| Beets Beat Hypertension Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, congestive heart failure, and kidney disease. It is a condition in which blood pressure in the blood vessels becomes elevated. When the heart beats, it pumps blood through the arteries. Blood pressure is the force of blood that is pushing against the walls of your arteries. If your blood pressure is too high, the heart works harder to pump blood, which could lead to organ damage and several other complications such as heart attack, stroke, or heart failure.
Hypertension occurs when the pressure inside the blood vessels is too high. When your heart pumps, it sends blood out through the arteries. The force of your blood pushing against the walls of your arteries causes pressure. Every time your heart beats, it forces more blood into the arteries, causing the pressure to rise. Between beats, when the heart is resting, the pressure lowers.
Blood pressure is measured by health professionals by inflating a cuff with air around the upper arm and then listening to the blood flow as the cuff deflates. A normal blood pressure reading is below 120 mm Hg Systolic and 80 mm Hg Diastolic, which is written as 120/80. A high blood pressure is a reading of 140/90 or higher.
Recent research published online in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association suggests that drinking beet juice can lower high blood pressure. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London found that blood pressure was lower within a 24 hour period in people who took nitrate tablets, and those who drank beet juice. The nitrate content found within the beetroot juice had been found to be the main underlying cause of its blood pressure lowering ability.
The study’s author Amrita Ahluwalia stated that they were able to demonstrate that the nitrate found in beetroot juice was the cause of its beneficial effects upon cardiovascular health by increasing the levels of the gas nitric oxide in the circulation. Ahluwalia said, “We showed that beetroot and nitrate capsules are equally effective in lowering blood pressure indicating that it is the nitrate content of beetroot juice that underlies its potential to reduce blood pressure. We also found that only a small amount of juice is needed - just 250 ml - to have this effect, and that the higher the blood pressure at the start of the study the greater the decrease caused by the nitrate.”
This study has shown that there are ways to lower your blood pressure that are safe, natural, and effective. So if you are looking for a way to get your blood pressure under control then look no further, several of your favorite Wholefood Farmacy Beverages contain beets such as BeautiPhi, FructiPhi, GloriPhi, and Farmacy Pro Power. Understanding Type 2 Diabetes
Rates of Type 2 (Adult Onset) Diabetes is skyrocketing in our society. 18 million Americans are now stricken with Type 2 Diabetes, 20% of those over age 65 have it and 1 in 3 who have it don’t even know they have it. In addition, this difficult chronic disease is now showing up in young adults and even in school age children. The good news is that 90% of cases are PREVENTABLE.
Prevention starts with understanding the cause. When a healthy person eats a meal, the body converts carbohydrates into blood sugar. The brain recognizes the rise in blood sugar levels and signals the pancreas to produce insulin. Insulin is a chemical messenger that rings the “dinner bell” telling all 10 trillion cells in the body to come and feed on the blood sugar. As the cells feed on the blood sugar, the blood sugar levels come back down. This is how it’s supposed to work.
Carbohydrates come in two forms natural (complex) and man-made (simple). The man-made carbs are found in processed foods such as white table sugar, candy, sodas, high fructose corn syrup, and white bread. Eating man-made carbs causes sudden, unusually high and sustained spikes in your blood sugar levels. This constant over-stimulation of the pancreas, year after year after year, causes your -internal machinery- to wear out prematurely. In some cases, the pancreas gets tired and can’t produce enough insulin. In other cases, the “dinner bell” rings so often that the cells get tired of hearing it, and stop running to get their blood sugar. Either way, when this happens, the health care industry declares that you have Type 2 Diabetes. And yes, for only a few hundred bucks a month for testing supplies and medication, they can keep you alive.
Natural sugars, like the sugars found whole foods, are known as complex carbs. They do not cause those sudden and sustained spikes in your blood sugar levels, so your “internal machinery” can last a lifetime. It really is that simple.
The first step to preventing diabetes is to know your risk. The Washington University School of Medicine offers a comprehensive risk assessment tool on their website. We encourage you to click the link below and take the test it only takes a few minutes. Click Here!
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, making a few changes can dramatically lower your chances of developing Type 2 Diabetes. The same changes can also lower the chances of developing heart disease and some cancers.
Control your weight. Excess weight is the single most important cause of Type 2 Diabetes. Being overweight increases the chances of developing Type 2 Diabetes seven-fold. Being obese makes you 20 to 40 times more likely to develop diabetes than someone with a healthy weight.
Losing weight can help if your weight is above the healthy-weight range. Losing 7-10% of your current weight can cut in half your chances of developing Type 2 Diabetes.
Get moving . Inactivity promotes Type 2 Diabetes. Every two hours you spend watching TV instead of pursuing something more active increases the changes of developing diabetes by 14%. Working your muscles more often and making them work harder improves their ability to use insulin and absorb glucose. This puts less stress on your insulin-making machinery.
Long bouts of hot, sweaty exercise aren't necessary to reap this benefit. Findings from the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study suggest that walking briskly for a half hour every day reduces the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes by 30%.
This amount of exercise has a variety of other benefits as well. And even greater cardiovascular and other benefits can be attained by more, and more intense, exercise.
Tune-up your diet . Two dietary changes can have a big impact on the risk of Type 2 Diabetes.
- Choose whole grains and whole-grain products over highly processed carbohydrates . In other words, choose whole foods instead of processed foods.
- Choose good fats instead of bad fats . The types of fats in your diet can also affect the development of diabetes. Good fats, such as the polyunsaturated fats found in tuna, salmon, liquid vegetable oils, and many nuts, can help ward off Type 2 Diabetes. Trans fats do just the opposite. These bad fats are found in many margarines, packaged baked goods, fried foods in most fast-food restaurants, and any product that lists "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" on the label. If you already have diabetes, eating fish can help protect you against a heart attack or dying from heart disease.
If you smoke, try to quit. Add Type 2 Diabetes to the long list of health problems linked with smoking. Smokers are 50% to 90% more likely to develop diabetes than nonsmokers.
Alcohol now and then may help . A growing body of evidence links moderate alcohol consumption with reduced risks of heart disease. The same may be true for Type 2 Diabetes. Moderate amounts of alcohol-a drink a day for men, a drink every other day for women-increases the efficiency of insulin at getting glucose inside cells. And some studies indicate that moderate alcohol consumption decreases the risk of Type 2 Diabetes. If you already drink alcohol, the key is to keep your consumption in the moderate range. If you don't drink alcohol, there's no need to start-you can get the same benefits by losing weight, exercising more, and changing your eating patterns.
The bottom line? They key to preventing Type 2 Diabetes can be boiled down to five words: Stay lean and stay active .
To that end, The Wholefood Farmacy offers you a convenient way to enjoy the pure, nutrient dense, whole foods that your body needs. Our 7 & 13 day programs of whole foods and water can offer you a new beginning. Taking care of yourself is the only way to lead your children towards a life of self-care and prevention.
Tomatoes Are Souper! Scientists are suggesting that tomato lovers may be more likely to reduce the risk of serious disease. Lycopene, an anti oxidant which gives tomatoes their lovely rich red color, helps remove free radicals from the body. Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules and have been implicated in cancer and other serious diseases.
Professor Michael Avirim of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel who is testing lycopene in clinical trials says, ' In its natural form, lycopene is an excellent anti oxidant that helps to prevent formation of oxidized LDL, the 'bad' cholesterol in blood, which contributes to the build up of plaque that narrows, stiffens and constricts arteries and can lead to heart attacks. When this natural extract was added to cancer cell cultures, the lycopene inhibited their growth. Lycopene is the most potent nutritional antioxidant found to date.
Another study compared men who had had a heart attack with the same number of healthy men and found that those with high levels of lycopene appeared to reduce their risk of heart diseases by 50%. The study’s coordinator, Lenore Kohlmeier, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the university of North Carolina, said, 'Based on our findings, and other research, lycopene can be an excellent antioxidant, we recommend that people eat tomato based cooked foods.'
Several recent studies have shown that a diet rich in tomatoes and tomato products is strongly linked to a reduced risk of certain cancers. In a six year study of 48,000 male professionals, Dr Edward Giovannucci and colleagues at Harvard Medical School found that consuming tomatoes and tomato based products between five to seven serving a week was associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer of 21% to 34%.
Another study published in the International Journal of Cancer said that lycopene appears to protect against cancer of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, colon and rectum. Researchers at the University of Illinois report that women with the highest lycopene levels had a five fold lower risk of developing precancerous signs of cervical cancer than women with lowest lycopene levels.
The human body does not produce lycopene alone and therefore relies on a consumption of tomatoes and tomato based products for this anti oxidant. Nutritionists and other health professionals have long advocated the cancer preventative benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables. .
Lycopene: Just The Facts
Research by Dr. Joseph Levy and colleagues from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, may have identified the unique mechanism through which lycopene protects against cancer which is by activating cancer-preventive phase II enzymes.
Lycopene is an open-chain unsaturated carotenoid that imparts red color to tomatoes.
Lycopene is a proven anti-oxidant that may lower the risk of certain diseases including cancer and heart disease.
In the body, lycopene is deposited in the liver, lungs, prostate gland, colon and skin. Its concentration in body tissues tends to be higher than all other carotenoids.
Epidemiological studies have shown that high intake of lycopene-containing vegetables is inversely associated with the incidence of certain types of cancer. For example, habitual intake of tomato products has been found to decrease the risk of cancer of the digestive tract among Italians.
In one six-year study by Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, the diets of more than 47,000 men were studied. Of 46 fruits and vegetables evaluated, only the tomato products (which contain large quantities of lycopene) showed a measurable relationship to reduce prostate cancer risk. As consumption of tomato products increased, levels of lycopene in the blood increased, and the risk for prostate cancer decreased. The study also showed that the heat processing of tomatoes and tomato products increases Lycopene bioavailability.
Ongoing research suggests that lycopene can reduce the risk of macular degenerative disease, serum lipid oxidation and cancers of the lung, bladder, cervix and skin.
The Wholefood Farmacy’s Vichyssoise V-6 Creamy Tomato Soup is quick and easy taking only a minute to prepare. Handcrafted using the finest whole food ingredients, our V-6 Tomato Soup is made from Tomatoes, Brown Rice, Potatoes, Tapioca Flour, Oats, Onions, Dill Weed, & Stardust Pure Salt. If you haven’t tasted it, you don’t know what you’re missing. Children, TV, & Blood Pressure
A study from the University of California, San Diego, shows that watching too much television can lead to obesity and high blood pressure in children.
This study, published in the December 2007 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that obese children who watched four or more hours of TV a day were 330% more likely to have high blood pressure than children who watched less than two hours a day.
Dr. Jeffrey Schwimmer wrote in the study that: "There is a significant association between hours of television watched and both the severity of obesity and the presence of hypertension in obese children". Many studies have found a strong link between watching TV and obesity, but this is the first study to show a link between TV and blood pressure in obese children and teens, the researchers wrote.
Obesity in children is on the rise, increasing the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Moreover, high blood pressure in children has been rising right along with obesity rates. High blood pressure in children is often undetected and can quietly damage the internal organs, especially the kidneys.
We encourage parents everywhere to guide their children towards a more active lifestyle and to make healthier food choices available in the home. Small changes, over time, offer parents the best chances of success. A little less TV and a few more healthy snacks are two small changes that we can all live with and enjoy. Wholefood Farmacy foods are a wonderful way to take that first step in the right direction. Favorites among kids are Phi Plus, Buckey Ball Matrix, Cornucopia, Cornaborealis and Corn of Plenty.
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