I've been looking at nutritional sites for a couple of hours because I think it's always worthy to chase down a few potential diet ghosts that are always floating around. If you really stop and think about it, every diet could use a little tune up, and admitting your diet may not be perfect is always the first step. Since I learned I was off the chart with my sodium intake, I started investigating to determine what else I might have wrong. Turns out I had another diet foe I need to pay attention to: cholesterol.
I know ALL my levels are high right now – that's to be expected in the beginning of a healthy changeover. As you read in segment eight , I revealed my weight after I realized my blood pressure was pretty high. Since blood pressure is a measure of a good diet, I knew even though I was trying to eat healthy with what little I had, it wasn't a great diet. When I saw the blood pressure machine tell me I was off the charts, it was nothing short of a slap in the face with a high voltage metal paddle. I was honestly shocked to the core. I stripped down the kitchen of all sources of sodium and gave my friend eleven bags of food. Nothing was held back – even my comfort foods went on the chopping block.
Vitamins are not a problem for me, but I must confess, I get tired of taking them. I'd rather take vitamins now than be put on some medication later and have my medical record show it. I want to give the Peace Corps absolutely no reason to request additional tests that will cost me a ton of money later, so vitamins are a good short-term investment. Working off this premise and using my knowledge of vitamins, I started to create a program that would help me in losing weight and bring the assorted blood levels down to acceptable levels.
I know essential fatty acids are important to the body when you start dieting, or else your mood goes through the floor and your brain sails into a fog bank. There are such things as “good” and “bad” fats, and essential fatty acids are well known for residing under the “good” category. There has been long standing research that garlic is important for cholesterol control, so that's in my daily routine. Of course it's important to take vitamin C during the winter season to help boost your immunity, and when taken in conjunction with vitamin E, they work like little “brooms”, sweeping up as antioxidants. I'm also ingesting lecithin and milk thistle because they work on the liver, and if your liver isn't functioning effectively, it's being overworked and under performing. There is much research to show a sluggish liver will “hoard” fat around the mid-section, increasing your risk of fatty liver and ultimately, Non- Alcoholic Steatorrhoeic Hepatosis. You can guess that wouldn't look good on a medical report and if I have it, which is sounds like most obese people do, it's reversible (liver cells can regenerate).
Here's a little tip that I just picked up today in my Internet travels: do not take vitamin E with garlic capsules. Both have the ability to thin the blood, and you don't want to take two blood thinners at the same time! So there's another adjustment to my health regimen and a few dollars saved in my pocket.
The reason I mention this is because the liver can process cholesterol and fats if it's functioning normally, but you're not going to bring down the blood levels if your liver is overtaxed. Of course there's always more to the story than just a quick overview. Lecithin keeps cholesterol and fats liquid so they won't stick to the arterial walls, but you need a way to transport the harmful elements out. We take it for granted with extra water, we can urinate the poisons out. That's not exactly the case, but it is a big part of it. The liver produces bile, which helps to process the cholesterol and fats being sent in, but your body needs ample fiber as well in order to transport it out. Fiber acts like a sponge and gives the “bad” fats something to cling to. So it's water and fiber that help to rid the body of its toxins when it comes to cholesterol.
Of course exercise helps to lower bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol, but I think everyone has heard that from the doctor in one form or another. “Quick smoking, eat a healthy diet, and lose some weight”, and then you notice they're not a weight loss motivator. The ashtray on their desk also doesn't lend credence to their recommendations. We naturally do not like the “do as I say and not as I do” approach to a healthy lifestyle from the man who's got bacon crumbs in his moustache and Marlboros in his pocket.
