Growing up as a child in the 60’s there was always lots of space to play on the street or out in the big back yards, nearby parks, creeks and the beach. While we have lost a lot of these spaces, research is showing that the more “green” we are surrounded with the the healthier it is for us. Invariably as the suburbs spread out we lose more open space, green and private gardens are either small or non- existent. Globally, the same situation is occurring with a dramatic demographic shift towards urbanization. Between 2000 and 2050, the proportion of people living in urb...
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In the new year, with all the mention of healthy foods it is also important to put the role of physical activity in perspective and perhaps make that one of our top goals for 2017. Up until 10,000 years ago, humans were still living a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, scouting the landscape in the search for food, which placed a high level of physical stress on the body. Even going back just 200 years, humans were much more physically active than they are today, living a predominantly agrarian life, running farms and crop fields. The genetic and physical make up of hum...
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Most people don't realise that a large number of pharmaceutical agents, including many over-the-counter and prescription drugs, are linked with weight gain and obesity. Drug-induced weight gain is a serious side effect of many commonly used drugs. The weight gain can be extremely high in a relative short time: sometimes more than 10 kg over 12 months. Some medications can increase appetite, cause fluid retention, or slowly lead to weight gain over a period of time due to fatigue and lower activity. The best know impact, however, is the role of antibiotics in weight...
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Sleep has been shown to be as important to the human body as food and water, but most of us still don’t get enough sleep. We obtain treatment for illness or injury – yet we generally fail to seek help when we aren’t getting enough sleep. The average length of sleep has declined from around 9 hours a hundred years ago to seven hours or less today. And the depth of sleep has also declined. Sleep is complicated in the way that there are many different factors that influence the effectiveness of sleep. It’s not just duration that determines the effectiveness of said ...
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There is increasing evidence emerging from the scientific community which suggests that mass-medication in the form of water fluoridation is in fact having a serious and adverse effect on the public’s health. A recent report from the US National Research Council 1 concluded that adverse effects of high fluoride concentrations in drinking-water may be of concern. Animal studies have shown Fluoride may cause neurotoxicity, including effects on learning and memory 2,3. Recent experiments where the rat hippocampal neurons were incubated with various concentrations of sodium f...
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Vitamins for the heart The science is overwhelming. We can reverse heart disease, unblock arteries and lower blood pressure with good nutrition and lifestyle changes and it can be improved even further with supplementation. There are now thousands of articles in all levels of scientific journals—on the benefits of supplementing, not only for the general population but also for cardio vascular disease conditions. Unfortunately, these do not seem to get media attention despite the fact that they may show dramatic reductions in the incidence and severity of diseases such ...
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The thought of eating nothing but raw food, seems somewhat alien in the modern world, where the methods are cooking food are widely varied. But, until the discovery of fire, and the ability to recreate fire was developed around 1.8 million years ago, our human ancestors consumed massive amounts of raw food. It has been estimated that throughout 99% of human evolution, we consumed nothing but raw foods – something that is hard to imagine. Humans are the only species (if you don't count our domesticated animals) that do not eat a 100% raw food diet, with many populations...
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While industry is working to replace BPA because of health concerns it may be going in the wrong direction. Plasticizers with estrogenic activity, such as bisphenol A (BPA), have been reported to have potential adverse health effects in humans. Due to mounting evidence of these health effects and public pressure, BPA is being phased out by the plastics manufacturing industry and replaced by other bisphenol variants in 'BPA-free' products. This study investigated the estrogenic activity of 6 bisphenol analogues (bisphenol S, BPS; bisphenol F, BPF; bisphenol AP, BPAP; bisphen...
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When health is absent, Wisdom cannot reveal itself, Art cannot manifest, Strength cannot be exerted, Wealth becomes useless, And reason is powerless." — Herophilus 300 B.C. Our work places are either a great place to promote health or to contribute to the health problem. Our work environments are experiencing an emerging health crisis from longer workdays, deskbound occupations, access to poor quality foods and poor physical activity. In many cases they are contributing to a deterioration in employee health as our work and the workplace has the potential to have a ...
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The rapid increase in obesity which began in the 1980’s coincides with the emphasis on low fat diet and the food pyramid promoting grain and carbohydrate consumption in place of fat. While this is only circumstantial evidence a large number of studies now show the low-fat dietary approach to be wrong. In a review of data from 23 random controlled trials comparing low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets and most of the studies were conducted on people with health problems, including overweight/obesity, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The low carbohydrate groups often l...
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