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Honey is the only food on the planet that will not spoil or rot. What it will do is what some call ‘turning to sugar’. In reality, honey is always honey. However, when left in a cool dark place for a long time it will “crystallize”. When this happensloosen the lid, boil some water and sit the honey container in the hot water, but turn off the heat and let it liquefy naturally. It is then as good as it ever was. Never boil honey or put it in a microwave. This will kill the enzymes in the honey.
Cinnamon and Honey Bet the drug companies won’t like this one getting around. Facts on Honey and Cinnamon:
It is found that a mixture of honey and Cinnamon cures most diseases. Honey is produced in most of the countries of the world. Scientists of today also accept honey as a ‘Ram Ban’ (very effective) medicine for all kinds of diseases. Honey can be used without side effects for any kind of diseases.
Today’s science says that even though honey is sweet, when it is taken in the right dosage as a medicine, it does not harm even diabetic patients. Weekly World News, a magazine in Canada , in its issue dated 17 J anu ary,1995 has given the following list of diseases that can be cured by honey and cinnamon, as researched by western scientists:
HEART DISEASES:
Make a paste of honey and cinnamon powder, apply it on bread instead of jelly and jam and eat it regularly for breakfast. It reduces the cholesterol in the arteries and saves the patient from heart attack. Also, those who have already had an attack, when they do this process daily, they are kept miles away from the next attack. Regular use of the above process relieves loss of breath and strengthens the heart beat. In America and Canada , various nursing homes have treated patients successfully and have found that as one ages the arteries and veins lose their flexibility and get clogged; honey and cinnamon revitalize the arteries and the veins.
ARTHRITIS:
Arthritis patients may take daily (morning and night) one cup of hot water with two tablespoons of honey and one small teaspoon of cinnamon powder. When taken regularly even chronic arthritis can be cured. In a recent research conducted at the Copenhagen University, it was found that when the doctors treated their patients with a mixture of one tablespoon Honey and half teaspoon Cinnamon powder before breakfast, they found that within a week (out of the 200 people so treated) practically 73 patients were totally relieved of pain — and within a month, most all the patients who could not walk or move around because of arthritis now started walking without pain.
BLADDER INFECTIONS:
Take two tablespoons of cinnamon powder and one teaspoon of honey in a glass of lukewarm water and drink it. It destroys the germs in the bladder..
CHOLESTEROL:
Two tablespoons of honey and three teaspoons of Cinnamon Powder mixed in 16 ounces of tea water given to a cholesterol patient was found to reduce the level of cholesterol in the blood by 10 percent within two hours. As mentioned for arthritic patients, when taken three times a day, any chronic cholesterol is cured. According to information received in the said Journal, pure honey taken with food daily relieves complaints of cholesterol.
COLDS:
Those suffering from common or severe colds should take one tablespoon lukewarm honey with 1/4 spoon cinnamon powder daily for three days. This process will cure most chronic cough, cold, and, clear the sinuses.
UPSET STOMACH:
Honey taken with cinnamon powder cures stomach ache and also clears stomach ulcers from its root.
GAS:
According to the studies done in India and Japan , it is revealed that when Honey is taken with cinnamon powder the stomach is relieved of gas.
IMMUNE SYSTEM:
Daily use of honey and cinnamon powder strengthens the immune system and protects the body from bacterial and viral attacks. Scientists have found that honey has various vitamins and iron in large amounts. Constant use of Honey strengthens the white blood corpuscles (where DNA is contained) to fight bacterial and viral diseases.
INDIGESTION:
Cinnamon powder sprinkled on two tablespoons of honey taken before food is eaten relieves acidity and digests the heaviest of meals.
INFLUENZA:
A scientist in Spain has proved that honey contains a natural ‘Ingredient’ which kills the influenza germs and saves the patient from flu.
LONGEVITY:
Tea made with honey and cinnamon powder, when taken regularly, arrests the ravages of old age. Use four teaspoons of honey, one teaspoon of cinnamon powder, and three cups of water and boil to make a tea. Drink 1/4 cup, three to four times a day. It keeps the skin fresh and soft and arrests old age. Life spans increase and even a 100 year old will start performing the chores of a 20-year-old..
RASPY OR SORE THROAT:
When throat has a tickle or is raspy, take one tablespoon of honey and sip until gone. Repeat every three hours until throat is without symptoms.
PIMPLES:
Three tablespoons of honey and one teaspoon of cinnamon powder paste. Apply this paste on the pimples before sleeping and wash it off the next morning with warm water. When done daily for two weeks, it removes all pimples from the root.
SKIN INFECTIONS:
Applying honey and cinnamon powder in equal parts on the affected parts cures eczema, ringworm and all types of skin infections.
WEIGHT LOSS:
Daily in the morning one half hour before breakfast and on an empty stomach, and at night before sleeping, drink honey and cinnamon powder boiled in one cup of water. When taken regularly, it reduces the weight of even the most obese person. Also, drinking this mixture regularly does not allow the fat to accumulate in the body even though the person may eat a high calorie diet.
CANCER:
Recent research in Japan and Australia has revealed that advanced cancer of the stomach and bones have been cured successfully. Patients suffering from these kinds of cancer should daily take one tablespoon of honey with one teaspoon of cinnamon powder three times a day for one month.
FATIGUE:
Recent studies have shown that the sugar content of honey is more helpful rather than being detrimental to the strength of the body. Senior citizens who take honey and cinnamon powder in equal parts are more alert and flexible. Dr. Milton, who has done research, says that a half tablespoon of honey taken in a glass of water and sprinkled with cinnamon powder, even when the vitality of the body starts to decrease, when taken daily after brushing and in the afternoon at about 3:00 P.M., the vitality of the body increases within a week.
BAD BREATH:
People of South America, gargle with one teaspoon of honey and cinnamon powder mixed in hot water first thing in the morning so their breath stays fresh throughout the day.
HEARING LOSS:
Daily morning and night honey and cinnamon powder, taken in equal parts restores hearing. Remember when we were kids? We had toast with real butter and cinnamon sprinkled on it!
By Jeffrey Norris on June 25, 2009
The rise of obesity is usually blamed on too much eating and not enough exercising, but Robert Lustig, MD, a UCSF pediatric neuroendocrinologist, asks us to look beyond the obvious.
Yes, more Americans are overweight today than 30 years ago. Kids are still getting heavier, compared with prior generations of kids. That leads some UCSF researchers to warn that heart disease and other health problems will grow in future decades.
But behaviors that some might refer to as gluttony and sloth are merely consequences of the true cause of the epidemic, Lustig says. Food was just as abundant before obesity’s ascendance. The problem is the increase in sugar consumption. Sugar both drives fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry, setting up a “vicious cycle,” according to Lustig.
Robert Lustig, MDMore specifically, it is fructose that is harmful, according to Lustig. Fructose is a component of the two most popular sugars. One is table sugar — sucrose. The other is high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup has become ubiquitous in soft drinks and many other processed foods.
Lustig presented his case against fructose in a recent UCSF Mini Medical School course on diet and nutrition, part of a series sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Audience members may have been surprised to hear such unequivocally strong statements from a researcher. Lustig framed the obesity epidemic as a societal issue that pits the food-selling agenda of federal agencies and profit-seeking behavior of major corporations against public health needs.
Lustig quit working in the lab a decade ago. Now he spends more time with pediatric patients. He is on the front lines of the world’s weight woes, treating kids who already are obese, a condition that sets the stage for health problems that begin long before these children become adults.
Lustig still conducts clinical research. He evaluates dietary lifestyle, as well as pharmacologic interventions that might hold the pounds at bay. He tracks down associations between diet, lifestyle and health outcomes in an effort to identify biological mechanisms that will explain them.
Insulin and Leptin
Lustig’s own groundbreaking studies more than a decade ago stimulated the development of his controversial ideas about metabolism and biological feedback in weight control. One not-yet-popular idea is that, calorie for calorie, sugar causes more insulin resistance in the liver than other edibles. The pancreas then has to release more insulin to satisfy the liver’s needs. High insulin levels, in turn, interfere with the brain’s receipt of signals from a hormone called leptin, secreted by fat cells, Lustig believes.
In the 1990s, Lustig worked with children diagnosed with hypothalamic obesity, a disorder that can occur after brain tumor surgery. The children were making more insulin than was necessary for normal energy storage in fat cells. Lustig thought the kids were not receiving signals from leptin, which helps send a message that the appetite has been sated.
Lustig concluded that the children’s brains were fooled into thinking that they were starving. Lustig administered a drug called octreotide, known to block insulin release. Insulin levels fell; the children ate less, lost weight, spontaneously became more active and improved their quality of life.
Lustig tried the same treatment with obese adults, and found that a subset responded in the same way as the children with hypothalamic obesity.
Eating stimulates secretion of insulin and leptin. The conventional view holds that insulin, like leptin, feeds back in the brain to limit food intake, Lustig explains. But Lustig does not think that chronically elevated insulin levels feed back negatively to curb eating. Instead, chronically elevated insulin blocks leptin’s negative feedback signal, Lustig believes. “Most people think insulin does the same thing as leptin,” he says. “I think it does just the opposite.”
Lustig believes that fructose generates greater insulin resistance than other foodstuffs, and that fructose calories, therefore, fail to blunt appetite in the same way as other foods.
A Calorie Is Not Just a Calorie
Lustig also is at odds with mainstream scientific viewpoints when it comes to explaining how fructose is shunted through biochemical pathways and converted into fat and other molecules.
Unlike conventional calorie counters, Lustig does not believe all food calories have the same impact on fat storage and energy expenditure, regardless of whether they come from fat, protein or carbohydrate. Fructose, a type of carbohydrate, is not metabolized like other foodstuffs, and not even like glucose, the other major carbohydrate, Lustig says.
In addition, Lustig claims that fructose is just as bad as alcohol in causing fat storage in the liver — and in causing fatty liver disease.
Lustig advances these controversial ideas primarily by citing already published studies, most of them by other researchers. But he also tries to enlist bench scientists in research collaborations in the hopes that additional studies will prove to others that these ideas are correct.
Sugar No Better Than Fat
Each sucrose molecule consists of one molecule of fructose joined to one molecule of glucose. In the gut, these two components are quickly split apart. High-fructose corn syrup is a less expensive mixture of glucose and fructose. There is no point in belaboring the difference, Lustig says. “High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are exactly the same,” Lustig says. “They’re equally bad. They’re both poison in high doses.”
Over the past century, Americans have increased their fructose consumption from 15 grams per day to 75 grams per day or more, Lustig explains. The trend accelerated beginning about three decades ago, when cheap, easy-to-transport high-fructose corn syrup became widely available.
Much of processed food labeled “reduced fat” instead has sugar added to make it more palatable, Lustig says. But when it comes to harmful health effects, sugar is worse than fat, he claims. Consumption of either results in elevated levels of artery-clogging fats being made by the liver and deposited in the bloodstream. But fructose causes even further damage to the liver and to structural proteins of the body while fomenting excessive caloric consumption, Lustig says.
Four Simple Guidelines
Lustig prescribes four simple guidelines for parents coping with kids who are too heavy:
- Get rid of every sugared liquid in the house. Kids should drink only water and milk.
- Provide carbohydrates associated with fiber.
- Wait 20 minutes before serving second portions.
- Have kids buy their “screen time” minute-for-minute with physical activity.
Fructose is abundant in fruit. Fruit is fine, Lustig says, but we should think twice before drinking juice or feeding it to our kids. The fiber in whole fruit contributes to a sense of fullness. Lustig says it is rare to see a child eat more than one orange, but it is common for kids to consume much more sugar and calories as orange juice.
Eating fiber also results in less carbohydrate being absorbed in the gut, Lustig notes. In addition, he says, fiber consumption allows the brain to receive a satiety signal sooner than it would otherwise, so we stop eating sooner.
Exercise burns only a modest amount of calories, Lustig notes. But it does have other benefits. Exercise improves insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle, lowering insulin levels in the bloodstream. Exercise reduces stress and, therefore, reduces stress-induced eating, according to Lustig. Lastly, exercise increases metabolic rate.
The directive to balance active play with computer, video and TV time is the most difficult one to comply with, Lustig says. But failure to limit sugar intake appears to be the most predictive of poor weight control in children, he adds.
“You are not what you eat; you are what you do with what you eat,” Lustig concludes. “And what you do with fructose is particularly dangerous.”
Great article I found online here: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2009/06/8187/obesity-and-metabolic-syndrome-driven-fructose-sugar-diet
Heart-healthy eating plan that wasn’t even designed for weight-loss beats Jenny Craig and Slim Fast in 2012 ranking of the best diets
It is the time of year when workout DVD sales soar and diet books sell in their millions.
But there are some tried-and-true ways to lose weight, some far more effective than others.
So in what is a timely release, the U.S. News and World Report has issued its 2012 ranking of its best diets.
The league, based on assessment of each regime from a panel of experts, was topped for the second year in a row by the DASH Diet, which delivered the best results in terms of nutritional value, safety, weight-loss, and in preventing diabetes and heart disease.
An acronym for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, it advocates fresh produce, whole grains, lean protein and is low in fat and salt.
The site’s verdict read: ‘Though obscure, it beat out a field full of better-known diets.
‘A healthy eating pattern is key to deflating high blood pressure – and it may not hurt your waistline, either.’
Also ranking highly was the cholesterol-cutting TLC Diet, which came second, and the Mayo Clinic Diet, which came third with 3.9 out of 5 stars.
Generally it was the most balanced regimes that won the highest scores, with realistic goals and effective weight-loss a positive side-effect to a healthy-eating plan.
Carb-cutting plans, such as the Zone and Glycemic-Index diets, achieved the lowest scores because the panel felt they lacked key food groups and essential nutrients.
But it was the super-strict Macrobiotic Diet, branded ‘a mix of sound dietary guidance, mysticism, folklore, and nonsense’ by the experts, that claimed last place.
Chronicles of a Diabetic 