From: Abstract (provisional) of “Arginine and antioxidant supplement on performance in elderly male cyclists: a randomized controlled trial”

A study published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (23 March 2010) has shown that an arginine and antioxidant-containing supplement increased the anaerobic threshold at both week one and week three in elderly cyclists.

Background to the Study

Human exercise capacity declines with advancing age. These changes often result in loss of physical fitness and more rapid senescence. Nitric oxide (NO) has been implicated in improvement of exercise capacity through vascular smooth muscle relaxation in both coronary and skeletal muscle arteries, as well as via independent mechanisms. Antioxidants may prevent nitric oxide inactivation by oxygen free radicals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an L-arginine and antioxidant supplement on exercise performance in elderly male cyclists.

To carry out the study, sixteen male cyclists were randomized to receive either a proprietary supplement (Niteworks(R), Herbalife International Inc., Century City, CA) or a placebo powder. Exercise parameters were assessed by maximal incremental exercise testing performed on a stationary cycle ergometer using breath-by-breath analysis at baseline, week one and week three.

Result

L-arginine and antioxidant supplementation can improve exercise performance in the elderly.

You can read a provisional pdf version of the full study here.

Physicians and nutrition scientists from around the world gathered today in Orlando for the opening of the Global Nutrition Transition Conference in order to discuss emerging trends and grass roots solutions to the global obesity epidemic employing balanced nutrition and teaching healthy active lifestyles.

The conference is addressing what is termed the “Nutrition Transition” – the effect of the globalization of the Western diet which is changing dietary patterns and the incidence of overweight and obesity throughout the world. Conference presenters focused on the dramatic increases in the incidence of overweight and obesity in countries where, until recently, obesity was virtually unknown.

Today’s speakers included Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, Seattle; Dr. Anoop Misra, director of the Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases department of the Fortis Group of Hospitals in New Delhi, India; Dr. Nataniel Viuniski of Unimed Hospital, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; Dr. Linong Ji of Peking University in China; and Dr. Marion Flechtner-Mors of the University of Ulm, Germany.

As developing countries become more prosperous, they begin to share some of the health problems of the industrialized world – including huge increases in the number of adults and children who are carrying excess weight. In countries such as India and China, the recent migration to cities from rural areas and the increase in personal incomes has been accompanied by an increased incidence of overweight and obesity.

“While America and Mexico currently have the highest rates of overweight and obesity worldwide, rates are skyrocketing in Asia, particularly in India and China,” said Ji.

Current trends in the global diet have led to rising consumption of high fat, high sugar foods, which can displace local eating habits. As the food supply shifts, calorie intake goes up, but nutrient quality suffers. And activity levels are dropping, too. “As a result, China has seen its obesity rates nearly double since 1989, and 20% of India’s citizens are overweight or obese,” notes Ji.

At the same time, the incidence of obesity-related diseases is also on the rise. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that between 1998 and 2025, the number of people with type 2 diabetes worldwide will double – to 300 million – and that the majority of the increase will be in the developing world. Moreover, 80 percent of all heart disease in the world in the next 10 years will be due to diabetes type 2 associated with overweight and obesity.

The benefits of a total nutrition solution – one which encompasses the inclusion of a range of plant foods, and an emphasis on low fat proteins and healthy fats – is a cornerstone in building new dietary patterns. But the challenge will be to improve the nutritional quality and diversity of the world’s diet, while meeting demands for taste, convenience and value.

“One consequence of globalization is that the world’s people are consuming more foods that are energy rich, but nutrient poor,” notes Drewnowski. “And while convenience foods save time and money, restoring the nutrient balance of the global diet should be top priority. As long as there is limited access to healthy, affordable foods, nutrient supplements will be needed to help fill nutrient gaps,” he adds.

The Global Nutrition Transition Conference aims to explore the impact of this dramatic shift in diet and exercise patterns on world health, and to present insights into combating what is now a universal concern.

The two-day Conference is being sponsored by Herbalife. Drs. Flechtner-Mors, Ji, Misra, and Viuniski are members of Herbalife’s global Nutrition Advisory Board.

(Source: BUSINESS WIRE, Mar 15, 2010)

Healthy breakfast, balanced meals, healthy snacks – are these just slogans that others wield to make us feel guilty? Or do they have solid, scientifically based foundations that can offer us guidance for day-to-day living?

A few weeks ago, …
…at dinner in one of our local eateries, my friend pointed to his plate: “It’s great, this is a balanced meal; carbs, protein, vegetables, fat. Everything the body needs. You should be proud of me the way I’m eating.”
On the face of it, he was right about the pizza in front of him. His pizza did offer all these goodies. Only they weren’t all that good when you looked at them in detail.

Carbs – naturally, the pizza base was carbohydrate but as it was made from refined, white flour, it offered little else but calories as far as nutrition went. No fibre, vitamins or other essential nutrients. Plenty, though, for his spare tyre.

Protein – sure, cheese and pepperoni are protein. But what they brought to the table was a lot of saturated fat, the “bad” high cholesterol stuff that clogs our arteries, which far outweighed the benefits gained from the other nutrients they still contained. Let’s not talk about preservatives, either.

Vegetables – certainly, there was tomato sauce and an infant’s handful of sliced mushrooms and red pepper. It hardly satisfied the need for fibre and other plant based nutrients of the body of a grown man on a daily basis.

Fat – of course, there was plenty. In addition to the fat served up by the pepperoni and cheese, the waiter had sprinkled heart healthy olive oil on his pizza. No wonder that my friend’s wonder wheel weighed in with about 1,500 calories. That is the total daily calorie consumption for someone who wants to lose weight. All that in one meal in front of him, not not counting the wine, crackers, coffee and dessert. Which may explain why he didn’t really like my reply to his ‘balanced meal’ analysis.

The Golden Arches
In the last couple of weeks, the famous golden arches have started advertising massively again that they are now open from 6am to help people get started while still half asleep. I guess you have to be if you go for a Big Mac for breakfast. But does it really give us everything we need to get our day off to a great start?

Whatever your answer to this question, let’s not knock individual brands or types of food. What we need is a guide that tells us what’s what; that tells us reliably what to look out for, what we need, and how to avoid the common pitfalls – in other words, someone who explains Nutrition For Dummies.

Nutrition For Dummies is best used as a reference book to start you off on your journey. For that, it’s unbeatable. Use it as a starting point, and when you feel like it, dig deeper. It’ll pay off. I’ll give you some examples as we go along.

Take water, for instance. Nutrition For Dummies gives us 7 pages for starters. OK, I’ll resist the usual puns here. But after you’ve perused what the author has to say about this vital topic, you can do a lot worse than carry on with “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water” (reviewed a week ago in this blog).

The authors, Carol Ann Rinzler et al., take us through macro-nutrients (carbs, protein, fat, fibre), micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals) and phyto-nutrients (plant based nutrients we get from fruit, vegetables and herbs). Again, once you’ve satisfied your initial curiosity about, say, fruit and vegetables, you can go on to “What Color Is Your Diet?” which I’ll be reviewing here shortly.

Do you want to know if it’s safe to take supplements? There is a well reasoned chapter on food and dietary supplements, when to take them and when to avoid them. Of course, “if you’re willing to plan and prepare nutritious meals, you can almost always get your nutrients less expensively from a varied and balanced diet. This means plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, whole-grain cereals, dairy products, meat, fish, and poultry.” Who’d want to argue with the authors about that?

Superfoods are all the rage. Instead of going for the exotic, weird and wacky, you can opt for the home grown variety by following the book (I have the UK edition of Nutrition For Dummies is). Not everything has to come from far away. Apples, yoghurt, salmon, wholegrain seeded bread, and baked beans make up half the list on these isles. I’d better not tell my daughter that baked beans are classed as superfood. She might stop asking for them.

Nutrition For Dummies also has a great index, which is really helpful when you want to get your bearings fast. My recommendation: use it frequently, satisfy your curiosity about one topic or question at a time, and then move on to more detailed explanations elsewhere. Your body will certainly thank you for it.

If people don’t know what’s going on their plates and into their mouths, how can they follow a balanced diet?

Many of us know little about what’s in our food so rely on producers to be transparent on front of pack and responsible in their use of health and nutrition claims, not exploiting our naivety.

Read the full article here.

You will have noticed that I like Herbalife, at the very latest when you had a look at my recipes on my website.

I also get lots of questions about the company, questions hat are frequently founded on misinformation, rumours and prejudice. Here is an objective answer to all those questions: Jim Cramer, CNBC’s “Mad Money” guy, talks to Herbalife CEO Michael O. Johnson.

Enjoy:

If you have any questions about Herbalife, just ask.

We all know that water is the stuff of life. Not convinved? Check out this video – nothing can be more persuasive than a thousand pictures about the power and importance of hydration. Enjoy!

I just updated my website – www.MyHealthyBreakfast.com. Apart from the new header – can you guess how many different images are rotating? – the home page now explains what a healthy breakfast is: a balanced, protein-based breakfast providing balanced nutrition, the right kind of protein – yes, eggs are back again – and including the right kind of carbohydrates, wholegrain, with sugar coming preferably from fruit. You can read the full article here.

Get the full version in my report on how to “Get Your Day Off to A Great Start.” It’s free.

What a question! Of course, they do. Why, then, do most kids not get it? And what are the consequences for them? In this post, I take a more detailed look at these questions that are so important for the future of our children. It complements Part 1 of my report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”

Children Definitely Need Proper Breakfast.

Adults need a proper, healthy breakfast to get their day off to a great start. Children are growing, so they ought to need it even more urgently. And they do. Let’s first look at why.

Children have an extremely important job to do, at least my daughter does. They have to grow up. They have to go to school and learn the skills that allow them to grow into happy, healthy and productive adults. That’s a bigger job than any of us adults do.

It stands to reason that they need the right fuel to be able to do their job. As far as the physiological aspect is concerned, it’s obvious that a growing body needs highest quality nutrients in the right proportions at the required time. If their young bodies don’t get it, their growth will slow down; they’ll be prone to illnesses and never be able to perform as well as they could at whatever they choose.

This is true not just for breakfast but also for the other meals throughout the day. Breakfast has a special importance, though.

Children have dinner early, normally at about 6pm. Breakfast is the first refuelling opportunity their growing bodies are given after a break of 12 to 14 hours when they did run mostly on empty. It allows them to catch up and set the tone for the day.

Skipping breakfast, therefore, is simply not an option whatever the age of your child. It’s not even an option for you. If they skip breakfast, their first proper meal would be at lunchtime. This means that they would be running on empty for 18 hours! You couldn’t do it to your car, so why should you want to do it to your child?

There are some pretty hefty advantages of starting the day with a healthy breakfast as opposed to skipping it. Research has shown that a healthy breakfast eaten regularly first of all

• - improves their mood and reduces irritability, and therefore
• - improves their behaviour.
• - It also reduces hyperactivity.

This naturally makes for happier children at school. At a more academic level, a proper breakfast helps our children learn better and with less effort because it

• - helps improve attention span and concentration,
• - helps improve their mental performance, their ability to solve problems, and
• - helps improve their memory.

Getting started regularly on a healthy balanced meal in the morning has also shown to reduce

• - lateness
• - absence, and
• - visits to the school nurse.

All this will obviously help our children perform better at tests, make school a more pleasant, happier experience for them, and set them up for life with good eating and work habits. In my book, this is a pretty good return for making sure they have a properly balanced breakfast every morning.

What Is A Healthy Breakfast?

A healthy breakfast, for our children and for us, does not have to be anything extraordinary. It’s a nutritionally balanced start of the day:

• - Make them drink a glass of water as soon as they get up, and then
• - give them wholegrain (not just wholemeal) bread and butter,
• - an egg,
• - a glass of milk,
• - some fruit or
• - a glass of freshly pressed orange juice, preferably both.

Or cook some porridge with a twist. You’ll find more details in Part 7 of my free report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”

This combination will provide them with the vitamins, minerals, protein and slow release carbohydrates they need. Children who have such a start of their day will be well on their way to achieve 3 important goals:

1.  Meeting Their Daily Nutritional Needs

It will provide them with significant amounts of important micro-nutrients as well as macro-nutrients: vitamins C and D, calcium, iron, fibre, carbohydrates, protein and fat. This is of great importance also for older children moving into puberty and adolescence. Their nutritional needs explode as they swap their children’s bodies for adult ones.

2.  Not Suffering From Overweight

Research among 9 to 12 year olds has shown that a breakfast with a low glycemic index (low GI) – that is, wholegrain bread – combined with protein keeps them satisfied much longer. Children eating a more standard breakfast that has a high GI (white bread / toast, sugary cereals, etc.), get hungry much more quickly, snack more frequently and have greater problems controlling their weight now and as adults.

3.   Creating A Good Store Of Energy For The Day

This takes us back to the advantages that we’ve already seen of a healthy breakfast over skipping breakfast. These advantages are short term (for the day at school), medium term (helping them perform better and get better grades) and long term  (creating good eating and work habits for life).

For more details about what the body needs and where you find the nutrients, download my free report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”

For decades, we were told that eggs are bad for us. In 1970, they were linked to cholesterol and heart attacks; then we were told that they carry salmonella. So we stopped eating them. Well, at least we reduced our consumption drastically.

This has now been relegated to the realm of mythology. Eggs are good for you. It’s official. It has been shown in a study to be published by the British Nutrition Foundation in March 2009, that eggs have a clinically insignificant effect on cholesterol levels. Not only that, their high protein content can help people lose weight. Research published in 2008 showed that people who ate two eggs per day, while on a calorie-restricted diet, not only lost weight but also reduced their blood cholesterol levels.

As a consequence, major health organisations revised their guidance. The British Heart Foundation withdrew its recommendation to limit eggs to 3-4 a week. The Food Standards Agency advised that most people don’t need to limit how many eggs they have if they are eating a balanced diet. The American Heart Association also removed specific reference to eggs in their dietary recommendations for heart health.

The research also showed that only one third of the cholesterol came from the diet, and that it was raised by saturated fat, not by eggs. According to the British Heart Foundation, “if you need to reduce your cholesterol level it is more important that you cut down on the amount of saturated fat in your diet from foods like fatty meat, full fat dairy products and cakes, biscuits and pastries.”

It remains true, of course, that increase in blood cholesterol can increase the risk of heart disease.  People who are overweight and don’t exercise are more likely to have high blood cholesterol. Only eggs are now out of this equation.

According to Prof. Bruce Griffin, Professor of Nutritional Metabolism from the University of Surrey and joint author of the new paper, people do not need to be limiting the number of eggs they eat – indeed they can be encouraged to include them in a healthy diet as they are one of nature’s most nutritionally dense foods.

Eggs are a good source of important nutrients: they are protein-rich and provide vitamin A, vitamin D, niacin and vitamin B12. Their fat content is predominantly unsaturated.

So, let’s put eggs back in our healthy breakfast and go to work on an egg. They definitely are part of my breakfast plans. If you don’t know about them, get a copy of my report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”  Simply click here to get it.