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Diverticulitis

Mon, 02 May 2016 19:05:01 +0100

Diverticulosis occurs when small, bulging pouches develop in your digestive tract.

When one or more of these pouches becomes inflamed or infected, the condition is called diverticulitis. It can produce an acute, sometimes devastating illness, characterized by severe abdominal pain in the left lower part of the abdomen, fever and prostration (extreme physical weakness or emotional exhaustion).

The treatment usually consists of fluids, bed rest, and antibiotics and sometimes a hospital admission.

Diverticulosis is much less common in lifelong vegetarians.

No one is born with these pouches, but in Western societies, half the population will develop at least one, and usually a few dozen, by age 60.

The colons of people living in underdeveloped countries show a virtual absence of diverticular disease. Healthy, low, pressures in the colon happen when the diet is high in starches (potatoes, beans, rice, pasta and tofu), vegetables, and fruits.

While you are recovering from an acute attack of diverticulitis, eat a healthy starch-based diet with some helpful modifications for indigestion (cut out fruit juice and onions) and constipation (add ground flaxseeds).

There is no reason to avoid seeds or any other natural plant foods, as particles from these will not get stuck in your diverticuli.

Prescription and over-the-counter medications are largely used to treat symptoms rather than the cause.

A high fiber diet will decrease the likelihood of developing new diverticuli. The diverticuli already formed are permanent herniations of the colon, and will not disappear except by surgical removal, which is rarely indicated.

In the EPIC study of 47,000 men and women living in England or Scotland and studied for nine years, it was found that consuming a vegetarian diet with a high intake of dietary fiber was associated with a lower risk of admission to the hospital or death from diverticular disease. A high-fiber diet results in large stools that are easy to pass.

Animal foods, including meat, poultry, fish and dairy products contain no fiber. If there is not enough fiber in your diet then your stool is hard to pass and movement requires contractions of the bowel at very high pressures. Years of elevated pressures produce ruptures in the walls of the intestine (balloon-like bulges) called diverticula.

People with inflammatory bowel diseases are at greater risk than the average American for developing colon cancer. This provides another reason to change from your high-fat, high-cholesterol, low fiber diet.

Remember, what you put into your intestines determines their health.

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Gout is Painful

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 19:43:51 +0100

Patrick Hammer of London tells about his first attack of gout, which occurred when he was only 32-years-old and living in Somalia.

“I woke suddenly in the night to an unbearable pain, as if someone had stamped on the ball of my foot. An area of my foot was shining red, like a snooker ball, and was very sensitive and inflamed. I was amazed. I didn't know what it was.”

"The nurse at the British Embassy looked at my foot and told me that I had gout. I was prescribed a medication called colchicine, which helped clear the uric acid from my blood.”

According to the Arthritis Foundation, gout is a form of inflammatory arthritis that causes sudden, severe pain, swelling and tenderness – most often in the large joint of the big toe. Gout is not always limited to the big toe; it can affect other joints including the feet, ankles, knees, hands, wrists, elbows and sometimes soft tissue and tendons. It usually affects only one joint at a time, but it can become chronic and, over time, affect several joints.

A gout attack can last anywhere from a few days to two weeks, if untreated. The disease most commonly affects men and can manifest anywhere from age 30 onward. Women get gout too, although they are at a slightly lower risk, and it usually appears after menopause.

Dr. John McDougall writes that the most important cause of gout is an increase in the intake of rich foods, which are high in uric acid precursors, known as purines. Other lifestyle habits, like alcohol consumption are also believed to encourage the deposition of uric acid crystals in the joints.

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Higher levels of meat and seafood consumption are associated with an increased risk of gout… Moderate intake of purine-rich vegetables or protein is not associated with an increased risk of gout.”

Many doctors emphasize the role of heredity as the cause of gout. It can play a role because some people convert purines to uric acid faster than others and they eliminate uric acid from their bodies through their kidneys more slowly than others due to metabolic differences.

Slower excretion is more common in certain ethnic groups, such as Filipinos. But, Filipinos can maintain low levels of uric acid when they follow their native diet consisting of generous portions of rice and vegetables. If they switch to the high-protein, high-purine diets preferred in more affluent societies, their levels of uric acid rise quickly.

With a change in diet the uric acid level will decrease, as will the tendency to develop gout and kidney stones.

For more information on gout, click here.

"But, You Don't Like Food..."

Mon, 02 May 2016 18:55:58 +0100

As a health writer and coach, I get into all kinds of interesting conversations with people. First, they nearly universally assume that I have been blessed with an extraordinary amount of self-discipline while they have only been blessed with extra pounds. Then, the next thing I hear is that I just have good genes and they have ‘fat’ genes. Have you ever thought that maybe your ‘fat’ genes come from eating the same types of foods as your parents who gave you those ‘fat’ genes?

Most people can pull out a picture of themselves as a child or a teenager and marvel that they were so thin. But then they say, “I might as well eat what I love because it’s inevitable that I will get fat as I age. Doesn’t everyone?”

“I just need to accept myself.”

Of course, you need to accept yourself, but don’t you think you can accept yourself as healthy and thin just as much as you can accept yourself as unhealthy and fat?

Other comments I hear include:

“But, you don’t really like food like I do.”

“You just have willpower and I don’t.”

“I don’t even pretend that I’ll ever be thin.”

This has left me puzzled. I guess most people don’t see the struggle behind any of our behaviors. I love food, but I love my health more.

Author Dennis Prager says in his book, Happiness Is a Serious Problem, that you must have a goal before you can develop self-control.

My goal is health. That is a broad and fuzzy goal, so I have broken it down into some objective measures. The two easiest to check include a BMI below 25 and a blood pressure reading below 120/80.

Once I set my goal for health, I realized that every decision about food could be important.

If I did not believe that my food choices were important, believe me I would be stopping at every Dairy Queen on the highway for a Blizzard. I would then be stopping at McDonald’s for a burger and fries. I would stop at the bakery for a dozen chocolate chip cookies. I would eat at restaurants every night and order shrimp and steak and double cheese burgers. I would eat 3 baskets of greasy chips at every Mexican restaurant. I would load my baked potato with butter and cheese. I would order biscuits and gravy for breakfast with a side of bacon. I would definitely go out to lunch every day because that is certainly easier than packing something healthy. In other words, I love junk food and convenience as much as the rest of you.

I have just developed my self-control by setting my goal for health.

Chinese Company Offers $4.7 Billion for Smithfield Foods

Mon, 02 May 2016 18:56:21 +0100

Smithfield Foods is the world’s largest pork processor. According to Wikipedia, the company raises around 15 million pigs a year and in 2007 it slaughtered nearly 115,000 pigs each day. Pork producers in the United States are highly industrialized. Pigs are raised in something called a vertical integration system that enables the company to control the production of pork – from gestation to slaughter to meat processing.

Matthew Scully, author of the book Dominion writes: “About 80 million of the 95 million hogs slaughtered each year in America are intensively reared in mass-confinement farms, never once in their time on earth feeling soil or sunshine. “

In these so-called factory farms, pigs are raised in long, low, windowless sheds filled with row after row of two-foot-wide metal crates. Beneath the cages are slatted concrete floors that enable the pig manure to fall through the slats into pits below. Those pits are then flushed into lagoons, which become fertile breeding grounds for insects.

Can you even begin to imagine the horrible smell?

Throughout their short life, pigs are injected with minerals and given antibiotics to encourage faster growth. Sometimes little piglets fall through the cracks in the crate floors and end up in the waste system below. Often they are flushed into a city’s sewage system where their bodies clog up the pipes.

I realize that this is “just” an investment decision by Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. China is the world’s largest pork market. Therefore, Smithfield Foods Inc. will be cruelly raising even more pigs and adding more pollutants to our environment and hiring more and more undocumented workers to work in jobs that most American citizens wouldn’t put up with.

Two former employees at Smithfield’s in Utah quit their jobs because they couldn’t stand the cruelty any longer. In an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, the pair was quoted as saying that “if a piglet did not weigh at least five pounds after a week, it got beaten to death. A worker had to grab the little pig by its hind legs and slam it into a wall or into the concrete floor.”

Agribusiness has pushed state legislatures to pass laws making it illegal to enter industrial animal facilities, let alone videotape what goes on. They do not want citizens to know about the horror that goes on.

What can we do as citizens who are worried about the treatment of animals, who are worried about the cleanliness of our environment, or who are worried about the work lives of the illegal immigrants?

We can protest the laws our legislators are making on behalf of agribusiness and stop pretending that the packaged meat we buy in the grocery store is a result of a clean, humane system.

But even more importantly, we can stop eating the products of the system. We can stop eating ham and bacon and pork roasts and ribs. Not only will it be better for the plight of the piglets; it will be healthier for us.

Can You Prevent Alzheimer's Disease?

Mon, 02 May 2016 18:57:05 +0100

My father died of Alzheimer’s disease so I have a particular interest in this subject.

Alzheimer’s is the fastest growing health threat in the United States, according to researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The disease is incurable, but some research has shown that diet and exercise can reduce the odds of a person developing Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

“A growing number of epidemiological studies indicate that there is a strong relationship between nutrition and Alzheimer’s Disease,” researcher M.C. Morris writes in the European Journal of Neurology.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has called these findings linking food and dementia “groundbreaking.”

What are some risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s?

Saturated Fats

These fats are found in meats, dairy products and eggs. They appear to encourage the formation of beta-amyloid plaques within the brain. The Chicago Health and Aging Study reported that people consuming the most saturated fat had more than triple the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Trans Fats

Trans fats are found in doughnuts, bakery cookies, cupcakes, muffins, croissants and other snack pastries. They have been shown to increase Alzheimer’s risk more than fivefold.

Excess Iron

Excess iron can build up in the brain causing the production of free radicals. Using cast-iron cookware, eating meats and taking iron supplements all contribute to excess iron in the body.

Excess Copper

Excess copper impairs cognition. It comes from copper pipes and nutritional supplements.

Aluminum

Because aluminum has been found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, avoid uncoated aluminum cookware and read the labels before buying baking powder, antacids and processed foods to see if aluminum is listed in the ingredients.

What can you do to help protect yourself and your family from Alzheimer's?

Eat Nuts and Seeds

Some studies are looking into Vitamin E’s role in preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Foods containing vitamin E include walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, avocados and olives. Because these foods are high in fat, a small handful on a daily basis should be ample.

Eat Green Leafy Vegetables

Green vegetables are loaded with folate, an important brain-protecting B-vitamin. Greens also provide iron in a form that the body can use without causing iron buildup. Eat plenty of broccoli, parsley, Swiss chard, mustard greens, spinach, kale and turnip greens on a daily basis.

Eat Blueberries and Grapes

These deep colored fruits are powerful antioxidants shown to improve learning.

Eat Sweet Potatoes

Okinawans are the longest-lived people on Earth and sweet potatoes are the main staple of their diets. Sweet potatoes contain beta-carotene, another powerful antioxidant.

Eat Beans and Chickpeas

Beans are full of vitamin B6, folate, protein and calcium.

Take a Vitamin B12 Supplement

If you no longer eat meat, take a 500 microgram vitamin B12 supplement once a week. This vitamin is essential for healthy nerves and brain cells. One study has shown that a deficiency in vitamin B12 and folate can double the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

For menu ideas and recipes purchase a vegan cook-book, such as Coco’s Healthy Cooking and find recipes which fit the above criteria.

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Instead of Eating a Turkey, Why Don't You Adopt One?

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 23:47:45 +0100

This is Thyme – one of the turkeys I adopted from Farm Sanctuary this year. She is one lucky turkey. She was rescued from a factory farm and is living the life of a happy turkey.

Now I want to tell you about the other 98% of turkeys in this country who are being raised for meat. That clean, sanitized and wrapped turkey you purchase in the grocery store or order from a smoking facility has not had a good life. If you have even a tiny sympathetic bone in your body, maybe this information will get you to think again about what you are eating.

Look at this sweet baby turkey, called a poult, who is being humanely cared for. Others like him are not so lucky as they are probably in our factory farming system. Those poults are put onto a sorting machine right after hatching from their shells. The machines are supposed to sort the live turkey babies from the shells. However, in the process many of those tiny babies get caught in the machinery or accidentally get pushed out with the shells. Those poults who are injured plus the ones accidentally knocked into the trash are bagged up in plastic bags and dumped into trash cans while gasping for air as they are slowly suffocating.

The little birds that make it through the sorting process are then grabbed off the conveyor belt by a human hand that cuts off the tips of his toes before he is grabbed by a second human who cuts off the tip of his upper beak.

Scared, tired and hurting these little turkey babies are then put into their new home to live with 25,000 other scared, hurting poults. If they are "lucky" enough to live in a free-range factory, there is a window in the warehouse that lets in some natural light.

As these turkeys grow and get fat, there is not even enough room for them to turn around. If they get hurt or sick they just fall in their place and slowly die. Once or twice a week humans come through and pull out the sick and dying birds and drop them in their big plastic trash bags.

These turkeys are fed food laced with antibiotics to prevent some of the infections that can be caused by living in such close contact. They must stand in their own feces and urine which makes the smell of ammonia overwhelming.

Turkeys in the wild can live 10 – 15 years. These factory farmed turkeys are taken to slaughter houses by the time they are two-years-old. They are grabbed by those human hands again and thrown into crowded wire cages which are then loaded on a flat-bed truck. Frightened, they are totally exposed to the wind and the weather on their drive.

At the slaughterhouse these turkeys are grabbed out of their cages and tied up by their legs on another conveyor belt. They are fully conscious as their throats are slashed.

Did you know that animal cruelty laws do not apply to farm animals? The agri-business lobby has successfully pled their case with lawmakers that these animals are only products and not animals who can feel.

What can you do to help with this sad situation?

• Stop eating turkeys.
• Let your senators and representatives know that you want this cruelty stopped.
• Support animal rights organizations such as Farm Sanctuary or The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary instead of buying a turkey for your holiday dining.
• Get more information by reading books such as Diet for a New America, The Lucky Ones and Farm Sanctuary.

You Are Not Taking Any Medications..... Really?

Mon, 02 May 2016 18:57:44 +0100

Yesterday I had cataract surgery and the anesthesiologist was quite surprised that I was not taking any medications. I asked him why he was so surprised and he answered that nearly everyone he saw was on at least one medication - for high blood pressure or high cholesterol or something else - and many of them were on a number of medications.

He then asked me if I worked on my health or if I was just lucky. Since he was putting me to sleep at the time, I don’t think he was really expecting a long answer, so I just said, “Lucky, I guess.”

However, that brief conversation got me to thinking. Of course, I work on my health. That’s not to say there is not some luck thrown in to the mix, but I think we can all work on our health and get to the point of not having to rely on the pharmaceutical companies to do that work for us. It is probably easier to take a pill each morning than to think about “working on our health,” but many of those pills come with side effects and they don’t always translate into “good health.”

According to the web site, Healthy Is A Habit, there are measurable ways to check on our health – and most importantly – there are actually lifestyle changes we can make to get those excellent results in our own lives.

The site lists four markers for excellent health consisting of your BMI, your blood pressure, your total cholesterol, and your triglyceride level. Since most of us aspire to excellent health, these measurements should be important to us. In fact, we can actually – with a little bit of “work” reach them. That “work” mainly involves choices about what we eat and choices we make about exercise.

Check out the site to find out how close you are to “excellent health.” If you are not there, why not start with a daily walk and a copy of Coco’s Healthy Eating? Go ahead and get started by beginning to "work" on your health rather than relying totally on “luck.”