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UltraLife Newsletter 1

July 2009:

How Unhealthy are New Zealanders?
New Zealand is often portrayed by the media as 'green', all natural, packed with healthy, sporty young kiwis. But how accurate is this picture? How do we compare to the rest of the world in terms of health? Does the typical kiwi diet and lifestyle have a positive influence on our health? Or are we on the same downward spiral as America with their SAD (Standard American Diet)?

Many people in my recent survey reported that they would be happy with the health of the average New Zealander so lets see exactly what that is?

Here are some statistics on the state of the nation's health.

- New Zealand has a relatively high prevalence of obesity compared with other OECD countries. In 2006/7 the NZ rate of obesity was 25% compared to an OECD medium of 13%. USA was the highest percentage at 27% with NZ's 25% coming in 2nd. (Ministry of Social Development 2008 Social Report)

- An epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes is occuring in NZ as in other developed countries. In 1996 there were 86000 new diagnoses for diabetes. If the rate of diagnosis continues to increase as it currently is, by 2011 there will be 156000 new diagnoses each year. (Ministry of Health)
- Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in NZ – 40% of all deaths annually. In 2002 more people were living with heart disease than ever before. (Heart Foudation of NZ)

- International research shows New Zealanders have the third highest cancer rates in the world. Colon/rectum cancer is NZ's most common form of cancer.

- Around 75% of adult New Zealanders have blood pressure higher than the ideal level of 120/75 and would benefit by lowering their blood pressure.
- This year about 80,000 New Zealanders will break bones because of osteoporosis. That is a fracture every 6 minutes, and if nothing is done, this will increase to 120,000 people by 2020, with a fracture every 41/2 minutes.

- NZ has the 2nd highest prevalence of asthma in the world. 1 in 6 adults has asthma and 1 in 4 children.

All these statistics are based on diet and lifestyle related diseases. All except Asthma are openly acknowledged as being directly related to dietary factors.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that teaches us “Unless you change your direction, you're likely to end up where you're headed.” Considering where the SAD (Standard Aotearoa Diet) is taking us based on these figures, maybe it's time for a change in direction.

That's what UltraLife is here for. If you are ready to change the direction of your health call me on 669 3006 or email cathy@ultralife.co.nz and let me help you towards better health. Free Health Assessments available now.

UltraLife Newsletter September 2009

UltraHealth The Protein Myth: How much protein do we need? When I tell people I’m vegan, often the first question out of their mouths is, “Ok, so where do you get your protein?” As soon as I hear this question, I know that I’m dealing with someone who doesn’t know very much about plants. Nothing in our modern human diet has been as misunderstood, and as misrepresented, as protein. It's considered by most people as the foundation of nutrition. The importance of eating enough protein, primarily from animal sources, is drilled into us daily from childhood. Here are some of the biggest protein myths in our culture and the truth about our need for protein.

Myth #1: Protein is the Most Important Nutrient in our Diet Protein is one of the three required macronutrients for humans. Carbohydrates and fats are the other two. Proteins are body builders. Much of our body, except for water, is made up of different kinds of protein. All living tissue contains protein. Protein supports and maintains our blood, organs, muscles, hair, skin, and nails. Carbohydrates provide the body with a source of fuel and energy that is required to carry out daily activities and exercise. Any extra energy is stored in the body until it is needed.
Our bodies need a constant supply of energy to function properly and a lack of carbohydrates in the diet can cause tiredness or fatigue, poor mental function and lack of endurance and stamina.

Carbohydrates are also important for the correct working of our brain, heart and nervous, digestive and immune systems. Fibre, which is also a form of carbohydrate, is essential for the elimination of waste materials and toxins from the body and helps to keep the intestines disease-free and clean. Fat makes up part of our brain, it protects some of our joints and it provides reserves for when we're sick. Fat surrounds and insulates nerve fibers to help transmit nerve impulses. Fat is also needed so our body can absorb the fat soluble vitamins A, S, E, K, and prevent deficiencies of these vitamins.

Myth #2: The More Protein the Better Perhaps the most predominant food fallacy is the high protein intake (40 to 100 grams daily) usually recommended. Protein in excess of our needs is not utilized by the body. Too much protein is as harmful as too little, and is linked with shorter life expectancy, increased cancer and heart disease risk, widespread obesity and diabetes, osteoporosis, kidney stress, and bad digestion It's been estimated that the average person in this country eats two - six times more protein, usually from animals, than is needed for good nutrition. At it's most extreme, our protein fixation has led to the popularity of high-protein low-carb weight loss diets, condemned by doctors and nutritionists from around the world. High protein-diets bring about temporary weight-loss, at the expense of overall health, and people quickly regain weight once they return to a normal diet. There is more disease and death in the world due to excess protein then there
is due to lack of protein. There ARE ways to become protein deficient, but it's pretty difficult. One way is not to get enough food. In parts of the world where famine is real, we can see people with bloated bellies who are obviously protein deficient. But they don't just lack protein - they lack calories, iron, calcium, vitamins - everything. In other words, they're starving to death. So what is our daily protein requirement? The adult body loses about 0.34 g of protein per kg body weight per day. With a safety margin added we need .45 g/kg per day of "quality" protein to replace what's lost. So someone weighing 70kg needs to eat 31.5g of protein daily. Human breast milk contains approximately 6% of calories from protein. This supplies all the protein needs during infancy, the time of a human's life when protein needs are the highest. On a diet of 6% protein, an infant will double its weight in 6 months and triple its weight in a year. How can an adult who is not building new tissue at the same rate possibly need a higher percentage of protein than this? Here's the unscientific answer to how much protein we need: Do we look good, feel good, maintain optimum weight, and have good muscle tone? Do our hair and nails grow quickly? Do our wounds heal well? Are we generally healthy, and recover quickly from illness? If so, then we must be getting enough protein!

Myth #3: Plants are low in protein Plant foods are generally abundant in protein. For example, lettuce gets 34% of its calories from protein, and broccoli gets 45% of its calories from protein. Spinach is 49%. Cauliflower is 40%. Celery is 21%. Beans range from 23% to 54% depending on the variety. Grains are 8% to 31%. Nuts and seeds are 8% to 21%. Fruits are the lowest at around 5-8% on average. Most vegetables are excellent sources of protein, especially the green leafy ones, but often the problem is most people don't eat enough greens. If you wanted to suffer from protein deficiency on a vegetarian diet, you’d either have to seriously restrict total calories (i.e. starve yourself), or you’d have to eat a really messed up, unbalanced diet, like nothing but low-protein junk foods and certain fruits. But in those cases, protein deficiency probably won’t be your biggest risk. Personally I’ve never met anyone suffering from protein deficiency in NZ, vegan or otherwise. The much greater risk is overconsumption of protein.

Myth #4: Plant proteins are incomplete Another myth is the idea that you need to combine different plant foods to form complete proteins. The idea is that most plant foods only contain some of the essential amino acids, so you’d have to combine “incomplete” foods like beans and rice to form meals that contained complete proteins. This idea was put forth in the 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé. It was a million-copy bestseller. Unfortunately, many people still aren’t aware that this theory was later found to be completely false, as Lappé herself recanted her original theory in later works that were far less popular. The truth is that most plant foods do contain all the essential amino acids, but furthermore, your body will store amino acids in a pool between meals — it doesn’t even need to get all the essentials in a single meal. So the theory of combining plant foods to form complete proteins isn’t even remotely correct.

Myth #5: Animal Protein is Superior to Plant Protein There are some important differences between protein obtained from animal sources and protein obtained from plant sources. Animal Protein Plant Protein More Acid (Sulphur) Less Acid More Concentrated Less Concentrated Rapid absorption (no fibre) Slower Absorption These differences mean that plant protein is far more gentle on your body and digestive system. Also as animal protein is more concentrated, chances are you are eating too much protein if you rely on animal sources to obtain it. Our bodies can't store excess protein and so has to eliminate it. As the liver breaks down excess animal protein it releases toxic wastes due to its acidic nature such as urea, amonia and amino acid fragments. These wastes make their way to the kidneys for elimination. In order for our kidneys to deal with these toxins it requires additional calcium which it yanks out of our tissues and bones. This well documented condition is known as “Protein Induced Hypercalciuria” (Too much calcium going out in the urine). Diets high in animal protein cause a negative calcium balance even in the presence of more than adequate calcium intake. Thus Osteoporosis is not so much a disease of calcium deficiency but of protein excess. This is why throughout the world the incidence of osteoporosis correlates directly with protein intake. World health statistics show that osteoporosis is most common in exactly those countries where meat and dairy products are consumed in the largest quantities (including NZ).

Quality Protein: The quality of and our requirement for protein depends on several factors, for instance on heating, which can considerably lower the quality of the protein. If we use meat as our source of protein, cooking destroys some of the essential amino acids needed for building enzymes and healthy tissue. Cooking can destroy 40 to 85 percent of the available protein in most food. It probably isn't acceptable to eat raw meat to avoid these deteriorations; but eating other raw foods contributes to reducing the total need for protein. Raw food decreases the need for protein in yet another way: the usual, everyday diet requires 6-8 grams of protein per day just for the synthesis of digestive juices. But raw foods are easily digested, thanks to the enzyme content, thus economizing on digestive enzymes. So instead of worrying about getting enough protein maybe we whould be worried about what the excess of animal protein is doing to our long term health. By cutting back or eliminating animal protein in our diet and relying on green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds for our protein requirements we can not only get enough quality protein to meet our bodies immediate needs but also protect ourselves from many, so called, normal, age related, degenerative diseases.

If you need help with any aspect of your diet or health I am available for consultations, meal planners, food preparation classes, or individual and small group personal training sessions. Call Cathy at Christchurch 669 3006 or email cathy@ultralife.co.nz.

Recipe – Protein Shake
Ingredients: 1 Banana 1 Desert Spoon Tahini 1 teaspoon honey 1 Cup water A handful of green leafy vegetables

Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. If your blender is not powerful enough to blend the greens to a smooth enough consistency try chopping them before putting into the blender or use wheat, barley or spirulina powder.
 

UltraLife Newsletter August 2009

Healing Herbs, Damaging Drugs: For centuries people have gathered and used herbs to use as medicine.
However with the advent of the pharmaceutical industry we have seen many
useful herbal remedies forgotten. You can not patent a herb. Therefore
investors are not interested in herbs. And investors make the multi-trillion
dollar pharmaceutical world go round.

Walter Lewis, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis,
Missouri, states that the approach to research since the synthetic era, with
little regard for past data, "...has served to delay the application of many
potential benefits. For example, it is unfortunate that Cromolyn, the
miraculous prophylactic drug for asthma, has only recently been introduced,
though its use in the form of ammi seeds was part of Bedouin folk medicine
for centuries.”

Pharmaceutical companies have begun to search for plants that can cope with
the diseases that are associated with our modern life-style. Stress,
coronary disease, ulcers, rheumatism, and other ailments have already
yielded to the power of plants. Even anti-tumor properties have been found
in several plant species.

There may be a word of caution to the chemist who first isolates the
beneficial substance and leaves the rest of the root, bark, stem, leaf, or
flower behind. This purified chemical may act favorably on a particular part
of the body, but may also have deleterious effects on other parts of the
body. Side effects may include rashes, dizziness, fainting, palpitations,
blurred vision, diarrhea, or depression and long term may contribute towards degenerative diseases. The constituents of the plant that
were discarded in the laboratory often have an inherent balancing or modifying
mechanism that exerts control over the active principle.

Can we say "duh!"....well, yes, its easy for us, because we are coming full
circle and realizing that we need to go back to nature for answers. But at
the beginning of the scientific age, we became full of ourselves, and denied
both Father Universe and Mother Nature, who are really One. 'God is dead' was the
battle-cry of early science. We could do better. We could improve on every
herb, every food, every element, by extracting, combining, processing, and
synthesizing. And I'm sure some good has come out of it. But now we have
come far enough to humble ourselves before nature's vast knowledge once
again, this time with more skills, abilities, and scientific acumen to be
able to work WITH her instead of AGAINST her. Its like we were rebellious
teenagers who had just learned to think for ourselves and who had to break
our umbilical cord with our Mother in order to mature. But now we are coming
of age, we have learned that our own passage through time has given us
wisdom and perspective, we realize now that our Mother has that and much
more, and we are ready to make use of our Mother's knowledge and Her love
for us once again, for the health of all. There are many herbs helpful in healing specific medical conditions. However, if we are eating the food that was truly designed for our bodies, these conditions usually do not develop in the first place. It's like putting diesel fuel in a petrol powered engine and then wondering why you have car troubles. You take your car to the mechanic and he cleans out the motor. But unless you actually change your car's fuel to petrol, car troubles will just keep plaguing you and the motor will wear out more quickly than it needs to.

If you would like more information on which herbs would benefit you and your health and would like to change the fuel you run on, call me on 669 3006 or email cathy@ultralife.co.nz and let me help you towards better health. Free Health Assessments available now.

UltraLife Newsletter October 2009

The Best Diet for Allergies and Hay Fever

Imagine your doctor giving you this prescription for your nasal allergies or hay fever: “Eat some grapes and call me in the morning.” Well, it’s not that far-fetched. Just as the right grade of gas helps your car run well, the right diet for allergies is important to help you feel your best.

A healthy diet for allergies or hay fever protects you in many ways. It helps keep your respiratory system strong.  Many foods can help you breathe better because they open up clogged nasal passages. A nutritious diet also boosts your immunity to allergies. Certain foods have nutrients that can help boost your immunity and help your body fight sinus and respiratory infections, which are linked to allergies and hay fever.

The Link Between Diet and Allergies:
 Let’s take a short trip to the island of Crete. While skin allergies are common here, nasal allergies and wheezing are rare. Why? From childhood on, the bulk of the Crete islanders’ diet consists of fresh fruits and vegetables, olive oil, and nuts. The natural foods in the Mediterranean diet are high in antioxidants. Antioxidants protect cells from the oxidative damage that causes diseases, and they have immune-boosting compounds. 

In a study published in the journal Thorax, researchers found that Crete islanders who ate a Mediterranean diet had fewer allergies. They noted that diet staples such as nuts, grapes, oranges, apples, and fresh tomatoes were protective against allergies.   The researchers also reported that eating margarine increased the risk of allergies and wheezing. This is because margarine is made with unhealthy fat that boosts inflammation. Vitamin C is one of nature's great wonders. In addition to being a natural antihistamine, this water soluble vitamin has a multitude of other functions in the body. From being a powerful antioxidant fighting free radicals, to its role in the synthesis of collagen, it's the vitamin we truly can't live without.

Before you go reaching for the sythetic version of this amazing vitamin in tablet form take a trip to the produce isle of your local supermarket. The vitamin C in sythesised supplements doesn't even come close to the real thing found in abundance in fruits and vegetables. Foods rich in Vitamin C should be eaten as soon as possible when fresh, as they lose their strength after being exposed to air, or being processed, boiled, or stored for long periods of time. Good food sources of Vitamin C are guavas, blackcurrants, red bell peppers, kale, parsley, green sweet peppers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, mustard greens, mango, watercress, cauliflower, red cabbage, strawberries, papayas, green and white cabbage, spinach, citrus fruits, elderberries, turnips, peaches, asparagus, cantaloupe, cayenne pepper, green onions, new lima beans, black-eyed peas, green peas, radishes, raspberries, yellow summer squash, sweet potatoes, loganberries, tomatoes, new potatoes, lettuce, bananas, kiwifruit, honeydew, pineapple, cranberry juice, vegetable juice, tomato juice, and kohlrabi. That's a whole lot of options to keep you eating your C!

Flavonoids, such as Quercetin, are a group of plant pigments that are largely responsible for the colors of many fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Quercetin is a natural antihistamine that helps stabilize mast cells to prevent both the manufacture and release of histamine, as well as other allergic and inflammatory compounds. Good sources of Quercetin are citrus fruits, onions, garlic, apples, parsley, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, legumes, and berries. Carotenoids, the substances in plants that give them the wonderful red, orange and yellow colors, can be converted in your body to Vitamin A an essential nutrient for the health of the respiratory system. They are also found in spinach, kale, and collard greens. Studies have shown that people with the highest intake of carotenoids had the lowest rates of hay fever. Eat plenty of carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, apricots, mangoes and green leafy veg.

Omega-3 fatty acids can benefit hay fever sufferers as they have an anti-inflammatory effect. Good sources of these essential fats are walnuts and flax seeds. Some nutritional doctors have pointed out that there is an association between the increase in sugar consumption in the more affluent classes from the middle of the 19th Century and an increase in hay fever. Although it may just be coincidence, sugar and grass pollen, the commonest trigger of hay fever, are both in the same botanical family. Interestingly, wheat a common food allergy is also in the same family. There is no doubt that people with hay fever who are intolerant to some foods will benefit from excluding them from their diets. By reducing some of the load on your immune system your tolerance to pollen and other hay fever triggers may be increased.

While this may not produce results in the short term the long term effects of excluding reactive foods together with following a healthy diet free of refined carbohydrates, dairy and food additives, and the correction of any nutritional deficiencies often brings about considerable reduction in symptoms the following year. So instead of poisoning your body with unnecessary drugs to treat your symptoms next year, start changing your diet today to not only treat your symptoms but also prevent the problem before it starts.

If you need advise on using diet to treat or prevent this or any other form of dis-ease or to ensure an optimal diet for longevity, increased energy, wellbeing and ultrahealth call me for a free health assessment 669 3006 or email cathy@ultralife.co.nz.