Fighting fake hunger pangs -- and 7 other reasons to drink more water

image by susan burdick

Roughly 60 percent of your body is made of water. Drinking plenty vs not enough water affects how your body sends signals, regulates temperature, digests food (affecting nutrition), and more. Here are eight reasons to drink more water...

• Being dehydrated creates fake hunger pangs that are really your body's cry for water, not food. Next time you want a snack, try having a glass of ice water (or other unsweetened drink), and find something interesting to do for 10 minutes. This may make your hunger pangs go away.
• Did you know that skin is the largest organ in your body? Some toxins in the body can cause the skin to inflame, resulting in clogged pores and acne. Plus, any inflammation in the body is an additional drain to your immune system. 
• Your stomach and colon need water to help them break down food, absorb nutrients, and flush out waste. If you don't drink enough water, waste will collect in your body, causing a myriad of problems.
• Also, the less hydrated you are, the harder it is to poo. 
• Your kidneys are also essential for waste removal, processing up to 200 quarts of blood daily, sifting out waste and transporting urine to the bladder. Not surprisingly, they also require fluids to work properly. 
• Because dehydration affects the viscosity of the blood (makes it thicker), it forces your heart to work harder to pump blood through your body. 
• Could drinking more water prevent cancer? Some research says staying hydrated can reduce risk of colon cancer by 45% and bladder cancer by 50% for men. (Women showed no statistical difference for colon cancer, and were not included in the bladder cancer study.) (Sources: colon cancer-  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10404059;  bladder cancer - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/331514.stm)
• My favorite? Drinking more water may improve your mental sharpness! Research looking at dehydration in atheletes "was associated with negative mood, including fatigue and confusion." (Source: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/091123.htm)

Are you hooked on pop? Here's a "baby steps" approach to weaning yourself off the sweet stuff.

Fact sources:
http://greatist.com/health/reasons-to-drink-water
http://breakingmuscle.com/health-medicine/10-life-changing-reasons-to-drink-more-water
http://www.butterflytherapies.com/top-12-tips-for-a-healthier-life-part-1/

An experiment that shocked the scientists: Reheating pasta improves its nutritional qualities!

From a report by BBC: 

...what if you could change pasta or potatoes into a food that, to the body, acts much more like fibre? Well, it seems you can. Cooking pasta and then cooling it down changes the structure of the pasta, turning it into something that is called "resistant starch."

According to the report, the advantages of this are:

• Smaller rise in blood sugar
• More pre-biotics to feed the good bacteria in your gut
• Fewer calories absorbed.

But this gets better...

Curious but doubtful as to whether reheating the pasta would retain the benefits of cooling, the BBC asked a couple doctors to conduct a small experiment with nine participants. They tested eating the pasta original hot, after it was chilled, and chilled then reheated, testing the changes in their blood sugar several times. The results?

Just as expected, eating cold pasta led to a smaller spike in blood glucose and insulin than eating freshly boiled pasta had. 

But then we found something that we really didn't expect - cooking, cooling and then reheating the pasta had an even more dramatic effect. Or, to be precise, an even smaller effect on blood glucose.

In fact, it reduced the rise in blood glucose by 50%. 

This certainly suggests that reheating the pasta made it into an even more "resistant starch." It's an extraordinary result and one never measured before.

At least one of the doctors will be continuing the research on a more scientific level, to see whether adding resistant starch to one's diet can improve some of the blood results associated with diabetes.

This doesn't mean you can pig out on big bowls of spaghetti, but it does make that leftover lasagna a little more guilt free!

Read the full article

CDC study shows that being somewhat "overweight" has at least one positive effect.

I'm not a scientist or a medical professional (so this should not be considered medical advice) but I like to try to find medical studies that back up claims published here and there. The chart below is based on data drawn from a meta-analysis conducted by the CDC, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (2013 Jan 2), and posted on nih.gov.

Ninety-seven studies were used for analysis, providing a combined sample size of more than 2.88 million individuals and more than 270,000 deaths. The results showed that those who were somewhat "overweight" according to the standard BMI numbers actually had a lower mortality rate -- by 6% -- than those whose BMI would fall into the "healthy" range. There was even a slight advantage for those in the slightly obese range.

Click the image to see it larger.

For those who prefer their data in a paragraph to a chart, here it is. The study looked at mortality rates for four groups of people: those with a BMI of 18.5 to 20 (called "normal weight"), with a BMI of 20-25 ("overweight"), BMI of 25-30 ("obese grade 1"), and BMI over 30 ("obese grade 2"). The data showed a lower mortality rate for the the overweight and grade 1 obese groups, by 4-5%. Grade 2 obesity, however, showed a markedly worse mortality rate: +29%.

How does that shake out in height and pounds? Here are the numbers for some average height women (U.S.):

BMI if you are 5'2"

- "healthy": 110-130 lbs.

- "overweight": 140-160 lbs.

BMI if you are 5'4" 

- "healthy": 110-140 lbs.

- "overweight": 150-170 lbs.

BMI if you are 5'6" 

- "healthy": 120-150 lbs.

- "overweight": 160-180 lbs.

The study didn't look at quality of life issues, so if you were to mine the same data looking for incidence of diabetes, etc. the picture might look very different. But I just thought it was interesting that even up to a BMI (body mass index) of 35, being somewhat overweight actually has a positive effect on mortality over the course of the study.

Let us always remember, however, that the mortality rate over all time for everyone is 100%!  [insert ironic smiley face here]

Source of human images used in BMI graph: http://ygraph.com/bmi

Source of numbers used for average height BMIs: http://www.youngmomsconnect.org/downloads/bmi_chart.pdf

Graph created by Jana Snyder.

Diet duel: the Mediterranean diet vs. the low-fat diet

The Harvard School of Public Health recently conducted a study pitting the Mediterranean diet against a low fat diet. The results?

Weight change over 18 months:

• Mediterranean dieters lost an average of 9 pounds.
• Low-fat dieters gained (yes, gained) an average of 6 pounds.

Those who stuck with the diet:

• Mediterranean dieters: 54% stuck with it the whole 18 months.
• Low-fat dieters: 20% stuck with it.

Dr. Walter Willet, Chair of the Dept. of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health says:

"The real issue is not losing weight—people can cut back on calories and lose weight on almost any diet—but keeping weight off over the long run. Thus it is more important to find a way of eating that you can stay with for the rest of your life. For this reason, any eating plan you choose should be satisfying and allow variety, and should also be nutritionally sound."

Here's 12 Mediterranean recipes I want to try.

Quote source: Harvard School of Public Health website

Additional study: A small new study shows that following a Mediterranean Diet helped men at high risk for heart disease reduce their bad cholesterol, regardless of whether they lost weight.

Image source: The Boston Globe, "Mediterranean diet vs. low-fat Ornish plan," April 15, 2013

Fructose is the new "Fat"

So, last night, I picked up The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease and perused it in the book store. It's by an MD and a PhD, and is backed up with lots of studies. In it, the authors explain why sugar, corn syrup and anything high in fructose are so harmful to our bodies in general and especially our heart health. The quick summary: because they're processed first by the liver. (This article by the editor of Harvard Health Publications provides a quick and easy to understand summary of the subject.)

Which isn't to say that ANY fructose is bad; it's just the over-prevalence in the modern American diet that is problematic. A meta-analysis published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reached the conclusion that "obesity and diabetes rates were low when total [dietary] fructose intake was in the range of 25–40 g/d [grams per day]," adding the caution that, "Conclusions as to the safe and prudent amounts of fructose consumption will require carefully controlled dose-responses studies in different populations...."

This has prompted me to do some research on fructose found in various types of sweet substances. Here are some things I've discovered...

Here is a University of Vermont study (See Table 1) which found that higher grades of maple syrup -- those that are lighter in color -- may contain lower levels of fructose than their darker cousins.

A short list of the highest offenders, from the Wheat Belly Blog by Dr. William Davis:

Where do you find fructose? Fructose can be found in (roughly in order from worst to least):

• Agave

• High-fructose corn syrup

• Sucrose (white sugar)

• Honey

• Maple syrup

Self Magazine's incredibly helpful nutrition database has a page listing more than 700 foods highest in fructose. 

And here's the opinion of one Paleo dieter, from a forum thread on PaleoHacks:

The monosaccharide form of fructose, which is found in corn syrup, is supposed to be the most harmful. Surprisingly, the honey has about 42gm of monosaccharide fructose per 100gm serving, while molasses has about 13gm and maple syrup has about 4gm (source). So with regard to monosaccharide fructose, maple syrup would appear to be the least toxic.
However, in the previous thread on honey, studies are cited which show that honey does not have the same harmful effects as other sweeteners, and may even be beneficial. This is probably because honey is a whole food whose ingredients have complex interactions that somehow mitigate some of the possible harm from the fructose.

(Update, 3/12/13) And here's a great post on Green Lite Bites, exploring the nutritional aspects of several natural sweeteners.

Probably more info to come...

I am not a health professional and this post is not intended to be professional medical advice.

photo credit: Wikimedia

Yes, sugary drinks interact with weight-related genes (and how to kick the pop habit)

The Associated Press reports that "A huge, decades-long study involving more than 33,000 Americans has yielded the first clear proof that drinking sugary beverages interacts with genes that affect weight, amplifying a person's risk of obesity beyond what it would be from heredity alone." Full story here.

Are you hooked on pop? Here's a "baby steps" approach to weaning yourself off the sweet stuff. Try taking one or two weeks to adjust to each step.

1. Switch to diet pop, same amount. Update, 9/28/12: If you have a serious sugar addiction, you may need to do this step in phases. See this article for info about sugar withdrawal symptoms and how to manage them.
2. Replace one pop a day with coffee, tea or juice. No added sugar or artificial creamers. You may use other sweeteners. Do some research and experimentation to find a sweetener that you feel is healthy, and that doesn't cause any troubling side effects for you. 
3. Continue replacing servings until you are off pop completely.
4. Replace one drink a day with water or green tea. Flavor with real fruit or a splash of juice, if you want. (Note: if you’re going off of coffee or strong tea, you’ll need to do the replacement slowly to avoid caffeine withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and sluggishness.)
5. Continue replacing until water is all you drink all day (with fruit, if you like). Or green tea till 3 pm; water after.