Plant Paradox Diet, Why I’m Trying It.

The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry

Do you want to eat better, feel better, look better, sleep better, lose weight, etc? I do, so I’m trying the Plant Paradox diet. It was created by a doctor based on his patients’ reactions do different foods, those containing lectins and those that don’t.

The allowed ( and disallowed ) foods are chosen based on how his patients respond to them. Not just on what they say, but by doing actual blood tests and seeing how the foods affect their bodies internally. That sounds like real science.

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What are the Issues from Lack of Sleep?

What are the issues from lack of sleep?

A lot of people have issues with lack of sleep. I started reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD recently because I want to know why we need sleep and what happens in our bodies while we sleep.

Part of the reason for wanting to know more is because I am an affiliate with a company that sells sleep products. It’s a good idea to know the potential benefits from the products I endorse.

I didn’t realize there would be so much information about the dangers from lack of sleep in just the first few pages. And I’m not talking about the obvious sleep issues like driving while you’re tired, which should be enough for anybody.

All of this info comes from the first two and a half pages of text in Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD.

So, what are all of these risks?

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Should You Use Antibacterial Soap?

Is Antibacterial Soap Safe?If you are like most people you probably wash your hands several times a day. I know I do. What kind of soap do you use? A lot of people push the idea that you need to use antibacterial soap to make sure you’ve killed all the germs. It has become so common now that it is sometimes difficult to find soap that isn’t antibacterial, especially in liquid soap pump dispensers. They even put packets of antibacterial soap outside of the play areas in fast food restaurants. Is all of this antibacterial soap a good idea?

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How to Lose Weight and Keep the Muscle

Healthy Weight LossIt is a common problem for people on a weight-loss diet to lose muscle mass that they want to keep along with the fat that they want to lose. When you go on a diet you limit your calorie intake in hopes that the body will then turn to its fat stores for the energy needed to get through the day. The problem is that most dieters also end up reducing the consumption of materials needed to preserve their muscle mass. In the end, even though they lost weight, they don’t feel better and end up regaining the weight.

If you have tried to lose weight then maybe you have experienced this too. If so, then you may be interested in learning how to lose weight but keep the lean muscle mass.

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Why is Vitamin D Important?

Importance of Vitamin D3 I saw this infographic for Vitamin D on Facebook yesterday and it got me curious to find out more about what vitamin D is and what it does.

What is Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that your body can synthesize when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) light. There are some foods with vitamin D, so we can get it through our diet. Foods like cod liver oil, wild-caught salmon, portobello and maitake mushrooms, sardines and eggs are high in vitamin D.

The preferred way to get vitamin D is through exposure to the ultraviolet B rays in sunlight, but that can be difficult for many either because work keeps us inside all day or we live in the far northern or southern latitudes where there isn’t much UVB in the sunlight even if we can get outside.

Because we don’t get enough from exposure to sunlight, we have to either get it from our food or from supplements.

What Does Vitamin D Do?

Why is vitamin D important? I think everyone knows that vitamin D is necessary for strong bones because the body cannot process and use calcium without it. Calcium is also used by  the nerves that cause muscle contraction and beat your heart, so vitamin D plays an important supporting role in movement and circulating blood.

A lack of vitamin D is associated with a variety of conditions. The most common ones, other than reduced bone mass, appear to involve nerve tissue. Some studies indicate that insufficient amounts of vitamin D can contribute to increased risk for depression (including seasonal affective disorder), dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

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Do You Breathe? – Benefits of Breathing

Remember to BreatheYou may not realize how important it is to breathe properly. A lot of issues may go away when you do.

I started reading about Quantum Touch, an energetic healing technique founded by Richard Gordon. It starts with moving energy and deep breathing to increase your energy. One of the benefits of Quantum Touch is that the practitioner often receives healing as well as the client.

I believe that comes in large part to the breathing itself.

Reading the book about Quantum Touch got me thinking about some of the things I had learned and experienced with deep breathing before.

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US Spends More in Health Care Costs, But Not Healthier

Health Care CostsPolitico reported about a month ago that while the US spends a lot more on health care per person than any other industrialized country, we are not significantly healthier.

According to the article, health care costs in the US are almost $8,000 per person while the second place country is just over $5,000 per person. That’s a difference of almost $3,000 per person. That’s huge.

One thing they point to is that the US uses a lot more expensive technology, like MRIs and CT scans. If we have and use all of this expensive technology, and it isn’t making us any healthier, then what’s the point?

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Drug Trials Neglect Children

I received this article from the International Business Times about Drug Trials Neglect Children in my email today. It is more than a little disturbing.

Some researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston reviewed nearly 2500 drug trials and found that only 12% of them focused on children. They also found that the relatively few studies that did focus on children tended to be single-center rather than multi-center calling into question their applicability to a more general population.

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Get Kidney Stones? Drink More Water

I found this article on the Hartford Courant website: Too little calcium, water linked to kidney stones.

Researchers in a study tracked 78,000 women in their 50s and 70s to find links to kidney stones. They found that women who got more calcium in their diet (in their food, not from supplements), drank more water, and consumed less salt had a lower risk of developing kidney stones.

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Bacteria Helps You Stay Healthy

Dr. Mercola had a great article today about the microflora in your gut. In the article he says that:

Probiotics, along with a host of other microorganisms, are so crucial to your health that researchers have compared them to “a newly recognized organ.”

To give you an idea of how much microflora you have, your body contains about 100 trillion cells. They say that only 1 in 10 is a human cell. The rest are bacteria and microorganisms.

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