Eating with a purpose

True healthy eating involves eating with a purpose. What are you eating and why? The foods that you select should be carefully selected and should possess the nutrients needed to over come some health issues and promote overall good health.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Powerful Foods to Prevent and Fight Different Kinds of Cancer

By Chuck Bluestein

Toxicologist Herbert Pierson, Ph.D. is a cancer expert formerly with the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He suggests that people eat citrus fruit like oranges, grapefruits, lemons and limes to prevent and fight cancer. Citrus fruits possess 58 known anticancer chemicals, more than any other food. For the best digestion, eat fruits on an empty stomach, 15 minutes before eating other foods.
Studies show that what you eat can have a profound effect on your health, immune system and your ability to prevent and fight cancer.

Foods are not a good source of vitamin D since it is really a steroid hormone. The body cannot make a vitamin, by definition. The body can make more than enough vitamin D from strong enough sunlight. You cannot get too much vitamin D from sunlight so by making more than enough, your body will always have the perfect amount to use. Otherwise you can get it from supplements but there is a chance of getting too much vitamin D from supplements but that is rare.

This goes into the extra benefits of sunlight and tells more about getting vitamin D from sunlight and using the UV index to determine if you can get vitamin D from the sun. In Boston there are 3 months of the year where you cannot get any vitamin D from sunlight.

Moores Cancer Center proposes that cancer is a vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. Doctor of Public Health, Cedric Garland, says that enough vitamin D will virtually eradicate breast cancer. With the information in these articles, you will have a great deal of power in preventing or fighting cancer. Since the stomach can only hold so much the more animal foods you consume, the less room that you have for plant foods.

Plant foods like fruits and vegetables contain fiber and prevent cancer. Animal foods have no fiber and some studies show that they promote cancer.

Best Foods to Fight Breast Cancer
Breast cancer is hormone dependent just like uterine and ovarian cancers. Eat cabbage and other cabbage family or cruciferous vegetables. Besides their ability to fight all types of cancer, they help speed the removal of estrogen from the body so there is less to feed the cancer.

Wheat fiber or wheat bran that is in whole wheat can suppress the blood estrogen levels even better than a low fat diet. Whole wheat is a whole. In animals, a low-fat, high fiber diet cuts the incidence of breast cancers in half.

Eat different beans since they have contain several anticancer compounds and they contain phytoestrogens that help to block the activity of cancer-promoting estrogen. Foods from the sea can help block breast cancer. Seaweed like kelp is high in iodine and some experts feel that a lot of the cancer in America is due to a lack of iodine in the body.

Eating tomatoes is a powerful way to prevent any cancer due to the lycopene in tomatoes. This phytochemical is also in red grapefruit and watermelon. Watermelon has more lycopene than any food including tomatoes. Lycopene is also great for cardiovscular health. Watermelons also have amino acids in them that lower high blood pressure so take advantage of getting them while the weather is warm.

Best Foods to Fight Colon Cancer
Fiber is indigestible but it is in plant foods and it greatly helps the colon to work and be healthy. So foods with fiber like all unprocessed plant foods are great at fighting colon cancer. A study shows that eating wheat bran reduces the polyps in the colon. In my article about whole grains healthier than refined grains, it has a colonoscopy where they find a polyp in the colon of Dr Oz. Analysis showed that it was the type of polyp that usually becomes cancerous.

Food from the sea also helps to fight colon cancer. Cabbage and other foods in this family also help. See section on breast cancer for more on this. A six-year Harvard study with 90,000 women showed that no amount of red meat was good when it came to colon cancer. The people who ate it everyday were 250% more likely to get colon cancer than those that ate red meat less than once a month. Those eating it once a week were 40% more likely to get colon cancer than those eating less than once a month.

Best Foods to Fight Lung Cancer
Of course it is much better not to smoke but eating a lot of fruits and vegetables makes a huge difference even if you still smoke. The beta-carotene in carrots, sweet potatoes and dark green vegetables makes a very big difference in the risk of getting lung cancer. Eating a carrot twice a week can decrease your risk of getting lung cancer by 60%.

The folate in green vegetables also has a powerful effect on fighting cancer. Eating tomatoes and cabbage family vegetables make a big difference. For more on this see section on breast cancer. Drinking green tea or to a lesser extent black tea will help prevent lung cancer.

Foods that Prevent Prostate Cancer
The most powerful foods to prevent prostate cancer are the ones that are good at fighting all the cancers like garlic, Brussels sprouts, scallions, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, savoy cabbage, onions, cabbage, kale, beets and celery. In a study people who drank 2 glasses a milk a day had twice the risk of getting prostate cancer as those drinking one glass of milk a day. Also the people who live closer to the equator have a lower chance of getting it so vitamin D from sunlight makes the biggest difference.

Foods That Fight Pancreatic Cancer
Now this is the cancer that Steve Jobs died of. It sounds like he had the diet part right but I do not know if he was getting enough sunlight or vitamin D supplement. Also stress is terrible and I read that Steve Jobs could get really mad at people and that is not good for health. Studies show that eating more fruit reduces pancreatic cancer, but eating more pork increases pancreatic cancer.

Once a day pork eaters increased chances of getting pancreatic cancer by 70% and eating it more than once a day triples your chances of getting it. Eating fruit twice a day gave you a 40% less chance of getting it than people eating fruit less than once a day. Fruits and vegetables do not squeal like a pig when you kill them. The phytochemical lycopene, that is in tomatoes, watermelon and red grapefruit (but not in red berries) makes a big difference in reducing pancreatic cancer. Eating beans more than once a week will help but eating grilled or fried meat will increase it.

Foods To Prevent Stomach Cancer and other Cancers
Raw vegetables appear to be the best foods for fighting stomach cancer. All the other animals eat all their food raw except baboons. Make sure to add Chinese cabbage to that since that is especially good, but I bet that regular cabbage would be the next best thing. Tea is good for this cancer also.
Deep fried food like egg rolls (spring rolls) are not good for your cardiovascular system but they have mostly Chinese cabbage in them, right? Plus they taste great. Also eat these pungent foods daily that are also good against all cancers-- onions, garlic or scallions. Salt increases stomach cancer. But there are many articles telling us how it also causes people to become overweight and get high blood pressure leading to heart attacks and strokes. Instead of salt, use spices like tumeric, cayenne, ginger and others.

For skin cancer and also cancer in general increase your omega-3 fatty acids and decrease the omega-6 fatty acid from vegetable oils. Olive oil is good but does not affect the above since it is mostly omega-9 fatty acids.

For endometrial cancer, these foods are especially helpful-- carrots, spinach, broccoli, cantaloupe or lettuce. For preventing cervical cancer eat foods high in folate like greens and beans. Also eat foods high in lycopene. For laryngeal cancer eat foods high in beta-carotene like carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkins and greens. It has helped ex-smokers but not current smokers.

Source:

http://chuck-bluestein.hubpages.com/hub/Fight-Different-Kinds-of-Cancer-With-Different-Foods

http://truefitnessbootcamp.com/Nutrition_Challenge.html

Monday, August 20, 2012

Powerful Benefits of Eating Watermelon

Author: Chuck Bluestein

Watermelon may taste great and quench thirst but it has powerful health benefits. It is high in 2 amino acids-- citrulline and arginine making it great for lowering high blood pressure or hypertension. It also contains lutein and zeaxanthin that prevent macular degeneration.

Watermelon contains over 90% water so no need to drink anything with it. When you are hot and thirsty, watermelon is the best thing to quench your thirst. It contains electrolytes. Fruit does not need to be digested like other foods so eat it on an empty stomach and wait 15 minutes before eating other foods that take hours to digest.

Tomatoes are famous for having lycopene. This is the most popular phytochemical. There are thousands of phytochemicals and over 900 have been identified so far. Probably the second most famous phytochemical is resveratrol in grapes. Resveratrol has been proven to be effective in anti-aging. Then the third most popular is curcumin in turmeric.

Watermelon has more lycopene than any other food including tomatoes. You can not get fat from eating fruit. Agricultural Research Service-- The in-house research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says:Results showed that watermelon has as much or more lycopene as raw tomatoes and that the amount depends on both variety and growing conditions.

The investigators found that all juice treatments increased the plasma concentration of lycopene. Lycopene concentration was similar regardless of whether subjects consumed 20 milligrams of lycopene from tomato juice or from watermelon juice, which was not heat-processed.
The investigators had expected lycopene availability to be greater from tomato juice because it had received heat treatment, which is believed to improve lycopene bioavailability.

On average, watermelon has about 40 percent more lycopene than raw tomatoes. Lycopene is exceptional in preventing cancer and cardiovascular problems. It is mentioned in this article: Fight Cancer With Different Foods. That will tell the specific cancers that it is best for. So the lycopene will help with the 3 main causes of death-- heart attacks, cancer and strokes.

If you eat a pound of watermelon, it contains about 600 mg of potassium. That is a lot of potassium. That will greatly help your cellular health and help to lower high blood pressure or hypertension. See the article Main Cause of High Blood Pressure for a lot more on this and how people have high blood pressure and heart attacks or strokes because their ratio of potassium to sodium that they consume is too low. Salt/sodium consumption does not mean much by itself.

Watermelon has a lot of citrulline and arginine. These amino acids are also called L-Citrulline and L-Arginine. The first is not an essential amino acid but the last one is. Citrulline's name is actually derived from the Latin word for watermelon-citrullus-because it was first isolated from the fruit in 1930.

They produce nitric oxide that relaxes the blood vessels helping to lower high blood pressure. Here is a webpage that tells about how they work together when you consume watermelon. Also, it explains how it can help increase sexual satisfaction in men and women and help with erectile dysfunction. The above webpage says:

Citrulline, like arginine, is important in vasodilation, the widening of blood vessels, resulting from relaxation of smooth muscle cells within the vessel walls, especially in the large arteries and veins and smaller arterioles. The endothelium (inner lining) of blood vessels uses nitric oxide to signal the surrounding smooth muscle to relax. This results in a relaxing of the blood vessels, and increased blood flow.

In the body, citrulline is converted to the amino acid arginine, which goes on to make another important substance-nitric oxide. When citrulline enters the kidney, vascular endothelium and other tissues, it can be readily converted to arginine, thus raising plasma and tissue levels of arginine and enhancing nitric oxide production. So now you have the potassium and these 2 amino acids helping with your cardiovascular health and helping to lower high blood pressure. The number one cause of age-related blindness is macular degeneration. The phytochemicals lutein and zeaxanthin help prevent macular degeneration. Watermelon has a lot of these 2 phytochemicals.

These antioxidants will protect your eyes from other age related ailments such as drying up of eyes and optical nerves, glaucoma and more. Phytochemicals or phytonutrients are substances in plant foods that help the health of the body. If possible it is better to get organic watermelon since then you know that it is not GMO, not irradiated and does not have lots of chemical pesticides.