Talk about health

If you are a regular reader of my occasional rants you will not be surprised at what follows here.

While watching the news yesterday I happened on a story about a retired city councillor who had recently been diagnosed with AMD or age related macular degeneration. Now, this is a condition that is becoming much more common in the elderly, and involves changes to the eye where the central vision is affected at first. It is not reversible and if left untreated it leads eventually to blindness.

Having been diagosed, this lady was informed that there were two drugs currently available to slow down or stop AMD's progress. Their cost was £2,000 and £10,000 per year (approx $4,000 and $20,000). She told the viewing public that fortunately in her case she could afford to pay for treatment, but she was unhappy that the drugs were not yet available without charge through the UK's crumbling National Health Service.

Her message was to the effect that these drugs should be made available right away so as to save the sight of the many older people who are the victims of AMD.

"So what?", you might say. Well, as far as it went, the item was accurate. But, what got me was the complete absense of any qualifying mention of the benefits of dietary and supplemental carotenoids. These are well-known to prevent AMD in the first place and slow its progress in the second place.

Simply by adjusting your diet to include more vegetables such as corn, squash, broccoli, and peas, and adding an egg a day could make all the difference. You could prevent or postpone AMD for years and by judicious choice of diets you may be able to slow down or stop AMD progressing any further.

The thing is that such changes in diet would cost relatively little to the patient and nothing at all to the health services. Just by being aware of which foods contain the magic carotenoids with strange names such as lutein and zeaxanthin could make all the difference to your life.

It annoys me that the drug industry appear to have a strangle hold on the media such that journalists seem unable or unwilling to put things in perspective. All they want to show is that modern very costly drugs are the be-all-and-end-all of treatment, when they clearly are not, and point out the deficiencies in the health services of the UK.

AMD is an avoidable condition with the simple expedient of a healthy diet. So don't be panicked into thinking there is no hope unless you have lots of disposable income to buy the drugs. Just find out which food have the necessary carotenoids and eat them as part of your new and healthy diet. or get a carotenoid-containing supplement and follow the dosage instructions.

One final point, my site hase a useful booklet on Basic Food Groups that gives all the details and notes the corotenoid content of each food described. Just log on to http://www.healthexplored.co.uk to find out more. There's a free newsletter and a growing list of articles to refer to. And you can buy the booklets as well if you want to know more.

Wishing you the very best of health.

I don't know if you agree, but I've found getting back into work more difficult this year than ever before. Yes, well, maybe it's just me. Anyway, here's a thought to start the year (again)...

Does adding omega-3 to foods make them healthy or better for you?

This thought occurred to me as I searched the isles of my local supermarket recently and noticed that a lot of processed foods seem to have added vitamins, minerals and now essential fatty acids. The omega-3 thing is probably the one that is trumpeted more than some of the others right now. Hence my question.

There is omega -3 in yoghurts, cereals, fruit juices, dairy foods and others, all added, I presume, with the intention of making them appear healthy. But does it? From what I have read about fortifying food with vitamins that aren't normally in them, it seems that you don't get the benefit you might expect.

As a theoretical rule, you would suppose that having vitamins etc from any source is going to help you healthy. Not so. Ideally, get your nutrition from the freshest form of natural food that contains the nutrient - fresh natural fruits and vegetables, lean meats, oily fish all in season and sourced as locally as possible.

But, just adding random, fashionable health ingredients to hightly processed foods that otherwise are filled with sugars, transfats and so on but have little or no fibre doesn't transform them from unhealthy to healthy.

Omega-3 are very important nutrients that are sadly lacking from many diets these days. They are necessary factors in good health and most of us would benefit from taking more of them in our diets. So, the principle is right - get more omega-3 in your life.

However, you have to keep a balance. Your body is not designed to extract omega-3 from processed foods. Your digestive system expects to handle omega-3 along with the fish or nuts it appears naturally with. You can work with omega-3 in fish oil, krill oil and nut oils, but just adding it to some unrelated product is likely to cause problems.

My thoughts? I would rather work with nature to get my nutrients instead of fighting it. Don't expect your complex body to be able to deal easily with something else. Adding nutrients to an otherwise unhealthy food won't make it healthy. A few vitamins or essential fatty acids in a sugar-filled cereal or transfatty spread dosn't change its basic nature.

Don't be misled by adverts. Read the labels. Eat healthily most of the time - including omega-3 and vitamins. And limit the amount of processed food you eat.

There's a lot more to food than you think. Check it out at http://www.healthexplored.co.uk , sign up for my FREE newsletter and look at some of the articles available there.

Wishing you the best of health.

Labels: Fortifying processed foods

Sorry! That's right, I'm sorry. Sorry for not posting anything for almost a month now. I'm just full of excuses if you would like to hear some of them. OK, you asked for it.

At first I got caught up in the pre-Christmas shopping festival, if you can call it that. It's probably one of the disadvantages of working from home. All the problems of what to buy and for whom are discussed at the breakfast table and the outcome is that I go with my wife to help and advise ( maybe she doesn't quite see it this way).

Then, my children were both coming home for a few days, and their respective rooms had to be prepared for their arrival. And it was my 60th birthday, too. A milestone that just had to be recognised by close friends and family, so a small celebration was organised with a special meal out and the occasional alcoholic beverage!

Before I knew it, Christmas was upon us and several days of food preparation and consumption filled the time. Then, more visitors and the Scottish New Year - more excuses for overindulging. The January Sales followed and when I looked round it was now. Four weeks later and very little done with Health Explored or the Blog. Where did the time go?

In amongst all these feeble but understandable excuses (I hope you agree!) for not working, I have been progressing my stress book and associated tips to control it. It is almost ready for release, but I keep adding bits to it and now its is a lot longer than I had expected. I hope to have it on the site for sale in both downloadable and printed forms within the next week or two. Rest assured I shall let you know all about it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I hope you accept my apologies and my resolution is to be better at keeping you informed on health issues. You can find out more on my site at http://www.healthexplored.co.uk . The newsletter is FREE and discusses all the health problems arising on a regular basis - just what you need to help your own health. Sign up at the site right away.

Wishing you the very best for 2007 and the best of health, too.

James.