Asbestos Mesothelioma Blog

Want to look great and live longer? The secret isn’t a new miracle drug or surgical technique. It’s not even a new exercise program (though exercise couldn’t hurt). No, the real secret can be found in the foods you eat. Here are five foods that will help prevent disease and make us look and feel great.

Soy
A fantastic food for our health. It lowers cholesterol, and it reduces the incidence of osteoporosis as well as breast cancer and heart disease. Staving off osteoporosis is of particular importance because so many women are at risk for it. Soy is not just tofu; you can find it in soy nuts, which are a great snack food and good for sprinkling on a salad, or soy burgers.

Salad
Certain salad ingredients are going to do more for your body than others. For example, using leafy greens (such as spinach) as your base rather than lettuce is going to increase your intake of folic acid. Folic acid is extremely important for pregnant women and women in their childbearing years. If you include carrots in that salad, you’re getting a powerful antioxidant that reduces the risk of heart disease and cancer. Broccoli should also make an appearance. It is a great source of calcium as well as vitamin C. Of course, it’s not a salad without tomato, and in tomatoes you’ll find another powerful antioxidant that reduces the risk of prostate cancer. It becomes more potent, however, when it is consumed in the form of cooked tomato products, such as stewed tomatoes or fresh tomato sauce.

Fish
This is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are extremely good for the body. They decrease the incidence of heart disease and breast cancer. When selecting a fresh piece of fish at the market, you want to look for a firm fillet that has a healthy sheen to it and that doesn’t smell “fishy”. Fish is very easy to prepare. The best way to maintain the omega-3 fatty acids is to poach the fish. Season it with a little bit of parsley and some freshly ground pepper, maybe a little bit of coarse salt; you’ll need only about one minute per inch of thickness for cooking time. Very easy, very tasty and great for you!

Bread
Whole grains provide us with fibre, and fibre has been shown again and again to reduce the risk of colon cancer. Aim for at least 30 grams of fibre per day. Take care, however, to consume brown bread rather than white.
Blueberries
They are practically a dessert item, so it’s fun to be able to inc1ude them as part of a healthy diet. And it’s easy to convince the kids to eat them as well. Much like cranberries, they are used to reduce the incidence of urinary tract infections. Blueberries are also a powerful antioxidant, reducing the risk of many cancers as well as things such as memory loss.

For a long time now, research has been done on fat and its effects on the heart. We know that too much fat will clog and stiffen our arteries, bringing forth drastic effects that choke off blood to the brain and harm the heart. Whether your arteries are wrecked and your body suffers considerable other problems may depend on the chemical make up of the fat and its consequent disposition by the body. But animal fats are very different from the ones in fish.
Scientists were perplexed by the fact that Eskimos had virtually no heart disease and yet ate a high fat diet of blubber and seal meat; their blood cholesterol levels, especially among Alaskan Eskimos, were fairly high, only slightly lower than that of Americans, Danes, and others who were dropping dead from heart attacks. Research showed that Eskimo blood is not as sticky and does not clot as readily.
The same phenomenon shows up among families in Japanese fishing villages who are also remarkably free of heart disease. They found that the strange phenomenon was rooted in the fact that the Eskimos loaded themselves with a unique oil found in seafood. They typically devour 13 ounces of seafood every day, all of it heavily packed with molecular chains of fatty acids called omega-3’s. In contrast, the fat or oil in land plants and meat from animals raised on such plants are dominated by omega- 6 fatty acids that are broken down differently in the body.
An excess of omega-6 provokes the cells to frantic activity, causing the production of excesses of hyperactive prostaglandins and similar hormones that wreak havoc on the body.
Fish oils may protect against thrombosis - clots that block off blood. Cancer, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, allergies, immune inflammatory disorders, headaches, high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis are all disorders related to over enthusiastic production of prostaglandins. Fish oils, by curbing prostaglandin formation, may control the underlying metabolic mechanisms that set off these diseases too.
Nutrition experts at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas say older adults who eat just one serving of fatty fish a week can lower their risk of a fatal heart attack by up to 44 percent, compared to people who don’t eat fish at all.
But if you prefer your fish fried, you’re not getting the benefit. The high heat from frying changes the structure of the beneficial fatty acids so they no longer have the same effect on the body besides the negative effect of all that oil, used for frying, on your body. Fatty fish like salmon, tuna, sardines, mackerel and herring are most beneficial because they have the highest levels of the omega-3 fatty acids that prevent heart disease. These fatty acids are important for growth and development, but they’re not manufactured within the human body. Leaner fish like cod and flounder don’t have as much omega-3 and are less beneficial. Nutrition experts suggest you bake or grill fish to preserve the health benefits and recommend eating at least two servings of fish reek to help prevent heart disease.

• Treatment is usually very successful but can require a battery of medicines to deal with the problem, because each attack may be different. Most people will have tried painkillers such as aspirin or paracetamol but sometimes, just for one dose, three tablets, rather than the usual two, may make all the difference.
• One of the main problems is that during a migraine attack the stomach contents are static. This means that tablets taken are not well absorbed and therefore don’t work efficiently. Sometimes a doctor will prescribe medication to stop sickness and nausea and help empty the stomach, which will enable the painkiller to be more effective.
• Tablets containing codeine are not recommended because they can create dependence and a rebound headache once they are stopped. Anti-inflammatory tablets, such as ibuprofen, work for some people.
• New migraine-specific drugs called triptans, which control the changes in blood vessels that cause the migraine, have recently become available. These need to be prescribed by a doctor and come in the form of tablets, rapidly melting tablets, nasal sprays and injections for those whose migraine starts with vomiting.
• About three times more women than men are affected by migraine, and this is probably hormone related. Women with migraine react individually to extra hormones. About a third benefit from taking the contraceptive pill, in a third it makes little difference and in a third the migraine gets worse and the pill should be stopped. In that very rare group of women who have a numbness or weakness of part of the body when they have a migraine attack, the pill should definitely not be taken. During pregnancy, many women have fewer attacks and they may even disappear. A few have a really difficult time.
• For those troubled with very frequent attacks of migraine who find that painkillers don’t work, daily preventive medicines such as beta-blockers (which help regulate heart rhythm) may reduce the severity and frequency of the attacks, but these may also have side-effects.