Fats

In recent years, too much negative attention has been focused upon fats. The average American diet contains too many fats lacking in nutrients and dietary fiber complicated by excessive stress and lack of exercise. The outcome is a profoundly negative impact on health resulting in numerous health disorders. Nevertheless, correct types of fats are vital for good health.

Until the age of two, the body requires small amounts of fat for normal brain development. Fats are indispensable for they distribute the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Throughout life fats are important for providing energy and supporting growth.

Interestingly fats are the most concentrated source of energy for the body. Just one tablespoon of oil, which is liquid fat, contains 120 calories of pure fat and energy. Moreover fats are a more efficient energy source than either carbohydrates or protein.

Actually fats have the highest calorie density of all foods containing 9 calories per gram compared to carbohydrates and proteins 4 calories per gram. Fats produce around 4,000 calories of energy per pound compared to carbohydrates and proteins less than half creation of 1,800 calories per pound. Complicating this, our body also converts carbohydrates, and protein into fat for storage into our something like 35 billion fat cells to be drawn upon later for energy.

Consuming excessive amounts of fat can contribute to poor health. Accordingly the 40-50% fat consumed in the typical American diet is too much. Regrettably most diets contain too much of the wrong type of fats. To be able to understand the relationship between fat intake and health disorders, it is necessary to understand the different types of fats and how they act within the body

The foundations of fats are simple lipid triglycerides. All ingested fats are broken down into fatty acids, glycerin, and water. Fatty acids are classified according to the number of hydrogen atoms in the chemical structure of fatty acids molecules as either saturated or unsaturated. The three groups of fatty acids are:

monounsaturated,
polyunsaturated, and
saturated.

Monounsaturated Fatty Acids

Mostly found in vegetable and nut oils, but not in red meats, monounsaturated fats are desirable. Research indicates these seem to reduce blood levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) without affecting “good cholesterol” the high-density lipoproteins (HDL). Sorry to say they only have a modest positive impact on undesirable LDL. Consequently, the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) guidelines recommend between 10 to 15 percent of total caloric intake should be monounsaturated fat. Good sources include:

Almonds
Avocado
Cashews
Hazelnuts
Olive oil
Peanut oil and
Pecans.

Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids

Studies show polyunsaturated fats actually lower total blood cholesterol. Unfortunately large amounts of polyunsaturated fats also adversely reduce the levels of the “good cholesterol” high-density lipoproteins (HDL). Since all fats are high in calories, the NCEP guidelines recommend polyunsaturated fats should not exceed 10 percent of total caloric intake. Sources of polyunsaturated oil include:

Corn oil
Fish
Safflower oil
Sesame oil
Sunflower oil
Wheat germ oil

Trans Fats

Another ingredient to be aware of so as to avoid them are trans fats. Confusingly most of these are made when polyunsaturated oils are corrupted through hydrogenation creating a new type of fat not found in nature. This process hardens liquid vegetable oils for longer shelf life. The resulting oil is usually labeled partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Additional examples include solid products such as margarine and shortening. The bottom line is trans fats are unhealthy and contribute to health problems such as heart diseases. In 1994, Harvard health experts found trans fats contribute to at least 30,000 premature deaths each year meaning 82 deaths per day.

Studies have found trans fats behave much like saturated fats and raise undesirable LDL cholesterol levels while they reduce desirable HDL. By 2005 the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans warned to ”keep trans fatty acid consumption as low as possible.”

In fact Ban Trans Fat, a group started in 2003, has been successful in researching this problem to the point legislation has passed in California to remove the problem from their market as of 2010 and 2011. As a result this has had a trickle down effect with other states and companies beginning to review this harmful product and encouraging businesses to make an oil change. Ban Trans Fat has very interesting facts and figures about trans fat consumption of Americans. No doubt as the public becomes more aware of these changes we will eventually see a nationwide trend develop.

Saturated Fatty Acids

Whether manufactured in our livers or absorbed from food by our intestines, the fatty compound cholesterol or saturated fatty acids are necessary for production of blood plasma and cell membranes, vitamin D2, bile acids, and is a precursor of many steroid hormones such as estrogens or testosterone. Unfortunately saturated fatty acids can significantly raise blood cholesterol levels especially “undesirable” low-density lipoproteins (LDL). The NCEP recommends daily caloric intake of saturated fats should be kept well below 10 percent. People with severe high blood cholesterol problems are warned this level may even be too high.

Primarily found in animal products such as in dairy products, fatty meats, and processed meats such as hot dogs, or bologna these saturated fats are usually solid at room temperatures. To illustrate this the fat marbling in fatty meats is mostly cholesterol and saturated fat. Hence, food sources to minimize in a healthy diet include:

Cheese,
Beef,
Ham,
Lamb,
Pork
Processed meats,
Veal, and
Vegetable shortening.

Most food products contain a combination of all three groups of fatty acids but usually one type predominates. This is why the food label will say “saturated” or “high in saturates”. Likewise products made of mostly polyunsaturated fatty acids are called “polyunsaturated” or “high in polyunsaturated fats”, while oil mostly made of monounsaturated fatty acids is called “monounsaturated”. To further illustrate all the above explanations let’s review the label of my own organic first cold pressing extra virgin olive oil. One tablespoon (15mL) contains:

Calories 120 grams
Total fat 14 grams or 21%
Saturated fat 2 grams or 9%
Trans fat 0 grams
Polyunsaturated fat 1.5 grams
Monounsaturated fat 10 grams

As research continues on and on, it is wise to have a goal of lower cholesterol particularly through less consumption of undesirable saturated and trans fats products. Better choices are products with polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. The National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Protect Your Heart – Lower Your Blood Cholesterol recommends consumption of a heart-healthy diet to include:

beans,
bread,
cereals,
corn,
low-fat dairy,
fish,
pasta,
poultry,
lean cuts of meat, and
fruits and vegetables.

Moreover, first cold pressing extra virgin or expeller-process oils are better to purchase instead of chemical extraction methods such as hydrogenation. In closing both the USDA and NHLB government agencies now warn your total calories from fats should be between 20 to 35 percent of daily calories.

© Debby Bolen

10 Simple Rulesfor a Healthy Balanced Diet

For better health follow these simple healthy rules to cut down on your daily calories:

1. Don’t skip breakfast.
One the major mistakes people make is to skip breakfast thereby setting their body systems and hormones into chaos. By starting your day with a meal you will have energy to function and will kick your metabolism into high gear to burn calories throughout the day. No one leaves on a car trip with an empty gas tank. Make sure your “tank” has fuel in the morning too.

The CDC Improving Your Eating Habits warns skipping meals is one of the common eating habits leading to weight gain. When your body has been fasting over night and you don’t eat, your metabolism thinks food is unavailable and powers down. On the other hand, by eating breakfast this indicates to your body food is plentiful and it has as many calories to burn as it can. However, ingesting a big meal at the end of the day sits on your body over night.

Learn to live by this maxim: "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, and dinner like a pauper.”

2. White don’t bite.
Instead of bleached white, think brown as in: whole grain bread, brown rice, and whole-wheat tortillas. Brown is food’s natural form packing fewer calories, more vitamins, and more fiber thus taking your body longer to digest. The results are you eat less, and feel better with less health problems. Start your children out eating brown multi-grains so they will prefer them throughout their lives.

3. Go with green.
When you go with green vegetables you can’t go wrong: salad, spinach, zucchini, green beans, cucumbers, peas, kales, and so on. Go for the greens and eat plenty of them. They are loaded with fiber, minerals, and vitamins but are low on calories. Fill your stomach up with greens first such as a salad. Yet go light on the dressing, which is high in calories. A better choice is olive oil and vinegar.

4. More veggies please.
Discover how easy it is to fill up with veggies first. Discover different ways to serve vegetables. For example, some of the many different ways vegetables can be prepared is baked, braised, raw, roasted, or steamed.

5. Do snack.
Modify your view of a snack and load up on fruits and veggies as a replacement to processed foods. Munch throughout the day on healthy snacks of carrots, celery sticks, raw veggie crudités like red pepper strips and broccoli florets, or fruits instead. This lets your body know food is readily available and there are accessible calories to burn. With a full stomach you will eat smaller portions at meals. Eating healthy snacks throughout the day is the best way to control overeating and weight problems.

6. Water far and wide.
Do you know your body is made up of two-thirds water? Water is an essential nutrient involved in every level of functioning in our bodies. Eliminate all caloric drinks out of your diet including sodas, juices, and alcohol. For example, Elisa Zied, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, warns women there are 10 teaspoons or 40 grams of sugar in an average serving of soda pop. The average woman consumes 2000 calories daily and 50 grams of sugar should be the maximum allowed. When women drink one average size soda, they have consumed almost their entire allowable sugar intake for the day. Wiser choices are to drink water, juices, sparkling water, or unsweetened tea. If you don’t care for the taste, try slices of lemon or lime in your glass of water.

7. Be done after one.
Instead of counting calories simply don’t go back for seconds. Americans have a bad habit of quickly shoveling down a meal while Europeans and other cultures make mealtime an occasion of communication and enjoyment. Sit back and relax for 15 minutes to contemplate if you really need more food.

8. Discard dessert.
Change the way you view dessert. Don’t eat it late in the day when your body will convert it to fat. Break the dessert habit and replace it with healthy options or walking. Fresh smoothies or fruit can be eaten as an alternative.

9. Don’t super size.
When you are dining out, bigger is not better. Resist the temptation to get extra food for an additional price. The CDC warns over the last 20 years portion size, as well as waistlines are expanding. Even Atkins now advises its clientele to eat smaller steaks. The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has an interesting Portion Distortion Quiz showing how portion sizes of some of our common foods have changed in the last 2 decades.

10. Split meals and desserts.
When dining out, most restaurants will graciously give you another plate to split the meals with others. Savor the flavors with your friends and loved ones. In addition, you can ask your meal server to put half of the meal in a take out container to be consumed later or the next day.

~ Debby Bolen RN

Kids' school nutrition key to lifelong health

Great article by Rep Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), representing the 4th Congressional District, who is chairwoman of the Healthy Families and Communities Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor. Article discusses children's nutrition, costs of school meals, and reauthorizing of the Child Nutrition Act and National School Lunch Program.

Kids' school nutrition key to lifelong health

High Food Costs are Challenging

Today, I read this interesting article about inflation and how it is negatively impacting our society.  Many who say it is too expense have completely nixed eating out.  Gives statistics and exact details about why people are turning to processed foods but how we are even more at risk for chronic illnesses. 

High food costs make eating healthy meals a challenge

A steady rise in food prices has pushed consumers to their wits' end and changed shopping habits. Eating out has been nixed by many who say it's too expensive. But they can't avoid the grocery store and the sticker shock from prices that jumped 7.5 percent in the past year.

Debby Bolen

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Processed Food, Pharmaceuticals Contribute To Declining Health

In the United States, our modern society is so preoccupied and overwhelmed with every day activities of living we have lost contact with what is important. Have you ever contemplated the miracle of the human body functioning in harmony with lungs breathing, heart beating, senses sensing, muscles moving, healing and regenerating itself? Few have the time to think about this until problems develop.

Up until recently people believed each subsequent generation entering into its retirement years would be in better physical shape than the preceding generation. Then in March 2007, Health and Retirement Study research published by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), revealed the disturbing trend of Americans in their early to mid-50s reporting poorer health, more pain, and more trouble doing every day physical tasks than their older peers reported when they were the same age in recent years.

How can American pre-retirees be reaching retirement age in not as good health as their predecessors? Regrettably, the public is not educated enough about how our food and medical systems work together to keep us ill, thereby making money for themselves at our expense. Undesirable ingredients used in processed foods are part of the reason toward declining health in America. Disappointingly, the pharmaceuticals the medical system uses are no longer fully tested and many times contribute to further health decline instead of curing us while they become wealthy at our expense.

Earlier analyses, including an NIA-supported study suggests America’s obesity epidemic, which is contributing to higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, could be threatening the decline of our health. Furthermore, some of the today’s common diseases didn’t even exist 40 years ago. In this same time frame, we have made enormous advances in medical technology: we have more doctors, more pharmaceutical drugs, and more hospitals. In conclusion, all we have to show for all this is the sickliest generation of Americans in history with ever increasing disease rates.

©

Debby Bolen

How Antihistamines Work

For millions of us allergy sufferers, antihistamines ease the annoying discomfort accompanying allergic reactions. Being an allergy sufferer myself, through the decades I have taken both over-the-counter and prescription antihistamines, some of which have been discontinued. Allergic reaction symptoms include nasal congestion, sneezing, coughing, headache, and itching indicating sensitization to certain allergens such as pollen, mold, dust, or insect venom. Repeated exposure results in allergic reactions due to antigen-antibody interactions.

First, antigens come into contact with lung, gastrointestinal tract, and/or skin tissue, and enter into the bloodstream. Next, mast cells and white blood cells misidentify these as invaders and inappropriately respond by releasing histamines causing tissue injury. The severity of the allergic reaction is directly proportional to the amount of histamine released.

Histamines dilate small blood vessels and capillaries, but contract smooth muscles. Responses include decreased blood pressure, increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, constipation or diarrhea, heartburn and nausea, and proteins and fluids leaking from capillaries. Nasal mucous membrane capillaries leaking, result in nasal congestion. Skin capillaries leaking produce hives and swelling resulting in pain and itching.

Thankfully all antihistamines block most of histamines effects by competing at histamine receptor sites thereby preventing them from producing an effect on the tissues. Antihistamine drugs prevent, but can’t reverse, histamine responses. Some of the general uses of antihistamines include relief from nausea and vomiting, relief from motion sickness, and relief from coughs. Usually antihistamines are administered orally since they are well absorbed in the intestinal tract, or topically, although a few can be given intravenously. To maintain a therapeutic dose, these medicines are given two to four times per day because the liver rapidly metabolizes them.

First generation antihistamines, which can be used interchangeably, include chloropheniramine (Chlortrimeton®), diphenhydramine (Benadryl®), and promethazine (Phenergan®). Some of the side effects include nose and mouth dryness, and drowsiness. Some antihistamines are also used as local anesthetics because they depress sensor nerve activity. When taking these antihistamines, it is advisable to not drive or perform hazardous tasks, and not to use alcohol or other drugs.

Second generation antihistamines include cetirizine (Zyrtec®), and Loratidine (Claritin®), and third generation antihistamines include fexofenadine (Allegra®), claim to be more selective for histamine receptors and cause less drying or sedating. However, these are contraindicated in patients with hepatic dysfunction, and when taking certain antifungal, antibiotic, and serotonin release inhibitors due to unfortunate deaths. My personal experience with these antihistamines is I did not find the relief I needed.

Because of the sedative effect, antihistamines are used in sleep aids like Nytol®, or Tylenol PM®. Because of the drying effect, antihistamines are found in over‑the‑counter skin ointments/sprays/creams, cold remedies, and cough syrups.

However, people with hypertension, cardiovascular disease, urinary retention, increased intraocular pressure, narrow-angular glaucoma, peptic ulcer, or prostatic hypertrophy should not use antihistamines. They are also contraindicated in dehydrated children, nursing mothers, newborn or premature infants.

Nonetheless, antihistamines are widely used successfully by millions. In conclusion, antihistamines work by providing us allergy sufferers much needed: relief.

©
Debby Bolen, RN

What is an allergy?

Many people think of allergies as nothing more than sniffles. However, nothing could be more far from the truth. According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, allergies are the sixth leading cause of chronic illness in the United States affecting the productivity and quality of life of 40 to 50 million people, or more than 20 percent of the population.

Actually, an allergy is an adverse immune system response induced by exposure to a substance, named an allergen, resulting in harmful tissue injury upon subsequent exposures. Normally immune systems identify foreign invaders and send white blood cells to destroy infections. Unfortunately for us allergy sufferers, our immune systems incorrectly identify nontoxic substances as invaders and our white blood cells overreact causing more damage to our bodies than invaders would. These inappropriate hypersensitive responses vary from sneezing, watery eyes, stuffy sinuses, coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, itching, hives/skin rashes, headaches, and fatigue, to potentially life-threatening situations. In addition, secondary bacterial infections can set in including sinusitis, and ear infections.

Upon initial exposure to an allergen, symptoms may not even be experienced even though the immune system becomes sensitized to it. First, immune cells called macrophages engulf the allergen and link up with toxin-fighting white blood cells. Next, other white blood cells produce a protein called IgE, which is programmed to react to the allergen. Then, the allergen-specific IgE antibodies attach to mast cells in the digestive tract, skin, or in mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, throat, or upper airway. These cells store allergy-producing chemicals including histamines, which are responsible for the allergic reaction. When allergen particles fit in between two IgE proteins creating linked pairs, the mast cells break open and release histamine and other chemicals, such as eosinophils, causing inflammation, increased secretions, itching, or airway spasms.

Anything breathed in, eaten, or touched is a potential allergen. Common types of allergens include dust mites, pollens, metals, cosmetics, animal dander, latex, food, insect venom, medicine, food additives, chemicals, and mold. In addition, many sufferers react to multiple substances.

Allergy reactions are categorized as mild, moderate, or severe. Mild reactions affect a specific area of the body but do not spread and are similar to a cold, for example, watery eyes, and sneezing. However, moderate reaction symptoms spread to other body areas for instance a spreading rash or difficulty breathing. A severe allergic reaction is anaphylaxis which is a rare, life-threatening emergency affecting the entire body. Anaphylaxis progresses rapidly to serious upper airway swelling resulting in difficulty swallowing and breathing, accompanied by dizziness and mental confusion due to a rapid drop in blood pressure.

When allergy symptoms reoccur or occur longer than a couple weeks, make an appointment to be medically evaluated. Some sufferers obtain relief over longer periods of time with immunotherapy, named allergy shots. In conclusion, allergies cannot be prevented but are treated by making changes in your environment, and by taking over-the-counter or prescription medications such as antihistamines, decongestants, and nasal sprays.



©
Debby Bolen
Registered Nurse