LeavesNutrition News Group

Back Down To Earth for ordinary human mortals

Hello,

excuse me if I am not fully upto speed on these topics - as I am new to the
news groups and as a man of 40 years young who has always been skinny no
matter what I eat, I have never much worried about my diet, instead being
happy to rely in my youth on the diligence of my mother and girlfriends as
so many young men do! ~;o)

Now at my grand old age I find that I am as physically active as ever, but
often lack the energy to cope with the many responsibilities I now have in
life. Worse still I have been informed that despite the wide availability of
critical nutrients in food, my age restricts my body's ability to absorb
some of these so well, such as the Qten coenzyme. Given that I am still
regularly required to out perform and chase around 20 year old young men in
order to keep then in order, I have now found it necessary to educate my
self a little more in these matters! However, I am really only just starting
to make the effort to learn seriously about diet and nutrition.

As I understand it, the human race started out eating mainly nuts, fruits
and then vegetables. As we developed we started eating meat. It is only in a
third phase of our dietary development that we started eating breads,
cereals, pasta and the like. I have heard it suggested that our bodies' have
perhaps still not yet fully evolved to deal with this ?

Many people talk about fruit and vegetable diets and some swear by the
Palaeolithic Diet but these sound a bit extreme, as I was always taught to
just follow- a balanced three course meal to ensure my health. The
Norwegians and Danes are famous for being very tall and large, in large part
perhaps because they eat such a meat biased diet (Denmark = densely
populated and both countries have little available farm land). The eastern
cultures however, tend to eat meat with their vegetables and rice, and still
tend to be very small by comparison. Perhaps this is the origin of all the
legends of giants, dwarfs and little people around the world?

In Japan at least, increases in size have been noticeable in recent years
due to exposure to foreign eating habits, particularly hamburgers and other
junk food. Does this not tell us anything?

The Mediterranean traditional diet consists much more of fruit and
vegetables, as well as pasta. I personally have not noticed any special
overweight problems there. In Europe it tends to be the Germans in
particular who are berated for their over-weight tendencies. In fact they
were the only European nation who, along side the Americans were berated by
the airlines about loosing weight if they wanted cheaper airflights! They do
eat copious amounts of cream and fat, particularly in their desert
collection. The Polish people on the other hand seem to have old habits
still persisting which include the spreading of pure lard on toast for
breakfast. A friend of mine reported this one with alarm after having been
fed this delicacy. Only after eating it and delighting at the great flavour
did he realise what it was, much to his consternation. I have not heard of
the Pols have serious national obesity problems, but that maybe more to do
with the lack of national research and statistics, at least that have been
published. My friend assured me that the Polish men he met, whilst good and
friendly people, were quite intimidating due to their fitness and power,
most likely developed during their national military service, and generally
required to be maintained afterwards.

The British cuisine is even more famous. Fatty foods, fried breakfasts and
the like cause great consternation amongst Europeans. But think, UK is a
mongrel nation formed from the Europeans in the first place with all the
inherited cultural and cuisine traditions, though clearly modified and
developed in our own style over the centuries. The Great British breakfast
takes on a whole new outlook, if you have been up since the crack of dawn,
working out in the fields and cow sheds on a farm or anywhere in the
countryside. Cold. dark and damp mornings throughout the year can really
bring a chill right down into your bones. Just the smell of a British
Breakfast when returning from these arduous working life routines can be
quite a revelation! The flavour is much better, and it contains much of the
energy and other content you need to survive this way of life, though
obviously local availabilities always plays a large part in any such
cultural diet.

Dairy produce provides much of the vitamin D that we need to compensate for
the lack of sunshine to stimulate melanin production process via which
Indians and other warmer climate populations get their nutritional
requirements. This became very apparent in the UK many years ago, when
Indian immigrants did not adjust their dietary habits to the new climate and
frequently developed problems with bendy joints and bones from a disease
known as Rickets!

So where does all this leave us I wonder?

Is it really that diet that is the problem? Or is it the balance of our
diet, particularly in conjunction with our chosen life styles and genetic
dispositions?

If it is the latter, then the next question that arises is, this a matter of
education? Or simply one of people's own self-discipline, particularly in
respect to *listening* to their own bodies?

The body is constantly giving feedback through the sensation of taste
cravings and feelings of comfort or discomfort as we anticipate the next
meal. Outward signs are more obvious, but tend to be a case of looking in
the rear view mirror to see where we are going! Overweight, shortness of
breath, lack of energy, problems with joints or even concentration (states
confusion, absent mindedness, memory problems) or are signs of a potential
dietary defiance. The right kind of fatty acids such as the well known Omega
3 group derived best from deep sea oily fish clearly affect these things, as
a good friend of mine knows only too well. Genetic inheritance left him and
his sister with all sorts of problems at school, particularly in terms of co
ncentration and his joints and even skin problems. Concentration and his
mental faculties have significantly improved since taking Omega 3
supplements and just generally eating more fish.

Even if we spot the signs, do we have the motivation to do anything about
it? If it is true that 'You are what you eat' lets hope my friend does not
develop Guills, fins and a fishy character!

We need good motivation in order to make the commitment to following a
healthier diet, but if it does not appear to give any noticeable benefit to
our chosen lifestyle it can be difficult to maintain the discipline long
enough for it to become a habit and hence part of our lifestyle. After that
the going gets easier as always. It seems to me that if we take something
away, we must replace it with something else that fills the need the
original bad eating habits seem to fill. In many respects it is a bit like
drug abuse, the background reasons can be complex - unless we identify what
the needs were that led to the condition, we cannot fulfil them with
something more suitable.

Weight management in particularly difficult in this respect because mere
weight loss by itself is not the answer. It must give some positive feeling
to make people want to stay the course. In most weight management
programmes, the improvement is gradual and the positive 'Wellbeing' effects
often go unnoticed because of this the substitute food must be tasty and
enjoyable to make people want to consume it instead of the less healthy
alternative, without the stress of having to override their previous
cravings and impulses. This extra stress is a big barrier, especially when
people already feel over-burdened from the everyday demands of modern life.

Sports enthusiast by contrast have a definite goal that helps them to focus
and maintain the discipline much more easily, at least until the Big
Tournament day in anycase. Thereafter, they too often lapse back into bad
old eating habits, often continuing to consume as much as they did when they
were in regular training. I know many people who were once fit and powerful
from training regularly, particularly weight training, only to end up
over-weight and fat as the body flops down when the exercise rates decrease,
but the food consumption continues. ~

Not everybody can be a nutrition expert. Balanced meals with modern
processed food are hard to achieve. many Europeans are in particular put off
by irradiated and GM foods, and react badly to anyone trying to force it on
them, let alone sneaking it in the back door by deception as the US as
recently seems to have been trying to do.

Ordinary weight management can utilise the less efficient methods of taking
in food and food diet supplements, but for many sports people this is not
enough. The psychology of Pill Popping alone is scary enough! Although these
diet programmes can be useful for those who know and do not want to learn
all about nutrition and diet, they often lock you in to a standard diet that
does not suit all and gives little room to fine tune your diet effectively.
Just buying Mono-preparation products requires more money and a great deal
more expertise if you are to avoid the risks of effect cancellation and
other less desirable side effects from taking over doses or artificial
products and steroids to get a quick fix to your objectives - this is a big
problem amongst the body building fraternity.

There needs to be something in between. Food education and diet supplements
that are properly grouped according function in a modular way that allows us
some safety and guidance without being nutritional experts, yet allows us
still to fine tune our diet to our needs as we gain more knowledge and
experience with our own bodies, training programmes and lifestyle. The food
and diet supplements need to be tasty, something that we look forward to
consuming in its own right. There is little worse than trying to force down
an palatable mineral tablets every day that taste bad, don't dissolve
properly and are of dubious effectiveness or quantity, i.e. no noticeable
effect! The best products are in liquid or soluable powder form that is easy
and quick to ingest when you need, particularly during the short time
windows (40 minutes!) for recovery after a heavy training session.
Unfortunately very few companies have succeeded in doing this well,
particularly where ready made liquid forms are concerned. One advanatge of
powder forms and perhaps even, dare I say it, the tablet forms is of course
preservation of the product along with perhaps easier logistical
transportation in general. They certainly overcome the difficulties
encountered with moving fresh food around.

Worse still, the current market emphasis seems to be on a macho 'Pump Up the
Volume' psychology, that merely loads you up with more carbohydrates or
protein, regardless of whether your body can absorb it anyway!

Surely the correct approach is to have a base system that first cleanses
your body, stabilises and improves your ability to absorb nutrients (ie
stomach and intestine function), and then generally activates your body and
improves the nutrient transportation system (blood oxygen levels, widening
and relaxation of the blood vessels etc.) so that the nutrients you do
consume are used efficiently and transported quickly, directly to where they
are needed? Only then do we think about pep-ups, pumping in the carbs to
fuel the muscles for hard workouts, recovery drinks and general restoration
products to replace any lost minerals and other essential nutrients. This
would at least be consistent with all the training I have ever done and
experienced throughout my martial arts career with Chi Kung / Body Energy
training! There can be no doubt that such nutritional systems, when used
well with functional focused nutrition products could help ease a multitude
of other special medical conditions, from asthma to fertility.

The latest wonder of technology, is the advent of Nano-technology in the
nutrition business, at least one company so far - PM-Internation with its
Fitline products have succeeded in applying Nano-technology to create
nurtients so small that they fit within a single molecule. Whilst I do not
yetknow all the mechanics, details and implications of this, I understand
that the nutrients can be absorbed directly into the body's cells whilst
bypassing theother usual distribution systems such as the Endocrine
(hormone) system.

If you want a better and more concise explanation of the nutritional
methods, concepts and philosophies that I have touched upon in this text,
please take a look at the homepage link included below - and feel free to
contact me directly or via that web page.

I look forward to your comments / feedback and hopefully some further
enlightenment!

Pähkis

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fitline Nutrition Products Distributor

www.7442.fitline.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris Spencer wrote:

> LeavesNutrition News Group
>
> Back Down To Earth for ordinary human mortals
>
> Hello,
>
> excuse me if I am not fully upto speed on these topics - as I am new to the
> news groups and as a man of 40 years young who has always been skinny no
> matter what I eat, I have never much worried about my diet, instead being
> happy to rely in my youth on the diligence of my mother and girlfriends as
> so many young men do! ~;o)
>
> Now at my grand old age I find that I am as physically active as ever, but
> often lack the energy to cope with the many responsibilities I now have in
> life. Worse still I have been informed that despite the wide availability of
> critical nutrients in food, my age restricts my body's ability to absorb
> some of these so well, such as the Qten coenzyme. Given that I am still
> regularly required to out perform and chase around 20 year old young men in
> order to keep then in order, I have now found it necessary to educate my
> self a little more in these matters! However, I am really only just starting
> to make the effort to learn seriously about diet and nutrition.
>
> As I understand it, the human race started out eating mainly nuts, fruits
> and then vegetables. As we developed we started eating meat. It is only in a
> third phase of our dietary development that we started eating breads,
> cereals, pasta and the like.... [snipped about 50 pages]


So do you have a question or just want to make a speech? Or perhaps we
were supposed to overlook the fact that you *sell* nutritional products?

Regards,
Bob

il Mon, 09 Feb 2004 10:18:32 -0600, zxcvbob ha scritto:

> Chris Spencer wrote:
>
> > LeavesNutrition News Group
> >
> > Back Down To Earth for ordinary human mortals
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > excuse me if I am not fully upto speed on these topics - as I am new to the
> > news groups and as a man of 40 years young who has always been skinny no
> > matter what I eat, I have never much worried about my diet, instead being
> > happy to rely in my youth on the diligence of my mother and girlfriends as
> > so many young men do! ~;o)
> >
> > Now at my grand old age I find that I am as physically active as ever, but
> > often lack the energy to cope with the many responsibilities I now have in
> > life. Worse still I have been informed that despite the wide availability of
> > critical nutrients in food, my age restricts my body's ability to absorb
> > some of these so well, such as the Qten coenzyme. Given that I am still
> > regularly required to out perform and chase around 20 year old young men in
> > order to keep then in order, I have now found it necessary to educate my
> > self a little more in these matters! However, I am really only just starting
> > to make the effort to learn seriously about diet and nutrition.
> >
> > As I understand it, the human race started out eating mainly nuts, fruits
> > and then vegetables. As we developed we started eating meat. It is only in a
> > third phase of our dietary development that we started eating breads,
> > cereals, pasta and the like.... [snipped about 50 pages]
>
>
> So do you have a question or just want to make a speech? Or perhaps we
> were supposed to overlook the fact that you *sell* nutritional products?
>
> Regards,
> Bob

Not only that, he thinks 40 is old, just he wait <hehehe>
As the old song goes You aint seen nothin' yet!
--
Cheers,
Loki [ Brevity is the soul of wit. W.Shakespeare ]