Gelatin supplements, good for your joints? Yes and No

The following article poses the question- Should we take gelatin supplements.

The answer is yes and no.  IF you are not willing to make and consume Traditional Bone Stocks (article and recipe), then yes you should take gelatin supplements. My recommendation is Great Lakes Gelatin Collagen. I add it to my Smoothies.

BUT, it’s WAY healthier to eat the whole foods, as opposed to supplements or processed foods.

A new study from Keith Baar’s Functional Molecular Biology Laboratory at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences and the Australian Institute of Sport suggests that consuming a gelatin supplement, plus a burst of intensive exercise, can help build ligaments, tendons and bones. The study is published in the January issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Connective tissue and bone injuries are common in both athletes and the elderly, and interfere with peoples’ ability (and enthusiasm) for exercise, whether they are an elite athlete or just trying to lose weight and maintain fitness and flexibility. Steps that can prevent injury and enhance recovery are therefore of great interest.

Obviously, it’s difficult to assess the direct effect of a supplement on tissues without opening up someone’s knee. But Baar’s laboratory has been developing techniques to grow artificial ligaments in the laboratory. They used their lab-dish ligaments as a stand-in for the real thing.

Gelatin, Vitamin C and Exercise

Baar, Greg Shaw at the Australian Institute of Sport, and colleagues enrolled eight health young men in a trial of a gelatin supplement enhanced with vitamin C. The volunteers drank the supplement and had blood taken, and after one hour performed a short (five minute) bout of high-impact exercise (skipping).

The researchers tested the blood for amino acids that could build up the collagen protein that composes tendons, ligaments, and bones. They also tested blood samples for their effect on Baar’s lab-grown ligaments at UC Davis.

The gelatin supplement increased blood levels of amino acids and markers linked to collagen synthesis, and improved the mechanics of the engineered lab-grown ligaments, they found.

“These data suggest that adding gelatin and vitamin C to an intermittent exercise program could play a beneficial role in injury prevention and tissue repair,” the researchers wrote.

Read the paper here. The work was funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIH) and the Australian Institute of Sport.

Eat like Your Ancestors: Why you Should Forget Superfood Fads and Follow a Traditional Diet

It’s all about eating like your great-great-great-great-grandparents did

For decades we’ve been told to eat a different food practically every year if we want to be healthy: blueberries, avocados, chia seeds, quinoa and kale have all had their moments in the sun, but a new book claims we should forget food fads and eat like our ancestors.

100 Million Years Of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today by Stephen Le also reveals that we’re not actually consuming more calories than our predecessors, despite common belief.

Paleo, raw, veggan (nope, not a typo – that’s vegan but with eggs) – nowadays we’re spoilt for choice with diet options that will supposedly bring us optimal health and wellbeing, but it could be that these modern trends are doing more harm than good and have caused the current explosion of chronic diseases and allergies.

Le’s family are originally from Vietnam but his parents settled in Ottawa, Canada, in the 1960s, where Le and his three brothers were born and grew up. 

He was finishing his PhD at the University of California when he discovered his 66-year-old mother’s breast cancer – with which she’d been diagnosed years earlier – had spread to her lungs.

Le rushed home to Canada where his mother died three months later, aged 66. It was just two years after her own mother had died almost three decades older, aged 92.

His parents had obeyed every western food fad over the years, whereas his grandparents, unable to read English, had stuck to the traditional fare they knew. This got Le thinking. 

As a biological anthropologist, he started doing research into ancestral diets and food-related illnesses: “Some of my preliminary readings,” Le told Macleans, “showed that Asians who migrate to North America and Europe see elevated rates of breast cancer as well as prostate cancer.” And he wanted to find out why.

Contradicting nearly everything we’ve been told recently, Le discovered that the average person in 2016 doesn’t consume more calories than humans millions of years ago, and thanks to our increased metabolisms, we’re burning just as many calories as our predecessors too, despite our sedentary lifestyles.

So rather than eating less or exercising more, Le believes the key to health is eating like your ancestors. He champions traditional diets and argues that we should be looking to our genetic and cultural history when deciding what to eat.

Forget foodie fads and so-called superfoods, it’s the simple fare of our great-great-great-great-grandparents we should be consuming, whether that’s meat and potatoes or vegetables with rice. So instead of asking for the latest healthy cookery book, it might be worth taking a look at your grandparents’ cookbook and making the recipes handed down to them over the years.

Le thinks our society in fact places too much emphasis on fruit and vegetables. As our bodies have evolved, he believes we can no longer cope with the “daily jug-loads of fructose” we’re consuming through juices, smoothies and fruit.

And as for vegetables, Le points out that they became part of our diets late – even after meat and dairy – because they contain toxins. 

Whilst cooking vegetables neutralises said toxins, western cultures place salad and raw vegetables on a pedestal: “If you took people from most parts of the world to a salad bar, they would gasp in horror. They’d say, ‘You can’t digest these things!’” Le explains.

Le is not a nutritionist and admits that fruit and vegetables have nutritional value, he just believes we overstate their importance. “As long as we’re eating an adequately balanced diet, there’s no fear of non-nutrition,” Le says.

So next time you fancy potatoes but feel you really ought to have broccoli instead, that’s something to remember.

Do Humans Need Dairy? Here’s the Science

A lot of people will have already made up their mind about whether humans need dairy in their diet and will be thinking that the answer is obviously “yes” or obviously “no”.  But nutrition is based on science not opinion – so, here’s the latest research on the matter.

Milk is an interesting foodstuff. The sugar in it is called lactose and lactose requires a chemical or enzyme called lactase to allow it to pass across the walls of the gut into the blood stream. When we are babies, we all produce plenty of the lactase enzyme which allows us to absorb our mother’s milk. In populations where milk consumption has been historically low, such as Japan and China, most children will have stopped producing lactase soon after weaning and – producing almost entire populations that may be unable to absorb the lactose in milk – this we call “lactose intolerance”.

In populations where milk consumption has always been high, such as in Europe, most adults continue to produce lactase for their whole lives and can digest milk quite happily with only around 5% of the population being lactose intolerant.

Continuing to produce lactase into adulthood is actually an inherited genetic variation which has become so common because being able to tolerate milk has a selective advantage. Milk is a useful source of protein, energy, calcium, phosphate, B vitamins and iodine, meaning that those with the mutation were generally healthier and produced more children than those who couldn’t tolerate milk, and so the presence of the mutation increased.

The symptoms of lactose intolerance include wind, bloating and diarrhoea so if you don’t experience any of those after drinking milk or eating ice cream then you’re fine.

Fermenting

Kefir ‘grains’ after straining.

There is good evidence that milk has been part of the human diet in Northern Europe for more than 8,000 years which is when people there first moved from being nomadic to having a more structured way of life. Because 8,000 years ago most people didn’t tolerate milk well, they quickly realised that if the milk was fermented and became cheese or yogurt it could be better tolerated. This is because these processes encourage bacteria to use up most of the carbohydrate – the lactose – in the milk so people who didn’t produce the lactase enzyme could still benefit from the nutrients in the milk. Today people with lactose intolerance can drink kefir, a fermented milk drink made with a yeast starter, which some suggest also has probiotic benefits for the gut as well as many other health benefits.

So dairy has been pivotal to nutrition and important to the survival of many populations in the world and most Europeans and North Americans are well adapted to digest it. So if you have been told that humans aren’t adapted to have dairy in their diet, that isn’t correct. Similarly, it isn’t true to say that dairy promotes inflammation or acidity.

Calcium

Nutritional scientists and dietitians have often assumed that because milk is rich in calcium, it is therefore good for maintaining the calcium levels in our bones. However, a couple of recent big studies have brought this into question. A further systematic review of the evidence concluded that actually, it doesn’t seem to matter how much calcium you get from your diet, your risk of fracturing your bones remains the same.

That said, we have seen that in cultures, where dairy plays a very minimal part in the traditional diet such as in China and Japan, the incidence of hip fracture – a common outcome of poor bone mineral density – is 150% higher than that of white American or European populations.

One thing to remember about these studies is that they are looking at calcium intake in adulthood. However, we know that the strength of our bones is actually determined by our diet as children and teenagers. When we look at studies of children who have an allergy to cow’s milk, for example, we see that the strength of their bones is significantly compromised by the lack of milk in their diet and that desensitisation through treatment so their diet can include milk also strengthens their bones.

Interestingly, children with this allergy who are given alternative sources of calcium other than milk still find the strength of their bones compromised. This suggests that calcium-containing alternatives to dairy are still not good enough at promoting bone density in children.

While milk intake is really important for the healthy development of children’s bones, consuming milk as an adult doesn’t appear to decrease your risk of fractures. But there are lots of other nutrients in milk and dairy foods.

Studies have found that if dairy is replaced in the diet by foods containing the same amount of calcium such as green leafy vegetables or soya milk fortified with calcium, the diet contains less protein, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, riboflavin, vitamins A and B12. Milk and dairy foods are also a great source of all essential amino acids which are the small protein molecules that build muscles and repair tissue damage. Obviously the protein and micronutrients could be found from other sources but obviously not without careful planning.

When it comes to health, the bottom line is we probably don’t need dairy in our diets – as adults – but milk and dairy foods are convenient and good value and provide lots of essential nutrients which are trickier to source from other foods. Where milk drinking is the cultural norm we have adapted to tolerate it very well and it can be very nutritious.

Millie-  This article makes no mention of Traditional Bone Stocks, the very best and healthiest way to meet our needs for calcium , iron and amino acids.

The Many Health Benefits Of Avocado You Need to Know

Food trends are constantly changing, but thanks to the health benefits of avocado, the fruit has been in the spotlight for quite some time now. Its fame is partially due to its deliciously creamy, nutty taste—and, of course, how photogenic it is when spread atop toast. But we also need to give credit where credit is due: There are tons of nutrients packed into each and every avocado.

Avocados are one of the only fruits that contain healthy, monounsaturated fats,Lori Zanini, R.D., a California-based dietitian and spokesperson for the Association of Nutrition and Dietetics, tells SELF. “Including healthy fats in our meals during our day is important in order to keep us full and satisfied after meals, since fats take longer to digest than carbohydrates or proteins,” Zanini says. The majority of the fats in avocado are monounsaturated, which are lauded for having anti-inflammatory benefits and for helping to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. Some research also shows that healthy fat can positively impact insulin levels and blood sugar and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. “Additionally, avocados are naturally sodium and cholesterol free,” Zanini adds.

Smash it on toast, spread it on a sandwich, or slice it on top of eggs or salad. The possibilities really are endless. Just be sure not to go overboard (we know, hard to do)—because of their fat content, avocados are pretty high in calories, so too much of a good thing can backfire here. Zanini recommends sticking to 1-ounce servings, “which is about 2 to 3 slices or about 1/4 of a small avocado.”

Other than offering up a mega dose of healthy fats, there are a ton of other health benefits of avocado.

Avocados are also full of vitamins and nutrients our bodies need to function properly. Here’s what’s packed under that hard green skin and some of the ways each one benefits your health:

Vitamin K: Promotes normal blood clotting and prevents and treats weak bones.

Vitamin C: Contributes to cell growth and repair—from your skin to your nerves. It’s also an antioxidant, which protects the body from damage by harmful intruders (called free radicals) that cause health issues like heart disease and cancer.

Vitamin B6: Promotes healthy immune function, nerve function, and formation of red blood cells.

Vitamin E: Helps the body make red blood cells and boost immune function. It’s also an antioxidant, and essential for hair and skin health.

Folate: Promotes healthy cell and tissue development. It’s also essential for proper brain and spine growth in a developing fetus, so is especially important for pregnant women (it’s actually recommended that all women of reproductive age take a folate supplement). Zanini says it’s also important for preventing one type of anemia.

Magnesium: Important for muscle and nerve function, and also supports immune health and bone strength, regulates blood sugar, and helps with energy production. For those who suffer from migraines, getting more magnesium can be an effective way to prevent them (doctors will probably suggest a supplement rather than food sources, but getting more in your diet is good, too).

Potassium: An electrolyte that helps maintain a normal fluid balance in our bodies, aids nerve and muscle function, protein synthesis (building muscle), and keeps the heart beating normally. Bonus: It’s also great for reducing bloat.

Fiber: It keeps you regular, promotes colon health, lowers cholesterol, stabilizes blood sugar (which helps control appetite and keep you fuller for longer), and is helpful in maintaining a healthy body weight. Like many fruits, avocadoes have both soluble and insoluble fiber.

Lutein: This carotenoid—the name for a variety of plant pigments that give produce red, orange, and yellow coloring—is great for eye health. Research shows it may help protect against eye disease, partly because it absorbs damaging blue light. Lutein is also an antioxidant.

You might also like: How to Make Healthy Poached Egg and Avocado Toast

6 Anti Inflammatory Powerhouse Foods

CLEAN EATING CAN PUT OUT THE FIRE THAT’S MAKING YOU SICK

Photograph by Shutterstock

Adapted from Eat Clean, Stay Lean

Chronic inflammation has been associated with an increased risk of arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and cancer. Sure, some inflammation is good—like the acute kind is a form of self-protection, your body’s immune response to a cut or pathogens entering the body. Chronic inflammation, however, means that your body is constantly producing immune cells, which can damage the body. This harmful inflammation is a result of never-ending stress, being overweight, or a diet high in things like sugar, trans fats, and various toxins.

But while the wrong diet promotes excessive inflammation, a diet rich in clean foods can help reduce it and its harmful effects on your body. The following foods in particular are anti-inflammatory powerhouses:

COLD WATER FISH

Salmon, black cod, sardines, and anchovies are full of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids. Salmon is a particularly good choice—its rosy pink color comes from carotenoids, which also have anti-inflammatory properties.

SPICES AND HERBS

 Herbs and spices like basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, turmeric, peppercorns, ginger, and cinnamon are loaded with all sorts of antioxidants that have even been found to reduce pro-inflammatory compounds that build up on meat during grilling. And ginger and turmeric, in particular, have been linked to joint pain relief. Add them to marinades, dressings, spice rubs, and teas for a dose of health and flavor.

SWEET POTATOES

Sweet potatoes are high in vitamins C and E and the carotenoids alpha- and beta-carotene, all of which reduce inflammation and promote healthy, vibrant skin.

More: Top 10 Anti-Aging Superfoods Your Skin Needs

TEA

Green, black, and white teas contain free radical-fighting catechins, which have recently been associated with reduced muscle inflammation and a speedier recovery after exercise.

WALNUTS

 Walnuts contain alpha-linolenic acid—an omega-3 fatty acid that reduces inflammation and is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease and

AND- the mother of all anti-inflammatories- TURMERIC. Better yet, for amazing pain and inflammation use Curcumin- the extract in turmeric that is so powerful. I use this one   Turmeric Curcumin with BioPerine Black Pepper Extract – 750mg per Capsule, 120 Veg. Capsules

Case Study Chronicles First Brain Bleed Tied to Energy Drinks

Investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have presented the first case study of a patient experiencing a hemorrhagic stroke — a brain bleed — following consumption of an energy drink.

In an article in press in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, the UAB physicians detail the case of a 57-year-old man who developed an intracranial hemorrhage within 15 minutes of drinking a popular energy drink.

The patient presented at a local emergency department and was transferred to the stroke unit at UAB with symptoms of sensory changes (tingling and numbness) in the right arm and leg, along with ataxia (shaky gait and movement). A CT scan revealed a small hemorrhage near the left thalamus.

“The man reported that his symptoms began about 15 minutes after drinking an energy drink, the first time he had consumed this particular product, as he was about to do yard work,” said Anand Venkatraman, M.D., a fourth-year resident in the Department of Neurology at UAB and the lead author of the study.

Venkatraman says the drink contains a high level of caffeine, along with a variety of other ingredients, many of which are associated with increases in blood pressure.

“This particular drink contains several supplements for which we have little understanding of their potential interactions with each other or with caffeine,” Venkatraman said. “One is structurally similar to amphetamines, and several are known to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system.”

The sympathetic nervous system regulates what is known as the “flight or fight” response. When faced with an urgent, potentially dangerous situation, the body gears up to either take extraordinary action (fight) or run away (flight).

“The body begins to marshal all of its resources to respond to the situation at hand — boosting strength and alertness, for example — in part by raising blood pressure to increase blood flow,” Venkatraman said. “For a patient who may be at risk for vascular disease, this increase in blood pressure could be potentially dangerous, as a rise in blood pressure can affect an already weakened blood vessel to the point that it ruptures.”

Ingredients in the drinks that are suspected to influence the sympathetic nervous system include β-phenylethylamine hydrochloride, yohimbine and green tea extract.

“These ingredients are supplements and, as such, are not regulated by the government to the same degree that medications are,” Venkatraman said. “We don’t have good information on dosing for some of these supplements. We don’t know how much is too much, for example, especially in populations with varying degrees of risk.”

Another issue is serving size. The manufacturer’s label says the bottle contains two servings, but the patient reported that he drank the full 8 oz. bottle at one time, a behavior that Venkatraman believes is common.

“The warning here is that we do not fully understand how some of these ingredients interact with other compounds,” Venkatraman said. “Nor do we have enough information on maximum dosages, especially for individuals with underlying health issues. Consumers need to be aware of the ingredients in the drinks if they choose to use them, and check with their physician if they have questions. They should also follow the manufacturer’s recommendations.”

In this case, the patient had a history of elevated blood pressure and was at increased risk for vascular disease. Several months after the incident, the patient reported that he still had some residual effects from the incident.

“I am not anti-energy drink,” Venkatraman said. “In fact, I use them myself on occasion. But I strongly urge consumers to read the label and be informed. Don’t take unnecessary risks with your health. There is potential for a serious outcome.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Alabama at Birmingham. Original written by Bob Shepard. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. A. Venkatraman, A. Khawaja, A.H. Shapshak. Hemorrhagic stroke after consumption of an energy drink. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.ajem.2016.10.022