Maybe fad diets aren’t your thing, but you are looking to improve your total health including the mind, body and spirit combined. The book, The Seven Pillars of Health, is a holistic guide to improving your health that dosen’t just rely on diet and exercise alone. Christian author and medical doctor, Tom Colbert, MD, has put together a list of seven essential components to leading a healthy life in seven weeks.

His seven ingredients are: water, sleep and rest, eating living food, detoxification, supplements, exercise and coping with stress. Each of the pillars is to be practiced one week at a time.

Developed under Colbert’s belief that Americans are some of the most unhealthy people in the world, he puts forth a 50-day plan that seeks to change your life, challenge your thinking, motivate, and impact your entire community forever

The Seven Pillars of Health encourages eating a living diet, meaning that food should be fresh and minimally processed. Therefore, saturated fat, sugar, artificial sweeteners and meat are all not allowed.

Since the first pillar is dedicated to water, it should come as no surprise that consuming plenty of fresh water each day is a staple component of The Seven Pillars of Health. In addition, you are instructed to take certain nutritional supplements, most of which Dr. Colbert’s company makes and sells.

Exercise is a key component to leading a disease-free life, according to The Seven Pillars of Health. Exercise is viewed as not just a way to keep the body in shape but to get in touch with nature and improve mood and self-confidence. You are encouraged to exercise on most days of the week by engaging in such activities like walking, jogging or biking outside. Aerobic exercises and fun alternative exercises are described and can be practiced by just about anyone.

The Seven Pillars of Health is a lifestyle guide to optimal life. Focusing on the mind, body and spirit, each of the pillars are broken down, studied and applied for one week at a time. At the end of the seven weeks, you gain a complete approach to healthy living that is supposed to inspire and motivate you to a new way of living.

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Women, want to enjoy good health in your golden years?

Lose weight. Now.

A study published online last night in the British Medical Journal shows that women who are overweight in midlife are at increased risk of various health problems, from chronic diseases to cognitive impairment, once they pass age 70.

Conversely, the study found, women who were lean at midlife were most likely to be healthy after 70.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (both in Boston) analyzed data for more than 17,000 women collected through the ongoing Nurses’ Health Study, which started in 1976. Just under 10 percent of the women in the study who had lived to age 70 or beyond (their mean age was 50 when the Nurses’ Health Study began) reported being free of the 11 major chronic diseases the researchers tracked, maintaining good mental health and cognitive and physical function.

The likelihood of making it into that elite group decreased as BMI (body mass index) increased. Obese women were nearly 80 percent less likely to be healthy after age 70 than lean women. The least likely of all to remain healthy in later years were women who were overweight at age 18 and who gained more than 22 pounds by the time they turned 50. And whether they were lean, overweight or obese at age 18, women who gained weight by midlife had less chance of being healthy over 70 than those whose weight remained steady.

The study controlled for socioeconomic status and for smoking, diet and other lifestyle behaviors that could affect physical and mental health. One caveat: Most of the women studied were white, so researchers aren’t sure their findings extend broadly across the general population.

Still, the study adds new fodder to the often-heated debate about how closely body weight correlates to health. While the common wisdom is that being overweight puts people at increased risk of life-shortening diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, others say no such cause-and-effect relationship has been scientifically established and that people can be very healthy even if they’re overweight or even obese. The new research is the first, according to its authors, to examine the role of overweight and obesity in overall health among women who survive to older ages.

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Increasing Number Of Americans Have Insufficient Levels Of Vitamin D
 Average blood levels of vitamin D appear to have decreased in the United States between 1994 and 2004, according to a new report.

Clinicians previously believed the major health problems associated with vitamin D deficiency were rickets in children and reduced bone mineral content in adults, conditions reduced by fortifying foods with vitamin D, according to background information in the article. More recently, insufficient vitamin D levels have been associated with cancer, heart disease, infection and suboptimal health overall. Evidence suggests that levels of 30 nanograms per milliliter to 40 nanograms per milliliter may be needed for optimum health

“Vitamin D supplementation appears to mitigate the incidence and adverse outcomes of these diseases and may reduce all-cause mortality,” the authors write. However, currently recommended levels of supplementation—200 international units per day from birth to age 50, 400 international units per day from age 51 to 70 and 600 international units per day for adults age 71 and older—focus primarily on improving bone health. In addition, decreases in outdoor physical activities and successful campaigns to reduce sun exposure may have contributed to vitamin D insufficiency, since sunlight exposure is a main determinant of vitamin D status in humans.

Adit A. Ginde, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, Aurora, and colleagues compared levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D, a measure of the amount of vitamin D in the blood) from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), collected between 1988 and 1994, to those collected during NHANES 2001-2004. Complete data were available for 18,883 participants in the first survey and 13,369 participants in the second survey.

“Overall, the mean [average] serum 25(OH)D level in the U.S. population was 30 nanograms per milliliter during the 1988-1994 collection and decreased to 24 nanograms per milliliter during the 2001-2004 collection,” the authors write. The prevalence of levels lower than 10 nanograms per milliliter increased from 2 percent to 6 percent between the two time periods, and fewer individuals had levels 30 nanograms per milliliter or higher (45 percent vs. 23 percent).

Racial and ethnic differences persisted throughout the surveys; among non-Hispanic blacks, the prevalence of 25(OH)D levels of less than 10 nanograms per milliliter increased from 9 percent to 29 percent and levels of more than 30 nanograms per milliliter or higher decreased from 12 percent to 3 percent.

“These findings have important implications for health disparities and public health,” the authors write. “We found that the mean serum 25(OH)D level in the U.S. population dropped by 6 nanograms per milliliter from the 1988-1994 to the 2001-2004 data collections. This drop was associated with an overall increase in vitamin D insufficiency to nearly three of every four adolescent and adult Americans.”

“Current recommendations for dosage of vitamin D supplements are inadequate to address this growing epidemic of vitamin D insufficiency,” they conclude. “Increased intake of vitamin D (1,000 international units per day or more)—particularly during the winter months and at higher latitudes—and judicious sun exposure would improve vitamin D status and likely improve the overall health of the U.S. population. Large randomized controlled trials of these higher doses of vitamin D supplementation are needed to evaluate their effect on general health and mortality.”

Senior author Dr. Camargo was supported by the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for D-receptor Activation Research, and he and co-author Dr. Liu were supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

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Daily Red Meat Raises Chances Of Dying Early
Study Is First Large Analysis Of Link With Overall Health

The new study says, “If people want to be healthy and live longer, consume less red and processed meat,” global nutrition professor Barry Popkin said. 

Eating red meat increases the chances of dying prematurely, according to the first large study to examine whether regularly eating beef or pork increases mortality.

The study of more than 500,000 middle-aged and elderly Americans found that those who consumed about four ounces of red meat a day (the equivalent of about a small hamburger) were more than 30 percent more likely to die during the 10 years they were followed, mostly from heart disease and cancer. Sausage, cold cuts and other processed meats also increased the risk.

Previous research had found a link between red meat and an increased risk of heart disease and cancer, particularly colorectal cancer, but the new study is the first large examination of the relationship between eating meat and overall risk of death, and is by far the most detailed.

“The bottom line is we found an association between red meat and processed meat and an increased risk of mortality,” said Rashmi Sinha of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

In contrast, routine consumption of fish, chicken, turkey and other poultry decreased the risk of death by a small amount.

“The uniqueness of this study is its size and length of follow-up,” said Barry M. Popkin, a professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. “This is a slam-dunk to say that, ‘Yes, indeed, if people want to be healthy and live longer, consume less red and processed meat.’ ”

There are many explanations for how red meat might be unhealthy: Cooking red meat generates cancer-causing compounds; red meat is also high in saturated fat, which has been associated with breast and colorectal cancer; and meat is high in iron, also believed to promote cancer. People who eat red meat are more likely to have high blood pressure and cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease. Processed meats contain substances known as nitrosamines, which have been linked to cancer.

Although pork is often promoted as “white meat,” it is believed to increase the risk of cancer because of its iron content, Sinha said.

Regardless of the mechanism, the research provides new evidence that people should follow long-standing recommendations to minimize consumption of red meat, several experts said.

“The take-home message is pretty clear,” said Walter Willett, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It would be better to shift from red meat to white meat such as chicken and fish, which if anything is associated with lower mortality.”

The American Meat Institute, a trade group, dismissed the findings, however, saying they were based on unreliable self-reporting by the study participants.

“Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet, and studies show they actually provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness that can help with weight control. Proper body weight contributes to good health overall,” James H. Hodges, the group’s executive vice president, said in a written statement.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from 545,653 predominantly white volunteers, ages 50 to 71, participating in the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study. In 1995, the subjects filled out detailed questionnaires about their diets, including meat consumption. Over the next 10 years, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died.

After accounting for other variables that might confound the findings, such as smoking and physical activity, the researchers found that those who ate the most red meat — about a quarter-pound a day — were more likely to die of any reason, and from heart disease and cancer in particular, than those who ate the least — the equivalent of a couple of slices of ham a day.

Among women, those who ate the most red meat were 36 percent more likely to die for any reason, 20 percent more likely to die of cancer and 50 percent more likely to die of heart disease. Men who ate the most meat were 31 percent more likely to die for any reason, 22 percent more likely to die of cancer and 27 percent more likely to die of heart disease.

In contrast, those who consumed the most white meat were about 8 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who ate the least, the researchers found. Poultry contains more unsaturated fat, which improves cholesterol levels, and fish contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are believed to help reduce the risk of heart disease.

The risk also rose among those who consumed the most processed meat, which included any kind of sausage, cold cuts or hot dogs. Women who consumed the most processed meat (about an ounce a day) were about 25 percent more likely to die overall, about 11 percent more likely to die of cancer and about 38 percent more likely to die from heart disease, compared to those who ate the least. The men who ate the most processed meat were 16 percent more likely to die for any reason, about 12 percent more likely to die of cancer and about 9 percent more likely to die of heart disease.

Experts stressed that the findings do not mean that people need to eliminate red meat from their diet, but instead should avoid eating it every day.

“You can be very healthy being a vegetarian, but you can be very healthy being a non-vegetarian if you keep your red-meat intake low,” Willett said. “If you are eating meat twice a day and can cut back to once a day there’s a big benefit. If you cut back to two or three times a week there’s even more benefit. If you eliminate it entirely, there’s a little more benefit, but the big benefit is getting away from everyday red-meat consumption.”

In addition to the health benefits, a major reduction in the eating of red meat would probably have a host of other benefits to society, Popkin said: reducing water shortages and pollution, cutting energy consumption, and tamping down greenhouse gas emissions — all of which are associated with large-scale livestock production.

“There’s a big interplay between the global increase in animal food intake and the effects on climate change,” he said. “If we cut by a few ounces a day our red-meat intake, we would have big impact on emissions and environmental degradation.”

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Spa Health Cancer, Health Concerns, Health and Wellness, Heart Disease, New Research, health nutrition Meat and Cancer, Meat and Heart disease, Red Meat and Health

BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON – In these tough economic times, the family food budget is under closer scrutiny than ever. Add to that the time parents are spending working, or taking on extra shifts to make ends meet, and home-cooked family meals are becoming endangered species. March is nutrition month, so it’s a great time to take a closer look at how families can balance time, budget, and nutrition.

For many families, packaged foods are the answer. But how can they know which packaged foods are best? Nutrition labels help, but don’t tell the whole story. And since not all packages base nutrition information on the same serving size, comparing labels while shopping can be next to impossible.

To simplify the task, HealthCastle.com (http://www.HealthCastle.com), the largest nutrition site run by registered dietitians, is launching Go UnDiet: Packaged Food Review, the first ever online tool to compare, rate, and review packaged food, so that users can easily see which packaged foods make the most sense for their families.

“The Packaged Food Review provides all the information families need in a consistent, easy-to-understand format,” said Gloria Tsang, RD, founder of HealthCastle.com. “It’s a way of helping families eat healthy in a realistic way.”

Go UnDiet: Packaged Food Review provides the key information traditionally found on food labels, but adds extra details like whole grain and high fructose corn syrup content, and identifies whether the product contains artificial sweeteners. Each product review features an “RD’s take” summary to help interpret the nutrition facts.

Users can also sort products by the amount of fat, calories, sugar, fiber, carbs, and more. Based on what’s most important for your family, you can choose the item that appears at the top of the list. Or, if trying to choose between two products, compare them head-to-head.

“We hope families will use the tool to make their packaged food choices before they go shopping,” Tsang said. “That way they’ll come home with healthy packaged foods, rather than just grabbing whatever was sitting at the end of the aisle.”

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