Monica Johnson has three different homes. Her house in the Cincinnati area, Princeton High Schools football field and the Kroger grocery store.

You can throw Trader Joes, The Fresh Market and Sams Club in there, too. The store managers and employees know the Johnson family personally at all of them.

Thats not exactly a shocker. She makes a trip to one of those stores every other day to restock the family fridge.

So goes the life of the mother of a five-star, all-world, monstrous offensive lineman at the preps level. Thats what her son, Princeton star Paris Johnson Jr., has become, currently rooted into the ground like a California redwood at 6-foot-7, 295 pounds.

Its that size thats become his foundation for his ability to punish linebackers, bulldoze defensive ends and draw comparisons to a pair of fellow 6-foot-7 behemoth left tackles who starred on Ohio football fields:Orlando Pace, a Pro and College Football Hall of Famer who starred for the Buckeyes in the 1990's, and Andrew Whitworth, a 14-year NFL veteran whohascarved out a future Hall of Fame career of his own, including 11 years playing for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Johnson is the nations No. 1 offensive tackle and No. 7 overall player in the 2020 recruiting class. He committed to Urban Meyer in the summer of 2018, but when Meyer retired, it brought a precarious unease to Johnsons commitment. Once Johnson got more acquainted with Ryan Day and Ohio State's new staff, though, an unsteady decision was firmly stabilized, which will soon make him one of two five-star gems (along with receiver Julian Fleming the other) to officially become a Buckeye during this week's early signing period.

Johnson earned those rankings, comparisons and his status as one of the stars of Ohio State's 2020 class with his aggressive, explosive on-field play.

But the size wasnt always there.

Johnson was a late bloomer who stood at just 6-foot-3, 205 pounds during his freshman year at St. Xavier High School (he transferred to Princeton prior to his senior season so that he could graduate early and enroll at Ohio State in January).

Its proper to put the word just in quotes because of how he looks now. Which brings us back to Monica and those grocery store runs.

Paris has always been a healthy eater, she says. He is very disciplined with his nutrition.

That consists almost exclusively of an organic, all-natural diet, with 90 percent whole food consumption and the remaining 10 percent lined with popcorn, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle and Asian cuisine. Hes not a big sweets eater, but he will down some of Monicas homemade cookies and brownies. Only occasionally, of course.

That diet has remained steady throughout his high school years, but when he grew to become a mountain, his calorie consumption and food intake had to rise along with the height increase in order for him to become the elite offensive line prospect that he is now. That has meant a substantial hike in the Johnsons grocery bill.

Prior to Paris starting high school, our grocery bill was $350-400 per month, said Monica, also mother to daughter Sydney. Our family grocery bill is $800 a month (now). At first, grocery expenses was a bit overwhelming, but now it is just a way of life and has been included in our monthly expenses.

Like Monica said, her son has long been one to carefully watch what he eats. That began when his strength and conditioning coach at St. Xavier, Terrell Williams, created a nutrition plan for him during his second semester as a freshman, which he followed to a T. But now, what he eats has exploded.

We joke about (how) the fridge is never really full enough for our boys. And jokingly agree that our second home, aside from the football field, is the grocery store. Monica Johnson, mother of Ohio State OL Commit Paris Johnson Jr., on her and the mothers of other OL recruits

Paris consumes about 5,000 calories a day just to maintain his weight, Monica said. I prepare a hot breakfast for Paris every morning along with a protein shake. I also prepare a healthy lunch and snack for him while hes at school. And when Paris comes home from school, he will have another protein shake and healthy meal, which is usually leftovers from the night before.

In case you ever want to try eating like a blue-chip offensive lineman some day, heres an example of what Paris daily diet looks like:

Breakfast: Protein shake, three turkey sausage and cheese english muffins

Snack: Trail mix and grapes

Lunch: Four turkey and cheese sandwiches on wheat bread

Snack: Four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on wheat bread, an entire pineapple and more protein shakes

Dinner: One pound of lean meat (either chicken or steak), two cups of green vegetables and two cups of either rice, potatoes or pasta

Snack: Protein shake and popcorn

Oh, and dont forget that he consumes about four pounds of lunch meat every week.

Its a heavy diet, obviously, but it comes with the territory of growing into a highly coveted offensive lineman for a Power 5 program.

Paris is one of six offensive lineman commits in the Buckeyes 2020 class and one in the 2021 class (Ben Christman). Each of them has, at one point, weighed substantially less than he does now and has changed up his nutrition plans. Christman, for example, says he weighed about 220 pounds heading into his freshman year, then blitzed a carb-heavy diet to help him bulk up to around the 300-pound mark hes at now before tapering off, balancing his nutrition while laying off unhealthy snacks andsugars and lessening his carb intake.

But all seven of these players Johnson, Christman, Luke Wypler, Josh Fryar, Grant Toutant, Jakob Jamesand Trey Leroux have not done it by themselves. They each have an unsung hero in the background carrying a burden and helping them carve out the stoutness they have now. Monica Johnson is just one example of an offensive line mother who takes her job seriously.

Monica Johnson, left, has powered her son Paris Johnson Jr. and his transformation into a stout offensive lineman.

I enjoy preparing both my kidsmeals at home, Monica said. Its important to me to know whats in the food that they are eating. I do feel its my responsibility to govern that. When Paris was visiting colleges, we took a closer look at the nutrition and diet.

Shes not alone. The mothers of the other Ohio State offensive line recruits, Monica says, have shared plenty of stories on the amount of food their sons consume.

It has been a bonding experience, for sure, she said. We joke about (how) the fridge is never really full enough for our boys. And jokingly agree that our second home, aside from the football field, is the grocery store.

Those grocery store trips, however, will soon become less frequent for Monica Johnson.

Paris is going to enroll early at Ohio State, with classes and workouts beginning in January, meaning that Monica will soon hand off to Mickey Marotti and the rest of the Buckeyes strength and conditioning staff to handle her sons nutrition.

Thats perfectly fine with her. Monica and Paris have met with Marotti several times to pore over dietary details before he arrives on campus. Shes come away more than simply satisfied.

Coach Marottis nutrition plan is much more detailed, and, honestly, I dont have access to it at this time, she said. But its very thorough with micronutrients. His nutrition plan is very scientific. ... I have complete faith in Coach Marotti. He is the best in the business, and he has a proven track record.

Then again, so does she, and its all been worth it. Those big grocery bills have made Marottis job easier and helped put the Johnson family on a path to a fourth home. One filled with 100,000 red-and-white seats instead of blue-and-gray shopping carts.

Read the original post:
Handling of Paris Johnson's Monster Nutrition Plan Exemplifies Offensive Lineman Mothers' Unsung Work | Eleven - Eleven Warriors

DURHAM, N.C. -- A high-fat meal can silence communication between the intestine and the rest of the body, according to a new Duke University study in zebrafish.

While using the fish to examine cells that normally tell the brain and the rest of the body whats going on inside the gut after a meal, a team of Duke researchers discovered that a high-fat meal completely shuts down that communication for a few hours.

The cells they were looking at are the enteroendocrine cells, which occur sparsely throughout the lining of the gut, but play a key role in signaling the body about the all-important alimentary canal. In addition to releasing hormones, the cells also have a recently-discovered direct connection to the nervous system and the brain.

These cells produce at least 15 different hormones to send signals to the rest of the body about gut movement, feelings of fullness, digestion, nutrient absorption, insulin sensitivity and energy storage.

But they fall asleep on the job for a few hours after a high-fat meal, and we dont yet know if thats good or bad, said John Rawls, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke School of Medicine.

Since enteroendocrine cells are key players in digestion, the feeling of being full and subsequent feeding behavior, this silencing may be a mechanism that somehow causes people eating a high-fat diet to eat even more.

This is a previously unappreciated part of the postprandial (after-meal) cycle, Rawls said. If this happens every time we eat an unhealthy, high-fat meal, it might cause a change in insulin signaling, which could in turn contribute to the development of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes.

To understand the silencing better, the researchers tried to break the process down step by step in zebrafish.

After they first sense a meal, the enteroendocrine cells trigger a calcium burst within seconds, initiating the signaling process. But after that initial signal theres a delayed effect later in the after-meal period. Its during this later response that the silencing occurs, said Rawls, who also directs Dukes Microbiome Center.

The silenced cells change shape and experience stress in their endoplasmic reticulum, a structure that assembles new proteins. It seems that these enteroendocrine cells, which are specialized to synthesize and secrete proteins like hormones and neurotransmitters, become overstimulated and exhausted for a while.

The team tried the high-fat diet on a line of germ-free zebrafish raised in the absence of any microbes, and found they didnt experience the same silencing effect. So they began looking for gut microbes that might be involved in the process.

After screening through all the kinds of bacteria found in the gut, they saw that the silencing appeared to be the work of a single type of gut bacteria, called Acinetobacter. These bugs are normally less than 0.1 percent of the total gut microbiome, but they increased 100-fold after a high-fat meal and were the only bacteria able to induce the silencing effect.

Next we want to understand how Acinetobacter evokes this interesting response, said Lihua Ye, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author on this paper. We also suspect other bacteria might also have this capability.

Rawls said they arent sure why silencing occurs, nor whether it has any positive effect on the fish. It might be a way to prevent excessive signaling about the fat, but by being silenced completely like this, the cells wont be communicating anything else either.

We dont understand yet what the long-term impact of enteroendocrine silencing would be on metabolic health, Rawls said. This may be a maladaptive response to high-fat feeding that impairs the normal regulatory functions of these cells, leading to metabolic disorders like insulin resistance. But its also possible that the silencing is a beneficial adaptation to protect the animal from over-stimulation of the gut cells.

The study appeared as an accepted manuscript at the open-access journal eLife on Dec. 3. This research was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (R01-DK093399, R01 DK109368, R01-DK081426) and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

CITATION: High-Fat Diet Induces Microbiota-Dependent Silencing of Enteroendocrine Cells, Lihua Ye, Olaf Mueller, Jennifer Bagwell, Michel Bagnat, Rodger Liddle, John Rawls. eLife, Dec. 3, 2019. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.48479

See more here:
Fatty Meal Interrupts Gut's Communication With The Body, But Why? - Duke Today

Caviar is widely considered to be the Rolls-Royce of ingredients; a hallmark of haute cuisine that has forever upheld its reputation of being unequivocally luxurious. But how have fish innards become such a highly coveted delicacy? We spoke to experts in the caviar field along with some of the country's top chefs including Eric RipertandJean-Georges Vongerichten to find out what exactly is caviar, where to source the very best and, most importantly, how to serve those beautiful black pearls. Here, your in-depth guide to some very coveted fish eggs.

Caviar is unfertilized eggs also known as roe that are harvested exclusively from the sturgeon family of fish and then salt-cured. There are other popular types of fish roe like the bright orange salmon roe (ikura) which sits atop sushi but only sturgeon roe is considered caviar. Caviar is always spherical in shape, while color can range from jet black to deep khaki green, depending on the specific variety. It has a delicate flavor and is not overly fishy or salty but rather smooth and buttery. Sometimes it can have a nutty taste similar to that of hazelnut. Authentic caviar has a famous "Caspian pop" which occurs when the roe bursts on the palate.

BAZ RATNER/Reuters

There are many different species of sturgeon which produce their own unique type of caviar. According to Ilya Panchernikov the managing director ofCaviar Russe a high-end Madison Avenue restaurant which specializes in caviar the three species of sturgeon which made caviar famous were beluga, osetra and sevruga. "Beluga was always considered the best because of its rarity and size, followed by osetra and sevruga," Panchernikov says. "In addition, there are other caviar producing sturgeons, including the Pacific sturgeon and Siberian sturgeon." If that's not enough, there's also a myriad of hybrids being produced beluga X Siberian, Chinese hybrid (dauricus X schrenki) and osetra X beluga, to name but a few.

Until just a few decades ago, caviar was harvested from the wild sturgeon swimming in the Caspian and Black seas. The fisherman would capture the fish, cut out the "roe sacks" that held the eggs, and throw the fish back in to die. This overfishing critically endangered the wild sturgeons, so the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species put a series of bans and trade embargoes in place and made it illegal to sell or harvest wild caviar in the United States. Today, most of the world's caviar is being farmed across across the globe, fromChinato the Middle East toMadagascar.

According to Rod Mitchell, president ofBrowne Trading Company a premier supplier of fine caviar in the Northeast it matters less about the location and more about how it's actually produced. "The most reliable places to buy caviar are not areas but reputable farms," Mitchell says. "We at Browne Trading co-brand with producers and farms so customers actually know where their caviar if farmed and produced." Panchernikov echoes this approach and Caviar Russe is focused on forging relationships with artisanal sturgeon farms mainly in Europe to produce caviar "which resembles what was once available in the wild."

Regis Duvignau/Reuters

The main difference is taste. A fish's diet and environment contribute greatly to the flavor of the caviar it produces how briny, rich or buttery it is. Wild fish have a diet that is eclectic and varied, hence their roe has a more complex flavor. Conversely, farmed sturgeon have a controlled diet, which results in consistent quality and uniform taste. Panchernikov says wild and farmed caviar have a similar taste, "but wild caviar would most likely have a greater intensity overall."

Thanks to the influx of farmed sturgeon, the price of caviar has dropped substantially. Generally, you can expect to fork out around $100 give or take for an ounce of premium caviar. But you get what you pay for: on the higher end of the spectrum, you'll find caviar that reflects the time and effort put into the fish as opposed to cheap caviar which is a result of sub-standard production. "Cheap caviar is usually inconsistent, old, soft, salty, or just plain awful," Mitchell says.

Stick to longstanding reputable brands that are primarily focused on caviar. Pay particular attention to the provenance, production, handling and storage of the caviar. Be wary of words like "imported" and "Russian" no caviar legally comes from Russia now as they can be put on the label to deceive consumers. Caviar Russe,Browne Trading Company,Marky's, and Imperia Caviarall offer sustainable, high-quality caviar with next-day delivery.

You should keep caviar in the coldest part of your fridge usually at the bottom at between 34 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

An unopened tin of caviar can be stored in the fridge for 10 days to 2 weeks. However, because caviar gets saltier as it ages, it's best to eat it fresh.

More than 20 years ago, Mitchell and acclaimed chef Daniel Boulud came up with a grading system known as "The Three Ts" to assess caviar. It stands for Taste, there should be no bitter, salty or unpleasant flavors; Texture, the eggs should be firm enough that you can separate them with your tongue and they pop when pushed to the roof of your mouth; and Tone, they should have a clean color with a nice glisten. Panchernikov adds that good caviar should have low salinity, a rich buttery flavor and leave no after taste. "A good rule of thumb is to treat caviar like oysters, if it tastes wrong it's probably either old or poor quality," he adds.

Charles Platiau/Reuters

Lauded French chef and long-time caviar enthusiast Eric Ripert who even had his own exclusive caviar line at one point says "good quality caviar doesn't need too much to be enhanced." Purists will simply dollop caviar on the back of the hand with a bone or mother-of-pearl spoon metal utensils are to be avoided as they may oxidize caviar or pile the roe high atop a warm blini along with a smattering of crme frache. The Le Bernardinchef says he likes to serve it simply with Pullman white bread.

That's not to say the delicacy is limited to this type of preparation. Ripert himself has served roe-packedcroque monsieursand caviar-embellished wagyu. And his Michelin-starred contemporary Jean-Georges Vongerichten approaches caviar in a similar fashion. "We serve caviar in many different ways, from simple melba toast or warm blinis to my egg caviar and caviar creations," the chef says. Vongerichten's inventive creations see the ingredient paired with lemon gelee, egg toast, warm potatoes, tapioca, yogurt and herbs.

Of course, experimenting with roe is not a new phenomenon. Ripert recalls working in the kitchen with Jol Robuchon in 1983 and incorporating caviar in a bunch of eclectic recipes but since the delicacy is becoming somewhat democratized, it's being featured on a lot more menus. "Because the price of caviar has dropped dramatically, more and more chefs are using it in their cooking," Ripert says. The influx of sustainable and ethical farms has also contributed to the rise in popularity. "It is still an expensive item but now it's a lot more accessible as there are farms everywhere," Vongerichten adds.

But, really, there's no wrong way to eat it.

View post:
Caviar: what it is, where to buy it, what it costs, how to serve it - Business Insider

Sitting down with Dr. Conrad B. Esselstyn, Jr. for an hour is like listening to your favorite college professor on a topic youre fascinated by, however, instead of teaching you economics or social studies or history or biology, he teaches us how to live healthier lives, including having healthier sex lives, through the food choices we make.

Dr. Esselstyn, now 86 and sharp as ever, was one of the first doctors to insist that his patients adopt a plant-based diet for heart health, and he wants people to know how to live a long and healthy, active, vibrant life. Want a better sex life, healthier, younger organs and to reverse heart disease symptoms? Allwe haveto dois eat a plant-based diet, Esselstyn says. He teaches seminarsonhow to do it, which you can attend near Cleveland, where he was a revered surgeon at the famed Cleveland Clinic, for 50 years or so, or you can read this.

Conrad Esselstyn was a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and treating breast cancer patients when he realized that he was doing nothing to help the future patients, those who were unsuspecting of their condition or who were getting sick even as he tried to save those who arrived at his surgical offices. Hesuspected that one of the main reasons people got sick was related to a lifelong diet of animal fat and protein. His studies of women in societies where there was very little breast cancer showed that their mostly plant-based diet played a role in howseldom women would get breast cancer in those cultures, and he decided to switch his focus from cancer to heart disease when he also began to understand that eating the typical American diet was making half of the population show symptoms of cardiovascular disease.

This led to a practice of helping his patients change their diet. What happened next was something short of a miracle. Heart disease symptoms were held in check and even reversed, among the "compliant" patients who managed to stay on the diet, and he recalls his phone ringing and a patient telling him "Something's come up!" and sharing with the doctor that during the weeks of eating plant-based his sex life had restored to his youthful prowess.

Here, Esselstyn, one of the two major doctors in the documentary Forks Over Knives, along with T. Colin Campbell, tells The Beet what he thinks of our current obsession with fake meat, the best way to eat to live ahealthylife--and stayactive and strong well into our 80's 90's and beyond. What I learned here will change the way I will eat forever. No more cheating with cheese. Pull up a chair and listen up, as the good doctor gives a lesson in living healthy.

Q: When did you go plant-based? And why? What prompted your decision?

A. Back in 1984.At that point, I had two responsibilities as a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. One I was head of theBreast CancerTaskforce and two, head of thyroid surgery.I was increasingly disillusioned that for however many women I was treating who needed surgery, I was doing nothing for the unsuspecting next victim. So I started to do research and found that breast cancer was very low elsewhere, like 30 to 40 percent lower in Kenya nd also much lower in Japan. But as soon as those Japanese women migrated to the United States, by the second and third generations, their risk was as high as their American counterparts.

At this point, I realized that there might be more bang for the buck if I could look at cardiovascular disease. It became increasingly apparent that there were multiple cultures where cardiovascular disease was non-existent -- Papua New Guinea and Japan and the northern Mexican highlands. Most of those cultures eat largely plant-based and without oil. So if you could get people to eat to save their heart, they could also avoid cancers like breast cancer, colon, pancreatic and others.

I thought I had to do a study. I knew people were unlikely to make this transition without some science.We began running the study with 18 patients andhad about a 90 percent adherence in terms of patients with cardiovascular disease. (Now our most recent paper of 200 patients that we published in 2014 had an 89 percent adherence to our program.)

I went to the chairman of the Dept of Cardiology and see if they would send me 24 patients who were seriously ill who had failed their first or second bypass and angioplasty and they were too sick for these procedures. They had been told by their cardiologists they would not live out the year. And my fear with this group was how could I get them to make this significant change, which was obviously extreme since we are asking them to stop eating foods that are going to injure the lining of their arteries. I saw them every two weeks to draw their blood and their cholesterol and go over every morsel they ate. And then I stretched it out to every month. And then at the end of ten years to stretch it out to quarterly. And at 12 years, we wrote it up and published it. In 12 years of follow up on these patients what we found was quite exciting:Of the original 24, there were six that within the first six or eight weeks I knew they didn't get it and I released them from the study to go back to their cardiologists. They became my quasi-control group, and those who dropped out, two of them died and the other four had to have further bypass surgeries. The other 18 who stayed with us -- we wanted to know in the eight years before they had come into our study, how many events of worsening coronary disease had they had? It turned out they had 49 events in the prior years. Once those 18 years came into our study, over the next 12 years 17 of them had no further cardiac events. One little sheep wandered from the flock and enjoyed glazed donuts and such, and he had to have another heart procedure. But then he was back. We got him back. No surprise.

Q. How can youconvince healthy, as-of-yet asymptomatic people to eat plant-based before they end up in your office with a heart attack or signs of disease?

I am on the Nutrition Committee of the American College of Cardiology. First we are trying to educate cardiologists as to the causation of the disease they are being asked to treat.

It all comes down to education. You must share with them what happens in their body when they eat meat. They have to be educated. We know that when we do autopsies of GIs who died in Korea -- the average age of 20 years old. About 80 percent of them see gross heart disease and you could see it with the naked eye. That study was repeated among young women and men who died of accidents and suicides, more recently, and when they look at coronary arteries, it's in all these people. Its ubiquitous. When you go to high school, you get a diploma but you dont learn to eat. If you are over the age of 17 you already haveheart disease. You can decide whether you want to eat this way, but basically, if you don't cut out animal fat, you have a choice: You can have a heart attack or a stroke. Or both.

People don't eat plant-based, it's because they have never had a chance to sit down and understand how this disease behaves.The absolute key for people to understand is we all the experts are in agreement. Here's how cardiovascular disease works: The lifejacket of our health is the lining of the artery, the endothelium, which makes a magic gas, nitric oxide, that is the savior of all our bloodstream flowing smoothly. It keeps things from getting sticky. When you climb stairs or workout, the arteries dilate. Nitrate Oxide protects the wall of the artery from becoming thick and stiff and keeps blood flowing properly.

A safe amount of nitrate oxide protects us from cardiac disease. Everyone -- if they have CVD -- the preceding decades they have so damaged their cells that it keeps them from creating nitric oxide. So they get plaque and hardening of the arteries. However, the good news is this -- it's not a malignancy. Its a foodborne illness. If you can get patients to understand that every time these [animal product] foods pass their lips they are further injuring their endothelial cells. So if you stop injuring those cells further you not only stop the injury but you can reverse it.

With heart patients, I explain to them that they need to get off all animal products and dairy, and all oil. That includes olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, oil in crackers, oil in salad dressing. Plus anything with a mother or a face: Meat, pork, chicken, turkey, and fish. It includes dairy, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and sugary foods: cookies, cakes, donuts, pies, or an excessive amount of maple sugar and honey.

Thats the lineup. How do you get patients to make this type of transition? First thing is to show patients respect and the only way to show respect is go give them my time.

Once a month I conduct a seminar for six hours at the Clinic with their spouse or companion. If you think you can get anywhere without their spouses youre wrong.You teach them that they have created their disease. And you need to empower them to see how they can be the locus of control to halt and reverse this disease. They get all the slides, notebooks and information they need to make the change when they get home, including 240 recipes and a DVD of the entire seminar -- so if they go home and get rusty they can flip this on and get up to speed.

Then we have them hear fromtwo or three local participants who share their story of transformation and transitioning to a plant-based diet, and how it saved their lives, and those in attendance think: if he or she can do it then I can do this too. It works.

Q. What is the key function that going plant-based does to your body? And how do you explain this to non-science types?

A. They need to understand nitric oxide. Or boththe endothelium and nitric oxide. These two terms need to be understood. They need to understand that if you put your hand above your head like shielding from the sun, we can see that 8-year-olds have this much nitric oxide and then in 20s, it's this much -- and I put my hand at my neck level -- and it keeps going down throughout our lives. If you die and we do an autopsy it's down to here, and I point to well below my waist, around your knees. You have heart disease by then, but not so much that you would show up withsymptomsyet. Then in your 40s, you dont have enough nitric oxide to protect you. So if you continue to destroy endothelial cells, it will end up destroying you.

I explain to them: All the mystery is gone as to why you have this disease. They destroyed their endothelial cells and are not be able to make nitric oxide. If we could open up theirarteries and look inside, it's a cauldron of oxidation. They need antioxidants. Not from pills but from food. From food that is high in oxidated Value

Q. Okay now that we understand the method that greens help your body stay healthiest,let's talk about sex. Erectile dysfunction is a major topic among men of a certain age (and the ads on NFL TV broadcasts). How does food play a role?

A. When men eat a plant-based diet of heart-healthy greens, grains, and fiber-filled foods, Its so powerful and so inexpensive, and it opens up their circulation. ED is the first sign of heart disease, often, since the exact same system works on that body part as all the other blood vessels in the body. So when that stops working, it may be because the person doesn't have a healthy cardiovascular picture in general. Its hard for any cardiologist who is used to prescribing expensive drugs to instead tell their patients to just completely change their diet. But these plant-based foods can be as powerful as expensive drugs.

It's profound how exciting it can be for men. I often get a phone call to alert me that they have had a major development in their health. "Dr. Esselstyn," they will call me out of the blue, like 11 months after nutrition counseling, and he says, "I thought I should give you a phone callto say, recently something has come up!" I'm not surprised. In the movie, The Game Changers, young athletes find that a single evening meal at dinner had an impact on how many erections they had throughout the night, and how strong those were. "One dinner made the difference for them because they were young, healthy athletes. For those with unhealthy arteries, it takes a little longer," Esselstyn explains. But if the patient is consistent the plant-based diet works wonders.

Q.What exactly would you tell men to eat to improve their sex lives?

A. For breakfast: Oatmeal and blueberries. That's a good start. But you need to chew green leafy vegetables, six times a day for best results. Chew these leafy veggies afterthey have been boiled in water for 5 or 6 minutes, and drizzled with Balsamic vinegar, which has been shown to replace theendothelial cells and create nitric oxide. So you take leafy greens at breakfast, as a mid-morning snack, then lunch, then after lunch mid-afternoon, then again at dinner and after dinner. Kale and swiss chard and these greens can restore the capacity of your bone marrow to restore your Endothelial progenitor cells.

By chewing the greens, it allows the bacteria of the plants to mix with the bacteria of the mouth to help createeven more nitric oxide. All-day long by chewing these greens, you are restoring to your body that can reverse the disease.

The greens you need to chew on every few hours should be dark, green leafy vegetables, including:Kale,Swiss Chard,Spinach,Arugula,Beet Greens,Bok Choy,Collard Greens,Mustard Greens,Asparagus,Brussel Sprouts and Chard.

These can be as powerful as expensive drugs.

Q. Break up the fight: Which is better for you: Keto plan or plant-based eating?

A. The thing you have to go again is to look at the science.I am totally unaware of patients seriously ill with cardiovascular disease, where the ketogenic diet has halted disease. Plant-based does.

The Keto diet has meat in it. The research from Stanley Hazen from Cleveland Clinic from persons who are omnivoreswho are eating various products: beef, pork, chicken, turkey and those foods contain lecithin and carnitine. When an omnivore eats lecithin and carnitine, they have within their micro-biome bacteria that reduces these to the molecule called TMA in the gut -- which in turn gets reduced to trimethylamine oxide or TMAO, by the liver. And that has been shown to injure the bodys blood vessels. So every time you eat meat you injure your blood vessels. Then Dr. Hazen took someone who is totally plant-based and gave them meat and they did notcreate any TMAO because they do not have the bacteria in their gut to convert it into TMA or TMAO, it's gone after about three weeks, but if they continue they do start to eat pork, chicken, meat or fish, they make that bacteria and then they do start to injure their blood vessels again. So once you're off it, a trace amount won't hurt you. But if you go back to eating meat the gut microbiome changes again and you go back to hurting yourself.

This isn't just the science of a handful of leading doctors here or across the country. The World Health Organization -- which represents cultures throughout the world -- published a report saying red meat has the same level of carcinogen as smoking cigarettes.

If you don't believe it, justlook at the Harvard Nurses study and the incidents of death is up 12 percent over time, for those who ate red meat and 20 percent over the same period, for those eating hot dogs and ham and bacon.

Q. But this is super strict. You tell your patients no oil, no nuts, and only greens and gruits and grains? I thought almonds and certain nuts were beneficial.

A. I only tell the strictest version to those who are already sick. We say "No oil or nuts" for those patients with heart disease -- I do not tell patients who dont have heart diseases they have to give up oil and nuts. But I struggle with this. When I lecture before an audience there are those with diagnosed CVD and those who dont, who dont have symptoms. So the people in the audience who are well also have heart disease, they just dont know it yet.

Q. What about all those alternative meats? Here at The Beet we say they are a helpful gateway food, a conversation starter to show people they can live very happily without beef.

A. The healthiest food is whole food, plant food. Processed foods are awful. Alternative meats are terrible for you. If you compare alternative meats and what it does for your health versus real meats, its a question of asking the patient whether you want to be shot or hung. These all have saturated fat, a lot of sodium and Impossible has heme iron, which is not good for you. And there are no long-term studies whatsoever on the effects of eating this.

Q. Okay you convinced me to skip the Impossible Whopper next time I drive out of town on Long Island, even though I think it's delicious. So what do you eat in a day?

A. I don't cook.

Breakfast:I have oats. I eat them as dry cereal. I put them in the bowl, add some raisins, maybe a banana, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries. Add oat milk. Its a caloric feast. Cooking them is fine but you don't need to. Whenever I am on the road I cant rolled oats I can oatmeal.When youre on the road and youve got oatmeal you dont even need the almond milk -- the water is enough to wet them down. Add the bananas and berries and raisins

Lunch:That depends on the season. In the summer ann always wants to make open sandwiches. Toasted. Hummus, things like kale, scallions, some sort of slice of apple or a slice of cucumber, and sprinkles of Mrs. Dash,which is a mix of various herbs, spices and seasoning.

Snack: I usually like to grab a whole wheat bagel and I'm crazy about hummus. I heat or toast the bagel and I love gobs of hummus. Never eat hummus with oil. Make sure not made with oil. Whole Foods one contains no oil. Or make your own.

Dinner: My favorite meal is beans and rice and on top of that I'll add some peas, corn, cut up scallions, other greens, chestnuts and mango its an absolute feast. And on the edge of it Kale. Of course.

Treat or Sweet:Jane my daughter makes me a scone, it's dairy-free, with a little maple syrup in there somewhere.

Q. How long are you going to keep at it, treating patients and making videos, books and holding seminars?

A. It's a lot of fun to wake up every day with a little excitement. I am more excited than ever to keep going because of the profound changes we are seeing in how to treat patients. There is so much going on in this area now. My whole family is in it!

Originally posted here:
What to Eat for Better Sex. Dr. Conrad Esselstyn on How to Eat Now - The Beet

When Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now started shooting in 1976, Marlon Brando was already an eccentric legend and a legendary eccentric. Thanks to his electric performances, he'd first made a name for himself onstage before moving to the big screen and winning two Best Actor Oscars. He'd also earned a reputation for being reclusive, difficult to work with,and unpredictable.

The production of Apocalypse Now was infamously chaotic from the start. The planned 14-week shoot in the jungles of the Philippines was immediately thrown off course. There were multiple cast changes, tropical diseases, and the script wasn't finished. Plus, a typhoon closed production down for three months, lead actor Martin Sheen had a heart attack from the stress, Coppola had a nervous breakdown,and the crew were living a non-stop, drug-fueled party in the hotel.

Into all this chaos, Brando arrived. Treating the movie like nothing more than a payday, he hadn't even bothered to learn his lines,and he refused to act opposite co-star Dennis Hopper. Also, at 300 pounds, he didn't look the part of the half-starved, regimented army colonel that Coppola had hired him to play. It was too late to do anything about Brando's looks especially after he spontaneously shaved his head one day so they ditched the idea of the military uniform, dressed him in black, and shot him mostly in shadows, improvising lines.

Read more:
Actors that refused to change their looks for a movie - Looper