« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »
August 29, 2005
For a Healthy Heart, Eat From the Real Food Groups
Remember those four basic food groups from grade school health class? If you've forgotten them, don't worry about it, they don't tell you anything about your natural diet. They were a nutritionist’s attempt to make sense of a very contrived artificial diet based on grains and other processed foods.
It’s simpler and much more consequential to think about your food according to the macronutrients it contains. A macronutrient is a nutrient that you burn for energy. There are three basic types: Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. This is true if you are talking about the diet of modern Americans, ancient cave dwellers, or space station astronauts.
Macronutrients are different chemically and structurally, and each has a different function and a different hormonal response. The type of macronutrients you eat affects your metabolism, regardless of the number of calories you consume.
When you eat protein, your body produces growth hormones that build muscles. When you eat carbohydrates, your body secretes insulin to digest carbohydrates and build fat. (Eating fat has little effect on hormone balance.) The effect of eating protein and carbohydrate has a “compounding effect” over time.
The body muscle or body fat that you build in response to protein or carbohydrate in your diet then further affects your metabolism. For instance, muscle stimulates testosterone and energy use, while fat stimulates estrogen and energy conservation.
Creating a lean physique at the same time you sidestep this modern epidemic of heart disease is easier than you may think. You create both a lean body and a healthy heart by choosing the right quantity and quality of proteins and carbohydrates. For those of us who eat the typical American diet, this means increasing protein, decreasing carbohydrates, and replacing bad fats with healthy fats.
Simply return to the mix of these macronutrients in your natural diet. This approach will lay the foundation for you to establish the weight and health you were born to enjoy. You also will enhance your energy and strength while losing body fat. Once you try this approach to eating, you’ll agree that it’s more enjoyable and easier to follow than the American Heart Association’s low-fat approach.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 9:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2005
For a Strong, Healthy Heart: Enjoy Real Food Again
If you want to live a longer, healthier, and happier life, eat all the natural foods you love, including steak, omelets, salmon, and lobster. Yes, you can become lean and healthy – and improve your cholesterol profile, lower your blood pressure, reverse your diabetes, and lower your heart attack risk – while eating these fabulous foods.
The Heart Cure’s basic philosophy of eating is this: Eat foods that you enjoy in their natural, unadulterated forms. You can eat red meat, fish, poultry, dairy, eggs, most vegetables, most fruits, berries, and nuts. For a healthy heart avoid such man-made foods as Twinkies, French fries, artificial cheese spread, processed meats, and Wonder bread. It’s just that easy. Read chapter 6 to discover the wide variety of natural foods you can include in your heart-healthy diet.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 7:19 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Three Simple, Effective Ways to Measure Your Body Composition
According to the measurements used by most doctors, the Body Mass Index, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sammy Sosa are obese and Brad Pitt and Michael Jordan are overweight. Doesn't make sense, does it?
As you can see, the widely used Body Mass Index (BMI) can be grossly misleading. The problem is that the BMI uses simple height/weight tables that don’t differentiate between muscle and fat. And, since muscle weighs more than fat, a well-muscled person will have a higher BMI. Your weight may be fine according to the height-weight tables, but you may be flabby if you don’t have much muscle. Or, on the other hand, if you have a lot of muscle, you may fall into the overweight category, even if you are lean and toned.
For a meaningful measure of “fatness,” you need to determine the ratio of fat to lean tissues. You can then use that measurement to track your progress.
You can measure body composition in a number of ways. The three most popular are:
The skin fold test: This test involves measuring the thickness of the skin and fat folds at several key spots on your body using a caliper device. The approach is simple, fast, and provides an accurate measure of body fat. You can purchase calipers at exercise equipment stores or online at www.bodytrends.com.
Circumference measurement: This is a crude but useful approximation of body composition based on your waist and hip measurements. All you need to do is measure your waist (at the narrowest point) and your hips (at the widest point), using a tape measure. Your waist should measure at least one inch less than your hips.
Electrical impedance: This technique calculates body fat based on how well your body conducts electricity. (Water-based tissues are good conductors of electricity while fats are insulators.) This approach is not always very accurate, but it can help you assess changes in body composition over time. If you weigh yourself and measure your body fat at the same time of day, you can get a reasonable idea of how your body composition is changing. These electrical impedance scales are widely available at discount stores and often cost less than $100.
There is little point in measuring body composition more than once every two weeks. A healthy range of body fat for men is 10 to 20 percent; for women 15 to 25 percent. In most people, the leaner, the better.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 6:39 AM | Comments (0)
August 7, 2005
Detect Most Cholesterol Abnormalities with VAP Cholesterol
It may surprise you to learn that traditional cholesterol scores are very poor indicators of early cardiovascular disease. Many people with high cholesterol never develop heart problems, and at least half of the people who have heart attacks have seemingly normal cholesterol levels.
It’s time for a better test, and we now have one: The VAP (Vertical Auto Profile) cholesterol test. In addition to the basic scores (total cholesterol, high-density lipoproteins, low-density lipoproteins, and triglycerides), the VAP test includes new categories of cholesterol measurement. This extra data makes the test much more effective in predicting heart attack or stroke.
Even more importantly, the old test only picks up about 45 percent of cholesterol problems, but the VAP test identifies about 90 percent of them.
Using the data from the VAP test, you can determine whether your cholesterol is actually dangerous or if it is present in your bloodstream but virtually harmless in terms of triggering a heart attack. Among the most important new measurements are Lp(a), LDL pattern size, Metabolic Syndrome, and lipid remnants.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 6:30 AM | Comments (1)
August 6, 2005
Detect Heart Disease Early with Heart Scans
CT scanners allow doctors to get a "picture" of a patient’s organs without looking inside. The latest generation of these machines uses Electron Beam Tomography, a machine that delivers a single electron beam at a speed ten times faster than the x-rays used in traditional CT scans. In fact, the electron beam is so fast it can capture images of a human heart as it beats. This noninvasive test is capable of producing images showing calcium deposits and blockages in the arteries.
Doctors can use this test to detect heart disease early. It is painless, and the entire procedure takes only about ten minutes. The process is similar to an x-ray of the body. A radiologist interprets the freeze-framed images to determine the amount of plaque in the arteries.
The test has one limitation: It detects only calcified plaque’ not non-calcified or “soft” plaque. A high calcium score on the test predicts the occurrence of cardiac events. In most cases, a suspicious score indicates the need for further testing.
While the blood markers and additional measurements discussed in chapter 5 of The Doctor’s Heart Cure provide an excellent indication of the presence of heart disease, a heart scan may be worthwhile in patients who would like to document the actual presence of arterial blockage.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at 5:36 AM | Comments (0)