Lately, several of my patients have asked me about adding flaxseed to their diets. They’ve heard a lot about the important health benefits of Omega-3 fats and that flaxseeds are high in these good fats. While I agree that adding Omega-3 fats by adding flaxseeds to your diet is highly beneficial, you also need to exercise a little caution in doing so. Let me explain.
When heartburn occurs more than only occasionally, and you find yourself spending many nights awake burping up hot acid into your throat, you may actually have acid reflux disease. It has the same symptoms as common heartburn but it is caused by something more than the occasional dietary lapse. Here’s what I tell my patients about acid reflux.
I call DHEA the “anti-stress hormone.” It’s the most abundant product of the adrenal glands. DHEA is the precursor used by your body to produce sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. You have a lot when you’re young but production dwindles with age.
Nearly all vegetables are rich in antioxidants. And it’s been proven that antioxidants are effective at neutralizing free radicals in your body. As I have mention in the past it’s these free radical scavengers that can lead to cellular damage and possibly some form of cancer. So, it makes sense that eating more vegetables can not only be good for you…but help prevent cancer.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? How messages stick with us even after they’ve been proven false? I see patients every day that still buy into the low-fat dieting myth. We stop eating many of our favorite foods. Steak, for instance. A low fat diet will take you straight down the path toward weight gain and chronic disease.
All these medical warnings will probably not stop many of you from having those sudden urges for sweets. And they shouldn’t! The satisfying of your sweet tooth is a human desire. So here are a few natural substitutes that can serve a healthy and fun way to eat.
I had a patient the other day asking why I had recommended a multivitamin to him when research now shows multivitamins cause prostate cancer. He’d heard a report on a study that suggested men who take multivitamins have a higher rate of prostate cancer. This is so far from the truth that it scares me about what people are reading.
If you’re like most Americans, you slather on sunscreen before going outside, you wear sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat, and you stay indoors during the peak hours of the day. It turns out, you may have gone a little overboard. Sunlight is your body’s main source of vitamin D. When sunlight hits your skin it catalyzes the production of vitamin D, and vitamin D is very, very important to your health.
By the time you are sixty—if you’re a man—there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you’ll be suffering from an enlarged prostate. If you live long enough, your chances climb to 90 percent. An enlarged prostate—a condition called benign prostate hyperplasia—is a non-cancerous swelling of the prostate. As your prostate begins to swell, you’ll find that you need to make more frequent trips to the bathroom, your urine stream will be weak, and you’ll have a hard time finishing what you started… if you know what I mean.
Unfortunately, the typical American diet is sadly devoid of fiber. And if you’re one of the millions of people who suffer from gas, constipation, and bloating the lack of fiber could be placing your health in risk. Not eating enough fiber could be the catalyst to many serious diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
I’ve been using a lot of different spices. I learned that many of them not only enhance the taste of my food but are also very healthy for you. Today I want to recommend a few tasty spices that can help protect you from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis… even Alzheimer’s.
If there is one thing I enjoy as a doctor, it is being able to give patients advice that is easy and pleasant to follow. All-too-often, health advice sounds restrictive. That gets tiring for a patient.One more bit of welcome advice for most people is to cook more with garlic. Some people don’t like the way garlic smells, but most everyone agrees that it makes food taste better. Garlic provides a huge list of health benefits. And as long as you share your garlic-cooked meals with your loved ones, the smell shouldn’t be anything to worry about.