healthw7 on February 7th, 2010

Now this is something I can get into.  Dr. Al Sears, creator of the Pace weight loss and fitness program, tells us how you can “Enjoy Your Beer Without The Beer Belly”, my title, not his.  And, he’s going to the Super Bowl, lucky guy.  If you’re like me, you enjoy a good beer now and then.   So you should know which beers give you a greater chance to cause that unsightly beer gut.  This is a great article from Dr. Sears.  Check it out, and pass it on.  dmc

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This year, I’m lucky… I have tickets to the Super Bowl.

On Sunday, I’ll be driving down to Miami with a few friends to watch the big game. I’m extra excited because my new fitness book, P.A.C.E.: The 12-Minute Fitness Revolution, is being featured in the official program for the event.

The Super Bowl is a truly American tradition that brings families and friends together for a day of good fun and good food.

And good beer.

Many of the low-carb diets claim that beer has a high-glycemic index and will make you fat. But that’s not necessarily true.

I’ll show you why this claim is bogus and how it misses a more important point – the glycemic load.

And I’ll show you the best beers for your Super Bowl party. You can still enjoy the fuller flavor of “real” beers without having to suffer the watered-down, low-calorie beers that taste like ginger-ale, or worse.

You’ll also discover:

  • What can cause a “beer belly”
  • How to tell the difference between carbs that matter and those that don’t
  • How you can pick up a beer with confidence instead of guilt

Good News for Beer Lovers… It’s Good for Your Heart

A study  Israel adds evidence that a beer a day may help keep heart attacks away. Men with heart disease drinking one beer a day for a month decreased cholesterol levels, increased antioxidants, and reduced levels of fibrinogen, a clot-producing protein in your blood.1

Lower fibrinogen levels are associated with lower rates of heart attacks and strokes. Several population studies have linked moderate beer consumption to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and heart attack.

But as you’ve been hearing in recent years, excess carbs will give you excess belly fat. With a beer weighing in with an average of 11 grams of carbs per bottle, it’s leaving carb-counting beer drinkers a little parched.

Yet, there is more to the story of carbs and beer. To understand this point, let’s take a quick look at how beer is made.

Let the Yeast Take Care of the Carbs

Beer makers start with malted barley. When they brew barley malt, the liquid contains a lot of the sugar, maltose, and other starches  the grains. Does this equal high carbs? Yes. But wait…

During the next step, the fermentation process, they add yeast. Yeast cells eat carbohydrate. They convert it into alcohol and natural carbonation: the beverage you know as beer. The longer this fermentation process goes on, the higher the alcohol content and the less unfermented carbohydrates remain.

But what about the supposed high-glycemic index of carbs in beer?

In the Real World, Glycemic Load Matters

The glycemic index measures how fast and high a specific food or beverage increases your blood sugar. A lower glycemic index indicates a food will stimulate less blood sugar and is a “good” carb. A higher one means it’s a “bad” carb. This system is useful but fallible because it doesn’t account for your carbohydrate serving size. A better measure is your glycemic load.2

Glycemic load measures the effect of the total amount of a food on your blood sugar. To find the glycemic load of any food or beverage, simply multiply the glycemic index by the number of carbs per serving and then divide by 100.3 What’s a healthy number? Shoot for 10 or less.4

This distinction happens to be critically important when it comes to beer…

Beer Is Bad? The Diet Books Get It Wrong

Now back to the low-carb diet books telling you that beer has a high-glycemic index that will make you fat. You’ll wonder how they came to this conclusion after you look at the tests to determine glycemic index.

We measure the glycemic index by having a test subject consume 100 grams of a carbohydrate test food or beverage all at once. It has to be consumed within 15 minutes.

We then measure blood sugar every half hour over the next two hours. Then we compare these blood sugars with the blood sugars produced in response to 100 grams of sugar water.5

To test beer’s glycemic index, a test subject would consume 100 grams of carbohydrate. With an average of 11 grams per beer, you would have to drink nine beers all at once. To test a light beer, you have to drink more.

If someone tells you that a low-carb beer with 2.6 grams of carbs will make you fat because it has a high-glycemic index, ask them, “Who drank 24 beers within 15 minutes?” Even if you use only 50 grams of carbs, beer can’t be tested without causing test subjects excessive drunkenness!6

So what should you make of the diet books’ glycemic warnings about beer? Ignore that section of the low-carb books and forget about beer’s glycemic index. If you limit yourself to a couple of beers, there’s simply not enough carbs to conduct a meaningful test – or to have a meaningful impact on your blood sugar. But you can do even better.

Drink a Six-Pack, But Keep Those Six-Pack Abs

Now for the best news about carbs and beer. Since yeast feed on the carbs in beer, to lower the carbs all a brewer has to do is to let the fermentation proceed for longer.

Recently brewers have found ways to manipulate this feeding frenzy to allow the yeast to remove naturally nearly all of the carbs. This also has the advantage of avoiding the watering down of low-cal light beers.

Anheuser-Busch produced the first low-carb beer. For about a year, Michelob Ultra was the only low-carb on the block. Busch reports it has had the fastest growth of any new brew they have ever introduced. In less than a year, it shot to number 7 in sales for premium beers, eclipsing the acceptance of light beers a couple of decades back.7

Now other brewers are looking for their share of this fast-growing market. In recent years, beers  Labatt and Coors have joined Michelob Ultra. These beers boast less than three grams of carbs per bottle. They have less than half of the carbs but twice the flavor of some light brands.

Here’s how the popular brews stack up when it comes to carbs:

Popular Brew

Carbs.

Rock Green Light Low Carb 2.4 g
Michelob Ultra Low Carb 2.6 g
Aspen Edge Low Carb 2.6 g
Miller Lite 3.2 g
Amstel Light 5.0 g
Coors Light 5.0 g
Bud Light 6.6 g
Heineken 9.8 g
Budweiser 10.6 g
Coors 11.3 g
Michelob Light 11.7 g
Rolling Rock 13.0 g
Miller Genuine Draft 13.1 g
Guinness 17.6 g
Zima 30.0 g

Notice that the only light beer that compares to the low-carb brews is Miller Lite. But if you actually like the taste of beer, Lite may leave you with the feeling that you’re drinking a mix of water and beer.

Note that you get fewer carbs in four Michelob Ultras (10.4 g) than in one Michelob Light (11.7 g). You could drink five Rock Green Lights (my pick) and have fewer carbs at 12.0 than if you drank one regular Rolling Rock, which has 13.0. What’s more, each of these new low-carb brews seems to outperform the last, in terms of flavor and fullness.

The first three all have full-bodied taste but have the lowest carbs, as these are the specially formulated low-carb brews. You can find some European imports that will top off at 30 grams of carbs.

You’ll want to partake in these in moderation, if at all. Also, the “beer alternatives” such as wine coolers and hard ciders are in no way healthier and much worse when it comes to carbs. They start at around 26 grams and go up  there. If you’re cutting carbs, give those a wide berth.

Try a taste test of the lowest on the list and see which you prefer. If you like a beer now and then, you may be able to kick back and enjoy a cold one this Super Bowl with a little less guilt.

To read more from Dr. Sears, please visit here:

http://www.alsearsmd.com

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healthw7 on February 7th, 2010

Fitness madman Jon Benson is at it again… this time telling us you can get “skinnny eating fast-food…” And he intends to prove it. Naturally you have to modify the way you eat fast-food (duh!) but his tips are really clever. Here’s 3 for you today…

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 3 fast-food fatloss-tips

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Believe it or not you can get lean by eating fast food.

I know, it sounds crazy… but in a few weeks I’m going to prove it to the world with the release of my newest mini e-book “Fast Food Fitness: How I Dropped 40lbs Eating Fast Food Every Day.”

Do you think I’m joking?  I’m not.

Of course there’s a WAY to eat fast food and drop the pounds. You can’t just eat like everyone else does. That’s common sense.

And believe me, there are more healthy ways to drop the pounds than eating fast food… for sure.

But the way I figure it: Would you rather be healthIER and lean or UNhealthy and overfat?

Silly question… so consider “Fast Food Fitness” a path to the lesser of two evils… and one that actually got me to 10% bodyfat (that’s pretty lean!) a few years ago.

Here’s how it started:

I simply hate to cook!  I have since solved that problem… I hired a part-time chef (it’s cheaper than it sounds)… but until two years ago I was eating out every single meal… I mean EVERY MEAL.

Most of the time… not all of the time, but most of the time… these meals were fast food joints like burger joints and even fried chicken places.

But I had to keep my physique, so … what to do?

Well… you’ll have to wait. At least a few weeks.

If you want the book for half-price, you have to own a copy of “Every Other Day Dietplan”… everyone who owns a copy before “Fast Food Fitness” hits the Internet will get half-off.

So go here if you don’t have EODD yet …

click—–>  http://www.everyotherdaydiet.com/go/fitover50

Here’s 3 of my top 25 fast-food diet-tips… just these 3 will take you 1/3 of the way there…

First, use my Half-n-Half Principle. Order whatever you are going to order and then have the person behind the counter cut the order exactly in HALF.

Half to go… half to eat there.

Eat half now…. then the other half 3-4 hours later. Believe it or not you will store less bodyfat and even increase your metabolism eating like this.

Simple trick… give it a shot.

Second, ditch all the starch. That means buns, bread and anything made of flour. BUT here’s the “still tastes good” trick I use. I keep ONE of the pieces of bread from, say, my hamburger. Then I “pick” at it while I enjoy the meat and either a small diet soda or tea. Eat no more than 5 “picks” at the bread… about half a slice. You still get the exact taste of a burger with none of the stuff that makes most people over-fat.

Third, for you chicken lovers, split your order between fried and baked chicken. KFC has excellent baked chicken… try it. Then strip most of the skin off the fried chicken. Not all… most.

You still get the taste, but with far fewer bad food-stuffs and calories…. make sense?

Enjoy the tips… but remember, the healthiest (and tastiest) way to eat is still my Every Other Day DIetplan, which works in your favorite foods each week….

click—–>  http://www.everyotherdaydiet.com/go/fitover50

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healthw7 on January 26th, 2010

Just received this from Dr. Al Sear’s House Calls e-letter.  It’s all about high blood pressure and the effects it can have on your whole body, not just your heart.  Dr. Sears gives us some great “natural” solutions to control your blood pressure and protect not only your heart, but all the rest of you too.  Excellent article, as always, from Doctor Al Sears.  Check it out below, and, as always, pass it on.  dmc

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Dear Dan,

Most of the heart patients I see for the first time already know high blood pressure can mean disaster for their heart health.

But here’s what they don’t know.

Having high blood pressure can also wreak havoc on your brain, kidneys, and eyes.

Here’s the scary part…

High blood pressure can quietly damage these vital organs for years before you see any symptoms. If left unchecked, this silent killer can leave you with a disability. Or worse, it can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

That’s because your heart, brain, eyes, and kidneys all depend on blood flow. It supplies them with life-giving nutrients and oxygen.

Healthy arteries are strong and flexible. They’re smooth on the inside. This lets blood flow freely. With high blood pressure, however, it’s a different story.

The increased pressure can damage the lining of your arteries’ walls. This can lead to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), heart disease, and stroke. The constant pressure can also cause a section of the arterial wall to enlarge, causing an aneurysm in the aorta or brain.

It’s the same story with the kidneys and eyes.

High blood pressure is the most common cause of kidney failure. And in the eyes, this arterial damage can cause serious vision problems due to fluid buildup or nerve damage.

Unfortunately, mainstream medicine’s solution to this is side-effect laden drugs like beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, calcium-channel blockers, and diuretics.

Some of the unpleasant effects of taking these medications include:

  • Constant fatigue
  • Weakness
  • Shortness of breath
  • Depression
  • Impotence
  • Chronic dry, hacking cough
  • Swollen ankles
  • Kidney damage

One of my patients, R.G., put it this way: “If this is what it feels like to survive a heart attack, I’d rather be dead!” His previous doctor had him on a laundry list of drugs, including blood pressure drugs, to “protect” his heart. The side effects were crippling him.

Fortunately, you don’t need medications to protect your heart or even reduce your blood pressure.

You can do it naturally, with inexpensive foods and supplements.

For starters, you should get your blood pressure measured.

Most grocery stores and pharmacies have a station where you can get it checked for free. Otherwise see your doctor.

Once you know your scores, take a look at the chart below and see where you fall between the normal and high blood pressure (hypertension) range:

Blood Pressure Stage

Systolic (Top Number)

Diastolic (Bottom Number)

Normal

<120

<80

Pre-Hypertension

120-139

80-99

Stage One Hypertension

140-159

90-99

Stage Two Hypertension

160+

100+

Next, you can use any one of these four natural alternatives to reduce or even prevent high blood pressure:

Garlic – This tasty herb contains sulfides that help relax your arteries. This lets blood flow more freely. In fact, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that garlic can relax blood vessel tension by an amazing 72 percent.1 For maximum benefit, eat one to two cloves of fresh garlic per day. If you’d rather use a supplement, choose one that gives you at least 3,600 mcg of allicin – garlic’s active compound.

Hawthorn – This herb has been used for centuries as a heart tonic. Just like garlic, it works to relax the blood vessels. It does this by inhibiting enzymes called angiotensin-converting enzymes. (They are what cause your blood vessels to constrict.) Prescription drugs like ACE inhibitors work the same way – with far more dangerous side effects. In one clinical trial, hawthorn effectively reduced diastolic blood pressure.2 I recommend you take 1,000 mg of hawthorn extract daily.

CoQ10 – About 50 percent of patients that come to me on high blood pressure meds have stopped taking them just by supplementing with CoQ10. A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition confirms what I’ve seen in my own practice. Researchers gave CoQ10 to diabetic patients. Not only did their blood sugar improve, so did their blood pressure.3 This powerful and amazing antioxidant works by supplying your heart with the critical energy it needs to pump blood throughout your body. Without CoQ10, your heart would literally stop beating. I suggest you take 50 to 100 mg of the potent form of CoQ10 known as ubiquinol.

Quercetin – This powerful antioxidant is off most doctors’ radar screens. It’s a “bioflavanoid” that’s found in foods like apples, onions, red grapes, and leafy greens. In one study, researchers gave 22 people with high blood pressure quercetin for four weeks. At the end of the study, they showed significant improvement.4 The easiest way to get more quercetin is to eat more fruits and leafy green veggies. Otherwise, you can get a supplement at your local health-food store. I recommend 300 to 750 mg per day.

My friends at Barton Publishing have put together a special report that covers these and many other natural high blood pressure remedies most people – even most doctors – have never even heard of.

It’s called “The High Blood Pressure Remedy Report: How to Cure Your High Blood Pressure Naturally Without Drugs.”

I’ve never seen a more comprehensive report on how to naturally:

  • Prevent and reduce high blood pressure
  • Protect your heart, kidneys, eyes, and brain
  • Wean yourself off costly and harmful drugs like beta blockers
  • Reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke

If you’re at all concerned about your heart health and overall health, I highly recommend you check it out.

Find out more about it here.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD

To learn more about Wellness Research and Consulting, call (866) 792-1035 or visit:

http://www.alsearsmd.com ______________________________

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healthw7 on January 26th, 2010

Here’s another great article from Jenny Thompson at HSI (Health Sciences Institute).  It’s about cholesterol lowering statin drugs and a common symptom of their use, muscle pain.  But, as Jenny points out, the pain is really due to a lack of vitamin D, brought on by…you guessed it, the statin drugs.  Excellent article, please check it out below.  And, as always, pass it on.  dmc

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Dear Reader,

The puzzle of statin-induced muscle pain is finally coming together.

And the final puzzle piece SHOULD BE a devastating development for cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. But it won’t be, because I doubt the mainstream media will ever give statin users the information they need to rescue their health.

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The pieces fit
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In some patients, statin drug use prompts a debilitating side effect of muscle pain and weakness. This is well known.

Turns out, however, that the pain is actually a symptom.

Last summer I told you about new research that revealed what we should have seen coming: Many cases of statin- associated muscle pain are the result of muscle damage.

Now the new piece of the puzzle: The muscle damage may be due to a depletion of vitamin D, caused by statin use.

Researchers at the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati recruited more than 620 statin users. About 130 of the subjects reported muscle pain. Blood tests showed that vitamin D levels were generally lower in the muscle pain group.

About 80 muscle pain subjects were then divided into two groups. Half received high dosage vitamin D supplements for 12 weeks. Muscle pain was completely erased in over 90 percent of subjects in that group as their blood levels of vitamin D more than doubled.

In a commentary on this study, dietician Gale Maleskey notes that people with low cholesterol poorly absorb fat- soluble vitamins, such as vitamin D.

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Hard to imagine
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This should be the headline in every newspaper in the world: “Statin drugs may deplete vitamin D levels”

Just imagine what that means.

As we now know, adequate vitamin D has been shown to help reduce risk of certain cancers, cognitive decline, type 2 diabetes, narrowing of arteries in type 2 diabetes patients, congestive heart failure, and death from heart disease.

And last year I told you about a study that showed a strong link between low vitamin D levels and these four metabolic syndrome symptoms:

  • Lower HDL cholesterol levels
  • Higher triglyceride levels
  • Greater abdominal fat
  • Greater body mass index

Of all the drawbacks of statin use, the potential to rob the body of vitamin D may turn out to be the very worst.


…and another thing

You know that H1N1 flu vaccine that’s been scarce in many areas?

It’s about to get a lot scarcer.

Recently, U.S. officials announced they would cut in half their order of vaccine doses from one of the five companies that supply the vaccine.

This same thing is happening in other countries too. The UK has reduced a vaccine order with one company and may completely discontinue another order. Both France and Germany are attempting to cut their entire orders in half.

Reuters Health reports that the Netherlands and Switzerland have surpluses. Officials there are planning to ship unused vaccines to countries that have a shortage. I guess they plan to leave the vaccines on the front porch of those countries, ring the doorbell and run.

In a simpler era we’d all be lining up to get our shots. We’d have complete faith in Modern Medicine and the idea of “better living through chemistry.”

But here in the not-so-simple 21st century we were able to get the word out that the dreaded killer swine flu pandemic was mostly about vaccine sales.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson


To start receiving your own copy of the HSI e-Alert, visit:
http://clicks.hsibaltimore.com//t/AQ/5aA/66o/C4U/Ag/AlhCAQ/OwAz
Or forward this to a friend so they can sign-up to receive their own copy of the HSI e-Alert.