What is the Raw Food Diet?

I just saw an article on CNN about a woman that lost 160 pounds on the Raw Food Diet. Many people ask me about this because the Raw Food Diet seems like a natural and safe way ot lose weight.

Raw food diets can be a great way to not only lose but also led a much healthier, natural lifestyle in general. Most raw food diets are plant-based, with at least 75% of the diet composed of raw food.

Food examples include living and raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, rolled or flaked grains, and seaweeds. Some adherents may also eat cooked grains and legumes, fresh fish and poultry. For the strict raw food diet, however, nothing should be heated over 116 degrees Fahrenheit.

Some raw food dieters can be classified as vegans as well.

Raw Food Diet Terms

Raw: a material that is in its natural, unprocessed form, e.g. a food that has not been cooked
Vegan: a person who ascribes to a philosophy and lifestyle the seeks to exclude the use of animals for food
Enzymes: biomolecules that catalyze, i.e. increase the rates of, chemical reactions
Legumes: the seedpod of a leguminous plant (such as peas or beans or lentils)
Unpasteurized: refers to a liquid that has no gone through the process of heating for the purpose of destroying bacteria, protozoa, molds, and yeast.
Organic: in reference to foods that are grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, human waste, or sewage sludge, and that were processed without ionizing radiation or food additives.

Should you try the Raw Food Diet?

Good side advantages of the Raw Food Diet are numerous. This is a great lifestyle decision in a lot of ways

• Raw food diets have proven to improve digestion as well as other general digestive disorders
• Research supports that a diet of at least 75% raw foods can help prevent illness and cancer
• A diet rich in traditional nutrient dense foods has been linked to greater overall dental health
• Those who select a raw food diet often report losing and maintaining the loss by continuing the diet
• Some research supports that a raw food diet increases the intake of antioxidants, thus slowing down premature aging
• Skin complexion is often enhanced by the raw food diet
• Those who chose a raw food diet often report an increase in energy and a general feeling of “well-being”
• The heating of many foods can reduce both the vitamin and mineral content

Bad side of the Raw Food Diet

There are a few drawback of a Raw Food Diet.

• The diet can be time consuming in the preparation of food and the need for shopping every couple of days
• Those who chose a raw food diet often get stymied by the seeming lack of food variety
• Some nutrients and vitamins are actually made more absorbable by the heating process – there is a calculated risk in eating unpasteurized dairy products.

So what is the scoop then? Should you switch to a raw food diet?

Well I am not sure that I can answer that question. Most people go on a short term diet and learn some new eating skills that the move to a new lifelong changed diet for them.

In the case of the Raw Food diet you would actually be changing your entire lifestyle to eat only natural uncooked foods. The decision is yours but for most people I think the upheaval in lifestyle is probably not worth the trouble for most.

The post What is the Raw Food Diet? appeared first on Fitness Tips for Life.

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What is the Raw Food Diet?

I just saw an article on CNN about a woman that lost 160 pounds on the Raw Food Diet. Many people ask me about this because the Raw Food Diet seems like a natural and safe way ot lose weight.

Raw food diets can be a great way to not only lose but also led a much healthier, natural lifestyle in general. Most raw food diets are plant-based, with at least 75% of the diet composed of raw food.

Food examples include living and raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, rolled or flaked grains, and seaweeds. Some adherents may also eat cooked grains and legumes, fresh fish and poultry. For the strict raw food diet, however, nothing should be heated over 116 degrees Fahrenheit.

Some raw food dieters can be classified as vegans as well.

Raw Food Diet Terms

Raw: a material that is in its natural, unprocessed form, e.g. a food that has not been cooked
Vegan: a person who ascribes to a philosophy and lifestyle the seeks to exclude the use of animals for food
Enzymes: biomolecules that catalyze, i.e. increase the rates of, chemical reactions
Legumes: the seedpod of a leguminous plant (such as peas or beans or lentils)
Unpasteurized: refers to a liquid that has no gone through the process of heating for the purpose of destroying bacteria, protozoa, molds, and yeast.
Organic: in reference to foods that are grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, human waste, or sewage sludge, and that were processed without ionizing radiation or food additives.

Should you try the Raw Food Diet?

Good side advantages of the Raw Food Diet are numerous. This is a great lifestyle decision in a lot of ways

• Raw food diets have proven to improve digestion as well as other general digestive disorders
• Research supports that a diet of at least 75% raw foods can help prevent illness and cancer
• A diet rich in traditional nutrient dense foods has been linked to greater overall dental health
• Those who select a raw food diet often report losing and maintaining the loss by continuing the diet
• Some research supports that a raw food diet increases the intake of antioxidants, thus slowing down premature aging
• Skin complexion is often enhanced by the raw food diet
• Those who chose a raw food diet often report an increase in energy and a general feeling of “well-being”
• The heating of many foods can reduce both the vitamin and mineral content

Bad side of the Raw Food Diet

There are a few drawback of a Raw Food Diet.

• The diet can be time consuming in the preparation of food and the need for shopping every couple of days
• Those who chose a raw food diet often get stymied by the seeming lack of food variety
• Some nutrients and vitamins are actually made more absorbable by the heating process – there is a calculated risk in eating unpasteurized dairy products.

So what is the scoop then? Should you switch to a raw food diet?

Well I am not sure that I can answer that question. Most people go on a short term diet and learn some new eating skills that the move to a new lifelong changed diet for them.

In the case of the Raw Food diet you would actually be changing your entire lifestyle to eat only natural uncooked foods. The decision is yours but for most people I think the upheaval in lifestyle is probably not worth the trouble for most.

The post What is the Raw Food Diet? appeared first on Fitness Tips for Life.

Related posts:

1. National Brownie Day Wow, I had no idea that this even existed but today, December 8th, is National Brownie Day. A day dedicated...
2. Example Raw Food Diet Menu Figuring out a raw food diet menu can be challenging. You have access to hundreds if not thousands of raw...
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Sleep, Rest and Relaxation and Health

Sleep, rest and relaxation are a very important part of your daily ritual. I know that in the past I have gotten reved up with many projects and before long something has to be let go and it is usually the sleep that I need for a while.

Don’t do it!

As your sleep and rest start dropping you lose focus and can be lured into bad habits, sugar, coffee, and bad food.

The worst thing about a lack of rest is that your body will not have a chance to heal from your earlier workouts, this can be very bad as you not only will feel sore longer but it will also suck your optimism for your new lifestyle.

How Much Sleep to Get

How much rest is enough? You probably already know this. I myself do not wake up with an alarm clock or clock radio anymore. I am fortunate to have a flexible start time and know that I will not sleep in past 8:00 in the morning.

 

Try going to be earlier in the evening for a few nights and see when you wake up. In the fall and winter I always tape the TV shows that I watch so that I can get a chance to watch them when it is convenient to me not when it is convenient for the TV networks.

Another thing that pro bodybuilders do is have a nap in the afternoon, a nap can be great in cleansing your mind and letting you learn to relax better but you will probably find as I do that it is almost impossible to do except maybe on the weekends.

You can probably see from the tone of this information that I am delivering here that you must stop treating sleep and rest as something that takes away from something. Instead learn to treat it as your own personal time, something a little more sacred than just something unavoidable that has to be done.

The Effects of Sleep

According to leading sleep researchers, there are techniques to combat common sleep problems:

• Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule
• Don’t drink or eat caffeine four to six hours before bed and minimize daytime use
• Don’t smoke, especially near bedtime or if you awake in the night
• Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before sleep
• Get regular exercise
• Minimize noise, light and excessive hot and cold temperatures where you sleep
• Develop a regular bed time and go to bed at the same time each night
• Try and wake up without an alarm clock
• Attempt to go to bed earlier every night for certain period; this will ensure that you’re getting enough sleep

According to sleep researchers, a night’s sleep is divided into five continually shifting stages, defined by types of brain waves that reflect either lighter or deeper sleep. Toward morning, there is an increase in rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, when the muscles are relaxed and dreaming occurs, and recent memories may be consolidated in the brain.

No Hitting the Snooze Button

The experts say that hitting a snooze alarm over and over again to wake up is not the best way to feel rested. ‘The restorative value of rest is diminished, especially when the increments are short,’ said psychologist Edward Stepanski, PhD who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

This on and off again effect of dozing and waking causes shifts in the brain-wave patterns. Sleep-deprived snooze-button addicts are likely to shorten their quota of REM sleep, impairing their mental functioning during the day. (New York Times, October 12, 2004)

Certain therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy teach people how to recognize and change patterns of thought and behavior to solve their problems. Recently this type of therapy has been shown to be very effective in getting people to fall asleep and conquer insomnia.

According to a study published in the October 2004 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, cognitive behavior therapy is more effec

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Is Telomerase the Fountain of Youth?

Telomeres have been compared with the plastic tips on shoelaces because they prevent chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, which would scramble an organism’s genetic information to cause cancer, other diseases or death.

Telomeres are actually sequences of DNA.

Telomeres prevent a chromosome’s DNA from being eaten away. Previous studies have shown that telomeres shorten with age and linked short telomeres with several diseases. What no one has yet been able to say is if truncated telomeres cause health problems or are a side effect of aging and poor health.

There is also an enzyme called telomerase which is a very important enzyme in the growth, shortening, and control over the size of the Telomeres.

The science and health hopes in the interaction between telomeres and the telomerase enzyme is very scientific adn very interesting to say the least.

The mapping of telomerase is an important discovery, because telomerase is one of the very basic enzymes in cell biology.

Telomerase relengthens the telomeres so that they get the same length as before embarking on cell division.

The Science Behind Telomerase

The white spots are the Telomere Caps

Stig E. Bojesen, a researcher at the Faculty of Health and Medicial Sciences, University of Copenhagen, and staff specialist at the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev, has headed the efforts to map telomerase — an enzyme capable of creating new ends on cellular chromosomes, the so-called telomeres. In other words, a kind of cellular fountain of youth.

The surprising finding was that the variants that caused the diseases were not the same as the ones which changed the length of the telomeres. This suggests that telomerase plays a far more complex role than previously assumed,” says Stig E. Bojesen.

Scientists are not yet sure. But they have been able to use telomerase to make human cells keep dividing far beyond their normal limit in laboratory experiments, and the cells do not become cancerous. Mice engineered to lack the enzyme, called telomerase, become prematurely decrepit. But they bounced back to health when the enzyme was replaced. The finding, published online in Nature, hints that some disorders characterized by early ageing could be treated by boosting telomerase activity.

Fountain of Youth in a Pill?

Advocates of human life extension promote the idea of lengthening the telomeres in certain cells through temporary activation of telomerase (by drugs), or possibly permanently by gene therapy. They reason that this would extend human life because it would extend the Hayflick limit.

So far these ideas have not been proven in humans, but it has been demonstrated that telomere extension has successfully reversed some signs of aging in laboratory mice.

Also, the Salk institute has released studies on Telomerase

Studies have found shortened telomeres in many cancers, including pancreatic, bone, prostate, bladder, lung, kidney, and head and neck. As a cell begins to become cancerous, it divides more often, and its telomeres become very short. If its telomeres get too short, the cell may die. It can escape this fate by becoming a cancer cell and activating an enzyme called telomerase, which prevents the telomeres from getting even shorter.

Most adult body cells, however, keep telomerase tightly controlled and not very active. As this happens, telomeres eventually shorten. When they have shrunk to a certain length, the cells can go into retirement and stop dividing. Cancer cells, on the other hand, often increase their levels of telomerase so they can divide indefinitely.

Some research has shown that the enzyme telomerase makes cancer cells immortal, could it prevent normal cells from aging? Could we extend lifespan by preserving or restoring the length of telomeres with telomerase? If so, does that raise a risk the telomerase also will cause cancer?

University of California Study on Telomere Length

To find out, researchers at Kaiser Permanente and the University of California, San Francisco measured telomere length in 110,266 people in northern California. The participants are part of an ongoing project that explores links between genetics and health. This study is the largest ever to examine telomeres’ role in health.

The 10 percent of people with the shortest telomeres had a more than 20 percent higher risk of dying than people with longer telomeres, Catherine Schaefer, an epidemiologist who directs the Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health, reported November 8 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

“It seems as though once your telomeres get critically short, your risk of dying goes up,” she said. The increased death risk is about the same as for people who drink 20 to 30 alcoholic beverages per week or smoke for 20 to 30 years. “It’s a modest increase, but it’s not nothing.”

Higher body mass index, or BMI, was associated with longer telomeres. The discovery is counterintuitive, Eisenberg said, because higher BMIs —those associated with being over or obese — are linked to a variety of health problems including diabetes and heart disease

The phenomenon of limited cellular division was first observed by Leonard Hayflick, and is now referred to as the Hayflick limit. Significant discoveries were made by the team led by Professor Elizabeth Blackburn at the University of California.

Dr. Blackburn has developed such a test and also founded a company to market it. There will be a test on the market soon. For a few hundred dollars, interested people could learn whether they have short or long telomeres.

The post Is Telomerase the Fountain of Youth? appeared first on Fitness Tips for Life.

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Making Diet Food Taste Good