Santa Barbara Chiropractor

Does your refrigerator light stay on when you close the frig door? No? Well, new research is suggesting that perhaps it should! As a chiropractor, I’m all about “total wellness,” which means that I believe in routine chiropractic care along with a healthy lifestyle that includes good nutrition, regular exercise, drinking plenty of water, and dealing effectively with life stresses. Getting the nutrition we need from fruits and vegetables used to be a “no brainer,” i.e., just buy them fresh. But, with the current trend towards big farm over-planting that has lead to soil depletion in many areas, sadly the fruits and vegetables grown in, and pulled from, soil lacking in nutrients lack much of the health benefits they once offered. We generally need to search for fruit and veggie stands and farmers’ markets to get anything close to the natural nutrition that was once “a given” when we were children because, let’s face it, it’s hard to find healthy produce in our supermarkets anymore. So, I was pleasantly surprised and very interested in a new study that the harsh, unnatural lighting in most supermarkets — the kind of lighting that seems to have no environmental upside — apparently has a bright side: healthier fruits and vegetables.

That’s right! A recent study found that spinach actually gained nutritional value as it sat for days under fluorescent lights! And, not just “minor” value gains. Some vitamins doubled their concentrations. Apparently, fluorescent supermarket lights mimic the spectrum of natural sunlight, and some supermarkets keep them on all the time, 24-hours a day. Continuous light exposure allows plants to maintain photosynthesis and, of course, photosynthesis produces nutrients.

The study’s author, Gene Lester, is a research plant physiologist at the United States Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, MD. He and his colleagues chose to study spinach because it is one of the most nutritionally complete vegetables commonly available, with significant concentrations of vitamins C, A, K, E and folate.

You can read about how the research was done in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry or by going to discovery.com

Bottom line: To boost the nutritional content of spinach and other produce, researchers suggest (counter-intuitively) that consumers select packages from the front of display cases that are kept under continuous light.

Posted via email from healthandfitnessnews’s posterous

You probably know that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” but did you know that “A pound of fat equals 3,500 calories”? As a chiropractor who believes that a healthy lifestyle includes a healthy weight, I believe that the latter equation is just as important as the former when it comes to your health. So does First Lady, Michelle Obama. In announcing a national plan to counter childhood obesity, she indicated that weight loss doesn’t have include an unnatural “minus” intake of food, but slight lifestyle changes, such as replacing soda pop with water or walking to school, are “small changes that add up.” The formula seems simple enough: reducing calorie intake by just 100 calories a day, or burning up that amount, would equal losing a pound every 35 days, or as much as 10 pounds or more a year. And, though individual losses might vary and educating children (and their parents) about nutrition is still very necessary, in my opinion making “small changes” is a healthy place to start for many kids.

Unfortunately, there are those who find such equations “misleading,” like the health blog at NYTimes.com . In it Tara Parker-Pope states that “numerous scientific studies show that small caloric changes have almost no long-term effect on weight. When we skip a cookie or exercise a little more, the body’s biological and behavioral adaptations kick in, significantly reducing the caloric benefits of our effort.”

The question the article poses is “Can small changes in diet and exercise at least keep children from gaining weight?”  And it goes on to say that “While some obesity experts think so, mathematical models suggest otherwise.”

To read the blog in its entirety, click the link above. Then you can reach your own conclusions.

Posted via email from healthandfitnessnews’s posterous

Let's face it, if you like beer, you're going to look for a good reason to drink it, whether it's a tailgate party, as a pizza accompaniment, or to help built strong and healthy bones. Say what? Up until I heard the recent news reports and read an article that appeared recently on the healthDay News blog, I wouldn't have listed that last reason on the "pro" side of any health list I was making. But according to a new study published in Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture beer, or at least some beer high in barley and hops contain dietary silicon,contributes to bone mineral density. I'm a chiropractor, so naturally anything that helps to build bone density is good in my book. And, though there are foods, such as bananas, that also contain dietary silicon, if you like beer, this study is good news!

Beer for the Bones?

(HealthDay News) — Beer may help keep bones strong because it's a rich source of dietary silicon, which contributes to bone mineral density, a new study reports.

But the amount of silicon apparently varies by the type of beer.

"The factors in brewing that influence silicon levels in beer have not been extensively studied," study author Charles Bamforth, a professor in the food science and technology department at the University of California, Davis, said in a news release from the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. The study is published in the journal's February issue.

"We have examined a wide range of beer styles for their silicon content and have also studied the impact of raw materials and the brewing process on the quantities of silicon that enter wort and beer," Bamforth said. Wort is liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer.

The researchers tested 100 commercial beers and found that their silicon content ranged from 6.4 to 56.5 milligrams per liter.

"Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon," Bamforth said. "Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element. While most of the silicon remains in the husk during brewing, significant quantities of silicon nonetheless are extracted into wort, and much of this survives into beer."

More information

The U.S. National Institute of arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases has more about bone health.

SOURCE: Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, news release, Feb. 7, 2010

Posted via email from healthandfitnessnews’s posterous