Cocoa may enhance skeletal muscle function

Cocoa may enhance skeletal muscle function

Healthy Dark Chocolate

"More evidence that dark chocolate is good for you" says London Nutrition expert Yvonne Bishop-Weston (with a smile)

Dark Chocolate Flavanoids good for bones and heart

A clinical trial led by researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine and VA San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS) found that patients with advanced heart failure and type 2 diabetes showed improved mitochondrial structure after three months of treatment with epicatechin-enriched cocoa. Epicatechin is a flavonoid found in dark chocolate.

The results of this initial study has led to the implementation of larger, placebo-controlled clinical trial at UC San Diego School of Medicine and VASDHS to assess if patients with heart failure and diabetes show improvement in their exercise capacity when treated with epicatechin-rich cocoa.

The results, which mimicked earlier studies showing improvement in skeletal and heart muscle function

University of California, San Diego Health Sciences (2012, March 2). Cocoa may enhance skeletal muscle function. ScienceDaily.

Pam R. Taub, Israel Ramirez-Sanchez, Theodore P. Ciaraldi, Guy Perkins, Anne N. Murphy, Robert Naviaux, Michael Hogan, Alan S. Maisel, Robert R. Henry, Guillermo Ceballos, Francisco Villarreal. Alterations in Skeletal Muscle Indicators of Mitochondrial Structure and Biogenesis in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Failure: Effects of Epicatechin Rich Cocoa. Clinical and Translational Science, 2012; 5 (1): 43 DOI:

War Against Sugar Begins

War Declared on Sugar Mountain of Death

Sugar is as damaging and addictive as alcohol or tobacco and should be regulated, claim US health experts. (BBC)

Finally the War against SUGAR , the silent evil killer on our streets, has begun. Governments and polititians, even dieticians have always been wary of pointing their finger at the sugar industry the way they eventually did at the tobacco industry. The sugar industry is so powerful and many of the hereditary richest families in the world have their fingers in the slave trading sugar industry somewhere along the line. People have allegedly mysteriously died for speaking ill of the white stuff in the not too distant past.

Anyway you can imagine the cheer amongst nutritionists to see the start of an international nutritional lynch mob starting to gather and pin the blame of all the world's preventable health woes from infertility to obesity, heart disease to diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, dementia and even the common cold and cancer firmly at the door of the world sugar mountain.

In a comment in the journal Nature, Prof Lustig, a leading child obesity expert, says governments need to consider major shifts in policy, such as taxes, limiting sales of sweet food and drinks during school hours, or even stopping children from buying them below a certain age.

The professor of paediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, told the BBC: "It [sugar] meets all the criteria for societal intervention that alcohol and tobacco meet."

The researchers acknowledge that they face "an uphill political battle against a powerful sugar lobby".

Daily dose of diet soda may increase heart attacks ( Re drinks with artificial sweeteners)

The new findings have suggested that just a couple of daily cans of the supposedly 'healthier' (sic) diet artificially sweetened carbonated drinks, such as lemonade or cola, can raise the risk of liver damage, as well as potentially causing diabetes and heart damage. Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center claim those who drink diet soft drinks are 43 per cent more likely to have heart attacks, vascular disease or strokes than those who have none.The latest study appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2094681/Just-diet-fizzy-drink-increase-risk-heart-attack-stroke.html#ixzz1lG2u6SFl

But a Danish study suggest non diet soda drinks are just as leathal

Researchers, led by Dr. Bjrn Richelsen at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark asked people to drink either a liter of water, milk, diet cola or regular cola each day for six months.At the end of the study the regular cola drinkers ended up with 25 percent more fat surrounding their organs, and just about doubled the amount of fat in the liver and muscle.

"This study suggests that the adverse effects of sugary beverages go beyond just weight gain or fat gain. It's the gaining of the wrong fat in the wrong places," said Dr. Frank Hu, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health

Read More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/12/us-sugary-soda-idUSTRE80B1WS20120112

Oh and after many years of rediculousness in the US and UK/ Europe The sweet herb Stevia is now available for sale as a sweetener - get it raw and unadulterated here 
http://www.thesuperfoodco.co.uk/stevia-powder-250g-natural-sweetener-p-290.html

UK children and adults lack Vitamin D

Yvonne Bishop-Weston Nutritionist London: 25% UK toddlers lacking Vitamin D

Lack of of Vitamin D linked to depression by Bristol University study.

Ain't no sunshine? Then she's gone! Vitamin D deficiency rocks Britain's health



The Independent - BBC News

Government advice to take supplements? I think you'll find we told you so, many times, but just in case we'll tell you again about the importance of Vitamin D...

Back in 2009 we blogged about a study linking vitamin D to increased health risks , and on numerous other occasions including this one about Nutrients Men aren't getting enough of .

We reported

Vitamin D is Great for bone health but it's so much more: A study in Circulation found that people deficient in D were up to 80 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. Ask your doctor to test your blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. "You need to be above 30 nanograms per milliliter," said Michael Holick, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine at Boston University, in the report. If you come up short, Holick recommends taking 1,400 IU of vitamin D daily from a supplement and a multivitamin.

Vitamin D is one of the most important vitamins, especially for your immune system and for building and maintaining bone health.

Meanwhile Bristol University revealed new research from the Children of the 90s study at the University of Bristol, which has been charting the health of 14,500 children since their birth in the early 1990s, shows that the link between low levels of vitamin D and depression is established in childhood and that ensuring children have a good intake of vitamin D could help reduce depression in adolescence and adulthood.


Your body makes vitamin D from sunshine - as the song goes (ish) "If there ain't no sunshine, then she's gone, there ain't no vitamin D when she goes away."

"If you spend your time playing nintendo or computer games instead of running about outside, riding in a car instead of on a bike, taking the tube / bus instead of walking through the park, thinking you look cool always wearing dark glasses or if you have dark skin to genetically protect you from a hot equatorial sun and you live in northern Europe or north America then you are going to benefit from a vitamin D supplement. A vitamin D deficiency leaves you with a greater risk of a number of different diseases not just bone problems such as rickets." says Nutritionist in London Yvonne Bishop-Weston


Vitamin D Supplement - Special Offer - Vitashine - Buy Now

Size Zero 0 Anorexic Chic Horror of London Fashion Week

 Anorexia chic returns to the catwalk as Size Zero models return - mirror.co.uk:

"I FIND it shocking the fashion world has gone back to this look. Super-skinny models today look pale and ­emaciated as if they should be in a ­hospital ward." Says Yvonne Bishop-Weston Nutritionist London in The Sunday Mirror today

Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/02/27/harley-street-nutritionist-yvonne-bishop-weston-gives-her-expert-opinion-on-the-new-waif-models-115875-22951407/#ixzz1FA3wuLgp

The biggest risk is to young girls, it fuels their weight obsessions adding to their delusions that this is 'normal' and healthy

The designers that choose these girls and encourage this look may just as well be putting up alcoholics swigging from a bottle of vodka or heroin addicts smoking crack up their on the catwalks - it's totally irresponsible!.

Yvonne says"I see recovering anorexic girls in my Harley street clinic and it's a nasty, vicious and spiteful disease that rob's girls of their self esteem and chances of long term health.
Young women come in with pictures of models and they say “I want to look like this.” They aspire to look like the people who are chosen to show off clothes.
A recovering anorexic would see women like these as a healthy body weight. And the tragedy, of course, is that not all anorexics recover."

Most of us could do with losing a few pounds to reduce the risks of heart disease, Diabetes, cancer, stroke, but by going to the other extreme these girls are risking all those usual chronic diseases plus osteoporosis , infertility and any chance of ever being mothers, Alzheimer's, arthritis and as soon as the bloom of youth runs out their skin will look likes it's been peeled off, screwed up and tumble dried and then stuck back on with blue tack

Lets face it there are only 4 ways to achieve a size 0 body that looks like this

1. Obsessively starving yourself - Anorexia or bulimia, depriving your body of nutrients
   
2. Dangerous drug abuse - depriving your body of nutrients
   
3. Obsessive exercise - Stressing the body and depriving the body of nutrients
4. Disease - A muscle wasting disease, parasite infestation or cancer that deprives the body of nutrients
   

The restrictions placed on calories mean it is very difficult to get adequate nutrients into the body for it to function properly - typically the reproductive system is first to go (as non essential) then the digestive detox system as the body goes into emergency short term crisis management mode to try and keep the brain and heart alive at least.

If the models drink alcohol, take drugs or smoke in addition to starving themselves then they are pretty much doomed despite Kate Moss's best efforts to prove otherwise.

The only way to remotely healthy on this low calorie level would be a dangerously low fat diet of vegan raw food but then only nutrient rich vegetables and no high sugar fruits such as bananas and no nuts. However without the essential fats from nuts and seeds they would still risk heart disease and hormonal problems and brain function as essential fats are needed for every cell membrane in the body. Vegans can get these from nuts, seeds and algae but these size zero models are often fat phobic so are likely to avoid essential fats along with detrimental saturated animal fats.