Why Losing Weight Is Difficult: Carb-Heavy Breakfast

From Denny:  Currently, there is a 36 percent national obesity rate.  For decades now, food manufacturers have outrageously manipulated the food supply by adding so many preservatives and excess sugars into products it has caused a national health epidemic.

Consumers are overwhelmed trying to find healthy food that is safe to consume and feed our families.

Have you noticed the ingredient lists on packaged foods?  Try checking out the beloved cookies you buy and you will find at least three types of sugars added to the product when just regular sugar would have been enough.  Because of consumer demands in the past year, many manufacturers are reducing or eliminating the high amount or some of these sugars from their products.

It's those extra sugars that cause people to get addicted to the food and return time and again to purchase the product.  High fructose corn syrup and just regular corn syrup are the two worst culprits that literally turn into instant fat, raising the blood sugar levels fast and furious too, making people sicker.

Sleep Apnea: Taser Zap Your Tongue For Better Sleep

Is a cure for sleep apnea on the horizon?

From Denny: The health sphere is where crazy imaginative science fiction meets the newest health aids. Sleep apnea affects millions of troubled sleepers in America every night. It can be a dangerous obstructive sleep disorder.

Scientists must either have a great sense of humor or be odd sadists because now their latest effort to stop sleep apnea is to use a device to zap your tongue while you are sleeping.  It's like a tongue taser, a tongue nerve pacemaker.

Seriously, what is the research community trying to achieve here? The object is to prevent the tongue and throat muscles from relaxing so much during our sleep that they actually collapse and block our breathing. Who knew getting relaxed and mellow was a bad thing?

The tough thing is that sleep apnea sufferers can experience this breathing obstruction as often as every 30 seconds. It can cause a sleeper to jerk awake and gasp. This cycle can repeat itself as much as 30 times an hour. They are also known for loud snoring which can affect their sleeping partner.  It gets to the point that sufferers dread going to bed every night since the cycling tires them.

Talk about not getting a good night's sleep. Sufferers are deprived of our crucial deep sleep. How does this affect them during their waking hours? Being so sleep deprived of that restorative deep sleep we can be at higher risk for car crashes and deadly diseases.

New study to find relief 

Inspire Medical System in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will begin a 100 apnea patient study come January 2011. What they will study is if stimulation of the hypoglossal nerve is effective. Two companies developing this implant device are ImThera Medical based in San Diego, California and Apnex Medical based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"In this kind of research, we're not looking for little changes," says Dr. Meir Kryger, a sleep medicine specialist at Gaylord Hospital in Connecticut, who is helping to lead the study. "What we're looking for is actually cure."

How many Americans suffer from obstructive sleep apnea?  About 12 million, many who are overweight and middle-aged men - but anyone can have it.

To date what is the best treatment for sleep apnea?  Right now sufferers use a mask that gently blows air through the nose to help keep airways open while sleeping.  This is called CPAP - Continuous Positive Airway Pressure.  As many as 30 percent of sufferers will not or cannot use the CPAP mask.  They complain some masks leak or fit poorly.  Others complain about feeling claustrophobic.  Still others end up ripping off the masks during the night while they toss and turn during sleep.

Is it wise to go untreated?  No.  Apparently, going untreated is a risky business.  Sleep apnea raises the risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. What is the most immediate risk is that severe sleep apnea actually increases the chance of you crashing your car by seven times!

What do surgeons do for severe forms of sleep apnea?  There is an operation where they actually remove part of the roof of the mouth or some other soft tissue.  These are tricky operations and difficult to predict if they actually help.  They are reserved for the most severe cases and are questionable as to effectiveness.

So what about this new device, the equivalent of a pacemaker for your tongue?  Doctors implant a small generator near the collarbone.  Then they snake a wire up under the jaw to the tongue-controlling nerve, the hypoglossal nerve.  A sensor at the patient's diaphragm will detect when the person inhales and signal the implant to zap the tongue nerve.  The power has to be adjusted so that the tongue nerve gets stimulated just enough to keep the tongue from falling backward during sleep.

"I don't have any idea while I'm sleeping that it's on," says Krohn, the Minnesota man who'd given up on apnea treatment until volunteering for an early Inspire study last year - and says he now gets a good night's sleep. "It's a game-changer for me."

This tongue pacemaker device is still experimental.  Before you get to this level try the CPAP mask first and then talk to a sleep technician.  They may know more than your doctor since they specialize in the field. There are several details you might not know like adjusting humidity levels while sleeping.  If you are overweight or obese, they work on losing what weight you can.  Weight loss is known to help tremendously.

Hopefully, this tongue pacemaker may take the place of the uncomfortable mask.  Until then check out a sleep disorder clinic and talk to them in depth.  And may you get a good night's rest.



*** Photo from istockphoto.com



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First Lady Pushes 4 Healthier Food From Food Companies

From Denny: First Lady Michelle Obama is pushing hard on America's food manufacturers to speed up the effort to lose the excess fat, salt and sugar in foods. "We need you not to just tweak around the edges but entirely rethink the products you are offering," she said.

She's also calling on the nation's grocery store chains to start posting calorie counts and fat levels on all the shelves and deli self-serve areas.

Michelle Obama is committed to conquering childhood obesity in less than a generation. She has talked to schools and nutrition groups, going after junk food and snacks that pack school vending machines and grocery store aisles.

Food manufacturers are on notice from more than the First Lady. There is a child nutrition bill moving through Congress that would throw out junk food from the public school system across the nation. That sure would dig into those companies' profits.

And there is more: The Food and Drug Administration might have been asleep at the switch or held on a short choke chain during the Bush-Cheney years. Not so now. The agency is now cracking down on misleading labeling on food packages.

The First Lady has also called for less confusing food labeling, better portion sizing and increased marketing for healthy foods prepared in healthy ways. Like she said to the manufacturers, "While decreasing fat is good, don't replace it with sugar. This needs to be a serious industry wide commitment to provide healthier foods."

This new Obama campaign is aimed at school vending machines, school lunches and pushing children to exercise more.




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Chef Jamie Oliver Discovers American Kids Dont Know Veggies

From Denny: Chef Jamie Oliver recently discovered that America's first graders cannot identify even the most common vegetables and fruits like tomatoes and potatoes.

The British chef is on a mission to improve the diets of America's school kids. He entered a first grade classroom and queried the children as he held up each vegetable from a table display. They did not know one. All they knew was they didn't like vegetables when he first uncovered the display as audible gasps were heard throughout the classroom.

His first stop on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution - celebrity chef of Naked Chef fame - was to visit what is known as the unhealthiest city in America: Huntington, West Virginia. Chef Oliver is determined to improve America's ingrained bad eating habits and turn us away from the alarming rising rate of obesity. He is hoping this new series will be the catalyst for a healthy food reaction across America.

Take a look at these cute kids who clearly did not know what was on their plate or have any idea of the connection from farms or gardens to their lunch plate:





*** Almost every time I go to the grocery store the cashier asks me what those fruits and veggies are called. Hmmmm... maybe I should start memorizing those bar codes? :)

*** Please visit these food blogs:

Romancing The Chocolate

Comfort Food From Louisiana

Unusual 2 Tasty

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Trim Off Obesity: 3 Inspiring Stories, Nutritionist Answers Diet Questions

From Denny: These stories will get you pumped up and ready to tackle any extra weight you have been wanting to trim off. Impressive and inspiring stories, they all come from the Joy Fit Club series.

Amy Barnes, age 35, lost more than 340 pounds just through simple dieting and basic exercise. She got to this weight level because she was addicted to food as a way to emotionally medicate the hurt from an abusive relationship. After trimming off the weight she is now a body-builder:

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Greg McBride shed more than 250 pounds:

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Fast food junkie for years and now she has trimmed down from a high of 250 pounds down to a manageable 130 pounds.

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Joy Bauer, nutritionist, answers dieting questions and clears up confusion about calories and sugars in particular:

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Video: Where the Fat Lives

From Denny: This is a very short video with a huge psychological punch. If you missed it on last night's news, check out which states are doing well in weight control and which states still have acute issues with obesity. Keep praying for people to grab a hold on their health and do better; everyone needs support!

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Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup

From Denny: Here's an interesting post I ran across right here on Blogger about how negative it is to have in your diet this substance called high fructose corn syrup from the blog Change Your World. Generally, I've always avoided these foods listed because of what it contained. Maybe some of you don't have this information.

Good long list of typical on the shelf convenience foods that contain it. Also, lots of information about how high fructose corn syrup behaves in your body: turns to fat faster than any other sugar!

Here's an excerpt from the blog post:

"Food manufacturers embraced High Fructose Corn Syrup because it is cheaper than sucrose (table sugar) and mixes well with a variety of products, including beverages, baked goods, jams and jellies, candies, and dairy products.

Excess fructose intake has been associated with adverse health effects such as: metabolic syndrome, elevated triglyceride levels, hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, excess uric acid levels (associated with gout), and elevated levels of advanced glycation end products (linked with aging and complications of diabetes).

Excess fructose intake may contribute to hypertension. High blood pressure is a well-known comorbidity associated with obesity, hyperinsulinemia, and hyperlipidemia."

Then the post goes on warn why you should avoid this product. Look at it this way: if you are dieting and want to lose weight faster just chase this product out of your diet and watch the pounds start falling off! The America diet is saturated with manipulated foods that harm rather than help our bodies.

For the rest of this excellent post from this blogger, go here.

Childrens Food Allergies Linked to Obesity

Healthy, Overweight, Obese Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: A new children’s health study has found that food allergies may be linked to obesity. This was a larger study involving over 4,000 children from the ages of 2 – 19.

What did researchers find?

Being overweight or obese was strongly linked to allergic reactions to foods such as peanuts, eggs, (cow’s) milk and other common allergens. They also discovered that overweight or obese children were 25% more likely to have allergic reactions to at least one food, maybe more. In the study, 50% of the overweight or obese children were more allergic to milk than children of normal weight.

Inflammation plays a role in allergies

Researchers also found levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, with an association of being overweight. What this suggests is that systemic inflammation might also play a role in developing allergies.

Study’s author weighs in

The study’s lead author is Dr. Cindy M. Visness who is an epidemiologist with Rho, Inc. Rho, Inc. is involved in clinical trials as a provider for research and statistical services. “While there’s nothing conclusive about our findings, this is one more motivation to try to prevent obesity in children.”

Summary

This study doesn’t prove that obesity actually causes allergies. Other explanations for the association of obesity and allergies are possible such as inflammation. Inflammation occurs from being overweight.

What it does strongly suggest is that overweight children would have fewer allergic reactions to food by lowering their weight. This finding warrants more study about obesity and food allergies. Meanwhile, this is good information for parents overseeing their children’s nutrition.

This study was published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, May 2009.


Written by Denny Lyon

Health Risks of Phthalates

Health Risks of Phthalates: "Phthalate exposure has been linked to higher risk of liver cancers in both humans and animals.
In adult human men, phthalates have been linked to greater waist circumference and higher insulin resistance, a common precursor to type 2 (adult onset) diabetes.

They have been linked to thyroid irregularities, asthma, and skin allergies in both sexes. Though the exact mechanism is unclear, studies have linked higher rates of respiratory infections and other symptoms in children living in houses with vinyl floors.

One possible explanation is inhalation of dust tainted by phthalates, which are used in cosmetics such as nail polishes and hand creams precisely because of their ability to bind to human tissues."

By kerryg
Photo by dboy @ flickr - this photo sure gets your attention! :)

From Denny: Wow! You might want to read this warning of a common chemical found in your everyday life that interferes with your health! I knew some of it but this writer gave more details.