Top 4 Foods To Eat To Suppress Your Appetite

If you love food, as I certainly do, then to stay healthy it can help to balance your appetite naturally. I am not in favour of stringent diets or some of the wilder claims for fat-busting supplements, but there are some natural foods that will help you maintain a good, healthy, weight by helping suppress your appetite.

They can be very useful if you are trying to lose some weight and the basic principle is to choose foods are filling, but low in calories. Also, be adventurous in your food choices as one of the problems people have in sticking to a diet – sensible or otherwise – is that they get bored. Add in these healthy foods to your menus and you will help keep the weight off:

Celery
This crunchy vegetable was a major feature of my childhood with the stalks washed and placed in a glass jug on the dining table whenever we had salad. My mother had no idea how healthy it was but she knew it helped fill us up as it has a low energy density and, according to research conducted by the Mayo Clinic, that can help control hunger. Celery contains few calories, only 16 for a cup, and its bulk and slight saltiness can be very satisfying when you are hungry. Add it to the snack list.

Psyllium
To be honest, I am not that keen on psyllium as my experience of it is rather akin to swallowing wallpaper paste or even worse, frog spawn. No, I haven’t actually eaten either of those but this gives you some idea of the texture! Psyllium is a soluble plant fibre which adds bulk to the diet and gives you a feeling of fullness and is also a great colon cleanser and so helps eliminate waste and this can lose you a few extra pounds in no time. Psyllium, in my view is best taken as capsules with plenty of cold water but if you are made of sterner stuff and want to try the powder then I would suggest mixing it with lemon juice and a tiny amount of apple cordial in a large glass of cold water. Mix thoroughly and the trick is to drink it immediately before it starts to solidify..

Lentils
My absolute staple for soup making, lentils again are a great source of soluble fibre that helps your blood sugar to stabilize. This means you don’t get those peaks and troughs that can send you hurtling towards the biscuit barrel – oh no, that’s me again – and they also are a good source of protein, folic acid, iron, and magnesium. If you are a fan of the Atkins Diet you will already know that protein can suppress hunger by its slower rate of travel through the digestive system.

Courgettes
Like celery, this is another low density, high fibre, food that can help suppress hunger and a cup of it has only 20 calories. If you are already a fan, then try a new way of using it by making it a replacement for pasta in one of your meals. Using a food processor, or mandolin, cut the courgettes into very thin noodle-like strands and serve with a tomato sauce hot, or with a low calorie salad dressing for a light lunch.

I suppose for maximum appetite suppression you should make a tomato, celery and lentil sauce with courgette noodles to get the maximum flavour, fewest calories and virtually no cholesterol. If you do, let me know what it tastes like!
Health Bite on Xmas Drinks

Usually when trying to lose weight alcohol is the first thing to be cut down on, but how do you celebrate Xmas without the odd sherry or glass of wine? Well, if you are toasting the festive season you might like to remember that the moderate drinking actually can reduce your risk of heart disease. And, as heart disease will kill more women over the age of 65 than all cancers combined, this might seem like good news except that moderate drinking also increases the risk of breast cancer in some women. What to do? Well you could try adding in some vitamin B complex to your regime as that can lower the added risk of getting breast cancer if you drink and always try to have at least one glass of water for every glass of alcohol you have as that will lessen the hangover!

Lost Your Keys? Sleep On it

It’s sad but true that as we get older our memory is not what it was, though personally I prefer the theory of my colleague Dame Dr Shirley Bond. At our hormone health seminars when asked if failing memory was a symptom of menopause she said it was more due to the fact that the older we get the more we have crammed in our memories and I agree with that. It’s like trying to pull a favourite sweater out of an overcrowded wardrobe, sometimes you can’t even see it – especially if your wardrobe is filled with black clothes like mine!

I was taught a trick by a French gypsy to help find things; you think of the object, blow into your left palm and then close your hand into a fist. Whatever first comes to your mind is where you will probably find the lost object, however unlikely it seems – no guarantees but it works for me more often than not.

Now science has got in on the act and offers a useful little tip if you are frequently losing your keys. What you have to do is record the sound of your keys jangling and then play it to yourself on an ipod, or mobile phone when you are sleeping. This discovery was reported by neuroscientists at Northwestern University, in the US who carried out a small study, with 12 volunteers.

They wanted to know if specific sounds played during sleep would boost the memory of learned information so they started by asking their volunteers to information learned while awake. (See the year in health 2009.)

Memorize the correct location of 50 images on a computer monitor. The images were shown one at a time, arranged in a random place on the screen — a cat appeared on the bottom left, a gong on the top right and so forth. Each object was shown with a related sound — so subjects heard a meow with the picture of a cat, and a crashing noise coupled with the image of a gong. After studying the 50 images and locations, the participants were asked to take a short nap.

While they were doing this their brain waves were mapped to see what kind of sleep they were having and when they were in the deepest sleep the researchers began playing (very softly) a series of 25 of the sounds that the individual had heard earlier in the memory game. When the participants woke up about an hour later, they said they hadn’t heard a thing, but on average, each person did slightly better at remembering the correct locations of the 25 objects whose related sounds had been cued during sleep than those of the other objects. The sounds appeared to have entered the sleeping brain and helped consolidate associated memories.

Over the last ten years neuroscientists have discovered the most convincing evidence that memory is indeed dependent on sleep and they believe it is because during deep sleep, the brain replays certain experiences from the day, which, in turn, strengthens the memory of what happened. It is thought that when it comes to factual memories, like names, faces, numbers or locations, memory consolidation happens only during deep sleep — a phase of non–rapid eye movement sleep. The other broad type of sleep, called rapid eye movement or REM sleep, which is when dreaming occurs, is believed to play a role in consolidating memories involving emotions and motor skills, such as dancing or playing an instrument.

So this might mean that subliminal CD’s for helping you lose weight or quit smoking might be on the right track, though no research has been done on this so far.

Also if you are studying for exams, despite what your mother told you, deep sleep can strengthen factual memories but only you sleep within 12 hours of learning. In other words, you are better off learning at night rather than getting up early to cram the following morning.

Whatever new skill you want to learn, it’s a very efficient idea to reinforce your learning while you sleep. The only thing that worries me is that those of us who live alone haven’t got anyone to switch the ipod on during the night – and your partner might not be too thrilled to have to stay awake and do it either! Wonder if I can train the cats?

How To Have A Healthy Heart

Apart from the usual suspects of diet and exercise, there is now new scientific evidence for a very old, natural, practice. Heart rate variability, which is a sign of a healthy heart, has been shown to be higher in those who regularly practice yoga.

The autonomic nervous system regulates the heart rate through two routes, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The former causes the heart rate to rise, while, the parasympathetic slows it so that when working well together, the two ensure that the heart rate is steady but ready to respond to demands such as when we eat, our fight or flight response, or arousal.

The research was carried out at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, in Uttrakhand, and although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that yoga practice may improve health through breathing exercises, stretching, postures, relaxation, and meditation this is the first time its effect on the heart has put through a scientific trial.

The volunteers were all healthy men aged between 18 and 48, half of whom practiced yoga regularly and the others not at all. They were given electrocardiograms (ECG) and found that the regular practitioners had stronger and better control of their parasympathetic system which gave them more autonomic control over their heart rate and so a healthier heart.

Go find a local yoga class, or use one of the excellent DVD’s on the subject. For beginners I would suggest Barbara Curries Seven Secrets of Yoga for a quick and simple workout as I have been using it for years, and it is available on Amazon second hand for an amazing 1p at the moment! www.amazon.co.uk

Health Bite:

Another great ingredient you need for a healthy heart is vitamin D, and low levels may also increase the risk of atherosclerosis.

It seems that most people suffering from heart disease are chronically deficient in vitamin D and you can easily rectify that by getting some sunshine every day – not always easy in our climate – or by taking a vitamin D3 supplement.

Nutritionists recommend a supplement for those deficient of around 1,000 – 4000 IUs per day, but not when you are getting plenty of sunshine.

Vitamin D is also known to be a preventive agent for around 77% of all cancers so you get a double health bonus. Now, about booking that sunshine cruise

What, and When To Eat For Maximum Health Benefit

One simple way to stay healthy is to pay attention to what we eat, that much we know, and of more of that about a specific part of our diet in the Health Bite at the end of this piece.

Now it seems that when we eat could be just as vital to good health. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has turned the conventional wisdom that our body’s metabolism is controlled by our body’s circadian rhythms –our body clock, but instead it’s our liver that is responsible.

Our liver, which is the body’s metabolic clearing house, contains thousands of genes that wax and wane throughout the day and this process is mostly controlled by our food intake, not our body clock and this has a huge huge impact on our metabolism.

Previously it was thought that people like shift workers, who are unusually prone to metabolic syndrome, diabetes, high cholesterol levels and obesity, had these problems because of their shift patterns disrupting their normal circadian rhythm. Now this theory gives them an opportunity to change that as controlling eating and fasting periods can manage the body’s processes much more easily.

We all have a ‘master clock’ in the brain which is set by light and determines our sleep-wake cycles and when we eat. We also have subsidiary clocks in our other organs and they are not affected by light but do keep time through the fall and rise of gene activity on a roughly 24-hour schedule that anticipates environmental changes and adapts many of the body’s physiological function to the appropriate time of day.

This initial research has been done by putting laboratory mice on a strict 8-hour feeding/16-hour fasting schedule and this could be translated into how we eat on a daily basis. For example, genes that encode enzymes needed to break down sugars rise immediately after a meal, while the activity of genes encoding enzymes needed to break down fat is highest when we fast.

How does this help?

If you want to optimize burning fat and sugar, to control weight, you would want your period of ‘fasting’ after a meal high in fat, and all your food intake for a 24 hour period to take place within an 8 hour time frame. The researchers have found that not eating between 8 pm and 8 am works best if you want to lose weight and stay healthy and certainly much naturopathic advice has been not to eat a heavy meal at night, but it might be worth seeing if not eating all during the evening period makes a difference.

Healthy Bite:

So now you know when to eat, and here’s some advice on what not to eat to lose weight and stay healthy. Mount Sinai School of Medicine published their findings in the October/November issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and it means throwing away that frying pan, if you haven’t already, and giving up processed foods.

They conclude that simply by stopping frying food you will reduce inflammation in the body, restore its natural defence system, lose weight, possibly increase your lifespan and improve or prevent diabetes, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease.

Wow, and this works no matter what your age or whether you already have a serious disease. The processes of heating, pasteurizing, drying, smoking, frying or grilling food produces harmful toxins called Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs). When you eat foods subject to any of these processes then the AGEs adhere to tissues and oxidize them. This causes inflammation which can result in numerous diseases.

The new clinical study put their subjects on a diet of only eating food that was poached, stewed or steamed, but with no change in the number of calories they had each day. After four months of this they found that AGE levels, inflammatory markers, and biomarkers of vascular function declined by as much as 60 percent. Kidney patients put on this diet showed a similar reduction but after only one month on the diet.

So if you want to maintain a healthy immune system and avoid inflammatory disease it might be a good idea to follow that poaching, stewing and steaming diet recommendation.

Soy May Be Key in Preventing Colon Cancer

Colon cancer is the third most deadly form so any preventive measures for those at risk are worth studying.

A new study carried out by the Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland, USA has identified Sphingadienes (SDs), natural lipid molecules, which are found naturally in soy and that can prevent and possibly treat colon cancer. .

Soy has been previously mentioned as protective against colon cancer, but the exact nature of how it did so was not able to be identified until now. It seems that high levels of SDs actually induces the death of mutant cancer cells, in other words it is toxic to them.

Preventative colon cancer strategies often focus on cell death, the normal process the body uses to remove unhealthy or cancerous cells, and so anything that can raise SDS levels will speed this removal process. Soy is a rich source of SDs, and research is under way to see if the active ingredient can be used in drug therapy for cancer.

The natural prevention is to increase the amount of soy products in the diet if you at high risk of colon cancer.

Teenage Girls Obesity and MS Link

Teenage girls are often obsessed with weight, and a lot of emphasis naturally has been put on the fight against anorexia and false body image. However, the reverse is also flagging up a problem as recent research has shown that girls who were obese at age 18 faced double the risk of developing multiple sclerosis as adults.

The study is part of a very long running research project by the Nurses’ Health Study in the USA and found a much higher relative risk of MS among those girls who had a body mass index value of 30 or more at age 18. They have speculated that it could be related to inadequate levels of vitamin D or the systemic inflammation that is also associated with obesity. Those who are obese are often found to have very low levels of vitamin D.

Interestingly being overweight in childhood did not carry a similar risk, it was the weight as they reached 18-20 that was significant so it’s worth keeping an eye on teenage girls weight as they reach mid teens, if they will let you.

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Going For Gold To Detect Prostate Cancer

Scientists from the USA’s Northwestern University have developed gold and magnetic nanoparticles that has a 300% better chance of detecting prostate cancer than conventional methods and could also track a wide variety of diseases.

The nanoparticles can detect prostate specific antigens (PSA – a protein produced by the prostate), and these are the leading indicator of prostate cancer, at far lower levels than is possible with existing blood tests. The new technology could not only save the lives of millions of men but also be adapted to detect or monitor a wide variety of diseases, from HIV to CJD.

When a man has had a cancerous prostate removed his PSA level drops to below what is currently detectable. At the moment prostate cancer testing is done using two methods: a manual examination of the prostate or/and a blood test. The blood is tested for the presence of PSA, and men with prostate cancer typically have a higher level of PSA in their blood than normal.

The old test directly measured the amount of PSA in the blood, but this new test will indirectly measure PSA levels by adding two types of nanoparticles to the blood sample. First, spherical gold nanoparticles tipped with antibodies bind to one side of the PSA proteins. Next, magnetic nanoparticles bind to the other side, basically sandwiching the PSA.

A magnet then draws the PSA and nanoparticle sandwich out of the blood. The nanoparticles then separate, which in turn can spur the release of thousands of DNA strands.

Since every single PSA particle can result in thousands of DNA pieces, even the tiniest amounts of PSA can be easily detected. Compared with the existing PSA blood tests, this new method is 300 percent more sensitive.

The bonus here is that usually a man who has had prostate surgery may have to wait up to seven years before he definitively knows whether he is cancer free. The new test would shave years off that wait.

Also, by changing the antibodies that coat gold and magnetic nanoparticles, this technology can be easily adapted to detect or monitor virtually any other disease.

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How Fish Is Cooked Affects Omega 3 Levels

We know all about the heart benefits of eating fish high in Omega 3, but did you know that how you cook it can seriously affect the levels? Research carried out by the University of Hawaii and was presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions on November 20 and found that if you want to get the maximum benefit your fish needs to baked or boiled, rather than fried, salted or dried.

You can also enhance the benefits by adding low-sodium soy sauce or tofu when cooking it. Frying does not generally get many health points and fish is no exception – despite the wonderful crisp batter from my local fish and chip shop – and in fact has several associated health risks.

The researchers studied the intake of various forms of omega 3 including tinned fish, soy products like tofu and shoyu and studied the results.

The Gender Difference

Men with a high Omega-3 intake from fish had a lower risk of death due to heart disease, but women got the same heart protection from both fish and plant sources. The researchers theorised that, for women, eating omega-3s from shoyu and tofu that contain other active ingredients such as phytoestrogens, might have a stronger cardioprotective effect than eating just omega-3s from fish alone. Also, that eating salted and dried fish was a risk factor in women, but not in men.

Before you start shaking that soy sauce bottle, please note that the benefits apply only when using a low salt version as the standard one is very high in salt which can raise blood pressure. You might do better to make tofu a regular part of your diet as that also seemed that eating it also had a cardio-protective effect. Personally I think it’s like eating your school eraser but without the added taste benefit of ink, so soak it in low salt shoyu before using it, or try smoked tofu instead as that has more flavour.

So, banish that frying pan and steam/bake your fish instead for a healthier option. Interestingly they didn’t study microwave cooking, and as this is a very fast way of cooking that essentially steams the food it would have been useful to see if that was also a good method for preserving the Omega 3.

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