Joint Pain

Ignoring joint pain,
will cost you nothing but harm

People always undermine their pain on the pretext of having the capacity to bear it or just because they consider it to be a stress related pain. I have come across many cases where the patients considered consulting a doctor or going for an over the counter medication only when the pain became excruciating. A delay in starting medication for joint pain may aggravate the injury to the joints and the damage done may become intractable. As a doctor, I would suggest people not to ignore recurrent joint pain and start an over the counter medication immediately if they do not wish to go for surgeries or are wary of using drugs which have side effects.
Joint pain is one of the common ailments affecting humans. It may be a result of problems related to the joint. Certain problems affecting the joint, including inflammation, cartilage degeneration, crystal deposition, infection, and trauma, can cause joint pain.

Joint pain can be a result of an injury to any of the ligaments, and tendons around the joint. It can also occur in the cartilage, bones and ligaments within the joint. Pain can also be a result of inflammation of the joint and infection.
Arthritis - The root cause of joint problems
Arthritis is a condition that causes immobility and severe pain in the joints. The immobility varies with the condition and the pain becomes persistent over a period of time. Arthritis refers to numerous diseases and literally means inflammation of the joint.

Arthritis affects the body movements and is a long lasting condition. Depending on the management of the ailment you can get temporary relief.
Some forms of arthritis are a result of other tissue and organ disorders. Arthritis can affect people of all ages. Arthritis can cause swelling, redness, pain, and immobility in an affected area.
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How to prevent Heart Disease?

Everyone wants to improve their health. You should always keep in mind that whatever actions you do today can either help to prevent, delay or minimize the effect of heart disease or worsen it. The key is to control the risk factors. You cannot control every risk factor for heart disease such as family history, but you can definitely do something about your behavior. Age and gender also influence your risk of heart disease. Whatever your education, jobs and profession you should understand your lifestyle.

It’s important to know your daily habit. Are you a social drinker or a social smoker? Smoking and drinking too much alcohol is very bad and disturbs your heart. Smoking can cause you lung cancer and respiratory abnormalities. Also, excessive alcohol consumption can cause cirrhosis, an irreversible (it cannot be healed) liver disease that can disturb or even damage your liver and its functions. 

Where are you going for lunch? Your daily food and beverages is important key and gives good and bad effect to your body especially your blood pressure and your heartbeat rate. Most medical consultants and doctors will advise you to control your cholesterol level. Natural food such as vegetable, fruit, and other food contain with calcium, magnesium and potassium is very important to maintain your heart.

Another way to prevent heart disease is to be active in your daily life. An exercise or light sport such as jogging or a moderate physical activity at least 30 minutes every day is really good to control your body weight. Try to perform 30 minutes of moderate physical activity every day. Power walking is one of the best ways to prevent heart disease, because it increases your heart rate (how many times your heart beats every minute). This can help increase heart strength and endurance, and it’s very useful at times when you’re exposed to sudden, heavy physical activities.

 If you can lose even a small amount of weight, five pounds for example, it may have a positive effect on lipid levels and blood pressure preventing heart disease.

Good sexual intercourse also prevents heart disease because sex reduces heart disease risks. When you have sex, your heartbeat goes fast, and after that, you become calm and content. This is a sign of a good heart health. Take the case of women. Till they are 40, heart diseases are rare amongst them. But once they cross the menopause hurdle, the heart walls thicken, arteries stiffen and women become more prone to heart diseases. Here, an active sex life can make matters easier for you. 

Researchers at the Queen’s University say that making love three or more times a week helps women as well as men stay away from many diseases relating to the heart. Good news about sex is that a vigorous sexual encounter equals to running 15 minutes on a treadmill or playing a spirited game of squash. Sex boosts the production of testosterone (on men) which leads to stronger bones and muscles.

Please take this advice: Before you take any action about how to prevent heart disease, please consult with your doctor or go to your local hospital or clinic to do a medical checkup. If you can maintain your health and control your lifestyle you may live longer and happier. See you in Bali in another holiday.

Beautiful Skin

Are you happy today? You have a right to earn a happy life. Every day.

Don't wait, when you can have a more beautiful complexion in just a couple of weeks.We've heard from so many acne sufferers who ALL tell us the same things:

· You hate looking in the mirror.
· You are embarrassed, frustrated and angry.
· You feel like you don't look good no matter how hard you try.
· You wonder if people think you have a poor hygienic habits.
· You want to hide your face
. You wonder if people think you have a poor diet

Beautiful skin is something we all want. A clean and clear complexion is attractive and just sends out a message that we're healthy and that we look after ourselves with care and attention. But it feels so unfair that acne has nothing to do with how healthy we are, or how carefully we look after our skin!The fact is that acne is the result of overactive hormones. And today's environment has created such horrific hormonal imbalances that our bodies struggle just to keep working at 100% efficiency. Acne today is getting us while we're younger, and older. Doctors are now reporting that children as young as 8 and 9 years old are being treated for acne. An increasing number of adults are now suffering from acne into their 40’s. Acne outbreaks are becoming more severe.

It’s time for you to change your life. Don’t worry; there is a special solution to make your face and skin healthier and prettier than before.

If you want beautiful skin, you’re going to have to help your body to balance your hormones.

Smart Way to Lose Weight

Modern men and women need a slim body. They want a better appearance for many reasons. Yes, if you have an ideal weight you will healthier and happier. So, how to get a good body?

Dr. Kenneth Cooper in the late 1960s published Aerobics as the “perfect” way to “train” your heart. He thought that medium intensity aerobic exercise practiced three or four times a week was all you needed for heart health. Do you still follow this method? But, today the reality is different. A recent study by Harvard researchers shows that those who do short-duration, high-intensity workouts, reduce their risk of heart disease by 100 percent more than those who practice aerobic exercise.

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that men and women who exercised at a higher intensity had lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides (blood fat), higher HDL (good cholesterol) and less body fat. What’s more, medium intensity does not train your “high-energy output system” – your ability to get extra power fast. And that’s exactly what we’re missing in our modern world. You are overweight for the most simple of reasons -- because you're eating the wrong foods, the wrong types of calories per meal, and you're also eating meals in the wrong patterns each day.Food is more powerful than any prescription weight loss pills, because the FOOD that you eat cans either make you THIN or FAT. You don't get fat because of a lack of exercising, that's a myth. You get fat because you don't eat the right foods at the right intervals each day.

Also, the pattern that you choose to eat your meals each day is more powerful than any prescription weight loss pills. This is true because your body is like an "engine" and it only needs certain foods at certain intervals each day, and if you don't eat the right foods at the right times then it won't burn those calories -- and you'll wind up storing those calories as fat tissue.
You have gotten overweight by eating the wrong foods, that much is a fact. And guess what? You can get SLIM by eating the RIGHT FOODS at the RIGHT INTERVALS each day. Remember that the reason you cannot lose weight by starving yourself (using a low calorie diet) is because your metabolism will detect any major drop in calories and it will then ADJUST ITSELF by burning fewer calories each day.

It's not really any more complicated than that, and the way to start losing weight has nothing to do with starving yourself or jogging, but if you can combine a dynamic aerobics and eat right foods, you can achieve a better result to lose weight.

In a matter of weeks, you can: Lose pounds of belly fat, Build functional new muscle, Reverse heart disease, Build energy reserves available on demand, strengthen your immune system, and Reverse many of the changes of aging.

*) Source: from many sources.

How to Do a Fall Detox

By Katherine Huether

There a few schools of thought when it comes to performing detoxes. Some people simply don't do them. Others prefer to follow an extreme fast at least once a year. And there are the types of cleanses that fall somewhere in the middle. The following tea blend is ideal for any of these stages. I personally don't follow strict cleansing fasts. I prefer to prepare cleansing blends and follow a healthy diet. I like to use this blend in the fall because it contains ingredients such as rosehips which can help strengthen the immune system and are a good source of Vitamin C.

* Note: all the herbs listed in this blend are dried.

Instructions

Step1
Shop for the ingredients. I like to either purchase my herbs from a reputable supplier (I like Mountain Rose Herbs) or pick or grow my own. If you pick your own, make sure you give the herbs a chance to dry.

Step 2
When it comes time to make the blend, add all of the ingredients to the bowl. Stir with the wooden spoon until well combined.

Step3
Your best bet is to pour the blend into an airtight amber glass jar. However, if you can't find an amber glass jar, any airtight container will do. Just make sure to store the tea away from heat and light.

Step4
When it comes time to make the tea, use 1.5 tsp. of the dried blend with each cup of hot water.

Things You’ll Need:
• 1/2 cup stinging nettle leaves
• 1/2 cup dandelion leaves
• 1/4 cup burdock root
• 1/4 cup spearmint leaves
• 1/4 cup rosehips
• Medium mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Airtight container

Source: eHow.com

Healthy and Beautiful Skin

All women in the world are worried with their skin. If you understand how to treat your skin, so you can earn better advantages and look young. Metro sexual men are also visits beauty salon to consult skin treatment from beautician. Wow…

Healthy and beautiful skin. Image: carenstyle.com

Skin begins to lose its luster with the loss of collagen, the material that creates the smooth, elastic feel of youthful skin. As we age, collagen is replaced by amorphous bundles of cells. Skin becomes thin and stretched, and outward signs can include slight inflammation. Outer layers of skin become depleted of blood vessels that supply life-giving nutrients. But this is only part of the story. The loss of collagen and youthful skin is not just a result of simply aging. In fact, the main culprit for the vast majority of these unwanted changes is sunlight exposure. The sun’s ultraviolet (UV) light can damage your skin in many ways:

* Removes natural antioxidants in your skin, such as vitamins A, C, E, and coenzyme Q

* Decreases or even stops altogether your skin’s ability to make collagen

* Eliminates immune cells that protect against infections and cancers

* Causes several kinds of skin cancers, including melanoma.

Do you love to enjoy outdoor activities? Without excessive exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, skin remains young well past middle age. Science News demonstrated this assertion with contrasting photos in a recent issue. A ninety-year-old Asian monk who never went outdoors appeared to be a much younger man in his thirties. Also shown was a Navajo woman who spent most waking moments in the sun. While only fifty, she appeared twice her age.

Prevention and Treatment

Remember, you can’t change your past. You can, however, take control of what happens to your skin in the future. And you can go a long way toward undoing the damage of past years.
The first step is a commitment to keeping out of the sun. While some sun exposure is necessary to produce vitamin D, reduce that exposure to your face with broad-brimmed hats and wrap-around sunglasses that screen out UV. Also use appropriate sunscreen for your face and body. A broad-spectrum sunscreen that explicitly says it protects against UVA is the best. The spectrum of ultraviolet light causes most of the damage to your skin by creating oxidative free radicals. Traditional sunscreens protect only against UVB. Next, eat a healthy diet that will replenish from within the vitamins and antioxidants your skin needs to neutralize UV damage.
Please beware of cosmetic promotions that can solve your entire skin problem. Consult with your skin expertise.

The most practical route to reversing the ravages of photo aging is to use high-quality skin products formulated according to the latest scientific research. Simply purchasing products at the supermarket or drug store that make wild promises won’t achieve the effect you desire. With a range of scientifically-designed products to attack multiple areas, it is possible to make your skin look younger, to get rid of wrinkles, and to make your skin fuller and more elastic in short, to reverse a great deal of the damage your skin has suffered.

Note: Full article you read in anekainc.com

How To Reduce Stress That Causes Hair Loss and Bad Hair

Happy and stress free. Image: healthyceleb.com

Life is not always comfortable and enjoyable. You can be exposed to the stress of work, life issues, and many other pressures. Get the right tips so that you can reduce or overcome it, you can even prevent it. You can enjoy this interesting article below is written by the experts.

By: Alex Fir       

Your hair will be radiant and shining if you are healthy physically as well as emotionally. 
Your hair becomes dull and lifeless if you are upset emotionally. Your hair will begin to fall out, and it will become waxy with the overproduction of sebaceous glands.

Stress can affect your hair the same way that affects your other major organs such as your heart. Stress can cause hair loss and many times cause hair problems 3-6 months after some trauma event occurred.

As soon as your body finds its equilibrium and you have recovered from stress, the hair loss should cease. Reducing stress can stop stress hair loss so consider the following stress management techniques.

Deep Breathing

Deep breathing is a simple but effective stress management technique. It is actually the core component of many stress management techniques, which are comparatively complex in nature.

Imagery 

Imagery is a method of relaxation through use of pleasant or relaxing images. Such images help to calm the body and mind. One can get a sense of relaxation by simply controlling the breathing and viewing some soothing image.

Meditation Techniques 

Meditation has long been one of the most popular stress management techniques. It is the process of focusing upon the core of one's being. It soothes the mind, body and the emotions. One can do meditation by daily practice of a routine or simply while being alone outdoors.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

One can use Progressive Muscle Relaxation to achieve mental relaxation through physical relaxation. It involves tightening and relaxing the muscle groups in succession. In this technique, you first need to tense up a group of muscles to contract them as much as possible. Then relax the muscles normally after a few seconds. You should relax the muscles as much as possible.
Autogenic Training 
This stress management technique uses passive concentration and awareness of the body sensations for relaxation. Physicians use Autogenic training as a part of therapy for many ailments. In this technique, one focuses upon different sensations in different organs of the body through repetition of the autogenic "formulas". Those sensations include warmth, heaviness etc.
Biofeedback

Biofeedback is an advanced technique for achieving relaxation, controlling stress responses and for modifying the body's reactions. It uses certain monitoring equipment to extract information from the body. Such equipment can measure heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity, muscle tension, stomach acidity and other biological functions inside the body.

Martial arts 

Practicing martial arts can be a great stress management technique. It keeps one physically fit and mentally alert. There are several martial arts that one can take up. Tai chi is a Chinese martial art that is popularly known as "meditation in motion". It stresses precision and force. The body movements are soft and flowing.

Qigong
This ancient Chinese health care system combines Eastern philosophy and relaxation techniques with physical training. The physical training includes aerobic conditioning, isometrics, isotonics etc. This stress management technique has several forms. They are effective in treatment of various medical conditions.

Yoga 
This ancient Indian form of exercise is highly effective as a stress management technique. Yoga has many forms but all forms work on the principle that the mind has a connection with the body and breathing. Yoga restores the balance and harmony in the body and emotions through different breathing exercises and postures. It increases the body’s flexibility and capability for relaxation. 

Composition of the Hunter-Gatherer Diet

I bumped into a fascinating paper today by Dr. Loren Cordain titled "Plant-Animal Subsistence Ratios and Macronutrient Estimations in Worldwide Hunter-Gatherer Diets." Published in 2000 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the paper estimates the food sources and macronutrient intakes of historical hunter-gatherers based on data from 229 different groups. Based on the available data, these groups did not suffer from the diseases of civilization. This is typical of hunter-gatherers.

Initial data came from the massive Ethnographic Atlas by Dr. George P. Murdock, and was analyzed further by Cordain and his collaborators. Cordain is a professor at Colorado State University, and a longtime proponent of paleolithic diets for health. He has written extensively about the detrimental effects of grains and other modern foods. Here's his website.

The researchers broke food down into three categories: hunted animal foods, fished animal foods and gathered foods. "Gathered foods" are primarily plants, but include some animal foods as well:

Although in the present analysis we assumed that gathering would only include plant foods, Murdock indicated that gathering activities could also include the collection of small land fauna (insects, invertebrates, small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles); therefore, the compiled data may overestimate the relative contribution of gathered plant foods in the average hunter-gatherer diet.

There are a number of striking things about the data once you sum them up. First of all, diet composition varied widely. Many groups were almost totally carnivorous, with 46 getting over 85% of their calories from hunted foods. However, not a single group out of 229 was vegetarian or vegan. No group got less than 15% of their calories from hunted foods, and only 2 of 229 groups ate 76-85% of their calories from gathered foods (don't forget, "gathered foods" also includes small animals). On average, the hunter-gatherer groups analyzed got about 70% of their calories from hunted foods. This makes the case that meat-heavy omnivory is our preferred ecological niche. However, it also shows that we can thrive on a plant-rich diet containing modest amounts of quality animal foods.

The paper also discusses the nature of the plant foods hunter-gatherers ate. Although they ate a wide variety of plants occasionally, more typically they relied on a small number of staple foods with a high energy density. There's a table in the paper that lists the most commonly eaten plant foods. "Vegetables" are notably underrepresented. The most commonly eaten plant foods are fruit, underground storage organs (tubers, roots, corms, bulbs), nuts and other seeds. Leaves and other low-calorie plant parts were used much less frequently.

The paper also gets into the macronutrient composition of hunter-gatherer diets.  He writes that

...the most plausible... percentages of total energy from the macronutrients would be 19-35% for protein, 22-40% for carbohydrate, and 28-58% for fat.

He derives these numbers from projections based on the average composition of plant foods, and the whole-body composition of representative animal foods (includes organs, marrow, blood etc., which they typically ate). 

However, some groups may have eaten more fat than this.  Natives on the North American Pacific coast rendered fat from fish, seals, bears and whales, using it liberally in their food. Here's an excerpt from The Northwest Coast by James Swan, who spent three years living among the natives of the Washington coast in the 1850s:

About a month after my return from the treaty, a whale was washed ashore on the beach between Toke's Point and Gray's Harbor and all the Indians about the Bay went to get their share... The Indians were camped near by out of the reach of the tide, and were all very busy on my arrival securing the blubber either to carry home to their lodges or boiling it out on the spot, provided they happened to have bladders or barrels to put the oil in. Those who were trying out [rendering] the blubber cut it into strips about two inches wide, one and a half inches thick, and a foot long. These strips were then thrown into a kettle of boiling water, and as the grease tried out it was skimmed off with clam shells and thrown into a tub to cool and settle. It was then carefully skimmed off again and put into the barrels or bladders for use. After the strips of blubber have been boiled, they are hung up in the smoke to dry and are then eaten. I have tried this sort of food but must confess that, like crow meat, "I didn't hanker arter it".

I was very impressed by the paper overall. I think it presents a good, simple model for eating well: eat whole foods that are similar to those that hunter-gatherers would have eaten, including at least 20% of calories from high-quality animal sources. Organs are mandatory, vegetables may not be. Sorry, Grandma.

The Inuit: Lessons from the Arctic

The Inuit (also called Eskimo) are a group of hunter-gatherer cultures who inhabit the arctic regions of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. They are a true testament to the toughness, adaptability and ingenuity of the human species. Their unique lifestyle has a lot of information to offer us about the boundaries of the human ecological niche. Weston Price was fascinated by their excellent teeth, good nature and overall robust health. Here's an excerpt from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:

"In his primitive state he has provided an example of physical excellence and dental perfection such as has seldom been excelled by any race in the past or present...we are also deeply concerned to know the formula of his nutrition in order that we may learn from it the secrets that will not only aid in the unfortunate modern or so-called civilized races, but will also, if possible, provide means for assisting in their preservation."

The Inuit are cold-hardy hunters whose traditional diet consists of a variety of sea mammals, fish, land mammals and birds. They invented some very sophisticated tools, including the kayak, whose basic design has remained essentially unchanged to this day. Most groups ate virtually no plant food. Their calories came primarily from fat, up to 75%, with almost no calories coming from carbohydrate. Children were breast-fed for about three years, and had solid food in their diet almost from birth. As with most hunter-gatherer groups, they were free from chronic disease while living a traditional lifestyle, even in old age. Here's a quote from Observations on the Western Eskimo and the Country they Inhabit; from Notes taken During two Years [1852-54] at Point Barrow, by Dr. John Simpson:

These people [the Inuit] are robust, muscular and active, inclining rather to spareness [leanness] than corpulence [overweight], presenting a markedly healthy appearance. The expression of the countenance is one of habitual good humor. The physical constitution of both sexes is strong. Extreme longevity is probably not unknown among them; but as they take no heed to number the years as they pass they can form no guess of their own ages.

One of the common counterpoints I hear to the idea that high-fat hunter-gatherer diets are healthy, is that exercise protects them from the ravages of fat. The Inuit can help us get to the bottom of this debate. Here's a quote from Cancer, Disease of Civilization (1960, Vilhjalmur Stefansson):

"They are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time..." ...during the winter the Barrow women stirred around very little, did little heavy work, and yet "inclined more to be sparse than corpulent" [quotes are the anthropologist Dr. John Murdoch, reproduced by Stefansson].

Another argument I sometimes hear is that the Inuit are genetically adapted to their high-fat diet, and the same food would kill a European. This appears not to be the case. The anthropologist and arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent several years living with the Inuit in the early 20th century. He and his fellow Europeans and Americans thrived on the Inuit diet. American doctors were so incredulous that they defied him and a fellow explorer to live on a diet of fatty meat only for one year, under the supervision of the American Medical Association. To the doctors' dismay, they remained healthy, showing no signs of scurvy or any other deficiency (JAMA 1929;93:20–2).

Yet another amazing thing about the Inuit was their social structure. Here's Dr. John Murdoch again (quoted from Cancer, Disease of Civilization):

The women appear to stand on a footing of perfect equality with the men, both in the family and the community. The wife is the constant and trusted companion of the man in everything except the hunt, and her opinion is sought in every bargain or other important undertaking... The affection of parents for their children is extreme, and the children seem to be thoroughly worthy of it. They show hardly a trace of fretfulness or petulance so common among civilized children, and though indulged to an extreme extent are remarkably obedient. Corporal punishment appears to be absolutely unknown, and children are rarely chided or punished in any way.

Unfortunately, those days are long gone. Since adopting a modern processed-food diet, the health and social structure of the Inuit has deteriorated dramatically. This had already happened to most groups by Weston Price's time, and is virtually complete today. Here's Price:

In the various groups in the lower Kuskokwim seventy-two individuals who were living exclusively on native foods had in their 2,138 teeth only two teeth or 0.09 per cent that had ever been attacked by tooth decay. In this district eighty-one individuals were studied who had been living in part or in considerable part on modern foods, and of their 2, 254 teeth 394 or 13 per cent had been attacked by dental caries. This represents an increase in dental caries of 144 fold.... When these adult Eskimos exchange their foods for our modern foods..., they often have very extensive tooth decay and suffer severely.... Their plight often becomes tragic since there are no dentists in these districts.

Modern Inuit also suffer from very high rates of diabetes and overweight. This has been linked to changes in diet, particularly the use of white flour, sugar and processed oils.

Overall, the unique lifestyle and diet of the Inuit have a lot to teach us. First, that some humans are capable of being healthy eating mostly animal foods. Second, that some humans are able to thrive on a high-fat diet. Third, that humans are capable of living well in extremely harsh and diverse environments. Fourth, that the shift from natural foods to processed foods, rather than changes in macronutrient composition, is the true cause of the diseases of civilization.

Book Review: "The Human Diet: Its Origins and Evolution"

I recently read this book after discovering it on another health site. It's a compilation of chapters written by several researchers in the fields of comparative biology, paleontology, archaeology and zoology. It's sometimes used as a textbook.

I've learned some interesting things, but overall it was pretty disappointing. The format is disjointed, with no logical flow between chapters. I also would not call it comprehensive, which is one of the things I look for in a textbook. Here are some of the interesting points:

• Humans in industrial societies are the only mammals to commonly develop hypertension, and are the only free-living primates to become overweight.
  
• The adoption of grains as a primary source of calories correlated with a major decrease in stature, decrease in oral health, decrease in bone density, and other problems. This is true for wheat, rice, corn and other grains.
• Cranial capacity has also declined 11% since the late paleolithic, correlating with a decrease in the consumption of animal foods and an increase in grains.
• According to carbon isotope ratios of teeth, corn did not play a major role in the diet of native Americans until 800 AD. Over 15% of the teeth of post-corn South American cultures showed tooth decay, compared with less than 5% for pre-corn cultures (many of which were already agricultural, just not eating corn).
  
• Childhood mortality seems to be similar among hunter-gatherers and non-industrial agriculturists and pastoralists.
  
• Women may have played a key role in food procurement through foraging. This is illustrated by a group of modern hunter-gatherers called the Hadza. While men most often hunt, which supplies important nutrients intermittently, women provide a steady stream of calories by foraging for tubers.
• We have probably been eating starchy tubers for between 1.5 and 2 million years, which precedes our species. Around that time, digging tools, (controversial) evidence of controlled fire and changes in digestive anatomy all point to use of tubers and cooked food in general. Tubers make sense because they are a source of calories that is much more easily exploited than wild grains in most places.
• Our trajectory as a species has been to consume a diet with more calories per unit fiber. As compared to chimps, who eat leaves and fruit all day and thus eat a lot of fiber to get enough calories, our species and its recent ancestors ate a diet much lower in fiber.
  
• Homo sapiens has always eaten meat.
  

The downside is that some chapters have a distinct low-fat slant. One chapter attempted to determine the optimal diet for humans by comparing ours to the diets of wild chimps and other primates. Of course, we eat more fat than a chimp, but I don't think that gets us anywhere. Especially since one of our closest relatives, the neanderthal, was practically a carnivore.
They consider the diet composition of modern hunter-gatherers that eat low-fat diets, but don't include data on others with high-fat diets like the Inuit.

There's some good information in the book, if you're willing to dig through a lot of esoteric data on the isotope ratios of extinct hominids and that sort of thing.

Sunscreen and Melanoma

Melanoma is the most deadly type of skin cancer, accounting for most skin cancer deaths in the US. As Ross pointed out in the comments section of the last post, there is an association between severe sunburn at a young age and later development of melanoma. Darker-skinned people are also more resistant to melanoma. The association isn't complete, however, since melanoma sometimes occurs on the soles of the feet and even in the intestine. This may be due to the fact that there are several types of melanoma, potentially with different causes.

Another thing that associates with melanoma is the use of sunscreen above a latitude of 40 degrees from the equator. In the Northern hemisphere, 40 degrees draws a line between New York city and Beijing. A recent meta-analysis found consistently that sunscreen users above 40 degrees are at a higher risk of melanoma than people who don't use sunscreen, even when differences in skin color are taken into account. Wearing sunscreen decreased melanoma risk in studies closer to the equator. It sounds confusing, but it makes sense once you know a little bit more about UV rays, sunscreen and the biology of melanoma.

The UV light that reaches the Earth's surface is composed of UVA (longer) and UVB (shorter) wavelengths. UVB causes sunburn, while they both cause tanning. Sunscreen blocks UVB, preventing burns, but most brands only weakly block UVA. Sunscreen allows a person to spend more time in the sun than they would otherwise, and attenuates tanning. Tanning is a protective response (among several) by the skin that protects it against both UVA and UVB. Burning is a protective response that tells you to get out of the sun. The result of diminishing both is that sunblock tends to increase a person's exposure to UVA rays.

It turns out that UVA rays are more closely associated with melanoma than UVB rays, and typical sunscreen fails to prevent melanoma in laboratory animals. It's also worth mentioning that sunscreen does prevent more common (and less lethal) types of skin cancer.

Modern tanning beds produce a lot of UVA and not much UVB, in an attempt to deliver the maximum tan without causing a burn. Putting on sunscreen essentially does the same thing: gives you a large dose of UVA without much UVB.

The authors of the meta-analysis suggest an explanation for the fact that the association changes at 40 degrees of latitude: populations further from the equator tend to have lighter skin. Melanin blocks UVA very effectively, and the pre-tan melanin of someone with olive skin is enough to block most of the UVA that sunscreen lets through. The fair-skinned among us don't have that luxury, so our melanocytes get bombarded by UVA, leading to melanoma. This may explain the incredible rise in melanoma incidence in the US in the last 35 years, as people have also increased the use of sunscreen. It may also have to do with tanning beds, since melanoma incidence has risen particularly in women.

In my opinion, the best way to treat your skin is to tan gradually, without burning. Use clothing and a wide-brimmed hat if you think you'll be in the sun past your burn threshold. If you want to use sunscreen, make sure it blocks UVA effectively. Don't rely on the manufacturer's word; look at the ingredients list. It should contain at least one of the following: titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, avobenzone (Parsol 1789), Mexoryl SX (Tinosorb). It's best if it's also paraben-free.

Fortunately, as an external cancer, melanoma is easy to diagnose. If caught early, it can be removed without any trouble. If caught a bit later, surgeons may have to remove lymph nodes, which makes your face look like John McCain's. Later than that and you're probably a goner. If you have any questions about a growth, especially one with irregular borders that's getting larger, ask your doctor about it immediately!

Grains and Human Evolution

[Update 8/2011: as I've learned more about human genetics and evolution, I've come to appreciate that many Europeans actually descend from early adopters of agriculture more than they descend from the hunter-gatherers that previously occupied Europe.  Also, 10,000 years has been long enough for significant genetic adaptation.  Read The 10,000 Year Explosion for more information].

You've heard me say that I believe grains aren't an ideal food for humans. Part of the reason rests on the assertion that we have not been eating grains for long enough to have adapted to them. In this post, I'll go over what I know about the human diet before and after agriculture, and the timeline of our shift to a grain-based diet. I'm not an archaeologist so I won't claim that all these numbers are exact, but I think they are close enough to make my point.

As hunter-gatherers, we ate some combination of the following: land mammals (including organs, fat and marrow), cooked tubers, seafood (fish, mammals, shellfish, seaweed), eggs, nuts, fruit, honey, "vegetables" (stems, leaves, etc.), mushrooms, assorted land animals, birds and insects. The proportion of each food varied widely between groups and even seasons. This is pretty much what we've been living on since we evolved as a species, and even before, for a total of 1.5 million years or so (this number is controversial but is supported by multiple lines of evidence). There are minor exceptions, including the use of wild grains in a few areas, but for the most part, that's it.

The first evidence of a calorically important domesticated crop I'm aware of was about 11,500 years ago in the fertile crescent. They were cultivating an early ancestor of wheat called emmer. Other grains popped up independently in what is now China (rice; ~10,000 years ago), and central America (corn; ~9,000 years ago). That's why people say humans have been eating grains for about 10,000 years.

The story is more complicated than the dates suggest, however. Although wheat had its origin 11,500 years ago, it didn't become widespread in Western Europe for another 4,500 years. So if you're of European descent, your ancestors have been eating grains for roughly 7,000 years. Corn was domesticated 9,000 years ago, but according to the carbon ratios of human teeth, it didn't become a major source of calories until about 1,200 years ago! Many American groups did not adopt a grain-based diet until 100-300 years ago, and in a few cases they still have not. If you are of African descent, your ancestors have been eating grains for 9,000 to 0 years, depending on your heritage. The change to grains was accompanied by a marked decrease in dental health that shows up clearly in the archaeological record.

Practically every plant food contains some kind of toxin, but grains produce a number of nasty ones that humans are not well adapted to. Grains contain a large amount of phytic acid for example, which strongly inhibits the absorption of a number of important minerals. Tubers, which were our main carbohydrate source for about 1.5 million years before agriculture, contain less of it. This may have been a major reason why stature decreased when humans adopted grain-based agriculture. There are a number of toxins that occur in grains but not in tubers, such as certain heat-resistant lectins.

Non-industrial cultures often treated their seeds, including grains, differently than we do today. They used soaking, sprouting and long fermentation to decrease the amount of toxins found in grains, making them more nutritious and digestible. Most grain staples are not treated in this way today, and so we bear the brunt of their toxins even more than our ancestors did.

From an evolutionary standpoint, even 11,500 years is the blink of an eye. Add to that the fact that many people descend from groups that have been eating grains for far less time than that, and you begin to see the problem. There is no doubt that we have begun adapting genetically to grains. All you have to do to understand this is look back at the archaeological record, to see the severe selective pressure (read: disease) that grains placed on its early adopters. But the question is, have we had time to adapt sufficiently to make it a healthy food? I would argue the answer is no.

There are a few genetic adaptations I'm aware of that might pertain to grains: the duplication of the salivary amylase gene, and polymorphisms in the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) and apolipoprotein B genes. Some groups duplicated a gene that secretes the enzyme amylase into the saliva, increasing its production. Amylase breaks down starch, indicating a possible increase in its consumption. The problem is that we were getting starch from tubers before we got it from grains, so it doesn't really argue for either side in my opinion. The ACE and apolipoprotein B genes may be more pertinent, because they relate to blood pressure and LDL cholesterol. Blood pressure and blood cholesterol are both factors that respond well to low-carbohydrate (and thus low-grain) diets, suggesting that the polymorphisms may be a protective adaptation against the cardiovascular effects of grains.

The fact that up to 1% of people of European descent may have full-blown celiac disease attests to the fact that 7,000 years have not been enough time to fully adapt to wheat on a population level. Add to that the fact that nearly half of genetic Europeans carry genes that are associated with celiac, and you can see that we haven't been weeded out thoroughly enough to tolerate wheat, the oldest grain!

Based on my reading, discussions and observations, I believe that rice is the least problematic grain, wheat is the worst, and everything else is somewhere in between. If you want to eat grains, it's best to soak, sprout or ferment them. This activates enzymes that break down most of the toxins. You can soak rice, barley and other grains overnight before cooking them. Sourdough bread is better than normal white bread. Unfermented, unsprouted whole wheat bread may actually be the worst of all. 

Another China Tidbit

A final note about the Chinese study in the previous post: the overweight vegetable-eaters (read: wheat eaters) exercised more than their non-vegetable-eating, thin neighbors. So although their average calorie intake was a bit higher, their expenditure was as well. 

Although I speculated in the last post that affluent people might be eating more wheat and fresh vegetables, the data don't support that. Participants with the highest income level actually adhered to the wheat and vegetable-rich pattern the least, while low-income participants were most likely to eat this way.

Interestingly, education showed a (weaker) trend in the opposite direction. More educated participants were more likely to eat the wheat-vegetable pattern, while the opposite was true of less educated participants. Thus, it looks like wheat makes people more educated. Just kidding, that's exactly the logic we have to avoid when interpreting this type of study!

Wheat in China

Dr. Michael Eades linked to an interesting study yesterday on his Health and Nutrition blog. It's entitled "Vegetable-Rich Food Pattern is Related to Obesity in China."

It's one of these epidemiological studies where they try to divide subjects into different categories of eating patterns and see how health problems associate with each one. They identified four patterns: the 'macho' diet high in meat and alcohol; the 'traditional' diet high in rice and vegetables; the 'sweet tooth' pattern high in cake, dairy and various drinks; and the 'vegetable rich' diet high in wheat, vegetables, fruit and tofu. The only pattern that associated with obesity was the vegetable-rich diet. The 25% of people eating closest to the vegetable-rich pattern were more than twice as likely to be obese as the 25% adhering the least.

The authors of the paper try to blame the increased obesity on a higher intake of vegetable oil from stir-frying the vegetables, but that explanation is misleading. A cursory glance at table 3 reveals that the vegetable-eaters weren't eating any more fat than their thinner neighbors. Dr. Eades suggests that their higher carbohydrate intake (+10%) was partially responsible for the weight gain, but I wasn't satisfied with that explanation so I took a closer look.  Dr. Eades also pointed to their higher calorie intake (+120 kcal/day), which makes sense to me.

One of the most striking elements of the 'vegetable-rich' food pattern is its replacement of rice with wheat flour. The 25% of the study population that adhered the least to the vegetable-rich food pattern ate 7.3 times more rice than wheat, whereas the 25% sticking most closely to the vegetable-rich pattern ate 1.2 times more wheat than rice! In other words, wheat flour rather than rice was their single largest source of calories. This association was much stronger than the increase in vegetable consumption itself!

All of a sudden, the data make more sense. Wheat seems to associate with health problems in many contexts. Perhaps the reason we don't see the same type of association in American epidemiological studies is that everyone eats wheat. Only in a culture that has a true diversity of diet can you find a robust association like this. The replacement of rice with wheat may have caused the increase in calorie intake as well. Clinical trials of low-carbohydrate diets as well as 'paleolithic diets' have shown good metabolic outcomes from wheat avoidance, although one can't be sure what role wheat plays from those data.

I don't think the vegetables had anything to do with the weight gain, they were just incidentally associated with wheat consumption. But I do think these data are difficult to reconcile with the idea that vegetables protect against overweight.

Cancer in Other Non-Industrialized Cultures

In Cancer, Disease of Civilization (1960), Wilhjalmur Stefansson mentions a few cultures besides the Inuit in which large-scale searches never turned up cancer. Dr. Albert Schweitzer examined over 10,000 traditionally-living natives in Gabon (West Africa) in 1913 and did not find cancer. Later, it became common in the same population as they began "living more and more after the manner of the whites."

In Cancer, its Nature, Cause and Cure (1957), Dr. Alexander Berglas describes the search for cancer among natives in Brazil and Ecuador by Dr. Eugene Payne. He examined approximately 60,000 people over 25 years and found no evidence of cancer.

Sir Robert McCarrison conducted a seven year medical survey among the Hunza, in what is now Northern Pakistan. Among 11,000 people, he did not find a single case of cancer. Their diet consisted of soaked and sprouted grains and beans, fruit, vegetables, grass-fed dairy and a small amount of meat (including organs of course).

Mortality and Lifespan of the Inuit

One of the classic counter-arguments that's used to discredit accounts of healthy hunter-gatherers is the fallacy that they were short-lived, and thus did not have time to develop diseases of old age like cancer. While the life expectancy of hunter-gatherers was not as high as ours today, most groups had a significant number of elderly individuals, who sometimes lived to 80 years and beyond. Mortality came mostly from accidents, warfare and infectious disease rather than chronic disease.

I found a a mortality table from the records of a Russian mission in Alaska (compiled by Veniaminov, taken from Cancer, Disease of Civilization), which recorded the ages of death of a traditionally-living Inuit population during the years 1822 to 1836. Here's a plot of the raw data:

Here's the data re-plotted in another way. I changed the "bin size" of the bars to 10 year spans each (rather than the bins above, which vary from 3 to 20 years). This allows us to get a better picture of the number of deaths over time. I took some liberties with the data to do this, breaking up a large bin equally into two smaller bins. I also left out the infant mortality data, which are interesting but not relevant to this post:


Excluding infant mortality, about 25% of their population lived past 60. Based on these data, the approximate life expectancy (excluding infant mortality) of this Inuit population was 43.5 years. It's possible that life expectancy would have been higher before contact with the Russians, since they introduced a number of nasty diseases to which the Inuit were not resistant. Keep in mind that the Westerners who were developing cancer alongside them probably had a similar life expectancy at the time. Here's the data plotted in yet another way, showing the number of individuals surviving at each age, out of the total deaths recorded:


It's remarkably linear. Here's the percent chance of death at each age:


In the next post, I'll briefly summarize cancer data from several traditionally-living cultures other than the Inuit.

Cancer Among the Inuit

I remember coming across a table in the book Eat, Drink and Be Healthy (by Dr. Walter Willett) a few years back. Included were data taken from Dr. Ancel Keys' "Seven Countries Study". It showed the cancer rates for three industrialized nations: the US, Greece and Japan. Although specific cancers differed, the overall rate was remarkably similar for all three: about 90 cancers per 100,000 people per year. Life expectancy was also similar, with Greece leading the pack by 4 years (the data are from the 60s).

The conclusion I drew at the time was that lifestyle did not affect the likelihood of developing cancer. It was easy to see from the same table that heart disease was largely preventable, since the US had a rate of 189 per 100,000 per year, compared to Japan's 34. Especially since I also knew that Japanese-Americans who eat an American diet get heart disease just like European-Americans.

I fell prey to the same logic that is so pervasive today: the idea that you will eventually die of cancer if no other disease gets you first. It's easy to believe, since the epidemiology seems to tell us that lifestyle doesn't affect overall cancer rates very much. There's only one little glitch... those epidemiological studies compare the sick to the sicker.

Here's the critical fact that modern medicine seems to have forgotten: hunter-gatherers and numerous non-industrial populations throughout the world have unusually low cancer rates. This idea was widely accepted in the 19th century and the early 20th, but has somehow managed to fade into obscurity.  Allow me to explain.

I recently read Cancer, Disease of Civilization by Vilhjalmur Stefansson (thanks Peter). Stefansson was an anthropologist and arctic explorer who participated in the search for cancer among the Canadian and Alaskan Inuit. Traditionally, most Inuit groups were mostly carnivorous, eating a diet of raw and cooked meat and fish almost exclusively. Their calories came primarily from fat. They alternated between seasons of low and high physical activity, typically enjoyed an abundant food supply yet also periodically faced famines.

Field physicians in the arctic noted that the Inuit were a remarkably healthy people. While they suffered from a tragic susceptibility to European communicable diseases, they did not develop the chronic diseases we now view as part of being human: tooth decay, overweight, heart attacks, appendicitis, constipation, diabetes and cancer. When word reached American and European physicians that the Inuit did not develop cancer, a number of them decided to mount an active search for it. This search began in the 1850s and tapered off in the 1920s, as traditionally-living Inuit became difficult to find.

One of these physicians was captain George B. Leavitt. He actively searched for cancer among the traditionally-living Inuit from 1885 to 1907. Along with his staff, he claims to have performed tens of thousands of examinations. He did not find a single case of cancer. At the same time, he was regularly diagnosing cancers among the crews of whaling ships and other Westernized populations. It's important to note two relevant facts about Inuit culture: first, their habit of going shirtless indoors. This would make visual inspection for external cancers very easy. Second, the Inuit generally had great faith in Western doctors and would consult them even for minor problems. Therefore, doctors in the arctic had ample opportunity to inspect them for cancer.

A study was published in 1934 by F.S. Fellows in the US Treasury's Public Health Reports entitled "Mortality in the Native Races of the Territory of Alaska, With Special Reference to Tuberculosis". It contained a table of cancer mortality deaths for several Alaskan regions, all of them Westernized to some degree. However, some were more Westernized than others. In descending order of Westernization, the percent of deaths from cancer were as follows:


Keep in mind that all four of the Inuit populations in this table were somewhat Westernized. It's clear that cancer incidence tracks well with Westernization, although other factors could be involved in producing this result (such as poorer diagnosis in less Westernized regions). By "Westernization", what I mean mostly is the adoption of European food habits, including wheat flour, sugar, canned goods and vegetable oil. Later, most groups also adopted Western-style houses, which incidentally were not at all suited to their harsh climate.

In the next post, I'll address the classic counter-argument that hunter-gatherers were free of cancer because they didn't live long enough to develop it.

Cancer and the Immune System

My understanding of cancer has changed radically over the past few months. I used to think of it as an inevitable consequence of aging, a stochastic certainty. The human body is made of about 50 trillion cells, many of which replicate their DNA and divide regularly. It's only a matter of time until one of those cells randomly accumulates the wrong set of mutations, and loses the molecular brakes that restrict uncontrolled growth.

Strictly speaking, the idea is correct. That is how cancer begins. However, there's another check in place that operates outside the cancer cell itself: the immune system. A properly functioning immune system can recognize and destroy cancerous cells before they become dangerous to the organism. In fact, your immune system has probably already controlled or destroyed a number of them in your lifetime.

I recently read a fascinating account of some preliminary findings from the lab of Dr. Zheng Cui at Wake Forest university. His group took blood samples from 100 people and purified a type of immune cell called the granulocyte. They then evaluated the granulocytes' ability to kill cervical cancer cells in a cell culture dish. They found that it varied dramatically from one individual to another. One person's granulocytes killed 97% of the cancer cells in 24 hours, while another person's killed 2%.

They found some important trends. Granulocytes from people over 50 years old had a reduced ability to kill cancer cells, as did granulocytes from people with cancer. This raises the possibility that cancer is not simply the result of getting too old, but a very specific weakening of the immune system.

The most important finding, however, was that the granulocytes' kung-fu grip declined dramatically during the winter months. Here's Dr. Cui:

Nobody seems to have any cancer-killing ability during the
winter months from November to April.

Hmm, I wonder why that could be?? Vitamin D anyone??

Celiac and Fat-Soluble Vitamins

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is the possibility that intestinal damage due to gluten grains (primarily wheat) contributes to the diseases of civilization by inhibiting the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. If it were a contributing factor, we would expect to see a higher incidence of the common chronic diseases in newly-diagnosed celiac patients, who are often deficient in fat-soluble vitamins. We might also see a resolution of chronic disease in celiac patients who have been adhering faithfully to a long-term, gluten-free diet.

One thing that definitely associates with celiac disease is bone and tooth problems. Celiac patients often present with osteoporosis, osteopenia (thin bones), cavities or tooth enamel abnormalities (thanks Peter).

An Italian study showed that among 642 heart transplant candidates, 1.9% had anti-endomyosal antibodies (a feature of celiac), compared with 0.35% of controls. That's more than a 5-fold enrichment! The majority of those patients were presumably unaware of their celiac disease, so they were not eating a gluten-free diet.

Interestingly, celiac doesn't seem to cause obesity; to the contrary. That's one facet of modern health problems that it definitely does not cause.

The relationship between cancer and celiac disease is very interesting. The largest study I came across was conducted in Sweden using retrospective data from 12,000 celiac patients. They found that adult celiac patients have a higher overall risk of cancer, but that the extra risk disappears with age. The drop in cancer incidence may reflect dropping gluten following a celiac diagnosis. Here's another study showing that the elevated cancer risk occurs mostly in the first year after diagnosis, suggesting that eliminating gluten solves the problem. Interestingly, celiac patients have a greatly elevated risk of lymphoma, but a lower risk of breast cancer.

There's a very strong link between celiac and type I diabetes. In a large study, 1 in 8 type I diabetic children had celiac disease. This doesn't necessarily tell us much since celiac and type I diabetes are both autoimmune disorders.

One last study to add a nail to the coffin. Up to this point, all the studies I've mentioned have been purely observational, not able to establish a causal relationship. I came across a small study recently which examined the effect of a high-fiber diet on vitamin D metabolism in healthy (presumably non-celiac) adults. They broke the cohort up into two groups, and fed one group 20g of bran in addition to their normal diet. The other group got nothing extra. The bran-fed group had a vitamin D elimination half-life of 19.5 days, compared to 27.5 for the control group. In other words, for whatever reason, the group eating extra bran was burning through their vitamin D reserves 30% faster than the control group.

Unfortunately, the paper doesn't say what kind of bran it was, but it was probably wheat or oat (**Update- it's wheat bran**). This is important because it would determine if gluten was involved. Either way, it shows that something in grains can interfere with fat-soluble vitamin status, which is consistent with the staggering negative effect of refined wheat products on healthy non-industrialized cultures.

Add to this the possibility that many people may have some degree of gluten sensitivity, and you start to see a big problem. All together, the data are consistent with gluten grains interfering with fat-soluble vitamin status in a subset of people. As I discussed earlier, this could contribute to the diseases of civilization. These data don't prove anything conclusively, but I do find them thought-provoking.

Thanks to Dudua for the CC photo