30 seconds on Fish Oil (to get enough Omega-3's)

The Berkeley Wellness Letter has a good summary of what you need to know about Fish Oil capsules. I take 3 capsules every day (spread through the day) to get me about 1,600 milligrams DHA and EPA in total.

• It's still better to eat fish containing Omega-3's than to take the Omega-3 capsules. Berkeley Wellness thinks that the benefits of fatty fish outweights the risk of contaminants. Having said this, let's remember that the American Heart Association offers those with heart disease the option of getting to the higher levels of Omega-3 recommended by taking Omega-3 supplements.



• The American Heart Association recommends that people with heart disease take in 1,000 milligrams of EPA and DHA. (in total) every day. You can get this amount from about 3 ounces of a fatty fish like mackerel, salmon or trout. The problem is that most of us do not eat fatty fish every day. So what to do ? Eat fatty fish a couple of times a week and take 2 or 3 capsules of fish oil every day.
  


• What about eating foods fortified with Omega-3 ? Probably not the answer for most people as the amounts of Omega-3 are so small. For instance: 1 cup of Soy milk enrished with Omega-3 DHA has 32 milligrams; a tablespoon of Smart Balance has 32 miligrams of Omega-3. It needs too many cups of fortified milk and too much Smart Balance to get to the 1,000 milligrams a day.



• What about Omega-3 from plants like flaxseed, walnuts or canola oil ? Afraid not, the Omega-3 from plants is of the ALA form which our body's can, with a lot of difficulty, turn into DHA and EPA but not in sufficient quantities to make the 1,000 milligrams a day of EPA and DHA.

The Wellness Letter also has a subscribers corner for those who hand over quite a small number of dollars every year (which I do).

Omega-3 consists of 3 different fats with the initials EPA, DHA and ALA. It is the first 2 which are valuable additions to our diet; ALA not so much. However nutrition labels often lump all three together under one Omega-3 total

The Berkeley Wellness Letter added in some additional detail on supplement labels. I buy Ultimate Omega from Nordic Naturals and the label says "Pharmaceutical Grade". Apparently this term is meaningless when put onto unregulated supplements. Wellness was also spectical about another label on my bottle of Omega-3 - "molecular distillation" as an unverified term.

Metabolic Syndrome - Just Stand Up

Standing up, without doing anything else, helps your body to process fats after a meal. If you are sat down the fat stays in the blood and keeps on circulating for a long time and then gradually deposits into arteries or stored long-term in fat cells.

Read this report and look at the video which includes a shot of two test tubes. One shows clear blood serum when the patient has stood up after a meal while the blood serum taken after sitting down after a meal (the meals in the two are exactly the same) is noticeably cloudy.

Look at these charts on Metabolic Syndrome - you can use the next and last buttons on each slide - to see what a difference physical activity can make in reducing health risk. Until now it wasn't known that light activity could be quite that light - just standing up is a good thing.

The Metabolic Syndrome Institute is a great source of information. This video from them is well worth listening to.

Fight Off Osteoporosis

We were visiting England for Christmas. One evening after dinner I was asked if anything could be done to increase bone density.  The answer, if you are just  starting to see a reduction in bone density, is to jump  as the video shows.

The video shows you a progression in exercises:

• start with stomping while sitting down
• then stand up and stomp some more
• carry on to hopping
• now you are ready for jumping
• finally skipping (skipping without a rope works the bones just as well as with a rope - and safer if indoors).

The lady asking the question, around 40, had just had a first bone density scan and it had come back showing osteopenia. The person in question walks the dog every day but this was obviously not enough to keep bone density high.

She was quite definite, joining a gym was not going to be the answer. What, if anything, could she do at home ?

As a result this short video was made (2 1/2 minutes) and this blog talking about what her (and possibly your) options might be.

All, or nearly all women, will see a reduction in bone density through the latter decades of life with a really sharp drop in bone density in the few years around menopause. Reduced bone density is known as osteopenia and later when the reduction becomes severe it's called osteoporosis. 

If you are already into osteoporosis, jumping probably has too many dangers and you should restrict yourself to stomping and hopping, because there is the danger that these exercises might cause a bone fracture.

The research seems to show that twice a day has more effect than once a day but three times a day is no more effective than twice a day. So twice a day is the target. Do these bone strength exercises at least 8 hours apart - so morning and evening seem just about right.

About 20 to 40 stomps (in one session), hops, skips or jumps are all you need to signal to your bones to get stronger. So the recipe is 20 stomps, etc. twice a day.

Start off cautiously, talking to your doctor about this is always a good idea, with just 2 or 3 stomps on each leg. Then over the weeks you can gradually build up. Add in a few hops then a few jumps and finally add in just a few skips. The video shows the lady jumping in shoes on a carpet. Over a period of several months, if the exercise is causing no pain, you can think about jumping on bare boards.

It doesn't sound like too much does it ? One problem is that people can think that it doesn't sound enough and do 30 minutes of jumping. This video is aimed at someone who wants to preserve bone strength and bone density not at someone aiming to be an Olypic athlete. Two or three minutes in the morning and another two or three in the evening is all you need for bone strength.

Strangely enough the usual strength training workouts to increase muscle strength seem to have no impact on bone strength. So you need to think about 2 different workout styles - one for muscle strength which will take 20 to 40 minutes andthe entirely different style of workout for bone density.

Cardio workouts like walking, swimming, aquatics, elipticals, low-impact aerobic do not do much, if anything for bone strength. High-impact aerobics will increase bone density but you do not need an hour of high-impact to increase bone density.

The video shows someone in the corner of her living room just getting up and doing the bone strengthening exercises. You don't need to get changed into exercise clothes and the TV can stay on - just like in the video.

To complement these bone density exercises you probably need to do some balance exercises and also some stretching. Of course you'll need some cardio for heart health and some muscles strengthening. 

Vitamin D - get an accurate test of blood levels of Vitamin D

Quest Diagnostics erroneously reported Vitamin D tests.

Yesterday newspapers all over the USA had this kind of headline.


The story behind the story started 2 years ago when Dr Cannell, working at California's prison for the criminally insane, noticed that Quest Diagnostics blood tests for Vitamin D almost always reported OK levels of Vitamin D. Dr Cannell was amazed “A black man coming from solitary confinement on California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation food cannot have a normal level of vitamin D.” This quote is from the extensive New York times report which had several more amazing quotes.

Quest executives say they dismissed the concerns of Dr. Cannell because he was a paid consultant to DiaSorin, a company that makes a rival test.


Quest were hit by a combination of bad luck and some incompetence. The bad luck was that Quest did upgrade their test technology using new equipment but then didn't calibrate the new equipment adequately at all their test labs. Dr. Wael A. Salameh, the medical director for endocrinology at Quest said some materials used to calibrate test results had been faulty. And four of the seven Quest testing laboratories around the country did not always follow proper procedures, he said.

The big problem is that for 2 years many patients have had Vitamin D test results back from Quest saying they are fine right when it has become plain that Vitamin D intake needs to go up very substantially. Read this editorial on the urgent need to revise up Vitamin D recommendations.


The same editorial has this paragraph: "Evaluation of most relations of health and disease that involve vitamin D leads to the conclusion that a desirable 25(OH)D concentration is 75 nmol/L (30 ng/mL) (3-5). If a concentration of 75 nmol/L is the goal to be achieved by consumption of vitamin D, then why is it so rare for members of the population to accomplish this?


One reason is that almost every time the public media report that vitamin D nutrition status is too low, or that higher vitamin D intakes may improve measures of health, the advice that accompanies the report is outdated and thus misleading. Media reports to the public are typically accompanied by a paragraph that approximates the following: "Current recommendations from the Institute of Medicine call for 200 IU/d from birth through age 50 y, 400 IU for those aged 51–70 y, and 600 IU for those aged >70 y. Some experts say that optimal amounts are closer to 1000 IU daily. Until more is known, it is wise not to overdo it." The only conclusion that the public can draw from this is to do nothing different from what they have done in the past. "


How much Vitamin D ?

The bottom line on Vitamin D ? A meta-analysis of primary prevention high-quality trials published in 2005 found that oral cholecalciferol (D3) in a daily dose of 700–800 IU or intermittently 100,000 IU every 4 months with or without calcium, should reduce both hip and non-vertebral fracture risk significantly compared to placebo. Trials that administered 400 IU vitamin D did not achieve fracture efficacy. Notably, there was a significant association between higher achieved 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels (25(OH)D) in the treatment groups and fracture efficacy: The minimal mean level where fracture efficacy was observed was 74 nmol/l (25(OH)D).

If you have the time read this serious piece on Vitamin D and how much makes a difference.

Which leaves the question "Am I Vitamin d deficient ?" Lab tests via your doctor could still give a wrong answer. Once option is to go direct to get a test for Vitamin D level in the blood. You put a spot of blood on a testing sample and ZRT run a test for you. Dr Cannell, the doctor at the California prison for the criminally insane mentioned earlier, says that he thinks it's accurate.

If you have half an hour look and listen to this Stanford Lecture on Vitamin D.

Jenny Craig and Volumetrics - what's it all about ?

You might have noticed that the Jenny Craig TV ads now mention something they call Volumetrics. Do you know what it's all about ?

Over a year ago I compared Volumetrics with Skinny Bitch.

I rated Volumetrics sensible approach. For certain you will never see Skinny Bitch being featured in a Jenny Craig TV commercial. Skinny Bitch is hard core vegetarian but very well written.

WebMD has just caught up with Volumetrics - look at their post.

The word Volumetrics was coined by Barbara Rolls. The central idea is to eat food which fills up your stomach without putting too many calories into your tummy. To go with this Barbara has a really good piece of advice about reading nutrition labels.

The idea is to compare the weight (in grams) of a portion (or serving) to the calories into the serving. Make sure the calories are less than the weight. Doing this means that you fill up while keeping the calories down.

Vitamin E - to supplement or not ?

Vitamin E supplements - dangerous or healthy ?


Suddenly Vitamin E gets back into the news.

On December 30th, 2008 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that taking Vitamin E, Vitamin C and/or Beta-carotene didn't have any impact on cancer risk. This was a nearly 10 year study involving researchers from Harvard and Brigham-Young.

At almost the same moment the January 2009 issue of the Wellness Letter (published by the University of California, Berkley) arrives leading with the question "Should anyone take Vitamin E ?"

Vitamin E was discovered by University of California, Berkeley researchers in 1922 and since around 1995 the Wellness Letter has advocated taking Vitamin E supplements but now it's reversed it's stance and now says - get your Vitamin E from food.

Vitamin E is found in the following foods:
* Wheat germ
* Corn
* Nuts
* Seeds
* Olives
* Spinach and other green leafy vegetables
* Asparagus
* Vegetable oils -- corn, sunflower, soybean, cottonseed

The Wellness Letter position in a nutshell:
Vitamin E in retreat
The Wellness Letter has tracked vitamin E for our readers for many years. About 15 years ago we started recommending E supplements (400 IU a day) because the findings about the potential benefits seemed plausible and exciting. But in 2001, after more research appeared and disappointment set in, we halved our suggested amount to 200 IU. Then, in 2005 we stopped recommending E altogether. When hundreds of studies fail to find a benefit, and so many contradictions emerge, you have to be skeptical.

Bottom line: Get your vitamin E from food, not supplements. The supplements have not proved beneficial, and may even be risky. We stick by our advice that most people can benefit from a basic multivitamin/mineral supplement, which usually supplies the RDA for vitamin E.

• Vitamin E exists naturally in eight forms (four tocopherols and four tocotrienols), of which alpha-tocopherol is probably the most important and the most often studied.

• It acts as an antioxidant—that is, it helps neutralize free radicals (oxygen molecules that can harm cells and may contribute to chronic diseases).

• It is fat-soluble and can thus be stored in the body.

• It is measured in milligrams or International Units (IU); the latter are used on supplement labels. The daily Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for adults is 15 milligrams (about 23 IU).

• Deficiency in E is unknown, except in people with rare genetic disorders or malnutrition, or in preterm infants.

• Nuts, seeds, vegetable oils, whole grains, and leafy greens supply the most vitamin E. Broccoli, tomato sauce, red peppers, carrots, and some fish are also good sources.

So that's it then - no more Vitamin E ?

Maybe not !

There is this report from early in 208 that low levels of Vitamin E are linked to physical decline in seniors. This study did not look at supplements as the researchers position is that sufficient Vitamin E can easily be obtained from food.

Tufts researchers analyzed what Americans were actually eating and came to the conclusion "The majority of men and women in the United States fail to meet the current recommendations for vitamin E intake. Many of the top contributors are not particularly high sources of alpha-tocopherol but are consumed frequently. Greater inclusion of sources such as nuts, seeds, and vitamin E-rich oils, could improve intake of alpha-tocopherol."

The Linus Pauling Institute, which has been an advocate of high levels of supplementation on many nutrition items, recommends 200 IUs a day of Vitamin E supplement (in the form of Alpha-tocopherol) - taken with food.

The 200 IUs a day contrasts with the government set recommendation of 22.5 IUs per day but going too high is probably not an issue. In November, 2004, the American Heart Association stated that high amounts of vitamin E can be harmful. Taking 400 IU per day, or higher, may increase the risk of death. So don't go totaly crazy !

One way forward could be a tablespoon of Wheat germ oil which will get you just about all the Vitamin E you essentially need. However it is pretty intense in flavor and a tablespoon might be difficult to swallow so soft capsules might be the way to go.

Then of course there is the question of absorption of Vitamin E out of capsules. This report thinks that fortified cereals provide a better way to absorb Vitamin E than consuming capsules.

Bottom line for me is that there are certain molecules that our bodies do not make and we call these things vitamins. Our bodies don't make these molecules because they used to be so common in our food that there was no point in making these molecules. So a healthy variety of food is the best way to go. Of course, for many this is too difficult and if you are in this situation then it has to be supplementation. Do it through foods fortified with Vitamin D rather than swallowing a lot of capsules.