Diet & Weight Loss Archive

Internal cleansing may empty your wallet, but is it good for your health?

Spring usually makes us think of cleaning — putting our records in order for the tax season, emptying our closets of winter coats, and readying our gardens. As if those chores aren't enough, we're now hearing that our bodies need a thorough internal cleansing as well. A growing number of infomercials, Web sites, and print articles are urging us to eliminate the systemic buildup of toxins that supposedly results from imprudent habits or exposure to hazardous substances in the environment. Such toxins, we're told, will sap our vitality and threaten our health unless we take measures to "detox" ourselves.

Four diets forged in clinical trials offer real benefits for the entire cardiovascular system.

Do the basics of healthy eating — more fruits, vegetables, good fats, whole grains, and healthful protein packages, and less of the not-so-good stuff — work for the heart? Indeed they do. A host of studies has shown that each of these elements, by itself, can lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar; improve the flexibility of arteries; or protect against heart attack, stroke, and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Put various pieces together and the protective effect is even more powerful.

Saturated and trans fat? No. But replacing carbohydrates with unsaturated fat could lead to a longer, healthier life.

Fat of any kind packs in the calories. A single gram contains nine, compared with four in a gram of carbohydrate. So, yes, fat can be fattening if you eat too much of it. Of course, the same is true of carbohydrate. Extra calories that lead to extra weight, no matter where they come from, aren't healthy.

Any diet that helps you take in fewer calories will help you shed pounds.

The "Atkins is best" headlines you may have seen in March 2007 had champions of the low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet smiling — and hoping that people wouldn't read the study on which the news reports were based.

What you eat can fuel or cool inflammation, a key driver of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.

Inflammation is an essential part of the body's healing system. Without it, injuries would fester and simple infections could be deadly. Too much of a good thing, though, is downright dangerous. Chronic low-grade inflammation is intimately involved in all stages of atherosclerosis, the process that leads to cholesterol-clogged arteries. This means that inflammation sets the stage for heart attacks, most strokes, peripheral artery disease, and even vascular dementia, a common cause of memory loss. Think of it as friendly fire "" yourself attacking yourself.

Inflammation doesn't happen on its own. It is the body's response to a host of modern irritations that our Stone Age genes haven't quite caught up to. The main ones are smoking, lack of exercise, high-fat and high-calorie meals, and highly processed foods.

Learn to manage your triglyceride levels to avoid having a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.

Visceral fat more of a health concern than subcutaneous fat

Though the term might sound dated, "middle-age spread" is a greater concern than ever. As people go through their middle years, their proportion of fat to body weight tends to increase — more so in women than men. Extra pounds tend to park themselves around the midsection.

At one time, we might have accepted these changes as an inevitable fact of aging. But we've now been put on notice that as our waistlines grow, so do our health risks. Abdominal, or visceral, fat is of particular concern because it's a key player in a variety of health problems — much more so than subcutaneous fat, the kind you can grasp with your hand. Visceral fat, on the other hand, lies out of reach, deep within the abdominal cavity, where it pads the spaces between our abdominal organs.