There was a lot of excitement when Splenda was first released on the market. But pretty soon, you can see the faults in the synthetic sweetener. Some even go so far as to call it toxic.

If our body takes in a manmade substance, it doesn’t know what to do with it. No matter what anyone says, it can’t be that good because our bodies don’t know how to get rid of it.

It is chlorinated sugar. Look at substances like Nutrasweet and Aspartame, which have been linked to everything from intestinal problems to brain tumors. You can find more information on Splenda and its effects at http://www.holisticmed.com/splenda.

One main reason Splenda is unhealthy is that it contains chloride. The thyroid hormone contains iodine. They are very close. The Splenda then interferes with the thyroid hormone function. Our bodies are then in trouble and it’s not really helping you lose weight.

If you want to lose weight try not to use artificial sweeteners or even weight loss products, which the FDA is now always warning us about. Instead, go to a natural diet of meat, fish, vegetables and purified, possibly distilled water.

Get rid of manmade wheat, dairy, and carbohydrates. Nothing but natural. Give up juice but do not give up fruit. The difference between fruit and juice is simple. The fibers in the piece of fruit that you eat stabilize the sugar. Juice doesn’t do the same thing, there is nothing to stabilize the sugar.

Don’t bother with Splenda, artificial sweeteners, or supplements. Instead, lose weight the way that nature intended. Visit our website at www.doctorkalitenko.com to find out how. We also have a great calorie counter on our site. Don’t forget to try it!

Obesity is a very well recognized cancer risk factor. This fact is a very powerful stimulant to lose weight. But can it be neutralized?  The only thing that needs to be done is to prove that it is not obesity that causes cancer, but something else.  Hard to do, but possible. And in my opinion, that is what a new study might be doing intentionally or unintentionally.  Take a look yourself.

According to the new study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on December 30, 2008, “Insulin, Insulin Like Growth Factor 1 and Risk of Breast Cancer in Postmenopausal Women,” it is not obesity itself, it is your high insulin level that causes cancer.  The conclusion is that we need to control insulin levels.

But how about weight? If it is all about insulin, then do we need to lose weight or not? The study states, that “this (obesity) association was attenuated by adjustment for insulin” http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/1/48.

The way that I interpret this study is to mean that if we watch our levels, we have no need to lose weight.  I don’t agree with this statement.

When does an obese woman have low insulin level? When the weight gain is not for a long time and her body is still sensitive to insulin, being able to bring its sugar down with less insulin.  But what happens when it is a long time, when her body gets too many calories? It loses its ability to respond properly to insulin and bring sugar down.  This is called insulin insensitivity and the result is a high insulin level.

The bottom line is that a high insulin level in an obese, postmenopausal woman might be the result of a long time of being obese, leading to increased cancer risk.  So you need to lose weight and change your lifestyle and not just watch your insulin level.

A new study suggests that increased breast size by the age of 20 may signify a higher risk for diabetes in mid-life. Data was gathered from Nurses Health Study 11 to show that the correlation does exist.

The relationship between breast size and diabetes can be explained as follows: too much fat might elevate the estrogen level, resulting in breast size increase.

Therefore the solution to the problem might be a hormonal level check.

And the first change that needs to take place is weight loss.

Food stimulates cortisol secretion by adrenals. Cortisol secretions are what help you fight stress and manage anxiety.

Therefore, if one has a low cortisol level because of adrenal fatigue secondary to chronic stress, he tends to eat more to bring cortisol up.

So, if you seem to be in a constant struggle, unable to lose weight even though you are diligently dieting, check your hormone levels.

Contemporary medical study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, the official journal of the International Society for Sexual Medicine, found that obesity is linked to low testosterone level, explaining erectile dysfunction.

But is obesity the reason of low hormones or low hormone levels are the cause of obesity? There is no answer for the question in the article. On on hand fat tissue transforms men’s main sex hormone testosterone into women’s main sex hormone estrogen, leading to erectile dysfunction. On the other hand low testosterone may lead to muscle mass drop and hence fat accumulation, leading to further testosterone drop. Which is the first and which is the second, I do not know. But from the practical standpoint weight loss is the most important thing to start with. Imagine that obesity is the primary cause of low testosterone, then weight loss is the primary goal. But even if low testosterone is the primary cause of obesity, then loosing weight will help to slow down the testosterone drop, helping with erectile dysfunction.

So let us benefit from the well known fact, that calorie restriction prolongs life. And helps with erectile disfunction too. May be sex can prolong your life!

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/134731.php

There is no doubt, that weight loss is very important for people with extra ponds to stay healthy. And any products to help achieve weight loss are potentially good money making machines. And that is what Hydroxycut was using to make money: people’s natural desire to stay healthy.But to what expense? For some to Hydroxycut customers the price was too high: liver damage, resulting in liver transplant on 2002 for example. Or jaundice, seizure or cardiovascular events. Or even death in 2007. Isn’t is too much?, resulting in liver transplant in 2002, why FDA is warning us now, in 2009?

What is means is the complete FDA failure to protect us, consumers. Government created FDA to ensure our safety, not to watch people suffering for at least 7 years then intervene.

What does it mean to us? That we must rely on our common sense, not on FDA: stay away from any artificial products including weight loss products, any kind of shakes, processed food etc.

Stick with “Paleolitic” diet using organic food, and you do not have to worry about safety.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/01/hydroxycut.fda.recall/

We all crave unconditional love, and while we may be in a satisfying relationship, we still would do everything possible to look attractive to our significant other. Why bother? Because you want to be in control.  It feels good to have your significant other look at you with desire.  It feels great to feel sexy.. However, feeling sexy may not come that easy especially if you need to lose some pounds. 

Have you ever been engaged in an intimate moment but have been unable to just let go because you’re being overly critical of yourself?  I think we have all been there and the result is the same: you don’t enjoy yourself as much.

Recently I’ve read an article in New England Journal of Medicine about obesity genes. Researchers have found so many of them! It was quite surprising to me. I was always under the impression that we gain weight because we eat too much.  Even with this research, I still believe so because it is not enough to just have those genes.  Having a genetic predisposition for a certain trait does not imply causality. Having these genes does not mean you have to become obese, it just means that you have the potential to be.  To be functional, these genes have to be activated by the environment. No modern society around – no obesity genes expressed.

Therefore to lose weight and look sexy you need to eat a cave’s men diet which includes:

• Meat
• Fish
• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Drinking distilled water

The premise of getting rid of carbohydrates is a difficult one, I know. But it has to be done.  Removing carbohydrates does not have to mean starvation and cravings.  The easiest way to do this is to eat nuts when you cannot tolerate hunger any more.  Try it out and please share with me your experiences, thoughts and suggestions.

Good luck!

It prevents a person from sleeping, working and relaxing. What is the most common cause of back pain? Too much excess weight! Think about it: the more pressure you put on your spine, the faster it breaks down.  It’s the same as your car: the more you use it, the faster it breaks down. So what needs to be done for back pain?

The first thing to do is to loose weight.  How? Eat natural food like meat, fish, vegetables and fruits, drinking distilled water. Isn’t it easy? And your weight will go down without heroic efforts.

The second thing to do is to check your hormone profile to make sure that pain and/or weight gain is not the result of a dysbalance. Remember: it is easily correctable.

The bottom line: for your back pain do you want to take pills and eventually have to go through risky surgery or do you want to correct it naturally?
back pain, lumbago, hormones

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Why? Because nobody likes dieting.  That is why everyone was very excited when a new anti obesity drug named Tesofensine appeared on the market. But what does this drug do?

Tesogfensine is a serotonine/noradrenaline/dopamine reuptake inhibitor.  In plain words this drug increases mediator’s concentration in our brain. Its mechanism of action looks similar to Prozac and other antidepressant medications. This reminds me of a very important fact – that the most of our serotonin is made in our gut.

From this, we can conclude the following: instead of taking another magic pill from the pharmaceutical company, you’re better of eating the right food and exercising to loose weight.  If you don’t want to do this, then you’re going to spend a lot of money for the pharmaceutical ’s sake!

Another important thing to remember is this: the long-term effects are unknown.  Chantix is an example of a drug that causes unwanted mood changes!

The bottom line: the natural approach to loosing weight is always better, pills? not always.

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According to the majority of experts we need to eat breakfast. Somebody even suggests, that breakfast should be the most important meal of the day. Remember: eat breakfast as a king, lunch as a prince, and dinner as a pauper. But when I tried to apply this to my weight loss program I found out that eating breakfast may be not a good idea. What I found was

in the morning my appetite achieves its peak. Therefore  if I eat breakfast, I either eat a lot, therefore ruining weight loss, or if I eat a little, I have to suffer from restraining myself. On the other hand by evening my appetite declines, so I eat less. Think about it: early men did not have any food for breakfast, so their appetite was up because they had to have an urge to look for food. So they had to search for a food for hours before they get any,  so they could eat their meal in the evening. By that time they did not need too much appetite, because food was available already.

Nowadays we have plenty of food, we can open a refrigerator and get something right away. Or we can got to fast food restaurant and order whatever we want. But if we eat in the morning, when out appetite is the greatest, we consume much more calories, then we are supposed to.

So what is the solution?

1.  Omit breakfast. I do it on the working days, because when I work, I forget about food.

2.  If you cannot skip breakfast, I eat fried or steamed vegetable with a little fat in it. The reason: vegetables distend the stomach, creating sense of satiety, fat, being the most powerful appetite suppressant, brings appetite down very well.

The bottom line is: I would suggest to skip breakfast, if possible. This idea cannot be applied to the patients with insulin insensitivity syndrome. If this is the case, then skipping breakfast may be much easier, but their problem is evening meal.

If anybody has any ideas or suggestions, please share with us.
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According to common sense to loose weight you need to consume less calories. Therefore it was proposed to cut down on fat because it contains a lot of calories. Therefore low fat foods were created. However the results of consuming low fat food were disappointing. Therefore they came up with another idea: low carb diet. The result? Which approach is better?

The study from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, done on 322 volunteers, show that people who eat low carbs or Mediterranean diet loose more weight and get more benefits for their heats. The explanations of this fact may be as follows:

1.  Low fat food may be bulked up with starch.

2.  Starch causes blood sugar and hence insulin swings, resulting in appetite increase.  Same as low nicotine cigarettes: less nicotine, but more cigarettes taken.

Any other comments, ideas or explanations?

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There are few proven ways to prolong life. The most important one is calorie restriction.  Calorie restriction is the cornerstone in anti aging. How do you reduce calorie intake? Portion control!

But, it is much easier to say than to do. And also, how do we learn to stop eating when there is food is still on the plate, but you are already full? There is another easy way to do it.

There are many ways to control the portion. The traditional way: do not put too much food on the plate. But how do you do it if you are alone and there is nobody to monitor you and you are hungry?

What I suggest is to plan the calorie distribution of your meal. It is very easy: carefully plan the energy rich part, like meat, making sure, that it is no more than 1 or 2 servings (50 — 100 g). But the rest of the meal, which does not contain too many calories, like broccoli or bok choy, can be the largest part of the meal.

And in this case if you stop eating when you are full — OK. But, if not — you do not need to stop, because calorie consumption would be minimal anyway. Isn’t it simple?

A few days ago I decided to eat a steak for Saturday dinner. It was about 200 g., or about 7 ounces. Very tasty! However, I only ate about the half of the steak! I couldn’t finish it because I was full. I couldn’t believe it! A few years ago I would eat the whole steak with a side dish and asked for more.

At that time I was also overweight. But now I’m ok. What happened to me? What happened to my appetite? What happened to my stomach? In my opinion the secret of weight loss is daily meal planning to avoid processed food.

I believe that the worst thing in the world for our health is processed food. I’ve eliminated it and now I do not have to worry about eating too much, about portion control, etc.  My patients and I found out that the hardest part is the daytime, because when we are at work we eat what is readily available — junk food.  Daily meal planning can solve this problem. What I do for myself is I plan my morning and daytime meals in advance. For example I decide to eat apples in the morning and oranges for lunch. So before going to work I make sure that I have apples and oranges available, as well as plenty of water. Or I decide that for breakfast I’ll have strawberries and for lunch I’ll eat pears. So I make sure, that strawberries and pears are in my refrigerator. Dinner is easy to plan too: salad and meat or fish. Sometimes I will add 1 or 2 tablespoons of brown rice, or broccoli, or cabbage.

Because there are no carbohydrates, there is no constant hunger. Of course sometimes I’m hungry, but not that much. The secret is daily meal planning. Just make sure, that you have fruit with you. Do not forget water. And do not worry about weigh loss!

It is not a secret that obesity may be a risk factor for cancer. There are multiple explanations for this. Some people say that obesity is creating inflammation, therefore promoting cell transition into cancer cells. Some people think that fat is taking too much of the vitamin D, reducing our natural defense from cancer.

Apparently we may get another clue how obesity hurts our body. For me the news was quite unexpected: Pfizer’s new drug was linked to lung cancer. Guess what drug it is?

It’s the new inhaled insulin Exubera. And no one knows yet how it specifically promotes cancer, but there are studies that suggest the link between insulin and aging. Does insulin alter our immune defense? Is insulin promoting cancerogenesis? At this time there no answers. Maybe it is not insulin itself?

I think we need more studies about insulin and cancer as well as insulin and aging.  My guess is: the more we weigh, the more insulin we produce.  The more obese we are, the higher our chances are to get cancer. Therefore Insulin itself might be the problem.

Bottom line:  want to live longer? Lose weight!

Recently, I saw a patient who was suffering from multiple medical problems. One of them and perhaps the most important problem was obesity. And my patient understands this. But when I reminded him about weight loss, he said that he cannot eat the right food because of the simple and obvious reason: he did not have time to get what he needed.  He was too busy to eat right, to buy the right foods and to cook healthy fresh meals.

We all understand this. I’m sure we all have used this excuse before as well. Being busy is the part of our lives. So what has to be done?

Do you know that good planning prevents poor performance? I think this is the key: planning! Not once in a while, but daily meal planning. What I do for myself: in the morning before eating my morning fruits and supplements with plenty of water, I plan my lunch, evening meal and next morning fruit meal to figure out what needs to be bought at the food or grocery store.

Usually in my daily meal planning I write the list of fruits, vegetables, meat, fish or chicken. And I try to buy the food before work. If I cannot do it in the morning, I do my daily meal planning in the evening and buy food before coming home from work. As soon as planning is done and food is brought from the store I am guaranteed that I get the right food. Usually in the daytime I eat fruit and drink pure water, which is easy to do and does not require preparation.

And even though this is time consuming, the evening meal has to be prepared at home to make sure that there is no processed food and no food additives like monosodium glutamate. I also use calorie calculation to plan the meals and the multiply it by 2 to make sure that I do not get too many calories. But it is optional.

That is how I do my daily meal planning. You’ll see, that even without excessively planning or watching your calorie intake, you will be much healthier. You’ll save money since you won’t be buying as much junk, you’ll feel good that you prepared a healthy meal, that you are prepared for the day, and you’ll have a newfound energy.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding daily meal planning please let me know.

In my understanding ther are 3 major causes of increased appetite

1. Chemicals in our food, e.g. MSG — monosodium glutamate.

2. Change in food form, e.g. flower: because of milling absorbtion surface goes up dramatically, resulting in abnormally high blood sugar, therefore too high insulin level, then too low blood sugar, causing food craving. Same applies to cookies!

3. Food we are not created to eat, e.g. milk or juices.

Is obesity our own fault? I don’t think so! Because I can hardly recall seeing any advertising, promoting broccoli or fresh fish. However there are plenty of processed food commertials and promotions: juices, cookies etc..

Bottom line: avoid processed food! Good stuff is in the periphery of a food market!

Sagging skin is a common condition for those who lose a lot of weight. We have all seen the tabloids at one time or another that show something who’s lost over a hundred pounds, and is now holding their sagging skin in front of them. For those of us who have lost it and pout it back on, we know that it’s not always so easy to snap back as we age.

And many people are afraid of the weight loss showing in their face, particularly with sagging cheeks. A thread lift, which pulls the skin up is a great solution for this.

Thread lifts cost less and require less downtime for many people and are sometimes referred to as the lunchtime lift, since they only take an hour or so to perform.

In order to lose weight you have to be hungry all the time, right? Actually, not at all. Though portion control can often cause bouts of hunger at certain times of the day, a steady, healthy diet will result in feeling full and losing weight. The key isn’t just counting calories and fat, it about choosing foods that will fill you up and fuel you longer. One reason for feeling too hungry when you’re watching your calorie intake is eating too much food with a high glycemic index. If a dieter eats simple sugars like cookies or starchy food like mashed potatoes, their sugar goes up too fast resulting in high insulin levels. The result of high insulin level is a subsequent low blood sugar level, which results in hunger.

The solution is to eat foods with a low glycemic index like meat, beans, vegetables, eggs, cottage cheese etc. You can learn to eat right again and choose foods that will keep you on track.

Fatigue and daytime sleepiness can be caused by sleep apnea syndrome, which is common in obese people.

Sleep apnea syndrome, which is airway obstruction during sleep resulting in ineffective sleep and frequent awakening, is a lifelong and complicated condition. The most common way of treating it is the use of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, which keeps the airway open during sleep by means of a flow of pressurized air into the throat.

Because of the sleep deprivation associated with the illness, such people are tired since morning and need an afternoon nap. The solution is to lose weight, with the right diet and right natural treatments for a longer and healthier life.

It is easier to look and feel younger than the average person thinks. Changes in your diet, in your vitamins, and being aware of the causes of your illnesses, rather than just the medications to keep them at bay, are important. Know your body, and take care of it.