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What can you do when nothing works to shift that unfortunate flab?

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you’ve worked tirelessly to shift the pounds but still have that last bit of flab, it can be frustrating and demoralising and you may feel that all the hard work you’ve put in hasn’t been worth it. It’s not just people who are overweight that suffer with the problem of having a little fold of flab they just can’t seem to shift and some people can exercise for years and stick to a healthy diet and still experience the same problem.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you may be wondering what on earth you can do to get rid of that last bit of flab and with the summer fast approaching, you may be considering your options in time to feel confident in your swimwear or simply feel comfortable in summery clothes.

Exercise and diet

The most effective way to lose weight the guys at the private clinic will tell you is to adopt a healthy diet and exercise on a regular basis. However, if you have already reached your target weight but still want to improve specific areas of your body, it may be beneficial to do exercises that are focused on those flabby areas. Some exercises and activities are designed to blitz certain areas of the body and this can be very successful. Personal trainers can advise you on what kind of exercises you need to be doing to target problem areas.

VASER liposuction

Liposuction may seem like a drastic measure, but VASER lipo can be used to sculpt the body, as well as creating more dramatic changes, so if you’re toned and slim but can’t seem to get rid of a problem area of flab or you simply want to tackle a specific area, this could be a suitable treatment.

VASER liposuction is much less invasive than conventional liposuction procedures and works by using ultra-sonic energy to gently break up and remove unwanted areas of fat. Before the procedure, tumescent fluid is injected into the desired area, causing the blood vessels to constrict. The procedure involves only very small incisions, through which tiny probes are inserted. These probes then vibrate and cause the fat to break down and mix with the tumescent fluid, which is then removed by suction.

Filed Under: Cosmetic Surgery, Exercise Tagged With: , , ,

Logging Exercise: How to Keep Track of Your Exercise, Diet, and Caloric Expenditure

June 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

A 2008 study by The Journal of Exercise Physiology raised some interesting questions regarding the motivational side of fitness. The study – a survey undertaken on several American college campuses – revealed that the vast majority of people who didn’t exercise chose not to due to a combined lack of time, motivation, and other commitments.

The time factor appears to be a common one amongst would-be exercisers. There are thousands of anecdotes highlighting the ‘time’ cost of exercise, each one conveniently ignoring the ambition and focus benefits that it can bring. We’ve found seven truths of exercise; activities that can help you get the most from your physical activities while limiting the amount of time they cost you.

If you’re aiming to maximize the effects of your diet, exercise routine, or healthy lifestyle, these seven methods can and will help you do so. Apply one, two, or all seven – whichever ones take your fancy – and you’ll see immediate improvements in your ability to sustain and track the effects of your workout routine.

Buy and use a food scale:

Food scales are excellent for keeping track of your caloric intake, especially if you make the good decision to eliminate processed and packaged foods from your diet. Without a convenient package to draw your nutritional information from, a food scale is one of the few ways to gain accurate data about the amount of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates that you’re ingesting.

Track the amount and type of foods you eat, and log them to add to throughout the day. Then look over them at the end of every day, week, or month and calculate your total caloric intake and macro-nutrient profile.

Track your caloric intake:

Weighing, monitoring, and carefully selecting your food sources will result in nothing positive without an effective monitoring system. Rather than picking foods based on their nutritional data and ‘healthy’ packaging, pick your foods according to the holes, gaps, and shortages in your total diet.

The most effective way to do this is by tracking all of your food consumption in a meal diary. Carry a small notebook with you and write down whenever you eat a major meal or snack. Over time you will grow familiar with your major diet choices and be able to instantly calculate how many calories and macronutrients are in each, cutting down the amount of time required to track diet information.

Log intensity, not just activity:

‘An hour of exercise’ is a vague, ineffective method for measuring activity. Exercise is extremely varied and diverse domain, one that’s packed with alternative options and different choices. An hour of constant rowing is likely to burn a huge amount of calories, while an hour spent lightly riding a stationary bicycle might not have such significant and measurable benefits.

For this reason, it’s worth logging the intensity of your exercise rather than the duration. Use a heart rate monitor or pedometer to determine not just how long you exercise for, but how dedicated you are to your exercise. High-effort activities such as stationary rowing on a  rowing machine and high-speed running on treadmills will yield greater benefits than jogging or cycling, despite requiring less time.


Keep it simple, scalable, and consistent:

Limited motivation is the second-most-frequent reason not to exercise, trailing only behind limited time. What’s most common amongst would-be exercisers isn’t a lack of motivation due to activity, but a lack of motivation due to the perceived difficulty and complexity surrounding exercise.

It’s a perception that’s been driven home by the fitness industry, particularly ‘miracle’ weight loss supplements and ‘fitness secret’ workout programs. Thanks to the sea of fitness shortcuts, the real information about weight loss and exercise is alarmingly difficult to find.

The truth is that losing weight isn’t hard per-se, it’s just requires hard work. By ignoring so-called miracle fitness cures and focusing on the most simple, scalable, and consistent workout routines, you’ll be able to keep motivation constant and limit the number of excuses which could keep you from exercising.

Cut out minor problems and focus on the big picture:

There’s no reason to obsess over a single excess meal or unhealthy snack. They’re a natural part of dieting, and treating temptation like it’s a forbidden feeling can only lead to greater stress and less effective training.

Let small mistakes happen, and don’t penalize yourself if you end up making them. Even star athletes and professional trainers let unhealthy events slip into their lives; what keeps them motivated and effective is a focus on the bigger picture. Create long-term exercise goals and focus on them alone, while treating one-time mistakes and occasional unhealthy meals with little care.

Work out your ideal P/F/C ratio:

There are three figured which dieters should pay attention to: the amount of calories which they consume, the expenditure of those calories through exercise, and the breakdown of those calories into groups of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

By monitoring the macronutrient breakdown of your diet, you’ll be able to arrange foods into specific groups and eat not just for all-round health, but with your specific goals in mind. Boost your protein intake and you’ll find yourself becoming slightly more muscular. Increase your fat intake and you’ll reserve more long-term energy and find yourself sleeping more soundly.

Spend time calculating which macronutrient breakdown is most beneficial for you, as everyone responds differently depending on their lifestyle and body type. Dieters wishing to grow stronger and more muscular should increase their protein intake; dieters aiming to lose fat should cut down on empty carbohydrate consumption, while dieters aiming for all-round health should consume a mixture of the three.

Keep track of your sleep quota:


The Harvard Women’s Health Watch recently reported that an alarming seventy-five percent of adults suffer from sleep-related problems. Some experienced light and occasional insomnia, others experienced concentration problems stemming from a lack of sleep, while others found themselves unhealthy and lacking in energy due to their sleep patterns.

Sleep is one of the most important elements of fitness, but it’s all too often ignored in favor of flashy exercise routines or hip diets. Include a ‘sleep’ column alongside your caloric intake and exercise columns and monitor how much time you spend in bed. Most doctors recommend adults sleep for between seven and ten hours per night, depending on their lifestyle and caloric output.

Logging Exercise: How to Keep Track of Your Exercise, Diet, and Caloric Expenditure

A 2008 study by The Journal of Exercise Physiology raised some interesting questions regarding the motivational side of fitness. The study – a survey undertaken on several American college campuses – revealed that the vast majority of people who didn’t exercise chose not to due to a combined lack of time, motivation, and other commitments.

The time factor appears to be a common one amongst would-be exercisers. There are thousands of anecdotes highlighting the ‘time’ cost of exercise, each one conveniently ignoring the ambition and focus benefits that it can bring. We’ve found seven truths of exercise; activities that can help you get the most from your physical activities while limiting the amount of time they cost you.

If you’re aiming to maximize the effects of your diet, exercise routine, or healthy lifestyle, these seven methods can and will help you do so. Apply one, two, or all seven – whichever ones take your fancy – and you’ll see immediate improvements in your ability to sustain and track the effects of your workout routine.

Buy and use a food scale:

Food scales are excellent for keeping track of your caloric intake, especially if you make the good decision to eliminate processed and packaged foods from your diet. Without a convenient package to draw your nutritional information from, a food scale is one of the few ways to gain accurate data about the amount of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates that you’re ingesting.

Track the amount and type of foods you eat, and log them to add to throughout the day. Then look over them at the end of every day, week, or month and calculate your total caloric intake and macro-nutrient profile.

Track your caloric intake:

Weighing, monitoring, and carefully selecting your food sources will result in nothing positive without an effective monitoring system. Rather than picking foods based on their nutritional data and ‘healthy’ packaging, pick your foods according to the holes, gaps, and shortages in your total diet.

The most effective way to do this is by tracking all of your food consumption in a meal diary. Carry a small notebook with you and write down whenever you eat a major meal or snack. Over time you will grow familiar with your major diet choices and be able to instantly calculate how many calories and macronutrients are in each, cutting down the amount of time required to track diet information.

Log intensity, not just activity:

‘An hour of exercise’ is a vague, ineffective method for measuring activity. Exercise is extremely varied and diverse domain, one that’s packed with alternative options and different choices. An hour of constant rowing is likely to burn a huge amount of calories, while an hour spent lightly riding a stationary bicycle might not have such significant and measurable benefits.

For this reason, it’s worth logging the intensity of your exercise rather than the duration. Use a heart rate monitor or pedometer to determine not just how long you exercise for, but how dedicated you are to your exercise. High-effort activities such as stationary rowing and high-speed running will yield greater benefits than jogging or cycling, despite requiring less time.

Keep it simple, scalable, and consistent:

Limited motivation is the second-most-frequent reason not to exercise, trailing only behind limited time. What’s most common amongst would-be exercisers isn’t a lack of motivation due to activity, but a lack of motivation due to the perceived difficulty and complexity surrounding exercise.

It’s a perception that’s been driven home by the fitness industry, particularly ‘miracle’ weight loss supplements and ‘fitness secret’ workout programs. Thanks to the sea of fitness shortcuts, the real information about weight loss and exercise is alarmingly difficult to find.

The truth is that losing weight isn’t hard per-se, it’s just requires hard work. By ignoring so-called miracle fitness cures and focusing on the most simple, scalable, and consistent workout routines, you’ll be able to keep motivation constant and limit the number of excuses which could keep you from exercising.

Cut out minor problems and focus on the big picture:

There’s no reason to obsess over a single excess meal or unhealthy snack. They’re a natural part of dieting, and treating temptation like it’s a forbidden feeling can only lead to greater stress and less effective training.

Let small mistakes happen, and don’t penalize yourself if you end up making them. Even star athletes and professional trainers let unhealthy events slip into their lives; what keeps them motivated and effective is a focus on the bigger picture. Create long-term exercise goals and focus on them alone, while treating one-time mistakes and occasional unhealthy meals with little care.

Work out your ideal P/F/C ratio:

There are three figured which dieters should pay attention to: the amount of calories which they consume, the expenditure of those calories through exercise, and the breakdown of those calories into groups of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

By monitoring the macronutrient breakdown of your diet, you’ll be able to arrange foods into specific groups and eat not just for all-round health, but with your specific goals in mind. Boost your protein intake and you’ll find yourself becoming slightly more muscular. Increase your fat intake and you’ll reserve more long-term energy and find yourself sleeping more soundly.

Spend time calculating which macronutrient breakdown is most beneficial for you, as everyone responds differently depending on their lifestyle and body type. Dieters wishing to grow stronger and more muscular should increase their protein intake; dieters aiming to lose fat should cut down on empty carbohydrate consumption, while dieters aiming for all-round health should consume a mixture of the three.

Keep track of your sleep quota:

The Harvard Women’s Health Watch recently reported that an alarming seventy-five percent of adults suffer from sleep-related problems. Some experienced light and occasional insomnia, others experienced concentration problems stemming from a lack of sleep, while others found themselves unhealthy and lacking in energy due to their sleep patterns.

Sleep is one of the most important elements of fitness, but it’s all too often ignored in favor of flashy exercise routines or hip diets. Include a ‘sleep’ column alongside your caloric intake and exercise columns and monitor how much time you spend in bed. Most doctors recommend adults sleep for between seven and ten hours per night, depending on their lifestyle and caloric output.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanwoodswalker/4469929440/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookchiq/2008116647/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maynard/2381931893/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/3327882217/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/justonlysteve/2281405824/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottwills/35750854/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesbondsv/4351558656/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_gin/2388032929/

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How both hydration and dehydration

February 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you’re a parent you must know how important it is to keep your child hydrated. However, there are a few ways you could prevent your child from dehydrating themselves. Firstly, take into account the physical condition of your child as this plays an important role in the way their bodies adjust to the heat outside. If your child is overweight or hasn’t been involved in physical activities for a long time then they will be more prone to dehydration when exposed to the outdoor heat suddenly.

What you need to do is encourage your child to play games or exercise slowly and in a lesser degree so that their bodies can adjust to the external environment. Also, make sure that they play or exercise in cooler and shadier places in the beginning. This gradual process helps their body to learn how to sweat.

It is also important to ensure that they drink lots of water or energy drinks. Studies have shown that children need to drink plenty of water or juice before going to play and it is also necessary to make them drink fluids every 20 minutes even in between the game. This will keep then adequately hydrated. Also, be aware of the weather conditions. The hotter and more humid the weather is the more probability it is for dehydration. Try to encourage your child for early morning or evening activities. If you follow these simple tips you should be able to ensure that your child does not have to suffer from dehydration.

Now moving on to adults for a similar yet different problem, the problem of excessive sweating. Humans shed water through pores in the process known as perspiration. This is normal. What is not convenient however, is when even small activities like a walk in the park or climbing up the stairs cause you to sweat profusely.

Yet many of us especially men do suffer from this problem. It is a nuisance at best as you constantly have to so freshen up, wear dark clothes to hide the sweat stains and wear sweatpants even in summer. The best way to deal with this issue is to stay fit and this exactly the reason why athletes don’t even break a sweat for running short distances.

Filed Under: Dehydration, Exercise, Health Articles, Nutrition Tagged With: , , ,

How to lead the best healthy lifestyle

February 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

“You are what you eat” which is why it is so important to pay attention to what we feed ourselves. A healthy lifestyle incorporates a healthy diet. There are plenty of websites and books advising you what to eat but only you know your body best. Choose a diet suitable for your body type and avoid junk food at all costs. The first step is to read those labels well and there’s always more than meets the eye.

Also, the labels can give you a good idea on the vitamin and mineral content so you can decide what is best for you. Make a habit of eating fruits. Substitute an apple or mango for your in between, junk food snacks. Fruits are a good substitute for other sugar based food as well since unlike the latter they don’t make you gain weight. Buy fresh vegetables instead of packed ones as they have more nutritional value. Go easy of fatty products and milk but completely avoiding either is not healthy either. And a tip to make sure you don’t eat excessively as any meal would be to eat some food appetizers, they reduce your appetite by filling you up a little.

For those of you trying to lose weight here are a few tips. Avoid oily food and when cooking in oil, use the one with low cholesterol value. What you also need to avoid are fruits such as bananas, dairy products like cheese or butter and also alcohol (unless you want to end up pot bellied). What you must do is drink lots of water as it increases you metabolism and burns calories, eat plenty of veggies, protein is great and of course, don’t forget to exercise. Whatever you do, don’t starve yourself as it’s just a sure fire way of harming your body.

Other aspects of maintaining a healthy body and healthy lifestyle are to get enough sleep and exercise. Yoga is great for keeping the mind and body in balance. For a normal adult, a minimum of 8 hours of sleep is necessary. Try to catch up on that or you could find yourself yawning though the entire day. Also, negative thinking has a great impact on how your body feels. Negative emotions and stress can zap all your energy and leave you inactive. Avoid smoking and drinking as these make you gain weight, age you sooner and kill your stamina. Eat well, nurture a healthy mind and you will find yourself enjoying life a lot more.

Filed Under: Exercise, Health Articles, Nutrition Tagged With: , , , ,

Control the sweat

February 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Sweating as we all know is a necessary evil, a process that allows the body to excrete the unnecessary. However, sweating excessively is also a health issue and a medical problem that needs to be dealt with as soon as possible by you if you are suffering from it. Also, sweating excessively is also a major cause of embarrassment, as it is definitely not a desirable trait that one would want to see in other person. In public, you will always be aware of yourself because of the obvious sweat stains that you are aware of that can be easily visible by everyone around you. This can be a major cause of embarrassment no doubt, but what is more important is the fact that it is actually a medical condition. However, sweating excessively can indeed be controlled and here are some ways that will help you do so.

 There are some things that you can add to your regular diet for example that will help you reduce the amount that you sweat every day. For instance, adding grapes to your daily diet will help you do that. Even if you don’t feel like eating grapes, even grape juice can serve the purpose, because this fruit helps your body cool down considerably that in turn will help you sweat less during the day. You could also tomatoes in a larger quantity to your daily diet, in fact even tomato juice is a good idea to help you sweat less, drinking buttermilk also helps to a great extent.

Apart from only adding some specific foods to your diet there are also some direct physical things that you can do to help you sweat less than you normally do. For instance, make a solution out of water and baking soda and then soak some cotton woolen pads in that, you should then use that woolen pad to wipe your underarms so that the sweating is reduced considerably. Also, cider vinegar when applied to the underarms actually helps relieves excessive sweating to a great extent.

However, it has been proven that there are also times when excessive sweating is caused because of psychological problems as well, this could include anxiety and stress and other kinds of mental pressure. A good way of dealing with excessive sweating due to stress and anxiety therefore is by seeking some professional psychological help to combat depression. You might just discover that you sweat a lot less after you have received this kind of a treatment.

However, you must also realize that there is no way that you can actually stop your body from producing sweat completely. Not only is it hardly possible, but this is not something that is desirable no matter how badly you might feel about sweating. Sweating is a natural bodily process that might actually cause harm to your body if you try stopping it completely. However, excessive sweating is also not normal and has to be dealt with before it gets too bad to handle.

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Your Diet Affects Your Eyesight

February 11, 2010 By 1 Comment

What you eat and how you eat it is often an area of health advice that people seek, but they ask for such advices when they suddenly realize that they need to shed those few extra pounds or they have heard of a new food group they could eat to keep their skin glowing and looking youthful. However, the fact is that good healthy food indulged in a well thought out diet is not actually great as far as their physical appearance is concerned but that such a diet can actually work wonders for your body even though you might not visually be able to notice the change. For instance, a healthy diet will surely have a healthy effect on your eyesight.

A diet that is high on fat and sugar can actually directly cause harm to your eyes even though you might know it yet. This kind of fat or sugar can clog up the blood vessels, the retina in your eyes that will eventually lead to a lack of oxygen supply to your eyes. This of course means big trouble as far as your eyesight is concerned and so this diet can actually lead to a loss of your eyesight. So just like a sugar filled diet can cause you to contract diabetes it might as well be causing you to suffer from a cataract very soon. There are also some other particular foods such as white rice or white bread and the likes that has a very high risk of increasing the sugar content in your blood that will again lead to a similar problem in your eyesight. This kind of food therefore is as bad for your overall health as you might already have been hearing as it is for your eyesight. In comparison, it is the wholegrain products that are actually healthier to handle than the other kinds of carbohydrates mentioned above.

In fact something that might be a part of your diet already can be working to your eyesight’s detriment. For instance, the consumption of alcohol on a high level will actually affect your eyesight. The main reason for this is because it is the liver that converts the beta carotene into the Vitamin A that is such an important nutrient to keep your eye healthy. It is however the liver that excessive alcohol consumption affects. If the liver therefore is put under the kind of stress that alcohol puts it under, the production of Vitamin A will be affected that will eventually affect the health of your eye as well unfortunately.

In fact there are researchers who have even found a direct link between smoking and the health of the eye. Smoking is another part of a person’s daily lifestyle that many people cannot get rid of but is a very unhealthy feature of their diet. Among the various harms that a smoking habit can cause to the body, damaging the blood vessels of the eye is also one of them.

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How to Stay Active All Day

November 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Being active is more of a personal need then doing it for others. How many times we pretend that we are active but always looking for easy way out and delay work as much as possible. Activeness is not a personal trait but a part of a lifestyle which anyone can attain with no restrictions whatsoever.

Getting tired can mainly be attributed to lack of proper sleep, incomplete diet, excessive drinking or smoking. For a normal Adult (18+) a minimum of 8 hours of sleep is required. Incomplete sleep will lead to yawning, tiredness, dullness and leave you out of energy. As a result at the end of the day you cannot expect to be still active.

One of the other major factor is stress. Negative thinking will zap all our energy out leaving us feeling low and inactive. But if staying active is your daily struggle then lack of physical activity could be the reason. Exercises are important to increase stamina and endurance for long hours of work.

The best ways to stay active and full of energy is to focus on your diet. Eat high energy foods such as fish, bananas, fresh vegetables, juices and so on. The food which must be avoided should be milk products, junk food (chips and cola) and meat (pork/beef). Chocolates and ice creams are high on fat but high energy food too. They are feel good food which changes your mood.

Sometimes you are following a right diet and exercising everyday but still that exhausting feeling still lingers, then the last resort would be to try sleeping for 1-2 hours extra then normal and see if there are any improvements.

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Ateronon And Statins

August 5, 2009 By 5 Comments

The UK spends more than £500 million a year on statins, the NHS wonder drug for lowering cholesterol. Could a new food based pill, also known as the tomato pill, do a better job – without side-effects and at far less cost?

Statins are the biggest single item on the NHS drugs bill costing around £500m a year. If proposed heart disease screening for everyone aged 40-74 in England goes ahead even more people than the current 3 million could be taking statins – and costs could soar to billions.

The suggestion that doubling the number of people taking cholesterol-lowering statins could make a major health impact and lower the current total of 227,000 heart attacks in the UK each year and more than 87,000 first strokes and 53,000 second strokes, is medically controversial.

NHS Choices Medical Knowledge Service www.nhs.uk/news/2009/02February/Pages/WideStatinUse.aspx concludes: “Statins can have adverse effects and are not needed by everyone. Each person who is being considered for a statin medication should continue to have their individual coronary risk assessed according to their blood cholesterol level, age, sex and presence of other risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking.”

Although statins are estimated to reduce heart disease incidence by around a third not all heart attacks are in patients with raised cholesterol levels. Yet regardless of cholesterol level/status heart attack victims have one other preventable risk factor in common – atherosclerosis.

Aterosclerosis, the narrowing and hardening of the arteries caused by plaque, a deposit of fatty substances that furs up the inside of the arteries, is a shared symptom of heart attacks, stroke and other common and costly vascular diseases such as circulatory dementia, intermittent claudication and AMD (age related macular degeneration, the commonest cause of sight loss in the UK).

Preventing atherosclerosis could be even more valuable in reducing heart disease and stroke than lowering cholesterol. Until now there has not been a simple and effective way to tackle the problem. However, a team of scientists at Cambridge Theranostics (CTL) which focuses on natural products to improve heart health, have developed Ateronon, a one-a-day supplement containing 7mg patented bioavailable lycopene.

The unique combination of lycopene, whey protein and soy in Ateronon acts as a potent antioxidant to prevent oxidisation of bad cholesterol. In clinical studies Ateronon has reduced oxidisation of LDL cholesterol, a key process in the development of atherosclerosis, by more than 90 per cent within two months. It is the only clinically proven product to reduce the oxidation of LDL.

Ateronon® capsules given daily to older CHD patients (mean age 61, range 40-70) doubled plasma lycopene levels in two weeks from 0.26 to 0.52µmol/L. To reduce the risk of atherosclerosis plasma concentrations of the antioxidant lycopene need to be at least 0.2µmol/L, with an increasing trend in improvement from 0.2 to 0.6µmol/L. Unlike statins, no side effects have been reported by either coronary heart disease patients, or healthy individuals, taking Ateronon®. The capsules can also be safely taken in conjunction with lipid-lowering medication such as statins, and other drugs or treatments, say CTL.

Current clinical trials using Ateronon® at Harvard Medical School, Boston, are determining the rate of reduction of atherosclerotic plaque, and reduction of hypertension (high blood pressure). They are due to end 2011.

A trial of Ateronon® among haemorrhagic stroke patients is underway at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge and will also report in 2010.

Filed Under: Exercise, Health Articles, Heart, Illness, Tomato Pill Tagged With: , , , ,

About The Tomato Pill Ateronon

August 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Plant ‘factories’ producing lettuces in little more than a fortnight, are springing up all over the developed world.

This month it was revealed that the Ozu Corporation in Japan is the latest conglomerate to diversify into ‘hydroponic’ horticulture techniques, where vegetables are grown in a sort of super-nutrient soup, instead of traditional soil. They are brought to maturity in sterile, indoor, temperature-controlled conditions, and sold with a guarantee of no contamination by any bugs or bacteria.

Hydroponic growing systems are also widely used in the production of tomatoes, but many fear that these high-tech, high-speed growing methods reduce the nutrient content of vegetables.

The British Tomato Growers Association has pointed out that lycopene, the key beneficial ingredient of the health-giving ‘Mediterranean’ diet is only found in optimum concentrations in outdoor sun-ripened tomatoes.

Lycopene is known to reduce the breakdown, or oxidation of harmful fats in the blood, known as low-density lipoproteins. It is this breakdown process which leads to the build up of harmful sticky deposits on arterial walls, in an ultimately fatal process called atherosclerosis. Now scientists have discovered a more efficient way of delivering lycopene to the human body in a treatment called Ateronon.

Ateronon, also known as the tomato pill, is a lycopene formulation which mixes the compound with natural proteins from milk and soya, increasing its ‘bioavailability’ – or capacity for absorption by the human body.

Studies of Ateronon have shown that it can reduce rates of fat oxidation to almost zero in as little as two months which will dramatically reduce the risk of life threatening illnesses such as heart disease and stroke.

Because Ateronon is a food not a pharmaceutical product, it is entirely safe and has been launched direct to the public http://www.ateronon.co.uk.

Filed Under: Exercise, Health Articles, Heart, Illness, Tomato Pill Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

10 Tips For Reducing Cholesterol

August 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Above all, enjoy your food. Eat a tasty a healthy balanced diet, such as the Mediterranean diet LINK on a regular basis because it is delicious and healthy. And while you do not need to eat any cholesterol, because the body makes it, you can still eat foods that contain cholesterol if they are part of a low fat healthy diet and you are living an active lifestyle. All of the below factors will reduce the risk of heart disease and strokes, in a similar way as the new tomato pill which was launched in June this year.

1.    Regular exercise increases the amount of ‘good’ cholesterol in the body. That means at least 30 minutes daily of brisk walking or another activity that makes you slightly breathless and a little sweaty. If your lifestyle is sedentary – you spend most of your days sitting down – then one hour of moderate exercise is needed every day.

2.    Eat lots of fruit and vegetables (at least 5 portions a day) because they contain antioxidants that help prevent harmful changes to cholesterol that can lead to atherosclerosis and heart disease.

3.    Eat lots of starchy carbohydrate foods such as whole grain breads, pasta, rice, oats and starchy vegetables, plus beans and pulses such as lentils. The fibre (also called NSP or non-starch polysaccharides) in these foods, and in fruit and vegetables, can bind with cholesterol and help remove it from the body.

4.    A balanced diet also requires moderate amounts of protein such as meat, but choose lean red meat, or skinless poultry, or game and cut off visible fat to avoid increasing your saturated fat intake. Good protein choices are also fish or vegetable proteins such as nuts, and eat sparingly sugary and fatty foods. Even though eggs contain cholesterol, they are a good choice and there is now no limit to how many can be eaten each week for a healthy heart – but even so, variety is better than relying on just one food.

5.    Avoid fatty meat products such as pies, pates, sausages and other processed fatty meats because they are high in saturated fat which contributes more to raised cholesterol levels than the amount of cholesterol eaten in foods such as shellfish and offal (e.g. liver).

6.    Saturated fat is also found in “hydrogenated vegetable fats” so avoid products such as biscuits, pies, peanut butters and other processed foods that contain these – check ingredients lists on the label.

7.    Trans fats are another form of harmful saturated fat that raises cholesterol levels, so choose spreads and readymeals and other processed foods that state they are “free from trans fats” on the label.

8.    A balanced diet also contains dairy food for calcium, a mineral needed by the heart and for healthy bones, but choose low fat dairy milk, yogurt and so on to avoid the saturated fat in full-fat versions.

9.    Alcohol in small amounts can also raise levels of ‘good’ cholesterol, and red wine in particular additionally contains antioxidants that help prevent hardening of the arteries by damaged cholesterol. However, even one unit of alcohol per day can raise the risk of certain cancers by a small amount. So drink only in moderate, sticking to “safe” levels of not more than 28 units per week for men, with alcohol-free days; and 21 units for women. and you don’t have to drink!

10.    Replace the saturated fats in your diet (lard, deep fried foods, processed foods) with polyunsaturates from vegetable oils, or monounsaturates from olive oil, rapeseed oil and nuts. Eat fish twice a week, one being oily fish (e.g. mackerel, salmon, tuna) for omega-3 heart-healthy fats. Omega 3 is also in sunflower and soy oil and walnuts and linseed oils.

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