Food as Medicine Infographic from Dr John La Puma
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Aug30
Stay Healthy with Food as Medicine (Infographic)
Posted in: Media, Wellness and Health, Wine and Tea
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Mar18
No, it’s not hype. It’s science.
I gave a talk on “Manly Dieting” to the National Wellness Association at #IHRSA in LA on Culinary Medicine and Manly Dieting this week, and was overwhelmed with the response: 10% of the audience spoke with me afterwards, to ask if they could be in my beta test for men (and bring 9 other men), which we plan to run online later this year. I loved it, and plan to include them. Meanwhile:
1. Walnuts (not drive but performance).
Especially after a fatty (read salami and cheese) meal: walnuts keep your arteries from constricting in response and responding abnormally to exercise and exertion. Walnuts are also high in the amino acid arginine, which you need to make nitric oxide, to keep arteries flexible, and improve your blood flow.
Dosage: 8 walnuts, with your meal, 4 hours before sex. Take with Viagra/Cialis/Levitra, or instead.
b. Beans, legumes and seeds, especially kidney beans, peanuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
These foods are richest in arginine, an amino acid which precedes nitric oxide in the body. And nitric oxide allow vessels to dilate.
An excellent study showed that a supplement high in arginine improved female desire, satisfaction and frequency of sex, regardless of menopausal status. Note: watermelon, which generates arginine indirectly, probably only makes you pee more.
c. Mediterranean foods, if you have a big belly and metabolic syndrome. The diet works to help you burn belly (visceral) fat…which blocks insulin so you store more fat, squeeze your kidney and poison your liver. If you’re a guy, you should know that belly fat turns the testosterone your testes make into estrogen. And drops your ability to make muscle, get lean and strong, and other drops.
The Mediterranean diet as a whole helps women with metabolic syndrome have better sex: better overall desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, pain.
It also helps men overcome erectile dysfunction (ED), also known as impotence. One-third of obese men with ED cure their disease after 2 years of a Mediterranean-style diet and exercise.
Dosage: It’s a meal! Three times daily.
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Mar23
Statins, Leg Pain and Cholesterol: Foodie Alternatives
Posted in: Common Conditions, High Cholesterol, Wellness and Health
The March 19 2010FDA Warning about Zocor, a statin medication causing myopathy, and rare rhabdomyolysis, makes me think about other ways people who love food can lower their cholesterol too.
The simple story is this: eating food with cholesterol in it doesn’t raise your cholesterol level, very much. It’s foods (red meat, cheese) with solid fats (saturated and trans) and for some people, highly processed foods with starches and sugars.
The NY Times’ Tara Parker Pope‘s smart “Eating Your Way to Lower Cholesterol” has great tips (see #24 and #61) as does the WSJ’s Tom Burton’s now famous “A Reporter Eats His Way to Lower Cholesterol.”
The foodie story? Foods rich in soluble fiber (barley, oats, beans, lentils) lower LDL cholesterol: up to 50 grams daily has an effect: beyond that, not.
Flax meal has an important effect: up to 2 tablespoons twice daily. Omega-3 fatty acids raise HDL (healthy cholesterol), as does alcohol–one drink for women, and two for men.Eat an ounce and a half of nuts daily instead of carbs like crackers/chips. Try stanol/sterol margarines instead of butter and sour cream. Add green or black tea. Consider cinnamon.
In the supplement world, look at lecithin and psyllium.
None of these cause leg pain, cost hundreds of dollars per month, or necessitate remembering to take your pills. And they can taste much better!
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Jan19
When Food as Medicine Grand Rounds appeared 3 years ago, it was a toddler, pulsing with Inspiration and Experimentation.
Now, it’s skipped adolescence and it’s going to Washington! But as Jake Sully notes: “…all energy is borrowed; at some point you have to return it.”
Weight Loss
@precordialthump unveils his Utopian College of Emergency for Medicine (UCEM) regimen for combating post-Christmas corpulence: ME (more exercise) and ELF (eat less food). Actually, EDF (E Different F).Healthline’s Nancy Brown dissects the data: a medium movie popcorn and soda gives 1610 calories and 60 grams saturated fat. BYO, please…a theme for 2010.
Chef Paul Lynch cooked a week’s meals for diabetic Mrs. Ippolito in an Oldways Whole Grains Makeover for a Grand Prize Winner. No doubt a break from higher GL carbs.
DiabetesMine offers much needed relief from the “daily manual pancreas” with an artificial pancreas, which is one way around all those Cheetos.
And then there are adolescent females with Type-1 diabetes who have a two to four-fold higher incidence of eating disorders. Insulin omission is their weight loss MOA. Scholarly Terri Schmitt shows us why.
Contrast that with MedLibLog’s touching food-for-thought post on childhood obesity, and the proper role of unsaturated fat in food.
Money
David Williams’ Business Blog smartly dissects the Cookie Diet (and its reported $18m 2008 revenues).Henry Stern can’t believe that you can donate blood and get beer, and wonders if pot (brownies?) is next.
Reason sees low-methionine foods as both key to longevity and a potential pot of gold. That’s lots of peppers and berries, btw. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Pleasure
Fitness Fixer’s Dr Bookspan, bless her heart, takes pleasure in the rhythm of cooking and giving and gardening.Theresa at thefoodhunter finds literal calf strength in learning to cook local, better than any trainer. You go girl.
Dr Bates’ personal trainer is loyal, handsome and photogenic. Yours can be too.
Eve Harris manages to tie together Food TV’s Alton Brown’s volitional weight loss and integrative oncology in a healthy piece of her mind. Wish there were more…she really gets it.
Reform
With photos of Martha Stewart and Dan Barber in the open air of a New York summer event, Eddie C’s beautiful story going from food activist to a prestigious botanical institution shows where reform could head. Grow more of your own. Get sick less.That poetry is complemented by Medical Whistleblower and his smart and funny Health Care Reform Reformed Christmas Carol in Rhyme.
Colorado health insurance insider (the only U.S. state <19% obesity) states: “the main reason health insurance premia are out of control: we’re too fat and we overuse our healthcare system.” Ouch. Off the couch!
Each TV hour watched increases the CVD death rate by 18%, according to Happy Hospitalist. Watching, not being on:). Though as hard as Dr Oz is working, I wonder.
Barb at Florencedotcom suggests viewing the well-referenced AHRQ Patient Safety site.
But where are food allergens, chemical contaminants (no BPA, via ChefMD’s blog) in hospital food, no cheeseburgers after bypass, and soda as off-limits for pediatric patients? Food as medical error is not on the safety radar. Yet.
Follow Dr Gawande: his last New Yorker piece was about farming. And food.
N.b. I liked other submissions too, though they were not about food: the heroicism of clinicians volunteering in Haiti (Inside Surgery); docs leaving medicine (Dr Gwenn); fighting tamponade (with dayglo photos) from Bongi; social media in Aussie hospitals from @sandnsurf; the musings of distractible internist Dr Rob; and epinephrine auto-injectors from AllergyNotes.
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Jan11
http://drjohnlapuma.com will host Grand Rounds early early a.m. on Tuesday, January 19, 2010; the deadline for blog submission is Sunday January 17, 2010 at 3 p.m. PST.
A weekly synthesis of the best posts from the medical blogosphere, Grand Rounds is a convergence of top health-conscious bloggers. You don’t have to be a clinician! Grand Rounds owes huge props to founder Dr. Nicholas Genes and pioneer Dr. Val, who also details rules and FAQs on her site.
Like the first Grand Rounds on Food and Diet and its bite-size Medscape Pre-Rounds on the add-careers-instead-of-change-them approach, this fest promises to be tasty, with a line out the door.
I hope it will be a Korean taco truck, full of street food flavor and feeling. With a lot of napkins. Meanwhile, check out DrRich’s Grand Rounds this week.
Theme: food and diet as Information, Inspiration, Joy, Compassion, Treatment, Reassurance and Cure. In short, as health care. Michael Pollan is pitching his new “Food Rules” as a completely different approach to health care. Can food be health care?
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Michael Pollan To contribute, please send me an e-mail to /grandrounds /at /drlapuma.com with your blogger name, *post name*, post URL, and a one line pithy yet juicy description of your post. Please put your *post name* in the subject line.
Want to host? Dr. Anonymous, Emergiblog and Kevin.MD all show how to host, add value and have fun.
