenish your stack of nuts.  The next best way is to mix your favorite protein powder with a tall glass of low fat milk or coconut milk.  This may give you good fats and an ample protein supply, which may be vital for lean muscle development.

Plus, it may provide more vitamin D and calcium, which may stimulate your body to burn MORE visceral fat.  Confused?  Let me explain…

Vitamin D, Calcium, and Fat Loss - Researchers may have determined that vitamin D and calcium TOGETHER may be a potent one-two punch for weight loss.  And not your regular run-of-the-mill fat loss, but a potent fighter against visceral fat.  These researchers have determined that a large percentage of Americans may be lacking in calcium and vitamin D.  And this may lead to an increase in obesity.  In a similar study, researchers determined that youth who may be lacking in vitamin D, may be one key for the rise in youth obesity.

Now back to the ADULT study!

The researchers recruited 171 participants with an average age of 40.  They were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one with fortified orange juice (both regular and lite), and the other as a placebo.  The results were ASTOUNDING!  Both groups showed insignificant weight loss.  Insignificant weight loss means that it might have been statistically insignificant.

However, the group who had the fortified orange juice - lost 12.7 cm of visceral fat.  The control group lost only 1.3 cm.

Plus, the participants in the “lite” version - lost a dramatic 13.1 cm of visceral fat.  The control group in the lite version lost only 6.4 cm.

Their researchers concluded that vitamin D, in combination with Calcium supplementation, may reduce visceral fat deposits.  Even though this research is new and needs further study on the exact mechanism, the results may prove promising for reducing central obesity.

What Can You Do? - Obesity has grown to epic proportions.  And these numbers may continue to climb in the foreseeable future.  Being overweight or obese may increase your chances of developing chronic diseases.  In fact, the longer you hold onto your FAT may dramatically increase your risk.  There are two types of fat in your body: subcutaneous and visceral.

Visceral fat may be DEADLY to your health.  Including more calcium and vitamin D may increase your body’s ability to BOOST VISCERAL FAT BURNING, thereby banishing it FOREVER.  Including more foods that supply your body with adequate vitamin D and calcium may provide a powerful one-two punch for visceral fat loss.

Including a product, like Prograde Lean, may increase your protein intake, possibly supplying your body with the building blocks it needs to maintain lean muscle tissue.  Mix it with a glass of a low fat, organic dairy product, or your favorite fortified juice and you maybe one your way to increasing your weight loss, especially the loss of nasty visceral fat.

If you or someone you love needs help with an exercise training program, please contact me.

24 of 30 Things to Stop Doing To Yourself and Start Doing For Yourself

Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Do something extraordinary.


I find when I don't challenge myself and step outside that box that has been created for us and usually by ourselves, I don't feel as fulfilled as I could be.  Taking the easy out can be a boring, mindless activity and not the way I choose to live my life.  WM of PBC


Start working toward your goals every single day. – Remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.  Whatever it is you dream about, start taking small, logical steps every day to make it happen.  Get out there and DO something!  The harder you work the luckier you will become.  While many of us decide at some point during the course of our lives that we want to answer our calling, only an astute few of us actually work on it.  By ‘working on it,’ I mean consistently devoting oneself to the end result.  Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Do you have a dream to help others?  Do you dream about getting up every morning and working at a career you would actually love to do?  Do you have hobbies that you think would be something fun to do on a regular basis?  Of course you do, we all dream.  Now take one of those dreams and figure out how you can take one step forward toward making that dream a reality.    Maybe it won't pay the bills right now, but why wait and always wonder?  Take a couple hours a week and develop the skills necessary to put your dreams into action.  Most of you won't quit your "day job", but why not enjoy your part time job, it may even get you through the day because you are excited about doing the other.    There are many volunteer opportunities to try out just about any activity you can dream of.   You can test the waters and that allows you to dip your toes without drowning.  If you find you really don't want to do that activity as your new found career, you haven't given up everything.  But you also gave it just a little extra and did something about it.  WM of PBC

Gut Check

The amino acid glutamine can help strengthen your gastrointestinal tract.

Can you imagine someone saying, “My heart’s been acting up a little lately—I’m taking some over-the-counter stuff for it”? People say such things about digestive woes all the time. These problems tend to be regarded casually, often under the assumption that a bout of indigestion or bowel trouble will resolve itself. And for occasional discomfort, that may the case.

But assuming that persistent digestive distress—heartburn, stomach upset, pain, gas and bloating, constipation and/or diarrhea—will simply go away is a bad idea. Such symptoms can indicate damage to the intestinal wall, which can have health consequences beyond the digestive tract.
Relieving symptoms without addressing intestinal dysfunction at the root is not enough. The best approach is to help heal the digestive system’s delicate lining—the place where trouble starts.

Studies suggest that the amino acid glutamine can play a significant role in such healing.

Disrupted Digestion

The membrane that lines the intestinal tract (known as the intestinal mucosa) serves as a traffic cop, letting nutrients into the bloodstream while keeping everything else out. That process can be disrupted, though, by conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease (among others). When that happens, noxious substances such as bacteria and partially digested proteins can enter the blood.

Known as leaky gut syndrome, this condition “not only creates inflammation in the gut but has the potential to create pockets of inflammation everywhere else in the body,” says Raphael Kellman, MD, a holistic practitioner in New York City and author of Gut Reactions (Broadway Books). He adds that leaky gut interferes with normal nutrient absorption, leading to nutritional shortfalls.

Glutamine Protection

Glutamine (also called L-glutamine), one of the protein building blocks known as amino acids, promotes digestive health in several ways. It is the preferred fuel source of the cells that line the small intestine, where most nutrient absorption takes place. It is used to synthesize glutathione, a key antioxidant, and to help clear ammonia, a toxin that can throw off the body’s acid-base balance. What’s more, glutamine has shown an ability to protect the stomach against ulceration and to prevent stomach contents from backing up into the esophagus, which helps ease heartburn.

A number of studies support glutamine’s digestion-supportive properties. It has been found to help protect preterm babies against leaky gut (Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine 10/11) as well as severely ill patients on feeding tubes. And glutamine’s ability to reduce ammonia levels has provided protection against stomach disorders associated with H. pylori, a microbe linked to ulcers, in animals (Journal of Pharmacological Sciences 1/10).

As important as glutamine is to intestinal health, it works best in combination with other nutrients. These include calcium, which helps buffer acidity, and antioxidants such as selenium and vitamins C and E, which fight free radicals. Beneficial microbes that normally inhabit the intestinal tract, known as probiotics, help turn dietary fat into fatty acids needed for a healthy mucosa. And whole-food concentrates have an alkalinizing effect that promotes proper digestion, which helps ease symptoms.

If your digestive system is always giving your grief, don’t shrug it off lightly. Glutamine can help you fix the problem at the source.  By Lisa James 

Don't let some run of the mill upset stomach or gas pains stop you from going to the doctor.  If you are popping antacids like gum, you have an issue.  Your issue may be eating too much at one sitting, or it could be something much more serious.  I finally went to the doctor and found out I had Barrett's Esophagus which is a precancerous changing of the cells.  i was able to reverse most of my condition with exercise, eating healthier, eating more often,  and getting more fiber in my eating plan.  Cutting down on alcohol, chocolate and caffeine also helps because these things weaken the muscle that keeps your food down once you eat it.  You may not have a serious problem, but I didn't think mine was either.  Get checked out.  WM of PBC

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