Health for life

You guys! I wrote a book! And it’s out today!

Do-it-Yourself Therapy: Head Games for a Rainy Day is a light-hearted activity book that will delight your friends and conquer your enemies. But don’t take it from me. Take it from Random House’s/Potter Style’s official product description:

More affordable than your analyst, and more fun than webMD, this novelty book full of games, home remedies, and therapeutic activities for the obsessive, depressive, and passive-aggressive will help you diagnose your neurosis! You’ll go crazy for tools like punch-out Rorschach Ink-Blot-from-Hell diagnostic cards, fill-in-the-blank therapy sessions with your personalized paper-doll analyst, bathroom vanity disguise kit featuring cover-up labels for your prescription meds, and the insanely accurate Neurosis Bingo (if you experience five symptoms listed on the board in one day, BINGO!, your disorder is revealed). Do-It-Yourself Therapy also offers curative activities like the “Can You Find the Happy Pills?” hidden picture game, an obsessive-compulsive to-do list, and Sorry-I’m-So-Crazy postcards to punch out and send to friends when your behavior has crossed the line.

Available through mah Amazon store (lower left-hand side of this web page), brick-and-mortar bookstores, and neat places everywhere. Thank you!

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) recently published their new Position Statement on nutrition therapy for people with diabetes:

Nutrition Therapy Recommendations for the Management of Adults With Diabetes, Diabetes Care, Published online ahead of print, 9 October 2013.

This post focuses on fat. Previous posts focused on carbohydrate and protein. The carbohydrate post summarized the grading system that the ADA used to rate their evidence.

Keeping with their recommendations for carbohydrate and protein, the panel did not designate a particular amount of fat to consume. They noted that people with diabetes eat about 36-40% of their calories from fat - an observation, not a recommendation.

For people without diabetes, the Institute of Medicine states that an acceptable amount of fat to consume (acceptable macronutrient distribution range or AMDR) is 20-35%, and that there is "evidence for increased obesity and its complications [e.g. heart disease] at high intakes of fat." Echoing this, the ADA said:

"Individuals with diabetes should be encouraged to moderate their fat intakes to be consistent with their goals to lose or maintain weight."

Here are the ADAs grades for total fat intake:

Evidence is inconclusive for an ideal amount of total fat intake for people with diabetes; theore, goals should be individualized. Grade C

Fat quality appears to be far more important than quantity. Grade B

Regarding fat quality, the ADA recommended substituting saturated fat with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat: "PUFAs and MUFAs are recommended substitutes for saturated or trans fat."

In people with type 2 diabetes, a Mediterranean-style, MUFA-rich eating pattern may benefit glycemic control and CVD risk factors and can theore be recommended as an effective alternative to a lower-fat, higher-carbohydrate eating pattern. Grade B

Nuts and olive oil are good sources of monounsaturated fat.

Omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs. The panel perred omega-3-rich food over omega-3 supplements:

Evidence does not support recommending omega-3 (EPA and DHA) supplements for people with diabetes for the prevention or treatment of cardiovascular events. Grade A

As recommended for the general public, an increase in foods containing long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) (from fatty fish) and omega-3 linolenic acid (ALA) is recommended for individuals with diabetes because of their beneficial effects on lipoproteins, prevention of heart disease, and associations with positive health outcomes in observational studies. Grade B

The recommendation for the general public to eat fish (particularly fatty fish) at least two times (two servings) per week is also appropriate for people with diabetes. Grade B

About saturated fat, they said:

The amount of dietary saturated fat, cholesterol, and trans fat recommended for people with diabetes is the same as that recommended for the general population. Grade C

They note that the general population should be aiming for less than 10% of calories from saturated fatty acids (SFAs) and less than 300 mg cholesterol/day:

"The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 recommends consuming less than 10% of calories from SFAs to reduce [cardiovascular disease (CVD)] risk. Consumers can meet this guideline by replacing foods high in SFA (i.e., full-fat dairy products, butter, marbled meats and bacon, and tropical oils such as coconut and palm) with items that are rich in MUFA and PUFA (i.e., vegetable and nut oils including canola, corn, safflower, soy, and sunflower; vegetable oil spreads; whole nuts and nut butters, and avocado).

CVD is a common cause of death among people with diabetes. As a result, individuals with diabetes are encouraged to follow nutrition recommendations similar to the general population to manage CVD risk factors. These recommendations include reducing SFAs to less than 10% of calories, aiming for less than 300 mg dietary cholesterol/day, and limiting trans fat as much as possible."

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Urine is not a dirty and toxic substance rejected by the body. Urine is a by-product of blood filtration, not waste filtration. Medically it is erred to as "plasma ultrafiltrate". It is a purified derivative of the blood itself, made by the kidneys--whose principal function is not excretion but regulation of all the elements and their concentrations in the blood. Urine can be compared to leftovers from a meal, and this metaphor may help us understand why our bodies excrete elements that are valuable to our health and well-being.


Nutrient-filled blood passes through the liver where toxins are removed to be excreted as solid waste. Eventually, this purified "clean" blood undergoes a filtering process in the kidneys, where excess water, salts, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antibodies, urea, uric acid and other elements not usable at that time by the body are collected in the form of a purified, sterile, watery solution that is urine. The function of the kidneys is to keep the various elements in the blood balanced. The important elements in the blood are not filtered out because they are toxic and harmful to the body, but simply because the body does not need a particular concentration of an element at that specific point in time. It is this very regulating process of the kidneys that allows us to eat and drink more than our bodies need at any one time.

Urine is considered to be an invaluable source of nourishment and healing that perhaps has been too controversial or not financially rewarding enough for it to be talked about and encouraged as a potent medicine. Ones own urine, a living food, contains elements that are specific to ones body alone. The body is constantly producing a huge variety of antibodies, hormones, enzymes and other natural chemicals to regulate and control its functions and combat imbalances that one may not be aware of. Biomedx.com

Clinical studies have proved that the thousands of critical body chemicals and nutrients that end up in urine lect the individual bodys functions. When re-utilised, these chemicals and nutrients act as natural vaccines, antibacterial, antiviral and anticarcinogenic agents as well as hormone balancers and allergy relievers. The information that urine contains theore cannot be duplicated or derived from any other source. Just as nature produces no two people who are exactly the same, there are no two urine samples in the world that contain exactly the same components.