Saturday, August 15, 2009

Shake the Salt Habit

Shake the Salt Habit
The health of your arteries is critically important to virtually every aspect of your health.

Too much salt (sodium) ages your cardiovascular system by raising your blood pressure and hardening, stiffening and thickening your arteries and the walls of your heart.

You want to keep your blood vessel soft, smooth and supple like they were when you were a child and a teenager and avoid developing the rigid, inflamed and crusty pipes that can lead to heart attack, stroke, and congestion heart failure.

As an American adult, chances of developing high blood pressure during lifetime are 90 percent.

If you continue to follow your current lifestyle, sooner or later you will probably get hypertension – the medical term for high blood pressure.

Why? For starters, the average American consumer about 4000 mg of sodium daily, which is about six to ten times more salt than we were designed to eat.

Add the fact that blood pressure rises in response to too much body fat, stress and sugar and too little sleep and exercise and you have to the recipe for high blood pressure.

Excess sodium does much more than just raises your blood pressure. A study shows that high sodium intake reduced blood vessel wall function.

In addition, salt leaches the calcium from your bones, making you prone to osteoporosis and fractures, and also appears to increase cancer risk – especially in gastrointestinal tract.

A recent study found that extra salt the diet increased the like-hood of heartburn (also known as esophageal reflux) by as much as 70 percent.

A good place to start lowering the sodium in our diet is by removing the salt shaker from the table and hiding it in an inconvenient spot.

But only about 5 percent of the salt in our diet comes from the salt shaker; 75 percent comes from processed and restaurant foods.

Most people do not choose to eat high sodium product – they jut eat the foods that are readily available in our culture.

Salt is everywhere in our modern diet even in foods such as bread that don’t taste salty.

Processed foods are loaded with salt to help preserve freshness, and the more sodium you eat, the more you will crave salt. When you eliminate highly processed, high sodium foods from your diet, you will take a huge step toward a healthier, more vigorous life.
Shake the Salt Habit

Monday, July 6, 2009

Formula to Good Health

Formula to Good Health
Most American today are overfed yet undernourished, which eventually leads to obesity and poor health.

The answer to those pervasive problem is simply to eliminate the low nutrient to calories ration foods like processed grains, sugars, fatty processed meats, soft drinks and packaged snack foods, and increase the intake of high nutrient to calorie ratio foods like vegetables, fruits, seafood and whey protein.

A diet with a high nutrient to calorie ration supplies with large quantities of beneficial vitamins, minerals and other antiaging phytonutrients, but at the same time it reduces your calorie intake.

If you want to lean, fit, vigorous, and brought and happy, you must do what you are designed to do. People usually eat until they are full or satiated.

If you consume natural high nutrient but low calorie foods like fruits and vegetables, you can eat more volume and thus will feel satisfied for a longer period after eating.

It is very difficult to get fit by eating vegetables and fruit.

If you also make sure to include healthy lean protein with each meal, you will stay full longer and be able to avoid cravings.

If you trying to lose weight and not feel deprived, subtle changes can lead to realm lasting results.

A study researchers tested whether they could fool people into thinking they were eating the same amount of calories even though they trimmed their intake by 800 calories a day.

They did this by “super-sizing” the portions of foods with high nutrient to calorie like vegetable and fruits.

At the same time they cut high calorie synthetic foods containing sugars and fats by about 25%.

As turned out, the participant did not even notice that they were consuming fewer calories because they were eating more food and staying full longer.

On the other hand, when the researchers cut calories by just decreasing portion sizes, participants complained they weren’t getting enough to eat.

In other word, you will feel less deprived and have better luck losing body fat if you increase your intake of fruits and vegetables and cut out processed high sugar and high fat foods, rather than relying on cutting portion size alone.
Formula to Good Health