Category Archives: Diet And Food

If you have ever been on a diet, you know the pure vulnerability of getting weighed at the doctors office. Standing on that old metal scale with your shoes off, you might avert your eyes, as if that would prevent the nurse from saying the number out loud as they write it down. But what if weight did not play such an active role in determining your health?

On this edition of Embodied host Anita Rao examines 'The Health At Every Size Movement' with Christy Harrison, anti-diet registered dietitian, nutritionist and certified intuitive eating counselor, Dr. Louise Metz, and Mirna Valerio, former teacher-turned-sponsored athlete.

Some of the research presented in this show challenges a lot of what we have been told about health and our bodies...possibly even what you have heard from your medical provider. We invite you to listen with an open mind. Linked at the end of this page are studies referenced in the show. This conversation is not a substitute for personal medical advice.

On todays episode of our ongoing series Embodied: Sex Relationships and Your Health, we deconstruct diet culture by examining the holes in the science which props it up. The medical field has puzzled over the obesity epidemic for years with little progress. According to a growing field of doctors and health practitioners, weight is not the end-all-be-all indicator of health. Data shows that a higher body weight is correlated with diseases like osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, but correlation does not imply causation.

History of Diet Culture

Christy Harrison is an anti-diet registered dietitian, nutritionist and certified intuitive eating counselor. After spending much of her life engaged in disordered eating, she found her way out of diet culture. She calls it The Life Thief and defines it as a system of beliefs that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue; promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher moral and health status; demonizes certain foods and food groups and ways of eating while elevating others; and oppresses people who don't match up with its supposed picture of health and well-being.

In her forthcoming book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating (Little, Brown Spark/2019), she traces diet cultures history as far back as ancient Greece and the societys moralistic arguments against fatness.

This was because of the belief system that ancient Greeks had about balance and moderation and all things being seen as a virtue, she says. So fatness was seen as an imbalance to be, quote unquote, corrected.

Though that perspective fell out of vogue for centuries after the fall of Rome, it began to reemerge in the mid-19th century culture, still long before the medical world propagated weight stigma.

Ideas about the value of different bodies and of different people was really in the foreground and that started to lead to a demonization of fatness, she says. Early evolutionary biologists who are working around [the turn of the 19th century] started to point to fatness as a mark of, quote unquote, evolutionary inferiority because people who had more fat on their bodies were supposedly women and people of color and groups that were being demonized at the time.

Harrison says the societal association of fatness with disenfranchised groups like women and people of color attributed to the convergence of weight stigma and medicine. As patients increasingly demanded to be weighed by their doctors and be put on diets, medical professionals bent to their demands. She also points to the emerging life insurance industry as a factor in medicalizing weight stigma.

The life insurance industry, of course, is geared towards making money and making sure that they're having people in their insurance pool who are going to live the longest. And so they're doing this research to determine who's a bigger risk. And they found from their early research in wealthy, white middle-aged men that it seemed to be the larger-bodied men were dying sooner. And so they started to relay this information to doctors. They started to kind of coalesce behind a campaign of telling people not to be fat and having people lose weight as a way of supposedly reducing health risks. The risks are really it was about reducing monetary risks from the insurance industry.

The Obesity Epidemic

The research these early insurance companies conducted relied on measuring body mass index, or BMI. The scale categorizes people as underweight, normal or healthy weight, overweight or obese. BMI is a persons weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. It was developed in the 1830s by an astronomer as a statistical exercise.

Dr. Louise Metz says it is a problematic way to categorize health. She is a board-certified internal medicine physician specializing in eating disorders and gender-related care. She founded Mosaic Comprehensive Care in Chapel Hill, and it is a weight-inclusive health center.

[BMI] was designed for populations, not for individuals, and was not designed to define health in any way. And then moving on later to the modern age, it was used to begin to define health somewhere in the 1900s, Metz says. And then later on in the late 90s, what we found is that these arbitrary categories for BMI were suddenly changed. So the definitions of obesity and overweight were suddenly decreased and 29 million people suddenly became quote, overweight or obese overnight. And these changes really were not based in any research that shows that there was a direct link between these BMI categories and health.

[BMI] was designed for populations, not for individuals, and was not designed to define health in any way.

The measure is still used today to track changing body weight at a national level. Medical professionals and insurance companies use BMI as a measure of a persons health. Harrison says this contributed to the declaration of an obesity epidemic.

Many other researchers who are in the so-called field of obesity research are financed and funded by the pharmaceutical industry, [and] the pharmaceutical industry [is funded] by the diet industry, Harrison says. Many of them have their own diet plans and programs that they are selling and have this financing that's coming from people with a vested interest in making Americans fear weight gain and think that their body size is a problem.

Weight and Health: Correlation vs. Causation

Still, the CDC links higher body weight to a range of health consequences like high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and osteoarthritis. There is ample evidence that weight and these health consequences are correlated, but Harrison and Metz caution against implicating weight alone.

We don't have proof that it's the body size causing these health conditions. So there are several other mediators of that. So one could be cardiovascular fitness. We have some data to show that that could be a mediator between body size and health, Metz says. There's one study that looked at this and found that in people who have low cardiovascular fitness levels, mortality rates were higher with higher BMIs. But [in] individuals who had higher cardiovascular fitness, we found that the mortality rates evened out across body size and that in fact, people who are quote overweight or obese and were active cardiovascularly had lower mortality rates in those with a normal BMI who were inactive.

For Type 2 diabetes, a disease widely believed to be preventable by avoiding weight gain, Metz says medical professionals are asking the wrong questions.

There are assumptions behind those questions, and that it is likely not the body size that is causing diabetes again, but there may be other mediators like genetics. So someone might be predisposed to have a higher body weight and have diabetes. And someone might be exposed to chronic dieting and weight cycling As well as weight stigma [that] are increasing the risk of conditions like diabetes.

Why Diets Dont Work

Harrison, Metz and any promoter of the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement will tell you that diets do not work. They are not designed to result in long-term weight loss, but instead trap people in cycles of weight fluctuation. This process is called weight-cycling, and there is evidence that it adversely affects health.

Weight-cycling is this repeated cycle of weight loss and regain that people undergo when they try to intentionally lose weight, Harrison says. And we see in the research that up to 98% of the time when people embark on weight loss efforts, they end up regaining all the weight they lost within five years, if not more. In fact, up to two thirds of people who embark on weight loss efforts may regained more weight than they lost.

Up to 98% of the time when people embark on weight loss efforts, they end up regaining all the weight they lost within five years, if not more.

People in larger bodies get started on this weight-cycling sometimes as early as childhood. A lifetime of dieting, HAES practitioners argue, contributes to poor health. Our bodies are not designed to diet, and Harrison has an explanation as to why the vast majority of people gain back the weight they lost and sometimes more.

Our bodies are wired to resist starvation. And they have all kinds of biological mechanisms that kick in in a situation of lack of food, right, because the body perceives that as famine, she explains. And so it will do things like turn down your fullness hormones so that you keep eating longer in the presence of food, ramp up your hunger hormones so that you're more likely to seek out food, turn down your body temperature so that you're not burning as much energy, reduce your reproductive function because that requires energy.

There's a million things, little things that your body does to help you survive in a situation of lack of food.

To counteract this, Metz never recommends intentional weight loss to her patients. From the HAES perspective, it is more important to focus on things like metabolic levels and other vital signs. As part of the weight-inclusive model at Mosaic, patients are not routinely weighed. If deemed necessary, like in adolescent growth or prescribing weight-determined medication, practitioners will privately weigh the patient and turn the face of the scale away if the patient does not wish to know their weight.

Weight change could be a symptom, and Metz acknowledges its importance when patients bring it to her attention. But overall, she references HAES research in justifying the mostly weight-neutral approach at her practice.

[The] study looked at women who were quote overweight or obese and assigned them either to a diet routine/diet plan or a non-diet Health at Every Size approach. And what they found in these two groups [is] that initially, at the six-month follow-up that they did see improvements in blood pressure, high cholesterol and an increase in engaging and exercise behaviors among both groups, she says. And they saw that weight went down in a diet group. But then if you followed them out to two years, we found that the folks in the diet group actually had all of those numbers revert back to their baseline, and they had no sustained health benefits from engaging in the diet. But in the non-diet group, we found that at two years, they had sustained improved health outcomes across the board, but no change in their weight.

Navigating Diet Culture as a Fat Athlete

Not everyone has access to a HAES practitioner. For people in larger bodies, the weight stigma baked into the medical field can prevent their doctors from seeing past their size and addressing underlying issues.

Mirna Valerio has experienced that firsthand. She is a former teacher-turned-sponsored athlete who runs marathons and ultramarathons. She gained some celebrity in the running community as a large black woman and avid trail runner. Even though she has been running regularly for over a decade, some people still question her validity as an athlete. Her book A Beautiful Work In Progress (Grand Harbor Press/2017) traces her rise as an avid marathon and ultramarathon runner.

Please do not ask me to exercise or to lose weight, she writes on her doctors intake forms. I'm a very, very active person. I run marathons and I work out four to six days a week. I know I'm overweight and I've been working at slow and permanent weight loss for the past five years. Please actually read my chart before you start talking about these things. I would highly appreciate it.

It works for her now, she says. Prefacing her appointments with that note will get most doctors to address her health concerns beyond weight. Still, people on the street question her health.

I'm fat. You don't need to tell me. You don't need to tell me with your body language, you don't need to tell me explicitly or implicitly, I already know that. So it doesn't help me to keep pointing that out, whether I'm out on the trail, whether I'm out on the road, whether I'm just trying to sit in and be me and exist in this world as I am.

She has not weighed herself in years, but her body size has stayed about the same since she started running seriously.

Metz says everyone can take this HAES approach to their own doctors, like Valerio did.

If you're going to your doctor, one thing is that you do not have to be weighed. It is your right to decline to be weighed, she says. And another helpful quote that we learned from Raegan Chastain she will say that if the doctor is recommending weight loss for a condition that you have and you don't think it's appropriate, you can ask Well, what would you recommend for someone in a smaller body? What testing or treatment would you recommend for someone who's thin?

On this edition of our recurring series Embodied: Sex, Relationships and Your Health, host Anita Rao talks with Harrison, Metz and Valerio about diet culture and the stigma larger-bodied people face from the examining room to the running trail.

Continued scholarly reading:

Mortality rates by BMIReview articles that summarize the literatureWeight and correlation with metabolic profilesWeight bias in healthcareCardiorespiratory fitness as a mediator of health

Read more:
Embodied: Deconstructing Diet Culture And The Science Behind It - WUNC

Bruce Chadwick lectures on history and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He also teaches writing at New Jersey City University. He holds his PhD from Rutgers and was a former editor for the New York Daily News. Mr. Chadwick can be reached atbchadwick@njcu.edu.

One of the first photos you see in Renee Taylors delightful play about dieting is a black and white picture of her as a chubby kid in New York in the late 1940s. In hundreds of subsequent photos and videos, Taylor, the unforgettable mom of Fran Drescher in the hit TV seriesThe Nanny,tells the story of her life and all the diets she has been on, real and crank, medical and fanciful. Its about caloric food you can bake and a LOT of chocolate cake.

Her story is told in her engaging one woman show,My Life on a Diet,that just opened at the George Street Playhouse, in New Brunswick, N.J. The play is the story of her career in show business, marriage (53 years) to actor/writer Joe Bologna and a world ofcalories. As she says, its a story of her highs and lows, on and off the scale.

In her story, told as she sits at a desk in her home, she tells the rather remarkable tale of all the famous celebrities she knew as friends and lovers. Each has a number of anecdotes attached. Lovers included brilliant off-color comic Lenny Bruce, who overdosed during his relationship to her, and friends Barbra Streisand and, most importantly, Marilyn Monroe.

She met most accidentally.

Taylor enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Acting School in New York in the 1950s to become a performer. Sitting in class with her was Marilyn Monroe, who was just becoming famous. Taylor had no qualms in befriending Monroe and Monroe saw in her a level headed, down to earth friend that she desperately needed. The two hit off right away and remained pals for years.

Taylor rose from bit movie player to c-star of some movies and became a television star in several shows and thenThe Nanny. Through it all, she constantly a waged war against weight, fighting all the way to keep it down, and often failing. The play starts off as a standard Hollywood story but as it goes on you feel real empathy for her and her waistline combat.

Renee had personal struggles, too. She dated a lot of men before meeting Bologna, and they had a tempestuous, marriage counselor filled marriage. Her good friend Marilyn died young of an overdose of pills. Lenny Bruce overdosed, too. You begin to see Taylor as just like any other human being, with lots of troubles, grieving over the losses of friends as we all have, and not just a glitzy Hollywood star. Its a humanity that develops right through the end of the show and makes her lovable.

Oh, the endless diets. They are funny. She makes up celebrity diets and recounts tales of famous people she met who went crazy over diets, such as Jackie Kenneys sister, rail-thin Princess Lee Radziwell. The woman walked up to a gourmet delight buffet table an ate three little carrots for dinner. I leaned over and said to her, oh, such overeating

There was 40s box office Queen Joan Crawford, whom she met with her slightly nutty mother Freida. Mom told Joan she had to work harder at body cleansing diets to save her health and Crawford, with a long nod, said Im doing that.

Taylors story is familiar to any one who has been on a diet. She always weighed herself after getting up andbeforebreakfast. I also fixed the scale before I got on it, she laughed.

You have to admire her for battling against her weight and remaining sane in Hollywood over such a long time. We all know what a crazy life show people have too much eating and drinking, drugs, love affair, on and off employment, shrinks, always waiting for the next job. What do you do? You eat.

The play is warm and loving. It is a memoir of sorts with her as the center. It is not a drama or high comedy or sprawling spectacle, either, but it is good as good as a big, calorie ridden holiday dinner, with a big dessert cake, please large slice.

PRODUCTION: The play is produced by the George Street Playhouse. It is written by Taylor and Joe Bologna, and directed by Bologna. Sets and Lighting: Harry Feiner, Projections: Michal Redman, Costumes: Pol Atteu, Sound: Christopher Bond.The show runs through December 15.

Read more here:
A Concise History of Diets through Life and a Lot of Show Biz Spice - History News Network (HNN)

Everyones relationship to food is different, which means that theres no quick, universal fix to developing eating habits that support a healthy body and mind. A research report that looking at the findings of 14 studies, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, offers one solution, at least for the former: physical activity calorie equivalent food labelling, or labels on food that describe the amount of exercise required to burn the amount of calories contained therein. Researchers found that across the studies analyzed, these labels were more effective in reducing food consumption than traditional calorie labels or unlabeled food. On the revelation that people thinking about the exercise theyll need to do later eat less, anyone whos ever dealt with disordered eating could respond: No fucking shit.

When it comes to talking about food, there are some pretty obvious things to avoid, including language that feeds (sorry, punny!) directly into the mentality wherein food is earned, and eating less is always the goal... which is exactly the kind of mindset this kind of nutrition labeling promotes. The idea that food requires penance in the form of exercise is a pervasive cultural myth, and is incredibly harmful. Personal trainers buy domains like earnthosecarbs.com to promote their work; news outlets run stories about how long it takes to burn off Chipotle, sushi, and potato chips; companies promote workouts on Thanksgiving, presumably to balance out all of the time your fat ass was, uh, spending time sharing food with loved ones. Equating eating more calories or weight gain with poor health without qualification is patently false, and hyper-focusing on diet and exercise as a punitive balancing act is pretty much a one-way ticket to Eating Disorder City.

The food labeling report positions its results as a good thing, and positions physical activity calorie equivalent labels as a positive step to encourage healthier food choices and reduce disease, but in reality this measure encourages a corrosive line of thought. Messaging around food that implicitly encourages disordered eating is everywhere. Celebrities talk about how amazing they feel (and look!) after completing their latest aggressively-low-calorie cleanse or water fast, and influencers promote unrealistic dietary and lifestyle habits in the name of wellness. We dont need researchers to slap more of this guilt and shame onto the fuel we literally all need to consume in order to stay alive.

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Excerpt from:
Tips for How to 'Work off' Calories Don't Belong on Food (Or Anywhere) - Free

The United Nations General Assembly week in New York in September was a global stock-taking exercise aimed at understanding where the world collectively stands on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ahead of the 10 years remaining to achieve the 2030 agenda.

That week of stock-taking identified that although we have made progress in certain areas such as infant and maternal mortality, poverty and infectious diseases we are falling dangerously behind in efforts to reach the Global Goals. The natural environment is rapidly deteriorating because of climate change and collapsing ecosystems, global hunger is on the rise and at least half of the worlds population lacks access to essential healthcare services.

Two of the greatest challenges facing the 2030 agenda, climate change and public health, were strongly displayed in September. The U.N. Secretary Generals Climate Summit brought together world leaders to ramp up ambition for climate mitigation. By the summit, 65 countries committed to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and 87 companies had joined the "Business Ambition for 1.5C- Our Only Future" campaign. (As of Dec. 11, 177 companies had signed the pledge). Alongside the Climate Summit, the U.N. hosted the High Level Political Forum on Universal Health Coverage, where countries signed the Political Declaration on "On Universal Health Coverage: moving together to build a healthier world" (PDF).

By using health as a leading indicator of progress, companies will find a compelling business case for action by uncovering cost savings and risk reductions that otherwise would go unseen.

A recent Lancet report explains that the challenges facing obesity, undernutrition and climate change make up a syndemic (synergies of epidemics) "because they co-occur in time and place, interact with each other to produce complex sequelae, and share common underlying societal drivers." Another Lancet commission publication, "Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems," demonstrates that existing policies, incentives and subsidies in the food system cause unhealthy diets and unsustainable agricultural practices simultaneously. These reports demonstrate that the common systemic drivers that cause our global institutions to produce results that hinder the 2030 agenda require a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to create long-lasting solutions.

That is why the U.N. Global Compacts "Health is Everyones Business" action platform in September published the "Business Leadership Brief for Healthy Planet, Healthy People." Launched at a side event to the U.N. General Assembly, the report calls on businesses to take an integrated approach to simultaneously improve the health of people and the planet. The report highlights that many challenges facing the planet and the health of people are interlinked: air pollution and climate change; water, sanitation and hygiene; and food and nutrition (see below).

The private sector has a substantial role to play in addressing the joint challenges facing the health of people and the planet. Companies can exacerbate these challenges by, among other things, releasing greenhouse gas emissions, having suppliers in areas without access to proper sanitation and hygiene, and having employees with unhealthy diets that hamper their productivity.

The private sector also can positively contribute to solving these challenges. "Especially through energy renovation of buildings, we can contribute simultaneously to addressing environmental and health concerns, to the benefit of residents and the planet," said Mirella Vitale, senior vice president for marketing, communications and public affairs at ROCKWOOL Group.

The findings of the report highlight three key insights that can help companies create effective and lasting solutions that address the health of people and planet.

Addressing environmental and climate determinants of health can provide strong business outcomes across many touchpoints in the value chain.

In the report, Steve Rochlin, CEO of Impact ROI, highlights mounting evidence that companies that take an integrated approach to climate and environment outperform their competitors across a range of vital key performance indicators (KPIs) including increased share price by as much as 6 percent and increased sales value by as much as 20 percent.

Mette Ss Lassesen, market director for the Environment & Health business at Ramboll, an engineering, design and consultancy company, reports that "most of our environment-related work focuses on human health outcomes, as well as environmental impacts the two are inextricably related. We have found that business strategies that include health and well-being as a component of a broader sustainability focus improve competitive advantage and increase market opportunity."

Minimizing health risks associated with air pollution, climate risks, poor water quality, sanitation and hygiene, and poor diets can reduce absenteeism, reduce presenteeism, reduce healthcare costs, increase productivity, and increase employee retention. Considering air pollution as an example, industry studies have found that poor air quality reduces consumption, hinders executive recruitment and contributes substantial healthcare costs to the company.

Sally Uren, CEO of Forum for the Future, wrote in the business leadership brief: "We need to acknowledge the deeply interconnected nature of challenges we are facing , and accept that addressing them will require fundamental changes in the way we think and operate."

In her recent article on GreenBiz, Uren outlined six steps to build a sustainability strategy based on a systems approach. Consider those steps in the context of taking action on the interconnected challenges facing the health of people and planet:

The last key insight outlined in our report is the need for strategic integration of health into environmental strategies across the value chain. Companies demonstrating leadership on planetary health challenges exhibit competencies in working collaboratively across disciplines and functional silos and across organizational boundaries to serve people and the planet. Two attributes are essential to successful business leadership on planetary health:

The first is the mastery of intent the ability to intentionally design and implement solutions, such as programs, policies and products, which tackle global problems at the intersection of public health and the environment, thereby achieving more than the sums of both parts.

The second is the mastery of integration the ability to design a corporate strategy that aligns teams, policies and targets around these integrated solutions.

Ambitious action to solve challenges facing the health of people and planet requires that companies design solutions at the intersection of public health and the environment built within a corporate strategy that aligns the proper teams, policies and targets. The Health and Environment Strategy integration matrix below shows that companies must reach quadrant D through forming integrated strategic value of health across the value chain.

In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, we must put aside incremental change and target transformative opportunities that realign the ways in which systems operate.

When it comes to achieving a healthy planet for healthy people, we believe human health must become a leading indicator for environmental progress. With 23 percent, or 12.6 million, deaths globally attributed to environmental risk and $5.11 trillion in welfare losses every year caused by air pollution, transformative change will take place only if companies begin to measure the health and welfare losses associated with their environmental impact.

Ambitious action to solve challenges facing the health of people and planet requires that companies design solutions at the intersection of public health and the environment.

Leading businesses understand the urgency of taking ambitious action on planetary health and more need to follow suit. Pam Cheng, executive vice president of operations and IT at AstraZeneca, stressed the urgency to act: "Our collective response to climate change over the next 10 years will define health and wellness globally for generations to come. We do not have the next 50 years to make a difference. The time is now."

Read this article:
Why human health must be at the center of climate action - GreenBiz

A 48-year-oldvegansays she looks better now than she did in her 20s, and credits her vegan diet for her youthful looks.

Victoria Featherstone Pearce from east London is regularly mistaken for being in her late 20s. She believes its due to plant-based eating, no alcohol and cruelty-free skincare routine.

She turned vegan 15 years ago, at 33, after learning about the dark side of the dairy industry.

The model and charity owner has never had botox and believes her lifestyle choices have impacted her appearance.

She has never had botox before. [Photo: Caters]

READ MORE: Meat eaters can now get paid to go vegan

I am not ashamed to say I feel and look good I want to continue rocking it and being sexy until I am 90! She admits.

In the modelling industry, I have had experiences where we have spoke over the phone and I will be dismissed due to my age. People hear I am 48 and a distorted image appears in their mind just because I am older it doesn't mean I look it.

I believe mature models have a lot more to offer and I dont want to be just a number.

READ MORE: Adding lemon to your drink might not be vegan

Shes not the first model to appear to defy ageing at 48. Earlier this year,Claudia Schiffer posed nakedfor a magazine cover at the same age.

The modelling industry has traditionally favoured younger models, a bias that Victoria has encountered in her professional career.

Recently, I lied about my age for a German commercial casting the age bracket cut off at 38 so I tried my luck and got the job!

I told the truth when they employed me, and they couldnt believe I was a decade older.

The industry needs to change as its also contributes to women of all ages feeling bad about themselves when really modelling should give women confidence, not take it.

She believes changes should be made to the modelling industry. [Photo: Caters]

Shes an advocate formental healthas well as veganism after suffering fromdepressionsince she was 21-years-old.

I have been depressed for a long time due to finding out my dad wasnt my real dad at 21 years of age. Depression doesnt have a face; most people are shocked when they hear I am.

Victoria has continued her work as a successful model, and she wouldnt be the only one to believe a vegan lifestyle is the key to feeling and looking healthier.

Story continues

Veganism has quadrupledin the last four years, with the likes ofSimon Cowelladopting the lifestyle change and dramatically losing 1.4 stone of weight in the process.

Recently, 33-year-old Megan Fox revealed her children go to a sustainable, vegan school.

We send them to an organic, sustainable, vegan school where theyre seed-to-table, they plant their own food. They grow it, they harvest it and they take it to local restaurants to sell it, so they understand how all of that works. She explained inan interview.

See the rest here:
48-year-old women credits veganism for her youthful looks - Yahoo Sports

Colon Health: Diverticulitis may cause abdominal pain, fever, nausea, constipation and diarrhoea.

Highlights

Our digestive tract, which starts at the mouth and ends at the anus, is an amazing interconnection of organs which are hollow and are together vital for life itself. As the food we eat with our mouth moves along the oesophagus, stomach, the small intestines, large intestines, it is broken down from its solid form, and further digested to release nutrients that are absorbed to nourish our body to support growth, cell repair and for energy. The digestive tract is supported from the outside by organs like liver, gall bladder, pancreas etc.

Large intestines, also called colon, is the last part of the digestive tract that ends at the anus. Its length is about 150 cms. Its main function is reabsorption of water, minerals and the formation of stools. It is also the space where billions of bacteria live and support our body. Sometimes a sac forms in the wall of the colon, bulging outwards; this is called diverticulum. If there is more than one, it is called diverticula and if they are inflamed or infected, they are diverticulitis. Usually they appear on the left colon as a result of increased pressure and can be asymptomatic for a lifetime. Diverticula have been linked to obesity, high-fat low-fibre diets, and inactive lifestyles. Diverticulitis can be a simple inflammation or a more serious condition requiring hospitalisation or even surgeries. Diverticulitis may cause abdominal pain, fever, nausea, constipation and diarrhoea sometimes.

Prevention is better than cure so eating a diet that has fibre reduces the risk of diverticulitis. It softens the stools and ensures quick passage. A diet rich in both soluble and insoluble fibre is recommended. Add fresh vegetables in all your meals; half your plate should contain seasonal vegetables. Carrots, green leaves, cauliflower are all rich in fibre. Whole grains like wheat, bajra, maize, buckwheat, ragi, and barley, all add up to increase the fibre in your daily food. At least two of your major meals must have whole grains. Whole dals and legumes like rajma, chana, lobia, whole moong, and sprouted pulses are other good sources of fibre. Swapping fresh fruit juices with 2-3 whole fruits, especially oranges, guava, apple with the skin, and pomegranates with the seeds are smart choices. If you are prone to constipation, then including fibre supplements like physillium husk, at least 3 times a week works well.

Along with fibre, fluids are also essential; if the amount of water you drink is less than what is absorbed by the fibres then the stools tend to become hard. To keep the stools soft, drink up. Water is the best fluid but fresh vegetable soups, vegetable juices, fresh lemon water, coconut water, green tea also add up to the total. The recommended adequate intake of water is 35ml/kg body weight.

(Also Read:Prebiotic Foods Versus Probiotics: What's Best For Our Diet?)

Probiotics have a positive role to play in diverticulosis. As the stools move slowly, research has shown that it may affect the flora of the colon causing inflammation as the gut bacteria act as barriers. Including both probiotic and prebiotic foods can turn out to be beneficial. Fibre is the best prebiotic for our gut as it forms the base for the bacteria to thrive on. Probiotics are found abundantly in fermented foods. One of the best sources of probiotics is dahi or yogurt. Apart from this, khamiri roti, fermented idli and dosa batter are some other common foods that you may add to your diet.

Exercise helps reduce the intra colonic pressure and also helps prevent constipation, so keep a daily schedule. Exercise also helps manage weight, which is a risk factor for diverticulitis.Medical nutrition therapy for diverticulitis depends on the severity and stage of treatment. If the symptoms are severe, you may need clear liquids; liquids that do not leave any residue like clear soups, green tea, and fresh coconut water etc. This is followed by a full liquid diet comprising chaas, tea, diluted milk and maybe supplements. From here, a soft diet which is low in residue is added. Typically this will have soft dals like arhar, moong, masur, khichdi, ghiya, tori, and carrots to start with and your clinical nutritionist will work with you to bring you up to a normal diet depending on your treatment, symptoms and how you are coping with your diet changes.

Diverticulum isn't so common in Asia as compared to the western world, but with all of us moving towards high-fat, low-fibre, ready-to-cook, ready-to-eat processed foods and away from our traditional lifestyles, we need to take precautionary measures.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

See the original post here:
Colon Health: All You Need To Know About Diverticulitis; Diet Tips And More - NDTV Food

(This video was originally broadcast on Iowa Outdoors, Episode 905, November 20, 2019.)

Just off the trail behind Grays Lake in Des Moines, a battalion of volunteers armed with clippers and saws are going to battle with invasive and overgrown plants and trees. These are "upcycled stewards."

Andrea Boulton, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation: Basically if you're familiar with the whole concept of upcycling - taking something old and reusing it or repurposing it - it's a very similar concept here. We're taking something that an invasive species or a non-native species here in our parks and reusing it to be able to feed animals at the zoo. A variety of species will benefit from what we're taking out of our parks and and providing it to them.

Honeysuckle, willow, mulberry, elm and other brush is being removed, loaded up, and hauled away to Blank Park Zoo.

Andrea Boulton: I mean evasive plants tend to take over an area and prevent those native plants that are good for the ecosystem from from thriving. So they're shading out the plants that need the sunlight to grow. And those plants provide a wealth of benefits to the land whether that's soil, or protecting from soil erosion, providing some water quality benefit or being the habitat and food that a wildlife may need. So getting rid of the invasives provides those more beneficial plants to thrive.

Chris Eckles, Blank Park Zoo: We want to get invasive plants and plant I might be just kind of over growing out of the woods and just make the to have a healthy woods. But our animals also need browse in their diet. So it's a win-win for everyone because we can take a lot of the stuff back to our animals so they can browse on it, or perch on it, or roll in it or just kind of have fun with it too.

The twigs and foliage are called "browse". It's food and fun for the animals at the zoo. Each animal has its normal daily diet maybe pellets, meat, or fruits and vegetables . And browse is an important addition to that. Some animals browse in their natural environments like the giraffes, which browsing trees in the savannas. So the zoo wants to provide opportunities for the animals to do the same in captivity.

Chris Eckles: So that's what will hang it so they have to really use their their neck and their tongue and really pull on the leaves, and and have something yummy to eat that's a little different than the hay and the other stuff they're getting. The rhinos enjoy it very much. And our new baby rhino Kamara is even enjoying it though she can't eat it she's pretending she's eating it just like mom. So she's imitating mom which is really fun to watch her go around with browse in her mouth and try to figure out what to do, And our gibbons love it, our tigers love it, our lions love it, the goats of course they love it as well. So every animal just loves what we bring from upcycled.

Volunteers with upcycled stewards gather periodically to work on different areas. Just like the old saying Gray's Lake's trash is Blank Park Zoo's treasure.

Andrea Boulton: People want to give back and not everybody can do that financially. And it's an opportunity to actually be on the land and do the work and make a make a difference that they can see, and have that impact that the community can see at a popular park like Gray's Lake. And then see the difference it's making at a popular destination like the zoo.

Chris Eckles: And at Blank Park Zoo we believe in conservation. We believe it's not just far away places that we want to conserve and protect. We want to protect Iowa and we want to protect our native plants and animals as well. So when we're doing this we're helping our pollinators, and our birds, our bunnies, by giving them better habitat to live in and then also growing our native flowers and our native trees are gonna have a better

chance when you thin out your forest. So we want to give back, not just globally, but we really feel it's important to get outside the zoo walls and give back to our local environment and work with our partners who are doing that work every single day.

Originally posted here:
Invasive Species Removal Benefits Park and Zoo Animals - Iowa Public Television

Constipation is the medical term for infrequent or hard-to-pass bowel movements. A person may have constipation if they have not had a bowel movement in 3 or more days, or if they need to strain very hard when they do have one.

Sometimes, a person may experience a headache in addition to constipation. In some cases, these two symptoms could share the same underlying cause.

Common underlying causes of both symptoms include not drinking enough water or eating enough of certain nutrients. In these instances, drinking more water and eating more fiber may help resolve the symptoms.

If constipation and headaches frequently occur together, it may be due to a long-term condition that requires medical treatment or lifestyle changes.

This article outlines some health conditions that could cause headaches and constipation, along with their associated treatment options.

Many people who experience headaches also complain of constipation. A 2015 study sought to investigate this link.

The researchers assessed the medical records of 96 children who went to the hospital complaining of headache. Of these, 24 had constipation and received appropriate treatment. At a follow-up consultation, all 24 of those children showed improvements in both constipation and headache.

The study authors therefore conclude that successful treatment of constipation can improve headache particularly tension-type headache. However, they could not determine whether constipation triggers headache or constipation and headache are both symptoms of the same underlying cause.

Often, both headaches and constipation develop as a result of not consuming enough fluids or having a balanced diet.

Dehydration, which occurs when someone loses more fluid than they take in, can result in both constipation and headaches.

Constipation can also occur due to eating foods that contain little or no fiber. Many of these foods, such as fast foods and processed foods, are high in sugar. This may cause headaches.

In these instances, taking in more fluid and eating more nutritious high fiber foods could help resolve both symptoms.

There are also several underlying conditions that may cause both constipation and headaches. A person with one of these conditions may experience the two symptoms at the same time. These conditions include:

Celiac disease is a type of autoimmune condition. People who have celiac disease experience intestinal inflammation and damage as a result of eating gluten. Gluten is a protein present in wheat and wheat products.

There are three types of celiac disease: classical, nonclassical, and silent.

Classical celiac disease is characterized by intestinal malabsorption. This refers to when the intestines become so damaged that they are unable to absorb enough nutrients from the diet. Some signs of intestinal malabsorption include:

A person with nonclassical celiac disease may experience mild gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms such as abdominal pain and bloating. They may also experience:

Silent celiac disease is so-called because those who have it are unlikely to experience any symptoms. They may, however, experience improved health after adopting a gluten-free diet.

Treatment

The only treatment for celiac disease is to follow a strict gluten-free diet. This will allow the small intestine to heal, which should lead to a reduction in GI symptoms.

Mood disorders such as depression and anxiety can trigger tension headaches and GI issues.

Some additional symptoms of depression include:

There are also several types of anxiety disorder. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most common. People with GAD experience persistent and excessive worry that interferes with their daily life.

They may also experience symptoms such as:

Treatment

A doctor may prescribe medications for people with depression or anxiety. However, these medications can take some time to work. People may also need to try several medications before finding a drug that works well for them.

People with either mood disorder may also benefit from talking therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Fibromyalgia is a condition characterized by chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain. Common symptoms of fibromyalgia include:

Some people with fibromyalgia may experience migraine or tension headaches. They may also experience digestive issues, such as irritable bowel syndrome or gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Treatment

The most effective treatment for fibromyalgia is physical exercise. Aerobic exercise may be particularly effective.

People with fibromyalgia may also benefit from taking certain medications. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have approved the following three drugs for the treatment of fibromyalgia:

People with fibromyalgia may also benefit from the following treatments:

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a condition that causes a person to feel overwhelmingly tired or fatigued. As a result, a person may have great difficulty carrying out normal daily activities.

CFS can cause headaches and, in some instances, constipation. Other symptoms may include:

Treatment

There is currently no cure for CFS. However, there are things a person can do to alleviate their symptoms. This may include spreading out activities that they know will drain them of energy. Certain supplements and relaxation therapies may also help.

The symptoms of CFS differ from one person to another. For this reason, a person should talk to their doctor about their specific symptoms and the possible treatment options.

Headaches and constipation can both be side effects of certain medications. Two medications that may cause these symptoms are opioids and statins.

A person should talk to their doctor if they develop constipation or headaches after starting a new medication.

Treatment

If medication is the cause of both constipation and headaches, a doctor may lower the dosage. When possible, they may even prescribe an alternative medication.

If these options are not feasible, a doctor may prescribe medications to help alleviate the side effects.

In many cases, staying hydrated and eating a well-balanced diet that includes enough fiber can help prevent both headaches and constipation.

A doctor may offer advice on how to prevent flare-ups of a chronic underlying condition. Once a person begins treatment for the condition, the symptoms may clear up.

Some general tips for preventing constipation include:

Some foods that are high in fiber include:

Learn more about healthful high-fiber food options here.

Learn more about foods that could help prevent migraine here.

Constipation and headaches can sometimes occur together. In some cases, these symptoms may share the same underlying cause. This may be a lack of fluid or fiber.

However, there are also several health conditions that can cause both constipation and headaches. Treating the underlying condition can help alleviate these symptoms.

In some cases, constipation and headaches may occur as side effects of a medication. If this is the case, a doctor may lower the dosage of the medication or prescribe an alternative drug.

A person should see a healthcare provider if they experience persistent or recurrent constipation, headaches, or both.

More:
Can constipation cause a headache? What to know - Medical News Today

Lets face it: third-party cookies have always been a stop-gap solution, largely unfit for the task of long-term user tracking and targeting. Increased emphasis on consumer privacy, led by GDPR and the impending California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), has only accelerated wider acknowledgment and acceptance of this well-kept secret that most of the people in ad tech knew all along.

Already, the main browsers have either stopped cookie use altogether or at least restricted it significantly, while the fall of the cookie was a key talking point at this years Dmexco.

So as we approach the next decade, the collapse of the third-party cookie seems inevitable and imminent, begging the question: what should digital doomsday preppers be doing to future proof their advertising investments and media businesses?

Third-party cookie-based tracking has trained marketers to become accustomed to attributing performance to users and audiences, rather than media and outcomes. But knowing which user clicked is not as important as knowing which message or environment got them to click, or what actions they took on a webpage after the click occurred. By resetting marketer expectations to focus on metrics like brand engagement, landing page conversions, and on-domain actions, marketers can start to gain visibility into the performance of direct media investment, using first-party cookies and on-domain user behaviour tracking without the need for third-party cookies.

Multi-touch attribution has earned a premium spot in the advanced marketing toolkit, but what meaningful actions can be taken with this data? How can we adjust strategies with a fractional attribution model? By eschewing measurement tactics that rely on third-party cookies, marketers have the opportunity to re-evaluate how they invest their media and assess performance. Real-world business outcomes, like sales, store visits, test drives and completed applications can all be achieved - and measured - without using third-party cookies. And isnt knowing business lift driven by media investment more meaningful than exposure-to-conversion reporting anyways?

Publishers understand their audiences and can group these site visitors into valuable segments for media buyers. Similarly, advertisers understand who their customers are and why they engage with their brand. The current programmatic trading paradigm, which relies on third-party cookies as its currency, is designed to push publishers and advertisers apart, while ad tech handles the important task of cookie matching and audience segment creation.

But if ad tech isnt enabling unique publisher audiences to be activated on good first-party advertiser data, then it isnt doing its job. Activation of audiences can be done in a more persistent and privacy-friendly way when agencies can go direct-to-publisher and not rely on a half dozen third-party syncs in between. By facilitating principals - the owners of the data, relationships, and budgets - and media owners to connect directly with each other, ad tech can re-empower the largest value creators in the ecosystem while carving out a meaningful position for itself in the supply chain.

The above scenarios require the workings and measurement of digital advertising to be fundamentally rethought. It is the job of the technology providers who power the tools and platforms that enable these buying, targeting, and measurement tactics to also start the difficult work of finding technology-led solutions to unravel the industrys over-reliance on cookies.

For starters, the programmatic advertising process yields details of where ads appear such as page content, device, operating system and browser. Free of personally identifiable information (PII), these can be used to create audience segments and monitor campaign effectiveness in a way that is as useful as third-party cookies.

Contextual targeting, currently undervalued and under-explored, is poised to re-discover a premium place among brand advertisers keen to have their campaign appear in the right place to reach their target audience. Recently, weve seen major investments from private equity firms, agency holding groups, and major tech players in contextual targeting offerings.

With historical industry efforts focused on optimising cookie-dependent machine-learning models, there is now a major opportunity for ad tech providers to leverage machine-based approaches to build cookie-less models that predict audience interests and behaviours, exposure frequency and conversion potential by context category. Google recently announced movements in this direction, using machine-learning models to create a privacy-safe approach to managing ad frequency.

Astute readers may notice that ID consortiums (open identity frameworks that can be used to target audiences) are not included in this analysis. While these are good initiatives, most are built around consolidating third-party cookies, which feeds our collective sweet tooth and doesnt solve the longer-term industry challenge.

The digital advertising industrys enforced reduction of cookie consumption wont be comfortable. However, I would anticipate that the companies currently focused on innovating for a future that doesnt rely on the third-party cookie will be healthier businesses for it, while also delivering on the promise of performance for advertisers, yield for publishers, and privacy for consumers.

Tim Conley is client services director, Europe at Iponweb

More here:
Cut the cookie: digital advertising's overdue diet - The Drum

Your cube-mate went keto and lost 15 pounds. Your sister-in-law did the Whole30 and felt less moody and less stressed than ever before. Your dad wont stop raving about how the Mediterranean Diet cleaned up his blood pressure and triglycerides. These diets have more in common than being trendy they all ask you to cut your sugar down to almost zero.

In the U.S., added sugars make up roughly 17% of most adults diet. That makes sense considering roughly 74% of packaged foods have added sugar, according to stats from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And before you think youre exempt from that category, turn over whatever bottle or box you just munched out of added sugar is in soda and potato chips, but also Greek yogurt, smoothies, trail mix, and protein bars, says Harley Pasternak, celeb trainer and co-founder of Sweetkick.

And unlike going low-carb or low-fat both controversial because they force you to cut out foods from your diet that are actually nutritious reducing your sugar intake is suggested by every health professional worldwide. (Spoiler: It's been tied to weight gain, depression, and increased risk of pretty much every disease.)

Translation: If you're overwhelmed with trendy diets but thinking about making some diet changes in 2020, sugar is a pretty good place to start. Ahead, everything you need to know about the mental and physical health benefits of a sugar "detox" plus tips for how to cut sugar out of your diet for good.

RELATED: Everything You Think You Know About Carbs Is Wrong

All sugars are a type of carbohydrate, but there are two types of sugar molecules: simple and compound.

Simple sugars contain one molecule glucose, fructose, or galactose and are the foundation for every type of sweet treat. Because they only contain a single molecule, they break down really quickly, spiking your blood sugar which is why we often call them quick-burning fuel. (More on this category in a minute.)

Compound sugars are made up of two or more of these foundational molecules and encompass things like sucrose, lactose, fiber, and starches. The combination of molecules means your body processes them slightly slower, which is a good thing. But depending on their chemical makeup, they can still be pretty bad for that spike in insulin. Which brings us to...

Considering galactose is almost exclusively found in lactose i.e. milk products fructose and glucose are the main simple sugars we are dealing with. And fructose is really the biggest problem, says Kimber Stanhope, Ph.D., R.D, research nutritional biologist with the University of California Davis and the SugarScience team at the University of California San Francisco. (A 2019 study analysis agrees, pointing to fructose above other offending molecules like glucose.)

Okay, quick bio lesson (stay with us this helps explain pretty much everything else): Glucose and fructose, the two main simple sugars, have the exact same chemical composition. However, they have a different rate-limiting enzyme, which influences how your body responds to the molecule.

Remember, sugar is a carb which means its purpose is to provide fuel for the body. When you eat any sugar, it leaves the intestine and goes directly to the liver. Glucoses rate-limiting enzyme (called PFK) is very sensitive to how much energy (aka fuel) the liver needs. If the organ is full-up, PFK shuts down and all the glucose bypasses the liver and goes to the brain, the muscles, fat cells, nerve cells in essence, it allows the rest of the body to use the energy source as fuel.

Fructose, on the other hand, has a rate-limiting enzyme called fructokinase, which doesnt really care how much energy is already in the liver. That means when fructose leaves the intestines and hits the liver, it stays there. The liver is then stuck dealing with a big overload of the sweet molecule. It stores some as glycogen to later be used as fuel during, say, a workout; but the liver can only store so many carbs or sugars, so whatever fructose is leftover, the liver does what it always does with too much potential energy: It stores the fructose as fat.

That fat has two fates, neither of which are good, Dr. Stanhope says: Its either sent into the blood along with cholesterol, raising things like triglycerides which directly increases your risk for heart disease; or its stored in the liver, increasing liver fat which, among other consequences, can cause insulin resistance, upping your risk for type 2 diabetes. For most people, both happen, increasing their risk for most of the top deadly diseases in America, Dr. Stanhope adds.

The main added sugars we consume are sucrose and high fructose corn syrup (found in sodas, desserts, candies, even salad dressing). Both of these are made up of both glucose and fructose, but the latter is harmful enough to trump the dynamic, meaning these added sugars still contribute to your disease risk, Dr. Stanhope says.

While its important we dont over-eat sugar of any kind, not all sugar is created equal, Pasternak says. That is, added sugar is enemy but natural sugars meaning fruit are a go.

The sugars in natures candy are a mix of sucrose, fructose, and glucose but there are a handful of reasons you dont need to stress over the fructose in your fruit, Dr. Stanhope says: For starters, fruits are no more than 10% sugar. And because of that, youd have to eat a lot of produce to equal the amount of fructose youd get in, say, a soda way more than most people are willing to or capable of eating in a day.

Mostly though, fruits fiber saves it from being a sugar rush fiber slows down the rate at which our body processes the accompanying molecules, so your liver and brain arent overloaded with sugar but instead are able to process it over a healthier timeline.

Whats more, fruit has a whole lot of other nutrients, namely bioactive compounds like polyphenols, that boost our health and create an advantage thats above and beyond any potential damage the fructose an do.

In fact, a 2018 meta-analysis in BMJ reports that carbohydrate quality, including sugars, plays a much larger role in disease risk than quantity that is, things like added sugars and high-glycaemic load grains are more related to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers; whereas whole fruits, non-starchy vegetables, and legumes, help protect against it.

The problem: The food industry has come up with a zillion ways to say "added sugar" on a label, making it hard to know what to steer clear of. (Literally there are at least 61 different names for sugar listed on food labels.) Look for common terms like brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, and sucrose.

Were not asking you to cut out added sugar always and forever. The word cleanse is overused the body is so resilient it doesnt really need to be cleansed, says Pasternak. But a sugar reset is really about resetting your habits, your palette, and your relationship to sugar.

Going through a sugar reset will help re-balance your neurochemical and hormonal production and improve pretty much every aspect of your health. And while nixing sweets from your eternal future sounds overwhelming, cutting back for a reset will actually help you crave less of it in the long-term. Heres nine benefits you can expect from cutting sugar:

Sugar increases your risk for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and pretty much every metabolic disease, but the major risk is to your heart: Researchers from Harvard looked at peoples diet over 15 years and found those who regularly got 17 to 21 percent of their calories from added sugar were 38 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, compared to those who limited added sugar to 8 percent of their calories. In fact, just one or two additional servings of sugar a day increases your risk for coronary heart disease by 10 to 20 percent, reports a 2018 study in Nutrients.

Now, lets be real: Most of us under 45 arent thinking about heart disease. But the health issues that people encounter later in life are a byproduct of the poor food decisions that theyve made since they were young, says Pasternak. And considering heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women (most of whom more than likely didnt think theyd be a statistic when they were young and healthy), this is a huge perk.

People love to say our brain becomes addicted to sugar, and some studies have suggested this but the research is almost exclusively on mice and our brains are much more complex, says Drew Ramsey, M.D. assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who studies how nutrition affects mood disorders.

But while sugars not actually addictive in the official definition of the word, it definitely has a hold on your brain: Eating sweets and carbs prompts our brain to take up more tryptophan which is used to make serotonin, aka the happiness hormone. Thats why your brain craves the sweet stuff, he explains.

Sugar activates the reward center in your brain, so the more sugar you eat, the more youre going to want to eat sugar, he explains. Whats more, a recent study in Obesity revealed that when we eat something that has at least two of fat, sugar, carbs, or salt so-called hyper-palatable foods our brains ability to decipher when weve had enough to eat is overpowered, which increases the chances youll overeat.

Even if youre sticking with seemingly healthier sweets like vanilla yogurt or smoothies, eating a lot of sugar cultivates a microbiome thats hungry for the molecule, which often furthers the craving cycle, Dr. Ramsey adds.

Eating a diet high in added sugar means youre inevitably eating less fruits and vegetables, which increases the chances were missing out on nutrients key for body and brain health things like magnesium, zinc, omega 3 fats, Dr. Ramsey says. One-fifth of deaths world-wide are thanks to poor diets namely those low in fresh vegetables, seeds and nuts but high in sugar, salt, and trans fat which breeds disease, reports recent research in The Lancet. Meanwhile, eating more fresh fruits and vegetables is directly linked with weight loss, fending off depression, and higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction.

Youre giving birth to thousands of brain cells a day and theyre always in the state of repairing and trying to make new connections, largely thanks to the neurochemical brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, Dr. Ramsey explains.

Added sugars likely suppresses BDNF production, and certain nutrients in whole foods enhance it so ditching processed foods for real produce means a healthier brain.

Men and women who consumed a ton of sugar per day (67+ grams, which is 17 teaspoons of sugar or just under 2 cans of Coke) were more likely to show symptoms of depression over five years than folks who cut back (less than 40 grams a day, or 10 teaspoons), reports a 2017 study in Scientific Reports.

Theres a few things at play here. For starters, not eating enough fruits and vegetables significantly increases your odds for depression, according to a 2017 study in BMC Psychiatry. And that BDNF suppression comes into play, too, since less of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor is directly linked with depression.

The root of all this: What you eat directly affects the bacteria in your gut. The types of bacteria that live in your colon affect how you feel and think and how anxious you are, Dr. Ramsey adds. Plants and fermented foods create diversity; sugar creates discontent.

The World Health Organization recommends adults and children limit their added sugar intake to max 5% of their overall calories specifically to protect their oral health, as studies show this is the threshold for developing tooth decay. Bacteria feeds on sugar molecules, so the more its in your mouth, the more often bacteria can breed.

This may or may not be on your list of 2020 goals, but eating less sugar is directly linked to losing weight, and eating more of it with weight gain, according to a meta-analysis out of New Zealand. Sugar causes spikes in insulin which is our master metabolic switch that then tells your body to store visceral fat, Dr. Ramsey explains. Heres why thats important, even if you dont care about losing weight: Visceral fat not only increases body fat, but it actively produces inflammation, increasing your risk for depression, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, among other issues, he adds.

The inflammation sugar creates in the body can exacerbate skin conditions like eczema, acne, and rosacea. Hormones, genetics, and stress can all be culprits too, but docs say giving up sweets can significantly help your skin calm down.

RELATED: What Does Sugar Actually Do to Your Skin?

The types of bacteria that live in your colon affect how you feel and think, how anxious you are, whether you gain weight, how hungry you are, what you crave, Dr. Ramsey says.

When you eat sugar, youre feeding the less healthy bacteria in your gut and creating inflammation, he explains. Having an unhealthy microbiome creates an immune system thats out of whack and a metabolic system that isnt running as efficiently as it should, he says. When we eat more plants, diverse fibers, and fermented foods, however, we create a more diverse microbiome.

Itll only take about two weeks off sugar for the cravings to quit, Dr. Ramsey says. And if you make it a month, for most people that means theyve found a sustainable way to eat sugar-free. But a lot of people relapse in the third or fourth week, he adds. Your best bet: Go in with a game plan. Here are some general rules to make giving up the sweet stuff easier on your brain and body.

See more here:
Is Eliminating Sugar the Only "Diet" We Should Be Taking Seriously? - Yahoo Lifestyle