published by wheatgerm on November 26, 2011 - 8:32am
I am trying understand the need for PH balance in my diet. A company Young life http://www.lifeionizers.com/compare-all-ionizers.html sells filter systems for several thousand dollars that outputs water at a PH level 10 saying that our unbalanced diet requires that we have much more alkaline water. The also recommend eating lots of vegetables which helps keep the diet more alkaline. There is also a body of thinking that says dairy should be eliminated because it increases acidity.
I took Subway sandwiches to feed the medical students in my Food Pharmacology class yesterday. Because no sandwich place on the planet gives you enough vegetables to slow down the bread digestion rate enough to optimize health, I asked them for several trays of vegetables so the students could max out on their own. In the condiments bag was salad dressing in case anyone wanted to avoid the carbs altogether.
If more of the calories we ate went to muscle tissue, there would be fewer calories going to body fat. The concept is simple: You eat a certain amount of food, and the body distributes it to all its tissues. If more is sent to one type of tissue, there is less remaining for other tissues. I call this the “Partitioning Principle.”
There is a moment in the future when you will take your last breath. Starting from that moment, your loved ones will live on without you, doing the best they can under those trying circumstances, until they themselves join you in a better place. With this in mind, if you knew that every time you ate a meal high in saturated fat, sugar and total calories you were slicing off one to three hours of your life, what would you do? You might say eating saturated fat and sugar makes you happy so it is worth it, that it is difficult to stop, or that healthier food is not available.
There is an obvious need for sufficient calories during intensive training. Not so obvious are how much and how often we should consume specific nutrients. Protein, carbohydrate and water are not easily stored in the body, forcing us to consume them regularly. Hunger and thirst sensations serve as reminders of our needs, but these sensations don’t tell us the best combination and timing of nutrients for driving health and performance. For example, we often don’t feel hungry right after waking in the morning or after exercise even though the body has low blood and amino acid levels at those times.
There are many barriers to healthy eating in our environment, such as social pressures and a low availability of convenient healthy foods. There are also many barriers within ourselves, such as habit and low expectations of one’s ability to improve. Food addiction, whether it is to sugar, fats, or eating in general, can be one of the most powerful internal barriers. Addiction stems from changes in nerve signaling in the emotion portion of our brain. We start off “liking” something, which escalates to “cravings”, and ultimately to an excessive (meaning life-interfering) dependence.
Most diseases are directly impacted by lifestyle. We know this because of disease trends comparing the US to other countries and increased disease in people who immigrate to the US. All humans have genetics that may result in disease (being alive incurs risk), and taking care of ourselves allows us to take advantage of whatever good genetics we have. To know how to take care of ourselves, we need to know the facts on health, including nutrition.
Einstein once said “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This saying comes to mind when I hear an athlete suggest that as they train harder they just need to eat more calories, which ignores the fact that eating too much at once results in FEWER calories going to muscle.
To “like” something means that your reward response is stimulated in your brain in response to whatever it is that you like. Things that stimulate a large reward response can induce addiction. Some analgesics (things that reduce pain) function in part by inducing this same reward response. Sucrose (table sugar), glucose and low-calorie sweeteners have been shown to reduce pain in newborn infants as effectively as being held and breastfed by their mothers. Specifically, during blood draw, 31% fewer newborns cried if they were being breastfed and those who did cry cried for a 33% shorter duration compared to newborns using a pacifier during non-maternal holding [Phillips RM et al., Ambul Pediatr 5 (2005) 359]. If we measure how much babies ‘like’ something by how much their crying is reduced, we enter the world ‘liking’ sweet tastes as much as we do our own mothers…
I took Subway sandwiches to feed the medical students in my Food Pharmacology class yesterday. Because no sandwich place on the planet gives you enough vegetables to slow down the bread digestion rate enough to optimize health, I asked them for several trays of vegetables so the students could max out on their own. In the condiments bag was salad dressing in case anyone wanted to avoid the carbs altogether.
Most diseases are directly impacted by lifestyle. We know this because of disease trends comparing the US to other countries and increased disease in people who immigrate to the US. All humans have genetics that may result in disease (being alive incurs risk), and taking care of ourselves allows us to take advantage of whatever good genetics we have. To know how to take care of ourselves, we need to know the facts on health, including nutrition. 
Einstein once said “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This saying comes to mind when I hear an athlete suggest that as they train harder they just need to eat more calories, which ignores the fact that eating too much at once results in FEWER calories going to muscle. 
To “like” something means that your reward response is stimulated in your brain in response to whatever it is that you like. Things that stimulate a large reward response can induce addiction. Some analgesics (things that reduce pain) function in part by inducing this same reward response. Sucrose (table sugar), glucose and low-calorie sweeteners have been shown to reduce pain in newborn infants as effectively as being held and breastfed by their mothers. Specifically, during blood draw, 31% fewer newborns cried if they were being breastfed and those who did cry cried for a 33% shorter duration compared to newborns using a pacifier during non-maternal holding [Phillips RM et al., Ambul Pediatr 5 (2005) 359]. If we measure how much babies ‘like’ something by how much their crying is reduced, we enter the world ‘liking’ sweet tastes as much as we do our own mothers…
