High homocysteine (Hcy) is an indication of low vitamin B12 status. It is also a risk factor for other serious diseases too, especially cardiovascular disease and stroke, as it can damage the walls of blood vessels. Hcy can easily be lowered. For some people, awareness of this fact could be life changing.
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Everyone’s a nutrition expert these days. Wherever you turn, you’ll find a legion of pundits lining up to tell you what to eat, from your co-worker to your latest Internet guru. Then there are the official experts. They have all got something to say — and it’s all different.
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To know what optimal mental and physical health feels like, you have to first experience the alternative. There’s no light without shade, after all. And that is the first principle of junk food therapy. Ignore all the media drivel about the New Year bringing in the New You. This isn’t the new you, it’s the real you, the one who’s been there all along, but standing in the dark.
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Numerous studies have concluded that dieting is associated with long term weight gain. This phenomenon has even been given a scientific name: fat overshooting. In other words, you will regain the weight that you lost, and then some. This apparent paradox is attributed to a decrease in resting energy expenditure and “adaptive thermogenesis”, as the body (the thyroid gland) adjusts its metabolic rate to match the reduction in calorie intake. It doesn’t have to be like this. The long-term solution is easier, more effective and evidence-based. It involves these three principles.
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Today, those cancers most associated with high consumption of vegetable cooking oils are those of the breast, prostate and colon. How can something so seemingly innocuous, so deeply insinuated within our food culture, be in any way involved in the development of such serious disease?
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As you sleep, your body clock orchestrates the secretion of important metabolic hormones that influence the way you gain and lose weight. These hormones — which include growth hormone, insulin, ghrelin and leptin — are produced in a cyclical manner. Obey your biology, as outlined in the following three steps, and you’ll find that losing weight is much easier when you work with your body, not against it.
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If you recently switched to a 100% plant-based diet, you can relax for quite some time. The adult liver can store enough vitamin B12 to last 1–5 years. But after that, and without “careful planning”, your health could suffer serious and irreversible damage.
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Alicia was certainly different, but she was typical in one regard: she had a combination of physical and mental symptoms. And, as it turned out, there was one underlying cause. Alicia’s brain lacked fatty acids, and this deficiency was manifesting in other parts of her body.
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Whatever the nutritional qualities of chia, you have to respect a food that manages to achieve superstar status whilst tasting of, well, nothing in particular. Milled gravel, perhaps. A food that you’d be unlikely to crave even in the throes of an extended intermittent fast.
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You probably associate vitamin D with bone health, but that’s just a fraction of the picture. There are receptor sites for this vitamin throughout the brain and deficiency is associated with a range of neurological disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, dementia (including Alzheimer’s) and Parkinson’s disease.
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