Health related information and news from around the world.

Spreads and dips. The following are all suitable to use as alternatives to margarine or butter: avocado, hummus, baba ganoush, tahini, nut butter/spread (eg. peanut, almond, cashew, hazelnut or macadamia paste) and tomato paste.

Red wine. One glass daily with a meal for women and two glasses for men is an ideal quantity. It is best to have at least three alcohol free days per week.

Dark chocolate. A maximum of 100 grams per day is recommended. Look for chocolate that contains between 70 and 85 percent cocoa solids.

Green tea. Ideally you would drink three cups a day. If you do not like the taste of green tea, purchase a variety that has been flavoured with other herbs such as mint or lemon. Oolong tea is also highly beneficial.

Garlic and onion. These are best eaten raw, as cooking can damage some of the infection fighting properties they contain.

Spices. Ginger, turmeric, fenugreek, rosemary, cumin and others. Most spices have natural antibiotic actions and they are high in antioxidants, helping to reduce inflammation in your body. Many of them are helpful for stabilizing blood sugar levels, thus are good for people with Syndrome X and diabetes. Using spices in your cooking reduces the need for salt. Small amounts of sea salt can be used, unless you have high blood pressure and are sensitive to salt.

Grains. These are all fairly high in carbohydrate and should be limited.

Oats and barley are high in soluble fibre and have cholesterol lowering properties. Rolled oats are best used to make porridge; barley can be added to soups, and some bread contains added barley. Bread should be limited, and only that with a low GI or made of stone ground flour should be used.

Stevia. This can be obtained in powder, tablet and liquid form. Stevia is an ideal natural, non-calorie sweetener to use in place of sugar in tea, coffee and cooking.

*60/53/5*

L-Arginine

L-arginine is an amino acid found in many foods. The head of the sperm contains an exceptional amount of this nutrient which is essential for sperm production. As long ago as 1944, researchers found that an arginine-free diet – even for just a few days – prevented sperm maturing correctly.

Since then, a great deal of research has shown that L-arginine supplementation should be considered seriously when there are problems with sperm and male fertility. According to one study, supplementing with L-arginine can help to increase both the sperm count and quality. Other research showed that sperm counts doubled after supplementation and there was also an increase in the number of pregnancies.

Warning

People who have herpes attacks (either cold sores or genital herpes) should not supplement arginine because it stimulates the virus.

Your partner should take 1 000 mg a day.

L-Carnitine

Another amino acid called L-carnitine also appears to be essential for normal functioning of sperm cells. High levels of L-carnitine have been found in sperm cells and it seems the higher the level, the better the sperm count and motility.

Supplementing with L-carnitine over four months helped to increase the number of normal sperm in men with a high percentage of abnormal forms, and to increase their sperm count.142

Your partner should take l00 mg a day.

Vitamin A

This vitamin deserves special mention because there is a lot of confusion about its use before and during pregnancy. The key point is that it is important to have good amounts of vitamin A at the point of conception because it is essential to the developing embryo.

Recently, concerns have been raised about the use of vitamin A while trying to become pregnant and during pregnancy. These problems were brought to light by a number of women who regularly ate large amounts of liver during pregnancy. (In the past, women were told to eat liver when pregnant because it is a good source of iron. However, liver also contains large amounts of the animal form of vitamin A, retinol, and it is this that appears to cause the problems.)

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that pregnant women who take high doses of retinol every day increase their risk of having a handicapped baby. The danger threshold appears to be daily doses in excess of 10,000 IU, which results in a one in 57 chance of having a handicapped baby (compared to those who take just half that dose).

Interestingly, it seems that vegetable sources of vitamin A (beta-carotene) do not cause any defects in an unborn child so eating carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, spinach and broccoli is much safer than eating animal sources of vitamin A.

One of the dangers of giving health advice is that the public reacts by swinging from one extreme to another. This has been the case with vitamin A because the usual recommendation now is to take no vitamin A during pregnancy. Yet the consequences of a deficiency of vitamin A during pregnancy can be just as devastating.

Vitamin A has antioxidant and protective properties similar to those of selenium, which protect against cell mutation. It is essential for healthy eyes and, in animal studies, a deficiency of vitamin A has produced newborn animals with no eyes, eye defects, undescended testes and diaphragmatic hernias.

Benefits of vitamin a in pregnancy

In developing nations, deaths in pregnant women are far from rare and may be as much as 50 to 100 times higher than in industrialized countries. And yet studies show that by taking 42mg of beta-carotene daily, this death rate can be reduced by 49 per cent. By taking vitamin A, as retinol, there can be a reduction of 40 per cent.

You should take up to 5000 IU of Vitamin A a day.

*52/73/5*

•     There appears to be a link between alcohol and high blood pressure. Withdrawal of alcohol from someone who is used to drinking produces a rise in blood pressure before there is a fall. The re-introduction of alcohol then produces a rise in pressure within a few days. It is best to avoid alcohol altogether, if you have high blood pressure.

•     Saturated fats may play a part. Research in Finland suggests that reducing the ratio of saturated to polyunsaturated fats in the diet may reduce blood pressure. This is independent of the effects on cholesterol and unrelated to dietary salt intake.

•     There are several studies which suggest that the Pill causes a small but significant rise in blood pressure. It probably makes sense to use another method of contraception if you are at all worried about your blood pressure, if there is a history of blood pressure in your immediate family, or if you are over 35.

•    Lead and cadmium are dangerous to those who work with them. They should be avoided in the workplace whenever possible.

•    One of the main features of modern food processing has been to reduce the amount of potassium we consume. Cooking vegetables in large volumes of water also reduces their potassium content and the adding of salt during cooking does the same. Giving potassium to people with normal blood pressure reduces the blood pressure. It is also well proven that vegetarians (who consume more potassium than the rest of the population) have lower blood pressures than do omnivores. It thus seems sensible, if you have high blood pressure, to include potassium-rich foods in your diet and to cook carefully so as to retain the potassium you buy. Also, restrict salt intake to help the potassium do its job.

*174/72/5*

To paraphrase the poet John Donne, no human is an island. We are all connected.

Our most basic connection is to family. Family ties link us to a genetic, as well as a cultural, past. Through marriage, work, and play, one family interacts with others, forming the network of society. Each thread in this fabric affects, and is in turn affected by, the others.

How, exactly, do families contribute to eating disorders? Researchers use different criteria. Some look at how members communicate. Do they use facts or emotions? Do they express emotions openly or in a disguised way? What about problem-solving: Does the family take a creative approach, or is it stuck with rigid, unworkable solutions? And leadership: Who’s in charge?

Alas, no formula can capture the complex interactions of any family, let alone a family coping with an eating disorder.

Is an eating disorder hereditary? Studies of identical twins, who share the same genetic traits, found that when one of a pair of twins has anorexia, her sister has a better than 50 percent chance of developing the disorder. The correlation is pretty high, but is it proof? Not really – remember that both twins are reared in the same family environment and experience the same social and psychological pressures. What we need are studies of identical twins who have been brought up in different homes. If both twins develop a disorder, then the evidence for a genetic predisposition would be strong.

Michael Strober, a psychologist at UCLA, recently found that anorexia nervosa was eight times as common among close relatives of anorexic patients as in the general population. He writes: “At least some cases of the illness arise from a familiarly transmitted liability, although the manner in which genetic and environmental factors combine to produce illness remains uncertain.”

The stereotype holds that eating-disordered people are white and come from upper-middle-class backgrounds, but patients actually come from many different races and all levels of society. The parents of eating-disordered children tend to be older, but the same holds true of many psychiatric illnesses. Nor is birth order significant—being born first, second, or twelfth doesn’t make any difference. And proportionally, as many eating-disordered individuals come from broken homes as they do from intact ones.

*96/35/5*

Whenever Pat Beyer gets the urge to splurge, she picks up a 5-pound bag of sugar.

“Five pounds of sugar is heavy,” says Pat, a 41-year-old resident of Huntingtown, Maryland. “When I think that I lost the equivalent of five of those bags, it’s easy for me to resist temptation.”

Pat found the extra 25 pounds after giving birth to twins in 1992. Three months later, she found the motivation to get rid of them when she saw a family photo. “I stood out in the photo, but not because of my outfit,” she recalls.

A size 14 and only 5 foot 4, Pat knew that she had to make a change. She joined Weight Watchers in October and was down to a size 8 at her twins’ christening the following February.

Pat has successfully kept off her weight, but not without temptation. She has that bag of sugar as a reminder of what she used to weigh. “I remember coming back from the grocery store one day and lifting that 5-pound bag of sugar to put it in the pantry,” she says. “I thought, ‘I lost five times that much!’

That realization has rescued Pat from many a sticky dietary situation over the years. She recalls one incident in 1998, when she was § feeling particularly frazzled. “The kids hadn’t eaten, and they had to be at T-ball and soccer practice on the opposite sides of town,” she says. “I figured that the easiest thing was just to stop at McDonald’s on the way.” As she reached for her keys, she remembered the sugar.

“I’d taken off five bags of sugar, and I didn’t want to add one back on,” Pat says. She put down the keys and went to the kitchen to prepare a quick meal of chicken and vegetables.

WINNING ACTION

Pick up a bag of sugar. Find a symbol of your weight loss—a 5-pound bag of sugar, a can of Crisco, or a slab of bacon. When somebody says McDonald’s, think about your symbol. Pick it up to remind yourself of how far you’ve come and how much additional weight you’d have to carry around if you gained it back.

*150\89\8*