Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 16

Is a Vegan Diet Healthy For You?

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

Sharecare.com, Dr. Oz’s “home for your health”, is a platform where experts will answer user-generated questions concerning one’s well-being. Explore the site and you’ll get an opportunity to see what people are really thinking, what’s confusing them, as well as what they want more information about. One question I’ve answered on multiple occasions was this: “How’s a vegan diet healthy for me?”

            Vegan diets are not innately healthier; it’s possible to be a vegan and still eat processed foods. When I was going to Equinox in the 90s, we used to call these kids “Twinkie Vegetarians.” They wouldn’t eat anything that had ever been alive, but instead were eating spaghetti and Coco Crunches. It’s possible to be a vegan or a vegetarian and still eat a horrible diet. However, the spirit of the vegan diet is something I do agree with.

Fresh fruits and vegetables offer an array of compounds; an encyclopedia of flavonoids, polyphenols, catechins, vitamins, and minerals. These things act as powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories in the body. The fiber in these foods helps control blood-sugar and may protect against cancer. The problem is that humans do better with some animal products in their diet.

The vegan diet does not provide one with a sufficient amount of B12, zinc, or heme iron. There are very few vegetarian sources of EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids, which for the most part, can only be found in animal foods and fish.

What makes a meat-eating diet unhealthy has nothing to do with eating foods that come from animals. However, most of the meat that’s on the market today comes from animals that are sick. Factory feedlot cattle, which are raised in confinement, are fed unhealthy grains, shot full of steroids, growth-hormones, and antibiotics. If this were the only meat available, I would become a vegan. Grass-fed beef is a whole different story.

Animals raised on pasture, eating their natural diet of grass, are rarely injected with antibiotics or hormones and pose no threat to one’s health. While some people clearly seem to thrive on a leafy diet, there have been many anecdotal stories regarding the longterm health problems with the vegan orthodoxy.

Loss of energy, brittle hair, and nutrient-insufficiency are three I’ve seen frequently reported. My personal opinion is that one’s diet should be loaded with plant-based foods. However, some healthy sources of animal protein, such as grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, and wild salmon will do a body good. Remember, everyone’s different and no diet philosophy is going to be equally valid for everybody.

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

Should You Be Worried About Antibiotics?

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

The World Health Organization calls Antibiotics a major threat to public health. Should you be worried? What does antibiotic resistance actually mean to you? Should you fear taking antibiotics?

There are three times as many bacterial and fungal cells in your body as there are human cells. Why do you need all those bacterial and fungal cells? They populate your gut, your digestive tract, and they’re responsible for many important functions in your body. The gut is literally considered the second brain because of the inherent connection between the gut and the brain. The health of the gut is intimately associated with the health of the brain. The gut bacteria are also associated with digestion and assimilation of nutrients. They’re called probiotics, they’re pro health, they’re helpful, and they’re important microbes that assist in metabolic operations. They also assist with immunity. The latest research shows that the balance and composition of those bacterial microbes in your body has a lot to do with your weight.

Human cells and bacterial cells co-existed in a perfect symbiosis that supported the health of the whole body, till antibiotics came to play. According to Martin Blaser MD, the author of the book, “Missing Microbes,” antibiotics are actually fueling the modern day plagues, contributing to diabetes, contributing to obesity, to asthma, to allergies and even to certain kinds of cancers. The number one service your native bacteria (microbes in the gut) perform is immunity. The microbes are a huge part of your immune system. The overuse of antibiotics has altered the delicate balance of microbes that are living in all of us, and that makes us vulnerable to a wide number of diseases that plague us today.

Every time you take a course of antibiotics, you disturb the delicate balance of your gut flora and the result is way more bad bacteria like candida albicans, than good bacteria like lactobacillus. It’s not as much as the antibiotics prescribed by your doctor, although that definitely counts; it is that factory farms are dosing their factory farm animals with antibiotics to fatten them up and to keep them from getting sick in the horrible confined quarters they live in; and from the food that they eat that isn’t natural to their bodies.

Antibiotics arrive in our food, in milk, meat, cheese and eggs; and are found in the water supply and in all densely farmed commercial fish, especially shrimp, lobster; salmon and catfish. By 2010 healthcare providers prescribed 258 million courses of antibiotics to people in the United States alone; the highest rate was to babies under the age of two. This is a complete disruption of the natural flora of the garden of our gut. Next, we will examine the issue of antibiotic resistance. The more often we put antibiotics into our bodies and into our children’s bodies, the more likely we are to select for bacteria that are resistant to the action of those antibiotics. We keep selecting for bacterial survivors. A dose of amoxicillin will travel through the whole body to all the organs, all the tissues and it will destroy bacteria, leaving the more resistant bacteria, which then multiply rapidly allowing disease to spread even faster.

I’m not saying that you should never take antibiotics. There’s a couple things you can do to protect yourself. Take a probiotic supplement every single day. I consider probiotics to be one of the top 10 supplements for most people and I recommend it for just about everybody. Continue to take those probiotics alongside your antibiotics when you’re under an antibiotic treatment. Second, tell your doctor you would like to wait a few more days before you sign on for amoxicillin for that cough, or a wait a day before you get a script for your kid’s head cold. Resist pushing your doctor for a quick fix for your own anxiety. That doesn’t mean to say “no” if you have a sick kid and he/she really needs an antibiotic and your doctor says so. And lastly, demand better sources of protein. Grass-fed and organic meat as well as pastured pork are raised without antibiotics.

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

 

Weight Loss Tips that Work

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

This is Dr. Jonny, and I want to talk to you about weight loss tips that can work with any diet.

For the vast majority of people, eating less food is a good idea; one way is to eat half of what you order at a restaurant; another is to try intermittent fasting- letting a significant amount of time pass between meals.

Try having a salad before a meal. Eat more soup! Its low calorie, high volume & high in nutrients.

As Adele Davis said, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”

Proactive planning works too- writing down what you’re going to eat before the fact.

 

Watch this short video for more tips that can be used with any eating plan.

http://jonnybowden.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Weight-Loss-Tips-That-Work-Jonny-Bowden.mp4

 

I’d love to hear from you – tell me if these tips were helpful!

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

8 Glasses of Water a Day—Fact or Fiction?

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

A myth that I myself have subscribed to for most of my professional career is that you have to drink 8 glasses of water a day. Truth is, there’s not a bit of scientific evidence to support the claim. So where did it originate?

In the beginning, a 1945 Food and Nutrition Board Recommendation reported that the human body requires 2.5 Liters of water a day—or roughly 8 glasses of water. What has been overlooked is the fact that much of the water we get is derived from the foods we eat. Check out this short video-blog for the full picture: http://bit.ly/JB8GWater

Water is vital to the overall well-being of our system. When experiencing even a little dehydration, a single glass can be thoroughly energizing, help fill our stomach and even help us lose weight. While it may be a myth that you must drink 8 glasses a day, it certainly won’t hurt to sip H20 from sunrise to set.

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

5 Easy Changes for Better Eyesight for Life

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

You probably know that sugar is death to the eyes, and that using vegetable oils is bad. You also know you should eat a low glycemic diet, but what specifically should you be eating? What specific supplements should you be taking if you really want to protect your vision?

Earlier this week, I wrote about the work of Chung-Jung Chiu on “Diet in the Vision”. Chiu found that carbs, and especially high glycemic carbs, sent the risk for every bad eye issue skyrocketing. Why does that matter to you? Because, with a few very simple changes you can significantly reduce the risk factors for the major health conditions that steal your eyesight as you grow older.

#1. Eat a classic Mediterranean diet. This diet has been found to benefit just about every single condition you can imagine and reduce the risk of any future health issue.

Think of it not so much as a specific diet, but as a pattern of eating. It’s a pattern of eating that has a lot of fresh, organic food and lots of fruits and vegetables in tons of gorgeous colors. It is loaded with olive oil, legumes and fish.

#2. Get enough protein. Where it gets really interesting is the amount of protein you need to consume daily. The British ophthalmologist Stanley Evans (who has been studying cataracts for 40 years) has found that in many cases people with vision issues have a protein deficiency. Evans recommends a minimum daily intake of 70 to 80 grams of protein to protect the eyes.

The coauthor of my next book, “Smart Fat,” Dr. Steven Masley and I actually decided on a protein recommendation between 80 and 120 grams a day for most people! (Be on the lookout for the “Smart Fat” book, coming out in January 2016, Harper Collins.) What we recommend is very close to what the eye doctor says. His 70-80 grams is the minimum, we’re saying 80-120 grams, so 80 grams should be the. That amount of protein will absolutely make a difference to your vision and to your eyes.

#3. Color your world with food! Next, add specific foods like kale, spinach, cooked collard greens, cabbage, which are all rich in lutein, which is one of the most effective antioxidants in the carotenoid family benefitting the eye itself. Other foods that have a lot of lutein are kiwi, grapes, and egg yolks. (Yes, egg yolks are GOOD for you – as long as they’re cage free and organic.)

Think red: specifically, red colored seafood. Go for wild salmon from Alaska. The red color comes from astaxanthin, which is a powerful antioxidant that’s found in krill (which is what wild salmon eat). Think blue: blueberries, blackberries, purple grapes, they all contain anthocyanins, which help promote the production of particular retinal pigments that are critical for vision in dimmer lights. Finally there’s alcohol (and specifically wine). In the Australian Blue Mountain Eye Study, those who had one or two drinks a day actually lowered their risk of developing cataracts by 50% compared to those who had either more than two drinks or none at all. There’s a sweet spot in there: one to two drinks a day.

So far, here is our eye food prescription list: Fatty fish; Mediterranean eating plan; Olive oil; Vegetables, especially kale, spinach, collards, and cabbage; Blue fruits, like blueberries, blackberries, black grapes; And moderate alcohol and the right supplements.

#4. Always follow the Big 3: exercise, don’t smoke, and wear sunglasses. And keep in mind that a lot of medications, including statin drugs, antibiotics and hypertensive meds, can really increase the risk of eye problems as well.

#5. Get the RIGHT Supplements for Vision: In the AREDS study, they tested the effects of specific vitamin supplements, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, beta carotene, and zinc to find that they provided a very significant 25% reduction in risk. A number of companies market the original ARED formula. Because of a later research, many added fish oil, lutein and zeaxanthan.

If you’re not taking one of those eye specific formulas based on the original ARED research, here’s what you should still make sure you’re including every day if you want to protect your eyes. Start with the antioxidants, especially carotenoid, it’s like lutein and zeaxanthan and they’re both found in egg yolks and all those green vegetables that we mentioned earlier. Get at least one to three grams of Vitamin C and at least four hundred IUs of Vitamin E. Both of those were used in the original ARED study. With the Vitamin E, make sure you get the mixed tocopherol or the gamma heavy tocopherol (about 400 IUs of that along with the one to three grams of Vitamin C). Fish oil, at least one to two grams a day. I especially like Barlean’s high EPA DHA. Lastly, a good B complex including folate in the methylfolate form, not folic acid. That’s a great start for eye health.

What we’re finding out, in the end, is that so many of the conditions we thought were inevitable consequences of aging are actually not, or at least much more modifiable than anybody thought. Your vision, your eyes are a prime example of the food you eat. The supplements you take really do matter.

SEE you soon!

Dr. Jonny

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

 

 

 

The Better to See You With!

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

In the last decade or so, I’ve definitely noticed a lessening of sharpness in my vision. I use contact lenses already, but I set out the past few weeks to know what I could do for myself to preserve my vision and keep my eyes sharp like they’ve always been. We are what we eat – so there has to be a dietary connection, of course.

The most fascinating thing I came across was a very interesting researcher from Tufts University named Chung-Jung Chui. Chui has been investigating the effect of nutrition on the eyes for a very long time. He is actually involved with the Nutrition and Vision Project, which studies patients who have developed three of the most common vision-destroying eye problems, which are glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and macular degeneration. The first thing that he found was that patients who develop any of these three conditions had one thing in common, a diet high in processed sugar.

There’s just no escaping it: Sugar is bad for you on so many levels. Here is why we should really think of sugar in relationship to the eyes. High sugar in your bloodstream gloms onto slippery proteins. These type of proteins are then “sticky” (rather than slippery) and difficult to travel through small blood vessels like in the eye. That is one reason diabetics have so many problems with their toes, their kidneys and their eyes, because of the tiny capillaries in those areas that need to carry cells.

Chui’s interest in diet and vision goes way back. He did a study of 500 nurses’ diets. When he examined their eyes, he found that those with the highest intake of carbs, no matter what the quality, were two and a half times more likely to develop cataracts than those eating the least carbs; the risk increased the more carbs you ate.

In another study from Australia, where researchers looked at the diets of over 1,000 patients age forty-nine or older, with no history of eye problems and no history of cataracts, the quality of the carbs did matter. They again examined them after five years as well as after ten years. Even when controlling everything, diabetes, age, sex, they still found that every significant increase in the glycemic index of the food these folks were eating increased the risk of developing cataracts. Those with the highest glycemic index had a unbelievable 77% greater risk of developing cataracts than those who ate a low GI diet.

Chui and his colleagues estimated that one-fifth of all macular degeneration cases could be eliminated if people stopped eating processed carbs and consumed a low GI diet. He believes the eye has a very active metabolism. It’s determined not just by sugar but also by oxygen. Chui believes that when you eat too much sugar, it actually turns on genes that code for low oxygen. Ultimately, the eye is being bombarded by too much sugar and too little oxygen.

It’s not just sugar. It’s also vegetable oil. Researchers at Harvard found that while processed foods doubled the risk of macular degeneration, high intakes of vegetable fat quadrupled the risk. I’ve been saying this forever – these highly processed vegetable oils are not your friend. Soybean oil, safflower oil, corn oil, sunflower, items that the vegans claim that are so great for you. They’re not. They’re very pro-inflammatory. Inflammation is the friend of every degenerative disease we know including those that affect the eye.

What you eat matters: high glycemic diets are a killer for your eyes. Cut back on sugar – and cut back on vegetable oil. Eat an anti-inflammatory diet filled with lots of carotenoids: kale, spinach, collards, blueberries, dark grapes. Make these basic lifestyle improvements right now.

And make sure you exercise and don’t smoke!

People who exercise an hour a day lower their risk of macular degeneration by two-thirds. Running or walking can also cut the risk of cataracts significantly. Amazingly, the very same diet that protects your eyes, Mediterranean eating patterns, tons of vegetables, legumes, olive oil, fish, low-glycemic index diet, low sugar, low vegetable oil; is exactly the diet that’s going to make you slim!

It’s also the diet that’s going to protect your brain; the diet that’s going to protect your heart. One big dietary change will produce a trifecta of benefits. It all starts with cutting back on sugar, cutting back on processed foods and cutting back on vegetable oil.

Be sure to watch for Part 2 of this series on eye health and nutrition.

See you soon!

Dr. Jonny

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

 

The Cereal Killer

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

Imagine you’re about to eat a bowl of typical American breakfast cereal. You cover it with some milk and it’s all crunchy. About 3 minutes later, it is a soggy mess. That soggy mess – cereal manufacturers have been trying to fix for years but can’t do – is a clue to why cereal is one of the worst foods on the planet.

Around the turn of the last century, people ate a lot of cereal. Cereal wasn’t out of a box. Ready-to-eat cereal hadn’t been invented yet, so people ate grains that had to be combined with water or milk, cooked slowly over the stove for a long time. They also ate a lot of high-protein foods for breakfast like bacon, eggs and ham.

Into this milieu came a really interesting character named John Harvey Kellogg. Kellogg was a surgeon. He lived in Battle Creek, Michigan; he ran a sanitarium, the Battle Creek Sanitarium. As a vegetarian and a devout Seventh-Day Adventist, he had some really interesting ideas about food.

Kellogg, well-motivated as well as sincere, wanted to find a healthier low-fat, high-fiber way for his patients to start the day, and he wanted it to be something that he could send to them by mail when they left the sanitarium. Ideally, something that didn’t need to be cooked. Kellogg and his wife, make something called granula, which later was renamed to granola. They wanted to make those grain pieces flatter to get the texture better, to make it more like a flake instead of the granula rock.

Experimenting, they boiled the wheat. They found it turns into a mush. They run this mush through a roller; they discover the wheat was sticking onto the roller like a flattened flake. The beginnings of flakes! Around this time, a whole new system of warehousing and centralized production was emerging. This meant that to make it in the marketplace, the product had to be able to survive for several months. This was not good news.

Real corn flakes start to develop a foul odor after about a month because the oil in the germ portion of the corn starts to turn rancid. With the new production system, it could had been up to nine months between the production time and the actual consumption. They had to change the formula. They took out the problematic corn germ as well as the bran; and used only the starchy center. Everything that had anything good was removed; they probably didn’t even know how bad this was yet because vitamins hadn’t even been identified in food yet!

They were faced with a new technology emerging called gun puffing; puffed wheat and puffed rice? It started back in 1904. They actually took army surplus cannons; they filled them with white rice and then applied super high heat. The cannons became scalding hot, lots of pressure in the chambers. When they opened the chambers, boom, there was a rapid drop in pressure, the rice exploded into puffed rice. The problem was that this wasn’t that efficient. Soon, the gun puffers were a thing of the past and in came the extrusion machines.

Here’s how your healthy cereal (this includes just about everything you didn’t make on your own stove) is made The extrusion machine takes the ingredients, mixes them together at warp speed, it forms a resultant kind of goo into any of fun-filled shaped you want, letters of the alphabet, little animals, and so many more. It originally took them about 7 hours to cook and process grains; with extrusion machines, the time was reduced to 20 minutes.

According to the excellent book, “Pandora’s Lunch Box”, which is really the best book I’ve ever read about the food processing industry, extrusion is: “Undoubtedly, the harshest and most nutritionally devastating way to process cereal.”

Beyond the extruding machines, there is steam cooking under pressure, drying, and toasting, which occurs at fiery 525 to 625 degree temperature – that’s because they need to evaporate every drop of water in order to give the remaining dreck as long a shelf life as possible. Most commercial cereals are literally immune to decomposition. There’s nothing in it that’s alive.

Here’s the final irony. What do you think this stuff tastes like after this entire process? It tastes like the box it comes in. Seriously! The only think they can do to make it edible and have people actually eat it, is to use durable manufactured flavorings. There’s no such thing as a natural flavoring. This stuff is all manufactured in factories in New Jersey. They use artificial flavorings and artificial coloring because the original stuff is a disgusting gray. Then, because there’s absolutely nothing of any value in this mess, they fortify it with synthetic vitamins, mostly made in China, so they can tell you on the box how this is a healthy cereal that contains 100% of your vitamin needs.

While I’m sure that somebody’s going to write to me and tell me about some beautiful cereal, fat-free, up in New Hampshire, and they grow everything by hand and they package everything by hand. I’m sure there’s an exception somewhere to every rule, but if that wonderful cereal from New Hampshire wound up in a box and it was shipped anywhere where you can buy it, chances are even it was subjected to at least some of the techniques that they have to subject this stuff to in order to be able to put it in a box, ship it, and sell it. That’s why I say, in my opinion, that commercial processed cereal is one of the worst foods ever.

This is Dr. Jonny, busting the low-fat diet one myth at a time.

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

Eat more Nuts and Chocolate?

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

I’m going to tell you about two foods I want you to eat more; the first food is nuts, and the second is chocolate. Nuts and chocolate? Many of us, over 40, were demonized by these foods. My parents used to say, “Oh nuts; they’re fattening. Chocolate gives you acne. It’s pure sugar. There’s nothing good in it. It just makes you fat.”

Both nuts and chocolate had, for a long time, been without any health credentials, but that has changed in the past couple of decades. I found two epidemiological studies in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, volume 101 number 2: one is on nuts and the other one on chocolate. So, here’s the good news.

Even with the limitations of the epidemiological data, we can still discover some very interesting things, especially if they occur over and over and over again. If it turns out, for example, in study after study after study of all kinds of populations, all over the world that people who are exposed to radiation the most, develop cancer the most: that’s a hypothesis worth testing and until we know more it could be recommended to avoid radiation.

Okay, in this particular study, researchers looked at data from 20,000 male physicians, followed for about 3 years, and filled out many questionnaires including what they ate. The researchers did different crunching of the numbers, focusing in on any possible statistical association between what they ate and their likelihood of dying. Sure enough, there was such an association.

In this particular study, they found that people who ate more than 5 servings a week of nuts had about a 26% reduction in their risk of dying from anything (“All-Cause Mortality). Even the ones who ate 2 to 4 servings a week had reduced risk of dying; there was also a significant reduction in cardiovascular mortality.

People who eat more nuts have diets that are higher in magnesium, higher in fiber, higher in poly and mono unsaturated fats, all of which can have a profound effect on your health. But a lot of other studies have also shown an inverse relationship between nut consumption and BMI, which is measure of weight or overweight. People who eat nuts are, by far, less fat than people who don’t. Put nuts on your playlist and into heavy rotation. I eat them every single day. I put a handful in my Dr. Johnny’s Berries and Cherries. If you would like the recipe, just write to me.

Chocolate! Chocolate contains cocoa flavanols; beneficial plant-based phytonutrients that have a profound effect on cardiovascular health. We have studies of a very interesting group called the Kuna, who lives off of Panama. They drink 5 cups a day of a cocoa rich drink; they have very low blood pressure. Their blood pressure doesn’t move higher as they age as it happens everywhere else. There are more studies on cocoa and blood pressure, as well as studies on cocoa and insulin sensitivity, cognitive function, or heart disease.

On this latest study from the same issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition as the nut study, they found that chocolate consumption lowers the risk of diabetes. They followed, for a little more than 9 years, more than 118,000 participants who did not have diabetes at the beginning of the study. The people eating 1 to 3 servings of chocolate a week had a significantly lower risk of diabetes. In this particular study, the results were most pronounced in the younger healthier folks, but there have been other studies that also showed that the risk factors for diabetes are strongly reduced by chocolate consumption.

We’re not talking Hershey’s bars here. We’re referring to the dark chocolate which is where all the great cocoa flavanols are found. On the package’s label, you’ll see 60% cocoa, 70% cocoa. The higher the cocoa the more bitter the chocolate is. I think the sweet spot for where the chocolate still tastes really good is around 60%. While the studies vary about the ideal consumption amount, I like a square or 2 a day of the good stuff. That’s all you really need. The two foods that nobody is going to be sad to hear that are good for you are: nuts and chocolate.

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

 

 

Demystifying Vitamin K: What do all those numbers mean, anyway?

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

For years, Vitamin K was the Rodney Dangerfield of vitamins. You can almost picture it sitting around a table with all the other fat-soluble vitamins (like E, A and D), pulling on it’s tie and saying “I don’t get no respect”.

But that was then and this is now.

Vitamin K is finally getting the attention—and the respect– it so richly deserves.

Let’s start with the basics. Vitamin K is actually the collective name for a group of structurally related compounds. Vitamin K1 is primarily found in green leafy plants (i.e. lettuce, spinach), while vitamin K2 is primarily synthesized by bacteria in the colon.

To make things even more complicated, vitamin K2 comes in several “flavors”, the most important of which are MK4 and MK7, and huge controversies rage over which form is “better”. (Here’s the Cliff Notes: MK4 in food—mainly from grassfed dairy– is great stuff, but all the MK4 in supplements is synthetic, and not nearly as effective as MK7, which is also available to the body a lot longer than the synthetic MK4.)

Now here’s the kicker: Vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 are so different, that many think they should be considered different vitamins.

So first let’s look at vitamin K1.

One of the most important things vitamin K1 does is assist the body with clotting, meaning it has “anti-hemorrhagic” activity. This is why doctors say you have to avoid green leafy vegetables—the best source of vitamin K1— when you’re on Coumadin. Coumadin thins the blood. It’s given— usually to older people—when the doctor is afraid your blood will clot too easily, producing a stroke. Since vitamin K1 helps make clotting happen, the doctor tells you to limit green leafy vegetables. (We can discuss the “wisdom” of this advice another time.) Interesting trivia—vitamin K got it’s name from koagulation, the German word for clotting.

But vitamin K2 does a lot more than help with clotting. “New evidence…. has confirmed that vitamin K2′s role in the body extends far beyond blood clotting to include protecting us from heart disease, ensuring healthy skin, forming strong bones, promoting brain function, supporting growth and development and helping to prevent cancer – to name a few”, writes Chris Kresser, L.Ac.(1)

Vitamin K2 and your bones

Vitamin K2 is vitally important for strong healthy bones. A bone-related protein called osteocalcin is known to be a sensitive marker of bone formation because it has the capacity to bind minerals like calcium to bone. When osteocalcin is “undercarboxylated”, it’s more or less defective—it doesn’t bind minerals to bones very well. Carboxylation is dependent on vitamin K. Studies have shown that under-carboxylated osteocalcin is highly predictive of hip fracture. Research has also shown that those who already have osteoporosis have a lower level of vitamin K2.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

Vitamin K2 and your heart

This same vitamin K-dependent “carboxylation” process that makes osteocalcin so effective for bone-building also works on a special protein called MGP (or matrix Gla protein). When MGP is carboxylated, it has heart-protective benefits! Carboxylated MGP actually helps prevent calcification in the arteries. But without enough vitamin K2, MGP isn’t carboxylated, and therefore can’t do its work of protecting your heart from “hardening of the arteries” (calcification). No vitamin K2, no carboxylation.

Do you get enough?

For decades, the conventional wisdom was that everyone got enough vitamin K from their diet, and there was no need to supplement. Is that so? Maybe, maybe not. A recent survey conducted by Sarah Booth of the Vitamin K Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston suggests the latter. Only half the females age 13 and over, and less than half the males got the RDA, she notes. “This confirms there are very low intakes nationwide”.(1)

What’s more, antibiotics in our food supply reduce the intestinal bacteria that make vitamin K2!

Remember to take vitamin K with a meal containing some fat, since it is a fat-soluble vitamin. And make sure that your vitamin K supplement contains a healthy dose of vitamin K2, preferably of the MK-7 variety.

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

http://chriskresser.com/vitamin-k2-the-missing-nutrient
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/jan00/green0100.htm

 

 

Top Five Healthy Habits for Extending Your Life

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

Let’s be honest- if you could find the recipe for a long, robust life of optimal health and vibrant energy, you’d probably discover that it has a lot more than five ingredients. People who maintain phenomenal health well into their ninth and tenth decades probably do a whole lot of things differently than the average person. That said, you can’t go wrong cultivating the following five habits. Every one has been shown to have a significant connection to either a longer or a healthier life- sometimes both.

Stay connected . Study after study demonstrates that people who maintain strong personal and social connections have better health outcomes than people who don’t. Stay involved. Even caring for an inanimate object can actually extend your life and boost immunity. In one study, a group of nursing home residents who were given a plant to take care of had significantly better health outcomes (and less deaths) than those who weren’t. There’s a reason married men live longer than single men!
Walk every day for 30 minutes . We can debate whether walking is the ultimate complete exercise (it’s not), but the fact is that 30 minutes a day of aerobic exercise protects the brain and may stave off nasty degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline. Evidence from the National Weight Control Registry shows that walking is one of the main habits of people who successfully keep weight off. And massive evidence shows the cardioprotective effects of even moderate aerobic exercise.
Take fish oil daily . If there’s one supplement that could benefit just about everyone on the planet it’s fish oil. The omega-3 fats in fish lower triglycerides, protect the heart and brain, help regulate mood, fight depression and may impact memory and cognition. Best of all, fish oil is one of the strongest natural anti-inflammatories there is, and inflammation- “the silent killer”- is a component of virtually every degenerative disease from obesity to heart disease to Alzheimer’s.
Eat a high fiber diet. High fiber diets have been associated with just about every positive health outcome you can imagine. Health organizations recommend 25-35 grams of fiber a day– the average American gets a paltry 8-11 grams. Fiber helps with weight loss, helps regulate blood sugar, and may protect against some forms of cancer. Best of all, the only way to get it is by cultivating yet another life-extending habit: eating real foods, namely vegetables, vegetables and more vegetables. Plus fruit and beans.
Destress your life: Sure, it’s easier said than done but consider this: a consistently high level of the stress hormone cortisol kills cells in the hippocampus, an important area of the brain needed for memory and learning. While some stress is actually beneficial, most of us have way too much, much too often. Destressing- and it’s companion activity, restful sleep- restores valuable balance to the body’s systems and probably extends life. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the ever mellow Tibetian monks are among the longest lived people on the planet.

And hey, while you’re on a roll, it wouldn’t hurt to add a few more healthy habits to the list. Drinking green tea and red wine would be a real good idea, as would eating fish a couple of times a week. Reducing calories (you don’t need nearly as many as you think) has been shown in animal studies to extend life- give it a try. Add eight glasses a day of clean water, a little sunshine and a healthy dose of gratitude- I’m willing to bet you’ll be around to watch your grandkids graduate college.

You’ll probably be able to drive yourself to the graduation.

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™