The Surprising Benefits of Potassium

If you’re one of the 31% of our adult population with high blood pressure, you probably know that it increases your risk of heart disease (the leading cause of death in the U.S.) and stroke (the third leading cause of death). You may also know that high sodium intake can raise your blood pressure. I wonder if you know that potassium can help you lower it.

Potassium is primarily found in foods high in nutrition, which means consuming a potassium-rich diet will improve your cardiovascular health overall. Unfortunately, most Americans eat only half of the recommended 4,700 mg of potassium each day. According to 11 studies involving over 250,000 people (that’s a lot of data!), adding three servings of a potassium rich food to their daily diet was linked to a 21% lower risk of stroke.

To lower your blood pressure and risk for heart disease and stroke, add these foods to your diet (the mg. per serving are listed in parentheses): medium baked potato with skin (925), 1 cup cooked spinach (800), 1 cup prune juice (710), 4 oz. cooked halibut (600), ½ cup canned white beans (595), 8 oz. plain yogurt (580), medium baked sweet potato with skin (540), 1 cup orange juice (500) – more than a medium banana at 420!, 1 cup winter squash or Brussels sprouts (495), 1 cup cooked broccoli (460, 1 cup cantaloupe or tomatoes (430), 1 cup carrots (410), 1 cup corn (380), 1 cup nonfat milk (380), and ½ cup avocado or cooked lentils (365). Source: Wellness Letter August 2011

You Can Stop Overeating

Do you catch yourself overeating? I do - not as much as I used to, but occasionally I still catch myself feeling uncomfortably full after a meal. You’d think after being a lifetime member of Weight Watchers for 17 years I’d have it figured out by now, wouldn’t you? So why is it still so hard to avoid overeating?

Researchers have found that people are influenced by a number of external cues that result in overeating, even when they’re aware of the cues. The key is not to educate yourself to the cues, but to change your environment so the cues aren’t there at all. Here are some suggestions:

- Use smaller bowls and plates to eat from. The food looks like more and you’ll be inclined to think you’ve had enough.

- Rearrange your kitchen so that the healthy food choices are up front in your cupboards and the refrigerator. Put the treats in the back so you have to work to find them.

- Eliminate family style serving, where you place serving bowls of food on the table. I did this right after I joined Weight Watchers and it really helped with portion control. I typically put only salad on the table and reserve family style serving for holiday meals exclusively.

- Repackage bulk foods into single serving sizes. You and your family members will be more inclined to stick to a single serving, which is healthier for all of you and easier on your food budget.

- When eating out, look at your plate as soon as the food arrives, and ask yourself how much you’d eat if you were at home. Odds are there will be more than that on your plate. Immediately request a box and put anything more than you would typically eat in the box to enjoy later.

- Avoid serving too much variety at once. While variety is great in terms of nutrition, it tends to result in overeating. Studies show that people eat more M ‘n M’s when they’re presented with an assortment of colors than when they’re given an equal number of the same colored candies. It’s the same with Girl Scout cookies. It’s okay to buy a variety, just don’t put them all out at once. The two-cookie serving size will turn into four – one of each – if you put four kinds on the table. (Keep this in mind with Christmas cookies, too!)

Give these ideas a try and let me know what other tricks you have to keep your serving sizes in check.

New Weight Watchers Program Launched

Did you hear that Weight Watchers introduced a new program last week? As a lifetime member and former leader, this caught my attention. Weight Watchers is the most successful weight loss company in the world and has been at it for over 40 years. When the experts there feel that there is enough new information in the weight management field to introduce a major new program after 13 years, I wanted to know more. So rather just stop by for my monthly weigh-in, I stayed for the meeting.

I learned that the patented Points have been revised. Rather than just incorporating calories, fat, and fiber, the Points Plus program now looks at protein and carbohydrates as well. Basically, rather than grouping all calories together and treating them as equal, the new Points Plus calculation incorporates all forms of calories (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) individually. This makes sense to me, because they don’t all have the same number of calories per gram. Fat has nine calories per gram where protein and carbohydrates have four calories per gram each. I also know my body processes these differently. Fat can sometimes upset my stomach, especially saturated fat, because it’s hard to digest. Protein makes me feel full longer, and carbs are very satisfying to me. So now to calculate the Points with Points Plus, we need to know the grams of protein, carbohydrate, fat, and fiber in the food.

After hearing about the new program, I decided to try out it out. This means I have to re-learn the Points value of everything. Foods heavy in carbohydrates have a lot more Points than they did under the old program, but fruit is now Points-free – all fruit. Why would I do this now, during the holidays? Because it forces me to be conscious of my eating, and that’s really important with so many treats around. I’ll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, be good to yourself as you celebrate this season, and remember – all things in moderation!

Preventing Diabetes

Because diabetes is a condition where blood sugar is too high, many people mistakenly think that eating too much sugar is the primary cause of diabetes. While sugar is a contributing factor, there are many other habits that can increase your risk of developing this disease:

• Obesity (BMI of 30 or more) and overweight (BMI of 25-30) both increase the risk of diabetes, and even modest weight loss (9 pounds in three years) in someone with elevated blood sugar levels can cut the risk in half. Regular exercise can lower the risk, as well.

• Consuming simple carbs such as potatoes and white bread increases the risk while whole grain consumption lowers it.

• Trans fats increase the risk of diabetes while those who eat the most polyunsaturated fats have a lower risk.

• Eating one serving of red meat a day increases diabetes risk by 22% over those who eat red meat once a week. Processed meats such as hot dogs, bacon, and lunch meats increase the risk even more.

For more information on dietary fats, obesity, healthy eating, and exercise, scan the archives of this blog and stay tuned. These topics will continue to appear in the months ahead.

Blood Sugar and Diabetes

If you watch television, you’ve probably seen ads related to blood sugar testing. The incidence of diabetes is rising, right along with Americans’ waistlines. Diabetes occurs when the body cannot regulate blood sugars. Uncontrolled diabetes increases your risk for eye problems including blindness, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and nerve damage. Data from 2007 indicate that 23.6 million children and adults in the United States—7.8% of the population—have diabetes, and the number is growing is each year (www.diabetes.org).

What is considered a healthy blood sugar (glucose) level? Glucose levels are measured through a blood test where the sample is drawn by a medical professional from a vein or by a finger stick. There are a variety of tests and the kind of test done determines what a healthy level is, as shown below:

• Fasting (at least 8 hrs since eating): normal range is 70-99 mg; beginning of diabetic range is 126 mg

• Two hours after beginning last meal: normal range is 70-145 mg; beginning of diabetic range is 200 mg

• Random: normal range is 70-125 mg; beginning of diabetic range is 200 mg*

* Other symptoms must be present such as increased thirst and frequent urination (especially at night), unexplained increase in appetite, unexplained weight loss, fatigue, erection problems, blurred vision, and tingling or numbness in the hands or feet

There are several risk factors for diabetes. We’ll look at those next time. In the meantime, make sure you speak to your doctor about how often you need to get your blood sugar level checked. (Unless otherwise noted, the source I used for this article was www.mebmd.com.)

Hormones Increase Breast Cancer Risk

Did you read recently in the Arizona Republic that women who take estrogen and progestin after menopause not only increase their risk for breast cancer, but also face even a somewhat increased chance of dying from the disease? How does this differ from what we already knew? How great is the risk? It can be confusing to sort it all out, so here are the facts:

• Eight years ago a federally funded study called the Women’s Health Initiative revealed that the risks of heart disease and breast cancer outweighed the benefits of taking estrogen and progestin for relief from menopause symptoms.

• Although at the time researchers thought the risk of death from breast cancer was not any greater, the use of the hormones dropped almost 65% from 2002 to 2009. Still, some 40 million women were taking the hormone combination.

• As a result of the diminished hormone use, breast-cancer diagnoses started to drop.

• Last year researchers concluded that women who took the hormones were 70% more likely to die of lung cancer. Lung cancer and breast cancer are the two leading causes of cancer death in women.

• Now that researchers have 11 years of data from the study, they have determined that the tumors that result from the hormone combination are just as likely to be the more difficult to treat type of tumors, not the smaller, less-threatening ones they had thought eight years ago. This means the risk of dying from breast cancer is slightly higher.

• Still, this newly identified risk of death from breast cancer as a result of hormone use is low.

• Researchers recommend that women who take the hormone combination do so at the lowest effective dose for the shortest period of time. There continues to be debate about whether five years is too long to be on the hormones.

• The use of estrogen alone, which women who have had hysterectomies take, does not carry the risks reported here.

There are many other risk factors for breast cancer, such as smoking, a sedentary lifestyle, a diet high in saturated fat, and genetics. Be sure to discuss your risks carefully with your physician so you can make the most informed choice about your health.

You’re Sweet Enough

You are sweet enough. I hope you know this, because I’d like to see you avoid the 400 calories worth of added sugars the average American consumes each day. When you consider that it takes 3500 extra calories to gain a pound, it’s easy to see why so many people are overweight today. Besides the toll sugar takes on the waistline and teeth, sugar in its various forms causes the following concerns for health experts: it raises triglycerides, increasing the risk of heart attack; it might boost visceral fat, deep abdominal fat linked to a higher risk of heart disease; it raises the risk of gout and high blood pressure; it could promote overeating; and it’s generally found in foods of little nutritional value – junk food (Nutrition Action Health Letter, Jan./Feb. 2010).

To be fair, there are a couple of common myths about sugar that are not supported by research. First is that sugar causes diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, it does not. It does contribute to obesity and overweight, and these are very much linked to diabetes, however. Second, there is no scientific evidence that sugary foods cause hyperactivity. Health experts believe that it’s the events where sugar is consumed in large quantities, such as birthday parties, that promote the high energy.

It’s not realistic to eliminate all sugar from your diet since some occurs naturally in foods and food labels don’t distinguish naturally occurring sugar from added sugar. If you’d like to reduce your sugar consumption, or at least be more aware of it, watch for these ingredients on food labels: dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, fruit juice concentrate, malt syrup, molasses, invert sugar, honey, sorghum, and cane sugar (Environmental Nutrition, March 2010). Don’t be fooled into thinking that some of these are better for you than others – they’re not. Added sugars are added sugars.

You Can Significantly Modify Your Cancer Risk

So says the Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Report published by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund. The report took five years to compile and contains the analysis of over 7,000 large-scale studies by 21 international experts. Key findings include:

• Some 30-35% of cancers are caused by diet.
• Other than not smoking, the single most important thing you can do to prevent cancer is to keep your weight under control.
• Cancers linked to obesity include endometrial cancer, colon, kidney, pancreatic, postmenopausal breast cancers, and some lymphomas and leukemias.
• Even a 5-10% weight loss can be significant.
• Inactivity increases the risk of breast and colon cancer.
• Even one drink a day can significantly increase breast cancer risk. (But one or two drinks/day “very substantially reduces heart disease risk.”)
• Dietary supplements are not recommended to prevent cancer.
• Plant foods are recommended to protect against digestive tract, lung and prostate cancers.

Factors with convincing evidence they increase cancer risk include obesity, abdominal fatness, consuming red or processed meat, and drinking alcohol. On a more positive note, things with convincing or probable evidence they decrease cancer risk are physical activity; lactation; and consuming milk, non-starchy vegetables, onions, garlic, fruits, and foods that contain fiber, folate, beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamin C, selenium.

I find this very encouraging. Certainly progress is being made in finding a cure for cancer, and that’s great. Why not take steps to reduce the risk of even getting it to start with?