Mindfulness Mondays 13: Gratitude
August 24, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
What? A fourth or fifth blog on gratitude? Absolutely, if I could write about gratitude every single day I would. Don’t worry: this is just a gentle reminder (an occasional one) to be thankful for what we have. Most oftentimes we pray out of a desire or a lack of something. Instead, we all should pray with unbridled gratitude. No matter what we have, we should be thankful. No matter what tragedy should befall us, we should hold gratitude in our hearts and our souls.
When I do yoga and I am in excruciating discomfort of holding a pose, the teacher reminds us, “Be grateful that you can even do this. There are people in wheelchairs that would give anything to do what you are doing.” That truly puts things into perspective. My father was ill many years and wheelchair bound, and he would exclaim, “I can’t believe that people with good legs would waste them by not playing golf,” a passionate avocation of my father during his healthier days. When we don’t encounter sickness or weakness, we just assume we are where we are because that is natural. We then start to turn to petty things because that is where our mind is consumed. A director of my anti-aging center, Deborah Haynes, opened one of her lectures I attended in Cleveland with a wonderful aphorism: “A healthy man has a thousand wishes. A sick man has but one.” How true.
This week (and for the rest of our lives), wake up with the words “thank you” on your breath and go to sleep with the same. Spend every waking moment even during times of frustration and pain with an open heart and with gratitude. Fill your prayers with supplicative gratitude rather than needy wants. Just be thankful. Open your heart with gratitude.
In Defense of Food Part 7 of 10: Omega 3s and 6s
August 21, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
I found this chapter to be the most fascinating of many in the book, In Defense of Food. We think Omega 3 fatty acids come from fish, which they do. But ultimately they come from leaves, which fish eat in the form of algae. Omega 3s were discovered in the 1980s for their health benefit in mental activity/neurologic functioning, cell membrane permeability and flexibility, visual acuity, and decreasing inflammation. Omega 6s come principally from seeds and work to reverse the benefits of Omega 3s, specifically to store fat, stiffen walls, and to increase inflammation.
What is truly fascinating is that it is believed that our body’s access to Omega 3s and 6s is a zero-sum game. If we eat too many food items with Omega 6s in them, then we get very little benefit from any ingested Omega 3s. The ratio is what counts. Unfortunately, in our Western diet, we consume on average 10 to 1 Omega 6 to 3 ratios, whereas in the pre-refined grain era we were consuming about a 3 to 1 ratio.
In Japanese and Eskimo cultures that consume vast quantities of fish compared with grain items, their level of heart disease is remarkably lower. In fact, it is known that Omega 3 receptors are found plentifully in the heart tissue that can lead to a more stable heart rhythm, less thrombogenesis (clot formation), and a smoother arterial wall. Unfortunately, with all of the processed foods we are eating we are displacing our Omega 3s making them practically useless. This goes against the grain (sorry for the pun) that some nutritionists argue that the Omega 6 found in seed oil is still so much better than consuming saturated fats. But this may not be the case. Rising Omega 6s may lead to poor bioavailability of Omega 3s.
Omega 3s may cut the chance of heart disease and heart attacks by a full third. That is amazing. I have incorporated Omega 3s as supplements (this is about the only supplement I currently take, 4 pills a day to total 2000 mg of combined EPA/DHA fatty acids, other than Vitamin D since I am sun deprived) into my diet but now I realize the importance of reducing my Omega 6 exposure. In short, eat more leaves and eat fewer seeds.
What is very interesting too is that most processed foods take any remaining Omega 3s out of the equation. Omega 3s have short shelf life and cannot be maintained well. The reason that many diets of the world have moved to higher Omega 6 to 3 ratios (that is a Western diet) is that Omega 3s are rapidly processed in the body and can lead to repeat hunger, whereas Omega 6s typically satiate better. However, all of us need to be more conscious of how Omega 3s can help us for better cardiovascular health, brain/neurological health, and to limit the chances of chronic diseases.
In Defense of Food Part 6 of 10: Refining Grains and Declining Health
August 20, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Since the Industrial Revolution, grains have become more and more refined. Corn and cereal grains have been pulverized into powder with all the nutritional content squeezed out. Rice has been freed from its healthy brown shell into a whitened significantly less beneficial product. By making our digestive systems work less, these refined products are quickly converted into glucose, which leads to our insulin resistance and weight gain. Making corn into corn syrup is perhaps the most blatant offense.
Realizing that diseases like beriberi and pellagra were a direct result of a loss of B vitamins from these refined products, millers started to add B vitamins back into powdered grain and rice products. But what valuable nutrients have we lost in the process? A study from the University of Minnesota by David Jacobs and Lyn Steffen found that despite adjusting for dietary fiber, vitamin E, folic acid, phytic acid, iron, zince, magnesium, and manganese in the diet (all the good things that we get from whole grains), there was still considerable health benefit to just eating the whole grains themselves, as none of the sum of these nutrients alone could explain. As they concluded, “This analysis suggests that something else in the whole grain protects against death.”
Interesting, the absence of these micronutrients that we can’t even label or understand how their synergestic actions may work may lead to even more hunger. Bruce Ames, a Berkeley biochemist, purports a theory that the hunger we experience in eating large quantities of non-nutritious food may stem from our body’s unrelenting desire to attain these missing ingredients so we consume more of bad food to get what we need and are missing.
A diet high in whole grains leads to fewer chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancers; whereas the inverse is certainly true. One of the biggest changes in American diet since 1909 has been the rise of calories coming from sugars, from 13 to 20 percent. Then add the percentage of calories coming from carbohydrates (about 40 percent, or ten servings, nine of which are refined!), we see that Americans are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another. With the rise of fructose along with glucose, we have the perfect storm for our diseased state. The high sugars spikes our insulin levels leading to a crash as the glucose enters are cells, returning us to hunger.
It is not fat that is killing us, it is refined sugars and grains in our diet that no amount of scientific tinkering can overcome.
In Defense of Food Part 5 of 10: Going Back to Basics
August 19, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
We oftentimes cite the greater life expectancy today as evidence at least in part that our dietary knowledge and change in dietary habits maybe accounting for this improvement. Has scientific tinkering with nature truly succeeded? Pollan argues that for people of the same age bracket, there is increasing evidence of cancer and diabetes than those who lived at the turn of the 20th century, a hundred years ago. The rate of heart disease in 1900 is not widely reported, so comparisons are harder to establish. However, today we live with the idea that these modern diseases are a fact of life.
A group of ten Australian Aboriginals who had left the Outback for Western society started to develop obesity, diabetes, and were chronically ill. As part of a study, they were asked to return to their native tribes for 7 weeks part of the time split between the coastlands and part of time further inland to see what would happen. Without prepackaged foods, they subsisted on turtles, crocodiles, fish, shellfish, indigenous plants, and even insects. After 7 weeks in the wilds of Australia, the average weight loss was 17.9 pounds, diabetes disappeared, blood pressure was dramatically lowered, and their blood levels of omega-3 skyrocketed into the stratosphere.
Weston Price, a Canadian dentist, travelled the world in the 1930s to investigate the incidence of dental decay in less “civilized” cultures. Surprisingly, he found in cultures that had no processed flour, sugars, and other packaged goods, there was almost no evidence of tooth decay despite an absence of brushing and flossing. In fact, it did not matter if the diet consisted of meats, blood, and milk like the Masai of Africa or fruits and vegetables in other cultures, there was almost no dental compromise. Even in mountaineers who had a thick coating of green ooze covering their teeth, underneath it all, their teeth were in almost pristine condition.
In summary, what we tout to be Western advances for our health actually may only be a mask that has, in general, despite the advances of medicine and technology actually led to the demise of our health. Just look at the statistics: 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese; ¼ have a metabolic syndrome; 54 million are prediabetic; and the incidence of type 2 diabetes has climbed from 4 to 7.7% in the adult population (which is equivalent to more than 20 million Americans). We need to get back to basics: whole grains, plants, and fewer sugars and fast food detours.
In Defense of Food Part 4 of 10: Puritanism and Food
August 18, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
Pollan argues that the more packaged our food becomes and the more refined no matter what ingredients are contained within, the greater the problem we face with our health and heart status. He believes that tinkering chemically with God’s foods oftentimes leads to greater problems. He speculates that the reason why the U.S. in particular suffers from “nutritrionism” is our puritanical relationship with food: it should not be savored but should be a perfunctory item to facilitate our growth and well-being. It runs counter to how Europeans dine casually and longingly without the semi-religious bent toward food components that Americans focus on. To me, it is a brilliant thesis and on this flight leaving Europe after a week of eating less quantity of food, eating only naturally prepared foods, eating less quickly, and walking a lot more, I feel the weight (pun intended) of Pollan’s words and the charge to change a lifestyle.
A study was conducted in America with the first word response that occurred in one’s mind after hearing “chocolate cake”. Americans instinctively said, “Guilt”. The French given the same query said, “Celebration”. I, like many Americans, have an adversarial relationship with food. “I can’t eat that, I’ll feel guilty.” “That I could eat, but I know I won’t like it but I should.” These thoughts pollute my mind and create an unnatural relationship with food that, well, can’t be healthy. I believe that my intention in the coming days, weeks, months and hopefully for perpetuity is to remove the shackles of my puritanical mindset and give up a large degree of guilt about food and just savor freshly prepared meals without calorie-counting: “Oh I ate too much fat” and “I need to workout tomorrow” mentality that divides us Americans from those Europeans. I believe the timing of my reading In Defense of Food and my concurrent travels abroad is no coincidence. We have a lot to learn from other cultures, as much as other cultures have a lot to gain from ours.