Free Republic

Other than the ads that claim Acai Berry is a great diet supplement does any Freepers use it for a reason as a diet supplement in concentrated capsule form? Thanks. Could not find any legit forums when I googled it is all ads promoting the product no real medical info. And I dont count Dr. Oz as a legit resource.

CARACAS, Venezuela – Call it the Bolivarian battle of the bulge. President Hugo Chavez said in a televised speech Friday that "there are lots of fat people" in Venezuela and advised his supporters to exercise and eat healthy to trim their waistlines. "I'm not saying fat women, because they never get fat," he added. "Women sometimes fill out." The 55-year-old leader said he himself has lost nearly 20 pounds (9 kilograms) by exercising and eating well. But Chavez, who still appears heavier than when he first took office in 1999, acknowledged that he could lose a few more pounds (kilograms)....

Forty Years' War Many Americans do not think twice about taking medicines to prevent heart disease and stroke. But cancer is different. Much of what Americans do in the name of warding off cancer has not been shown to matter, and some things are actually harmful. Yet the few medicines proved to deter cancer are widely ignored. Take prostate cancer, the second-most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, surpassed only by easily treated skin cancers. More than 192,000 cases of it will be diagnosed this year, and more than 27,000 men will die from it. And, it turns out,...

Elevated dietary fructose linked to high blood pressure A diet high in fructose increases the risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension), according to a paper being presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 42nd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition in San Diego, California. The findings suggest that cutting back on processed foods and beverages that contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) may help prevent hypertension. Over the last 200 years, the rate of fructose intake has directly paralleled the increasing rate of obesity, which has increased sharply in the last 20 years since the introduction of HFCS. Today, Americans...

Analysis of the pending Obama Administration health care bill indicates that most taxpayers will end up paying more, yet get less medical care than they currently do under preexisting plans. This, however, is not a bad thing according to an Obama Administration spokesperson. “An estimated 90% of visits to the doctor are unnecessary,” observed Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. “By eliminating as many of these visits as we can, we will hold down the cost of care. We will also be reducing the frequency with which patients are injured by doctors. Most people aren’t aware that being...

Yield: 24 servings (serving size: 1 bar) RECIPE INGREDIENTS Non-stick cooking spray 3 cups favorite granola 1 cup wheat germ 1 1/2 cup almond butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/3 cup whole-wheat flour 3/4 cup honey 1 cup dried cherries or dried cherry-flavored cranberries 1 cup slivered California Almonds

The Mediterranean diet, already thought to protect against heart disease and cancer, may also help to prevent depression, Spanish researchers say. They found depression was more than 30% less likely to develop in people who followed a diet high in vegetables, fruit and cereals, and low in red meat. They studied 10,094 healthy adults over four years, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports.....

So what does the world's oldest man eat? The answer is not much, at least not too much. Walter Breuning, who turned 113 on Monday, eats just two meals a day and has done so for the past 35 years. "I think you should push back from the table when you're still hungry," Breuning said. At 5 foot 8, ("I shrunk a little," he admitted) and 125 pounds, Breuning limits himself to a big breakfast and lunch every day and no supper. "I have weighed the same for about 35 years," Breuning said. "Well, that's the way it should be."...

Despite the efforts restaurant chains from fast food to fine dining have made to add more-healthful items to the menu, consumers still aren’t buying. In a poll on chainleader.com, 82 percent of respondents say their better-for-you items are selling “lousy.” Recent research shows that customers cite economic factors as a reason for not purchasing healthful food—or as an excuse. Too Great a Cost Chicago-based foodservice consulting firm Technomic says its research shows the recession is hindering consumers’ healthy-eating behavior. Although more than half of consumers say they are more concerned about their eating habits than they were a year ago,...

Reliapundit alerts us to breaking news: Gertrude Baines, who lived to be the world's oldest person on a steady diet of crispy bacon, fried chicken and ice cream, died Friday at a nursing home. She was 115. Baines, who remarked last year that she enjoyed life so much she wouldn't mind living another 100 years, died in her sleep, said Emma Camanag, administrator at Western Convalescent Hospital. The centenarian likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician, Dr. Charles Witt. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. ...Staff at Baines' nursing home described her as a...

New research in the FASEB Journal identifies the 'Goldilocks dose' of DHA that is 'just right' for preventing oxidative stress in menA team of French scientists have found the dose of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) that is "just right" for preventing cardiovascular disease in healthy men. In a research report appearing in the September 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), the scientists show that a 200 mg dose of DHA per day is enough to affect biochemical markers that reliably predict cardiovascular problems, such as those related to aging, atherosclerosis, and diabetes. This study is the first to identify...

The tomato pill: Daily dose is as good for the heart as Mediterranean food By TAMARA COHEN 31st August 2009 British scientists have developed a groundbreaking pill which provides all the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet. One capsule of Ateronon taken daily can break down fatty deposits in the arteries and help prevent heart disease and strokes, potentially saving millions of lives. The supplement, which costs £35 for a month's supply, contains lycopene, a chemical found in the skin of ripe tomatoes. Each pill provides the equivalent of eating three kilos of ripe tomatoes. Studies have shown eating an...

A new study on Friday suggests that wheat bran and other fibrous foods that do not dissolve easily in water not only fail to soothe irritable bowels but may even make things worse, AFP reported. The study found that most soluble types of bran, such as psyllium, appear to ease inflamed bowels, but the insoluble varieties people have traditionally eaten for regularity don't work as advertised. The hard outer layer of grains is referred to as bran. Psyllium, also referred to as isphagula, is derived from the seed husks of the Plantago ovata plant, and is the chief ingredient in...

Since the best minds of the country have concluded that health care is a basic human right, it must also be presumed that this right automatically includes the most fundamental component of all human health - food. Leading nation's scientists have long been warning us that denying a person the nutrition from food impairs health in the most direct and injurious manner. Today the debate is over: the right to health and the right to food are pretty much one and the same - the inalienable human right to have your bodily functions regulated by the government for your own...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: June in Greenwood, Arkansas. It's great to have you, thank you for calling, and welcome. CALLER: Rush, it's an honor to speak with you. RUSH: Thank you very much. CALLER: I'm calling because I've had similar success on a weight loss program very similar to your program.

President Barack Obama said that a key source of his frustration with public criticism of his health care plan is that “the people who created this mess aren’t qualified to critique my solution.” “Look, the average American is an over-weight slob,” Obama asserted. “He eats too much of the wrong foods. He doesn’t get enough exercise. He engages in dangerous activities like smoking and driving. This is driving health care costs through the roof. Opposing my reforms would let these same behaviors continue unchecked.” The President argued that the evidence supports a “transfer of control over health issues from those...

Grinding Up a Rancid Review A 2007 review of previous studies (that is, a study of studies) conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute of Cancer Research claimed that a pattern of research showed a link between red meat consumption and colorectal cancer. The review recommended that people limit their intake of red and processed meats. Slam dunk, right? Not so fast. A nonprofit research organization confirms that the review omitted a major study on meat consumption and cancer. And this week, the review’s own author is admitting that it doesn’t have much meat on its...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

Los Angeles, CA (BANG) - Gwyneth Paltrow feels "pure" after surviving for three weeks on pumpkin seeds and coconut water. The slim actress followed the Clean Detox program "to the letter," after gaining some weight during a "majorly fun and delicious relax-and-enjoy life phase." Writing on her website, Gwyneth said: "This program allowed me to work and exercise regularly, something I cannot do if I am on a liquid only detox. I followed it to the letter and I feel pure and happy and much lighter." While on the diet - which has the motto Remove, Restore, Rejuvenate - Gwyneth...

Polysaccharides from black tea may blunt the spike in sugar levels after a meal more than similar compounds from green and oolong tea, and offer potential to manage diabetes, says a new study. The black tea polysaccharides also exhibited the greatest activity for scavenging free radicals, which are linked to development of diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, according to new findings published in the Journal of Food Science. Interest in tea and its constituents has bloomed in recent years, with the greatest focus on the leaf’s polyphenol content. Green tea contains between 30 and 40 per cent of...

What's the best way to stay out of Obama's crappy hospitals in the future? Stay healthy! EC interviews author, patriot, dietician, and now radio host Kevin Brown. You can listen to him every Saturday on Liberty Works Radio Network at noon EDT.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A study comparing how two common dietary oil supplements affect body composition suggests that both oils, by themselves, can lower body fat in obese postmenopausal women with Type 2 diabetes. The two oils compared were safflower oil, a common cooking oil, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a compound naturally found in some meat and dairy products that has been associated with weight loss in previous studies. Both are composed primarily of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are considered “good fats” that, when consumed in proper quantities, are associated with a variety of health benefits. In the study, 16...

A man who ate an undercooked salmon salad claims he developed a 9-foot tapeworm, the Scientific American reported. Anthony Franz sued Shaw's Crab House in Chicago for serving him the salad, which he said made him violently ill, according to the Chicago Times.

Appearing in the June 5 issue of JBC For the past century, changes in the Western diet have altered the consumption of omega-6 fatty acids (w6, found in meat and vegetable oils) compared with omega-3 fatty acids (w3, found in flax and fish oil). Many studies seem to indicate this shift has brought about an increased risk of inflammation (associated with autoimmunity and allergy), and now using a controlled diet study with human volunteers, researchers may have teased out a biological basis for these reported changes. Anthropological evidence suggests that human ancestors maintained a 2:1 w6/w3 ratio for much of...

In the battle to lose weight, hunger is the dieter's worst enemy. But research has revealed a simple aid to taming the appetite: soup. It's dieting's best kept secret says one science writer. Imagine a typical lunchtime meal - say, chicken and vegetables with a glass of water. If you eat the food and drink the water, you will feel full for a couple of hours before hunger kicks in. But if you blend the food with the water - to make soup - you will stay hunger-free for much longer, and less likely to snack through the afternoon. How...

Ancient Israel was far from "the land of milk and honey," and instead people suffered from the lack of a balanced diet, according to a theologian. Dr Nathan MacDonald, an Old Testament lecturer at St Andrews University, used biblical texts and archaeological evidence to study the ancient diet. He has concluded that there were frequent famines and people's meals often lacked vitamins and minerals. --snip-- ...In North America, books based on the diet of the Bible such as What Would Jesus Eat? and The Maker's Diet are bestsellers. Dr MacDonald explained: "Though many people have thought otherwise, the evidence is...

In a new initiative to combat growing obesity, the British government has launched an offensive against restaurants whose food is deemed “too tasty” or “too convenient.” Offending establishments are being given orders to shut down. “Since the very beginnings of the British nation we have always relied upon the inconvenience and unpalatable nature of traditional English foods to help us win the battle of the bulge,” said U.K. Under-Secretary for Health, Nigel Bland. “Kippers, kidney pie and boiled beef were things we ate to keep from starving. They are difficult to prepare and nobody pigged out on such hard to...

Convicted Killer Terry Nichols Says Low-Fiber Prison Diet Has Impacted Bowels The Smoking Gun Web site reports on a lawsuit against his jailers filed by Terry Nichols, the domestic terrorist who teamed up with Timothy McVeigh to murder 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. According to the court documents on the Smoking Gun Web site, Terry Nichols, 54, says the low-fiber prison diet has given him "chronic constipation, bleeding, hemorrhoids." This week, a federal judge rejected Nichols's bid for a preliminary injunction against the Bureau of Prisons. A lawsuit filed last month by Nichols is pending. To support...

Pharmacists will weigh and measure customers to prevent some people taking new over-the-counter diet pills. Two pills that can help women rapidly drop a dress size will go on sale this week. The first helps slimmers lose 50 per cent more weight than through willpower alone, by preventing the body absorbing fat. The second tricks the brain into thinking the stomach is full, leading to weight loss of 10lb over three months in trials. Eating disorder charity Beat has urged drug company GlaxoSmithKline to ensure only adults with a BMI of 28 or more are allowed to buy its drug...

Suppose you wanted to test the effects of halving the amount of salt in people’s diets. If you were an academic researcher, you’d have to persuade your institutional review board that you had considered the risks and obtained informed consent from the participants. You might, for instance, take note of a recent clinical trial in which heart patients put on a restricted-sodium diet fared worse than those on a normal diet. In light of new research suggesting that eating salt improves mood and combats depression, you might be alert for psychological effects of the new diet. You might worry that...

CHICAGO – The largest study of its kind finds that older Americans who eat large amounts of red meat and processed meats face a greater risk of death from heart disease and cancer. The federal study of more than half a million men and women bolsters prior evidence of the health risks of diets laden with red meat like hamburger and processed meats like hot dogs, bacon and cold cuts. Calling the increased risk modest, lead author Rashmi Sinha of the National Cancer Institute said the findings support the advice of several health groups to limit red and processed meat...

UK researchers found that vegetarians had a lower overall cancer rate than meat eaters, but contrary to suggestions from other studies, they found a higher rate of colorectal cancer among the vegetarians than among the meat eaters. The study was the work of researchers working on the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Oxford (EPIC-Oxford) and the findings were published in the online issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 11 March. In their background information, lead author Tim Key, a Cancer Research UK epidemiologist who is based at the University of Oxford, and colleagues wrote that few...

Monday March 9, 2009 Studies Find Contraception Makes Women Obese and Newborns Too Thin By Thaddeus M. BaklinskiOTTAWA, March 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - University of Ottawa researchers have found that women who conceive within a month of taking birth-control pills tend to have premature babies or babies with a low birth weight. At the same time, another study from the University of Texas has revealed that users of the contraceptive "shot" are significantly more likely than other women to become obese.Xi-Kuan Chen, an epidemiologist and senior analyst with the Canadian Institute for Health Information at the University of Ottawa said...

The Bill Ayers Diet by: Deborah Lambert, February 12, 2009 While today’s teaching methods have certainly not improved students’ standardized test scores, tomorrow’s students may shock and surprise everyone with their knowledge about the politics of obesity. Leftist educator and FOB Bill Ayers noted in a discussion forum in a recent issue of Radical Teacher that “practically anything, from the lofty to the mundane, can be the subject of serious inquiry.” He noted, for example, that Gov. Huckabee’s dramatic weight loss inspired Arkansas school officials to pose students' BMI index results on their report cards. To Ayers, this provides an...

Have you seen the news stories about the obesity epidemic? Did you see Super Size Me? Then guess what? ... You've been fed a load of bologna. Comedian (and former health writer) Tom Naughton replies to the blame-McDonald's crowd by losing weight on a fat-laden fast-food diet while demonstrating that nearly everything we've been told about obesity and healthy eating is wrong. Along with some delicious parody of Super Size Me Naughton serves up plenty of no-bologna facts that will stun most viewers, such as: The obesity "epidemic" has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC. People the government classifies as...

Children who regularly eat cured meats like bacon and hot dogs may have a heightened risk of leukemia, while vegetables and soy products may help protect against cancer, a new study suggests. Researchers found that among 515 Taiwanese children and teenagers with and without acute leukemia, those who ate cured meats and fish more than once a week had a 74 percent higher risk of leukemia than those who rarely ate these foods. On the other hand, kids who often ate vegetables and soy products, like tofu, had about half the leukemia risk of their peers who shunned vegetables and...

People on low-carbohydrate diets are more dependent on the oxidation of fat in the liver for energy than those on a low-calorie diet, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a small clinical study.The findings, published in the journal Hepatology, could have implications for treating obesity and related diseases such as diabetes, insulin resistance and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, said Dr. Jeffrey Browning, assistant professor in the UT Southwestern Advanced Imaging Research Center and of internal medicine at the medical center. "Instead of looking at drugs to combat obesity and the diseases that stem from it, maybe optimizing...

New evidence in mice bolsters the notion that a version of a gene earlier shown to protect lean people against weight gain and insulin resistance can have the opposite effect in those who eat a high-fat diet and are heavier, reveals a report in the January 7th issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication. The findings suggest that the 12 percent of people who carry the so-called Ala12 version of the gene that serves as a master controller of fat differentiation will be more sensitive than most to the amount of fat in their diets. (That fat-moderating...

For the first time in a decade, losing weight will NOT be one of my New Year's resolutions. The reason? After years of piling on the padding (and a few failed weight-loss attempts) I've lost 60 lbs. over the past four months. I've only blogged about diet once and did so hesitantly. But that two-year-old post is still getting consistent hits. Everybody is Googling for the silver bullet to shedding pounds. They think that there must be some secret diet, high-tech fitness equipment, or miracle pill that will finally give them health. As I said back then, fat people offer...

For this post, I compiled statistics on U.S. weight, health and lifestyle trends, and graphed them as consistently as possible. They span the period from 1970 to 2007, during which the obesity rate doubled. The data come from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Some of the graphs are incomplete, either because the data don't exist, or because I wasn't able to find them.

You drink diet soda, so you must be healthier. Right? That's what New York Gov. David Paterson is talking about with his proposal for an "obesity tax" — a 15 percent slap on non-diet sugary soft drinks. Think $1 for a Diet Coke, $1.15 for a Coke. There's just one problem: Studies have found links between drinking diet sodas and obesity and diabetes. A 2005 study at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, and separate studies released in 2007 at the University of Alberta in Canada and the University of Massachusetts found that diet soda drinkers were...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For people who have type 2 diabetes, a low-glycemic index diet is significantly better than a high-fiber diet for keeping blood glucose levels down, researchers report Glycemic index, or GI, refers to how rapidly a food causes blood sugar to rise. High-GI foods, like white bread and potatoes, tend to spur a quick surge in blood sugar, while low-GI foods, such as lentils, soybeans, yogurt and many high-fiber grains, produce a more gradual increase in blood sugar. The current study in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association involved 210 individuals with type 2...

A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health. The finding, published online Wednesday in the journal Cell, is from a group led by David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School. It is part of a growing effort by biologists to understand the sirtuins and other powerful agents...

By stressing the importance of a carbohydrate-based, low-fat diet, current U.S. dietary guidelines may have unexpectedly contributed to the current obesity epidemic, according to researchers. In accordance with national recommendations, Americans have slightly reduced their fat intake, wrote Dr. Paul Marantz of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and his coauthors. But their carbohydrate and total-calorie intakes have increased, along with the rate of national obesity (Am. J. Prev. Med. 2008;34:234–40). The observation is not enough to establish a causal link, but enough data exist to make at least an inference. “The hypothesis that dietary fat admonitions actually...

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2008) — Eating too much fructose can induce leptin resistance, a condition that can easily lead to becoming overweight when combined with a high-fat, high-calorie diet, according to a new study with rats. Although previous studies have shown that being leptin resistant can lead to rapid weight gain on a high-fat, high-calorie diet, this is the first study to show that leptin resistance can develop as a result of high fructose consumption. The study also showed for the first time that leptin resistance can develop silently, that is, with little indication that it is happening. The study...

It's more than just achy joints and arthritis, researchers sayDuring this year's baseball playoffs, Chicago White Sox outfielder Ken Griffey Jr., 38, threw a picture-perfect strike from center field to home plate to stop an opposing player from scoring. The White Sox ultimately won the game by a single run and clinched the division title. Had Griffey been 40, it could be argued, he might not have made the throw in time. That's because in middle age, we begin to lose myelin — the fatty sheath of "insulation" that coats our nerve axons and allows for fast signaling bursts in...

The Obama Diet — Not Just Arugula

As Ashley Barrett-Carter left Ryan Memolo's Army recruiting station after their first meeting more than a year ago, the staff sergeant thought, "I'll never see her again." Sgt. Memolo had encountered overweight applicants before, including some who dropped the pounds and returned to enlist. But those people exceeded the weight requirement by 20 or 30 pounds. Ms. Barrett-Carter needed to lose 100.

Vitamin 'may prevent memory loss' (Vitamin B12) A vitamin found in meat, fish and milk may help stave off memory loss in old age, a study has suggested. Older people with lower than average vitamin B12 levels were more than six times more likely to experience brain shrinkage, researchers concluded.

CHICAGO — Maybe you CAN blame being fat on your genes. But there's a way to overcome that family history — just get three to four hours of moderate activity a day. Sound pretty daunting? Not for the Amish of Lancaster County, Pa.