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Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead

August 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

100 pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe Cross is at the end of his rope and the end of his hope. In the mirror he saw a 310 lb man whose gut was bigger than a beach ball and a path laid out before him that wouldn’t end well— with one foot already in the grave, the other wasn’t far behind. FAT, SICK & NEARLY DEAD (2010) is an inspiring film that chronicles Joe’s personal mission to regain his health.

With doctors and conventional medicines unable to help long- term, Joe turns to the only option left, the body’s ability to heal itself. He trades in the junk food and hits the road with juicer and generator in tow, vowing only to drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice for the next 60 days. Across 3,000 miles Joe has one goal in mind: To get off his pills and achieve a balanced lifestyle.

While talking to more than 500 Americans about food, health and longevity, it’s at a truck stop in Arizona where Joe meets a truck driver who suffers from the same rare condition. Phil Staples is morbidly obese weighing in at 429 lbs; a cheeseburger away from a heart-attack. As Joe is recovering his health, Phil begins his own epic journey to get well.

What emerges is nothing short of amazing – an inspiring tale of healing and human connection.
Part road trip, part self-help manifesto, FAT, SICK & NEARLY DEAD defies the traditional documentary format to present an unconventional and uplifting story of two men from different worlds who each realize that the only person who can save them is themselves.

Filed Under: Green Food, Nutrition (videos), Obesity, Obesity Tagged With: , ,

A Delicate Balance – The Truth

May 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Every person today has been touched or will be touched by the loss of a loved one to illness and premature death. In a time when modern medicine and science have made such enormous advancements, why is this so? The film identifies the effects of animal agriculture upon the environment. There are many ways of reducing impact upon climate change.

“Livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportation’s contribution.” “At present, there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats. With pigs and poultry, they form a critical part of our enormous biological footprint upon this planet.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Through interviews with top experts in the field of medicine, ecology and nutrition, this documentary explains why people in the Western World are subject to the unprecedented epidemic of ill health.

The film, written by Aaron Scheibner, shows a way out of this cycle of sickness, both human and environmental. We don’t think about where our food comes from and what it does to our body and mind or what impact it has on the world around us.

A Delicate Balance -The Truth (2008) is a succinct production featuring candid, heartfelt interviews with some of the world’s leading experts (including mainstream researchers, doctors, nutritionists, cattle ranchers, environmentalists and politicians) from Harvard to Cornell to Tufts.

A Delicate Balance was made in order to help reduce the unnecessary loss of human life, to reduce the suffering of animals across the planet and to help empower people to make environmental change.

 

Filed Under: Environmental Medicine, Nutrition, Nutrition (videos) Tagged With: , , , ,

Vitamin E in Diet Protects Against Many Cancers

May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Researchers find form commonly used in supplements has no such benefit. 

Vitamin E in vegetable oils and nuts prevents cancer, according to research done at Rutgers University and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

Next time you need to choose between vegetable oil and margarine in that favorite recipe, think about your health and reach for the oil.

While the question of whether vitamin E prevents or promotes cancer has been widely debated in scientific journals and in the news media, scientists at the Center for Cancer Prevention Research, at Rutgers Mario School of Pharmacy, and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, believe that two forms of vitamin E – gamma and delta-tocopherols – found in soybean, canola and corn oils as well as nuts do prevent colon, lung, breast and prostate cancers.

“There are studies suggesting that vitamin E actually increases the risk of cancer and decreases bone density,” says Chung S. Yang, director of the center. “Our message is that the vitamin E form of gamma-tocopherols, the most abundant form of vitamin E in the American diet, and delta-tocopherols, also found in vegetable oils, are beneficial in preventing cancers while the form of vitamin E, alpha- tocopherol, the most commonly used in vitamin E supplements, has no such benefit.”

Director of the Center for Cancer Prevention Research at Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy

Yang and colleagues, Nanjoo Suh and Ah-Ng Tony Kong, summarized their findings recently in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. In a Commentary, Does Vitamin E Prevent or Promote Cancer? the Rutgers scientists discuss animal studies done at Rutgers as well as human epidemiological studies that have examined the connection between vitamin E and cancer.

Yang says Rutgers scientists conducting animal studies for colon, lung, breast and prostate cancer found that the forms of vitamin E in vegetable oils, gamma and delta-tocopherols, prevent cancer formation and growth in animal models.

“When animals are exposed to cancer-causing substances, the group that was fed these tocopherols in their diet had fewer and smaller tumors,” Yang says. “When cancer cells were injected into mice these tocopherols also slowed down the development of tumors.”

In researching colon cancer, Yang pointed to another recently published paper in Cancer Prevention Research indicating that the delta-tocopherol form of vitamin E was more effective than other forms of vitamin E in suppressing the development of colon cancer in rats.

This is good news for cancer research. Recently, in one of the largest prostate cancer clinical trials in the United States and Canada, scientists found that the most commonly used form of vitamin E supplements, alpha-tocopherol, not only did not prevent prostate cancer, but its use significantly increased the risk of this disease among healthy men.

This is why, Yang says, it is important to distinguish between the different forms of vitamin E and conduct more research on its cancer preventive and other biological effects.

“For people who think that they need to take vitamin E supplements,” Yang says, “taking a mixture of vitamin E that resembles what is in our diet would be the most prudent supplement to take.”

 

Reference

Yang CS, Suh N, Kong AN. Does Vitamin E Prevent or Promote Cancer? Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2012 Apr 16. [Epub ahead of print]

 

Filed Under: Cancer, Vitamin E Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Hungry for Change

May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We all want more energy, an ideal body and beautiful younger looking skin. So what is stopping us from getting this?

From the creators of the best-selling documentary Food Matters comes another hard-hitting film certain to rock your world.

Hungry for Change (2012) exposes shocking secrets the diet, weightloss and food industry don’t want you to know about; deceptive strategies designed to keep you coming back for more. Find out what’s keeping you from having the body and health you deserve and how to escape the diet trap forever.

Featuring interviews with best selling health authors and leading medical experts plus real life transformational stories with those who know what it’s like to be sick and overweight. Learn from those who have been there before and continue your health journey today.

 Learn More

www.hungryforchange.tv (Official Website)

10 Step Action Guide. Make these simple additions to your life and watch your health improve. You can even print this out and put this on your fridge!

Jon Gabriel’s Evening Visualisation. Listen and learn how to apply the principles of visualisation as discussed in the film with visualisation expert Jon Gabriel.

Food Matters is a hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health. It is a feature length documentary film informing you on the best choices you can make for you and your family’s health.

The Food Matters Detox and Rejuvenation Guide is an informative guide that will teach you how to apply the principles addressed in the film. This instantly downloadable e-Book will help you find better alternatives for the foods your body might not agree with, giving you the tools and skills necessary to prepare more nutritious meals.

Food Matters the Recipe e-Book. If you’ve watched Hungry For Change and Food Matters and you are looking for ways to incorporate the lessons from these films into your daily life then this book is for you. The idea is that once you start adding these recipes into your life on a daily basis you will start feeling better and this will encourage you to keep eating this way!

Filed Under: Aspartame, Aspartame, Nutrition, Nutrition (videos), Sugar & Sweeteners, Sugar Videos, Videos Tagged With: , ,

Diet and Autism

March 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Researcher Karl-Ludvig Reichelt and his colleagues at the National Hospital in Oslo have found that autistics have more peptides, or fragments of proteins in the urine than healthy people. The effect of this peptide accumulation is an opium-like effect in the brain. The autistics function better socially and achieve greater benefit from teaching and other stimulus when they eat a diet with low protein content without gluten and dairy products. The Norwegian nutrition physiologist Dag Viljen Poleszynski is also interviewed in this film. This is a trailer of the film FOOD? (2005).

 

Filed Under: Autism, Autism, Mental Disorders, Nutrition (videos), Videos Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Mother’s Diet Influences Baby’s Allergies — New Research

September 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A possible link between what a mother eats during pregnancy and the risk of her child developing allergies has been identified in new research published in this month’s The Journal of Physiology.

The research found that if a mother’s diet contains a certain group of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) – such as those found in fish, walnut oil or flaxseed – the baby’s gut develops differently. The PUFAs are thought to improve how gut immune cells respond to bacteria and foreign substances, making the baby less likely to suffer from allergies.

Until now, several clinical trials have shown that fish and walnut oil supplementation in pregnant women reduces the risk of allergy in their children, but the mechanism was unknown.

“There is intense research interest in maternal diet during pregnancy. In the western diet, the group of polyunsaturated fatty acids that we have shown to help gut function are actually disappearing – our dietary intake of fish and nut oils is being replaced by corn oils which contain a different kind of fatty acid”. Said Dr Gaëlle Boudry, of the INRA research institute in Rennes, France.

“Our study identifies that a certain group of polyunsaturated fatty acids – known as n-3PUFAs – causes a change in how a baby’s gut develops, which in turn might change how the gut immune system develops. These changes are likely to reduce the risk of developing allergies in later life.”

The team found that supplementing a mother’s diet with n-3PUFA caused the new-born’s gut to become more permeable. A more permeable gut enables bacteria and new substances to pass through the lining of the gut into the bloodstream more easily. These new substances then trigger the baby’s immune response and the production of antibodies.

“The end result is that the baby’s immune system may develop and mature faster – leading to better immune function and less likelihood of suffering allergies,” added Dr Boudry.

This research adds to previous studies which have shown that an intake of n-3 PUFAs during pregnancy increases gestational length and maturation of the central nervous system of a baby and that their performance on mental tasks also seemed to be improved in childhood.

“Other studies have found that a diet containing fish or walnut oil during pregnancy may make your baby smarter – our research adds to this, suggesting such supplements also accelerate the development of a healthy immune system to ward off food allergies.”

In terms of next steps, the team’s findings were based on piglets so research will continue to see if they translate to humans. The porcine intestine is an excellent model of the human gut however, so they are hopeful that the findings can be extrapolated. The team also plans to investigate whether the apparent gut function-boosting effects of n-3PUFA that they have identified in new-borns extends into later life.

 

Reference

De Quelen F, Chevalier J, Rolli-Derkinderen M, Mourot J, Neunlist M, Boudry G. n–3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in the maternal diet modify the postnatal development of nervous regulation of intestinal permeability in piglets J Physiol 2011; 589 (17): 4341-4352.

 

Filed Under: Asthma & Allergy, Fats & Oils, Health Conditions, Nutrition, Omega-3 Fatty Acids Tagged With: , , , , ,