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How many of these changes do we associate with age and how many are the results of the years of giving the right kind foods a miss? All experts agree that the foods we select are a big factor in maintaining the health of our bodies. After all, why do you eat? Are you hungry? Surprisingly more often, than not the truthful answer is 'No'. Most people either eat out of sheer boredom or do social eating or because it is time for a meal or when they are under stress. These are called stress eaters, but we will discuss it another time. Ask yourself, "Do you continue to eat when you're no longer hungry?" Learn to appreciate the difference between hunger and appetite. The answers to all these questions lie within your brain. Hunger is the need for food. You can have an appetite for certain foods only, without really being hungry. For instance, you may look at a piece of chocolate pastry and start feeling ravenous. On the other hand, you can be hungry and eat basic home-cooked food. While your hunger may be based more on your physical needs your appetite is influenced more by culture, social obligations and emotional factors. Most of us have a greater problem not with starting to eat, but with stopping. Floured The use of white or
refined flour is increasing by the day. We often hear that white flour
(maida) or the products made from maida are bad for our
health. But the exact reason why it is bad or how much it can harm us
is not known to many of us.
Most of the food items made of maida are tasty, but these tasty foods affect our health. Processed foods like white flour, refined sugar, soft drinks are widely available and mostly unavoidable. These permit us to become over fed and under nourished because these provide empty calories. Food manufactures remove the endosperm of the wheat (white flour) from the germ (wheat germ) and the bran (wheat bran). Foods made from refined flour, refined sugar and refined oil, borrow nutrients from our body in order to aid their own absorption thereby depleting the body's reserves of vitamins and minerals. Even if the white flour
that you buy, reads 'enriched flour' - it only means that only four or
five vitamins have been added to it but at least 10 more have been
taken away (lost during processing). Wheat in its refined form is
harmful to the body as it is not only fattening but also the rootcause
of most diseases of the 21st century. It has a high glycemic index
(71) and people who eat maida, eat twice the number of calories
as compared to those who eat 'whole' unprocessed, low GI foods.
Most breads which we use as a breakfast option are also made up of maida. Roomali roti, naan, cakes, pastries, most baked foods, biscuits, snacks, pastas, noodles, samosas…..the list is endless! Maida is found in all junk food. Maida is found everywhere in hotels, households, roadside eateries and bakeries. Nutritionist and doctors usually advise us to decrease the salt intake if a person has a blood pressure problem, and to control 'sweet intake' in diabetes… but maida is a food which needs to be avoided in all degenerative health conditions. Harmful effects of maida Foods that are made from maida have a high glycemic index for example foods like noodles, pasta, white bread, biscuits, cakes, pizza base, burger buns etc. As refined flour (maida) has a high glycemic index, it will digest quickly and release sugar into the bloodstream swiftly. This causes a sharp insulin response which, over a period of time, with prolonged consumption of processed and refined foods, causes inflammation, insulin resistance and eventually type 2 diabetes. Fried maida products make it worse! When foods containing maida are fried, for e.g. samosas, chaklis, fried noodles, kachori, puran poli, cheesy pastas, lasagnes etc., the body gets an overdose of fat and refined carbohydrates, which disrupts your metabolism, leads to inflammation, hyper insulinism, insulin resistance and eventually type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer and even cancer. Eating maida also raises your bad cholesterol (LDL), makes you fat, clogs your arteries, raises your blood pressure, disrupts your blood sugar, keeps you hungry, makes you crave for sweets, causes mood swings and irritability and ruins your health, looks and relationships. People eat it because they are unaware of its consequences. Some unscrupulous nutritionists' advocate maida products like pani puri, cheese cakes, pastas, noodles, pizzas to patients who are desperate to lose weight but are unable to give up their addiction to white flour. Instead of counselling the ill-informed patient, these nutritionists feed their clients' desire for junk foods and further promote ill health in their patients. Maida consumption can only lead to diseases like fatty liver, raised triglycerides, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, etc, etc. The concept that diet can affect the condition of the body is not new. Using food in a positive way is entirely up to us. Unfortunately, the food that we eat caters to our taste buds rather than to our body's nutritional needs. You can rebuild your health, by using food as medicine to prevent many diseases. Hope this gives you not only food for thought but also thoughts about how your food becomes you. — The writer is a nutritionist. She treats obesity and related health disorders online. She can be reached at ask@health-total.com / www.health-total.com
Health
Capsules
In that study, a team at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, reported that a compound they had created and injected into obese mice increased activation of a protein called REV-ERB, which is known to partially control animals' circadian rhythms and internal biological clocks. The injected animals lost weight, even on a high-fat diet, and improved their cholesterol profiles. Unexpectedly, the treated mice also began using more oxygen through the day and expending about 5 per cent more energy than untreated mice, even though they were not moving about more than the other animals. In fact, in most cases, they were more physically lazy and inactive than they had been before the injections. The drug, it seemed, was providing them with a workout, minus the effort. Intrigued, the Scripps scientists, in conjunction with researchers from the Pasteur Institute in France and other institutions, set out to see what their compound might be doing inside muscles to provide this ersatz exercise. When they set the sedentary mice loose on little treadmills, they ran "significantly longer both in time and distance" than untreated animals, the authors wrote, even though they had not been training beforehand. The drug "certainly seems to act as an exercise mimic," a co-author, Thomas Burris, now the chairman of the department of pharmacological and physiological science at St Louis University School of Medicine, said. It is not inconceivable, he adds, that at some point in the future, such a drug might allow people, especially those who are disabled or can't otherwise exercise, to enjoy the health benefits of endurance without the exertion. The study is published in the journal Nature Medicine. Weed-smoking teens susceptible to psychiatric disorders Regular use of marijuana during adolescence may permanently impair brain function and cognition, and increase the risk of developing psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia in adulthood, says a new study. Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine hope that the study will help to shed light on the potential long-term effects of marijuana use. Study's senior author Asaf Keller said, "Previous research has shown that children who started using marijuana before the age of 16 are at greater risk of permanent cognitive deficits, and have a significantly higher incidence of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. There likely is a genetic susceptibility, and then you add marijuana during adolescence and it becomes the trigger." The study is published in Neuropsychopharmacology — a publication of the journal Nature. Prolonged breastfeeding makes babies brighter kids Scientists have linked breastfeeding with better receptive language at 3 years of age and verbal and nonverbal intelligence at the age of 7. Evidence supports the relationship between breastfeeding and health benefits in infancy, but the extent to which breastfeeding leads to better cognitive development is less certain, according to the study background. Mandy B. Belfort, M.D., M.P.H., of Boston Children's Hospital, and colleagues examined the relationships of breastfeeding duration and exclusivity with child cognition at ages 3 and 7 years. Researchers used assessment tests to measure cognition. The study said that longer breastfeeding duration was associated with higher Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test score at age 3 years and with higher intelligence on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test at age 7 years. However, the study also noted that breastfeeding duration was not associated with Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning scores. The authors said that in summary the results support a causal relationship of breastfeeding in infancy with receptive language at age 3 and with verbal and nonverbal IQ at school age. These findings support national and international recommendations to promote exclusive breastfeeding through age 6 months and continuation of breastfeeding through at least age 1 year. The study has been published in JAMA Pediatrics. Junk food behind most liver diseases
Decongestants’ use linked to birth defects A woman's use of decongestant medications in the first trimester of pregnancy may raise her child's risk of certain rare birth defects, according to a small study. Some types of over-the-counter decongestants, including the popular phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine, were individually linked to rare, specific birth defects of the digestive tract, ear and heart. — Agencies
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I
After all, this is what
life is all about. You may have lived with certain eating and living
habits, some good and some bad. But you also have a measure of control
over your habits — the diet you eat and the amount of exercise you
get and whether you smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. A number of
changes in your physical appearance and your health you experience on
a day-to-day basis are influenced by your habits. Other changes are a
result of the passing years.
New York:
Scientists believe that they could reap the benefits of exercise
through a pill. Two new studies investigate the enticing possibility
that we might one day be able to gain the benefits of exercise by
downing a pill, rather than by actually sweating, the New York Times
reported.
More and more liver
diseases are being caused by obesity and junk and fried food than
alcohol consumption, says liver expert S.K. Sarin. "Bad food can
cause bad liver. While alcohol causes liver problems in 10-20 per cent
of the population, fatty food leads to obesity and problems in 25 per
cent of population," said Sarin. Non-alcoholic fatty liver
disease was one cause of a fatty liver linked to fat deposition
unrelated to excessive alcohol use. "Obese kids have a major
problem as they grow up to definitely have liver problems which later
lead to other major health issues," he said. It was very
important to get the liver tested at a proper time as in his opinion
all heart diseases were due to liver diseases.