A study done to assess whether exercise would have effects on the prevalence of diabetes among those who are at the highest risk of the disease (black women) has proven that it does indeed have a preventative effect. This is great news for all of us, as if exercise can prevent diabetes in those at highest risk it obviously also has an even greater positive effect on all others.

Read an excerpt from the article from Medical News Today:

“Taking a brisk walk several times a week for exercise appears to reduce black women’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a study published this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Reuters Health reports. Few studies have been conducted on the benefits of exercise among black women, according to Reuters. For the study, Julie Palmer of Boston University and colleagues used data from the ongoing Black Women’s Health Study that followed 45,000 black women from 1995 to 2005.

Researchers found that those who said they walked for a minimum of five hours weekly for exercise were one-third less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not walk. The risk of being diagnosed with the disease was significantly lower among women who said they regularly took a brisk walk even when taking into account possible contributing factors such as age, income and diet. The study included a large number of obese women and they too appeared to have a lower risk for developing diabetes if they exercised regularly.

Palmer said, “This is important, because it suggests a way to reduce diabetes risk even among the women who are at highest risk of the disease,” adding, “The finding that brisk walking for a few hours a week or longer reduces diabetes risk may be the most important finding of all. This is something almost all women can do in the course of their daily lives.”

Researchers also found that women who watched television for five or more hours a day were 86% more likely to develop diabetes than those who watched less than one hour per day (Norton, Reuters Health, 12/18).”

For those of you who just can’t seem to get motivated to exercise, We might have an answer for you HERE, to get started join the Vibrational Fitness and Health – Vibrational Weight Loss Program and get started the easy way.

“So easy it feels just like cheating.”

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We all make New Year resolutions, and at the time we all intend to keep them, don’t we? Then life just gets in the way and we slip back into old habits, eating at the wrong time, eating what ever comes quick and easy and unconsciously deciding we don’t have time to exercise.

Sound a bit like last year and the year before and the year before that?

Making a change in the way you percieve your resolutions is the only way to get them to stick! How? I hear you ask. Weeeellll…

It’s all to do with habits of thought, thinking it would be nice to stop smoking or lose weight and hoping or wishing we could stick to our resolutions really means that we have given it some thought and it’s a nice idea BUT we don’t really believe we will do it.

However this year do it differently, make each of your New Year resolutions something you know you will do by writing it down as a goal, something you intend to achieve and posting it somewhere you will see every day. My method is to put it on a brightly coloured Sticky Note in my diary and move it to the next day after deciding what I will do on that day as one step to reaching those goals I have written down.

That’s my rule, to schedule in one thing I will do to reach each of my goals everyday, it may be something small if I am having a particularly busy day but I will do something! So what goals do you have for the new year?

1. Write them down on a sheet of paper right now.

2. Make each of them a positive – e.g. “I am now a non-smoker” or “I am now slim and fit”

3. Put each of these affirmations onto a sticky note in a row from top priority to low priority and if your health is on the bottom you may need to revise your priorities, how can you achieve anything else if you are not healthy, fit and full of energy?

4. Stick your sticky note into your dairy and when you look at your diary each day read through your list of goals and mark down on that page what one thing you will do on that day to reach each of those goals – AND THEN FOLLOW THROUGH!!

Next thing you know you will have achieved all of those goals and be on your way to writing a new list, good for you!

Be Fit! Be Healthy! Be Slim! do it online…

So many of us have been misguided by the many different approaches to insulin resistance, leptin resistance (both insulin and leptin resistance is an indication of prediabetes) and diabetes itself. We have been told by some to eat high fibre diets, to eat a ‘balanced’ diet, to eat carbs to avoid carbs  and on and on…

I for one have written two books on these health challenges of the 21st century and they are available for immediate download HERE and will be available in the new year as a part of our new Vibrational Weightloss Program soon to be introduced on our soon to be overhauled site in the new year (we will be working hard on it over the new year just for you).

Back to diets and diabetes, the best approach is to eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruit (these are carbohydrates too) for without carbohydrates in some form our muscles and brain cannot work efficiently. Add in some high quality protien, some good fats and last in small amounts add in some of the other carbs: Grains – ONLY wholegrains and in very small amounts.

As for high fibre if your dietician is still promoting this approach to you read this information on a study done to test this theory out from Medical News Today:

“The advice on the low glycemic diet suggested patients ate more: beans, peas, lentils, pasta, rice boiled briefly, low glycemic index bread such as pumpernickel, rye pitta, and quinoa and flaxseed, and cereals such as large flake oatmeal and oat bran.

The advice on the high cereal fiber diet suggested patients ate more: “brown” or whole grain foods such as whole grain bread, whole grain breakfast cereal, brown rice, potatoes with skins, whole wheat bread and crackers.

Both diets also emphasized fruit and vegetables.

Each patient’s blood was tested for blood glucose and cardiovascular risk factors before and after they went on the diet.

The researchers found:

• Levels of glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), a way of testing blood glucose using red blood cells, went down by 0.5 per cent absolute units in the low-glycemic diet compared to 0.18 decrease in the high-cereal fiber diet.
• An increase of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the so-called “good” cholesterol or HDL-C, in the low-glycemic index diet of 1.7 mg/dL.
• This compared with a decrease of HDL-C in the high-cereal fiber diet of 0.2 mg/dL.
• There was a greater reduction in the ratio between “bad” cholesterol (low density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL-C) and good cholesterol (LDL -C:HDL-C) in the low-glycemic index diet group compared with the high-cereal fiber diet group.

The authors concluded that:

“In patients with type 2 diabetes, 6-month treatment with a low-glycemic index diet resulted in moderately lower HbA1c levels compared with a high- cereal fiber diet.”

They wrote that:

“Lowering the glycemic index of the diet improved glycemic control and risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD). “

These findings have important implications for treating patients with diabetes where it is important to have tight glycemic control without complications, they added, explaining that although:

“The reduction in HbA1c was modest … we think it has clinical relevance.”

“Low-glycemic index diets may be useful as part of the strategy to improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes taking antihyperglycemic medications,” they added.

The authors explained that drugs to improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes often fail to address cardiovascular risk factors. They said that the ability of diet to address both glycemic control and reduce CHD risk increases the relevance of this type of treatment, especially for patients like the ones in this study who were overweight and also taking statins to reduce CHD risk.”

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Exercising for 1 hour has been shown to suppress two important appetite hormones and leave you feeling satiated earlier and hungy less often. The researchers found that aerobic exercise works much more effiently as an appeitite suppressant than resistance exercise, this could lead us to a better explanation of why we get hungier when we are veg-ing out than when we are busy.

So we now have another reason to exercise 1. burn the fat 2. suppress the urge to eat along with all the other benefits of exercising that keep you healthier and living longer.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2008) — “A vigorous 60-minute workout on a treadmill affects the release of two key appetite hormones, ghrelin and peptide YY, while 90 minutes of weight lifting affects the level of only ghrelin, according to a new study. Taken together, the research shows that aerobic exercise is better at suppressing appetite than non-aerobic exercise and provides a possible explanation for how that happens.”

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Are you a resourceful and resilient woman? Are you competitive? Then your waist measurement may be larger than your less competitive and resourceful friends!

Don’t bemoan your so-called imperfections though, your larger waist to hip ratio may be doing you a really big favour.

“The hormonal profile associated with high WHR (waist-to-hip ratio) … may favor success in resource competition, particularly under stressful circumstances,” writes Cashdan. “The androgenic effects – stamina, initiative, risk-proneness, assertiveness, dominance – should be particularly useful where a woman must depend on her own resources to support herself and her family.”

In other words, trading the benefits of a thin waist for better ability to collect resources may be a good deal in certain societies and situations. And there is evidence that male mate preferences may reflect this trade-off, according to Cashdan.

In Japan, Greece and Portugal, where women tend to be less economically independent, men place a higher value on a thin waist than men in Britain or Denmark, where there tends to be more sexual equality. And in some non-Western societies where food is scarce and women bear the responsibility for finding it, men actually prefer larger waist-to-hip ratios.

“Waist-to-hip ratio may indeed be a useful signal to men, then, but whether men prefer a WHR associated with lower or higher androgen/estrogen ratios (or value them equally) should depend on the degree to which they want their mates to be strong, tough, economically successful and politically competitive,” Cashdan writes.

“And from a woman’s perspective, men’s preferences are not the only thing that matters.” Medical News Today

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The simple message to you all is eat less, move more and this rings true for all of us whether we are menopausal women or not. However, this report came out with a few things that rang bells for me as this is just where I am now and have been wondering why I am positively avoiding exercise until my brain tells me I better get on that machine or out the door for that walk. Read on and discover some answers from Medical News Today:

“One of the most interesting things that came out of the conference – with applicability to large numbers of women – was the discussion about why women gain weight during menopause,” said Dr Sainsbury-Salis.

“So many women get confused when they start to gain weight during menopause, because their eating habits haven’t changed.”

“What the research shows clearly is that menopause causes a dramatic and sudden reduction in physical activity levels. Just prior to menopause, women halve their amount of activity compared to pre-menopause levels.”

“So one reason women gain weight in menopause is because of a reduction in energy expenditure. Combine this with unchanged eating habits and weight gain is almost inevitable.”

“We don’t know exactly why menopausal women stop moving as much. But we know it’s not because of their age and the lifestyle constraints happening at that time of life. Research suggests it’s directly related to the lack of oestrogen, which has dramatic effects on signals the brain sends to the body. We’re doing research to see what causes these effects and whether or not they continue long-term.

“A lot of women ask whether they can actively counteract that tendency. In fact, it’s been shown that women who maintain or increase their level of physical activity during menopause tend to come out the other end without gaining weight.”

“Another thing, when physical activity levels drop and your energy needs are less, it’s really important to stay in tune with your hunger signals because you just don’t need to eat as much in order to feel satisfied.”

“During menopause, most women experience redistribution of fat, often gaining weight around the middle,” said Professor Campbell. “As we have demonstrated in our research, abdominal fat is a risk factor in the development of cardio-metabolic diseases, such as diabetes. Prior to menopause, women have a lower risk of heart disease than men. Menopause equalises that risk.

Well, I better go jump on my Vibration Platform for 10 minutes and get my body moving…

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An Australian study into diets that help to move fat deposits or keep fat off altogether has found that eating higher protein meals helps to burn fat more efficiently, especially for those who are already overweight or obese.

“Study participants were put on two protein-enriched meals and one standard meal, which all contained the same number of kilojoules. The two protein-enriched meals differed in the type of carbohydrate they contained – either high- or low-GI. The amount of kilojoules subjects burnt was then measured.

The high-protein meals led to the greatest level of fat oxidation. This plan included a cheese and tomato omelette for breakfast, and a beef, chutney and salad sandwich, with a tub of low-fat yoghurt, for lunch.

“We found a clear relationship between body composition and the effect of dietary protein on fat oxidation. Our bodies burn energy and use fat differently, and we need to take this into account when planning our diets,’ said Dr. Batterman who works at the Smart Foods Centre at the University of Wollongong.” Medical News Today

For information on a lifestyle approach to weight loss, leptins and insulin resistance check out our eBook,

“A Rainbow on My Plate.”

Be Fit! Be Well! do it online…

Be Fit! Be Well! do it online…

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This news item at Medical News Today says it all:

Large Waist Nearly Doubles Death Risk:

“The researchers wrote that previous studies relied heavily on BMI (body mass index, a person’s weight in kilos divided by the square of their height in metres) to assess the link between body fat (adiposity) and risk of death, but not many had looked into the effect of how the body fat is distributed.

For the study the researchers used data from 359,387 participants from 9 countries that were taking part in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), one of the largest long-term prospective studies in the world. The average age of the participants when data were first collected was 51.5 years, and 65.4 per cent were women.

Using a statistical tool called Cox regression analysis the investigators looked for links between BMI, waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio with risk of death, while taking into account other factors like age, location, education, smoking, alcohol, exercise and height.

The results showed that:

• 14,723 of the participants died over a mean follow up period of 9.7 years.
• Participants with a high BMI, compared with those in the medium range, were more likely to die from cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
• Participants with a low BMI were more likely to die from respiratory diseases.
• BMI of 25.3 for men and 24.3 for women was linked to the lowest risk of death.
• After adjusting for BMI, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio were strongly linked to risk of death.
• The 20 per cent of participants with the largest waist circumferences (the top quintile) had waistlines measuring more than 120 cm or 47.2 in for men and more than 100 cm or 39.4 in for women.
• The 20 per cent with the smallest waist circumferences (the bottom quintile) had waists smaller than 80 cm or 31.5 in for men and less than 65 cm or 25.6 in for women.
• For every 5 cm increase in waist circumference the risk of death went up by 17 per cent in men and 13 per cent in women.
• Comparing the top quintile for men had a relative risk of death of 2.05 (95 per cent confidence interval(CI) of 1.80 to 2.33) and for women this figure was 1.78 (95 per cent CI 1.56 to 2.04).
• For waist to hip ratio the top to bottom quintile relative risks were 1.68 (95 per cent CI 1.53 to 1.84) for men and 1.51 (95 per cent CI 1.37 to 1.66) for women.

The results also supported earlier findings that BMI is strongly linked to risk of death in that, as the authors explained:

“BMI remained significantly associated with the risk of death in models that included waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio (P<0.001).”

They conclude that these findings:

“Suggest that both general adiposity and abdominal adiposity are associated with the risk of death and support the use of waist circumference or waist -to-hip ratio in addition to BMI in assessing the risk of death.”

In a separate statement, the team from Imperial College London wrote that the study provides strong evidence that:

“Storing excess fat around the waist poses a significant health risk, even in people not considered to be overweight or obese.”

They said doctors should measure waistlines and hips as well as BMI when doing routine health checks.

The researchers found that waist to hip ratios varied widely among different countries in Europe.

They suggested that the reason increased waistlines are linked to higher risk of death could be that fatty tissue in the abdomen secretes cytokines, hormones and chemicals that are known to increase the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

The lead author of the study, Dr Tobias Pischon, a Private Docent at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbrücke, explained that:

“Abdominal fat is not only a mere energy depot, but it also releases messenger substances that can contribute to the development of chronic diseases. This may be the reason for the link.”

The European coordinator of EPIC, professor Elio Riboli, from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial College London, said:

“Although smaller studies have suggested a link between mortality and waist size, we were surprised to see the waist size having such a powerful effect on people’s health and premature death.”

“Our study shows that accumulating excess fat around your middle can put your health at risk even if your weight is normal based on body mass index scores,” he added.

Riboli said that apart from smoking and drinking there are few other individual characteristics that can increase a person’s likelihood of early death.

Although the study did not look into why some people have larger waistlines the researchers suggested this was mainly due to genetic factors, physically inactive lifestyles and poor diets.

Riboli said:

“The good news is that you don’t need to take an expensive test and wait ages for the result to assess this aspect of your health – it costs virtually nothing to measure your waist and hip size.”

He said if you have a large waist you should exercise every day, avoid drinking too much alcohol and improve your diet.

“This could make a huge difference in reducing your risk of an early death,” he added.”

What can you do? Keep a lookout for our announcement coming soon, Wam Fit and Well introduces:

“Vibrational Weight Loss – So easy it’s just like cheating!”

We’re very close to launching our new program please stay tuned for the announcement.

Be Fit! Be Well! do it online…

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It seems to me in this  day and age that people are not listening to the news or the research or the gross ads on TV about smoking being a way to sign your own death certificate. Young people are still taking up smoking and older people steadily refuse to quit.

It really is a case of “How to boil a frog!”

How to boil a frog: If you boil the water first, it’s hot and the frog although burned will jump right out and get away, so to boil a frog you put him in the pot while the water is cool and as it gradually heats he will enjoy the water cause it feels so good – until it is all to late and he cannot get out and boils himself into frog soup.

Cigarette smokers are the same: they start smoking to appear cool or because they tell themselves that they need it to stay calm. This is the cold water… even though they see all the ads about the bad health effects (the water is getting warmer) of smoking they ignore them cause it feels so good. Then when it is all too late and they have the cancer… You get the picture.

However, if a cancer appeared or they became impotent on their first cigarette, they would stop and never come back (the boiling water).

So as far as I am concerned people who smoke are in the act of becomming frog soup. If you need more evidence here are some links for you:

Study into the effects of smoking on nurses, death rates and incidences of disease:

http://www.physorg.com/news145800798.html

Study into affect of smoke on hearts shows your heart may actually alter it’s shape (not a good thing):

http://www.physorg.com/news145818349.html

and this one is a link to a new website that empowers young women to “live smoke free”:

http://www.physorg.com/news145818109.html

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