Author: andrewstemler

fibre

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According to the British  Nutrition foundation the government in 2015 published new guidelines with a recommendation that the population’s fibre intake should increase to 30g a day for adults (aged 17 years and over).

 Age (years)
 Recommended intake of fibre
 2-5  15g per day
 5-11  20g per day
 11-16  25g per day
 17 and over  30g per day

here is a fun fibre video

According to the British Nutrition Foundation

Fibre helps to keep our digestive system healthy and helps to prevent constipation. For example, fibre bulks up stools, makes stools softer and easier to pass and makes waste move through the digestive tract more quickly.

The European Food Safety Authority suggests that including fibre rich foods in a healthy balanced diet can improve weight maintenance. Dietary fibre can reduce your risk of:

  • Cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke) and type 2 diabetes
 Foods such as oats and barley contain a type of fibre known as beta glucan, which may help to reduce cholesterol levels if you consume 3g or more of it daily, as part of a healthy diet.
  • Colorectal cancer (bowel cancer)
Did you know that the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) estimate that 45% of bowel cancer could be prevented through diet, physical activity and weight?

Fibre and bowel cancer
We know that dietary fibre may help to protect against bowel cancer. Although the reasons for this are not fully understood, this may be because fibre increases stool size, dilutes content and moves it faster through the gut so the amount of time waste products stay in contact with the bowel is reduced. Some types of fibre may also help gut bacteria produce helpful chemicals that can have beneficial effects on the bowel (see below).

Fibre and good bacteria
Research has increasingly shown how important the bacteria in our gut may be to our health, and it has been suggested that a fibre rich diet can help increase the good bacteria in the gut.  Some fibre types provide a food source for ‘friendly’ gut bacteria helping them to increase and produce substances which are thought to be protective such as short-chain fatty acids.

The dish hold

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The absolute foundation of gymnastic training is the dish hold, or hollow hold or handstand plank. It’s a super useful skill and a great core and abdominal muscle builder. If you want a L sit, a handstand or a muscle up, you need this!

 

Body fat calculator

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Knowing your fat percentage is one of the best fitness tests you can do.

The best way to assess your body fat percentage is to get me to whip out my fat calipers.

However, for those of you who don’t fancy that experience, I quite like the zone body fat calculator.

Get a tape measure with inches and fill-out this interesting online calculator

Click here

Be anti-inflammation

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Whatever chronic disease you choose to review, the chances are it can be linked to inflammation. This is where your body is driven a bit mad and starts attacking itself .

Chronic inflammation is also called persistent, low-grade inflammation because it produces a steady, low-level of inflammation throughout the body.

Low levels of inflammation can be triggered by a perceived internal threat, even when there isn’t a disease to fight or an injury to heal, and sometimes this signals the immune system to respond. As a result, white blood cells gear up but have nothing to do and nowhere to go, and they may eventually start attacking internal organs or other healthy tissues and cells.

So its best to change the basic environment of your body, and you can do this, effectively, by diet.

Reduce the amount of foods you eat that are high in saturated and trans fats, such as red meats, dairy products and foods containing partially hydrogenated oils,  Limit sugary foods and refined carbohydrates cake, table sugar, many breakfast cereals , bread.  Cut back on the use of cooking oils and margarines that are high in omega-6 fatty acids, such as corn, safflower and sunflower oils.

Does temperature affect Cholesterol levels

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If you start thinking about the function of cholesterol,  it allegedly  (among other things) modulates membrane fluidity over a range of temperatures.

in Habitat temperature is an important determinant of cholesterol contents in copepods where it states “The most consistent trend is the positive relationship between cholesterol content and habitat temperature. Species residing in warmer habitats (e.g. Centropages typicus, Eurytemora affinis) had approximately twice the cholesterol of species living in colder waters (e.g. Calanus glacialis, Euchaeta norvegica). A similar pattern was observed for comparisons of species within genera (Calanus, Acartia and Centropages), with the species abundant at lower latitudes having more cholesterol than the northern congener. These data indicate that habitat temperature is an important determinant of cholesterol content, and cholesterol endows membranes with the stability required for a range of body temperatures”.

Maybe crustations and humans probably  don’t have that much in common.

If you are curious about cholesterol, here is an interesting slide share

Cholesterol Units Converter

 

What do you thincs about Cholesterol

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Ive only just discovered the existence of  Thincs, a body that questions the link between saturated fats , cholesterol and  heart disease.

According to their website,  “The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS) is a steadily growing group of scientists, physicians, other academicians and science writers from various countries. Members of this group represent different views about the causation of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, some of them are in conflict with others, but this is a normal part of science. What we all oppose is that animal fat and high cholesterol play a role. The aim with this website is to inform our colleagues and the public that this idea is not supported by scientific evidence; in fact, for many years a huge number of scientific studies have directly contradicted it”. 

It seems to be accumulating studies here

Is Fructose the villain?

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This is an amazing read, and is part of my cholesterol studies

“Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans” found here

take home message is here:

“Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose. Fasting plasma triglyceride concentrations increased by approximately 10% during 10 weeks of glucose consumption but not after fructose consumption. In contrast, hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and the 23-hour postprandial triglyceride AUC were increased specifically during fructose consumption. Similarly, markers of altered lipid metabolism and lipoprotein remodeling, including fasting apoB, LDL, small dense LDL, oxidized LDL, and postprandial concentrations of remnant-like particle–triglyceride and –cholesterol significantly increased during fructose but not glucose consumption. In addition, fasting plasma glucose and insulin levels increased and insulin sensitivity decreased in subjects consuming fructose but not in those consuming glucose. These data suggest that dietary fructose specifically increases DNL, promotes dyslipidemia, decreases insulin sensitivity, and increases visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults”