The mighty mushroom and HPV

A while back I wrote a post on how mushrooms are really healthy and can even combat cancer.  This humble vegetable has loads of nutritional benefits that help us achieve optimal health.

One of the major problems we face in our day to day life is being infected with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), this is a highly contagious virus that can cause cervical cancer and is sexually transmitted.  The infection affects skin and the moist membrane linings of the body, for example the cervix, mouth and throat.  More than three quarters of women acquire the virus during their lives and some strains can cause cervical cancer.  But it isn't just women who are affected, men can also be infected with this virus, there is a vaccine against it (with horrendous side effects in many teenagers that have been given it), but, you can also take your own precautions - be safe, protect yourself and use a condom.

However, an extract from a Japanese mushroom kills HPV.  American research found that the extract active hexose correlated compound (AHCC), present in Shiitake mushrooms, may play a role in preventing HPV-related cancers.

In a study with mice, AHCC eradicated HPV within 90 days, and it also decreased the rate of cervical tumor growth.  Associate professor Dr. Judith Smith of the University of Texas Health Science Center Medical School, said:

"The results of this study were very encouraging.  This study, initiated in 2008, shows that by itself AHCC has the potential to treat the HPV infection."

AHCC works with the immune system as a therapy, which is a treatment that uses a body's own immune system to help fight disease.

Our immune system incorporates a number of different cells including; Natural Killer (NK) cells, dendritic cells and cytokines and human and lab studies have shown that AHCC increases the number and activity of these cells, which enable the body to effectively respond to infections and block tumor growth.

HPV DNA has been detected in 99.7% of cervical cancer biopsies, proving the biggest causative relationship of any cancer.  Several other types of cancer are also HPV related, including 95% of anal cancers, 60% of throat cancers, 65% of vaginal cancers, 50% of vulvar cancers and 35% of penile cancers.

Dr. Smith added:

"AHCC is a common, well tolerated nutritional supplement that has been used for decades in Japan.  I am very excited to be pursuing a nutritional approach to trying to find a treatment for HPV infections.

"We had previously demonstrated an antiretroviral regimen that successfully eradicated the HPV infection but wanted to develop a more benign protocol, since these medications have a number of side effects."

The findings were presented at the Society of Gynecological Oncology 45th Annual Meeting on Women's Cancer in Tampa, Florida.

I am also very excited that a nutritional approach is being investigated.  There is strong evidence that the solution to many of our modern diseases exists in our food - we just have to investigate further and trust Mother Nature to give us the answers.  It has already been proven that a healthy balanced diet and regular exercise are the best way to prevent serious diseases.

Social Nutrition:

You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com 

Slash your cancer risk

Being obese brings life threatening consequences, one of which is cancer.  Obesity caused by poor lifestyle choices such as diet are the cause of one in eight hospital admissions for women over the age of 50 according to information from a new study.

According to researchers  from the University of Oxford found that hospital admissions for women over 50 are commonly caused by issues related to obesity or being overweight, and that these issues accounted for roughly 2 million days in hospital a year in the UK.

This information has come to light from research that was part of the Million Women Study - one of the biggest health research projects currently being carried out in the UK.  The researchers found the information by looking at the diseases in women with a high body mass index (BMI) of more than 25, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

However, although these diseases are common with women over the age of 50 with a high BMI, the study found that most of the issues were to do with cancer.  Weight is one of the big risk factors for breast cancer, BUT it is also one of the few that can actually be altered.

Lead author, Gillian Reeves explains:

"A lot of the work I do is related to cancer.  A lot of the risk factors for breast cancer, in particular, you can't change.  In some sense, it is quite nice to think this is a modifiable risk factor - there is a lot to be gained by not putting on excess weight."

The Million Women Study estimates that the annual bill to the taxpayer by overweight or obese women over 50 and their hospital visits is around 598 million Euros based on one NHS bed costing 299€ per day.

This study has been running since 1996 and looks at changes in health of the whole population over time, looking at about a quarter of all the women in the UK between the ages of 50 and 64 with a total of 1.3 million women participating in the study.

36% of the participants were overweight, and roughly 18% were obese bringing the total of women with weight issues to 54% of the participants - this is just a few percent lower than the official figure of women in England with weight issues - 58%.

The hospital admissions for overweight women in relation to the health problems they were suffering were as follows:

• Cataract surgery = 45,000 admissions
• Gallbladder disease = 35,000 admissions
• Breast Cancer = 34,307 admissions
• Heart Disease = 32,483 admissions

The study has determined that weight was a major factor in both minor and major ailments.  Women
with a BMI over 25 were at a bigger risk for diabetes (74% of admissions) and knee replacements (66% of admissions), and one in five heart attacks were due to weight issues.  The study found that the more weight a woman gained the more likely she was to spend time in hospital and it also found that women with a BMI of higher than 25 were LESS likely to smoke or drink with meant that their health issues were due only to being overweight rather than due to other unhealthy habits.


So, choosing a healthy lifestyle with a balanced diet and regular exercise will mean that your risk of serious health problems including cancer, will be far less than if you don't.  So remember this the next time you reach for a chocolate biscuit with your mid-morning coffee.

A healthy lifestyle really is easy to achieve.  There is so much information at your fingertips that will help you to make healthy choices - your body will thank you for it and so will the medical community.  The truth is, as I said 2 weeks ago, even with everything we know nowadays about what constitutes a healthy diet and the need for regular exercise, and we are STILL getting fatter and sicker, but what it really comes down to is what YOU choose to do.

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

Quit sugar and look younger!

If any of my anti-sugar rants haven't gotten the message home that SUGAR IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH... then maybe I should be attacking your vanity!

SUGAR CAUSES AGEING!!!!!

Yes, that's what I said.  Quitting sugar will make you look YOUNGER!  Now, have I got your attention?

Here's the science:

There is a process in the body called glycation.  When you have sugar molecules in your system, they attack the other cells in the body bombarding them.  They attach themselves onto fats and proteins in the process known as glycation.  This process produces advanced glycation end products (AGEs for short), which cause protein fibers to become stiff and malformed.  However, a lot of what is known about the effects of glycation comes from research on diabetes:  The connective-tissue damage and chronic inflammation resulting from diabetics' sustained high blood sugar can lead to debilitating conditions such as; cataracts, Alzheimer's Disease, vascular tightening, and diseases of the pancreas and liver.

The proteins in the skin most susceptible to glycation are the same ones that make a youthful complexion so plump; these are collagen and elastin.  When these two proteins join forces with renegade sugars, they weaken, become less supple and discolored and all this produces WRINKLES, loss of firmness and radiance on the surface of the skin.  The presence of AGEs also makes the complexion more vulnerable to other dangers such as UV light or cigarette smoke.  Cheryl Karcher, MD a Dermatologist from New York says:

"Number one, the glucose makes the cells abnormal; and number two, it creates free radicals.  So you get a double whammy when it comes to aging."

To an extent, gycation is a fact of life.  It happens to everyone and it's happening right now.  It can be measured, the cross-links formed between sugars and proteins emit a fluorescence, which scientists can capture using Visia complexion analysis cameras.

"If you take a fluorescent image of children, their faces will come out very dark," says Greg Hillebrand, PhD, a biochemist at Procter & Gamble, "but with each decade, the AGEs, and therefore the brightness, will accumulate more and more."

This means that by the time we reach retirement age and beyond, we can expect our Visia images to be incandescent.  The external signs of glycation begin to show around the age of 30 or 35, produced by the build-up of sun damage, environmental oxidative stress, changes in hormones, and the development of AGEs begins to result in... aging.

"When you're younger, your body has more resources to ward off damage, and you're producing more collagen," says Fredric Brandt, MD, dermatologist based in New York and Miami, who in 2007 was one of the first to launch an anti-aging skincare line specifically for glycation.  "When you reach a certain age, these sugar by-products begin to build-up at the same time that your threshold for damage is getting lower."

However, sugar isn't the only guilty party here.  Even healthy foods such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables turn to glucose when digested, but in a less damaging fashion.  Removing all forms of sugar from our diet isn't healthy either, it still is an essential fuel for cells and energy metabolism, critical for survival.

"For most people with normal levels of glucose, the glycation process is something that happens gradually over the course of a lifetime, and it's really not that big of a deal," says Hillebrand, "but diet and lifestyle choices can affect how quickly the effects can be seen on the skin."  For example the premature yellowing of skin in smokers, Hillebrand explains, "Smoke reduces antioxidants in skin, and smokers' vitamin C and E are being used up trying to take care of all this oxidation that's caused by smoking, so they don't have a lot of antioxidant potential to take care of normal processes like glycation," he says.  "And if you add a high-glycemic index diet, you're just asking for trouble."

For me the real problem is refined sugar and the amount of sugar "hidden" in processed foods.  Many people that have eliminated all refined sugar and hidden sugar from their diets have noticed many health benefits, the most noticeable of which is better skin.  So, if you take into account that sugar is as dangerous to your health has cocaine, and it ages you quicker... those are two pretty powerful reasons to erase it from your life.  Believe me, it really is possible!

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

We are still getting fatter and sicker...

We are what we eat.  This is a fact.  And on the whole, the western world is fatter and sicker than it has ever been.  Even with the amount of free information available to us about what a healthy diet really is, we are still eating all the wrong foods.  A lot of this is just that people don't want to make the effort of cooking healthy meals at home and tend to rely on take aways and fast food options.  Governments are also to blame with food pyramids that encourage us to base our diets on starchy foods (carbohydrates) which only adds to weight problems and doesn't make us healthy at all.  If you add to that the vast amount of marketing by the food industry which tells us that we should all be eating McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC and if you are cool and hip you drink CocaCola, Pepsi, Monster, and Red Bull.

Kris Gunnars, a nutrition researcher, medical student and personal trainer at AurthorityNutrition.com, has compiled a series of graphs that appear to show a direct correlation between changes in the Western Diet and the current, seemingly uncontrollable, obesity epidemic.

Kris Gunnars says, as many others such as Zoe Harcombe and myself have, that sugar intake has increased drastically in the past 160 years and our diets have changed the type of fat we eat and we are consuming more processed food than ever before.

Gunnars also believes that there are other contributing factors such as eating fewer eggs and changing butter for margarine.

On his website he says:

"There is an immense amount of evidence I've found that runs completely contradictory to what the governments and dietitians around the world are recommending.  The modern diet is the main reason why people all over the world are fatter and sicker than ever before.

"Everywhere modern processed foods go, chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease soon follow.

"The studies are clear con this... when people abandon their traditional foods in favor of modern processed foods high in sugar, refined flour and vegetable oils, they get sick."

First dietary guidelines for Americans were published in 1977, almost at the same time the obesity epidemic started.

 "Of course, there are many things that can contribute to these health problems, but changes in the diet are the most important factor."

"The first dietary guidelines for Americans were published in 1977, almost at the exact same time the obesity epidemic started." (1983 in the UK)

 "Of course, this doesn't prove anything (correlation does not equal causation), but it makes sense that this could be more than just a mere coincidence.

"The anti-fat message essentially put the blame on saturated fat and cholesterol (harmless), while giving sugar and refined carbs (very unhealthy) a free pass.

"Since the guidelines were published, many massive studies have been conducted on the low-fat diet.  It is no better at preventing heart disease, obesity or cancer than the standard Western Diet, which is as unhealthy as a diet can get.

"For some very strange reason, we are still being advised to follow this type of diet, despite the studies showing it to be completely ineffective."

SUGAR

 "People in Western countries are consuming massive amounts of refined sugars, reaching about 150 lbs (67kg) per year in some countries.  This amounts to over 500 calories of sugar per day.

"The sources vary on the exact figures, but it is very clear that we are consuming way more sugar than our bodies are equipped to handle.

 "Controlled human studies show that large amounts of sugar can lead to severe metabolic problems, including insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides - to name a few.

"Added sugar is believed to be one of the main drivers of diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and even cancer."

According to Zoe Harcombe, author of The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused it? How Can We Stop it? agrees with Kris Gunnars, she says:

"The UK chart looks very similar to this chart.  Just over 200 years ago we used to take 4-5lbs of sugar a year; by the middle of the 19th century, this had increased five-fold to about 25lbs a year; we now take about 100lbs per year."

FRUIT JUICE CONSUMPTION

"Of all the sugar sources in the diet, sugar-sweetened beverages are the worst.  Fruit juice is actually no better - it contains a similar amount of sugar as most soft drinks." Gunnar explains.

"Getting sugar in liquid form is particularly harmful.  The studies show that the brain doesn't "register" liquid sugar calories in the same way as calories from solid foods, which dramatically increases total calorie intake.

"One study found that in children, each daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages is linked to a 60% increased risk of obesity."

Zoe Harcombe adds that: "It's a similar picture in the UK.  Figures show that sugar-sweetened beverages have increased in consumption from 512ml per person per week in 1975 to 1.142ml per person per week in 2005."

CALORIE INTAKE

"Although sources vary on the exact figures, it is clear that calorie intake has increased dramatically in the past few decades.

"There are many complicated reasons for this, including increased processed food and sugar consumption, increased food availability, more aggressive marketing towards children, etc.."

In fact, according to Zoe Harcombe things were different in the UK; "In 1975 we were eating 2,290 calories per person per day- but by 1999, this had fallen to 1,690 calories per person per day.  Yet there are an increasing number of people who are overweight or obese."

My opinion on this is that it depends on the type of calories you are eating.  Not all calories are used by the body in the same way so fewer calories of the wrong type of food could do more damage than lots of calories of the right foods.

ADDED FATS

The type of fat eaten has also changed, with oils being favored over butter.

"When health professionals started blaming saturated fat for heart disease, people abandoned traditional fats like butter, lard and coconut oil in favor of processed vegetable oils.

"These oils are very high in Omega-6 fatty acids, which can contribute to inflammation and various problems when consumed in excess.

"These oils are often hydrogenated, which makes them high in trans fats.  Many studies have shown that these fats and oils actually increase the risk of heart disease, even if they aren't hydrogenated.

"Therefore, the misguided advice to avoid saturated fat and choose vegetable oils instead may have actually fueled the heart disease epidemic."

BUTTER AND MARGARINE CONSUMPTION

Gunnars says that saturated fat has been "demonized", resulting in many people switching to unhealthy margarines containing trans fats which have been linked to heart disease

"Another side effect of the "war" on saturated fat was an increase in margarine consumption.

"Margarine was traditionally made with hydrogenated oils, which are high in trans fats.  Many studies show that trans fats increase the risk of heart disease.

"Grass-fed butter actually contains nutrients that are protective against heart disease (like Vitamin K2), therefore the advice to replace heart-healthy butter with trans-fat laden margarine may have done a lot of damage."

SOYBEAN IS A BIGGER SOURCE OF CALORIES THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE

Soybean oil is often used in cheap, processed foods

"The most commonly consumed vegetable oil in the U.S. is soybean oil.  Soybean oil actually provided 7% of calories in the U.S. diet in the year 1999, which is huge.

"However, most people don't have a clue they're eating this much soybean oil.  They're actually getting most of it from processed foods, which often have soybean oil added to them because it is cheap.

"The best way to avoid soybean oil (and other nasty ingredients) is to avoid processed foods."

EGGS

Eggs have been falsely accused of increasing the risk of heart disease, this has now been disproved.

"Eggs are among the most nutritious foods on the planet.  Despite being high in cholesterol, eggs don't raise the bad cholesterol in the blood.

"For some reason, the health authorities have recommended that we cut back on eggs, even though there is no evidence that they contribute to heart disease.

"Since the year 1950, we have decreased our consumption of this highly nutritious food from 375 to 250 eggs per year, a decrease of 33%.

"This has contributed to a deficiency in important nutrients like Choline, which about 90% of Americans aren't getting enough of."

LINOLEIC ACID

Too much linoleic acid

"Most of the Omega-6 fats that people are eating is a fatty acid called linoleic acid.

"Studies show that this fatty acid actually gets incorporated into our cell membranes and body fat stores.  These fats are prone to oxidation, which damages molecules (like DNA) in the body and may be increasing our risk of cancer.

"In other words, the increased consumption of processed vegetable oils has lead to actual harmful structural changes in our bodies.  That's a scary thought."

Sources:
Authority Nutrition
Zoe Harcombe

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com