Dr. Mercola Tells Us Not to Condemn Fat Just Yet

The concept of the perfect body has changed over the centuries. When only the wealthy could afford food with “sugar” and “fat”, the ideal body was shown in paintings by Reuben. They were nudes of substantial noble women, lolling in idleness, their meaty flesh – a delight to the eyes. Now, we have eschewed “fat” and are in fact enamored of the toned, muscular physique that signals health and outdoorsy activity. But is “fat” as “evil” is we think it is?

“Fat” has held a negative view in dieters’ eyes since the idea of “low fat” first saw light. But studies show that a “low carb diet” is the way to go. And when talking of total health – some people may actually reap the rewards of a low-fat diet.

This is topic may look complicated but it becomes easier to understand when viewed from a Metabolic Typing angle. According to Dr. Mercola at the core of nutritional typing “is the principle that we each have unique systems that are designed to thrive on unique combinations of protein, fat and carbohydrates”

Some people may benefit from a high protein diet. Others find that a vegetarian type diet with less protein and complex carbohydrates from vegetables is ideal.

Pushing nutritional types aside, there are additional factors that can help most people manage their weight. According to Dr. Mercola these factors are “eliminating grains and sugar from your diet and making sure you exercise” Grains and sugar will awaken an insulin response that will cause your body to gain weight. Exercise on the other hand will not only help you stabilize your insulin levels, but will also help you reach your weight loss goals and fight infections.

The No-Grain Diet by Dr. Mercola helps you reach your weight loss goals by optimizing your diet. This book also includes a section on the emotional aspects of dieting that often negates our weight loss efforts; and how a psychological acupressure technique called EFT helps you overcome them.

Another road you can take for losing weight is Living Fuel. Living Fuel Rx is a meal replacement, nutritiously full of concentrated sources of vitamins, minerals, proteins, essential fats, enzymes, co-enzymes, herbs, botanical extracts, and soluble and insoluble plant fibers. Whole foods are of course still the best - but if you simply don’t have time to pack your own healthy lunch and are surrounded by fast food and vending machines, take Living Fuel Rx instead.

Dr. Mercola Says “Be In and Thin with BioTHIN!”

Is it hard for you to drop those unwanted pounds? Feel like you should be losing weight because you’ve been working out – but the weighing scale won’t budge? Are your clothes beginning to feel tighter even if you feel you’re watching what you eat?

You surely don’t want the unpleasant shock of finding that you’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Or be dismayed that you can’t pour yourself into your little black dress!

It may be time to examine what you should be doing right. But Dr. Mercola advices that before you do that, you have to take stock of a few facts.

When a product is termed low-calorie or low-fat it may not be necessarily good for you. Or even directly address weight management issues. Plus it may not be ultimately healthy for you, because in addition to being highly processed and sorely lacking in vital nutrients – it may also contain ingredients that may not be healthy for you!

You can’t have your cake and eat it too when it comes to diet soda. If you think it’s a healthier alternative to regular soda – it’s not. Both types of soda are simply not going to do you any good. Simply going without soda is better for a healthier and fitter “you”.

Artificially sweetened beverages contain many synthetic therefore harmful ingredients. Latest research shows that they can actually cause weight GAIN – and you surely don’t want that. There’s detailed info on the hazards of artificial sweeteners in Dr. Mercola’s book Sweet Deception, as well as in various articles of his website.

Going to commercial weight loss centers demands a large chunk of your time. What’s more their food products cost a lot – and offer little flexibility in terms of meeting the needs of your Nutritional Type. If there are any positive effects gained from visiting these “fat farms”, these may be lost when you return to the real world.

If you’re at the end of your rope and want to wear that flattering get-up to the next high school reunion, BioTHIN is a product that will help you lose weight and keep you healthy too.

Dr. Mercola says:

BioTHIN™is an all-new and all-natural supplement that I formulated to help better address your weight loss concerns. And I can assure you that this help harmonizes with the way you were designed to lose weight -- and with overall healthy living.

BioTHIN™ is formulated to give you the edge you seek, to make a long-term difference in your weight loss and overall health.

What's more, it will put you back in the driver's seat of your health.

Teach Your Kids Healthy Habits with Dr. Joseph Mercola

You are what you eat. And what you eat, your children are bound to eat too.

A survey conducted two years ago by the America On The Move Foundation showed that 71 percent of children get information about how to be healthy from their mothers and 43 percent from their fathers.

Even without this survey and other related studies, it’s a no-brainer that good health for children starts with the parents. For osteopathic physician and natural health expert Dr. Joseph Mercola, getting yourself healthy and adopting healthy attitudes about food are two of the best things you can do for your children.

As a parent, you will need to explain proper nutrition to your children and why they need to eat the right kinds of food. Take the time to cook and prepare nutritious meals and snacks and more importantly, be a good role model for them. After all, it is completely unfair to ask them not to eat things they later see you eating.

Here are some simple tips from Dr. Mercola to help your children get started on a healthy lifestyle:

• Exercise as a family – Make exercise part of your daily schedule. Take walks, play tag in the backyard, enroll in some martial arts class and simply set aside time each day as a family to sweat it out and get your bodies moving!

• Stop being a couch potato – Turn off the TV, computer and video games. Not only is watching too much TV associated with obesity, but limiting these things will also give you more time to do physical activities with your family instead.

• Prepare healthy meals and set family mealtimes – Staying fit is next to impossible if your diet is mostly fast food or processed foods. Let your kids help in meal preparation as this makes them more likely to eat the healthy foods you’re serving. Studies show that families who eat together have better overall nutrition. Kids with family mealtimes are less likely to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide. They are also more likely to do well in school and delay having sex.

• Don’t limit healthy fats – There is no such thing as a fat-free diet, for you or for your child. Your child needs healthy fats from animal sources, coconut oil, raw nuts and seeds, olive oil, avocado and others for his/her development. Introduce some healthy fats into your child’s diet by adding butter, raw cheese, or olive oil to lightly steamed veggies.
• Don’t use food as a reward – Don’t get your child thinking that eating unhealthy foods is necessary for their emotional fulfillment.
  

• Don’t force your child to finish everything on his/her plate – No matter how healthy and well-balanced the food, there’s no need to make your child eat every last bite. Most kids will naturally stop eating when they’re full. If your child starts overeating early, there’s a good chance he/she will overeat later in life too. Just serve them small portions or save what they don’t finish for later.

• Stay away from junkfood – “Kid’s foods” like pizza, French fries and macaroni and cheese are bad from a health perspective – don’t give in to their cravings. You are not “depriving” your child by not giving them soda and fries; you are doing them a huge favor.

• Nutritional Typing – Nutritional typing is an essential tool for you to find out which types of foods are best for your unique biochemistry, and it also works for kids of all ages too.

Raising healthy children in a country with a fast food culture and where junk food is available in every corner is easier said than done. But it is possible. You just have to make a firm decision, stick by it and take control of your own health!

Mercola.com, the world’s most popular natural health website, provides free health information for people of all ages. Visit Mercola.com now and find out what’s in store for you!

Dr. Mercola Poses the Question: Are You Thinking Yourself into Gaining Weight?

Does mental activity, especially those that require analysis and creative thinking cause you to gain weight? Dr. Mercola says that “thinking” may have something to do with weight gain!

A taxing day of mental work can be as physically exhausting as actual physical work! So you can say that “thinking hard” can also increase appetite. Research has shown that mental work actually “destabilizes” your insulin and glucose levels, and that’s what may be causing the increase in appetite and subsequently - eating.

For now, it’s safe to say that there are many factors we can look at, that leads to increased appetite, and many are connected to your mind.

Dr. Mercola Explains What Your Mind Has to Do With It

One of the states of mind that leads to more eating is stress (remember, mental challenges also induce stress). Everyone can relate to this truth, and to a certain extent this response is hard-wired into you.

Researchers found that when rats are chronically stressed, they release glucocorticoid steroid hormone (cortisol in humans) which leads them to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviors - which includes eating high-energy foods. When they eat these foods, they develop abdominal obesity - but the negative aspects of chronic stress were not as sharp!

It is normal to want to relieve stress but not at the expense of physical health! Abdominal obesity or “belly fat”, may naturally result from increased food intake, which has been linked to an increased risk of heart attacks, diabetes, strokes and more. Nipping stress in the bud at its core is a much better solution than calming your nerves with a big, greasy slice of pizza!

In addition, stress is not the only culprit that leads you to eat more. A 2004 study by British researchers found that about half of adults turn to food in times of boredom and loneliness!

Does This Mean Mental Work Leads to Weight Gain?

Dr. Mercola answers “no.” But being aware that your appetite may be awakened after a long, arduous meeting or hours at the computer is something to bear in mind. If you feel hungry, then you should eat something. Just see to it that it is something that will actually provide your body with nutrition! Determining your nutritional type, and eating accordingly, is the only way to feel satisfied, give your body the nutrients it needs -- without having to worry about gaining weight.

Dr. Mercola Says Snacking Can Be Healthy!

Everyone likes to munch on something. It’s hard to control our appetite for snacking. And we try to look for healthy alternatives so we can indulge! That’s why supposedly healthy snacks like sugar-free pastries and candy have a growing market made up of people who want to enjoy guilt-free snacking!

But Dr. Mercola warns that you must not be hoodwinked into believing that these options are “healthy”. These snacks are usually processed foods and artificial sweeteners which are just as harmful if not worse than the real deal! Instead of opting for snacks or food that mammoth food corporations spend billions of marketing dollars on, just to convince you that these are the healthier alternatives, seek all-natural snacks that offer you a broad range of nutrients!

Of course everyone hopes for a great tasting snack that satisfies cravings but doesn’t compromise health!

There’s a One Trail Mix that’s Better for Your Snacking and Nutritional Needs

Dr. Mercola has worked with some producers to develop a Trail Mix that uses only premium quality, organic dried fruits, nuts, seeds and authentic cocoa. Way Healthier Trail Mix doesn’t only have widespread appeal in terms of flavor (young and old alike would love the infusion of flavor in a handful of this healthy mix); it has a double dose of nutrients you can enjoy at any time of the day without feeling guilt ridden!

Still don’t believe your lucky stars - a snack that’s a nutritious handful of everything yummy?! You’ll want to rush and get yourself some when you learn what else Way Healthier Trail Mix has for you!

• Only Certified Organic nuts and seeds

• A trail mix providing antioxidants and smarter oils!

• A high energy snack with no added sugar or harmful preservatives

• No partially hydrogenated oils or fats!

Dr. Mercola states that you have every right to enjoy “healthy” snacking that’s genuinely good for you! Grab a Way Healthier Trail Mix now!

Dr. Joseph Mercola Blows The Whistle On Monsanto

Would you trust a company responsible for producing some of the most dangerous chemicals in the world to have a hand in securing global food supply?

Monsanto is the world’s largest conventional seed company and is also the leading producer of genetically-modified seeds. But before “reinventing” itself as an agricultural company, Monsanto produced chemicals, including highly toxic PCBs (banned in the 1970s) and the infamous Agent Orange, a defoliant (chemical sprayed or dusted on a plant to cause its leaves to fall off) used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to deny cover for the enemy.

According to the Vietnamese foreign ministry, around 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, with some 500,000 children born with birth defects.

Studies show that genetically-modified food genes can contaminate humans, contribute to food allergies and create viruses. Genetically-modifed food has also been linked to a terrifying new disease called Morgellons disease or syndrome. Morgellons disease is characterized by symptoms including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations beneath the affected person’s skin, with persistent skin lesions (including rashes or sores) that heal slowly and ooze small blue, black or white fibers.

Aside from the genetic modification of food, Monsanto is also responsible for introducing other health hazards, including:

• Aspartame – the controversial artificial sweetener allegedly increasing the risks of brain tumors, brain lesions and lymphoma

• rGBH – an artificial growth hormone for cattle suspected of increasing the levels of cancer-causing chemicals and other dangerous material in milk

• RoundUp – the popular herbicide used for weeding farms and lawns linked to numerous environmental and health problems like increased risks of cancer, miscarriages, attention deficit disorder, reduced production of sex hormones and genetic and immune system damage in fish

This is not a vendetta against Monsanto. Neither is it a plot for a new horror novel. You are reading this important piece of information because it is absolutely crucial to maintain your good health.

Find out more about Monsanto and become aware of other threats to your health when you log on to Mercola.com, the world’s # 1 natural health website. Founded by osteopathic physician and natural health guru Dr. Joseph Mercola, Mercola.com is the trusted health resource of more than 1.3 million subscribers, including 100,000 health professionals.

Be informed and stay healthy! Visit Mercola.com now!

Dr. Joseph Mercola Warns Against Increasing “Pharmacracy”

Do you immediately reach towards your medicine cabinet every time your temperature rises or you feel a slight pain or an ache in your body?

If you do, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to know that the global pharmaceutical industry was estimated to be worth more than $693 billion in 2007 and is projected to top $1.0 trillion by 2013.

But it’s not just the overdependence on over-the-counter (OTC) drugs that’s feeding “Big Pharma.” Back in 1929, the average American only got less than two prescriptions per year. By 2006, the average annual prescription rate per capita in the United States soared to:

• Over 4 prescriptions per child (age 0-18)

• Almost 11 prescriptions for adults (age 19-64), and

• Almost 28 prescriptions per senior (65 and over)

Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician and natural health practitioner, has voiced his concern on this alarming trend, as the pharmaceutical industry continues to turn American society into a “pharmacracy,” where drugs are the first resort for treating even the most minor ailments.

According to Dr. Mercola, a vicious circle is clearly evident because the statistics of prescriptions per capita has increased dramatically in the past 75 years. Treating disease symptoms with drugs will create other health problems, which lead to yet another prescription to counteract the side effects from the first one, followed by another one, and yet another one.

If all these prescription and OTC drugs did treat and cure diseases, the healthiest country in the planet would be the U.S. But instead, more Americans are suffering from completely preventable diseases like diabetes and prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death, killing almost 106,000 per year.

But all is not lost. You can stop this looming pharmacracy by taking control of your own health!

For Dr. Mercola, drugs should be your last option, not your first choice. The decision to take drugs and medication is yours alone. Many fail to realize that it is possible to stay healthy by simply making the necessary lifestyle changes, understanding the fundamentals of good nutrition and exercise and avoiding unnecessary drugs.

If you cannot avoid taking drugs, do some research before you take them. Your doctor will not have all the answers and all the latest research findings about the drug. Make sure you are aware of the potential side effects by reading the package insert. Even if it states that a side effect is rare, it can still happen to you. The potential benefits should always outweigh the potential risks.

Dr. Mercola is the founder and editor of the world’s top natural health website, Mercola.com, where he offers simple but sound and hype-free advice to help you achieve optimal health. To find out more about Dr. Mercola and his practice, visit Mercola.com now!