Gray Hair causes-Gray Hair Facts

Direct sign of aging is Gray Hair, older people like to prevent this from happening. But like aging, graying hair is natural and unstoppable process. Having gray hair is not so bad. You can still have healthy and beautiful hair despite the gray and one way of achieving that is by giving your gray hair vitamins.

Hair turns gradually grey (gray) due to a reduction in the production of melanin pigment in the hair bulb as the age increases. You will observe the first grey hairs usually near the temples, then to the crown and then at the back of your head. Premature graying is due to a rapid decline in melanin.

How does hair become gray?

Each hair follicle contains pigment cells that produce the chemical called melanin that gives the hair its natural color. The hair's light or dark color depends on the amount of melanin each hair contains. As we get older, the pigment cells in the hair follicles die gradually. Because of this, the production of melanin becomes weak, making its color to fade to silver, gray, or white.

Causes for Premature Graying:-

The premature graying may be due to following reasons:

(1) Premature graying of the hair is basically hereditary. So if your father's or grandfather's hair started early to turn Grey there is a chance that your will also have premature graying of hair.
(2) Excessive prolonged stress, anxiety and tension.
(3) Excessive intake of tea, coffee and alcohol.
(4) Excessive intake of fried and oily foods.
(5) Excessive intake of spices.
(6) Deficiency of nutritionist especially copper can reduce the production of melanin.
(7) Sever illness like typhoid too can start graying of hair.
(8) Excessive intake of sour and acidic foods.

Remedy for Premature Graying (Gray) of Hair:-

(1) Eat protein rich foods. Proteins - Sources: sprouted whole grains, cereals, meat and soy in your diet.

(2) Eat foods rich in iron, minerals and vitamin A and B.
Vitamin A - Sources: dark green vegetables & yellow fruits.

Vitamin B - Sources: fresh green leafy vegetables, bananas, tomatoes, cauliflower, cereals, liver kidney, yogurt, yeast and wheat germ.
Minerals like zinc, iron and copper - Sources: zinc - red meat, chicken & green vegetables
iron - beef, dried apricots, red meat, parsley, eggs, wheat & sunflower seeds (Iron Rich Foods)
copper - sunflower seeds, cashews, almonds, crabs and oysters, egg yolk & whole grains.

(3) Rub Indian gooseberry (Amla) mixed in coconut oil into the scalp regularly. It can show wonderful results, your gray hair will turn black. Boil some dried Amla pieces in coconut oil till it turns black. Apply this oil to prevent hair graying.

(4) Eat foods rich in iodine such as banana, carrots and fish.

(5) Drink butter milk with 2 teaspoons each of yeast and wheat germ will prevent and cure premature graying of hair.

(6) Grate some fresh ginger. Mix with honey and place it in a jar. Eat 1 tea spoon every day.

(7) Massage your hairs with coconut oil and lemon juice every day.

(8) Boil some curry leaves in coconut oil and apply in scalp and hair roots.

(9) Boil some dried ribbed gourd in coconut oil till it turns black. Massage this oil in scalp and hair roots should be massaged into the scalp.

(10) Mix 1 tablespoon of table salt to a cup of strong black tea without milk. Massage this water on the scalp. Wash your hair after an hour.

(11) Make a paste of 2 tspn henna powder, 1 tspn yogurt, 1 tsp fenugreek (methi seed powder, 3 tspn coffees, 2 tspn basil juices and 3 tspn mint juice and apply to the hair. Wash hair with shampoo after 3 hours.

(12) Massage your scalp and hair with butter made from cow milk twice a week.

Training a new generation of clinicians

On Saturday September 25th, the Jefferson School of Population Health was the site of a unique training program designed to help create a new generation of clinicians fluent in the language of measuring and improving the quality and safety of healthcare. With support from Lilly, we hosted dozens of trainees from mutiple schools throughout the Northeast. They assembled to hear from faculty like David Mayer MD at the University of Illinois talk about creating a new culture of practice characterized by openess and patient centeredness. They got to hear David LindquistMD from Brown Medical School demonstrate the power of medical simulation training for safety and quality improvement. They also heard from Lia Logio MD from Cornell Medical College talk about creating a training environment that recognizes different cultures, and thereby improves the quality of care.Learners from all of these schools will themselves become leaders and they will spread this gospel to help change undergraduate medical education (UME) and graduate medical education (GME)in new and exciting ways. While the ACGME in Chicago is working to mandate new types of reporting, from resident involvment in medical error to measuring the outcomes of residency training, these new learners will be prepared to meet this challenge. What are your trainees doing to keep up with this critical national trend?? How can we prepare the next generation of clinicians in the disciplines of quality measurement and safety improvement?? DAVID NASH

Potatoes and Human Health, Part II

Glycoalkaloids in Commonly Eaten Potatoes

Like many edible plants, potatoes contain substances designed to protect them from marauding creatures. The main two substances we're concerned with are alpha-solanine and alpha-chaconine, because they are the most toxic and abundant. Here is a graph of the combined concentration of these two glycoalkaloids in common potato varieties (1):

We can immediately determine three things from this graph:

• Different varieties contain different amounts of glycoalkaloids.
• Common commercial varieties such as russet and white potatoes are low in glycoalkaloids. This is no accident. The glycoalkaloid content of potatoes is monitored in the US.
  
• Most of the glycoalkaloid content is in the skin (within 1 mm of the surface). That way, predators have to eat through poison to get to the flesh. Fortunately, humans have peelers.

I'll jump the gun and tell you that the generally accepted safe level of potato glycoalkaloids is 200 mcg/g fresh weight (1). You can see that all but one variety are well below this level when peeled. Personally, I've never seen the Snowden variety in the store or at the farmer's market. It appears to be used mostly for potato chips.

Glycoalkaloid Toxicity in Animals

Potato glycoalkaloids are undoubtedly toxic at high doses. They have caused many harmful effects in animals and humans, including (1, 2):

• Death (humans and animals)
  
• Weight loss, diarrhea (humans and animals)
  
• Anemia (rabbits)
• Liver damage (rats)
  
• Lower birth weight (mice)
  
• Birth defects (in animals injected with glycoalkaloids)
  
• Increased intestinal permeability (mice)

However, it's important to remember the old saying "the dose makes the poison". The human body is designed to handle a certain amount of plant toxins with no ill effects. Virtually every plant food, and a few animal foods, contains some kind of toxic substance. We're constantly bombarded by gamma rays, ultra violet rays, bacterial toxins, free radicals, and many other potentially harmful substances. In excess, they can be deadly, but we are adapted to dealing with small amounts of them, and the right dose can even be beneficial in some cases.

All of the studies I mentioned above, except one, involved doses of glycoalkaloids that exceed what one could get from eating typical potatoes. They used green or blemished potatoes, isolated potato skins, potato sprouts or isolated glycoalkaloids (more on this later). The single exception is the last study, showing that normal doses of glycoalkaloids can aggravate inflammatory bowel disease in transgenic mice that are genetically predisposed to it (3)*.

What happens when you feed normal animals normal potatoes? Not much. Many studies have shown that they suffer no ill effects whatsoever, even at high intakes (1, 2). This has been shown in primates as well (4, 5, 6). In fact, potato-based diets appear to be generally superior to grain-based diets in animal feed. As early as 1938, Dr. Edward Mellanby showed that grains, but not potatoes, aggravate vitamin A deficiency in rats and dogs (7). This followed his research showing that whole grains, but not potatoes, aggravate vitamin D deficiency due to their high phytic acid content (Mellanby. Nutrition and Disease. 1934). Potatoes were also a prominent part of Mellanby's highly effective tooth decay reversal studies in humans, published in the British Medical Journal in 1932 (8, 9).

Potatoes partially protect rats against the harmful effects of excessive cholesterol feeding, when compared to wheat starch-based feed (10). Potato feeding leads to a better lipid profile and intestinal short-chain fatty acid production than wheat starch or sugar in rats (11). I wasn't able to find a single study showing any adverse effect of normal potato feeding in any normal animal. That's despite reading two long review articles on potato glycoalkaloids and specifically searching PubMed for studies showing a harmful effect. If you know of one, please post it in the comments section.

In the next post, I'll write about the effects of potatoes in the human diet, including data on the health of traditional potato-eating cultures... and a curious experiment by the Washington State Potato Commission that will begin on October 1.


*Interleukin-10 knockout mice. IL-10 is a cytokine involved in the resolution of inflammation and these mice develop inflammatory bowel disease (regardless of diet) due to a reduced capacity to resolve inflammation.

The PriceWaterHouseCoopers 180 Conference

The PWC 180 Conference is an invitation only annual event in Washington DC. I was lucky enough to attend this years event at the "W" hotel in downtown DC, just across from the Treasury building. The opening event featured a panel conversation with notable figures like Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Topol and Esther Dyson, among others. The theme really struck home with me, namely, connecting with the healthcare consumer of the future. Are you a quantifiable selfer?? Do you measure your sleep brain waves with a ZEO and email the results to all of your friends?? Do you compete on line regarding how many miles you swim each day or how tough your morning workout really is?? Apparently, lots of top people in our field do this sort of thing as a matter of routine. We know from solid research that if your friends are healthy, you probably are too and the opposite is also true.I believe we have a lot more to learn about how best to change behavior and this conference gave me some good insights about the work involved. I am not quite ready to broadcast my REM sleep pattern but I am ready to compare workouts and my best running times too---especially if it will inspire others to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Promoting population health is what our school is all about and the PWC 180 Conference gave me all kinds of new ideas. Are you a quantifiable selfer--I did not even recognize the term until a week ago!!! DAVID NASH

Potatoes and Human Health, Part I

Potatoes: an Introduction

Over 10,000 years ago, on the shores of lake Titicaca in what is now Peru, a culture began to cultivate a species of wild potato, Solanum tuberosum. They gradually transformed it into a plant that efficiently produces roundish starchy tubers, in a variety of strains that suited the climactic and gastronomic needs of various populations. These early farmers could not have understood at the time that the plant they were selecting would become the most productive crop in the world*, and eventually feed billions of people around the globe.

Wild potatoes, which were likely consumed by hunter-gatherers before domestication, are higher in toxic glycoalkaloids. These are defensive compounds that protect against insects, infections and... hungry animals. Early farmers selected varieties that are low in bitter glycoalkaloids, which are the ancestors of most modern potatoes, however they didn't abandon the high-glycoalkaloid varieties. These were hardier and more tolerant of high altitudes, cold temperatures and pests. Cultures living high in the Andes developed a method to take advantage of these hardy but toxic potatoes, as well as their own harsh climate: they invented chuños. These are made by leaving potatoes out in the open, where they are frozen at night, stomped underfoot and dried in the sun for many days**. What results is a dried potato with a low glycoalkaloid content that can be stored for a year or more.

Nutritional Qualities

From a nutritional standpoint, potatoes are a mixed bag. On one hand, if I had to pick a single food to eat exclusively for a while, potatoes would be high on the list. One reason is that they contain an adequate amount of complete protein, meaning they don't have to be mixed with another protein source as with grains and legumes. Another reason is that a number of cultures throughout history have successfully relied on the potato as their principal source of calories, and several continue to do so. A third reason is that they're eaten in an unrefined, fresh state.

Potatoes contain an adequate amount of many essential minerals, and due to their low phytic acid content (1), the minerals they contain are well absorbed. They're rich in magnesium and copper, two minerals that are important for insulin sensitivity and cardiovascular health (2, 3). They're also high in potassium and vitamin C. Overall, they have a micronutrient content that compares favorably with other starchy root vegetables such as taro and cassava (4, 5, 6). Due to their very low fat content, potatoes contain virtually no omega-6, and thus do not contribute to an excess of these essential fatty acids.

On the other hand, I don't have to eat potatoes exclusively, so what do they have to offer a mixed diet? They have a high glycemic index, which means they raise blood sugar more than an equivalent serving of most carbohydrate foods, although I'm not convinced that's a problem in people with good blood sugar control (7, 8). They're low-ish in fiber, which could hypothetically lead to a reduction in the number and diversity of gut bacteria in the absence of other fiber sources. Sweet potatoes, an unrelated species, contain more micronutrients and fiber, and have been a central food source for healthy cultures (9). However, the main reasons temperate-climate cultures throughout the world eat potatoes is they yield well, they're easily digested, they fill you up and they taste good.

In the next post, I'll delve into the biology and toxicology of potato glycoalkaloids, and review some animal data. In further posts, I'll address the most important question of all: what happens when a person eats mostly potatoes... for months, years, and generations?


* In terms of calories produced per acre.

** A simplified description. The process can actually be rather involved, with several different drying, stomping and leaching steps.

Guest Commentary: Interpreting Healthcare Budget Projections

Joe Couto, PharmD, MBA
Outcomes Research Fellowship Director
Jefferson School of Population Health


Last week, media outlets were abuzz from a Health Affairs article that was published online that showed a slight increase in the growth of US aggregate health spending (0.2%) compared to an analysis published in March’s issue prior to the passage of reform. Yearly, this report is authored by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and published in the journal with little fanfare.

However, in light of the controversy surrounding healthcare reform and mid-term elections, this report was touted by political pundits as yet more proof that healthcare reform is already a failed experiment. Their contention is that, contrary to the claim in March 2010 by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the legislation would result in a net budgetary savings of $143 billion over the period 2010-2019, the legislation will instead grow healthcare costs over this period. While there is a bit of truth to their claim, a lot of facts have been left out of their reporting.

First, these projections have been made by different agencies, with CMS the source of the Health Affairs article, and the CBO the source of the figure often quoted by the Obama administration. Therefore variation is to be expected.

Second, the two figures are not directly comparable. The CBO’s figure is merely based on what the government will pay for healthcare over the next 10 years, most notably Medicare and Medicaid. The CMS figure of national health spending growth includes both public and private payers, and actually projects no increase in the growth of government spending on healthcare under the new health reform law. Thus the 0.2% increase in national health spending is attributed to growth in spending on the private payer side of the equation. This is explicitly demonstrated in the tables published in the Health Affairs article.

It is also important to note that in late August 2010 the Director of the CBO, Douglas Elmendorf, stated in a letter to Sen. Crapo (R-Idaho) that he has no reason to believe that his agencies’ projections from March would differ substantially 5 months later.

Third, it is important to realize that budget predictions are historically inaccurate and subject to sizeable variation. In 2002, CMS projected US aggregate health spending to grow at a rate of 6.7% in years 2009 – 2011. In 2008, growth was projected to be 6.6% and 6.7% during this period. The current CMS projections estimate spending to grow at rates of 5.8% (2009), 5.1% (2010), and 4.2% (2011). Thus a change of 0.2% would seem relatively insignificant in light of the variation seen over time in these projections. The authors of the latest Health Affairs article recognize that “many facets of these projections could change dramatically” over time.

Finally, the primary goal of health reform legislation was not to control cost, but to expand coverage. While it starts to create a more efficient system where costs can theoretically be controlled over time, the legislation does not contain many provisions whose sole focus is to control or contain costs.

What escaped the majority of authors of the editorials that appeared in the lay press last week is that the Health Affairs article underscored the fact that this legislation will cover an additional 32.5 million Americans by 2019 (9.7% of the US population in 2019), with little projected impact on health spending growth over the next 10 years. No matter what side of the political fence you sit on, this is truly extraordinary.

Speaking at Wise Traditions 2010

I'm happy to announce that I'll be presenting at the Weston A. Price foundation's 2010 Wise Traditions conference. The conference will be held in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Nov 12-14. The theme is the politics of food.

Sally Fallon Morell has invited me to give a talk on the diet and health of Pacific islanders. The talk will be titled "Kakana Dina: Diet and Health in the Pacific Islands", and it will take place on Sunday, November 14th from 4:00 to 5:20 pm. In preparation for the talk, I've read eight books and countless journal articles. Although some of the material will be familiar to people who follow the blog, I will not be rehashing what I've already published. I have nearly an hour and a half to talk, so I'll be going into some depth on the natural history and traditional food habits of Pacific island populations. Not just macronutrient breakdowns... specific foods and traditional preparation methods.

Learn about the health of traditional Pacific island populations, and what has changed since Western contact. Learn about traditional cooking and fermentation techniques. See unpublished photos from the Kitava study, courtesy of Dr. Staffan Lindeberg. Learn about the nutritional and ceremonial role of mammals including pork... and the most gruesome food of all.

I hope to see you there!


Kitava photo courtesy of Dr. Staffan Lindeberg

Guest Commentary: JSPH's New Online Degree Programs

Juan Leon, PhD 
Director of Online Learning 
Jefferson School of Population Health

 
Lisa Chosed, MA 
Online Programs Administrative Liaison
Jefferson School of Population Health


Jefferson School of Population Health (JSPH) academic degree programs are now online!

Juan Leon, Director of Online Learning, and Lisa Chosed, Online Programs Administrative Liaison, have been working since January to provide support to the first cohort of faculty who will be teaching online.

Students taking online courses receive an Online Student Orientation—6 hours of training that acclimates newcomers to the structure of the online courses and the online environment in general. The course ensures that online students are familiar with JSPH academic policies and have access to all of the same resources as on-site students. The Orientation also introduces fundamental online skills such as conducting literature searches in the library, posting assignments, and producing papers in conformance with style guidelines. Our Master of Science degrees in Health Policy, Chronic Care Management, and Healthcare Quality & Safety are completely online...and courses go live Monday morning, September 13th at 9:00AM. We are excited and ready!

How do our online programs fit into the broader educational landscape today? According to a report released last year by the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), a leading research center, online enrollments continue to grow faster than those for the entire higher education student population. More than 1 in 4 higher education students today take at least one course online.

While offering online programs is in keeping with the larger national trends, we are the first to offer online Master’s degrees in Healthcare Quality and Safety and in Chronic Care Management. Other distinguishing features of our programs are the small, specialized courses, highly qualified faculty, and the strongly motivated student body comprised of professionals in health care and related careers. Our students are finding that online courses can fit into their busy schedules, and that our focus on workplace applications of learning allows them to implement positive changes, both immediately and over the longer term.

The Sloan-C report, “Learning On Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009,” is available here.

Dogen Zenji on Nutritionism

Dogen Zenji was the man who brought the Soto lineage of Zen Buddhism to Japan. He was a prolific writer, and many of his texts are respected both inside and outside the Soto Zen community. Last week, my Zen group was discussing the Genjo Koan, one of his works that is frequently used as a chant. Here's an excerpt. It may seem cryptic but bear with me:

...when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round or square; its features are infinite in variety... It only look circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this.

Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.

What Dogen meant, among other things, is that the world is much more complex than what our conscious minds can perceive or understand. It was true in the 13th century, and it's still true today, despite our greatly expanded understanding of the natural world.

We can apply this principle to nutrition. For example, what is red palm oil? Two hundred years ago, perhaps we only knew a few basic facts about it. It's a fat, it's red, it comes from an African palm fruit and it has a particular melting point and flavor. Then we learned about vitamins, so we knew it contained vitamin E, carotenes (provitamin A), and vitamin K. Then fatty acid composition, so we found out it's mostly palmitic and oleic acids. Now we know red palm oil contains an array of polyphenols, sterols, coenzyme Q10 and many other non-essential constituents. We don't know much about the biological effects of most of these substances, particularly in combination with one another.

Add to that the fact that every batch of red palm oil is different, due to strain, terroir, processing, storage, et cetera. We know what the concept "red palm oil" means, roughly, but the details are infinitely complex. Now feed it to a human, who is not only incredibly complex himself, but genetically and epigenetically unique. How can we possibly guess the outcome of this encounter based on the chemical composition of red palm oil? That's essentially what nutritionism attempts to do.

To be fair, nutritionism does work sometimes. For example, we can pretty well guess that a handful of wild almonds containing a lot of cyanide won't be healthy to eat, due at least in part to the cyanide. But outside extreme examples like this, we're in a gray zone that needs to be informed by empirical observation. In other words, what happens when the person in question actually eats the red palm oil? What happened when a large group of people in West Africa ate red palm oil for thousands of years? Those questions are the reason why I'm so interested in understanding the lives of healthy non-industrial cultures.

I'm not criticizing reductionist science or controlled experiments (which I perform myself); I just think they need to be kept in context. I believe they should be interpreted within the framework of more basic empirical observations*.

One of the most important aspects of scientific maturity is learning to accept and manage uncertainty and your own ignorance. Some things are more certain than others, but most aren't set in stone. I think Dogen would tell us to be wary of nutritionism, and other forms of overconfidence.

* Wikipedia's definition of empirical: "information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment." As opposed to inferences made from experiments not directly related to the question at hand.

Guest Commentary: Promoting Prevention Through the Affordable Care Act

Rob Simmons, DrPH, MPH, CHES, CPH
Director, Master of Public Health (MPH) Program
Jefferson School of Population Health


It has been nearly six months since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) passed Congress and was signed by President Obama. There has been much discussion on the future impact of the new law. Many of the questions raised about the improvement of the health care system and whether it will reduce the skyrocketing increases in healthcare expenses over the past several decades are yet to be answered since significant provisions of the PPACA will not take effect until 2014 or later.

What is clear is that the PPACA will greatly expand health promotion, preventive health services, and the public health infrastructure as a large number of the prevention provisions of the PPACA will begin to take place within the next 6-12 months.

Assistant Secretary of Health Howard Koh, MD, MPH, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, MPA, provided a perspective on the preventive sections of the PPACA in a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine. They describe 28 different preventive health sections in the PPACA divided into categories of impact for individuals, businesses and workplaces, communities and states, and the national level.

At the individual level, the most significant provisions are those that provide incentives to participate and pay for risk reduction and for preventive services for those with private health insurance as well as those with both Medicare and Medicaid public health insurance. No longer will there be financial barriers for individuals to obtain evidence-based preventive health screenings, immunizations, risk reduction services such as tobacco cessation, and wellness visits with their health care provider.

For businesses and workplaces, grants will be provided to small businesses to offer comprehensive wellness services. Employers with 15 or more employees will be required to provide reasonable break time and appropriate facilities for nursing mothers to encourage breastfeeding. The Centers for Disease Control will be providing evaluation technical assistance to private industry for their worksite wellness initiatives.

At the community and state government level, grants will be provided to community organizations and state governments to develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based prevention programs and to provide incentives to promote and maintain healthy behaviors.

At the national level, a wide range of funding is provided to improve and expand health care delivery and patient outcomes, national coordination and leadership, public health infrastructure, the National Health Services Corps., community health centers, private-public partnerships for prevention, diabetes prevention, breast health awareness, oral healthcare preventive activities, and nutrition labeling for restaurant and vending machine menu items.

Since Secretary Sebelius and Assistant Secretary Koh have the primary responsibility for implementation, assessment, and assurance of the PPACA through the development of regulations and subsequent federal actions to support and enforce its provisions, their perspective and priorities are important to note and follow over the next few years. I look forward to reading and, as a public health professional, experiencing, this most significant political effort in the history of our nation to promote health and the use of preventive health services. Whether it will significantly reduce health risks such as obesity and tobacco use and increase protective factors such as breastfeeding and healthy eating, only time will tell. I welcome the ideas of others as outcomes of these initiatives are evaluated and published over the next several years.

To read this article, please click here.

tomorrow's food

As I've posted before, with my new job, morning exercise class, and evening activities, I'm gone from 6:50 am until 9 pm on weekdays. I eat all my meals "out" (but not in a restaurant), so that means preparing them the night before. Here are tomorrow's meals:

At top are salads for each meal: 1 large head romaine lettuce, raw broccoli, 1 nectarine, 2 small apples, chia seeds, and pumpkin seeds, divided into the 3 salads. That's pretty much a random selection from the fridge, though the nectarine was ripe so that wasn't random. The fridge is full of apples, so random selections will usually lead to apples now that the season is upon us. At middle right is a small bottle of D'angou pear vinegar. It's yummy on salads. At bottom are 2 servings of beans & greens plus. I prepare those on the weekend and freeze in serving-size containers. I'll have those for breakfast and lunch. Then at dinner I'll have two boiled ears of corn, courtesy of house-mate--we will cook at eat them at the office. Only one week left of sweet corn season.

Here are the meals packed in bags, along with my supplements, a knife and fork, and 3 napkins:

These stack in one of my bike bags, and my exercise/work clothes go in the other bag. So far so good though I haven't had time to practice my flute. I wish I had one more hour in the day.

easy eggplant, tomato, etc dish

This varies depending on what food I have on hand, and doesn't need to be followed exactly.

Ingredients:

1-2 medium eggplants

1-2 16 oz cans tomatoes or 3-6 fresh tomatoes

1 lb mushrooms

1 onion or some leeks

a bunch of kale

a can of beans, any kind

fresh basil, parsley, chives, or dried italian seasoning

ground seeds, e.g., sesame, flax, sunflower, pumpkin, hemp, or chia (no need to grind the chia)

1 Tbsp date syrup

Chop everything up except date syrup and seeds, throw into a big pressure cooker, cook for 3 minutes, then add the date syrup and seeds. This probably works with any veggie substituted of eggplant, like broccoli and cauliflower, brussels sprouts.

Late summer beans & greens

This is similar to my usual beans but it uses harvests from the garden too:

Ingredients:

1 lb beans (any variety from Rancho Gordo)

juice from 5 lbs carrots--about 36-40 oz

water as needed--a few cups

1-2 onions

1-2 lb mushrooms, any kind (Dr. Fuhrman now says all mushrooms are good for you).

tons of collard greens (a week's worth from 6 plants!)

eggplant if there is any ripe

herbs from the garden (parsley, chives, basil)

Rinse the dry beans. Chop the onions, mushrooms and collards in a food processor--not required for onions and mushrooms but saves time and compacts them--required for the tons of collard greens to compact them. Combine everything in a big pot, and soak overnight or for several hours. Cook for 4 hours, or until desired tenderness, adding water as needed.

Note: We can tomatoes from the garden, and sometimes a can doesn't seal. I might add in one of these if there is one.

my new schedule

As I said in this post, I've started a new job outside the home, and that combined with my morning exercise class and evening activities, keeps me away from home from 6:50 am until 9:30 pm pretty much every weekday. Occasionally I get home at 8-9 pm. I really wish I could get home by 9 pm on a regular basis, because I need about an hour to prep my food for the next day. I do some food prep on the weekend: I make a big batch of beans & greens & mushrooms & onions, freezing into 1-serving portions. I also make a week's worth of smoothies for house mate, and even smaller portions of beans, greens, and potatoes to freeze for some of her meals. Then each weeknight I just have to make salads for the next day, split into three meals (sometimes a big one alone, or a small one with the beans dish). These are simple and good. Some versions are 1) lettuce, berries, edamame (or not), seeds, d'angou pear vinegar; 2) lettuce and/or kale, apples or pears, fresh picked cherry tomatoes, seeds, d'angou pear vinegar; 3) cabbage, lettuce, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, pears, lime, seeds. chopped in food processor; or any other version of lettuce, fruit, seeds, raw veggies. I often throw carrot sticks and kohlrabi on top of the salad because I love them. I don't chop them because I love their individual flavors.

This works well, but sometimes when I'm out with friends and they are just getting started having fun, I say I have to go because I have to get home and spend an hour fixing tomorrow's meals. So I miss out a bit on some social stuff. Oh well. I think I can get them to adjust and realize we have to get the music jams going earlier since I leave early. :)

orange remainders

Okay, this post demonstrates how weird I've become. Here I am making orange juice for my housemate (not weird yet):

Here's the results: about 1 cup or orange juice, and the orange remainders from 4 small oranges (not weird yet):

Here's our respective meals (now it's getting weird):

I eat the rest of the oranges off their peel (i.e., don't eat the peels). I prefer this to eating a whole orange! It's fun to eat, not as intense and sweet as the whole orange, and I get to eat more. Now I look forward to making house-mate's orange juice! We might have the ideal juicer for this food because it doesn't disrupt the orange too much, just smashes it (and I purposely don't smash it all the way to leave a little juice for myself). I did a complicated calculation to determine the number of calories (measuring weights of original oranges, orange juice, and finished peels, subtracting weights of juice and peels from original, subtracting calories of juice from original orange minus peels) and determined that it's about 100 calories in the orange remainders for a 1 cup orange juice yield (4 small oranges, or 2-3 medium). It's similar to the amount of calories in the cup of juice. But it takes a lot longer to eat so the enjoyment per calorie is quite high.

Dental Care Tips- How to care for Natural Teeth

Dental health is everybody's dream, if your teeth hurt then do any activity so less excited, so that our productivity declining, i am presenting some tips on how to care for natural teeth, so teeth clean, healthy and not porous.

1. Avoid drinking coffee and red wine. Usually the two drinks that can leave stains in teeth immediately.
2. Watch your toothbrush. Replace your toothbrush at least once a month.
3. Eat vegetables because there are vegetables can clean teeth naturally.
4. Strawberries turned out to have a natural effect that can whiten your teeth, because the fruit contains high levels of vitamin C. Strawberry frequently to drink juice. and do not dispose of the waste. Take it and rub the pulp in teeth after a hushed moment, gargle. Do it regularly to get the maximum results.
5. Rub lemon rind on your teeth can also whiten your teeth. Do it regularly so the results can last a long time.
6. Avoid smoking. Smoking is the quickest way to change the color to yellow teeth.
7. Brush your teeth with the routine once every 12 hours is the basic rule that you must do to get white teeth. These habits can protect the teeth and plaque from the stubborn stains.
8. Take advantage of dental floss to clean between teeth, at least once a day.
9. Use a toothpaste that has the formula to whiten your teeth as recommended by your doctor.
10. Consult the dentist at least once a year subscription.

Guest Commentary: Creating a Culture of Wellness

Valerie P. Pracilio, MPH
Project Manger for Quality Improvement
Jefferson School of Population Health


In an October 2009 post, I posed the question, “what is population health?” — a broad term that is often misunderstood because there are many opinions about what it includes and excludes. A little more than a year ago, after the establishment of our school, we set out to tackle this question by bringing together leading experts in the field to compose a book on the topic.

The intent was to create a text that would serve as an educational tool and resource for healthcare stakeholders as they work to promote health and wellness. The result is a compilation of strategies to address the needs of the population from the perspectives of healthcare providers and public health professionals, businesses including payers and employers, and policymakers.

Population Health: Creating a Culture of Wellness is a call to action for all students and professionals. Anyone who is connected to healthcare is a stakeholder in the success of population health strategies. As patients, students, professionals, we must orient our thinking to consider the greatest good for the greatest number. We must explicitly recognize the systems nature of care. We must strive for a better understanding of the evidentiary basis of what we do every day at the bedside and across every setting where care is provided – in assuring wellness, preventing and treating illness, and supporting populations across the life span. We also must be accountable as stewards of public resources. That is population health.

Population Health: Creating a Culture of Wellness launched on August 16th and it serves as a primer on this important topic. To learn more, please visit the Jones and Bartlett web site. An official book launch event sponsored by the Meds & Eds Alliance and Thomson Reuters is scheduled for Monday, September 27th in Philadelphia, PA. For more information and to register for this event, click here.

Are you ready to answer the call to action? Please share your comments on how we could better address population health needs.

The China Study on Wheat

Denise Minger has just put up another great China Study post that's worth reading if you haven't already. Denise has been busy applying her statistics skills to the mountain of data the study collected. She noted in a previous post that wheat intake was strongly associated with coronary heart disease (CHD), the quintessential modern cardiovascular disease. I, and several other people, requested that she work her mathmagic to see if the association could be due to some other factor. For example, wheat is eaten mostly in the Northern regions of China, and CHD rates are generally higher at higher latitudes (vitamin D insufficiency?). This is true in Europe as well, and may be partly responsible for the purported benefits of the Mediterranean diet. You can mathematically determine if the association between wheat and CHD is simply due to the fact that wheat eaters live further North.

To make a long story short, nothing could explain the association except wheat itself, even latitude. Furthermore, she found a strong association between wheat intake and body mass index, typically a predictor of fat mass although we can't say that for sure. That finding echos a previous study in China where wheat eaters were more likely to be overweight than rice eaters (1, 2). Head over to Denise's post for the full story.

The China Study has major limitations built into its basic design, due to the fact that it was observational and pooled the blood samples of many individuals. Therefore, its findings can never prove anything, they can only suggest or be consistent with hypotheses. However, the study also has some unique advantages, such as a diversity of diets and regions, and the fact that people had presumably been eating a similar diet for a long time. I feel that Denise's efforts are really teasing out some useful information from the study that have been de-emphasized by other investigators.

There has been so little serious investigation into the health effects of wheat in the general population that I have to rely mostly on indirect evidence, such as the observation that the diseases of civilization tend to closely follow the introduction of white flour around the globe. Researchers studying celiac disease and other forms of gluten allergy, and the efforts of the paleolithic diet community in spreading that information (for example, Loren Cordain and Pedro Bastos), have been major contributors to understanding the health effects of wheat. Denise's analysis is one of the strongest pieces of evidence I've come by so far. One of these days, I'll post all of my references incriminating wheat. There are quite a few, although none of them is the smoking gun. I think there's enough indirect evidence that investigators should begin taking the idea seriously that wheat, particularly in the form of industrial flour products, may contribute to chronic disease in more than just a small subset of the population.