the-psoriasis-treatment

A new study suggests most U.S. adults continue to fail to get enough of the mineral through diet and supplementation to meet recommended levels. University of Connecticut and Yale University researchers examined data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected from 9,475 adults between 2003 and 2006. They found that, although dietary calcium intake was reported highest in older age groups, the amounts remained insufficient to meet adequate intake standards for age groups 50 years and older. These inadequate intakes come despite the fact that more than half of individuals ages 19 and older were taking a calcium supplement, according to the authors. For men, supplementation increased from 34 percent in the 19 – 30 age group to 54 percent in the 81 and older age group. The percentage of women taking supplements rose from 42 percent to 64 percent across the same range of age groups. "Adequate lifelong calcium intake is essential to optimizing bone health," rem...

What would you change about your own naturally evolved, naturally flawed body? Would you choose genetics to avoid diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, and cancer? Would you enhance your brain to increase memory and to boost creativity? Would you choose more fast-twitch muscle fibers to run faster or longer? Would you live longer? These are the questions that Harvey Fineberg , president of the Institute of Medicine, discusses in this new TED talk given in March that was posted only this month. Fineberg says that a new era of neo-evolution -- in which we, as humans, could guide the selection of traits that would define the course of humanity -- is upon us, and he called it "exciting," but "frightening." I want to answer all of his questions with a "Yes, sign me up!" Who is insane enough to reject a world with an absence of disease, of aging, of dying and death? Apparently, there are quite a few people. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson , professor of history at Ari...

Let me start this post with a warning about spirits (hard liquor). Taken on an empty stomach, they cause an acute suppression of liver glycogenesis. In other words, your liver becomes acutely insulin resistant for a while. How long? It depends on how much you drink; possibly as long as a few hours. So it is not a very good idea to consume them immediately before eating carbohydrate-rich foods, natural or not, or as part of sweet drinks. You may end up with near diabetic blood sugar levels, even if your liver is insulin sensitive under normal circumstances. The other day I was thinking about this, and the title of this article caught my attention: Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus . This article is available here in full text. In it, Kao and colleagues show us a very interesting table (Table 4), relating alcohol consumption in men and women with incidence of type 2 diabetes. I charted the data from Model 3 in that table, and here is what I got: I used the dat...

A health checkup could soon incorporate a telomere measurement to estimate a person's biological age as a superior indicator of age-related degeneration and vulnerability to disease than chronological age, reports Mitch Leslie in an article entitled, " Are Telomere Tests Ready for Prime Time ," published in Science magazine today. The article reports that two companies have announced plans to start performing tests for the general public this year: Life Length of Madrid has already began offering the tests to patients and Telome Health, of Menlo Park, Calif., will begin to make them available to clinicians sometime later this year. Already, medical researchers have employed telomere measurement for predicting illness and tailoring treatments to save lives, yet the article reports that skepticism exists about how effective telomere tests will be in predicting disease or determining lifespan in a clinical setting. "By curtailing self-renewal, worn-down telomeres might...

Mazess & Mather (1974) is probably the most widely cited article summarizing evidence that bone mineral content in older North Alaskan Eskimos was lower (10 to 15 percent) than that of United States whites. Their finding has been widely attributed to the diet of the Eskimos, which is very high in animal protein. Here is what they say: “The sample consisted of 217 children, 89 adults, and 107 elderly (over 50 years). Eskimo children had a lower bone mineral content than United States whites by 5 to 10% but this was consistent with their smaller body and bone size. Young Eskimo adults (20 to 39 years) of both sexes were similar to whites, but after age 40 the Eskimos of both sexes had a deficit of from 10 to 15% relative to white standards.” Note that their findings refer strictly to Eskimos older than 40, not Eskimo children or even young adults. If a diet very high in animal protein were to cause significant bone loss, one would expect that diet to cause significant bone loss i...

I love to read about Robert Sapolsky's baboons. They give me a kind of peace -- the kind received when you succeed in letting go of a stressful situation by thinking, "we're all just a bunch of baboons." What you get from Sapolsky's books, apart from its enjoyable wittiness, is a unique snapshot on how baboons are affected by stress, which is more or less the same way that we are affected by stress. Only, while baboons are stressed occasionally -- by a more dominant baboon or to escape a predator, for example -- we humans have built ourselves an environment where we're stressed chronically. This chronic stress of modern life leads to constant release of stress hormones (glutocorticoids) that continually harms the body, the brain, and brings about possible stress-induced disorders or even chronic diseases. In honor of Stress Awareness Month, it's a problem worth talking about. In fact, the results of a study presented April 4 at th...

A while back, I was talking with a friend of mine. He was a giant of a black man and we spoke about his  blood pressure woes and his weight issues. So I asked him about his diet, his habits, and all that. He told me all about it: How he ate all the right foods, how he was trying to avoid the wrong ones, and how he recently started walking on his treadmill. I said to him, "What do you do all day?" He said, "I'm in the office all day." "What do you do at lunchtime?" "I usually have a protein shake or eat a salad with some chicken." That's good, I tell him. But I want you to do one more thing. It's easy. While or after you eat, take a walk. Outside. In the parking lot. Once or twice a week. OK, he says. "But why outside?" I said, "Sunlight and vitamin D." Then, I told him a story we should all be familiar with by now, which went something like this: Darker skin is a result of greater production of a pigment called mel...

There are pizza restaurants, whose specialty is pizza, even though they usually have a few side dishes. Not healthy enough? Well, don’t despair, there are meatball restaurants too. I know of at least one, The Meatball Shop , on 84 Stanton Street, in New York City. Finally a restaurant that elevates the "lowly" meatball to its well deserved place! Meatballs are delicious, easy to prepare, and you can use quite a variety of meats to do them. Below is a simple recipe. We used ground grass-fed beef, not because of omega-6 concerns (see this post ), but because of the different taste. - Prepare some dry seasoning powder by mixing sea salt, parsley, garlic power, chili powder, and a small amount of cayenne pepper. - Thoroughly mix 1 pound of ground beef, one or two eggs, and the seasoning powder. - Make about 10 meatballs, and place them in a frying pan with a small amount of water (see picture below). - Cover the pan and cook on low fire for about 1 hour. There is no need for any ...

The “great blogosphere debate” rages on regarding the effects of carbohydrates and insulin on health. A lot of action has been happening recently on Peter’s blog , with knowledgeable folks chiming in, such as Peter himself, Dr. Harris, Dr. B.G. (my sista from anotha mista), John, Nigel, CarbSane, Gunther G., Ed, and many others. I like to see open debate among people who hold different views consistently, are willing to back them up with at least some evidence, and keep on challenging each other’s views. It is very unlikely that any one person holds the whole truth regarding health matters. Unfortunately this type of debate also confuses a lot of people, particularly those blog lurkers who want to get all of their health information from one single source. Part of that “great blogosphere debate” debate hinges on the effect of low or high carbohydrate dieting on total calorie consumption. Well, let us see what the China Study II data can tell us about that, and about a few other things....