Tag Archives: nutrition

Good News About an Old Enemy….Cholesterol!…….. by Beth Ellen DiLuglio M.S., R.D., C.N.S.D., C.C.N., LD/N


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Why is everyone picking on cholesterol !?  It is certainly one of the most misunderstood, demonized molecules that our bodies make!  It is so important as a precursor to many important molecules in our bodies and even acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory!  We produce cholesterol on an ongoing basis, for an ongoing reason.  If we make too much or eat too much cholesterol, a feedback loop will kick in and slow down production for most people.  Cholesterol drugs called “statins” triger that feedback loop and inhibit cholesterol production.  Unfortunately they reduce production of squalene and Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) as well  so people on statin drugs often experience side effects such as muscle cramping and exhaustion.
You must be asking why would we produce cholesterol when drug companies are telling us it is bad for us, so let’s review “Cholesterol 101”.  We are able to convert cholesterol into “vitamin” D, bile acids, cortisol and other vital hormones including DHEA, progesterone, testosterone and estrogen. Cholesterol is incorporated into our cell membranes and is one of the primary lipids in brain tissue! Does that sound like a poison to you?  OF COURSE NOT! Cholesterol is clearly vital to our health.
I put “vitamin” D in quotes for emphasis and to get your attention. Vitamin D is actually a hormone, but that’s another lecture!  It is produced from cholesterol in the skin, in the presence of UV light from the sun.  We can make up to 10,000 units of vitamin D with 30 minutes or so in the sun.   Vitamin D has several target organs including the central nervous system, GI tract, immune system, pancreas and reproductive organs.  Vitamin D is thought to protect us from tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis and even some cancers!  Make sure you are making or taking plenty of the “sunshine vitamin”!
What about “bad” or “good” cholesterol?  People like to call LDL a “bad” cholesterol but that is actually misleading.
The liver produces cholesterol and sends it out for delivery on the “LDL bus.”  It can be delivered to the cells that need it at the time.  The “HDL taxi” will pick up left over cholesterol and return it to the liver for recycling or disposal.  Be aware that LDL and HDL can become elevated in response to toxins such as organic solvents, pesticides, heavy metals or even dry cleaning fluid!  Elevated blood lipids should be completely assessed before any drug therapy is initiated!
There is one “bad” cholesterol and that is OXIDIZED cholesterol.  This can lead to a cascade of events that build up plaque in our arteries.  So, how do we prevent OXIDATION?  ANTI-OXIDANTS of course!  Vitamin C and full spectrum natural Vitamin E are especially important.  No wonder why a deficiency of Vitamin C (master antioxidant) can lead to a type of heart disease known as  atherosclerosis (“hardening of the arteries).  Apparently heart disease and atherosclerosis are not “statin deficiency” diseases after all!
P.S., eat the yolk of your eggs.  Not only do they contain cholesterol that should kick in your feedback loop, but they contain important nutrients such as choline, B12, vitamin E and even vitamin D!
So there, I hope you’ve started to fall in love with cholesterol.  I just had to defend that vital, yet defenseless molecule! Stay tuned for more !  Clinical Nutritionist Beth Ellen DiLuglio, MS, RD, CNSD, CCN, LD/N.  Metabolism.com
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Helpful Nutrition Hints for Avoiding Diabetes


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I am attaching an excerpt from a recent book by Dr. Frederic Vagnini and Lawrence D. Chilnick on how to use nutritional techniques to avoid developing diabetes. Thanks to the authors for permission to use this information.

Overcome Supermarket Roadblocks

by Frederic Vagnini, M.D., FACS, and Lawrence D. Chilnick,
Authors of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes

Shopping Defensively

Here are some specific hints for defensive shopping:

Prepare ahead. If there’s one rule to follow, this is it: Don’t to go to the supermarket “on the fly.” We’ve all run out for a few things and ended up buying twice as much as we needed. Often, something in the store tempts us to do just that. For example, how many supermarkets position the bakery right where you walk in, with the wonderful smell of newly baked bread or cakes perfuming the air? It’s not an accident.
Consult your cookbooks and create a weekly menu. Write down all of the ingredients you need for it.
Know what you are going to make, and make sure that most of what you buy fits into your overall meal plan.
Check the fridge and pantry so you know what you don’t need to buy.
Shop weekly. Shopping too often or stretching your shopping trips to every two weeks will make sticking to your meal plan more difficult.
Learn the store layout. The fewer tempting products you see and the less time you spend browsing, the easier it will be to avoid buying the wrong foods. The healthiest fresh foods are in areas against the store walls. Don’t spend time in the central aisles with things you don’t need.
Look up and down. The most attractively packaged food is on shelves at eye level.
Stay away from the areas where store employees are offering free samples of high-carb and fatty foods.
Eat before you shop. A hungry shopper buys more food and makes worse food choices, plus with diabetes, you need to eat at specific times and in amounts that ensure stable blood sugar.
Shop alone and without the kids. Although research claims that men are more likely to stick to their list only, the levels of obesity in both genders suggests otherwise. Going to the supermarket should be a directed, time-limited event. You are there to buy certain things you need; you don’t have to review every single one of the store’s offerings. If possible, shop for food when the kids are in school because they are special targets for marketers.
Make healthy choices. This doesn’t only mean buying fresh vegetables from local farms or good produce in the supermarket. A healthy choice is a meal you make at home — not take-out or prepared foods. Over the past decade, sales of prepared foods at the deli counters and throughout the store have risen steadily. Americans now spend over $15 billion per year on prepared foods in supermarkets and in shopping mall food courts.
While sales of starchy, fat-dripping fast foods are dropping, prepared take-out foods aren’t much better. The choices are often “family friendly”: fried chicken, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, baked potatoes, egg rolls, tacos, and creamy “comfort food” soups. Did you know that much of the prepared supermarket food is made by the same giant food companies that make the fast foods? If you buy prepared foods, avoid those with heavy mayonnaise or breading and high calories. Dodge items featuring rice or mashed potatoes, too.

Some experts suggest you take a close look at how much of your diet comes from the prepared choices. If prepared food makes up more than half of your diet, you have a problem. While one solution would be to learn to cook more or better, some people simply don’t like to cook or have too little time to make meals at home. But this isn’t an insurmountable problem.

Making the Supermarket Your Support System

If you are truly going to make a change that will bring your glucose under control and help you lose weight, you will have to take control of what you and your family eat. It is less difficult than you think. The secret is in your commitment to change.

There are scores of healthy-eating-oriented cookbooks in bookstores, supermarkets, mega-stores, and online recipe sources. These books help you follow some basic rules that will help meet the requirements of the Five-Step Plan.

Doing your own cooking will help you control what you eat, control your glucose, and lose weight. You will still go to the supermarket, but buying fresh vegetables in season, certain fruits, and good protein sources such as fish, chicken, turkey, and other lean meats will make your diet more interesting and flavorful. You might even discover that cooking can be fun, and you can make it a group activity. As you lose weight, you will feel better physically and mentally because the food you eat will be better for you. Your body will thank you.

Another good tip is to ask questions at the market. You’d be surprised how much help the people behind the counters can be, and not only at high-end supermarkets.

The desire for certain foods has been studied and reported on over the years. It’s often been noted that people fantasize more about food than any other pleasure, including sex. After all, food gave us our first pleasure as children, and eating habits last a lifetime. Given the level of obesity in the country, is it any surprise that many adolescents who do their “hunting” in front of the computer or video game are following in their parents’ footsteps?

The above is an excerpt from the book The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes by Frederic Vagnini, M.D., FACS, and Lawrence D. Chilnick. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2009 Frederic Vagnini, M.D., FACS, and Lawrence D. Chilnick, authors of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes

Author Bios
Frederic J. Vagnini, M.D., FACS, coauthor of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes, is a board-certified cardiovascular surgeon whose understanding of the ravages of cardiovascular diseases is grounded in twenty years as a cardiac surgeon. He hosts a popular call-in radio show and has published several books, including The Carbohydrate Addict’s Healthy Heart Program, a New York Times bestseller.

Lawrence D. Chilnick, coauthor of The Weight Loss Plan for Beating Diabetes: The 5-Step Program That Removes Metabolic Roadblocks, Sheds Pounds Safely, and Reverses Prediabetes and Diabetes, is the authors and creator of the New York Times bestseller The Pill Book, which has sold 17 million copies and is still in print after more than two decades. He is a publishing executive, editor, teacher, journalist, broadcaster, and author of several popular health reference books, electronic products, audiotapes, and videos.

For more information please visit www.amazon.com.

Building bridges


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Metabolism related disorders can really sneak up on you with no warning. Actually almost any disease can, the question is what you can do to prevent it or to manage it. There are many articles around how to prevent various disorders but, really, there are so many of them you don’t even want to know. Plus, it can create an anxiety to think about that. Before attending Chinese medicine school I had no idea about the variety of diseases, and at some point in the western medicine section of my education, particularly pathology, I even freaked out looking at all these scary photos. The bottom line is you never know what your genetic blueprint is exactly going to produce, what new flu is about to emerge, and which next food choice would be proved dangerous. I’m not even mentioning numerous prescription and over-the-counter drugs with various issues. However the reality, there is not so much you can do to control external environment, even by washing your hands and buying organic. Don’t take me wrong, please by all means take precautions – watch your diet, visit your doctor for regular checkups, follow the news on health and nutrition. And whatever happens – stay calm. It is your internal environment you can control to make decisions from the balanced and educated mood.

Many of us experienced scary moments when dreadful news are delivered to us and loved ones about the disease that has no cure and at the best can be managed with medications or nothing at all – just wait and see. Probably the scariest of all is placing your fate to the hands of your doctor while “googling” for hours, asking friends, pacing back and forth, screaming at heavens, feeling powerless. Then you have to make a decision – either disease has you – or – you have been diagnosed with the disease. I would strongly advocate for the second choice simply because it leaves you with the power to choose what to do from the place of your own unique constitution – on all levels. The disease never manifests exactly the same for everyone, and never can be treated exactly the same. The limitation here is what you already know vs what you don’t know yet.

The rule of thumb: never give up. The miraculous cures are recorded over and over again – while you have a hope you have a chance. Don’t believe a doctor who takes hope away from you, it is your health and your body – you have the right to press for answers, demand explanations, copies of your medical records, and consultations about other choices. Turn your attention to alternative medicine. A good medical doctor never blindly dismisses an alternative option – he will study it and give you his/her opinion. Some doctors don’t have time to educate themselves about other kinds of medicine and you can encourage them to do so. More and more medical doctors embrace acupuncture, nutrition, homeopathy, and other modalities in their practice or in collaboration with other practitioners. It all comes down to what patient will benefit from the most, and the safety of therapies integration. It is equally important to provide your alternative medicine doctor with copies of your lab results, especially if you are looking to benefit from herbal medicine or nutrition care.

We are lucky to live now – the age of technology. Modern and ancient medicines are dancing together building bridges between top-notch machines and dried herb decoctions, brain surgeries and homeopathy. Using it all you can expand your choices and the most important – build a well-defined plan to heal yourself using the expertise of doctors and specialists you trust.

Balance Your Thyroid for Sleep, Weight, Nutrition


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Another gift from the sea bringing balance to your body

Another gift from the sea bringing balance to your body

Did you know that yourthyroid and parathyroid,located in the base of thethroat is responsible for a number of important bodily functions including: balancing your weight, regulating your sleep and absorbing key nutrients like calcium?


It’s true! We’re so concerned in our culture about the size and shape of our hips, waists and more, but we need to take a closer look at the pit of our lower throat, because that’s where the thyroid is located. The thyroid requires iodine to function normally, and the best way to supply this nutrient is NOT through iodized table salt, but through a natural source: Sea Kelp.

Kelp is a seaweed naturally rich in minerals like calcium and iron, but also iodine. It is used in many Japanese and Macrobiotic recipes. The good thing about taking kelp is that the nutrients will balance your thyroid, but will not overload the system like taking an artificial source of these supplements could.

You can find sea kelp supplements in any health store, I suggest you take a 650mg tablet once or twice a day with a meal for a month, careful not to take too much and see if you notice any changes.
Kimberly, counselor since 1998 and founder of www.RedAppleYoga.com, holds a Masters in Health & Healing as a Certified Nutritional Counselor, a Masters in Education and is an internationally trained advanced  Yoga and Yoga Therapy instructor that has worked and studied in New York, Spain and in Southern India. Her practice is based in New York City. She believes in showing her clients how to combine time-tested ancient theories with modern knowledge to get the best benefits from both worlds.

Cardamom, small spice with huge benefits


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Did you know that Cardamom, that secret spice in many Indian and Mediterranean dishes is nature’s Ricola and Pepto bismal all in one?

small pods with huge potential

small pods with huge potential

Ever taste the earthy vanilla undertones in Chai or that gloopy Indian milk dessert and wonder what that special flavor is? Most likely it’s cardamom. In the traditional Indian medicine, Ayurveda,

cardamom seeds are also used as lozenges to suck on after meals to help digestion. I’ve tried it, its a little minty, sorty like licorice but pleasant.

Indian medicine says that the acid from teas and coffee and spicy foods irritate the intestines, leading to an increase of gassy gassiness that make the other foods we eat (namely milk, cheese, wheat) more difficult to digest. Cardamom in your diet can help the body to better digest all the other possibly irritating foods we eat because they are natural carminatives which reduce gas. I recently learned that the word “carminative” comes from the latin word that means to “card” as in carding wool…so it helps to remove gas from the intestinal wall as you would remove knots from wool. See, didn’t you always want to know that? 😉

Cardamom is also used in the Middle east as an additional flavor to ground coffee, making coffee brewed with these little pods less acidic on the body and actually helps regulate how we absorb the caffeine. You’ll still get the buzz without the possible gas or irritated stomach. And besides, it can make any coffee, especially bargain brand coffee taste like something that rhymes with Barbucks.

If you want to try it out, buy the bottled powder stuff and use it with cinnamon…over toast, oatmeal, in a cookie recipe, even in tea with milk and cheat your way to better digestion.


Best Benefits of Cardamom:

  • Detox the body of caffeine
  • Cleanses kidneys and bladder
  • Stimulates digestion and reduces gas
  • Improves circulation to lungs, helping asthma and bronchitis
  • Cures bad breath, even the official “halitosis” bad breath
Kimberly, counselor since 1998 and founder of www.RedAppleYoga.com, holds a Masters in Health & Healing as a Certified Nutritional Counselor, a Masters in Education and is an internationally trained advanced  Yoga and Yoga Therapy instructor that has worked and studied in New York, Spain and in Southern India. Her practice is based in New York City. She believes in showing her clients how to combine time-tested ancient theories with modern knowledge to get the best benefits from both worlds.

Lose weight and still eat the foods you love


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Did you know that nutrition is just as much about HOW and WHEN you eat as it is about what you eat?

Did you know that you can get more nutrients from eating your favorite neighborhood pizza in the right way, than you could from eating a steamed organic bowl of vegetables in the wrong way?

Ayurveda, the ancient system of health from India has given us tools to maximize the nutrients we get from our foods and to improve our digestion. So here’s 3 quick and crucial tips from ancient India!:

  1. When you eat, no matter what it is, chew it slowly, aiming for at least 30 chews per mouthful. Our saliva is the first step of digestion. Chewing well breaks down the food before your stomach processes it, exposing more of the nutrients to your body and also minimizing problems with reflux, acid and indigestion. Plus, savoring your food makes it last longer and may reduce the total amount of food you need to feel satisfied.
  2. When eating a heavy food like pizza, burgers, ice cream etc. try to eat these foods earlier on in the day, say for lunch or for an early dinner before 6:00pm. This will allow your body to digest and process the food before bed, going to sleep with a full stomach is at the root of a lot of weight management problems.
  3. When you eat a heavy meal, start with a raw salad filled with tons of crisp greens and your favorite light veggies like tomatos, cucumber, carrots etc topped with a light vinegar based dressing. The raw veggies act like a broom through the stomach, helping the body to digest the main meal and helping you maintain your weight.

Ancient India and China have a variety of techniques that can change your life depending on your lifestyle, body type, appetite, region that you live amongst many other considerations. This is something that an experienced practitioner can help you to decide. The above 3 suggestions will work for anyone anywhere and will provide simple and dramatic changes. Try them on for yourself and see how simple big change can be!