You may have seen this one before, but I wanted to share:
There is no treatment or drug which can overcome or negate the effects of a poor diet, inadequate nutrition,lack of exercise, and an unhealthy lifestyle. – David Getoffv
I love that quote! So get motivated and work on one of those areas today!
I came across some very disturbing facts related to childhood obesity and figured I would share them in hopes of jolting a parent or two into putting more effort and care into what they feed their children. This includes any adults who have contact with children, parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends, etc.
Please don’t be the favorite grandmother that even on occasion gives your grandchildren non-food garbage with the message that it is alright because it is from Grandma! What a horrible message to send, food and love should never be in the same message to any child, especially from adults they love and trust.
Use your position as a loved and trusted adult to teach GOOD habits! What a better world it would be if we all did this. And remember we are our children’s best example… what obesity message are you sending to the kids around you?
1. Childhood diabetes have increased 10 fold during the last 20 years.
2. Childhood obesity has increased nearly 3 fold in the last 25 years.
3. Amount that one additional soft drink per day increases a child’s risk for obesity: 60%
4. Increase in per capita consumption of soft drinks, 1950′s to today :500%
5. Percentage of school districts that have contracts with soft drink companies, allowing them to sell soft drinks on school property: 50%
6. Number of food ads viewed by the average child each year: 10,000
7. Estimated annual amount spent on food advertising aimed at US children: 10 billion
8. percentage of these that advertise fast food, soft drinks, candy, or sugared cereal: 95%
9. Increase in risk for childhood obesity per hour of daily television viewing: 12%
10. Annual direct cost of obesity to the American economy: $70 billion!
Source: Dream Magazine, Winter 2004, Published by Children’s Hospital Boston
According to a report in the January 19 issue of BMJ, pharmaceutical companies exaggerate the benefits of osteoporosis drugs, and downplay the risks of prescribing osteoporosis drugs for women whose bones appear to be slightly weakened (a condition called osteopenia).
The report suggests that pharmaceutical companies are pushing for women with osteopenia to take the same drugs that women with osteoporosis are being prescribed; the problem with this scenario is that women with osteopenia have such a low risk of experiencing fractures that taking osteoporosis drugs would provide almost no benefit.
If this scenario sounds familiar to you, it’s because this theme – trying to create medical standards of practice that would have relatively healthy people take prescription medication – permeates the entire conventional medical industry, courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry.
Consider that osteopenia is thought to affect almost half of older women, and it’s clear that the pharmaceutical industry has a lot to gain by promoting osteoporosis drug use by women with osteopenia.
Risks of Taking Osteoporosis Drugs
Just this month, researchers at the University of British Columbia and McGill University issued a warning on a class of osteoporosis drugs (bisphosphonates) taken by millions of women around the world that can lead to bone necrosis, a painful and disfiguring condition. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also issued an alert on bisphosphonates, including alendronate and risedronate, warning that these medications can cause severe bone pain.
Natural Ways to Prevent Osteoporosis
Hopefully, this article has convinced you that osteoporosis drugs should not be taken without careful consideration of the many effects that they can have on your physiology.
If you are concerned about osteopenia or osteoporosis, and want to do your best to prevent or address these health challenges through natural means, I hope that you find the following suggestions to be helpful.
1. Be physically active.
No other facet of your life has greater impact on the health of your bones.
If you are physically active, your body will work to make your bones as strong and flexible as possible. If you lead a relatively sedentary lifestyle, your body will not work to produce and maintain strong bones since your lifestyle is not signaling a need for such bones.
2. Eat mineral-rich foods on a regular basis.
Your body needs much more than calcium supplements to build and maintain healthy bones. When you consider that your bones are comprised of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, manganese, zinc, iron, silica, and many other trace minerals, it should be clear that eating mineral-rich foods is far superior to taking calcium-based supplements when it comes to providing comprehensive nourishment for your bones.
Green vegetables and herbs are the healthiest, mineral-rich foods that you can eat. If you want to ensure that you are actually getting the minerals in green vegetables and herbs into your bloodstream to become available to your bones and other organs, chew these plants thoroughly. Thorough chewing helps to ensure that the protective cell walls that surround all plant cells are sufficiently broken to allow your body to have access to the many minerals contained within those cells.
Drinking freshly pressed vegetable juices and well blended green smoothies are other ways of ensuring that you actually get the minerals in green vegetables and herbs into your bloodstream.
Use of high quality super green food powders can also help to provide your bloodstream and bones with a rich supply of minerals.
3. Consider drinking mineral-rich broths on a regular basis.
Broths that are made by simmering bones and a variety of vegetables for an hour or longer are a fantastic source of calcium and other minerals that can be used to keep your bones strong and flexible.
Mineral-rich broths are a chief source of dietary calcium in East Asian countries like Korea, China, and Japan, where many people are unable to fully digest dairy products. These broths take significant time and effort to make on a regular basis, but they are worth the effort of making, as they provide almost instant nourishment to your bones and other organs.
4. Ensure adequate vitamin D status.
Adequate amounts of vitamin D must be present in your body for calcium in your foods to be optimally absorbed and used.
When the weather is warm and sunlight is readily present, the best way to ensure adequate vitamin D status is to expose your skin to sunlight on a regular basis without getting burned. Sunlight acts on cholesterol found in your skin to produce vitamin D. Your body knows to stop producing vitamin D in this fashion when you have built up an adequate level. Keep in mind that use of a sunscreen with an SPF of 8 or higher can prevent sunlight from acting on cholesterol in your skin to produce vitamin D.
When the weather is cool, and sunlight is not readily available, the best way to ensure adequate vitamin D status is to regularly eat one or more foods that are naturally rich in vitamin D. Different varieties of fish like wild salmon and sardines are good food sources of natural vitamin D. High quality cod liver oil is another good food source of natural vitamin D.
5. Eat high quality fats and cholesterol.
Consumption of high quality fats optimizes the absorption of vitamins A and D into your bloodstream. Vitamin A is needed to keep your intestinal lining healthy and readily able to absorb minerals in the foods that you eat. For these reasons, it’s virtually impossible to have optimally healthy bones and teeth without including healthy fats in your diet.
Here are some examples of foods that are rich in healthy fats:
Healthy cholesterol is also needed for a healthy intestinal lining that is able to optimally absorb minerals into your bloodstream. Healthy dietary cholesterol can help to ensure adequate cholesterol status in your system so that sunlight has enough cholesterol to act on to produce vitamin D. While your body is capable of producing cholesterol from other nutrients, it makes sense to ensure adequate cholesterol levels via intake of healthy cholesterol.
6. Learn how to effectively manage emotional stress.
Chronic emotional stress can elevate the level of cortisol in your blood. Cortisol is useful for combating stress, but if it remains elevated in your system over the long term, it can cause the matrix of your bones to weaken. Corticosteroid drugs can also weaken your bones and cause osteoporosis if used in large quantities and/or over the long term.
7. Avoid regular consumption of foods that may cause your bones to lose calcium.
Acid-forming foods are foods that bring the pH of your blood down. You cannot survive if the pH of your blood moves outside a very narrow range (7.35 to 7.45), so your body must buffer the effects of acid-forming foods to maintain a healthy blood pH level. One of the main ways in which your body buffers acid-forming foods is to take calcium from your bones and use it to neutralize the remnants of acid-forming foods. If your body is repeatedly forced to do this, your bones may be weakened.
Foods that are strongly acid-forming in your blood and should not be staples in your diet include:
8. Regularly eat foods that are rich in vitamin C.
Collagen is a long, fibrous protein that is critical to providing your bones with tensile strength. In short, the more quality collagen that you have in your bones, the more physical stress that your bones can tolerate before breaking.
Your body needs vitamin C to synthesize collagen. Please note that there is a big difference between the full vitamin C complex found in real foods and synthetic forms of vitamin C found in many nutritional supplements. Some excellent food sources of real vitamin C are:
By Dr. Ben Kim on January 20, 2008
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