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  • Jun7

    Personal Food Revolution #7: Reverse Diabetes with What You Eat…Out

    Posted in: Common Conditions, Wellness and Health

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #7 of 7.*

    Carol has diabetes. She is 48 years old, the mother of two and a successful Washington litigator. She does not know what to eat at the dinner she must attend tonight.

    She eats out ten times weekly, usually orders chicken Caesar salad, and snacks on cheese, chocolate and energy bars. She often eats the last of her Taco Bell in the front seat of her car before going in for the night.

    I tell her that she can beat insulin resistance, which is causing her out of control diabetes. But she has to treat her disease like her best client–conscientiously.

    She is to avoid red and processed meat for 12 weeks: the heme iron increases diabetes risk. Ditto, any food with the words High Fructose or Enriched Flour or Sugar or Rice or Corn Syrup on the package.

    Tonight, like every night out, she should have two dinner salads with good vinaigrette over 20 minutes with good fish or lean poultry, and drink hot cinnamon tea afterwards. She should pack almonds, high protein cereal, tea bags and string cheese when she travels.

    Carol liked knowing what to eat, and practiced it, a lot, with coaching. She now teaches water aerobics in Virginia.

    *adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.

     

  • May24

    Personal Food Revolution #5: Eat Your Way to Lower Cholesterol

    Posted in: Common Conditions, High Cholesterol

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #5 of 7.*

    Tom’s case was a quandary: a Pulitzer-winning health reporter, he already exercised diligently, running about four miles most days. He had long ago given up meat and most cheese. Yet his LDL (bad) cholesterol was 169, way above the recommended 130 and an optimal 100.

    A single Dad, Tom’s two teenagers had grown accustomed to a stick of butter in their weekend Slow Roasted Hen.

    So I worked with Tom to add multiple terrific dishes to their eating cycle. There was a Turkish eggplant recipe, and white beans with escarole and tomato.

    His internist was astonished. His LDL dropped 33% to an acceptable 114; his healthy HDL cholesterol was up to 75.

    Apart from not spending his own and his employer’s money on drugs, Tom found another benefit to this program.

    His daughter regularly makes steel cut oatmeal for breakfast and enjoys split pea/carrot soup with tarragon, nutmeg and barley. And his son’s special request for dinner this past Saturday was grilled salmon with honey-mustard marinade.

    You can’t get that with a pill.

    *adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.
    **adapted from the Wall Street Journal report on lowering cholesterol, by Tom Burton.

    N.B. investigate top Amazon.com diet and nutrition alternatives to cholesterol medication

     

  • May17

    Personal Food Revolution #4: Tired, Gassy and Moody? Could It Be Gluten?

    Posted in: Common Conditions, Wellness and Health

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #4 of 7.*

    Terri is a 38 year old who traces her tummy problems back to high school. She has had off and on again fatigue, cramping, gas, bloating and mood swings. She has seen 11 doctors, and been told she is a “diagnostic dilemma” and has “atypical bowel syndrome.”

    Terry has celiac disease, an auto-immune reaction to gluten. Celiac is caused by—and can be cured by—what you eat.

    Gluten is a protein in wheat, rye and barley but is often hidden. Spelt and triticale have wheat, millet does not. Most blue cheese and soy sauce are off limits.

    The medicine? Savory, gorgeous gluten-free pasta, nuts, vegetables, meats, seasonings and even beer. They can heal and reverse insomnia, depression and osteoporosis in people with celiac disease.

    Terri re-discovered cooking and began to cure herself.

    She filled herself with the best ingredients—for her. Food became a joy, because she tasted it fully and didn’t overeat. And it changed her life.

    Off gluten, she felt better than she had in 40 years. She gained muscle strength, dropping to a size 8.

    Terri’s case inspired Gluten Free Quiz (www.glutenfreequiz.com) a free self-assessment of your risk for celiac disease.

    *adapted from my ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.

     

  • May14

    Personal Food Revolution #3: Eat Your Breakfast, Skip Your Migraine

    Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, Common Conditions, Environmental Health, Wellness and Health

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #3 of 7.*

    Mary C. is a 29 year-old Houston mediator with migraines. A poster child for tyramine-rich olives, nuts and pepperoni, she also had brie on English Muffins for breakfast. She downed a six pack of Diet Dr. Pepper or Diet Coke every week, usually at her desk, and beer on weekends. She regularly went a whole day without eating.

    There were several factors that could trigger her migraines—skipping meals, stress, artificial sweeteners, beer, the tyramine in her food.

    The best way to find out which was her trigger would be to correct all of these, and add them back one at a time. Mary didn’t want to do that, at all.

    But she did decide not to skip meals after she learned that is the most common trigger of all. She tried several high-iron cereals (Total and Product 19) for snacks, instead of olives and nuts. And wherever she went she packed her “migraine snack”: toasted pumpkin seeds, which are high in magnesium, which lowers the frequency of migraines.

    She’s cutting back on the diet soda and the beer, but since she’s not had one more headache, she says she might stay just where she is on the beverages.

    *adapted from my ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.

     

  • May6

    Personal Food Revolution #2: Are You Overweight, Never Hungry and at Risk For Stroke?

    Posted in: Common Conditions, Obesity and Weight Loss

    One of the best ways to help people transform their lives and create their own food revolution is to write my patients’ stories: this is #2 of 7.*

    Susan was just 50 when her younger brother Bill died of a stroke. Always significantly overweight, she nevertheless was healthy. She felt energetic, took no medicines, ran a small textile business (“love fabric”), avoided doctors (“no need, unless you’re sick”). But Bill’s death moved her like nothing else, until at 51, she had a TIA.

    Susan was a very picky eater: raised on corn casserole and peanut brittle, she kept to those foods. She had trouble changing her eating habits because she did not actually feel hunger. So she learned to stop eating when the plate was 80 percent empty.

    She also promised to begin to eat six fruits and vegetables daily, especially high folate (vitamin B9) ones, because folate in food cuts stroke risk.

    She chose one citrus fruit (tangerines), one vitamin C rich veggie (she chose red peppers), one green leafy (spinach), and three cruciferous (Brussels sprouts, watercress, broccoli) veggies. Her risk just dropped 55 percent, I told her.

    After four years, 72 pounds, three changes of wardrobe, two years off cigarettes, a new kitchen and one more scary TIA, Susan is still stroke free…and walking 20 blocks daily in Manhattan as a textile buyer for a major department store.

    *adapted from ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine.

     
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