Its Entirely Natural – Blog

Wow, chewing sugar-free gum can do much more than prevent tooth decay. Did you know it chewing gum can be used as a way to manage weight, reduce stress and even increase alertness?

The average stick of sugar-free gum is a mere 5-10 calories. You should consider eating a stick of gum instead of that high-calorie snack. You choose, gum or a chocolate chip cookie at 140 calories. Hmmm, I’d rather have the cookie, but I’ll chew gum instead.

It can also help cut down on those sugar cravings you might have. Studies have also shown, if you have a stick of gum before a snack it can help reduce the hunger and therefore reducing the amount of food you intake.

Gum can help relieve stress and increase focus. Research has shown that gum chewing may help in stressful situations like driving in traffic and waiting in line. Also, a study in 2002 showed that gum chewing appeared to improve a person’s ability to learn, retain and retrieve information. Other research showed that gum chewing increases blood flow to the brain by 25%. So, you students out there keep chewing that gum.

So, the next time you are grocery shopping, pick up a pack of sugar-free gum. It’s not all that bad for you.

zwire

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Not as easy or problem free as they’d have us believe

First, a couple of statistics: in the United States, which has a population of 300 million people, we have over 66 million who are technically defined as “obese.”  This in not a criticism of their character or a slur against them, it’s a physiologic fact.  “Obese” is defined as having a BMI—or Body Mass Index—of 30% or more.  That means that to be obese, one’s body needs to be at least 30% fat by weight—an enormous amount by any measure.

Within this group of obese people is a subset known as the “morbidly obese,” with a BMI of 40 or greater.  These are typically the people who weigh double or more their normal body weight.  For example, a woman who is 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 200 pounds, but should weight 110 to be in the normal range, is morbidly obese.  A man who is six feet tall should weigh about 175.  If he is morbidly obese, that means that he weighs at least 280 pounds.  In both cases, these people are at least 80 to 100 pounds overweight.

What are the consequences of being overweight?  The popular press talks about appearance and heart disease, but more subtle and deadly diseases can follow from obesity.  The biggest danger is from diabetes, which can come on because we’re overweight.  This type of obesity-caused diabetes is referred to as Type-II diabetes, as contrasted to Type-I, or “juvenile onset” diabetes.  The former comes from chronic obesity and lack of exercise, while the latter is generally caused by an overactive immune response (generally in childhood) to one’s own body organs.

Now for another statistic (I promise that this is the last one): over 12 million people in the US suffer from Type-II diabetes.  Most of those who do don’t even know that they have it.  They can live with the symptoms for years—symptoms which include

• Sweating
• Tiredness
• Constant thirst
• Irritability
• Hunger for sweet things
• Feelings of faintness

These symptoms occur because Type-II diabetics are producing too much insulin and have too little glucose in their bloodstream.

So how exactly—and without more statistics—does diabetes follow obesity?  The mechanism is pretty straightforward.  Your liver and your pancreas are the key players here.  The stomach digests the food, while your small intestine absorbs the nutrients—everything from sugars and starches to proteins and fats.  The liver converts what the body needs to glucose, while storing the rest as fat.  The liver knows how much glucose the body needs through the signals it receives from the pancreas—signals in the form of insulin.  The more insulin, the more glucose the liver pushes out into the bloodstream. 

When you’re obese, you eat too much all the time.  That means that the liver, overwhelmed, pushes out more glucose than the body needs.  The pancreas, in an effort to keep up with all that glucose, pushes out more insulin than the body needs.  As a result of this “insulin push,” the body’s cells become resistant to the signals.  Insulin-resistant diabetes results.

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Nothing is a total cure, other than losing weight naturally

We’ve all read about “cures” for obesity, from the fantastic to the unbelievable.  For those of us who are truly overweight—over 30% body fat, defined as “obese”—there seem to be new ways to lose weight through surgery that can help the pounds ‘melt off’ and the patient resume a normal life.  How real is this surgery, and is it as problem-free as we read in the ads?  Two answers: the surgery is very real, and growing, but it is a lifelong commitment that can have serious side effects.  In short, don’t try bariatric surgery unless you’re truly desperate to lose weight.

Why is bariatric surgery so difficult?  First of all, surgery of all kinds—even laparoscopic surgery—is more dangerous than surgery on people at normal weights.  That’s because their bodies are already under more stress, their health conditions not as good.  Then there’s the physical fact that there can be six to twelve inches or more of fat that the surgeon needs to penetrate in order to get to the stomach, before the core part of the operation can take place.

Surgeons take one of three approaches.  The best-known, and most popular, is the Roux-en-Y procedure. That cuts the stomach down to 10% of its normal size, while sending the rest to a shortened small intestine.  As you can imagine, the Roux-en-Y makes it difficult to eat more than a few spoonfuls at a time.  Since the small intestine is smaller as well, there are fewer nutrients absorbed.  The key drawbacks—and these are lifelong—include

• Vitamin deficiency, as fewer vitamins are absorbed in the small intestine.
• Continual feelings of nausea and fullness, whether one has eaten or not.
• 20% of those who receive Roux-en-Y find a way to get around it and get the extra calories, using methods as draconian as putting peanut butter in the microwave and drinking it warm.
• Over time, the stomach can grow to a larger size, which makes overeating more possible.

The newer laparoscopic bands, known as “lap bands,” do the same thing, but in a more minimally-invasive way.  These operations consist of the surgeon installing a clothespin-like device at the top of the stomach, again closing all but a portion of the stomach to food.  While the lap band procedure can be reversed, it poses many of the problems with the Roux-en-Y procedure.

Finally, the duodenal switch leaves the stomach much larger (and therefore the natural flow of food to the small intestine through the pylorus).  Rather than bypass the food from the stomach, the “switch” takes the bile acids and pancreatic fluids and bypasses a significant part of the small intestine.  Without those juices, fatty foods don’t get absorbed.  This operation is much less drastic, but can still lead to feelings of fullness and nausea in patients, without some of the side-effects related to vitamin deficiency.  There is some suggestion that the duodenal switch operation also reverses the effects of diabetes—an effect that needs further clinical research.

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Are you confused about all the weight loss and diets plans on the market today? Do you believe all the exaggerated claims of quick and easy weight loss? There is often misleading information and the true cost of these weight loss programs.

So which program is best for me? Take a look at www.bestdietforme.com. They provide a free online diet analysis and identify which of the tope 60 diet plans best fits your lifestyle, budget and nutritionalpreferences. After completing the analysis you get a report of the diets that would work best for you.

They cover all the top diet plans including: NutriSystem, eDiets, the Atkins diet, Zone Diet, Richard Simmons, Body for Life, Weight Watchers, South Beach Diet, Jenny Craig, LA Weight Loss, Slim-Fast, Herbalife, fad diets, diet books, MD plans, diet drugs, and many more.

So if you are on a diet or considering going on a diet, take a look at www.bestdietsforme.com. After all it’s free.

PRWeb

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When it comes to weight loss supplements the active ingredient that comes to mind most in people is Hoodia. Hoodia Gordonii is easily one of the hottest sellers of weight loss supplements today. It is also the most talked about. Hoodia Gordonii has been featured on prime time shows such as 60 Minutes, BBC Reports and Oprah’s O Magazine.

With all the buzz in the media and in the weight loss world – many people still don’t know what exactly Hoodia Gordonii is. Now there is a one stop web site that has a wealth of information. The newly launched www.hoodia-drug-info.com is a place where you can find information about Hoodia and in all of its forms. It will also help you determine if you are getting a quality Hoodia product and learn safety tips on taking this herbal remedy.

I found this site to be very informative and worth a look.

PRWeb

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It’s confusing enough to know what kind of diet a person should be on. Do I do the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, or the Blood Diet? It’s hard enough, as it is, to stick to any diet in general. So, who knows what is best, and is there any danger with any of these diets?

Well, a shocking study just came out from researchers at Aberdeen’s Rowett Research Institute. Low-carbohydrate diets may increase the risk of people suffering bowel cancer. They believe there is a link between eating less carbohydrate and reducing cancer-fighting bacteria. The researchers said they had discovered a link between consuming carbohydrate and the production of a fatty acid in the gut that protects against colorectal cancer.

Any diet you decide to attempt should be nutritional and not taken to any extreme. If your like me, maybe it’s OK to cheat every once in a while. This also confirms that you should consult you physician before going on any diet.

BBC NEWS 

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There has always been a debate on what diet works best. There are so many different diets and many of them are so hard to follow that people fail. If there one diet a person should be on, according to this study, it is a low glycemic index load diet.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) May 16, 2007, involving 73 obese adults, aged between 18 to 35 years, at the Children’s Hospital Boston, showed greater weight loss among participants who followed a low glycemic load (GL) diet over a low fat diet. The results suggest that dieters who have struggled to lose weight in the past may be able to overcome the diet challenge with a simple oral glucose tolerance blood test and a low GL diet based on low GI carbohydrate food choices.

As an additional benefit to this diet, it was reported that all participants who followed a low GL diet (regardless of insulin secretion), showed beneficial effects on HDL (good) cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations, known risk factors for diseases including metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

On a side note SoLo Gi is raising the bar in the food industry. They have created an ideal snack food for the GI/GL diet. Most nutrition bars and processed snacks are high GI, because the ingredients are predigested during their processing and metabolize quickly after ingestion, causing a rapid rise in blood sugar and corresponding flood of insulin into the blood stream. The new SoLo Gi bars don’t do this, and they come in 5 different flavors.

PRWeb

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