Excessive sun can do a lot of damage to your eyes and skin. Personally, super-bright sun has often left me blitzed, totally fatigued, while I actually like gray skies. But I am beginning to realize that it is lack of nutrition not just genetic predisposition that has been the problem.
Specifically, most people don't get anywhere near enough of two powerful and natural antioxidants which are extremely effective at protecting from the sun: lutein and astaxanthin.
Lutein (like its sisters Zeaxanthin and Cryptoxanthin) is especically concentrated in the eyes. It filters out blue light and allows you to withstand stronger rays. You may notice your eyes become richer in color if you eat more of it. You can get lutein in kale (huge amounts) and spinach as well as egg yolks and a number of other colored-skin foods.
Astaxanthin is what makes salmon pink and is found in ocean animals and plants. It has been called "nature's sunscreen" and prevents sunburn. I love salmon personally but it is usually dry in a can and farmed (not wild caught) as sushi, so as an alternative astaxanthin supplements are very cheap.
If you eat a lot of lutein and astaxanthin, you will notice your sun tolerance go up significantly.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Too much fructose can be dangerous and fattening
We live in an Age of Fructose. The average American ingests an amount of fructose per day that is wildly beyond what humans have eaten for thousands of years. This is due to the addition of artificially-produced sweeteners to just about anything you can imagine; there are "sweetened" forms of cereals to milk to vitamin pills. There is even sweetened toothpaste. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the notorious sweetener of choice, a cheap artificial byproduct of one of our nationally-subsidized staple crops, corn.
Many health problems are related to excessive fructose:
-Excess fructose has been linked to insulin resistance, i.e. your cells stop listening to insulin and do not receive nutrients in your blood stream even when they are present. Result: those nutrients end up being stored as fat rather than used.
-Excess fructose casues glycation. Like the caramel on Cracker Jacks, AGEs (Advanced Glycation End Products) are burned excess sugars that form when blood sugar is too high, particularly from fructose. These sticky AGE molecules are now being found by doctors to be a culprit in a huge variety of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart diesease, and alzheimers.
-Excess fructose causes gout. It causes high uric acid levels, which is all gout is.
-Worsens diabetes. Fructose was once (and still is by some) touted as the best sguar for diabetics. Turns out to be the worst. Agave syrup, marketed to diabetics, is straight fructose. It is marketed as a health product due to its low glycemic index (GI), but this belies the other effects, especially glycation, which is elevated for diabetics.
For some people, 25 grams a day is about as high as you want to go. If you drink a couple sodas a day, you just quadrupled that limit. One high-fructose corn syrup drink has a wildly unnatural amount of fructose. If you get stuck and need a sugar hit, buy a can of soda and dump half of it out before you start drinking.
For others, like me, who do not process fructose well, cutting out fructose altogether is a good idea. You have to get your carbs frmo other sources, there are plenty from fibrous carbs like legumes to quality starches like quinoa, and also milk if you can tolerate lactose. Fructose is one of many types of sugar which all carry different properties. It is very sweet compared to other sugars like glucose, lactose, maltose, etc. Besides straight fructose, which is actually found in relatively small amounts in fruits, it is also one of the byproducts of sucrose which includes common sugars like table sugar. When you eat white sugar, it breaks down into one glucose and one fructose molecule, so, to be clear, when a package says "sugar" half of it will turn into fructose.
Many health problems are related to excessive fructose:
-Excess fructose has been linked to insulin resistance, i.e. your cells stop listening to insulin and do not receive nutrients in your blood stream even when they are present. Result: those nutrients end up being stored as fat rather than used.
-Excess fructose casues glycation. Like the caramel on Cracker Jacks, AGEs (Advanced Glycation End Products) are burned excess sugars that form when blood sugar is too high, particularly from fructose. These sticky AGE molecules are now being found by doctors to be a culprit in a huge variety of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart diesease, and alzheimers.
-Excess fructose causes gout. It causes high uric acid levels, which is all gout is.
-Worsens diabetes. Fructose was once (and still is by some) touted as the best sguar for diabetics. Turns out to be the worst. Agave syrup, marketed to diabetics, is straight fructose. It is marketed as a health product due to its low glycemic index (GI), but this belies the other effects, especially glycation, which is elevated for diabetics.
For some people, 25 grams a day is about as high as you want to go. If you drink a couple sodas a day, you just quadrupled that limit. One high-fructose corn syrup drink has a wildly unnatural amount of fructose. If you get stuck and need a sugar hit, buy a can of soda and dump half of it out before you start drinking.
For others, like me, who do not process fructose well, cutting out fructose altogether is a good idea. You have to get your carbs frmo other sources, there are plenty from fibrous carbs like legumes to quality starches like quinoa, and also milk if you can tolerate lactose. Fructose is one of many types of sugar which all carry different properties. It is very sweet compared to other sugars like glucose, lactose, maltose, etc. Besides straight fructose, which is actually found in relatively small amounts in fruits, it is also one of the byproducts of sucrose which includes common sugars like table sugar. When you eat white sugar, it breaks down into one glucose and one fructose molecule, so, to be clear, when a package says "sugar" half of it will turn into fructose.
Healthy and Unhealthy Fats
One of the great nutrition myths of the 80s and 90s: that fat-free foods made people lose fat. This myth caused millions of people to eat totally opposite to their nature. Left only with carbs for fuel, it sometimes caused diabetes.
Another myth was that eating fat caused you to become fat. In truth, eating healthy fats actually helps you lose fat.
But fats on the whole are healthy, with some major important exceptions. Good fats: almonds, olive oil and olives (though olives often have a lot of sodium), milk fat (preferably unpasteurized), palm oil, moderate amounts of chocolate (low-sugar which is tough to find), coconunt oil, organic animal fat like in hamburgers not overcooked, high-quality fish oils, chia seeds, flax seed (though they say men should stick with chia), etc.
If you don't really understand fats, you really almost cannot be healthy in the industrial food society we live in. It is worth the time to figure out not just the basics but the fine details, because fats can kill you.
Basically there are two fuels that people burn: fats and carbs. If you don't eat fats you have to eat more carbs. To be stored as excess fat on your body, you have to burn fuel too fast so that there is a surplus. This is easy to do with carbs because they burn quickly, but it is hard to do with fats because they burn slowly.
Eating more fats and protein is also good for diabetes. Carbs drives up insulin in a big way whereas fats do not. Eating fat-free pushed millions of people toward diabetes and/or insulin resistance because each time they traded in fats for carbs, they spiked their insulin in an unnatural way.
Having said that
a) eating too many fats can make you sick. You have to figure out how much is right for you. You can't just inhale a gallon of cream, you won't be able to process it. (I've tried drinking a pint of cream in one shot; though it wasn't too bad compared to what you might expect, I did feel queasy a couple hours later). Also many people do not process plant fats well in their livers and so plant oils can have a toxic effect if you eat too many.
b) there are "fats that heal & fats that kill". The industrial oils like soybean and corn oil used in junk foods are fats that kill. There really is never a good reason to use corn or soybean oils, and yet they have been a staple of American cooking in the industrial food era because they come from our subsized grain crops. They kill because they have a super-lopsided ratio of inflammatory (Omega 6) to anti-inlammatory (Omega-3) fats. Trans fats are deadly as well but are being phased out in most foods, though somehow they still exist.
Another myth was that eating fat caused you to become fat. In truth, eating healthy fats actually helps you lose fat.
But fats on the whole are healthy, with some major important exceptions. Good fats: almonds, olive oil and olives (though olives often have a lot of sodium), milk fat (preferably unpasteurized), palm oil, moderate amounts of chocolate (low-sugar which is tough to find), coconunt oil, organic animal fat like in hamburgers not overcooked, high-quality fish oils, chia seeds, flax seed (though they say men should stick with chia), etc.
If you don't really understand fats, you really almost cannot be healthy in the industrial food society we live in. It is worth the time to figure out not just the basics but the fine details, because fats can kill you.
Basically there are two fuels that people burn: fats and carbs. If you don't eat fats you have to eat more carbs. To be stored as excess fat on your body, you have to burn fuel too fast so that there is a surplus. This is easy to do with carbs because they burn quickly, but it is hard to do with fats because they burn slowly.
Eating more fats and protein is also good for diabetes. Carbs drives up insulin in a big way whereas fats do not. Eating fat-free pushed millions of people toward diabetes and/or insulin resistance because each time they traded in fats for carbs, they spiked their insulin in an unnatural way.
Having said that
a) eating too many fats can make you sick. You have to figure out how much is right for you. You can't just inhale a gallon of cream, you won't be able to process it. (I've tried drinking a pint of cream in one shot; though it wasn't too bad compared to what you might expect, I did feel queasy a couple hours later). Also many people do not process plant fats well in their livers and so plant oils can have a toxic effect if you eat too many.
b) there are "fats that heal & fats that kill". The industrial oils like soybean and corn oil used in junk foods are fats that kill. There really is never a good reason to use corn or soybean oils, and yet they have been a staple of American cooking in the industrial food era because they come from our subsized grain crops. They kill because they have a super-lopsided ratio of inflammatory (Omega 6) to anti-inlammatory (Omega-3) fats. Trans fats are deadly as well but are being phased out in most foods, though somehow they still exist.
Low carb does not mean no carb
There is no such thing as a no carb diet. You can't function or retain muscle when you eat no carbs.
Having said that, low carbs works for a lot of people, though not everybody. The key to a low carb diet is that you have to get your fuels from somewhere else besides carbs, namely fats.
You can bacon, eggs, low-sugar chocolate, cream and milk, olive oil, nuts, seeds, etc. These fats are your fuels instead of carbs.
Having said that, low carbs works for a lot of people, though not everybody. The key to a low carb diet is that you have to get your fuels from somewhere else besides carbs, namely fats.
You can bacon, eggs, low-sugar chocolate, cream and milk, olive oil, nuts, seeds, etc. These fats are your fuels instead of carbs.
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