We are excited to announce that this Sunday May 4th from 8 am to 12 noon we will be doing free health screenings and advanced blood analysis including several genetic tests! This is a great opportunity to speak with Dr. Nields about HEALTHY ways you can lose unwanted pounds, improve your energy, and protect yourself against chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Stop by anytime between 8am and Noon! Be sure to fast at least 8 hours and bring your insurance card if you would like blood analysis.
We will be at Harvest Community School, Modular #6 (Behind New Covenant Ministries)
2360 St Johns Bluff Rd S #1, Jacksonville, FL 32246
Follow our blog to find amazing recipes, where to find cool gadgets, food tips, and well...just to VEG OUT with us!
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Breath easy, fruits and vegetables can prevent and improve asthma!
The Doctor's Office
Reactive Airway Disease, or Asthma, occurs when airways in the lungs become inflamed and narrowed, making it more difficult to move air (breath). It is largely an allergic response when the body's immune system gets out of balance. The severity of asthma can vary from an occasional nuisance to a lethal condition. Asthma is the most common chronic condition afflicting kids and it is increasing rapidly in the United States.
Recently researchers from England published a study of 1.2 million children from around the world in which they noted a huge variation in asthma rates in different places: as much as 20 to 60 fold differences! As expected, they found that air pollution was associated with higher rates of asthma, but surprisingly the strongest association with asthma rates was the diet. Fruit and vegetable intake was protective against asthma, while diets high in fat, sodium and sugar were associated with increased rates of asthma.
This isn't the first time diet has been found to play a major role in asthma, a small study found that removing eggs and dairy from asthmatic children's diet improved lung function measurably after eight weeks. Another study found that adults with the lowest intake of vitamin C from plants had a 7 fold increased risk of asthma. The lowest intake of saturated fat provided a 10 fold protection from asthma. Researchers from Australia also found saturated fat increases airway inflammation and makes bronchodilator medications less effective. They ranked 46 foods on a scale ranging from inflammatory on one end to anti-inflammatory on the other. Pro-inflammation foods were high in saturated fat, sugar and preservatives. Anti-inflammatory foods were fruits, vegetables, and foods high in fiber. The higher the inflammation index, the higher the chance of asthma. 70% of the asthmatics in the study were found in the highest consumers of pro-inflammatory foods.
It is important to understand that "associations" of variables with disease does not prove cause or cure of disease. For example researchers from the woman's health study found that patients who had the most vitamin E in their blood from diet had half the rate of asthma as those with the least amount of vitamin E. But the vitamin E had to come from food. People with high levels of vitamin E in their blood from supplements weren't protected. So at first we might jump to the conclusion that vitamin E supplements might be a good treatment for asthma, but we see that is not the case. The most likely reason is that high vitamin E levels are a marker for overall healthy diet, so it likely is a combination of many phytonutrients found in food that are acting together to protect whole food plant eaters from asthma, not just high levels of vitamin E. This is supported by other observations made by researchers including men who eat apples were found to have superior lung function, and kids with the highest fruit, salad, vegetable intakes had better pulmonary function testing.
Despite all of this exciting research on asthma, no one had yet tried to treat it with diet, until now. Practitioners in Sweden were making claims that they could treat asthma with a vegan diet, so a group of skeptical physicians at a major teaching institution took a small group of severe asthmatics and subjected them to a vegan diet for a year. 35 asthmatics started, but only 24 patients were able to stick to the vegan diet. Of these 24 patients, 71% ere improved at 4 months and 92% were improved at 1 year as measured by their ratings of their life as well as pulmonary function tests and blood markers of inflammation. Four patients were able to completely stop taking medications and the number of medications dropped from an average of 4.5 per patient to 1.2 per patient. Granted, there was no placebo arm of the study, but neither were there any negative side effects. Patients did however lose weight, improve their cholesterol and blood pressure.
One class of phytonutrients that is responsible for better asthma outcomes is the polyphenols. These phytonutrients bind allergens so our immune system doesn't react to them. They also act in a secondary way by inhibiting activation of the allergic response if the immune system does recognize the allergen.
Another way plant food is thought to protect against asthma is through it's effects on the intestinal flora. (see the previous blog Primer on Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Produce). Intestinal flora is thought to be important in developing and priming our immune systems in childhood. It has been observed that lactobacillus is less likely to be found in kids with allergies and asthma, and probiotics containing lactobacillus may help with childhood asthma. However we couldn't be sure it was the plant strong diet that led to better intestinal flora and less asthma as these children were also more likely to have been born vaginally, more likely to have been breastfed and less likely to have been exposed to antibiotics. So which factor made these kids less likely to have asthma? We are fortunate that researchers set out to answer just that question. They hypothesized that less fruit and vegetable intake led to less anti-oxidant protection in the lungs leaving a person more susceptible to toxic inhaled substances. This makes sense because our lungs and airways are coated with a thin fluid layer that is our first line of defense. This layer contains a range of anti-oxidants. We can actually measure a person's oxidative stress level through the breath exhaled, and oxidative stress does decrease with higher intake of fruit and vegetables. Oxidative stress further decreases by decreasing animal foods. This is consistent with the observation that child asthmatics have lower levels of phyotnutrients and antioxidants in their blood.
These observations are interesting, but what really matters is will changing the children's diet help their asthma? Researchers set out to answer this question first by depriving asthmatic children of fruits and vegetables to examine the effect on their asthma. When fruits and vegetables were removed from their diet, symptoms became much worse in a matter of days. Interestingly, the restrictive diet used in the study was 1 serving of fruit and 2 servings of vegetables a day, which is what the average american diet consists of! 50% of the US population today consumes 3 or less servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Researchers then sought to evaluate the treatment effect of fruits and vegetables for asthma. They compared the 3 serving/day group to a group who ate 7 servings of fruit and vegetables a day and observed the number of asthmatic exacerbations was reduced by half over the next three months in the group that ate more fruit and vegetables. And the side effects of the treatment? Less cancer, less heart disease, longer more productive lives!
The Doctor's Office
Reactive Airway Disease, or Asthma, occurs when airways in the lungs become inflamed and narrowed, making it more difficult to move air (breath). It is largely an allergic response when the body's immune system gets out of balance. The severity of asthma can vary from an occasional nuisance to a lethal condition. Asthma is the most common chronic condition afflicting kids and it is increasing rapidly in the United States.
Recently researchers from England published a study of 1.2 million children from around the world in which they noted a huge variation in asthma rates in different places: as much as 20 to 60 fold differences! As expected, they found that air pollution was associated with higher rates of asthma, but surprisingly the strongest association with asthma rates was the diet. Fruit and vegetable intake was protective against asthma, while diets high in fat, sodium and sugar were associated with increased rates of asthma.
This isn't the first time diet has been found to play a major role in asthma, a small study found that removing eggs and dairy from asthmatic children's diet improved lung function measurably after eight weeks. Another study found that adults with the lowest intake of vitamin C from plants had a 7 fold increased risk of asthma. The lowest intake of saturated fat provided a 10 fold protection from asthma. Researchers from Australia also found saturated fat increases airway inflammation and makes bronchodilator medications less effective. They ranked 46 foods on a scale ranging from inflammatory on one end to anti-inflammatory on the other. Pro-inflammation foods were high in saturated fat, sugar and preservatives. Anti-inflammatory foods were fruits, vegetables, and foods high in fiber. The higher the inflammation index, the higher the chance of asthma. 70% of the asthmatics in the study were found in the highest consumers of pro-inflammatory foods.
It is important to understand that "associations" of variables with disease does not prove cause or cure of disease. For example researchers from the woman's health study found that patients who had the most vitamin E in their blood from diet had half the rate of asthma as those with the least amount of vitamin E. But the vitamin E had to come from food. People with high levels of vitamin E in their blood from supplements weren't protected. So at first we might jump to the conclusion that vitamin E supplements might be a good treatment for asthma, but we see that is not the case. The most likely reason is that high vitamin E levels are a marker for overall healthy diet, so it likely is a combination of many phytonutrients found in food that are acting together to protect whole food plant eaters from asthma, not just high levels of vitamin E. This is supported by other observations made by researchers including men who eat apples were found to have superior lung function, and kids with the highest fruit, salad, vegetable intakes had better pulmonary function testing.
Despite all of this exciting research on asthma, no one had yet tried to treat it with diet, until now. Practitioners in Sweden were making claims that they could treat asthma with a vegan diet, so a group of skeptical physicians at a major teaching institution took a small group of severe asthmatics and subjected them to a vegan diet for a year. 35 asthmatics started, but only 24 patients were able to stick to the vegan diet. Of these 24 patients, 71% ere improved at 4 months and 92% were improved at 1 year as measured by their ratings of their life as well as pulmonary function tests and blood markers of inflammation. Four patients were able to completely stop taking medications and the number of medications dropped from an average of 4.5 per patient to 1.2 per patient. Granted, there was no placebo arm of the study, but neither were there any negative side effects. Patients did however lose weight, improve their cholesterol and blood pressure.
One class of phytonutrients that is responsible for better asthma outcomes is the polyphenols. These phytonutrients bind allergens so our immune system doesn't react to them. They also act in a secondary way by inhibiting activation of the allergic response if the immune system does recognize the allergen.
Another way plant food is thought to protect against asthma is through it's effects on the intestinal flora. (see the previous blog Primer on Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Produce). Intestinal flora is thought to be important in developing and priming our immune systems in childhood. It has been observed that lactobacillus is less likely to be found in kids with allergies and asthma, and probiotics containing lactobacillus may help with childhood asthma. However we couldn't be sure it was the plant strong diet that led to better intestinal flora and less asthma as these children were also more likely to have been born vaginally, more likely to have been breastfed and less likely to have been exposed to antibiotics. So which factor made these kids less likely to have asthma? We are fortunate that researchers set out to answer just that question. They hypothesized that less fruit and vegetable intake led to less anti-oxidant protection in the lungs leaving a person more susceptible to toxic inhaled substances. This makes sense because our lungs and airways are coated with a thin fluid layer that is our first line of defense. This layer contains a range of anti-oxidants. We can actually measure a person's oxidative stress level through the breath exhaled, and oxidative stress does decrease with higher intake of fruit and vegetables. Oxidative stress further decreases by decreasing animal foods. This is consistent with the observation that child asthmatics have lower levels of phyotnutrients and antioxidants in their blood.
These observations are interesting, but what really matters is will changing the children's diet help their asthma? Researchers set out to answer this question first by depriving asthmatic children of fruits and vegetables to examine the effect on their asthma. When fruits and vegetables were removed from their diet, symptoms became much worse in a matter of days. Interestingly, the restrictive diet used in the study was 1 serving of fruit and 2 servings of vegetables a day, which is what the average american diet consists of! 50% of the US population today consumes 3 or less servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Researchers then sought to evaluate the treatment effect of fruits and vegetables for asthma. They compared the 3 serving/day group to a group who ate 7 servings of fruit and vegetables a day and observed the number of asthmatic exacerbations was reduced by half over the next three months in the group that ate more fruit and vegetables. And the side effects of the treatment? Less cancer, less heart disease, longer more productive lives!
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Think Inside of the Bag! Lentil Shepherds Pie
2 lbs red potatoes diced
1 medium onion
1 stalk of celery
1 large carrot
1 tsp curry powder
1 lb jar of low sodium pasta sauce
3 1/2 cups cooked brown lentils
1 cup of frozen peas and corn
1 TBSP almond butter
1/2 cup rice milk (or soy milk)
1. Preheat oven to 350. Place potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with hot water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until tender.
2. Saute onion, celery, and carrot in a few tsp of water until tender. (add more water if it becomes too dry)
3. Add curry powder and sauté for 1 minute.
4. Add pasta sauce, lentils, and peas and corn and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Drain potatoes and add almond butter and rice milk. Mash until smooth.
6. Spoon lentil mixture into one large oven-proof dish. Top with mashed potatoes.
7. Bake for 40 minutes.
Serve with a fresh salad like the Strawberry Spinach Salad.
I always double this recipe! My kids love it and always go back for more.
2 lbs red potatoes diced
1 medium onion
1 stalk of celery
1 large carrot
1 tsp curry powder
1 lb jar of low sodium pasta sauce
3 1/2 cups cooked brown lentils
1 cup of frozen peas and corn
1 TBSP almond butter
1/2 cup rice milk (or soy milk)
1. Preheat oven to 350. Place potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with hot water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until tender.
2. Saute onion, celery, and carrot in a few tsp of water until tender. (add more water if it becomes too dry)
3. Add curry powder and sauté for 1 minute.
4. Add pasta sauce, lentils, and peas and corn and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Drain potatoes and add almond butter and rice milk. Mash until smooth.
6. Spoon lentil mixture into one large oven-proof dish. Top with mashed potatoes.
7. Bake for 40 minutes.
Serve with a fresh salad like the Strawberry Spinach Salad.
I always double this recipe! My kids love it and always go back for more.
Cut your risk of dying prematurely by 42%!
The Doctor's Office
Have you ever wondered just how important it is to eat fruits and vegetables? Is it really worth the extra money? Will we live longer, or will it just SEEM like we're living longer eating vegetables? Research recently published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reminds us again that fruits and vegetables are the most cost-effective way to protect your health and longevity.
When budgets get tight, often one of the first places people look for savings is the grocery bill. But cutting back on purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables is penny-wise and pound foolish. What little savings you gain from buying less produce will be dwarfed by medical expenses and lost work, which is why governments around the world are spending money to promote fruits and vegetables.
There have been many studies published showing health benefits of higher consumption of fruits and vegetables, but never has a study associated eating fruit and vegetables with an improved risk of dying. Recently British researchers published the results of their analysis of the impact of the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed and the risk of dying at any given age (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health). Although they expected to see benefits, they were shocked to discover how much protection eating fruits and vegetables offer. Over 65,200 study participants reported the foods they were eating over thirteen years, from 2001 to 2013. Researchers analyzed this data and found that there is a dose response to fruits and vegetables that is quite remarkable in preventing mortality. In other words, the more a person ate, the more protected he or she was from dying. People eating 1-3 servings a day enjoyed a 14% reduction in the risk of dying at any given age. Eating 3-4 servings yielded a 29% reduction in death, while 5-7 servings of fruits and vegetables daily improved your chance of surviving by 36%. The people eating seven or more portions had an astonishing 42% reduction in mortality. What this means is that as the study progressed, those that ate fruits and vegetables lived on, but those who skimped passed on.
So just how much produce is 7 servings? A serving is defined as a half a cup, or about the size of your fist. So it is not impractical to eat this much, it just takes a little planning, effort and for many of us changing our habits.
Eat more, Live more!
When you consider that the majority of medical expense is paid out at the end of life, and is spent on the chronic diseases that fruits and vegetables protect against, the cost of produce seems insignificant. Nevertheless, very few people think of these things while purchasing food. Americans eat pitiful few vegetables yet spend on average about $7,000 a year on medical costs per person! This study, and many others demonstrate that prioritizing our spending to include more produce can and will pay off not just economically but more importantly with good health. Hopefully this will make it a little easier to loosen your grip on that cash when it comes to buying produce!
We as consumers are casting votes with our dollars spent, but I want to emphasize another way we as citizens can impact the cost of produce. Our tax dollars are used to subsidize large mono crops like corn and wheat. The problem with this is that these staples are used largely to feed animals or to be processed into junk food. While huge industrial agricultural, pesticide, and food manufacturing companies yield profits from these subsidies, Americans opting for the cheaper (subsidized) food yield disease and death as we see above! It seems rational that we should be subsidizing the smaller organic farmers producing these health protecting fruits and vegetables, yet the politics and economics of food make it ever increasingly difficult for them to survive. Let your representatives know how important this issue is to you and your families! Look for opportunities to educate your friends and family.
The Doctor's Office
Have you ever wondered just how important it is to eat fruits and vegetables? Is it really worth the extra money? Will we live longer, or will it just SEEM like we're living longer eating vegetables? Research recently published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reminds us again that fruits and vegetables are the most cost-effective way to protect your health and longevity.
When budgets get tight, often one of the first places people look for savings is the grocery bill. But cutting back on purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables is penny-wise and pound foolish. What little savings you gain from buying less produce will be dwarfed by medical expenses and lost work, which is why governments around the world are spending money to promote fruits and vegetables.
There have been many studies published showing health benefits of higher consumption of fruits and vegetables, but never has a study associated eating fruit and vegetables with an improved risk of dying. Recently British researchers published the results of their analysis of the impact of the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed and the risk of dying at any given age (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health). Although they expected to see benefits, they were shocked to discover how much protection eating fruits and vegetables offer. Over 65,200 study participants reported the foods they were eating over thirteen years, from 2001 to 2013. Researchers analyzed this data and found that there is a dose response to fruits and vegetables that is quite remarkable in preventing mortality. In other words, the more a person ate, the more protected he or she was from dying. People eating 1-3 servings a day enjoyed a 14% reduction in the risk of dying at any given age. Eating 3-4 servings yielded a 29% reduction in death, while 5-7 servings of fruits and vegetables daily improved your chance of surviving by 36%. The people eating seven or more portions had an astonishing 42% reduction in mortality. What this means is that as the study progressed, those that ate fruits and vegetables lived on, but those who skimped passed on.
So just how much produce is 7 servings? A serving is defined as a half a cup, or about the size of your fist. So it is not impractical to eat this much, it just takes a little planning, effort and for many of us changing our habits.
Eat more, Live more!
When you consider that the majority of medical expense is paid out at the end of life, and is spent on the chronic diseases that fruits and vegetables protect against, the cost of produce seems insignificant. Nevertheless, very few people think of these things while purchasing food. Americans eat pitiful few vegetables yet spend on average about $7,000 a year on medical costs per person! This study, and many others demonstrate that prioritizing our spending to include more produce can and will pay off not just economically but more importantly with good health. Hopefully this will make it a little easier to loosen your grip on that cash when it comes to buying produce!
We as consumers are casting votes with our dollars spent, but I want to emphasize another way we as citizens can impact the cost of produce. Our tax dollars are used to subsidize large mono crops like corn and wheat. The problem with this is that these staples are used largely to feed animals or to be processed into junk food. While huge industrial agricultural, pesticide, and food manufacturing companies yield profits from these subsidies, Americans opting for the cheaper (subsidized) food yield disease and death as we see above! It seems rational that we should be subsidizing the smaller organic farmers producing these health protecting fruits and vegetables, yet the politics and economics of food make it ever increasingly difficult for them to survive. Let your representatives know how important this issue is to you and your families! Look for opportunities to educate your friends and family.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
An eye opener!
The Doctor's Office
Vision is easy to take for granted when normal, but if you ask anyone losing their eyesight, you're likely to here that they'd pay a high price to regain or preserve their ability to see. Fortunately for us, our produce bags offer a great bargain for protection from leading causes of blindness like macular degeneration and glaucoma.
Our eyes are amazing creations that transmit and focus light from the environment through the center of the eyeball and onto the retina at the back of our eyes. The retina has specialized nerve cells that respond to the light and transmit information through the ocular nerve to the brain where we can interpret our environment.
It is a miraculous process really. The lens focuses the light on the retina at the back of the inside of the eyeball. The retina is a thin, delicate layer of nerve cells that are exposed to a significant amount of focused light. This light can cause damage to our cells as you likely have experienced with a sunburn. When this happens to the retina it causes macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. Fortunately, our delicate retinal nerve cells are protected by the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE), which acts like sunblock for the retina. The pigment in the RPE is enhanced by nutrients like zeaxanthin and lutein which we get from the greens like the spinach in our produce bags! These nutrients naturally accumulate in the RPE and protect against the damaging effects of the solar radiation, preserving our eyesight.
Greens are also effective against glaucoma, another leading cause of blindness. It is not completely understood what causes glaucoma, or loss of the optic nerve that carries information from our retina to the brain. It has been observed, however that eating at least 1 serving of greens/week will decrease your risk of glaucoma by 69%. If one serving/week can do that imagine what daily greens will do!
We also know that anthocyanins, the dark blue and black pigments found in berries and purple vegetables, protect against vision loss once the disease process has started. Black currants have been shown in trials to stop the progression of glaucoma, presumably by increasing the blood flow to the optic nerve. The Chinese seem to have observed this phenomenon because a common Chinese medicine prescription for blindness in the elderly is 50-100 goji berries daily.
Hopefully this information has convinced you of just how valuable those produce bags are to you and your families!
The Doctor's Office
Vision is easy to take for granted when normal, but if you ask anyone losing their eyesight, you're likely to here that they'd pay a high price to regain or preserve their ability to see. Fortunately for us, our produce bags offer a great bargain for protection from leading causes of blindness like macular degeneration and glaucoma.
Our eyes are amazing creations that transmit and focus light from the environment through the center of the eyeball and onto the retina at the back of our eyes. The retina has specialized nerve cells that respond to the light and transmit information through the ocular nerve to the brain where we can interpret our environment.
It is a miraculous process really. The lens focuses the light on the retina at the back of the inside of the eyeball. The retina is a thin, delicate layer of nerve cells that are exposed to a significant amount of focused light. This light can cause damage to our cells as you likely have experienced with a sunburn. When this happens to the retina it causes macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. Fortunately, our delicate retinal nerve cells are protected by the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE), which acts like sunblock for the retina. The pigment in the RPE is enhanced by nutrients like zeaxanthin and lutein which we get from the greens like the spinach in our produce bags! These nutrients naturally accumulate in the RPE and protect against the damaging effects of the solar radiation, preserving our eyesight.
Greens are also effective against glaucoma, another leading cause of blindness. It is not completely understood what causes glaucoma, or loss of the optic nerve that carries information from our retina to the brain. It has been observed, however that eating at least 1 serving of greens/week will decrease your risk of glaucoma by 69%. If one serving/week can do that imagine what daily greens will do!
We also know that anthocyanins, the dark blue and black pigments found in berries and purple vegetables, protect against vision loss once the disease process has started. Black currants have been shown in trials to stop the progression of glaucoma, presumably by increasing the blood flow to the optic nerve. The Chinese seem to have observed this phenomenon because a common Chinese medicine prescription for blindness in the elderly is 50-100 goji berries daily.
Hopefully this information has convinced you of just how valuable those produce bags are to you and your families!
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