Posts Tagged ‘overeating’

Good digestion is the key to lasting health. Yet, this is one of the most backed-up, overloaded, and sluggish systems. You can tell from the sales of antacids, bulk laxatives, and colon problems.  We depend on the digestive system to operate correctly. You should feel great not bloated, nauseous, gassy, and sluggish from the last meal you had.

Digestion the Golden Rule

The golden rule to ensure good digestion is to not overeat. Digestion depends on the liver, gall bladder, pancreases, intestine and colon. Illness and disease starts when this system is not operating well. The digestive tract goes from the mouth to the anus. The organs that make up the digestive tract consist of the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine (colon) rectum and anus.

The liver and the pancreas produce digestive juices that reach the intestine. The gallbladder stores the liver’s digestive juices for when they are needed. The nervous and circulatory system also are major players in the digestive process.

Since all nutrition is dependent on the process of digestion it is an often overlooked as a cause of disease. A well operating digestion system maintains regular elimination, removes wastes that causes disease, and assimilates nutrients. It is a really complex process of breaking down food to usable fuel. When you eat food it is not in a form the body can use to supply nutrients to the cells. Digestion is the process that breaks down food into their smallest parts so the body can make use of it to build and nourish cells and provide energy.

The digested nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal walls and transported throughout the body. What this nutrition does is stimulates the immune system and boosts its function. Saturating your body with powerful nutritional complexes that protect, regenerate and strengthen the body is an important function.

 Several factors are in play

One problem is the food supply, which consists of processed foods and inferior quality groceries. What we in America consume is weirder and weirder concoctions that pose as food. These so called foods are the cause of many of the digestive problems. The amount of refined carbohydrates in our diet is a radical departure from our natural foods. We are vulnerable to the damages these cause in our intestines.

It is not that different from other modern ailments. It comes from the magnitude and measure of the way we have veered from our natural way of eating. Our food supply has developed into an industry that trades health for economic development.

By adopting a new and unnatural way of eating we are building barriers to good digestive health. Innovative companies producing technologically advanced foods are 360 degrees away from promoting a good strong digestive system.

By remembering that the whole body depends on good digestion it is time to get a physical make over, by flooding your body with high quality foods.

Calories count on the path to longevity. Most of us know the phase you are what you eat. This says you are also what you don’t eat.

Calorie Restriction

Calorie restriction is more than a way of cutting calories. People who practice this also eat a nutrient dense diet. It has been found that in less complex organisms restricting calories can double or even triple lifespan. With the human population there are indications that this has a profound effect. These are not formal studies, but from interviews of people who have remained healthy and reached 100 years plus.

In a review article in Science, Nutrition, and Longevity researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, University College in London and the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, reports that calorie restriction influences the same handful of molecular pathways related to aging in all the animals studied.

The first author Luigi Fontana MD, PhD is interested in the ability of calorie restriction as a way to promote good health. “The focus of my research is not really to extend lifespan to 120 or 130 years,” said Fontana.

Calorie Counter

Instead of being up for the count, use a calorie counter. This isn’t about where is the beef; this is about where are the calories. The currency of health is in the amount and type of calories consumed.

Just putting the data out there such as in calorie counters isn’t going to save lives. People have been counting calories for a long time and look where they are. The strategic priority is to audit the type of foods that are consumed on a daily basis. Your body can’t run on 3 pieces of toast, only one candy bar, and a frozen low fat dinner.

A low calorie diet is not meant for those that keep eating the same poor diet. To see change the guiding principal should be the source of the calories. 

Calorie Poisoning

Calorie poisoning is a relatively new phase that is being used to describe the current health landscape. The growing rates of obesity, cancer, premature ageing, cardiovascular disease and cognitive problems are examples of this in action.

What happens is the desire becomes so strong for a fix that the option of both health and longevity are shoved to the sideline.

The first step in this new world of abundance is to be wary of processed foods.They are the ones that set up the cravings that lead to overeating.

Solution

The growing rates of obesity are a reason some scientist think calorie restriction is a mute cause. But, Fontana said if researches who study nutrition and aging can understand how calorie restriction lengthens life and makes people healthier, it may be possible to develop less drastic interventions of medicines that influence pathways affected by calorie restriction, and help keep people healthy

Real Solution      

The common sense solution is to eat more whole foods with lots of  fruits and vegetables. The idea is not to concentrate on calories, but nutrition. There are very few cultures that have a healthy population that counts calories. This is a phenomenon of Industrial nations. It isn’t about an abundant food supply; it is about a poor food supply.

Addiction is the new eating disorder of the 21^st century.

Eating Disorders

The list of eating disorders is reduced to either starving yourself, or stuffing yourself and purging. What if there are reasons to call our obsession with and binging on junk food one of the most dangerous trends. The shocking part it is a growing movement, making its way to the most vulnerable victims our children.

U.S. researchers working with rats have shown for the first time the compulsion to overeat has the same biological mechanism as the addiction to drugs such as cocaine and heroin. It affects the brain’s pleasure circuitry in a similar way.

The study was conducted by Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J Kenny and graduate student Paul M Johnson. The Scripps Research Institute is in Jupiter, Florida. It was published in the online issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Addiction

According to a statement from the Scripps Research Institute the study confirms what many obesity patients have been saying for years binging on junk food is just about impossible to control.

Kenny and Johnson show that as pleasure centers in the brain become less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits. This is the same progressively deteriorating chemical balance in reward brain circuits seen in rats that over consume cocaine or heroin.

Kenny said the study confirms that junk food can become “addictive.” One of the tests of addictive behavior is to train lab animals to anticipate an electric shock. At first the animals receive the mild shocks at the same time as light coming on, eventually they learn to anticipate the shock when they see the light and avoid doing the thing that triggers the shock.

In rats that become “addicted’ to junk food ignored the light and continued to binge. The junk food consisted of what people eat: cheesecake, bacon, sausage, and Ding-Dongs a chocolate like cake.

Junk Food Wins

Junk food wins even with rats. Lab rats were divided into three groups. The first group got a balanced healthy diet, the second group had access to high-calorie “junk” food for one hour a day, and the third group was fed healthy food, but had unlimited access to the high-calorie “junk food.”

The third group quickly showed a preference for the junk food, eating it all day long and becoming obese.

“They always went for the worst type of food,” Kenny said. “As a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats,” when they removed the junk food and left the healthy diet, they refused to eat.

“ The change in the diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food,” said Kenny.

Conclusion

It doesn’t take a genius to know what group we belong to. We are in the third group minus the healthy food. What will it do to us, just look around. The next eclipse will be because we block the view.

Understanding this should make us realize we are being left without the power, or ability to withstand the temptations.