Natural Health and Herbal Remedies Blog – information on herbal medicine

The process of hydrogenation converts a liquid vegetable oil into a more solid state. This occurs through forcing hydrogen atoms into a vegetable oil under high pressure and high temperatures (120 to 210 degrees Celsius). A metal catalyst is used; it may be nickel, copper or platinum, and the process takes six to eight hours. Hydrogenation may be complete or partial.

Complete hydrogenation is where this process continues until all the double bonds in the oil are saturated with hydrogen. In effect this creates a fully saturated fat which is now very hard at room temperature. Because there are no more double bonds, there are no trans fatty acids in this type of fat. This means that the fat is not as harmful to health as partially hydrogenated oil; however all essential fatty acids in the oil have been destroyed. Commonly tropical fats such as coconut fat and palm oil undergo this process, to make them more useful to food manufacturers. This is the type of vegetable fat that is often used in chocolate to make sure it melts at mouth temperature.

Partial hydrogenation is where the process is halted before the oil is totally saturated. This means the resulting fat is not as hard; it has a semi solid, spreadable texture. Many trans fatty acids are present in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. The essential fatty acids in the oil are also damaged. The word “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil” is present on the label of very many processed foods. This type of fat is present in most margarines, vegetable shortening and processed food such as cakes, biscuits, donuts, crisps and hot chips.

Are there any benefits of hydrogenated oils?

These types of fats benefit the food industry greatly, but our health suffers as a consequence. Usually cheap oils are used for this purpose, such as canola, cottonseed, soy or corn oil, which generally do not have health benefits. It is usually too expensive to use olive oil in manufacturing processed food. Hydrogenated fats, being solid give some foods the required consistency; biscuits for instance are usually made from a solid fat like butter or margarine. Butter is more expensive to use than margarine, and it spoils much faster. Basically hydrogenated vegetable oil is used by the food industry because it is cheap, and gives the foods containing it a longer shelf life.

McDonalds replaced beef tallow with partially hydrogenated soybean oil in 1990. In September 2002 McDonalds promised to use healthier oil in its US stores by February 2003. However, nothing has been done so far: there are still six grams îf trans fat in a large serve of fries. In September 2004, McDonalds Australia began using a canola oil blend. This oil is 75 percent lower in saturated fat than their previous oil, but the trans fat content is not mentioned, and there are other potential problems with canola oil. The canola oil blend McDonalds use contains an antifoam agent called dimethyl polysiloxane.

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Your weight is crucial for your fertility. Being very underweight or very overweight can make conception difficult or impossible. So it’s important that your weight is within a certain range in order to give you the best chance of conceiving.

Nature gave women proportionately more body fat for a specific purpose, in order to reproduce and then feed our young. That is why fat accounts for 27 per cent of an average woman’s body weight, while it is only 15 per cent for a man.

Fat is essential to fertility and it is necessary in order to ovulate. Young girls do not begin to menstruate until their bodies are composed of at least 17 per cent fat.

Underweight

If a woman’s body fat drops too low, then her periods can stop. This low level of body fat may be caused by excessive exercise, as sometimes happens with ballet dancers or athletes who have very tough physical regimes.

Infertility can also be caused by excessive dieting. When a woman is anorexic, for instance, her periods stop. With so much publicity about anorexia and an increasing number of young women falling victim to the ‘summer’s disease’, the long-term damage to fertility caused by drastic weight loss is well-known. But not so many people realize that being overweight can also affect fertility.

Overweight

If a woman is overweight it can stop her ovulating. Studies have shown that just losing a small amount of weight, 10 per cent, for instance, can be enough to increase fertility by stimulating ovulation, improving hormone balance and making periods more regular.

In another study, on women who previously did not ovulate, 11 out of 12 conceived naturally after exercising and dieting over a period of six months to get their weight down.

Fortunately your dietary intake is fully within your control, and eating the right food may be the single most important thing you can do to achieve a successful pregnancy.

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In a moment we’ll suggest some ways to “inform our lives with spirituality,” as Dr. Kurth puts it. But first, what are the other benefits of integrating spirituality into our daily lives or increasing its presence and effect? People whom Dr. Kurth has studied report:

•     A sense of deeper meaning, purpose, and direction in life.

•     A sense of fulfillment. Maintaining a sense of connectedness and direction is hard work but worth it, says Dr. Kurth, because the process of doing it brings a sense of peace and fulfillment.

•     Renewed energy. “People are so burned out in their work lives and in their lives in general,” says Dr. Kurth. “Somehow when one taps into that sense of connecting with the Divine, there is a renewed sense of energy.”

•     Increased feeling of well-being. Psychologists Anne Colby, Ph.D., director of the Henry A. Murray Research Center at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her husband, William Damon, Ph.D., professor of education and director of the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University, conducted a study of people involved in “spiritual work.”

These were “people who are highly morally committed, people who are devoting their lives to something they really, deeply believe in,” explains Dr. Colby. “Helping the poverty-stricken, fighting for civil rights, things like that.”

Dr. Colby and Dr. Damon found that those who do such work for a long period of time tend to be deeply spiritual and have a very optimistic, resourceful, positive approach to life.

They also found that sometimes people can begin working for others for narrow reasons – perhaps pursuing career or business goals – and end up transforming their outlook. They may end up adopting a broader set of moral goals and a more selfless spiritual perspective simply from the process of doing the work and engaging other people as they do it.

What about the benefits of meditation we mentioned earlier?

We know that many American males associate meditation with short, fat, bearded men who wear orange robes. But it needn’t be that. Meditation can be cool.

As the body and mind relax in meditation, the brain begins pumping calming chemicals and sending soothing signals that cause our bodies to relax even more. These signals also stave off or even repair the ravages of stress, a known life-threatener and life-shortener, says Dr. Larry J. Feldman of the Pain and Stress Rehabilitation Center. Our blood is less likely to get clumpy and sticky and less likely to gum up artery walls. That translates into heart health. More than that, studies have shown that in the long term, people who regularly practice meditation or some other effective relaxation process develop a much greater tolerance to all sorts of stressors, says Dr. Feldman.

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Everywhere you look, the ideal of thinness, especially for women, is promoted as the ultimate goal. We’ve been brainwashed into accepting an artificial, impractical, even unhealthy image of the human form. Those who fail to achieve the ideal are mocked and scorned. People who are especially susceptible to social pressure-those who never developed a healthy sense of self-esteem-will go to extreme lengths to avoid ostracism and rejection. They will sabotage their own bodies for the sake of an artificial, unnatural concept.

But society’s ideals are at war with our bodies’ natural design. The war takes place on a vulnerable battleground: our minds. For some women, these conflicts may be temporary (a bout of crash dieting, perhaps) and will be followed by some kind of acceptable truce (“Okay, I’ll eat normal meals, but no more desserts”). Other people, however, need additional support to resist social pressure. Without such protection, people become victims of a strange syndrome, one whose symptoms are a distorted body image, bizarre eating patterns, illness, and much unnecessary suffering.

How does our culture develop and transmit this deadly message about thinness? Why should thinness be the social currency we value? Let’s look.

Envision the “ideal” female figure. What comes to mind? In this society, many people—men as well as women-probably conjure up an image of Miss America or a Playboy centerfold. Purely in the interest of science, a team of researchers carefully analyzed the body measurements of these icons of feminine beauty over the past few decades. They made a surprising discovery: As a general trend, each year the women chosen as these ideals have been thinner than their predecessors. This is odd when you realize that the average weight of the population has increased over the same time period. Thus there has been a widening gap between the “ideals” of female beauty and most women’s actual weights. These beauty queens’ relative body weights are actually lower than those of 95 percent of the female population!

My heart goes out to today’s woman, whose body may be perfectly normal but who believes that she must compete against this absurdly distorted vision of ideal beauty.

Our culture’s perception that the ideal female form should be abnormally slender is a fairly recent phenomenon. One of my bulimic patients, an eighteen-year-old college student, told me she had watched a Marilyn Monroe film on television. “Marilyn Monroe was such a pig!” she exclaimed. “She was so fat!” Strange to think that what was seen as sexy and attractive thirty years ago is now condemned as “fat.”

Although there are some historical precedents for similar distortions of the feminine ideal, such as the Victorian eighteen-inch waist, never before have they had such an impact on the vast majority of women. Media, such as women’s magazines, very often add to the confusion about body image. For example: The number of articles about dieting appearing in these publications has doubled every decade since World War II. Yet these same magazines present page after page of recipes for “luscious desserts” and “family-pleasing treats” illustrated with glistening, mouth-watering photographs. Mixed signals? You bet.

Since World War II, our food-buying and eating habits have also undergone a radical change. Food is plentiful, and its variety is enormous. Many of today’s foods are very palatable but rich in calories due to their high fat and sugar content. Fast food-from chain restaurants to microwave meals in our own homes-has revolutionized how and what we eat. And in our sedentary society, the only exercise some people get is pressing buttons on their television’s remote control. Given these facts, it actually does make some sense for people to be on their dietary guard.

For some people, however, an irresistible force (social pressure to be thin) meets an everyday temptation (tasty, abundant food) and produces an extreme reaction (an eating disorder). People at special risk include those who:

• have low self-esteem

• are overly sensitive to the opinions of others

• carry the concept of self-control to extremes

• have difficulty separating from their families

• Work in occupations that require a high level of body-awareness, such as modeling, dancing, or acting

When people with these characteristics suffer stress—for example, the death of a relative, a move to a new school or city, or a personal loss such as the breakup of a romance—an eating disorder is sometimes the result.

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It took him 10 years to figure out how, but George Trott found a way to get rid of those stubborn last 5 pounds.

George, a computer consultant from Manalapan, New Jersey, was just about to turn 50 when he found out that he had diabetes and heart disease. “I wasn’t really surprised, since both conditions ran on both sides of my family and I had been overweight for years,” he says. But it was enough to motivate him to trim 40 pounds off his 6-foot-2-inch frame by eating more healthfully and exercising regularly. “I didn’t want a life of excess medications and insulin shots,” he explains.

For years, he was happy about his new 185-pound physique, but he knew he could stand to lose a little more. At age 58, he was still stuck with what he calls “4 or 5 pounds too much George.”

On the suggestion of one of his grown kids, he visited Ann M. Chicchi, a registered dietitian in East Brunswick, New Jersey. She looked at George’s overall diet and exercise plan—which was good— and did some fine-tuning. She gave him a lower-calorie, low-fat eating plan that incorporated all of the nutrients that George needed. The plan also kept his carbohydrate intake at a level that was more appropriate for someone with diabetes and high triglycerides.

George took the food plan and molded it to fit his eating style. Instead of three large meals a day, he created a fourth small meal of whole-grain foods. “The complex-carbohydrate portion that Ann allotted for my breakfast I found more satisfying as a snack of whole-wheat crackers or bread around 9 o’clock at night,” he says. He still had a good-size breakfast each morning, but he also had something low-fat and nutritious to nosh on before bedtime.

The result was that he finally shed those last few nagging o pounds, and his next blood work came back much improved as well.

So now “4 or 5 pounds too much George” can call himself I cr3″ “just-right George.”

WINNING ACTION

When you hit the wall, call in a pro. If you’re having trouble taking off those last few pounds, consider enlisting the help of a registered dietitian. To find one near you, contact your doctor or your local hospital for a referral. If group support is more your style, look in the Yellow Pages under “Weight Control Services” for organizations such as Weight Watchers and TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly).

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