Why Environment Alters Your Nutrition

For instance, what are the dietary ramifications for an individual who has high self-efficacy for increasing fruit intake, but who lives and works in a neighborhood with no access to fresh fruit? The ability to have access to good nutritional foods is of the utmost importance to the growing bodies of young children and maintenance of older generations also!

A multidisciplinary team is examining how federal, state, and local policies influence the built environment, which in turn influences residents’ accessibility to places to be active and to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. The built environment includes man made physical structures and transportation systems and features such as land use and development, urban design, and visual surroundings. By promoting fruit trees, such as mango, avocado and citrus, and bamboo, experience shows that in time communities start to protect their trees because of the attractive revenue they generate. The grafting program helps to boost Haiti’s mango export industry and extend the avocado season. The objectives of this study were to determine how various diets, combined with exposure to volatiles containing ±-copaene, affect the ability of male Mediterranean fruit flies (from a wild and two unisexual strains) to withstand starvation. Accordingly, we maintained males on one of eight regimes combining a diet of sugar and protein, a protein pulse or apricot, with or without the aroma of the sexual stimulant ±-copaene.

Heart disease and cancers are the main cause of death in man today. These conditions are also more prevalent in our dog population. We extend our poor eating habits to our pets & children, then we wonder why our younger people are becoming obese!

Further, the toxic chemicals in sunscreen are now found in most Australians (including mother’s breast milk) with unknown consequences for our future health. FANTA works to heighten the focus on women’s and adolescent’s nutrition and increase implementation of programming that targets women’s health through its technical assistance to USAID missions and PVO partners around the world. FANTA is improving advocacy for women’s nutrition through the development of evidence-based models that highlight the consequences of malnutrition for policymakers and other audiences.

Though your parents’ medical history may give you some idea of what your medical future will be, your medical future will not be exactly the same as your parents. A fact that exists is that many battery driven products have AC current in their circuits? Most liquid crystal digital wrist watches use alternating current to drive the display: you are strapping a portable AC stress generator to your wrist (one of the most sensitive parts of your body with regard to subtle fields) and carrying it around all day.

Cooper (Chef Ann) suggests that parents look for meal plans without trans-fat and high fructose corn sugar and that include little to no refined sugars and flours. Cooper also says to look for meal plans that focus on whole foods and include lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Crop rotation is of the utmost importance in the continued health of the soil itself, therefore contributing to a sustainable environment and the overall health of the world. But before you chew on your veggies or bite into that fruit, you might want to consider this: Plants and food crops contain negative chemicals that affect the food you take in.

Until recently in our nation’s history, meat was a delicacy seen only on the most special of occasions rather than a staple food seen daily. Indeed, the majority of people on earth meet their protein requirements from non-animal sources such as beans, legumes, and grains.

Through partnership with these countries and our international network of people, we address local needs worldwide. Our activities encompass scientific publishing, research and communication, and our aim is to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and its application to real life. The social’ecological model is based on the premise that changes in individual behavior will come about through a combination of societal, community, organizational, interpersonal, and individual efforts. Basic-implementation states have begun to develop new and sustainable interventions, evaluate existing interventions and support additional state and local efforts to prevent obesity and other chronic diseases, or all of these.

We examined the effectiveness of a training program for physician-delivered nutrition counseling, alone and in combination with a structured office practice environment for nutrition management, on physicians’ counseling practices. Forty-five primary care internists and 1,278 of their patients in the top quarter of the cholesterol distribution at a central Massachusetts health maintenance organization (the Fallon Clinic) were enrolled into a randomized controlled trial. Analysis of overall phenotypic variation based on all eight characters revealed three significantly different groups: plains bison; the subpopulation from Pine Lake; the other subpopulations from Wood Buffalo National Park. Results indicate that panmixia has not occurred since the 1925-1928 introductions of plains bison to the Park and that the characters studied are genetically based. Offering complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses’ Association, it covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.

Biotechnology has the potential to reduce and/or eliminate the use of pesticides, improve the nutritional content of foods; and when introduced in staple crops, like plantains or rice, it will improve the quality of life of many developing nations. Seed production is based on selecting and improving local seed material and maintaining international varieties adapted to local conditions. The program is also working on multiplying corn and beans that have improved nutritional value.

NP 06-1 (a combination of two botanical extracts; Philodendron amurense bark and Citrus sinensis peel) or matching placebo was given in a dose of two capsules (370 mg each) twice daily. The outcome measures reported are lipid levels, weight, BMI, blood pressure and fasting glucose. My favorite way of accessing TOXLINE is through TOXNET, the incredibly comprehensive toxicology search tool provided free of charge by the National Library of Medicine. The website address for TOXNET is: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov.

This includes the International Journal of Sport Nutrition, for which you can access tables of contents from 1995 on, links and a newsletter. Spirulina contains the most potent nutrient combination of any food researched to date, and is well worth a try on your quest for total body wellbeing. Furthermore, it was a long-overdue boon to our cause to have an unflinching vegan governmental leader in the national spotlight.

That would free up huge areas of land to grow food for hungry nations. Nutritional strategies can lessen, but not abolish, toxic effects ; moreover, they require dissemination and compliance, which are unlikely to be fully effective. These issues demonstrate the need to develop a public health paradigm for the role of nutritional interventions in environmental health. I am convinced that this statement is a pure creation of the imagination.

Be aware of what is around you & your children that can harm you actively or passively!

The pollution in the air & water is another reason to make sure you take steps to balance your nutrition. Liquid vitamin nutrition is a necessary component of staying healthy, looking and feeling youthful.

In today’s world we have the technology that can keep us healthy.Chuck Arnone believes that liquid vitamins are the answer.

Living in a Toxic Body in a Toxic World

Our bodies face numerous challenges on a daily basis. Many of these challenges come directly from our environment. Pesticides, fumes, synthetic materials, cigarette smoke, caffeine, preservatives, and medications contribute to our toxic world. In addition to these environmental pollutants, our bodies produce waste by-products as a result of normal metabolism. If these toxins are not neutralized and eliminated, the result can be poor health and toxic-related illnesses and conditions.
Think for a moment. Do you:
*eat processed foods, non-organic fruits and vegetables, or hormone-laced meats and poultry?
*use artificial sweeteners?
*drink coffee, soda, or alcoholic beverages?
*consume foods that have preservatives, additives, dyes, or sweeteners added?
*eat fast foods and/or eat out regularly?
*drink fewer than 6-8 glasses of water daily?

If the majority of your answers are yes, then your diet alone likely contributes significantly to an influx of potential toxins in your system. Poor diet meshed with everyday exposure to environmental toxic substances and stress can result in you feeling less than your best. Not only might you experience toxic headaches, fatigue, and general overall poor health, but your symptoms might lead to poor digestion, food cravings, reduced mental clarity, PMS, low libido, and increased stress.
I’ve learned that every patient is in a different place in his or her quest for better health. Their level of personal fitness, health challenges, and ultimate goals may vary. By working together using state-of-the-art diagnostic and nutritional assessments, they can benefit from following programs tailored to their needs. Whether it’s a detoxification program or specific modifications in health management, patients who work with a functional medicine practitioner and use specialized tests and approaches have experienced tremendous results. Specifically, they’ve experienced increased energy and improved stamina, better
digestion, weight reduction, less bloating, fewer food addictions, improved elimination, and reduced symptoms of PMS. Some unexpected side benefits include shinier hair, clearer skin, and improved physical appearance.
<b>What is Functional Medicine?</b>

Functional medicine combines traditional healthcare of years gone by with modern science. It is a field that focuses on improving physical, mental, and emotional functions. This approach views disease, not as an enemy, but as an opportunity for change and growth.
In older systems of medicine, practitioners believed that the body was self-regulating, thus disease occurred when this self-regulation became disrupted. In more contemporary terms, we speak of feedback loops. When these feedback mechanisms get stuck or disrupted, imbalance and disharmony can occur. We call this being “sick.” Therefore, functional medicine aims to help a person’s body return to proper alignment and function.
Functional medicine focuses not on an endpoint or pathological state, but on the processes that underlie and precede it. While acknowledging the existence of pathology as well as a need to understand it, functional medicine focuses on the underlying processes and seeks a path of therapy that engages these underlying events. Functional medicine combines with contemporary medicine for the best possible approach—the best of both worlds.
Functional medicine is holistic rather than specialized. It approaches the body as web-like and holographic. While contemporary medicine compartmentalizes the body into specialties: liver doctors, heart doctors, mind doctors, and so on, functional medicine links all systems and identifies patterns among them.
As mentioned earlier, functional diagnostic medicine:

*Is patient-centered, based on each person’s unique needs.
*Aims to balance the patient’s functional systems.
*Integrates physical, mental, and emotional health.
*Uses scientific laboratory and diagnostic tests to pinpoint underlying causes.
*Focuses on outcomes versus controlling or suppressing symptoms.
*Emphasizes lifestyle changes, benchmark and follow-up testing.
<b>Patient-Centered Care</b>
In today’s world, people want to seek medical care that complements their own lifestyle and values. Many people are turning to complementary and alternative medicine because they feel listened to and treated as a whole person.
Functional medicine looks at how you are doing and feeling. You won’t be told, “It’s all in your head.” Functional medicine addresses all of you—your life, your well-being, what you eat, your work environment, your relationships and communication with others, how you relax and play, what medications you take, how well your digestive system functions, and what chemicals you’ve been exposed to. In hearing about your life, practitioners gather significant clues and information to assist you in feeling better.
You can change the way you feel and function! Rather than naming a specific disease, the functional medicine approach seeks to find underlying causes in context of your life choices. As a result, your treatment program will reflect your needs.

<b>Who Can Benefit from Functional Medicine?</b>
Many people today have health problems that don’t fit into simple categories. Often they have complex health problems involving inflammatory responses or immune, nervous, digestive, energy, and/or cardiovascular systems. These people are best helped by a functional approach to medicine. Typical patients include those with various auto-immune diseases, fatigue of unknown origin, and/or digestive complaints. Often they’ve visited several physicians without effective treatments or improvement.
Functional medicine is also for people who are interested in preventive healthcare. They want to take an active role in their own well-being and the health of their family members. Therefore, they seek functional medicine practitioners to guide their continued good health.
<b>How Functional Medicine Differs from Conventional Medicine</b>
Suffering with pain, discomfort, or reoccurring health complaints is your body’s way of getting you to pay attention. Rather than taking a pain medication each time you get a headache, backache, or stomachache, ask yourself “why” you’re experiencing the pain in the first place. The answer to the cause of these conditions may be simple or complex.
For example, chronic constipation or diarrhea could be from a bug you picked up years ago in a foreign country, or you could be reacting negatively to certain foods you’re eating. This approach obviously takes more work than just writing a prescription for an antibiotic; it takes specialized testing along with the knowledge of being able to interpret those tests and making the appropriate recommendations for treatment as well as follow-up testing to make sure that the irritant has been removed.
The following chart demonstrates a simplified comparison of functional diagnostic medicine versus conventional medicine.
<b>Common Categories of Functional Imbalance</b>

• Oxidative Stress
• Nutritional Imbalances
• Intestinal Dysfunction
• Impaired Detoxification
• Endocrine Imbalance
• Immune/Inflammatory Imbalances
<b>Biochemical Individuality</b>
Roger Williams, MD, coined the term “biochemical individuality.” Just as each of us has a unique face, fingerprint, and personality, our biochemistry is also unique. There are a wide variety of “normal” values found. For example, research has found that some babies require four times the vitamin B6 as others, and ranges of serum amino acids in healthy young men varied fourfold on average.
Identifying your unique biochemical needs provides a foundation for functional medicine.

<b>The 4-R Approach to Improving Health</b>
The 4-R approach forms the basis of improving the health of an individual in functional diagnostic medicine and provides the basic treatment philosophy. Although it’s a simple concept, it provides an effective way to resolve difficult and undefined illnesses. The 4-Rs refer to Remove, Re-inoculate, Replace, and Repair. Remove implies the elimination of anything that may be in your body or diet that contributes to your poor health. This can include foods, pesticides, food additives, environmental toxins, invasive bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Often, you may need sophisticated and specialized lab tests to determine the root cause of your illness. However, this is not typically the type of test you would find in a conventional medical office such as a simple blood study or urinalysis; rather, you’d find it in a specialty laboratory where microscopic examinations or cultures of stool samples may be performed looking for not-so-obvious problems.
Re-inoculate refers to the use of supplements containing lactobacillus acidophilus, bifidobacteria, and other friendly flora, also known as probiotics or the “good bacteria.” These “good” bacteria can repel harmful microbes and “bad” bacteria by repopulating the gut with the healthy organisms. Good bacteria are easily disrupted and destroyed by using antibiotics, which not only kill off the bad bacteria but the good bacteria as well.
Replace refers to correcting your diet and/or adding supplementation to support a poor digestive system that’s been destroyed by a disease process or invasion of bacteria, parasites, fungus, or virus.
Repair is the final step in the 4-R process. It supports rebuilding and regenerating the damaged tissue. This may require you to modify your diet and/or supplementation as well as increase the amount of sleep you get. In some cases, nutritional support may be required indefinitely if the body has been too far damaged by a long-term disease or condition. For example, if people with diabetes can no longer produce insulin, they may have to supplement with insulin indefinitely, but perhaps a lesser amount once their diets have been regulated.
Can you see the difference? Traditionally trained medical doctors are taught to evaluate symptoms as indicators of diseases. They then order diagnostic laboratory tests to confirm their diagnoses and start treating the symptoms of the disease while functional diagnostic healthcare practitioners probe for underlying causes.
<b>An Equal Partnership</b>
Your relationship with your functional medicine physician is an equal partnership and therefore rewarding for both of you. You may find your practitioner spends more time with you than a traditional doctor, asking you to fill out extensive questionnaires about your medical history, work history, diet, exercise patterns, stress level, hobbies, use of supplements and medication, and home and work environment. As a result, a program that’s specific to your individual needs and lifestyle will be developed.
As part of the program, you may be asked to:

• make changes in food choices and eating patterns
• take nutritional, homeopathic or herbal supplements
• undertake an acceptable exercise program
• go through a detoxification program
• meditate
• see a counselor about life issues
• join a support group
• get massages or other body-work

<b>Types of Lab Testing</b>
Evaluating organ “function” versus organ “pathology” is one of the principles of functional medicine. Many labs have developed a number of assessment tools that allow practitioners to understand a patient’s functional status. These tests complement the usual tests that physicians use and can detect problems long before more traditional tests locate anything amiss.
Tests may examine blood, hair, stool, urine, breath, and/or saliva. These common tests check nutritional status, digestive function, food and environmental allergies, amino acid balance, energy metabolism function, hormones balance, and more. Using this approach, your functional medicine doctor is able to determine why your body is out of balance.
For example, food allergy testing can be used in a wide variety of instances. Common ones include:
• children with learning or behavior problems
• people with migraines, skin problems, depression, digestive complaints, and foggy thinking.

If exposure to heavy metals or mal-absorption of minerals were suspected, practitioners would use hair analysis testing. Innovative saliva testing can measure levels of hormones such as DHEA, progesterone, testosterone, and estrogens. Stool testing is used to measure overall digestive function and determine if there is enough good bacteria in the gut. It also determines if certain bacteria, fungus, or parasites are interfering with good health.

Michael L. Dansinger provides articles about health medicine.Our bodies face numerous challenges on a daily basis. Many of these challenges come directly from our environment.

The Secret To Achieving Wellness

In computer programming, there’s a saying: Garbage in, garbage out. The same is true of the human body. If you put the wrong things into your mouth, you won’t be able to function at your optimum level, because your body’s biochemistry will be adversely affected, causing all kinds of havoc, and, in many cases, illness.

Our current food supply, bought from big supermarkets and full of boxed and packaged foods, is not designed for your optimum health and nutrition, but is instead designed to make the food corporations, big agribusiness and their seed suppliers, big pharma and the “health” industry rich. If you read labels, and learn how to decipher those disguised ingredients, you’ll discover that most prepackaged “foods” are cleverly disguised versions of the crops subsidized by the US government for farmers to grow, a corporate money machine that ensures your ill-being as it strips your wallet of tax dollars.

The ingredients made from those subsidy crops have, since their introduction into the food supply, sharply increased the incidences of heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, to name a few ills they’ve caused. The addition of high fructose corn syrup into almost every prepackaged food has helped cause the Obesity Epidemic in the US. And, because of the subsidies and the ability for corporations to reap huge profits, corn and other subsidy crops have been genetically modified (GMO) to increase yield. The problem is that those GMO Crops cause organ damage in humans and bee colony collapse, which threatens our whole food system.

What’s the answer?

Eating food that looks like food is the best place to start– raw fruits and vegetables, whole grains and nuts, milk and cheese, even if it takes a bit more time to cook.

But produce and other food in the supermarket is also a problem for your health. Food that has been grown in petrochemically fertilized soil, and treated with herbicides and pesticides is bad for your health and the health of every other living being. Those fertilizers wash out to the sea and create huge dead zones, like the ones in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Pesticides can never be completely washed off, and even newborn infants bear traces of pesticides in their blood from their mothers. Pesticides are, in many cases, carcinogenic, and since their introduction into the food supply, cancer rates have soared.

In addition to pesticide and herbicide use, the types of fruits and vegetables grown for the supermarkets are designed for “high yield” which gives higher profits, since produce is usually sold by the pound. These hybrids are heavier because they’re designed to retain more water, which also means there are less nutrients, less fiber and less sustenance in supermarket produce, which leaves you hungry and unfulfilled.

Organic produce is better for you. But by the time it gets to the supermarket or your local health food store, it’s travelled many miles, and been picked days, and sometimes weeks before you buy it. Every day that passes between harvest and consumption represents lost nutrients. Petrochemicals are burned, fouling our atmosphere to get the produce to the packing plant and then to your table. And the packing plants have been shown to be a leading cause of food contamination.

The best way to ensure that your diet is the healthiest possible is to grow your own organic food. Growing organic veggies and fruits ensures you are eating the freshest, healthiest, and most nutritionally dense food possible. Even if you live in a city, you can grow at least some of your own food in containers, sprout seeds, and participate in a neighborhood garden. Some organic produce can be purchased from local growers, or you can participate in an organic CSA.

Reprogram your body for your best health and wellness. Grow your own organic food!

To find out the easy way to start your organic garden, check out the Organic Gardening section of the Green Goods Guide.

Sugars Can be Good for you

I know, I know. All your life everybody has told you how bad sugar is for you. It makes you fat, it rots your teeth, and it pushes you toward diabetes. Now here I am telling you that sugars can be good for you. What is going on?

The basic assumption is that when somebody says ‘sugars’, most people think of table sugar, or what is chemically known as sucrose. Table sugar is actually a combination of glucose and fructose, two different sugars. The sugars that I’m talking about are simple sugars called monosaccharides. They are critical to almost all basic metabolic processes in the body. These essential little nutrients are found in many different fruits, grains, and vegetables when eaten in their naturally grown, vine-ripened state.

But when is the last time you ate anything that wasn’t processed, packaged, or adulterated in some form? Wheat and rice have all the bran and other nutrients stripped off in the processing. It’s so bad that the U.S. Government had to make companies add the chemical form of the nutrients back into breads, cereals, and the like. ‘Fortified’ simply means replacing many of the natural nutrients that were removed with chemical substitutes. But much more is taken out than replaced. Over a dozen vital nutrients are processed out of breads and cereals while only four to six are replenished chemically.

Fruits and vegetables are sprayed with God-only-knows-what pesticides and fertilizers. Then, the produce is picked while it’s still green. The nutrients from the ground never have an opportunity to enter the vegetable or fruit. Studies at Harvard have shown that the nutrient levels of phytochemicals like lycopene in store-bought tomatoes are almost a flat line graph when compared to the high-spike levels shown in vine-ripened tomatoes. It’s easy to see how our country’s rate of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases have skyrocketed since the advent of TV dinners and packaged foods in the 50’s.

According to Harper’s Biochemistry, the simple sugars that we need are glucose, galactose, mannose, xylose, fucose, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine, and neuraminic acid. The ones that we get now in our daily diet are primarily glucose and galactose. Luckily, our bodies are able to change these two sugars into the remaining six others. But that process requires many things to occur with perfect precision in our bodies. With all the stress, medications, environmental toxins, and other compromising factors that our bodies have to deal with, it is clear that the system will malfunction from time to time.

The injury done to our bodies happens down at the cellular level and can even result in DNA damage. The field of glycobiology is now developing in the medical community. ‘Glyco’ means sugar. In fact, there was a recent meeting in London, Ontario of a group of glycobiologists from all over the world. They spoke of a new diagnostic study called ‘sugar-printing’ in which they are discovering that certain sugar malfunctions result in specific diseases. For example, rheumatoid arthritis shows a deficiency in galactose due to a missing enzyme that helps move it through the body. By supplying additional galactose in the form of a supplement, the symptoms disappeared.

The information coming out in medical studies regarding the impact of glyconutrients is astonishing. The Soviets were using this carbohydrate technology back in the 70’s and 80’s with their Olympic athletes. The result was tons of gold medals and no failure in drug tests because the glyconutrients are food-based, not a synthetic chemical or drug. The Soviets also used this preventative measure to boost the overall health of their troops located in Siberian outposts. Their testing showed less overall illness and an increase in immune system function. In addition, Chinese studies show improvements in diseases ranging from cancer to arthritis when the patients were given glyconutrient supplements. This new technology is so important and far-reaching in terms of our overall health that it was the topic of my Ph.D. research. You can read a copy of my dissertation at my website.

If you would like more information on any topic discussed in this article or to suggest ideas for a future article, you can contact me through my website email.

Jerry Ryan, Ph.D. is a Natural Health Coach who teaches individuals and group classes on the scientifically documented benefits of natural health techniques. He is also an internationally published author and has been a guest speaker at such places as NIKE World Headquarters. For more information, his website is http://www.JerryRyanPhD.com