Life is Healthy

Who does not know Facebook? This Social networking in the virtual world successfully spell of the planet earth. The amount of users around 150 million people! And continue to increase. Thats why we do not surprised if its inventor, Mark Zuckerberg, for many times reach a lot of world prestigious appreciation. And, he is also confessed as young milyuner as long as history.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.

Mark received the last award from World Economic Forum (WEF). He was included to 230 people who are considered influential to the world as 2009 Young Global Leaders. The award given to young leaders from 71 countries.

Mark Zuckerberg with the Facebook vision and mission considered to have a good influence for the development of communication and interaction of the world by Young Global Leader (YGL), programs that lift people aged 40 years and under who has the ability to be a good leader, have the vision and the performance affecting to the world.

By WEF, Mark also considered as have a good impression in the public and people around him, and have a willingness to continue to developing Facebook for the development of communication and interaction for the sake of the people in the world.

Smart, funny, creative, talented Sara has passed away.

I only knew her as an online presence (although we did once spend more than an hour on the phone together) but I am grieving tonight and for all the people that love her.

I am told that Sara loved red wine and good tequila so if you partake of either of these tonight (and even if you don't) please raise a glass in her honour.

I am going to put on the lava earrings I bought from her (they are my favourites).

Damn. Cancer really sucks.

A BMI higher by four points was found to result in a younger appearance of between two and four years in women over 40 years old. In some cases, this meant that a difference in weight of as little as 10lb added four years to a woman's appearance, the Plastic and Reconstructive Journal reports.

Do you like music? Do you like Venn diagrams? Do you like bidding for big colour pictures in online auctions?

Then you’ll love the fact that some of the Venn That Tune artwork displayed at Foyles is still for sale on eBay. Two of the very limited edition (one of each!) colour images are still available and can be signed by the author if you wish. They are A3-size and mounted in plastic clip frames.

See here for more information.

Happy Bidding!

http://www.vennthattune.com/

For the past couple of weeks, I've only posted on Mondays. It's not that I haven't been exercising and watching what I eat. It's just that when I sit down to write, I feel like I have nothing new to say. I worked out four days last week—much better than previous weeks. I lost two pounds—of the weight I put on from not exercising. I really do enjoy going to the gym—and I'm getting my motivation back. So that's good news.

I've also been trying to find things to do besides sit around trying to figure out what i can eat next. I took the girls to the zoo on Saturday and walked around for two-and-half hours. My legs were tired, but it wasn't bad. I also didn't think about eating while we were there. And that, my friends, was a big plus.

Someone emailed me this page. I looked it over quickly, and it looks like a legitimate site. I hope you find something you can use.

Well, it's Monday. And I have two meetings today. What a way to start a week.

"If someone shows you who they are, believe them." ~ Maya Angelou

Talk is cheap, but actions have worth. Trust is a powerful thing, as long as it's earned - with action, not rhetoric.

My daughter had a meeting last Tuesday so I took g-baby Claire to her music class.

Cassie warned me that Claire’s music class MO is to take everything out of the diaper bag and bring it to her. Claire loves to go through my purse, too, so of course she brought me its contents throughout the class, too, until I got smart and put it up. (Remember, I was a mother of toddlers a LONG time ago. I’m a little rusty. My “duh” moment came when Claire called our veterinarian’s office on my cell phone. I hate telling Claire “no,” but I feared a long-distance call to Japan.)

In between diaper bag/purse mining, Claire and I sang songs, played tambourines, castanets and bells (I felt like Stevie Nicks for a moment), and we danced. A lot. I didn’t work out that day, but after 60 minutes of bopping, twisting, and lifting a 17-month-old kid, I had an idea for a new workout video: “The Grammy and Claire Dance and Sing Until Grammy Is Pooped Workout.”

Reason #493 why I am so devoted to maintenance: I’d have been WAY more pooped out 170 pounds ago.

Oh who am I kidding? I wouldn’t have even taken Claire to music class. We’d have stayed home and I would have missed out on yet another awesome once-in-a-lifetime precious moment that makes life so much fun.

On the way home, Claire sang the “Me” song she learned in class. The words are simple. “Me” is the entire first verse, “you” the second, and “we” the third. “Me” is one of the few words Claire says right now along with “wow,” “dat,” (a combination of “dad” and “Matt,” her dad’s name), and “uh oh.” Ask her what a kitty says and she says “mao,” like “Mao” Tse-Tung. Ask her what a doggy says and she pants. She’s brilliant, I tell you. Mensa material.

Her vocabulary isn’t quite enough to know what her speaking voice will ultimately sound like, but it’s exciting to listen to it emerge. What will she sound like in a year, five years, 20 years?

I thought about emergence as I cleaned out my flower beds yesterday and saw all the shoots emerging from the ground. As I raked dead leaves, pulled weeds, and bagged old mulch, I looked at my arms, thighs and calves and remembered when I was losing weight I liked watching them emerge. Even now, as I continue to challenge them with new exercises, I see muscles emerge in ways I didn’t expect. It’s still exciting. But I also wonder what they’ll look like in five years, 10 years, 20? Things will shift and change and am I prepared to watch a new kind of emergence, perhaps something not quite as optimistic as toned muscles?

I thought about the Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Claire’s voice, garden plants, this emerging, changing body of mine. Nothing gold can stay, but all are here now in this moment to appreciate them for what they are right now. And right now, this body can still plant and tend a garden, and most importantly, dance with Claire to “No More Monkeys (Jumping on the Bed).”

Diet betting is basically making a wager that you will lose a certain amount of weight in a specified amount of time," nutritionist Elisa Zied told CBS station WCBS-TV in New York. Co-workers and friends have made small weight loss wagers for years, but now there are Web sites to keep you on track. Mary Lou Wehrli her brother, Grant, are using www.fatbet.net to try to lose about 20 pounds each. The stakes? "The loser will buy the victor dinner or lunch for six at a sushi house," Mary Lou said.

Meet Sir Edward Mellanby, the discoverer of vitamin D. Along with his wife, Dr. May Mellanby, he identified dietary factors that control the formation and repair of teeth and bones. He also identified the cause of rickets (vitamin D deficiency) and the effect of phytic acid on mineral absorption. Truly a great man! This research began in the 1910s and continued through the 1940s.

What he discovered about tooth and bone formation is profound, disarmingly simple and largely forgotten. I remember going to the dentist as a child. He told me I had good teeth. I informed him that I tried to eat well and stay away from sweets. He explained to me that I had good teeth because of genetics, not my diet. I was skeptical at the time, but now I realize just how ignorant that man was.

Tooth structure is determined during growth. Well-formed teeth are highly resistant to decay while poorly-formed teeth are cavity-prone. Drs. Mellanby demonstrated this by showing a strong correlation between tooth enamel defects and cavities in British children. The following graph is drawn from several studies he compiled in the book Nutrition and Disease (1934). "Hypoplastic" refers to enamel that's poorly formed on a microscopic level.
The graph is confusing, so don't worry if you're having a hard time interpreting it. If you look at the blue bar representing children with well-formed teeth, you can see that 77% of them have no cavities, and only 7.5% have severe cavities (a "3" on the X axis). Looking at the green bar, only 6% of children with the worst enamel structure are without cavities, while 74% have severe cavities. Enamel structure is VERY strongly related to cavity prevalence.

What determines enamel structure during growth? Drs. Mellanby identified three dominant factors:

1. The mineral content of the diet
2. The fat-soluble vitamin content of the diet, chiefly vitamin D
   
3. The availability of minerals for absorption, determined largely by the diet's phytic acid content
   

Thus, if growing puppies are given a limited amount of separated [skim] milk together with cereals, lean meat, orange juice, and yeast (i.e., a diet containing sufficient energy value and also sufficient proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins B and C, and salts), defectively formed teeth will result. If some rich source of vitamin D be added, such as cod-liver oil or egg-yolk, the structure of the teeth will be greatly improved, while the addition of oils such as olive... leaves the teeth as badly formed as when the basal diet only is given... If, when the vitamin D intake is deficient, the cereal part of the diet is increased, or if wheat germ [high in phytic acid] replaces white flour, or, again, if oatmeal [high in phytic acid] is substituted for white flour, then the teeth tend to be worse in structure, but if, under these conditions, the calcium intake is increased, then calcification [the deposition of calcium in the teeth] is improved.

After finishing the last program and feeling SO ill, I was not sure about starting this one. I have no idea what happened my guess is food poisoning. Luckily, when I awoke the next day I felt considerably better, just a little “dodgy”.

This week’s program took place in Burgos. It’s a beautiful city in the north of Spain; and not too far from where I now live. However, like Salamanca the hotel is in the middle of the city and, in my opinion, far from suitable for the programs objective.
I believe the students learn more and quicker if they are really immersed in the sounds of the English language and not led astray by bars and other influences around them, all too tempting to drop back into Spanish!

Being in the middle of the city meant issues with people going out at night, everynight (however, to be fair, they were up the following morning to do the program), but it is a potential problem.
Also being a city people have friends and family who come to visit, when they are in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t happen.

The hotel as expected had lots of silly problems for us; no suitable music system, changing rooms frequently, changing of bedrooms, 500+ guests for a congress conference, extortionate internet access, not to mention the fact the food was awful (at least for the first few days).

At one point I thought we were going to have a mutiny on our hands, due to the bad food and service in the hotel. Really, I don’t understand how a hotel cannot get the simple things right?
You inform said hotel what our requirements are, advise them of any possible changes that may take place and you agree on the details ahead of time. This doesn’t seem to be happening which in itself, is creating further problems.

The program itself works, it really does; but the external issues are having a bigger and bigger affect on the program and it is being noticed by everyone, staff, anglo’s and of course the Spaniards. Someone needs to address this, BEFORE it’s too late.

This week’s level of English for the Spaniards was low and to me that came across very clear (especially after last weeks group) – the way it manifested itself was in frustration, confusion, tiredness, lack of involvement in the different activities and little socialising outside of their classmates. Really this is a wonderful opportunity that is to be savoured, where else in the world would you meet 15 English speakers who wanted to help you, speak to you, and about you (apart from an A.A. meeting).

The party (if you could call it that) took place in a bar close to the hotel, due to the congress conference, which again was just another issue, the hotel should have never agreed to take the group if they had prior engagements.

Several participants complained about being moved from venue to venue at the last minute, and of course the service and hotels location. I feel for them, they give up their time, travel here under their own steam and invest themselves in a product they may know very little about, I don’t want to start a week with problems as they carried throughout the week.
I want both Anglo’s and Spaniards to have the best time they can have and leave with only happy memories, not complaints and lingering issues. Can this be addressed of course, it takes some planning and communication; which is what our business is all about, afterall, so lets get it right: FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME!

The photos can be found here

Vaughan Town - Burgos - Program 145

Two hormones that are primarily responsible for regulating the body's energy balance, telling the body when it is hungry and when it is full. The study found that chronic insomnia disrupts one of these two hormones. "The current study shows that insomnia patients have a dysregulation in energy balance that could explain why these patients gain weight over time," said Motivala, who is also a member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.

"This is an exciting finding because it highlights how diverse behaviors like sleep and eating are connected. We are just beginning to explore the possible consequences of these connections, but it is another example of the importance of a good night's sleep for the body."

To date, no study has evaluated nocturnal levels of the two hormones, ghrelin and leptin, in primary insomnia patients. Ghrelin, a peptide secreted by the stomach, stimulates appetite and increases before meals. Leptin, which affects body weight and is secreted primarily by fat cells, signals the hypothalamus regarding the degree of fat storage in the body; decreased leptin tells the body there is a calorie shortage and promotes hunger, while increased levels promote energy expenditure.

Read more on: Medical News Today

I’m the poster child for bad posture. I lean on the water faucet when pouring a glass of water. I lean on the counter when I’m waiting for something to cook on the stove. I slouch. I cross my legs. I lean over too far on the elliptical. I’m a posture wreck.

I began my efforts to improve my posture a few years ago when I added functional training techniques to my workout. But in time, I stopped doing them, mostly because I switched up my routine and, I admit, it was hard (said in my best whine). In the last few weeks, I’ve reintroduced a few back into my strength training regimen, such as standing on one foot during bicep curls (alternating halfway through a set) and laying on an exercise ball during triceps work and chest presses. The purpose is to improve balance and strengthen the core, thereby improving posture.

Still I get lazy and lean.

I found some good articles online on how to improve posture. How To Improve Your Posture on WikiHow offers practical tips on how to sit properly in an office chair, stand, stretch, things like that. You can find help on YouTube, too. But you know and I know that we can read and observe and study until we’re blue in the face, but unless we remember to utilize what we’ve learned when we need that knowledge the most, all that learning is for naught.

So here’s what I’m doing to improve my posture: I’m learning to remember.

My body is an excellent teacher if I’d just let it be. I get so preoccupied with thoughts that I forget to pay attention to what my body is doing behind my back. By not questioning the sensations and listening to my body, my mind ends up making all the decisions. This inattention, in large part, is how I got to be 300 pounds, and it’s why I find myself day after day leaning, slouching and shuffling along.

Learning to remember to pay attention to my body helped me lose weight and it will help me improve my posture. I’m determined it will. Being aware of my hand leaning on the counter or spigot, listening to my knee stiffen up as I cross one leg over the other, feeling my back arch and my neck crack because they aren’t aligned properly – these are the things I have to listen to.

The path of least resistance (read: being lazy) is causing my body all kinds of headaches, so the leaning and slouching has to stop.

How do you remember to listen to your body? Have you made an effort to improve your posture? Any words of wisdom you’d like to pass along would be appreciated.

The DASH eating plan includes whole grains, poultry, fish, and nuts and has reduced amounts of fats, red meats, sweets, and sugared beverages. Study results indicated that elevated blood pressures were reduced by an eating plan that emphasizes fruits, vegetables, and lowfat dairy foods and is low in saturated fat, total fat, and cholesterol.

A few weeks ago, our girl "O" put Levain Bakery on the map or the cinnamon buns, but my boy has been telling me to try the Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies from his secret Upper West Side sweet shop for a minute, promising - "this will be the best cookie of your life."

Verdict? Ummmmm, yes it is! Or should I say "yummmm"? These perfectly golden brown, crispy on the outside, warm and chewy with their semi-sweet dark-chocolaty goodness on the inside, heavenly treats will bring out the inner cookie monster in anyone.

Calcium is not just good for your bones. It's a real aid to faster weight loss. A recent study found that obese people who increased their calcium intake from 600 to 1,200 milligram lost six times as much weight as the women who did not increase their intake.

The recommended daily amount of calcium for people under 50 is 1,000 milligrams per day. For older people over 50, it's 1,200 milligrams per day.

Most of us know that dairy products are high in calcium. But there are some vegetables which are even better per calorie and other nutrients they provide.

Some very calcium rich foods include;

- Spinach - 245 mg calcium per cup

- Collard greens - 226 mg per cup

- Yoghurt - 447 mg per cup

- Goats milk - 325 mg per cup

- Cows milk - 296 mg per cup

- Sesame seeds - 351 mg per one quarter cup

- Tofu - 100 mg per four ounces

See more info about the benefits of calcium and the best calcium rich foods here.

Richard and I exchanged a series of e-mails last week in which he remarked that Thai people generally have nice skin, which is something I've also noticed in Thai immigrants to the U.S. I believe you can often tell what kind of fat a person eats by looking at their face, especially as people age or bear children.

People who eat predominantly traditional fats like butter and coconut oil usually have nice skin. It's smoother, rosier and it ages more gracefully than the skin of a person who eats industrial fats like soy and corn oil. Coconut is the predominant fat in the traditional Thai diet. Coconut fat is about 87% saturated, far more than any animal fat*. Coconut oil and butter are very low in omega-6 linoleic acid, while industrial vegetable oils and margarine contain a lot of it.

I saw a great movie last week called "The Betrayal", about a family of Lao refugees that immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s. The director followed the family for 23 years as they tried to carve out a life for themselves in Brooklyn. The main fats in the traditional Lao diet are lard and coconut milk. The mother of the family was a nice looking woman when she left Laos. She was thin and had great skin and teeth, despite having delivered half a dozen children at that point. After 23 years in the U.S., she was overweight and her skin was colorless and pasty. At the end of the movie, they return to Laos to visit their family there. The woman's mother was still alive. She was nearly 100 years old and looked younger than her daughter.

Well that's a pretty story, but let's hit the science. There's a mouse model of skin cancer called the Skh:HR-1 hairless mouse. When exposed to UV rays and/or topical carcinogens, these mice develop skin cancer just like humans (especially fair-skinned humans). Researchers have been studying the factors that determine their susceptibility to skin cancer, and fat is a dominant one. Specifically, their susceptibility to skin cancer is determined by the amount of linoleic acid in the diet.

In 1994, Drs. Cope and Reeve published a study using hairless mice in which they put groups of mice on two different diets (Cope, R. B. & Reeve, V. E. (1994) Photochem. Photobiol. 59: 24 S). The first diet contained 20% margarine; the second was identical but contained 20% butter. Mice eating margarine developed significantly more skin tumors when they were exposed to UV light or a combination of UV and a topical carcinogen. Researchers have known this for a long time. Here's a quote from a review published in 1987:

Nearly 50 years ago the first reports appeared that cast suspicion on lipids, or peroxidative products thereof, as being involved in the expression of actinically induced cancer. Whereas numerous studies have implicated lipids as potentiators of specific chemical-induced carcinogenesis, only recently has the involvement of these dietary constituents in photocarcinogenesis been substantiated. It has now been demonstrated that both level of dietary lipid intake and degree of lipid saturation have pronounced effects on photoinduced skin cancer, with increasing levels of unsaturated fat intake enhancing cancer expression. The level of intake of these lipids is also manifested in the level of epidermal lipid peroxidation.

A series of semi-purified diets containing 20% fat by weight, of increasing proportions (0, 5%, 10%, 15% or 20%) of polyunsaturated sunflower oil mixed with hydrogenated saturated cottonseed oil, was fed to groups of Skh:HR-1 hairless mice during induction and promotion of photocarcinogenesis. The photocarcinogenic response was of increasing severity as the polyunsaturated content of the mixed dietary fat was increased, whether measured as tumour incidence, tumour multiplicity, progression of benign tumours to squamous cell carcinoma, or reduced survival... These results suggest that the enhancement of photocarcinogenesis by the dietary polyunsaturated fat component is mediated by an induced predisposition to persistent immunosuppression caused by the chronic UV irradiation, and supports the evidence for an immunological role in dietary fat modulation of photocarcinogenesis in mice.

Some time between when we pointed the car towards Florida and made our way back (we had a glorious time, by the way. Few photos this year but it's still this beautiful in Siesta Key), my book was published.

The dogs were less than impressed but the human members of my family are all very proud and I am so pleased to actually have a copy to hold in my hands. You can get yours from Women's Press or wait for details of the launches we are planning in Ottawa and Toronto.




And last night, S. won an Honourable Mention in the short story category (for 9-11 year olds) in the Awesome Authors contest, run by the Ottawa Public Library. His story, "The Man in the Photographs" was about how he never wants to seem as uncool as his father. "Pure fiction," he said at the awards ceremony.

Valerie Bertinelli has done it. She's lost 50 pounds. And People Magazine will sell a lot of issues to people who want to know how she did it. She looks really fantastic for 48 years old.

See her 'before' photo on an earlier cover of People Magazine.

See about her book on losing weight - Losing It.

• Men, you're directing this movie. Please make the first move.
  
  
• A first kiss is welcome on a second date, and if it doesn't happen by the third, you have to ask yourself, "am I in the friend zone"?
  
  
• Asking for a kiss is a little awkward, so like Nike - just do it, BUT...give a little non-verbal warning via:
  - a backhanded caress on the cheek
  - a warm squeeze of the hand
  - rubbing of the thigh
  - eye contact
  (Now the lady knows you're coming in...)
  
  
• It's in good taste to progress from a cheek kiss (first date), to a prolonged lip-to-lip kiss (no tongue), to the full monty on the next round.
  
  
• Try to avoid popping mints, gum, or god forbid - breath spray, right before the moment - it's a definite spontaneity killer.
  
  
• You don't have to wait until the end of the date to get your "first kiss" out of the way - kill it at a stoplight...or in a taxi. Sexy.
  
  
• Alcohol is an approved form of social lubricant (aka. liquid courage) to take the nerves out of the first kiss. (Hint: Champs is great - Tequila - not so great)
  
  
• Please don't update your Facebook/Twitter status after you've sealed the deal.

It’s about time: “Group challenges acai weight-loss claims.” The Center for Science in the Public Interest has gone on record challenging several company’s health claims that acai berries will help “shed pounds, flatten tummies, cleanse colon, enhance sexual desire, or perform any of the other commonly advertised functions.”

The state of Connecticut is getting on the bandwagon, too, by looking into claims of fraud.

"There are no magical berries from the Brazilian rain forest that cure obesity, only painfully real credit card charges and empty weight loss promises," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. "Aggressive acai berry pitches on the Internet entice countless consumers into free trials promising weight loss, energy and detoxification. These claims are based on folklore, traditional remedies and outright fabrications unproved by real scientific evidence."

While bloggers have been writing about this for months now, I’m glad authorities are finally looking into these ridiculous claims. I’m also glad I finally know how to pronounce “acai.” LOL

Another headline on CNN grabbed my attention: “Obesity can shorten lifespan up to a decade.”

While I realize BMI isn’t the be all and end all of fitness measurements, it’s still a pretty reliable tool in determining whether most people fall into the obese, overweight or normal weight categories.

“The researchers calculate that having a BMI of 30 to 35 takes to two to four years off the average lifespan compared with having a BMI of 22.5 to 25. Having a BMI between 40 and 45 (for example, being 5 feet 5” and weighing 240 to 270 pounds), they say, reduces one's lifespan by eight to 10 years. This reduction in lifespan is on par with being a heavy smoker.”

I began losing weight this last time mostly because I was afraid of the health repercussions and a little because of vanity. Actually, the two (health and vanity) collided in my imagination when I was 300 pounds and lived above my antique store – a very old 19th century building with long, narrow stairways. I thought, What if I need medical assistance and can’t get to the first floor by myself? How many people will it take to carry me down the narrow stairs? Could they carry me down the narrow stairs?

I don’t know what the long-lasting health affects I’ll incur from my obese past. There’s nothing I can do to change that. I can only do everything within my power to not become obese again. I may have already knocked off a few years of my lifespan. I don’t want to make any more contributions to that number. God knows science will probably determine I’m doing or consuming something that will surely do that for me.

In happier news, one of my Maintaining Diva friends, Sondra, is featured in next month’s Weight Watcher’s magazine. Her story is online now. Click here to read how she went from an inactive 242 pounds to a sleek 129-pound marathon runner. Please let me know if that link doesn’t work.

Sondra is encouraging and kind and realistic all at the same time. She’s also one of the healthiest eaters I know. Here she is after eating only half her dinner when the Divas met up in Connecticut last year.

I’m so proud of her and her marathon accomplishments. Mostly, I’m very blessed to call her my friend.

I’m heading to Pittsburgh for a few days to see Miss Claire and her mother and to visit Trader Joe’s. Maybe I’ll find some acai berries! LOL OK, maybe not. I’m sure they’re quite tasty, though, and would go well with Grape Nuts. I just won’t expect them to do amazing things for my sex life.

I’ll check back in in a few days. Be well and remember, don’t give your credit card to anyone promising to buff and shine your colon.

In the last post, I reviewed the controlled trials on the effect of the glycemic index (GI) of carbohydrate foods on health. I concluded that there is no convincing evidence that a low GI diet is better for health than a high GI diet, and in fact the long-term trials suggest that a high GI diet may even be better for insulin sensitivity.

Despite the graphs I presented in the last post, for the "average" individual the GI of carbohydrate foods can affect the glucose and insulin response to carbohydrate foods somewhat, even in the context of an actual meal. If you compare two meals of very different GI, the low GI meal will cause less insulin secretion and cause less total blood glucose in the plasma over the course of the day (although the differences in blood glucose may not apply to all individuals).

But is that biologically significant? In other words, do those differences matter when it comes to health? I would argue probably not, and here's why: there's a difference between post-meal glucose and insulin surges and chronically elevated glucose and insulin. Chronically elevated insulin is a marker of metabolic dysfunction, while post-meal insulin surges are not (although glucose surges in excess of 140 mg/dL indicate glucose intolerance). Despite what you may hear from some sectors of the low-carbohydrate community, insulin surges do not necessarily lead to insulin resistance. Just ask a Kitavan. They get 69% of their 2,200 calories per day from high-glycemic starchy tubers and fruit (380 g carbohydrate), with not much fat to slow down digestion. Yet they have low fasting insulin, very little body fat and an undetectable incidence of diabetes, heart attack and stroke. That's despite a significant elderly population on the island.

Furthermore, in the 4-month GI intervention trial I mentioned last time, they measured something called glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). HbA1c is a measure of the amount of blood glucose that has "stuck to" hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells. It's used to determine a person's average blood glucose concentration over the course of the past few weeks. The higher your HbA1c, the poorer your blood glucose control, the higher your likelihood of having diabetes, and the higher your cardiovascular risk. The low GI group had a statistically significant drop in their HbA1c value compared to the high GI group. But the difference was only 0.06%, a change that is biologically meaningless.

OK, let's take a step back. The goal of thinking about all this is to understand what's healthy, right? Let's take a look at how healthy cultures eat their carbohydrate foods. Cultures that rely heavily on carbohydrate generally fall into three categories: they eat cooked starchy tubers, they grind and cook their grains, or they rely on grains that become very soft when cooked. In the first category, we have Africans, South Americans, Polynesians and Melanesians (including the Kitavans). In the second, we have various Africans, Europeans (including the villagers of the Loetschental valley), Middle Easterners and South Americans. In the third category, we have Asians, Europeans (the oat-eating residents of the outer Hebrides) and South Americans (quinoa-eating Peruvians).

The pattern here is one of maximizing GI, not minimizing it. That's not because high GI foods are inherently superior, but because traditional processing techniques that maximize the digestibility of carbohydrate foods also tend to increase their GI. I believe healthy cultures around the world didn't care about the glycemic index of foods, they cared about digestibility and nutritional value.

The reason we grind grains is simple. Ground grains are digested more completely and rapidly (hence the high GI), leaving less undigested food hanging around the digestive tract. Undigested starch is readily fermented by intestinal flora, creating intestinal bacterial growth and hydrogen gas that promotes the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria in other parts of the body. Furthermore, ground grains are more effective than intact grains at breaking down their own phytic acid when soaked, particularly if they're allowed to ferment. This further increases their nutritional value.

The human digestive system is delicate. Cows can eat whole grass seeds and digest them using their giant four-compartment stomach that acts as a fermentation tank. Humans that eat intact grains end up donating them to the waste treatment plant. We just don't have the hardware to efficiently extract the nutrients from cooked whole rye berries, unless you're willing to chew each bite 47 times. Oats, quinoa, rice, beans and certain other starchy seeds are exceptions because they're softened sufficiently by cooking or minimal chewing.

Grain consumption and grinding implements appear simultaneously in the archaeological record. Grinding has always been used to increase the digestibility of tough grains, even before the invention of agriculture when hunter-gatherers were gathering wild grains in the fertile crescent. Some archaeologists consider grinding implements one of the diagnostic features of a grain-based culture. Carbohydrate-based cultures have always prioritized digestibility and nutritional value over GI. Have nutrition authorities suddenly gotten smarter than them in the last 20 years?

Finally, I'd like to emphasize that some people don't have a good relationship with carbohydrate. Diabetics and others with glucose intolerance should be very cautious with carbohydrate foods. The best way to know how you deal with carbohydrate is to get a blood glucose meter and use it after meals. For $70 or less, you can get a cheap meter and 50 test strips that will give you a very good idea of your glucose response to typical meals (as opposed to a glucose bomb at the doctor's office). Jenny has a tutorial that explains the process. It's also useful to pay attention to how you feel and look with different amounts of carbohydrate in your diet.

You probably thought I left town or something. I've been busy getting my house fixed up—oh, and babysitting. But I love having my girls around.

I've made up my mind to get back into my habits that got me this far. I've been back sliding for a while now, and I don't feel any better for it. I feel worse. I made it to the gym this morning. I've been eating better. The thought of returning to what I was has been too frightening. I could not face life if all I could do was waddle through it.

So I'm back on track. Yea.

I apologize for the disappearing post yesterday. Here it is again, almost in its original form.

I read an article by HungryGirl over on Yahoo called Attack of the 1000-Calorie Meals which spotlighted a few of the most fat-laden meals at chain restaurants. What made me angry and sad at the same time were many of the comments that followed. A good number of commentators held the attitude, “We’re all going to die. May as well eat what we want” and “The government can’t tell me what to eat.”

Many people also commented that outrageously high caloric food items are “special treats,” things people don’t eat “every day” and when they do, people just need to “work out more” to make up for it. First of all, it is quite clear just looking out into any crowd that fat-laden, processed and unnutritious foods are not special treats, otherwise 65 percent of our populace wouldn’t be overweight or obese, and people are not working out more to make up for it. Also, there are long-term consequences for eating high-fat, low-nutrient foods even as “special treats.”

It’s time to open a can of whoop-ass on this country’s dietary ignorance.

I agree that the government shouldn’t tell us what to eat, but I believe in serious food regulations. The government forced cigarette and liquor companies to place health warnings on their products. So, too, should restaurants. And I’m not talking nutritional information brochures in every restaurant. Nope. I want full disclosure under each menu item: calories, fat and sodium content, the whole nine yards. Now I realize many Mom and Pop places have complained of the financial burden this would create for them. OK, how about they give a list of ingredients, just like we see on food packages in the grocery store? The only thing they’d have to change is their menu or maybe buy a bigger chalkboard.

And if these seems too constricting for adults, too “big brother,” I believe we, as a nation, are morally obligated to do something to save our children. Obesity is slowly killing them and robbing them of quality of life.

Do we really want to live in a society with, according to a paper published last year by Johns Hopkins University, an overweight and obesity rate of 86 percent by 2030? As Barbara Berkeley wrote on our Refuse to Regain blog last week, “The huge burden of disease that will come along with such an increase is expected to raise obesity related health-care spending from the current $100 billion to over $960 billion per year.”

And we thought the stimulus package was expensive. This is an every year expense, folks, not a one-time deal.

Education and regulation are imperative. Now. This isn’t about thwarting individual choice. It’s about helping people make better choices, and if they choose not to, they need to understand the health and economic price that they and everyone will pay.

I had a few other questions go through my mind when I wrote this:

1. Restaurants have long said that they’re just giving consumers what they want when they create their high-fat menus. I argue they are creating an atmosphere of want. If more restaurants created healthy alternatives, I believe people would, in time and with education, choose those items, too.

2. Is it possible to create a culture of healthy eating? And if so, how?

3. Who is more culpable? Is it always the individual or do food corporations and restaurants have a moral obligation to stop creating foods that are potential carcinogens?

Leave a comment. I look forward to the discussion.

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Note to Anonymous who left a comment on yesterday’s erased post: I appreciate your passion and I thought you brought out some excellent points that I considered when reposting this blog entry sans the paragraph that set you off. While I stand by the spirit of what I wrote, I can see how the tone was biased and unfair.

"It's a shame to call somebody a 'diva' just because they work harder than everybody else." ~ Jennifer Lopez


If J.Lo's definition of 'diva' is correct, it surely applies to most of us. The B-Life & The Committee are currently re-working a few things to work harder for you. So don't call us divas...

Obama Pressed To Increase Global Water Aid


It has no teeth however, if water is not declared a human right and a public trust first. And that language has once again been stripped by the American delegation at this World Water Forum in Istanbul. There is no denying on this World Water Day 2009 that governments and citizens worldwide need to be much more cognizant of the water crisis facing many parts of this world and work to give water freedom to those who need it. That does not mean in my view collaborating with the very companies like Coca Cola and Nestle that steal water from those who need it and pollute their waterways with sewerage. It means taking these large government agencies in league with corporations that wish to privitize water supplies for their own profit out of the picture and allowing communities to deal with sanitation and water access.

This in many ways can be compared to the "food crisis" in that it is not always an issue of scarcity, but lack of access, waste, and non accountability on the part of these agencies in how funds are handled for education and the tools to be given to these water stressed areas in regard tosustainable irrigation practices, conservation, sanitation, and ownership of the water source. We don't need another US government agency to dictate the lives of people in the developing world to keep them subervient. We need bold action that brings them the tools to have opportunity and a dependable and clean water source they can control.

On this World Water Day I would hope water and the equitable distribution of it as well as fighting pollution and corporate ownership of this public trust to alleviate global poverty would at least be thought about today. It is good that this government at least sees the problem. However, how it is handled and by whom will be the deciding factor in whether we see progress or more corporate profit at the expense of the developing world.

1.4 billion people worldwide do not have access to potable water. That is outrageous especially when UN estimates predict that number to go over three billion by 2030. Water is the essence of all life on Earth. It is our sustenance that quenches our thirst, grows our food, and cleanses our bodies and souls. We are linked to this alive and lifegiving resource by a bond that goes beyond the physical. We are 70% water as the Earth is, though about only 1% of it is freshwater for human consumption and use. And we are neglecting and abusing it. This does not bode well for preserving that bond.

So many around the world still take this resource and human right for granted. So many think they can simply turn on their taps and it will always be there. However, many are finding out that is not the case if we waste it, pollute it, dam it, mismanage it, or continue the behaviors that lend to drought and global warming which evaporates it and changes its rainfall patterns. At one time this thought was not even entertained, but we are actually affecting the hydrologic cycle and based on reports of glacier melt worldwide particularly in the Himalayas, billions of people are at risk (with population statistics predicting 9 billion people by 2030) of not having enough water to grow their crops and sustain their lives.

So much of what we do everyday involves the use of water and it never asks for anything in return but for us to respect it.

Today is World Water Day. A day to honor those worldwide who have worked hard to bring potable water to those who need it most and a day to reflect on how important and precious water is to our lives and the effects of our actions.

Knowledge is power, awareness brings action. The world is at a crossroads and what we do to sustain and conserve water today saves it for tomorrow. The consequences of ignoring the global water crisis are too dire to think about. So let's not get to the point where we will have to. We can work to clean our waterways, conserve our water, adapt to climactic changes, decrease fossil fuel emissions, and most importantly demand that water be declared a human right and a public trust to bring water equity to our world and to help developing nations climb out of poverty. We have that power.

Let's use it starting now. The answer is so easy to find. It lies in us.

Music apparently can affect someone's emotions, including blood flow and tap of the heart. In fact, a study proves that music can help someone to have a healthy heart.

Research conducted at the American Heart Association New Orleans. As many as 10 women and men are healthy and not a smoker become research object. They all are asked to bring a CD containing their favorite music. At first they listen to music that they do not like. In those research, the hard rock music was selected. When listening to that kind of music, they all experienced a high level of fear and anxiety.

Even they feel that tap of their heart is not regular and not normal. However, when they told to listen on their favorite music, the fear and anxious feelings fade away, tap of the heart and blood flow back to normal.

Dr. Michael Miller, the researchers acknowledge that the music has a stunning effect.

So, lets the music play on!