We’re continuing here on the most common general foods that cause inflammation.

Omega 6s- Omega 6s are similar to omega 3 fats however they can increase or cause inflammation. All oils contain a mixture of fats. The healthier oils have a higher level of those healthier fats – most notably monounsaturated fats and omega 3 fats. For example olive oil has a high amount of monounsaturated fats but it also includes other fats. Flax oil is high in omega 3 fats. Oils high in omega 6s are canola, margarine made with soybean oil, rice bran oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, mayonnaise made with soybean oil and walnut oil. Keep added oils in your diet low to decrease your consumption of omega 6s and get your fats from the whole food such as walnuts. Here are a couple links on how to decrease your consumption of oil and therefore omega 6s.

How to Cook Without Oil (and Never EVER Miss It!)

 

Food Chemicals: MSG and Aspartame or NutraSweet – According to recent research on the gut microbiota (the bacteria in our gut) and inflammation MSG and aspartame are on the list for inflammatory food. Both are flavor enhancers designed to fool our body into a tastier food but can ill effects in the body. Avoid MSG and aspartame by eating whole foods and reading each ingredient label on packaged food. If you’re not sure what an ingredient is leave it on the shelf. MSG only has be labeled as Monosodium Glutamate, if it’s in another form it may not be listed at all. Aspartame will typically be NutraSweet with the logo on the label or ingredient list. Aspartame is a sugar substitute so beware of any diet food products. The only way to strictly avoid it is to make sure you know what your eating. Here are a couple resources on MSG and Aspartame

Check back! More still to come.

Nutrition Advancement is our name, inflammation is our game! We have known for years now the inflammation seems to be at the root cause of most all our health ailments. There are certain foods that are the main culprits of inflammation. They are:
Sugar – we all know sugar isn’t great for us but sugar, all kinds whether maple syrup or GMO beet sugar all create some inflammation. That’s right, unless it says ‘cane sugar’ on the label the sugar is genetically modified sugar from sugar beets. Another thing we know is that genetically modified foods seem to create inflammation in the esophagus and stomach lining by themselves. The first thing to address sugar is to keep it to desserts. Processed foods now contain sugar in just about everything. Watch your ingredient labels, buy whole foods, cook from scratch and keep sugars in dessert foods to limit your intake. Choose dried fruit in place of candy and end meals with fruit to signal to the brain the meal is over.

Saturated fat – With a few exceptions such as tropical oils including coconut oil, saturated fats are from animal foods like meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, cow’s milk and anything made from cow’s milk. Try decreasing your intake of saturated fats by choosing leaner and healthier animal products such as wild salmon and poultry. Watch out for processed foods, milk and cheese which are common in our food supply and are a hidden source of saturated fats.

Trans fat – Trans fats are where we chemically change the structure of unsaturated fats to make them more desirable in food products. The trans fats actually increase the tastiness of food and extend the shelf life. A win-win for the food company’s but a bad combination in our bodies. Trans fats are also associated with increased risks for cardiovascular diseases. A trans fat is changed into a molecule that can no longer really fit through the door of a cell. So what happens to a trans fat? It keeps circulating in the blood. We get older and have scratches on the inside of our arterial wall and the trans fats stick really nicely building up a big spot on the inside of the artery causing plaque. To look out for trans fats watch for any hydrogenated oils.

Refined Carbohydrates – Refined carbohydrates are any grains that are not whole grains. The food ingredient may say enriched and this means it is refined. Brown rice is the whole grain, white rice is  the refined grain or refined carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are only in plant foods just like saturated fats are mainly in animal foods. Carbohydrates are all grains (whether whole grain or refined grains), fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds. Oils can be from animals or plants and are not considered a carbohydrate since they are extracted from the animal or plant. Oils in their natural forms, for instance flaxseeds, are carbohydrates. Limit your use of refined carbohydrates by focusing on fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds and whole grains – especially limiting white flour.

 

Check back for more on the list of common inflammatory foods!

 

The research has been long-standing with evaluating the health of all types of vegetarian diets for decades.

Here’s a top 10 list of health benefits. Can you guess which ones are proven health benefits of a vegetarian diet? The others are possible benefits of a vegetarian diet.

1. Hypertension
2. Diabetes
3. Heart disease
4. Obesity
5. Cancer
6. Osteoporosis
7. Kidney Disease
8. Gall Stones
9. Premature death
10. Higher intake of antioxidants

Numbers 1-5 are the proven health benefits of vegetarian diets, 6-9 are possible health benefits of vegetarian diets and 10 is a dietary fact that vegetarians have higher intakes of antioxidants.

 

There are several different types of vegetarian diets.

A base vegetarian diet includes whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, fruit and vegetables.

Semi-vegetarian – no red meat. It includes a base vegetarian diet plus dairy and eggs.

Pesco-vegetarian – only eats fish (no meat or poultry) and includes the base vegetarian diet plus dairy and eggs.

Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian – eats a base vegetarian diet plus eggs and dairy.

Lactovegetarian – eats a base vegetarian diet plus dairy.

Ovo vegetarian – eats a base vegetarian diet plus eggs.

Vegan – eats a base vegetarian diet. A healthy vegan diet is also called a whole food plant based diet.

 

There is no other diet that has been studied as long and can report such significant health benefits as a vegetarian diet. Consider what you’re trying to accomplish with your nutrition; Is it to avoid disease? A vegetarian diet seems to be an optimal choice. If you’re interested on learning more about a vegetarian diet and how to make it work for you schedule a consultation today.

 

We’re all guilty of it from time to time, eating beyond hunger especially on a high stress day. So why is that?

One reason is that our bodies need a neurotransmitter called dopamine

Dopamine gives us that “Ahhhhh….” feeling of happiness and satiety. It’s made in the brain but the hormones in our gut determine how it is expressed.

So what are the sources of dopamine?

1. High fat and high sugar foods – any foods made with lots of fat and sugar such as baked goods or candy bars

2. Alcohol, elicit drugs

3. Exercise

4. Shopping addiction and any other addiction we maybe involved in will release dopamine.

 

When we image the brains of individuals with addiction to drugs, alcohol or food we notice that the dopamine receptors do not stimulate well. They are ‘burned out’ in a sense and don’t work as they are supposed to.

 

So what’s this person to do? They engage in more of the activity to try to get more dopamine. And it works! Temporarily… And then the amount of drug, alcohol or food needed becomes higher to get the same “Ahhh….” feeling from the dopamine.

 

What’s really a shame is that the more we engage in unhealthy ways of getting our dopamine fix specifically from food is that we create more free radicles from the high fat, high sugar and usually high white flour foods and then the free radicles attack neurons in the brain that tell us we’re full!

 

And there’s more. When we see stress as a threat we feel inadequate that we have any resources to cope and this leads to feelings of distress. So we eat more high fat and high sugar foods BUT this just suppresses stress, it does not fix the stressor. Now, eating that high fat high sugar food at times of stress becomes a habit – especially if we aren’t routinely releasing our stress. When eating high fat high sugar foods becomes a habit our bellies get big and this ultimately decreases the dopamine in the brain so we go back to the beginning of where we need to eat high fat and high sugar foods to suppress stress and it continues…

It’s a unbelievable vicious cycle, so what do we need to do?

Dump your stress routinely! We need to be certain that we are not at our tipping points from daily stress and getting our dopamine from healthy sources. If we are under a pile up of stress with no outlet and another stress comes along combined with low dopamine we will do anything to get that fix.

Become a low reactor to stress, not a high reactor to stress. We all know people who stress at every little thing. Choose to be a low reactor to stress and be sure to have a daily outlet such as deep breathing, meditation, stretching, yoga, guided relaxation or imagery or progressive muscle relaxation. Stay in the moment by paying attention to your senses. What do you see, hear, feel, smell and taste? Chances are the stressor has passed you by but you haven’t let it go.

Eat balanced meals and snacks. Eat breakfast within 1 hour of waking and meals every 4-5 hours with snacks between. Increase your fruit, especially after meals. This sends a satiety signal to your brain.

Be sure you get your dopamine from a healthy source, it appears the only source that’s healthy on the list is exercise so get moving with cardiovascular exercise of any kind.

There’s so much more on this topic so if you struggle with these issues your not alone and your body can increase the level of dopamine if you adopt a generally healthy diet, release stress daily and engage in cardiovascular exercise. When you first make changes the appetite hormones will increase (so unfair – right?) but the hormones will balance and the neurons can rebuild if we give our bodies what it needs to overcome.

Call us today for an individual consultation for more on this topic!

 

Many times we’ll get the question: what foods should I be eating? In this case, there’s a list for that. The USDA in the past has evaluated ORAC scores for hundreds of foods, herbs and spices and rates them in their levels of antioxidants. The function of antioxidants is to donate a free electron to a unstable molecule. This unstable molecule is referred to as a free radical until it gets that free electron. Free radicals cause damage our bodies. If we eat foods high in free radicals and low in antioxidants it may accelerate aging and disease. Here’s the USDA’s ORAC Scores from the last publication in 2010 http://www.orac-info-portal.de/download/ORAC_R2.pdf

Scroll down to the foods and you’ll see that in the “MEAN” column lists the broken down ORAC scores. For example, basil, cinnamon and cloves have very high ORAC scores. The vegetable and fruit category contain the foods with the most numerous high ORAC scores. For example in the fruit category acai, blackberry and cranberry top the list. For vegetables be certain to add artichokes, beets including the greens, cabbage and ginger to your diet. For nuts, peanuts and walnuts possess the highest ORAC scores and for legumes black, kidney, pinto beans and lentils top the list. Cocoa itself has a high ORAC score but once fat and sugar are added as in candies the score goes down. Sorgum grain tops the list as a superfood grain. Check out this resource for sorgum: http://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/whole-grains-101-orphan-pages-found/health-benefits-sorghum

And here for sorgum recipes: http://www.thekitchn.com/whole-grain-primer-5-ways-to-use-sorghum-this-summer-191244

or here: http://www.eastewart.com/recipes-and-nutrition/ancient-grains-20-sorghum-recipes-youll-love/

The USDA no longer complies a ORAC list citing the ORAC values has no impact on human health. Despite potential downfalls it continues to be a list of high nutrient dense whole foods. If you want to increase the nutrition in your diet be sure to include the whole foods with high ORAC scores.

Did you know? Antioxidants are actually the protective part of a plant for it’s survival? Yes! Antioxidants are only a property of plants and not animals so you’ll never see a meat, poultry, dairy or seafood product high in antioxidants. What prevents a fruit, vegetable, herb or spice from being eaten (or over-consumed)in the wild is what protects us from potential disease when we eat it!