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What Foods Trigger Inflammation?

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Inflammatory markers can double within six hours of eating a pro-inflammatory meal. Which foods are the worst? Excessive inflammation may play a role in a number of leading causes of death and disability, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. “But what are the stimuli that jumpstart the destructive inflammatory cascade?” You typically hear about the pro-inflammatory nature of a chronic high-fat diet, but the inflammatory effect “may not be limited to chronic intake but may be evident after the consumption of a single meal.” Within hours after eating an unhealthy meal, inflammatory markers like interleukin-6 (IL-6) can skyrocket, doubling within six hours. The majority of studies show an increase in IL-6 after consuming a high-fat meal. But the meals they tested weren’t just filled with meat, eggs, dairy, and oil, but also junky refined carbohydrates like white flour and added sugar. When people are given essentially straight butter fat and no carbs, they can still ...
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Do Pomegranates Live Up to Health Claims?

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Pomegranates are put to the test for weight loss, diabetes, COPD, prostate cancer, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The case of POM Wonderful (the pomegranate juice company) vs. Federal Trade Commission made it all the way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals before being denied review by the Supreme Court. In that landmark case, a panel of judges concluded that many of POM’s ads made false or misleading claims and the company “touted medical studies ostensibly showing that daily consumption of its products could treat, prevent, or reduce the risk of various ailments, including heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction.” The U.S. First Amendment does not protect misleading and deceptive ads. Striking a blow to its billionaire owners, the Court ruled that at least one randomized clinical trial would be required to substantiate claims of treating or preventing disease. If you look at the medical literature on pomegranate in general, you’ll see reviews touting its...
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Fighting Cancer with Whole Plant Foods

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The foundation of cancer prevention is plants, not pills. “The vast majority of cancer research is devoted to finding cures, rather than finding new ways to prevent disease. The results of these skewed priorities are plain to see.” It’s been nearly 55 years since President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, yet deaths from the most common cancers in the United States have continued unabated. “We have been looking at the very nature of cancer in the wrong way. Breast cancer doesn’t begin when a lump is first felt or detected by a mammogram. All the common epithelial cancers (lung, colorectal, breast, prostate, pancreas and ovary), which account for the majority of deaths, have a long latency period—often 20 years or more.” So, it’s not like you were healthy one day, then got cancer the next. You haven’t been healthy—you’ve had cancer growing in you for decades. Indeed, there’s a “bizarre misperception that people are ‘healthy’ until they have actual symptoms of invasive cancer,” b...
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Eating Organic: Can It Lower Your Cancer Risk?

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Does choosing organic over conventional foods protect against cancer? What are the effects of pesticides on cancer risk? In a review updating the evidence on human exposure and toxicity of pesticides, the body of evidence linking pesticide exposure and cancer is said to be so massive that pesticides’ role in the development of cancer “cannot be doubted.” However, most of the evidence that shows DNA damage from pesticides is from occupational exposure among farmers and workers in the fields, the pesticide industry itself, or those living in high-spray areas, as you can see at 0:35 in my video Pesticides and Cancer Risk . There is evidence linking non-occupational pesticide exposure to DNA damage—in this case, single- and double-stranded DNA fragmentation in the sperm of men with higher levels of pesticides flowing through their bodies—but that was in China, where the average pesticide concentrations are as much as four times higher than in some other parts of the world. Another w...
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What Does Personalized Nutrition Actually Deliver?

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There’s a lot of focus on personalized nutrition, but maybe we should focus on taking personal responsibility for our health. “Personalized nutrition (PN) is rooted in the concept that one size does not fit all,” and who doesn’t want to think they’re special? The idea of personalized nutrition is inherently appealing to our ego; that’s why simple messages recognizing individuality deeply resonate with us and why such messages are popular in marketing and sales. This focus on uniqueness has spurred the creation of personalized foods, along with the suggestion that “3D Food Printing seems to be a good candidate for food customization.” Now, there certainly are some legitimate differences between people. Some have a peanut allergy and keel over if they eat a peanut, others have celiac disease and need to avoid gluten, and some are genetically lactose-intolerant. There’s an enzyme mutation common in some parts of Asia that protects against alcoholism because people with the altered...
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The Link Between Milk and Parkinson’s Disease

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Is the brain damage associated with milk consumption due to the banned pesticide heptachlor or the milk sugar galactose? Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative brain disorder that affects millions of people. What causes it? Well, if you look at lifestyle factors associated with Parkinson’s disease, dairy consumption is the strongest dietary factor associated with an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. In fact, dairy products are the only food group consistently linked with a high risk of developing Parkinson’s. Five large prospective studies have confirmed the link. This includes the two Harvard cohorts, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which followed more than 100,000 people combined for decades in “the largest analysis of dairy and PD [Parkinson’s disease] to date,” analyzing more than 1,000 newly diagnosed cases. All the studies found a link between dairy and Parkinson’s, with most finding a significant link—about a 50% increase in ...
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Can Onions Help with Weight Loss, Cholesterol, and PCOS?

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Let’s talk about treating weight loss, cholesterol, and PCOS with diet. What can an eighth of a teaspoon a day of onion powder do for body fat, and what can raw red onion do for cholesterol? In one of my previous videos about onions, I talked about the data supporting—or not supporting—the role of onions in boosting testosterone in men, protecting bone health, controlling allergies, and dealing with the side effects of chemotherapy. What about weight loss? Enter the “Effect of Steamed Onion (ONIRO) Consumption on Body Fat and Metabolic Profiles in Overweight Subjects.” Researchers used steamed onions, which aren’t as spicy and have a weaker smell, so they could better disguise them as a placebo. They dried them into onion powder and gave people a minuscule amount—about an eighth of a teaspoon (300 mg) a day. Surely, a little daily dusting of onion powder wouldn’t affect people’s weight. But check out the results reported in the abstract: Measurements using a DEXA scan showed a signif...
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