HEALTH WATCH

Need quick weight loss? Simply eat up!

Trying hard to get in to shape? Looking in the mirror and frowning has now become a habit, eh? Stop scoffing at your obese figure, man or woman. You should be ashamed not to trust your will power to support your attempts at weight loss.

Just believe me, if there is a will this is the way to do it. Go head first because emotions only get you down. Just use your head; strategize, stand by your determination.

Like all achievers you are bound to have an enjoyable time working out a diet you’d love to live on. For once stop starving. Eat well. Watch your weight, loose like sand in your hand, slipping away the kilos, as you go slimming in style. Its not how much you eat; its all about what you eat.

Eat up and slim down with these fat-fighting foods. Our old western influenced diet has cost us dearly: One in three of us is now overweight or obese, and a third of our children will develop diabetes in their lifetimes.

But the answer isn’t eating less food”, it’s eating more of the right foods, a few of them in particular, can be called miracle foods for slimmers. Here are more secrets on how to lose weight and keep it off for good!

Nuts

Nuts are smart. They’re packed with mono unsaturated fatty acids, those good-for-you fats that lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes, and, according to new research, help you control your appetite.

Researchers have found that eating a high-protein, high-fat snack, such as almonds, increases your calorie burn for up to 3 1/2 hours. And just 1 ounce of almonds boosts vitamin E levels, increasing memory and cognitive performance, according to researchers. In another study, people who ate pistachios for three months lost 10 to 12 pounds, on average.

Whole grains

It’s not a magic disappearing act, but it’s close: When Harvard University researchers analyzed the diets of more than 27,000 people over 8 years, they discovered that those who ate whole grains daily weighed 2.5 pounds less than those who ate only refined-grain foods. Go for red rice and kurakkan!

Another study from Penn State University found that whole-grain eaters lost 2.4 times more belly fat than those who ate refined grains.

Whole grains more favorably affect blood-glucose levels, which means they don’t cause wild swings in blood sugar and ratchet up cravings after you eat them.

Plus, the antioxidants in whole grains help control inflammation and insulin. Whole grains also strengthen your heart, helping you live longer.

Avocados and other healthy fats

Just because a food has plenty of fat and calories doesn’t mean it’s fattening. See, certain foods cause you to gain weight because they provoke hormonal changes that trigger cravings. One hunger-control hormone, leptin, becomes blunted by starchy, sweet, fatty, and refined-carbohydrate foods.

Avocados, aren’t fattening, because they’re loaded with healthy fat and fiber and don’t cause wild swings in insulin levels. So enjoy the fat in avocados, olive oil, and nuts. Research shows that diets containing upward of 50 percent fat are just as effective for weight loss as those that are low in fat. Discover the new you!

Meats

Grass-fed beef, chicken, and pork are leaner and healthier than conventional livestock” and can help trim away pounds.

A 3.5-ounce serving of grass-fed beef has only 2.4 grams of fat, compared with 16.3 grams for conventionally raised beef.

In fact, grass-fed beef is so much more nutritious than commodity beef that it’s almost a different food.

Grass-fed beef contains more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which has been shown to reduce abdominal fat while building lean muscle. It also has more omega-3s and less omega-6s than corn-fed beef. It’s the same with chickens. According to a recent study, free-range chickens reared in our compounds have significantly more omega-3s than grain-fed chickens do, and less harmful fat and fewer calories than grain-fed varieties. This is important because omega-3s improve your mood, boost your metabolism, sharpen your brain, and help you lose weight.

Fish

Choosing seafood these days isn’t easy. Some species contain obesity-promoting pollutants (dioxins, PCBs). Others which are rared in farms are fattened with soy, which lowers their levels of healthy omega-3s. In fact, the American Heart Association recently urged people who are concerned about heart disease to avoid eating tilapia for just that reason. Ask your fisherman for the names of fish and avoid the kind that has a fishy after effect. That goes against conventional wisdom, doesn’t it?

So what kind of fish should you eat? Generally, small, oily ocean fish like herring, mackerel, sardines are low in toxins and score highest in omega-3s.

Wild Alaskan salmon, Pacific halibut, rainbow trout, and yellow fin tuna are generally low in toxins and high in nutrients.

And then there are fish that we should avoid at all times: farmed salmon, farmed tilapia, Atlantic cod, Chilean sea bass, and farmed shrimp. Fishy eh?

Raspberries and other berries

A recent study by researchers at Yale University School of medicine discovered that after eating a high-carb, high-sugar meal, free radicals attack the neurons that tell us when we’re full.

Instant oats

As a result it’s hard to judge when hunger is satisfied. Escape the cycle of overindulgence by eating foods that are rich in antioxidants; berries top the list.

The berries that give you the most antioxidant bang per bite, in order of merit are cranberries, black currents, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and pomegranates. Fiber is the secret to losing weight without going hungry. One US Department of Agriculture study found that those who increased their daily fiber intake from 12 grams to 24 absorbed 90 fewer calories per day than those who ate the same amount of food but less fiber.

Instant oats are one of the easiest ways to get more real fiber into your diet.

New research indicates that oats can also cut your risk of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, and even reduce your risk of weight gain.

Oats also have 10 grams of protein per half-cup serving, so they deliver steady muscle-building energy. Choose oatmeal that contains whole oats and low sodium, and also has whole-grain wheat flakes and flaxseed.

Cruciferous vegetables and other folate-rich greens

The more folate you have in your diet, the lower your risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s and depression.

And a recent study in the British Journal of Nutrition found that those with the highest folate levels lose 8.5 times more weight when dieting. Cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, Swiss chard, and bok choy, are not only rich in folate, they’re also rich in potassium.

Researchers at the Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, at Tufts University, found that foods rich in potassium help preserve lean muscle mass. New research shows that folate helps protect against damage from estrogenic chemicals like bisphenol-A (BPA), which have been linked to obesity.

Apples and other fruits

What makes the apple so potent? In part, it’s because most of us eat the peel: It’s a great way to add fiber and nutrients to your diet. But there’s a downside: The peel is where the fruit tends to absorb and retain most of the pesticides they are exposed to, apples and peaches being the worst offenders.

That’s why, for maximum weight-loss potential, we strongly recommend you buy organic versions of apples, pears, peaches, and other eat-the-peel fruits. In a recent study, normal-weight people reported eating, on average, two servings of fruit and 12 grams of fiber a day; those who were overweight had just one serving and 9g.

Credit that extra 3g fiber; the amount in one single apple or orange is the difference maker. Understood the logic?

- C.F

Diabetes to exact huge costs on poor countries

Diabetes and its complications, such as strokes and heart disease, will place an enormous financial burden on poorer countries in years to come, researchers warned in a report published Tuesday.

“Diabetes is moving from being a disease of developed countries to a disease in developing countries like India and China, and this could put pressure on healthcare systems through rising healthcare costs”, Philip Clarke, associate professor at University of Sydney’s School of Public Health said.

Clarke and his colleagues examined records of 11,140 patients with severe diabetes in 20 countries, including the complications they suffered, money spent and length of hospital stays, and they found diabetes hit healthcare costs more severely in poorer countries.“Patients in Asia and Eastern Europe had higher incidence of some events (like a stroke) than patients in established market economies, lower rates of hospitalization and longer lengths of stay”, according to the report.

While average per capita spending on healthcare in China was around $216 (international dollars) a year, health expenditure for a diabetic who ends up with stroke would be 10 times more, or $2,166, according to the study, which was published in the latest issue of PLoS Medicine.

International dollar is the equivalent of the US dollar but adjusted for purchasing power across countries.

“We know there are efficient ways of reducing these rates of complications. If you can stop people having strokes through blood pressure control, you can clearly reduce these patients’ healthcare costs,” Clarke told Reuters by telephone.

Flightless mosquitoes may curb dengue

Genetically altered mosquitoes that cannot fly may help slow the spread of dengue fever and could be a harmless alternative to chemical insecticides, US and British scientists said on Monday.

They genetically altered mosquitoes to produce flightless females, and said spreading these defective mosquitoes could suppress native, disease-spreading mosquitoes within six to nine months.

There is no vaccine or treatment for dengue fever, which is endemic in the tropics and is particularly prevalent in Asia and the western Pacific.

The disease, which causes severe flu-like symptoms and can kill, is spread through the bite of infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

“This could be the first in a new wave of products that might supplant insecticides”, researcher Anthony James of the University of California, Irvine, said in a telephone interview.

There are an estimated 50 million cases of dengue fever each year and about 2.5 billion people, two-fifths of the world’s population, are at risk, mostly in Africa and southeast Asia, according to the World Health Organization.

James’s team, including a group from the British biotechnology firm Oxitec Ltd, altered mosquito genes to disrupt development of the insects’ wing muscle.

The genetic modification grounded only the virus-carrying females and did not affect the males’ ability to fly, they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here The idea would be to distribute tens of thousands of eggs that would hatch out these genetically modified males, that would proceed to create a new generation of flightless, and thus doomed, daughters.

Because eggs are so small and easy to distribute, there would be far more genetically modified mosquitoes than natives, so they could in effect blot out the dengue-carrying population. “We stack the numbers in our favor by releasing a lot of these things,” James said. “The technology is completely species-specific, as the released males will mate only with females of the same species,” added Oxitec’s Luke Alphey, who led the study.

Alphey said using genetically modified mosquitoes would be an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical insecticides and would be egalitarian.

“All people in the treated areas are equally protected, regardless of their wealth, power or education,” he said. Both Oxitec and Oxford University have applied for a patent.

The current work is focused on mosquitoes that carry dengue fever, but the researchers said it could be adapted to other species that spread malaria and West Nile fever.

Reuters

HIV drugs prevent infection in African study

Maggie Fox Health and Science Editor

People across Africa who took AIDS drugs were far less likely to infect their partners with the virus, researchers said on Wednesday.

The study, presented at a meeting of AIDS experts, is one of the first to show so clearly that the drugs can prevent infection as well as keep patients healthy. It could boost efforts to provide the AIDS drugs to people, especially in the hardest-hit countries in Africa.

Dr. Deborah Donnell of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and colleagues followed 3,400 couples in which one partner was infected and the other was not in seven African countries.

The couples were all counseled on how to protect themselves and given free condoms. Each patient with HIV began taking a drug cocktail when he or she became eligible based on a measure of immune system damage called CD4 count.

Over the next one to three years, 103 of the previously uninfected people became infected. Nearly all, 102 infections, happened before the infected partner started taking the drugs, Donnell told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco.

Reuters

What is Prediabetes?

Having higher than normal blood sugar levels, but not yet in the range of diabetes, puts you at increased risk for developing Type 2 or full-blown diabetes. To help address prediabetes, as well as prevent other forms of diabetes, consider these four lifestyle changes.

Diabetes Support. Working toward optimum health and maintaining a strong immune system is especially important for diabetics.

Start by eating a diet designed to address diabetes; add in regular exercise and plenty of fluids; and consider taking immune supportive supplements.

Manage your health. Get regular checkups for blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and seek treatment if necessary.

Maintain a healthy weight. If you are overweight, the more pounds you lose, the less your chance of developing diabetes. Talk with your doctor about what your optimum weight should be and how to achieve it.

Eat a diet low in refined carbohydrates and incorporate fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and monounsaturated fats (such as olive oil) into your diet.

Get daily physical activity. Exercise improves the action of insulin, moving glucose out of the bloodstream and into tissues where it can be used for energy.