Nuts are quite possibly the “perfect” food: full of nutrition, satisfying and portable. Grabbing a small handful of nuts requires little effort on your part, yet their protein will keep you going strong, and their healthy monounsaturated fats are good for your heart.

In fact, in July 2003, the FDA approved the following health claim for nut package labels:

“Scientific evidence suggests, but does not prove, that eating 1.5 ounces per day of some nuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.”

Most of us are familiar with the traditional healthy nuts — almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews — because while there are thousands of nut varieties, only a handful are available commercially. Here are a few of the more unusual nut varieties that you may very much enjoy.

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That craving you have for sugar might be harmless if it happens once in a blue moon. But more and more health experts are examining America’s obsession with sugar, our growing waistlines and our deteriorating health, and are suggesting that we might even be sugar addicts.

Sugar is a naturally occurring substance that provides energy for your body’s cells, but it can be dangerous to your health when consumed in high amounts. Excessive sugar consumption has been linked to a variety of health issues such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol, not to mention tooth decay. Today, debate rages over whether sugar is addictive, with some research showing that sugar produces the same brain chemical reactions and behavioral reactions as illicit drugs like heroin.

Sugar Consumption Explosion of the 20th Century

The concerns start with the fact that today Americans consume over 150 pounds of sugar every year. This is a radical change from the way Americans used to eat. In 1700, people consumed only about four pounds of sugar in a year. By 1800 that was up to 18 pounds per year and by 1900 it was up to about 90 pounds of sugar per person, per year. But the greatest shift occurred in the 1950s with the introduction of high fructose corn syrup.

 

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Over 50 million Americans have a cluster of symptoms known as “metabolic syndrome,” and even more are at risk of this increasingly common disease. You may have metabolic syndrome, which is also known as Syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome, and dysmetabolic syndrome, if you have three or more of the following symptoms:

• High blood pressure
• High blood sugar levels
• High levels of triglycerides, a type of fat, in your blood
• Low levels of HDL (good cholesterol) in your blood
• Too much fat around your waist (specifically a waistline of 40 inches or more for men and 35 inches or more for women (measured across the belly))

What makes metabolic syndrome so dangerous is that this cluster of symptoms significantly increases your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

While several factors appear to cause metabolic syndrome, the dominant underlying risk factors for this syndrome appear to be abdominal obesity and insulin resistance. The food you eat normally gets broken down into sugar (glucose), which enters your cells for fuel. Insulin is made by your pancreas to help the glucose enter cells.

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Constipation is an extremely common problem in my practice and perhaps throughout all of America. There are many over-the-counter solutions. However until recently they weren’t specifically studied.

In a recent study, researchers compared dried plums (prunes) versus psyllium for the treatment of constipation. They found that dried plums are “safe palatable and more effective than psyllium for the treatment of mild to moderate constipation, and should be considered as a first-line therapy.”.

However,a previous study has shown that being vegan is probably the most effective therapy for chronic constipation!

For the details of how they measured the improvement in constipation, please take a look at my colleague Michael Greger, MD’s new video comparing these three approaches to the treatment of this common condition. You might also like to subscribe to his daily article/video as they are excellent.

 

Everyday you breathe in about 15,000 liters of air. If that air is polluted, the toxins are transported to all the organs in your body — not just your lungs. In fact, polluted air gets carried, via your bloodstream, from your lungs to your heart, liver, brain and other organs.

Sadly, air pollution is now a widespread problem in the United States. It comes from multiple sources — factories, power plants, dry cleaners, cars and trucks, wildfires and even from materials in your home.

Two out of every five people, or 42 percent of the U.S. population, actually live in counties that have unhealthful levels of ozone or particle pollution — two types of air pollution — according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air”.

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More and more research is coming out on the importance of the friendly bacteria in our intestinal tract and how it affects our general health and well-being.

This group of friendly bacteria in our guide is collectively called our Microbiome.

We now know that we have approximately 10 times more bacterial cells in our body than we have human cells. In addition, quite surprisingly there are 4 million or more genes contained in the microbial community of our intestines. We as humans, for comparison, have only 25,000 genes. So there are MANY more genes in our body from bacteria than our own cells!

Research is showing that there is an interaction between the DNA of the bacteria in our gut and our human DNA that contributes to our uniqueness and our health.

Obesity is a common problem in our society and much research is being done to understand it.

Now a new study has shown that germ-free mice that received gut bacteria from obese humans put on more weight and accumulated more fat than mice that were given bacteria from the guts of lean humans.

Furthermore, it was found that the transmission of physical and metabolic traits via the friendly bacteria in their guts, was also dependent on the mices’ diet.

In this study, the authors used identical and fraternal human twins, one of whom was obese and one of whom was lean and took the bacteria from the each of their stools, and put it into the mice.

The conclusion of this study is that the microbial communities in our gut can transmit lean or obese traits. Specifically the researchers found that a bacteria called Bacteroides, played a protective role against increased fat accumulation in the mice who were on a certain diet.

This research was done by Vanessa Ridaura,a Graduate Student at Washington University School of Medicine. Jeffrey Gordon, the director of the Center of Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University School of Medicine was quoted as saying “The recipients of the obese twins microbiota gained more fat than the recipients of the lean twins microbiota. This was not attributable to differences in the amount of food they consumed, so there is something in the microbiota that was able to transmit this trait.”

Specifically we do know that eating a high fiber – low-fat human diet will give us more diversity in our friendly bacteria, which is almost always a good thing.

These findings are suggesting that a much more complex view of the obesity problem is required. Specifically, the interactions between diet, body mass and gut microbiology have realized.

Dr. Gordon said what we all know and that is “In the future, the nutritional value and the effects of food will involve significant consideration of our microbiota – and developing healthy nutritious foods will be done from the inside out not just the outside in.”

I recommend to all my patients and readers that they take a probiotic every day. And of course high-fiber low-fat diet is the thing that we all should be doing.

The prevalence of obese and overweight individuals has dramatically increased in the United States in the last 20 years. In every U.S. state, at least 20 percent of residents are obese, and in 36 states that percentage rises to 25. In all, one-third of U.S. adults are obese and another 34 percent are overweight. There are many reasons for this epidemic, but one that you may not have considered is an allergy or sensitivity to certain foods. In fact, if you’ve been struggling to lose weight despite making positive changes to your diet and physical activity levels, this is a crucial factor worth looking into.

What are the Dangers and Risks of Obesity?

As you may know, a few of the serious side effects associated with obesity include:

• Coronary heart disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Stroke
• Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)

Achieving a healthy weight can significantly lower your risk for developing any of these health issues. So what exactly is a “healthy weight”?

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