the-psoriasis-treatment

Satiety is a common topic of discussion on this blog. In the last few posts it came up several times in the comments’ sections. Also, in my interview with Jimmy Moore , we did talk a bit about satiety. I told him what has been my perception and that of many people I know, which is that the least satiating foods tend to be foods engineered by humans. (Source: Wellnessuncovered.com) There is another component to satiety, which applies to natural foods, or foods that are not man-made. That other component is the nutrition value of those foods, and whether they meet our nutrition needs at a given point in time. If our body needs certain essential amino acids for tissue repair, subconscious mechanisms will make us crave those foods from which those amino acids can be extracted. In this context, eating is generally a good idea. The problem is that we have not evolved mechanisms to differentiate “true” from “fake” nutrient starvation; one example of the latter would be fat starvation due to t...

A PET image showing energy consumption in the hungry brain. Credit:   Wiki "Can we get any smarter?" That is the question that piqued the interest of a 14-year-old boy yesterday when he saw it on the cover of the July issue of Scientific American.  What came next was a reading of Douglas Fox's fascinating "The Limits of Intelligence," some heavy thought in a young teenager's head, and a surprised father who rarely has a conversation with his son about neuroscience. Plus, that same father is rarely met when he comes home from working all day to a welcome like this, "Hi dad. Do you want to go see a cool movie?" The movie my boy wanted to see (with me!) was  Limitless,  a science fiction flick he'd seen before about a man who takes a drug that unlocks his ability to use the "other 80 percent of his brain." We went to see it and, as my son pointed out after the movie, all of what was portrayed was just  impossible . Why? I asked. And that...

Telomere length has a proportional and linear relationship to omega-3 fatty acids. With all the attention surrounding telomere length as a biomarker of biological aging, it’s worth pointing out that one nutrient may make a lot of difference: fish-derived omega-3 fatty acids. The higher the blood levels of fish-derived omega-3 acids in patients with coronary heart disease, the longer the telomeres. This was what was found by researchers recently from University of California, San Francisco. Omega-3 The study (Farzaneh et al. 2010), published in the January issue of JAMA last year, showed that leukocyte telomere length (LTL) was positively associated with higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids (see Figure). “Omega-3 fatty acids may protect against cellular aging in patients with coronary heart disease,” the authors wrote. This longitudinal study followed 608 patients with stable coronary artery disease for five years. LTL was measured at baseline and again five years later. The basel...

Many people struggle to lose body fat, and never quite make it to their optimal. Fewer people manage to do so successfully, and, as soon as they do, they want more. It is human nature. Often they will start trying to become someone they are not, or cannot be. That may lead to a lot of stress and frustration, and also health problems. Some women have an idealized look in mind, and keep losing weight well beyond their ideal, down to anorexic levels. That leads to a number of health problems. For example, hormones approach starvation levels, causing fatigue and mood swings; susceptibility to infectious diseases increases significantly; and the low weight leads to osteopenia, which is a precursor to osteoporosis. In men, often what happens is the opposite. Guys who are successful getting body fat to healthy levels next want to become very muscular, and fast. They have an idealized look in mind, and think they know how much they should weigh to get there. Sometimes they want to keep losing ...

Michael Holick, MD, Ph.D., told me in a phone interview nearly a year ago that vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency was "one of the most common medical conditions" and has implications on the health of bones, the heart, the immune system, and likely every cell in the body. Dr. Holick added, "If a normal adult isn’t taking at least 1,500 to 2,000 IU from supplement and diet—and you can’t really get it from your diet—then we know you’re vitamin D deficient." Now, The Endocrine Society has released new clinical practice guidelines intended to help curtail widespread vitamin D deficiency with extra focus on care for populations who are most at risk. The guidelines follow on the coattails of last November's updated vitamin D recommendations by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which several experts have condemned as conservative and inadequate. In response, a "Task Force," led by Dr. Holick, reexamined the evidence and compiled new recommendations to prov...

Occasionally I get emails from people experiencing odd fluctuations in health markers, and trying to figure out what is causing those fluctuations. Spikes in LDL cholesterol without any change in diet seem to be a common occurrence, especially in men. LDL cholesterol is a reflection of many things. It is one of the least useful measures in standard lipid profiles, as a predictor of future health problems. Nevertheless, if one’s diet is not changing, whether it is high or low in fat, significant fluctuations in LDL cholesterol may signal a change in inflammatory status. Generally speaking, the more systemic inflammation, the higher is the measured LDL cholesterol. Corella and colleagues (2001) looked into alcohol consumption and its effect on LDL cholesterol, as part of the Framingham Offspring Study. They split the data into three genotypes, which are allele combinations. Alleles are genes variations; that is, they are variations in the sections of DNA that have been identified as cod...

Reference: Wolkowitz et al. 2011 March. People who suffer from major depression have a higher risk of age-related illness and earlier mortality (1 &2). Researchers from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), investigated (1) telomere length in depressed individuals versus matched controls and assessed other biological factors associated with telomere shortening. Led by Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D., the team of researchers published their findings in the March issue of PLos One . Their hypothesis was that not all depressed subjects would show shortened telomeres equally because of a large variance in depressive episodes over a lifetime. However, they predicted that those who suffered from depression for long durations would have shorter telomeres due to longer exposure to oxidative stress and inflammation induced by psychological stress. The scientists recruited 18 subjects diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), excluding those with psychosis or bipol...

My interview with Jimmy Moore should be up on the day that this post becomes available. (I usually write my posts on weekends and schedule them for release at the beginning of the following weeks.) So the time is opportune for me to try to aswer this question: What is a good low carbohydrate diet? For me, and many people I know, the answer is: a low calorie one. What this means, in simple terms, is that a good low carbohydrate diet is one with plenty of seafood and organ meats in it, and also plenty of veggies. These are low carbohydrate foods that are also naturally low in calories. Conversely, a low carbohydrate diet of mostly beef and eggs would be a high calorie one. Seafood and organ meats provide essential fatty acids and are typically packed with nutrients. Because of that, they tend to be satiating. In fact, certain organ meats, such as beef liver, are so packed with nutrients that it is a good idea to limit their consumption. I suggest eating beef liver once or twice a we...