Sounds like a nice prescription to extend one's life.
<Gay Riley: Elevated serum triglycerides are usually associated with insulin resistance, or the ineffectiveness of insulin to reduce blood sugar. Increased circulating insulin levels cause multiple problems with blood chemistry and homeostasis. One of the major problems is hardening of the arteries and plaque build up in the vessels. Because of this, dietary carbohydrate needs to be controlled.
Reduction and avoidance of high sugar, refined, processed, and packaged foods, alcohol, and sugary beverages is recommended. Adding more fresh produce (a useful rule-of-thumb is two vegetables for every fruit), high fiber carbohydrates like green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and other non-starchy vegetables, berries, citrus, and melon.
Starchy vegetables that are not white, like beans, lentils, sweet potato, and acorn squash are good choices. Mono and polyunsaturated oils from natural nuts, plants, different oils such as olive, canola, sesame, peanut, etc and fatty cold water fish are equally important.
The cellular membrane phospholipid layer is made up of the fats we eat and should be fluid and permeable. Bad diets high in sugar, saturated and trans-fats cause the membrane to become hard and impermeable to nutrients that need to move freely in and out of the cell, thus insulin resistance. The more of the good fats you eat, the more permeable the cellular membrane becomes allowing for healthy metabolism of sugar in the blood.
Good fats also create an anti-inflammatory condition in the blood by producing more anti-inflammatory hormones like prostaglandins. Saturated and trans-fats, on the other hand, produce more inflammatory prostaglandins, which creates a hyper-inflammatory state leading to conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, and a host of other medical problems.
Green leafy vegetables and citrus fruit increase blood pH and lower blood acidity. This is extremely important to total health. That is why we nutritionists run the vegetable/fruit issue into the ground.
Whole grains and fiber are important for slowing the absorption of carbohydrate into the blood and keeping blood sugar and insulin at a steady state. In other words, fibers smooth out blood sugar?no peeks and valleys in insulin and blood sugar.> |
