Tag Archives: metabolic rate

The Many Health Benefits of Flaxseed

Flaxseed has been used for many years for making linen. It’s also known as linseed, one
of the ingredients in paint. The closest it came to being food was its use for livestock feed.
It’s only about a decade ago that science discovered the many health benefits of flaxseed.

Flaxseed is a rich plant source of omega-3 fatty acids. Apart from supporting good vision,
omega-3 also fight weight gain by increasing metabolic rate and they protect against
cancer growth. Flaxseed contains a different type of omega-3 than fish. This type reduces
the incidence of blood clotting, which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
In addition, the omega-3 also appears to help prevent atherosclerosis, increase good HDL
cholesterol, lower levels of dangerous LDL cholesterol, and reduce inflammation.
They may also help to reduce depression.

Apart from omega-3, flaxseed is also a rich source of compounds called lignans.
While many plant foods contain lignans, flaxseed contains by far the most, at least 75 times
more than any other plant food. For example, you have to eat 60 cups of fresh broccoli
or 100 slices of whole-wheat bread to get the same amount of lignans in ¼ cup of flaxseed.
Lignans are important because of their powerful antioxidant properties to help blocking the cell-damaging effects of free radicals.
Food rich in lignans can lower the risk of heart disease. A Finnish study of almost 2,000 men found that those men with the highest lignan intake were significantly less likely to die from heart disease than those with the lowest intake.

Flaxseed also shows some potential of reversing kidney damage caused by lupus.
A condition by which the immune system produces harmful substances that attack and
damage healthy tissues.
When researchers at the University of Western Ontario gave flaxseed to nine people with
lupus related kidney disease, they discovered that several kidney functions, including
the ability to filter waste, quickly improved. The researchers believe that the lignans and
omega-3 in flaxseed fight inflammation in the tiny, very fragile arteries that supply blood
to the kidneys, helping reduce the artery-clogging process that can lead to kidney damage.

Apart from the health benefits of the lignans in flaxseeds to protect your heart, they also
fight cancer in your body. Lignans subdue cancerous changes once’s they have occurred,making them less likely to run out of control and develop into full-blown cancer.
Studies at the University of Toronto shows some promise for battling certain types of
cancer, in particular preventing typical female cancers, like breast- and ovarian cancer.

Two additional properties of the omega-3 in flaxseed, apart from its cancer-fighting power,
is the ability of limiting the body’s production of chemicals called prostaglandins.
The importance of prostaglandins is that they speed up tumor growth in large amounts.

To top it all up, flaxseed is also very high in fiber. Three table spoons of seeds contains
three grams of fiber, which is about twelve percent of the Daily Value.
The important role of fiber in your diet is the ability to block the harmful effects of
compounds that over time may cause changes in the intestine that can lead to cancer.

Whole flaxseed provide little benefit. Flaxseed is the one food that provide more
nutritional benefits when processed. So instead, buy the cracked or milled forms, which
readily give up the nutritious goodness packed inside.
Don’t buy the oil. Most of the lignans in flaxseed are found in the non-oil part of the seed.
While the oil may contain some lignans, it doesn’t provide as much as the other healthful
compounds found in the seeds, such as fiber, protein and minerals.

Lean for Life

It might be true that running burns more calories than walking and cross-country skiing
burns most calories of all, but fat loss has little to do with calories used during an
exercise session.
Many recent studies show that the right exercise raises your metabolic rate for up to
18 hours afterwards.

However, if you exercise in the evening and then go to bed, you lose most of the
fat loss effect, because sleep causes your metabolism rate to drop rapidly.
The best time to exercise is in the mornings, the earlier the better.

Exercise five mornings weekly for a minimum of 30 minutes
Dr. Leonard Epstein analysed all the published studies on exercise and fat loss
and showed that people who exercise five times per week lose three times as much
fat as those who exercise only twice or three times per week, even if they exercise for
a longer period.Those who exercise only once per week lost no fat at all.

For  fat loss, five days weekly exercise of 30 minutes is much superior to three days
weekly of 70 minutes, even though the total weekly exercise time of the three day
people is an hour longer.
In order to keep that metabolic rate churning, frequent exercise is the key.

Take a multiple anti-oxidant every day.
As you can read in my article about exercise, oxidation is the primary cause
of human degeneration.
Because exercise uses 12 – 20 times more oxygen than sitting in a chair, it also creates
masses of free radicals that causes a lot of oxidation damage.

Without additional anti-oxidants you are slowly killing yourself.
You can prevent exercise oxidation  damage by taking antioxidant supplements.

The first strategy in your fight against body fat is to reduce your appetite.
Phenylpropanolamine helps a little. Better is ephedrine hydrochloride and its original
source: Ma huang or Ephedra sinica.

But you should be very sensible in the use of these compounds.
Don’t use more than 25 – 50 mg per day, otherwise it lose it’s effect  and can cause
many side-effects, including raised blood pressure, anxiety and insomnia.

The second strategy is to reduce the taste of food, especially sweet tastes.
The herb Gymnema silvestre has been used for this purpose for thousands
of years in Ayurvedic medicine. It works a bit.

The third strategy is to reduce your body’s tendency  to store fat.
The herb Garcinia cambogia, a specific variant of the English brindleberry
is used in Ayurvedic medicine for this purpose.
The active ingredient is hydroxy citrate.

Ongoing studies by DR. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona indicate
that 500 mg of garcinia may reduce fat storage from a high-fat meal by up to 30%.
As a bonus, it may also reduce appetite.

The final strategy is to raise metabolic rate so that your body burns more calories
during the day. It’s called thermogenesis, which means: it raises body temperature.
To maintain the increased temperature, the body has to burn more calories to make
the heat – lots of calories. And because it is low level activation, the calories burned
come mainly from fat.

There are a lot of drugs that does the job, but all of them causes side effects.
It doesn’t make sense to make yourself unhealthy while trying to lose fat.

Least damaging are the beta-adrenergic agonists and most harmless of these
is ephedrine or its herbal source: Ma huang. These compounds work by inceasing
bodely output of noradrenalin, one of our “fight-or-flight” hormones.
That warns you right away not to use too much,(25-50 mg per day max.) or you
run into severe anxiety, irritability, headache and insomnia.

The FDA are against ephedrine, because folk have used larger doses and
caused real damage to the thyroid gland and other organs.

However, ephedrine on its own is not effective, because your body quickly
defends itself with multiple mechanisms that turn off the extra noradrenalin.
The three main defences your body uses against a sensible ephedrine
regimen (25–50 mg/day) are: increasing output of phosphodiesterase enzymes,
and increasing prostaglandin production.

These defenses can be overcome respectively by using caffeine, theophylline
(from tea) and acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
Herbal sources can also supply the caffeine, theophyline and aspirin.
Standardized extracts of kola nut, guarana, black tea and white willow are good
sources. And you can prolong the effect of caffeine, which is mildly thermogenic
by itself, by using naringenin, a compound found in grapefruit.

.Another effective chemical to use in conjunction with beta-receptor agonists
is yohimbine, a compound from the bark of the yohimbe tree.
Yohimbe is one of the class of compounds called selective antagonists
of alpha-2 receptors. This action of yohimbine has shown to cause long- term
thermogenesis and fat loss in animals.

Use the right herbal fat loss supplement every day
Controlling excess body water is the last thing you can do to lose body fat.
Especially for women, who have this problem. Bloating and edema prevent
your Lean For Life program, because they make you feel blah and make you
to sit like a slug and avoid exercise.

Diuretic drugs are not the solution, but mildly diuretic foods like melons,
cucumber, grapes, apples, parsley, pineapple and cooked asparagus
all help to shed excess water.
Mil diuretic herbs, like Uva ursi and Sarsaparilla also have a use in this
phase of fat loss.

Form specific, measurable, public, rewarded fat loss goals.
Success is always achieved by setting goals. To improve your performance,
you should set  specific goals and sub-goals and write them down and post
them on the fridge, for example, so that everybody can see them.

Goals have to be specific, measurable and time limited.
“To lose weight” is to vague. Instead for example: to lose 10 lbs of fat by
my next birthday is a good goal.
Lean for Life is a very long-term goal, so you have to use sub-goals to be able
to check your progress.

Finally, you have to make your goals public, so that your  family and friends
can blame you for failure, but praise & reward you for success.