Thursday, January 11, 2007

Health Notes

There is this book, The World's Healthiest Foods, Essential Guide for the Healthiest Way of Eating, by George Mateljan. If there were a discernible guiding principle behind my current diet, it would entail something like the title of this book. I attempt to eat the healthiest food I can eat. I take fish oil because it is good for me. I eat walnuts because they are good for me. I include olive oil, garlic, and broccoli in my diet because they are good for me. I exclude lots of things from my diet because they are bad for me. The only problem with books like the one above is that, although they have a lot of good fundamental information, they don’t have all the most up to date information available. For example, fish oil is good for you, but too much fish oil might be bad for you. For that reason you have to try and remain current with your information. That’s why I blog: to try and remain as current as possible, and to pass along what I find to my readers.

I cook pretty good broccoli. It is famous in some circles. However I may change the way I cook it. When I cook a pot of broccoli, some at the bottom of the pot is sort of boiled, and some at the top is sort of steamed. I may start steaming all of my broccoli. This process is supposed to preserve more nutrients. Hopefully the more nutrients and phytochemicals I eat, the healthier I’ll be. I just hope the new way of cooking it makes it taste as good as the old way.

DNA repair is an interesting subject to me. This article says that naringenin, a flavonoid found in grapefruit and oranges, may help with DNA repair. This article says folic acid might help with DNA repair. And of course cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower contain indole-3-carbinol (and sulforaphane?) which might help with DNA repair and prevent some forms of cancer. Of course you can read more about this subject elsewhere.

Here is an article that discusses calorie restriction and metabolism. This may be rehashing what we have previously discussed, but the article suggests that a leaner body is more effective in lowering the risk of cancer than a body containing more fat. Of course, in many ways it is difficult to separate a lean body from calorie consumption.

Here is an article that discusses how we might improve our health by using certain spices. And here is a National Library of Medicine page that provides detailed information about many more herbs and spices.

Maybe some people can’t consume foods that contain tannins. In many ways, though, that’s too bad. Those foods, like beans, berries, spices, fruits, and nuts are some of the healthiest foods you can eat, allergy aside. If I couldn’t eat those foods, I don’t know what I would do. I guess I’m lucky that so far I am not allergic to tannins. Maybe someone could work on a cure for allergy to tannins.


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Note: links that look good today often are no longer good in the future. I make every effort to create good links. When I discuss a topic, I also attempt to provide enough pertinent information so that readers won’t have to rely solely on the link at hand for their understanding, or for their further research.


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