Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Cancer - Health News ( I cut and pasted this from an email my friend sent me)

John Hopkins Update - Good article


AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY ('TRY', BEING THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY .

Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins:


1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.


2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.


3 When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.


4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors..


5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.


6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.


7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.


8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.


9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply
.

CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

a.
Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be M anuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.

b.
Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork.
Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).


e. Avoid
coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water.. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12.
Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.


14.
Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.
Anger, un-forgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment.
Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

1. No plastic containers in micro.

2. No water bottles in freezer.


3. No plastic wrap in microwave.


Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well. Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don't freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. Recently, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Cast le Hospital, was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.


Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.




Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Heatiness

Today, I was having a discussion with some colleagues over durians and how they were very unhealthy and heaty or "pu jua". Apparently durians contain about 357kcal per serving (about one full cup), which is a lot of calories. So, they were right with that - but what about the "heatiness"?

What exactly is "heatiness"? Heatiness stems from a Chinese philosophy of balance - in this case, of "hot" vs "cold" air inside the body. Correspondingly, there are certain foods which have the characteristics of being "heaty" and "cooling".

Excessive "heatiness" will bring about symptoms or physical feelings of temper, fever, and irritability. Symptoms of excessive heatiness would include:

1. Pimples
2. Sore throat
3. Nosebleeds
4. Ulcers
5. Indigestion / Constipation
6. Rashes / flushed face and cheeks

How our body is susceptible to these effects is affected by things like our lifestyle - sleep, exercise, nutrition, environment). From a TCM point of view, "heatiness" arises from lifestyle and weather factors, for example, hot weather, over-exertion, lack of sleep and exercise, stress and an imbalanced diet.
Food thus does play a part in causing heatiness.

Typically, heaty foods are:
1. Fried
2. Fatty
3. Rich is sodium
4. Sweet
5. Grows under the sun

Cooling foods are:

1. Dry
2. Lean
3. Rich is potassium
4. Salty
5. Grows in little sunshine

Examples of cooling and heaty foods:

Cooling Foods:

Bamboo shoot, banana, bitter gourd, clam, crab, grapefruit, lettuce, persimmon, salt, seaweed, star fruit, sugar cane, water chestnut, watermelon, lotus root, cucumber, barley, bean curd, chicken egg white, marjoram, oyster, pear, peppermint, radish, strawberry, tangerine, and yogurt, broccoli, cauliflower, zuccini, corn, tomatoes, pineapple, turmeric.

Heaty Foods:

Pepper, cinnamon bark, ginger, soybean oil, red and green pepper, chicken, apricot seed, brown sugar, cherry, chestnut, chive, cinnamon twig, clove, coconut, coffee, coriander (Chinese parsley), date, dillseed, eel, garlic, grapefruit peel, green onion, guava, ham, leaf mustard, leek, longan, mutton, nutmeg, peach, raspberry, rosemary, shrimp, spearmint, sweet basil, tobacco, vinegar, walnut, jackfruit, durian, leek, shallots, spring onion, , apricots, blackberries, black currant, mangoes, peaches, cherry, mandarin orange, grape.

Ideally, one has to balance the body condition with one's food intake. For example, herbal tea is said to have cooling properties which helps to negate one's heatiness.

A good knowledge of how your body is feeling and symptoms of heatiness will help you know what to eat to negate its negative effects and vice versa.

Live well!
Tim

Calorie Counting - Food Intake

This is a follow up post to my previous post on Weight Loss. As mentioned previously, diet and exercise are paramount to any weight loss program. No less important to dieting and exercise is calorie counting.

Basically, 1 calorie = 4.18400 joules. In English, this simply means that calories are a metric unit of energy. However, when dieting, weight loss and exercise is involved, we normally use a metric of kilocalorie or Calories (with the capital C).

Why is Calorie Counting important then? It's pretty simple actually - and it's also has all to do with diet and exercise. Basically, Calorie Counting is about examining how much energy you consume in your diet against how much you expand in your exercise.

To lose weight, you need to simply expand more energy in your exercise, and reduce how much you consume. Specifically, you need to:

1. Understand your dietary habits (in terms of what you consume and how many calories they contain)
2. Know what food is low in calories and tailor your dietary habits accordingly
3. Work out regularly and with enough intensity to ensure enough calories are "burned"

Cutting back on about 3,500 calories would equate to losing about 1 pound, or 2.2kg. To give you a general idea, women are advised to consume about 2,000 Calories per day, and men 2,500 Calories in the UK. In Asia, I guess that's probably slightly less. Just to give you a clearer picture, I'll list out some pretty common Singaporean foods and how many calories they contain, as well as some general activities, and how many calories they burn. I got this from a helpful site here:

Foods (1 serving of each)
Rice - 242 Calories
Mee Pok - 432 Calories
Char Siew Pau - 212 Calories
Char Siew Rice - 600 Calories
Sliced Fish Soup - 349 Calories
Carrot Cake - 467 Calories
Plain Prata - 122 Calories
Egg Prata - 289 Calories
Nasi Bryani tops the list at 873 Calories.

To put things in perspective, here's a list of some common activities / exercises, and how many Calories they burn. Heavier people tend to expand more energy doing the same activities as those who weigh less, so for the same activity, they burn more calories. Also, obviously working out at a higher intensity would burn more calories too.

Will write more about Calorie-burning activities in a separate post later :)

Live well!
Tim

Guinness is good for you!

Despite my recent "obsession" with health, fitness, wellness and nutrition, I am very much still a drinker at heart. I do drink rather occasionally (about 2 times a week at least), which does explain why I don't have abs of steel (yet :P), and I have to work out extra hard to get more defined.

Generally, drinking is rather bad for your liver and health on the whole, if drinking is too frequent or excessive. I don't think it's a coincidence that most professional athletes abstain from alcohol as well. I've read that drinking the occasional wine or beer does have it's health benefits such as reduced risk of heart diseases, but I won't really go into that too much. I'm sure everyone knows the ill-effects of alcohol as well, so not much need to elaborate.

Since I've started living more healthily, I've been trying to cut down on drinking. Also, I've been trying to drink less beer and find a better more nutritional alcoholic beverage. I don't like wines much - white ones are mostly too acidic and sour, whereas reds stain your teeth. Beer is also too gassy and I'm sure there's a reason a big paunch is called a beer belly, so I've started drinking stout :)

To most people, myself included - Stout = Guinness. I honestly can't think of any other stout (Kilkenny and ABC comes to mind, but I think they're dark beer). But what's the difference between stout and dark beer then? Haha... So anyway, I didn't know this but, Guinness contains only 198kcal per pint, which is much less than most other beers, and less than skimmed milk or orange juice (so says wikipedia).

Guinness also contains many antioxidants, which I mentioned in my previous post on skin food. These slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the arteries, which is beneficial on the heart.

Also, I particularly like how the pint of Guinness looks when it's fresh from the tap. The froth at the top and the darkness of it as it bubbles is quite a sight. Also, I used to find the taste bitter, but now I find it quite smooth. Also, my friend introduced me to "Black and Ten", which is Guinness mixed 50-50 with Kilkenny. Very nice too! Here's to more Guinness - it's good for you! :)

Live well,
Tim

Monday, April 6, 2009

The Biggest Loser - Update

I've just finished my jog - my legs hurt like crazy. Coronation Plaza to Sim Lim Square to SMU then up Clemenceau Avenue to River Valley Road and then to Grange Road stopping at Tanglin Mall. Total of about 11.7km. my nike+ died the last 3 or so km :(

My legs are aching like mad. My right ham string is super sore and my thighs hurt - but should be ok after some deep heat and a good 8 hours sleep. I'm going to take my glucosamine now too.

Glad I completed my 12km (almost), but there's another 28km to go from now til Sunday. Looking forward to it! :)

The Biggest Loser

I was told of this program by a colleague of mine, who was amazed at how some of these people lost the amount of weight they did. We had this discussion on how these people were so impossibly fat to start off with that, and that if you were THAT fat, it'd be so easy to lose weight.

So this Sunday, I was just bumming in my room and watching tv - and I stumbled across a channel showing this program. I think it was like the last 4 people in the elimination round. I was looking at pictures of the contestants before they took part in the show, and I didn't know if to be amazed at the amount of weight they loss, or disgusted about how they could be that fat before.

Nevertheless, I was quite inspired. I had a big weekend, drinking, eating and smoking. I've been taking nice pictures to put on my food blog, so maybe that's why I've been eating more. But starting today, I shall try to see how much weight I can lose myself.

I am going on a hardcore cardio routine to cut away all the fats and to see how defined and cut I can possibly become if I put my heart to it. I am going on a 12km run later once I knock off, and I pledge to run at least 40km this week. I'll keep you updated on my progress and weight loss through this blog.

Pictures paint a thousand words, but I'm happy to write a thousand words for your reading pleasure and my writing pleasure as well. Here's to a slimmer, lighter me!

Live well!
Tim

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Best Workout Music

I've never jogged listening to music previously. I always thought it too much of a hassle / discomfort to bring along a mp3 player. But once I started listening to my iPod once jogging on the treadmill in the gym, I realised I could go for longer distances, so I tried pushing myself more and more, and now I can cover about 15km (at a slow pace) as music helps distract me from the pain and repetitiveness of jogging.

Here are some songs which keep me "pumped up" for a good run or workout.

Rock

I stand Alone - Godsmack
Bodies - Drowning Pool
The Only - Static X
Crawling - Linkin Park
Hollywood Whore - Papa Roach
The Beautiful People - Marilyn Manson
Slither - Velvet revolver
Bulls on Parade - Rage Against the Machine
Whens Worlds Collide - Powerman 5000
More Human than Human - White Zombie
Thunder Kiss '65 - White Zombie
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Chinese Democracy - Guns N' Roses

Hip Hop

Back that Ass Up - Juvenile
Balla Baby - Chingy
Bombs over Baghdad - Outkast
Signs - Snoop Dogg feat. Justin Timerlake
The next Episode - Snoop Dogg
Impacto (Remix) - Daddy Yankee feat Fergie
Work (Freemason's Arabic Remix) - Kelly Rowland
Pump It - Black Eyed Peas
Elevator - Flo Rida
Ooh Wee - Mark Ronson feat Ghostface, Trife & Nate Dogg
100 Million - Birdman
For My People - Miss Elliott (Basement Jaxx Remix)

These are just some of the tracks which I think are really really good, especially the rock workout playlist, which really keeps me psyched up for the extra km of running.

I'll be adding on some dance music tracks later on, but I hope this helps in your workouts as well as they do in mine! :)

Live well!
Tim