Dr. BT 的blog
During the last annual physical, I was shocked to test high in trans fat. I eat super healthy.
Upon investigation, I finally zoomed to a few boxes of very delicious oil-free, salt-free walnuts that a friend of mine sent to me. Once I get started with these walnuts, I could not stop. They are delicious and crispy. It would not take much time for me to consume a box. I knew I should not eat too much nuts at one time because its calories. However, my excuse was at least it's healthily cooked.
Well, as I dig deeper, I wondered why I am not so addicted to the home roasted raw walnuts. It does not taste that great. The meat is more oily (non-crispy) and bitter. I suddenly realized that to make the delicious nuts crispy, the manufacturer has to put the nuts through high temperature drying process. Oils, especially polyunsaturated oils may oxidize and hydrogenate under really high temperatures.
So be careful about oils (such as nuts) under high temperature.
Indeed, nature makes foods that naturally limit your appetite. Human learned to process delicious unhealthy foods that can greatly increase your appetite.
One feature in YBM Life! Coach, our new online expert system to help you implement anti-aging program, is the hundreds of advices and videos teaching you how to's. To get a taste of such videos, take a look at Dr. Ping's shopping list video.
To access the full content and get an online coach 24x7, sign up YBM Life! Coach here.
亲爱的YBMers ，
我很高兴地宣布YBM网站正式推出YBM生命！的饮食/卡路里限制在线专家。你们当中许多人要求我们提供更具体的分步实施的指导。现在您可以有一个专家在你身边24小时x7天随叫随到 。请观看网站旅游和YBM生命！抗衰老程序的影视。
Many of us spend significant amount of time sitting in front of computers, meetings, and airplanes. This has really bad effect on the lumber spine. When you sit for a long day, our back muscle becomes so tired that it simply gives up and we settle in a position that all the stress of the weight is on our vertebral discs.
A good device is this simple cushion. Simply put it on your seat, it will keep your muscles engaged, thus protecting your disc.
Leading authorities are advocating red yeast rice as an effective way to lower cholesterol (e.g., this article on WebMD), despite the fact that the primary ingredient in these red yeast rice supplements, lovastatin, is also the active pharmaceutical ingredient in prescription drugs for high cholesterol such as Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, and Statins. In fact, lovastatin was originally derived from another type of red yeast called Monascus ruber (read this article). For these prescription drugs, there have been many known side effects such as liver damage during long term use. For extensive drug side effect, review this article. Therefore, 1. Don't take "expert" advice for granted. Make your own research because in the end, it's your body which takes these drug or natural supplements in, not the experts'. 2. "Natural" does not mean "food". 3. Always take the lifestyle change approach to fix your issues if you can. Go to drugs or potent natural supplements when you have to, knowing the side effects.
There have been confusing studies about cellphone use in relation to brain tumor. A new warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As the cellphone signals getting stronger and stronger, from 2G to 2.5G, and to 3G, as well as the added signal of WiFi, Bluetooth, radio, etc., it's prudent for us to take the precaution - so that we won't regret too late in the future.
The best way is to put it away from the brain when we talk, by using an old fashioned WIRED earphone, rather than a bluetooth.
Remember that the modern technologies and investment created a huge processed food industry in the developed nations. This food industry was supposed to produce a lot of "easy to digest" (e.g., refined), "nutrients enhanced" (e.g., vitamin D enforced), tasty, and convenient (e.g., fast foods) processed foods. The result of this modern industrial de-naturing has produced generations of metabolic syndrome related diseases. I wonder if the modern technology of dietary supplement industry will turn out to be similar. For example, eating tofu or other whole soybean products is a thousand year tradition in Asia, and proven to be healthy. Usually, raw soybeans contain between two and four milligrams of total isoflavones/gram. This is about 0.2-0.4% of isoflavones in raw whole soybean (read more here). As we know, isoflavones is a phytoestrogen, and has been singled out to be the really beneficial active component of soybeans. Now there are many soy extracts in the market as soy supplements. For example, the Ultra Soy Extract of Life Extension contains as high as 40% isoflavones! Yes, modern technologies can do wonders. But if you're not careful, and thinking that you can just take supplements for the nutrition of really good whole foods, you may be wrong!
I was talking to a client. He is a perfectionist in his health, fitness, and look. "I'm scared of tofu. I've stopped eating tofu," said he. "Why?" "My doctor told me it contains phytoestrogen, which can make man woman."
"Well, phytoestrogen is contained in many natural plant foods, oilseeds (such as flaxseeds, sunflower, sesame, olive, etc.), legumes (such as alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins, and peanuts), grains (e.g. wheat, oats, barley, rice), fruits (e.g. berries, apples), vegetables (e.g. carrots), herbs (e.g. ginseng), alcohol (e.g. beer). Are you going to avoid all of these?" asked I.
In fact, moderate consumption of whole foods containing phytoestrogen is not only safe, but also beneficial for men. See my earlier article about tofu.
The trick is not to casually eat any phytoestrogen which is extracted artificially from foods. For example, there're products in the market for lignans extracted from flaxseeds. These man-made "natural" products become more potent or concentrated. When taking these products, it must be in conjunction with a hormone program, which
requires careful monitoring and balancing. Read more on the article on male hormone replacement, as well as YBM Hormone.
A new study showed that keeping a food diary -- a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs -- is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. Yes, I know, life has more fun things to do than everyday writing diaries. It's hard to keep doing this for long term. Thus, it's really important to find better way. The key here is to be aware of what you eat. Knowing the amount of calories you eat is critical. For example, if you sit at the dinner table, do you know how much calories for a boiled potato? When you are at your office desk, popping open a diet coke, or getting a sports bar at the vending machine, do you know the calories? To know the calories is not difficult - consume you no time! First, get the habit of reading labels. Second, get yourself a pocket calorie counter - just like a small calculator - play with it as often as possible when you're curious about something you don't know. See my previous post "calorie counter at your finger tip." Over time, you'll be quite knowledgeable about the approximate calories of many foods, and this awareness will help you lose weight! The best thing about this methodology is that it costs you no time!
Prostate cancer, like many other cancers, is definitely not fun to go through. Not only the potential of death when the cancer spread, but also the risk of side effects such as impotence after surgery. Just listen to the Voice of Prostate Cancer from the New York Times - that will motivate you to try all you can to avoid it. There's really no good "cure"! But how? One of the most significant cause of prostate cancer, like breast cancer, is hormone imbalance. As men grow older, testosterone level goes down, SHBG and thus free testosterone also goes down, making things worse. In the meantime, more testosterones are converted to DHT (a more potent form of testosterone) and estrogen - significantly changing the ratio among these hormones. To prevent hormone imbalance, first follow YBM Test to track your hormones even if you're perfectly healthy and young, then follow YBM Hormone to keep your hormones young as long as you can.
To maintain a young male hormone level and balance, we need to avoid alcohol consumption. Most studies of alcohol's effects on male reproduction have been conducted in rats because the rat model mimics the human male reproductive system. Research has demonstrated that both acute and chronic alcohol exposure are associated with low levels of hypothalamic LHRH and pituitary LH in the adult and pubertal male rat, and further studies have suggested that alcohol inhibits testosterone secretion by the testes as well. For those who want to dig in a lot deeper, read this scientific paper by Loyola University researchers.
Sugar is not good for a healthy diet. But many "sugar-free" foods with sweeteners should not be consumed either. Foods that contain sugar alcohols can be labeled sugar-free because they replace full calorie sugar sweeteners. Sugar and sugar alcohols are each considered nutritive sweeteners because they provide calories when consumed. Sugar alcohols, or polyols, contain fewer calories than sugar. Sugar provides 4 kcal/gram and sugar alcohols provide an average of 2 kcal/gram (range from 1.5 kcal/gram to 3 kcal/gram). The bottom line is that even at a half of the calories, sweeteners retain the same property of sugar, i.e., empty calories and high glycemic index. There's an added problem: A recent research conducted at UCSD "Artificial Sweeteners Confound the Brain; May Lead to Diet Disaster", showed that Splenda is not satisfying—at least according to the brain. A new study found that even when the palate cannot distinguish between the artificial sweetener and sugar, our brain knows the difference. If that theory plays out, there could be implications for those who use artificial sweeteners as a weight-control aid. Recent research indeed suggests a correlation between artificial sweetener intake and compromised health. In one large survey, diet soda consumption was found to be associated with elevated cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk. A different study reveals a possible mechanism behind this effect: rats that were fed artificially sweetened yogurt in addition to their regular feed ended up eating more and gaining more weight than rats that ate yogurt with real sugar.
Many of our patients visiting our anti-aging clinic are confused about tofu. This is because of the confusing report in the media. It has become a FAD that eating tofu is bad, because it "turns" male to female, "due to its phyto-estrogen content", especially when this concept is promoted by some famous doctors (e.g., watch Dr. Mercola's video). There's even articles talking about "soy makes kids gay". Is phyto-estrogen good or bad? Apparently, soy or tofu has been consumed in Japan, China, and other Asian countries for thousands of years. Why suddenly it is condemned by modern medicine and western countries? First, let me ask you if water is good?
In my blog entry "Is Exercise for Burning Calories?", I talked about why it's not an efficient way of losing weight. In this post, I'd like to talk about other myths of exercises. Many people want to lose fat, especially fat in certain places, and believe, led by the fashionable trend, that they can do it by exercising that particular place, such abs. Unfortunately, this is not the case. To understand this, just pick up a teenager, and a 35 year old, with say, identical % body fat. So you'd say, proportionally they are equally fat. But you'll see the younger one has fat uniformly distributed throughout the body, while the older one loses fat in the face, neck, upper arm, and gains fat in the belly or hip, or upper leg. The redistribution is caused by genetic and aging, It's not dissimilar to how our hair changes. For male, as we age, the hair recedes at the temple, while at the same time, hair grows on the body, or nose, or ear, or eyebrows. You may build muscles, but you cannot hide the fat. That's why we see for many gym goers, they have beef'ed up muscles to be proud of, only have pockets of fat around their waist and belly. You can always tell a young body and a middle age body, no matter how he exercises, assuming the fat% is kept the same. Thus, the only way not to redistribute fat is to delay aging. If you can have a bio-age of 35, when at 60, you can show a physique of a 35!
“这是世界最好的有关结合现代医学和古老的东方医学智慧养生之道。 ”