Health Benefits of Coffee

As a certified and confirmed Starbuckeroo for many years, it is extremely gratifying to share with you the following article concerning the health benefits of drinking coffee. Of course, this has long been known by a few, but totally misrepresented by many. Why would Master Fard Muhammad give a nod to coffee in His teachings of How to Eat to Live to His Messenger, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, unless there was some benefit? While fasting, we are only allowed water and coffee! No tea, no jucie, no nothing! Only coffee and water!

I consider coffee to be one of the joys of life, along with good genuine chocolate. We generally have been led to think of coffee as seperate and apart from herbal teas, even though it is made the same exact way. Why shouldn't coffee be considered the ultimate herbal tea? It has way more benefits than any other herb. Why is it so popular despite its demonization, sometimes demonized in the same way as raw whole pure milk? Because people innately know it to be good and good for them.

Among other things, coffee perfects and accelerates thought, reducing computational errors and improving motor performance skills. Coffee of course increase mental alertness and speeds learning. It helps digestion in many ways and has a mild laxative effect. On the heart it is as positive inotropic effect, that is, it increases the force and power of the heart. It helps the kidneys by producing the well known diuresis, or increased flow of urine, helping to purify the body.

Side effects? Yes, if you drink too much. You might get the shakes or have difficulty sleeping. My personal recommendation - no more than 240mg of caffeine, which is about three 8 oz. cups of coffee per day. So, my daily vente bold red eye is right up to the limit!

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Coffee: Drink to Your Health

By Sylvia Booth Hubbard

For many years, coffee was considered a vice, linked with sleepless nights and cigarettes. But scientists have discovered that coffee contains potent antioxidants that can fight numerous ailments, including heart disease and diabetes. According to the American Coffee Association, 54 percent of Americans drink coffee on a daily basis, and they drink, on average, over three cups each.

Most studies examined the effects of caffeinated coffee. When decaffeinated coffee was included, the benefits were usually reduced.

The diseases coffee can benefit include:

• Dementia. Drinking moderate amounts of coffee during middle age — classified as three to five cups daily — can decrease the risk of dementia by 65 percent, according to a 2009 study by Swedish and Finnish researchers.

• Liver disease. In those who drink too much alcohol, those who drank the most coffee — more than four cups every day — reduced their risk of developing alcoholic cirrhosis by 80 percent.

• Heart disease. Research associated with The Nurses' Health Study found that women who drank two to three cups of coffee daily had a 25 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease. Along the same line, a Spanish study found that men who drank more than five cups of coffee each day lowered their risk of dying from heart disease by 44 percent, and that women who drank four to five cups each day reduced their risk by 34 percent.

• Prostate cancer. A recent study from Harvard Medical School found that men who drank the most coffee slashed their risk of developing the fastest growing and most difficult to treat prostate cancers by more than half when compared to men who drank no coffee.

• Gout. Drinking four or more cups of coffee each day dramatically reduces the incidence of gout, say U.S. and Canadian researchers. Men who drank four to five cups daily lowered their risk by 40 percent, and those who drank six or more cups daily reduced their risk of developing gout by 59 percent when compared to men who didn't drink coffee.

• Breast cancer. Coffee can either reduce the risk of developing breast cancer or delay its onset, according to Swedish studies. They found that coffee alters a woman's metabolism and produces a safer balance of estrogens. Women who drank two to three cups of coffee a day reduced their cancer risk by as much as two-thirds, depending on the specific type of breast cancer.

• Diabetes. Enjoying six or more cups of coffee daily can cut chances of Type 2 diabetes by 54 percent in men and 30 percent in women over those who don't drink coffee.

• Parkinson's disease. Several studies show that drinking coffee lowers a man's risk of developing Parkinson's up to 80 percent — and the more the better.

• Colon cancer. A Japanese report found that women who drank three or more cups of coffee every day slashed their risk of developing colon cancer in half.

What's responsible for coffee's healthy benefits? Most researchers believe it's the antioxidants (polyphenols or flavonoids) in coffee, but there are hundreds of compounds in coffee that may be partially responsible.

© 2010 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Disease Is a Business

Vitamin D Activates Immune System

Many of you who follow this blog remember that I recommended strongly that you and your family take Vitamin D (Cataplex D) as a part of our anti-swine flu protocol. Continuing research is showing why Vitamin D helps with the flu and everything else that requires immunity - infection, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and all the so-called auto-immune disorders. Remember, Vit D is the "Sunshine Vitamin" that is obtained naturally from exposure of the skin to sunlight for at least 20 minutes a day in most parts of the world. Picured are natural Vitamin D crystals. Anyone who lives north of a line drawn from East to West through Atlanta will probably not get enough Vit D in the dark days of winter and will need a Vit D supplement.

Also, keep in mind that dark skinned people will produce less Vit D in their skin due to the action of melanin, so darker people tend to have more severe Vit D deficiency, and hence, a higher risk of diseases affected by Vit D.

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Vitamin D Activates the Immune System

NaturalNews) There is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency sweeping across our modern world, and it's an epidemic of such depth and seriousness that it makes the H1N1 swine flu epidemic look like a case of the sniffles by comparison. Vitamin D deficiency is not only alarmingly widespread, it's also a root cause of many other serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.A new study published in the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a jaw-dropping 59 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient. In addition, nearly 25 percent of the study subjects were found to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.Lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Kremer at the McGill University Health Center, said "Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders."This new study also documents a clear link between vitamin D deficiency and stored body fat. This supports a theory I've espoused here on NaturalNews for many years: That sunshine actually promote body fat loss. Vitamin D may be the hormonal mechanism by which this fat loss phenomenon operates.The research findings on vitamin D, by the way, get even better...
Activator for the immune systemRecent research carried out at the University of Copenhagen has revealed that vitamin D activates the immune system by "arming" T cells to fight off infections.This new research, led by Professor Carsten Geisler from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, found that without vitamin D, the immune system's T cells remain dormant, offering little or no protection against invading microorganisms and viruses. But with vitamin D in the bloodstream, T cells become "armed" and begin seeking out invaders that are then destroyed and carried out of the body.Vitamin D, in other words, acts a bit like the ignition key to your car: The car won't run unless you turn the key and ignite the engine. Likewise, your immune system won't function unless it is biochemically activated with vitamin D. If you're facing the winter flu season in a state of vitamin D deficiency, your immune system is essentially defenseless against seasonal flu. That's why all the people who get sick are the ones who live indoors, work indoors and exist in a chronic state of vitamin D deficiency.That's also why virtually all the people who died from H1N1 were chronically deficient in vitamin D. They had virtually no immune system protection at all and were thus easy targets for the swine flu.These findings about vitamin D "arming" the immune system were published in Nature Immunology. Commenting on the findings, the researchers said, "Scientists have known for a long time that vitamin D is important for calcium absorption and the vitamin has also been implicated in diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, but what we didn't realize is how crucial vitamin D is for actually activating the immune system -- which we know now." (UK Telegraph, source below).It seems the CDC and WHO remain utterly ignorant about this research or they would have been recommending vitamin D to fight the recent H1N1 pandemic rather than vaccine shots. Vitamin D would have been a far more effective (and less costly) defense against the pandemic than vaccine shots, especially given that even vaccines don't work unless there is an immune response, and that immune response requires the presence of vitamin D!And while vaccine shots have undesirable side effects such as causing severe neurological damage in a small number of vaccine recipients, vitamin D's only significant "side effect" is that it prevents 77% of all cancers, too. (http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html)
The common denominator for diseaseWhat's becoming increasingly clear from all the new research is that vitamin D deficiency may be the common denominator behind our most devastating modern degenerative diseases. Kidney failure patients are almost universally deficient in vitamin D and diabetes patients are usually in the same category. People suffering from cancer almost always demonstrate severe vitamin D deficiency, as do people with osteoporosis and multiple sclerosis.

Soda Drinking Linked to Six Major Diseases

The only safe soda is the one not consumed - that goes for fruit juice drinks as well. Almost all of them can be counted on to contain the deadly high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as the sweetening agent. Diet sodas are perhaps worse in that they substitute toxic chemicals to impart the taste of sweetness. Aspartame and the like are termed 'excito-toxins' because they excite brain cells to the point of death and produce altered - sometimes violent- behavior and toxic emotions.These toxic chemicals and HFCS are not a natural part of the human food chain and therefore the human body has no capacity to handle these unnatural materials. Now science proves that they cause disease and are in part responsible for the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and cancer that are destroying human potential and driving health care costs through the roof.

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Soda Causes 130,000 Cases of Diabetes

NaturalNews) For years, advocates of natural health have been hammering away at the message that soda causes diabetes and obesity. The soda industry, meanwhile, has remained in denial mode, mirroring the ridiculous position of the tobacco industry that "nicotine is not addictive." Soda doesn't cause diabetes, the industry claims, and it's perfectly safe to consume in essentially unlimited quantities.The Corn Refiners Association has joined the denial with its own spin campaign that seeks to convince people High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is totally natural and completely harmless. HFCS is, of course, the primary sweetener used in sodas and soft drinks.Now comes new research presented at the American Heart Association's Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention annual conference in San Francisco. This new research reveals that over the last decade, soda consumption has conservatively caused:

• 130,000 new cases of diabetes

• 14,000 new cases of heart disease

• 50,000 more "life years" with heart disease over the last decade

"The finding suggests that any kind of policy that reduces consumption might have a dramatic health benefit," said senior study author Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo (associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco).

The American Beverage Association, meanwhile, says this study hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal yet and therefore it doesn't count. Soda consumption doesn't cause diabetes or heart disease, they claim, because "...both heart disease and diabetes are complex conditions with no single cause and no single solution."It's silly logic, of course: Diabetes obviously has a cause. It's not some spontaneous disease that appears out of nowhere. And when you go looking for the cause, you obviously have to look at dietary factors since diabetes is a disease related to the consumption and metabolism of dietary sugars. Once you do that, sodas immediately raise a red flag because they're liquid sugar in a highly-concentrated form that does not exist naturally in nature.HFCS doesn't grow on trees, in other words.

Nature provides sugars locked into insoluble fibers that slow digestion and lower the effective glycemic index of sugars that are consumed. In nature, sugars are always combined with minerals, too, and many of those minerals help prevent diabetes and heart disease. But High-Fructose Corn Syrup is stripped of virtually all those minerals. It contains no fiber and no healing phytonutrients that you might encounter in plants. As a result, HFCS -- sometimes dubbed "liquid Satan" -- might be called a dietary poison that causes disease while contributing to nutritional deficiencies that accelerate disease.
Bone loss

Interestingly, this new study did not look at loss of bone density, which is another side effect of drinking soda. Due to the extremely high acidity of the HFCS sweetener combined with the phosphoric acid used in sodas, people who drink sodas often lose bone minerals and end up being diagnosed with osteoporosis (even at a relatively young age).

Other people end up with kidney stones due to all these minerals passing through the kidneys and contributing to the built up of mineral deposits there. Long-term soda consumers may even suffer from pancreatic cancer due to the extreme stress placed on the pancreas following the consumption of liquid sugars.

In all, soda consumption is linked to at least six serious diseases:

#1) Diabetes

#2) Obesity

#3) Heart disease

#4) Cancer

#5) Osteoporosis

#6) Kidney stones

That's why taxing sodas is more than merely a way to raise money through soda sales; it's also a way to dramatically reduce the cost of treating these diseases. It's no surprise that several U.S. states are now starting to seriously consider slapping new taxes on sodas and other "junk" beverages.That's not the way I would prefer to see the situation handled, actually.

The better option, in my view, would be to ban all soda advertising by effectively stripping Free Speech rights from corporations. Such rights belong only to individuals, not multi-billion-dollar corporations. Corporations whose products physically harm the health of the population at large should not be allowed to openly advertise and promote those products to the public. They can still sell them, they just can't advertise them.

The Truth About Fats in the Diet

For as long as most of us can remember we have been hearing about the danger of eating too much fat in the diet. We have been warned that this will cause heart disease, cancer, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doctors in white lab coats, TV ads, magazine articles and health gurus alike have chorused these warning until most of us just take it for granted that it must be true. So we purchase the low fat or no fat foods in our super market thinking that we are doing something great for our health and wellness. I know one Sister who served bean soup that didn't quite taste right. When I inquired about her recipe, I found out that she did not use any cooking oil! She thought it was bad!

We have also been led to assume that animal fat is bad and vegetable fat (or oils) are good. Or that fat in the diet makes a person fat! All of these misconceptions and misunderstandings need to be cleared up. The following article from our good friend Dr Mercola sheds a great deal of light on the subject. While I don't think much of his special diet per se, in general, the information he gives out is very helpful.

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Saturated Fat is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease
Posted by: Dr. Mercola

February 25 2010
The saturated fat found mainly in meat and dairy products has been regularly vilified by physicians and the media, but a new analysis of published studies finds no clear link between people's intake of saturated fat and their risk of developing heart disease.
In the new analysis, which combined the results of 21 previous studies, researchers found no clear evidence that higher saturated fat intakes led to higher risks of heart disease or stroke.
A number of studies have linked the so-called Western diet to greater heart disease risks; that diet pattern is defined as one high in red meats and saturated fats -- but it is also high in sweets and other refined carbohydrates like white bread.
Sources:
Reuters February 4, 2010
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition January 13, 2010 [Epub ahead of print]


Dr. Mercola's Comments:
The demonization of saturated fat began in 1953 with Dr. Ancel Keys’ publication of a paper comparing fat intake and heart disease mortality, and the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued ever since.
The idea that saturated fat is bad for your heart became so ingrained in the medical and health community, anyone daring enough to question this dogma was automatically viewed as a quack, regardless of the evidence presented.
Instead, trans fats became all the rage and have since saturated the market.
But times are a-changing, and in many ways for the better.
Along with a new interest in reviewing the sanity of vaccinating against every microscopic foe under the sun, medical scientists have finally begun to take a hard look at the link between saturated fats and heart disease – only to find that there is none.
Additionally, by now many have realized that it’s the trans fat found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that is the true villain, causing far more significant health problems than saturated fat ever could.
Yet Another Study Finds No Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease
Over the years, researchers have repeatedly failed to find the link between saturated fat and heart disease that Dr. Keys initially thought he had discovered, and this latest study is no exception.
When they pooled data from 21 studies that included nearly 348,000 adults, and surveyed their dietary habits and health events for anywhere from five to 23 years, they found no no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.
Most likely, the studies that have linked the so-called “Western diet” to an increased heart disease risk simply confirm that sugar and refined carbohydrates are harmful to your heart health. Because although the Western diet is high in red and processed meats and saturated fats, it’s also alarmingly high in sugar and refined carbs like bread and pasta.
What I found most encouraging in this article was Dr. Eckel’s statement that “the thinking on diet and heart health is moving away from a focus on single nutrients and toward ‘dietary patterns’."
This is precisely the message that needs to get out. You simply cannot optimize your health while staring at individual ingredients or nutrients in your diet.
Whole foods – real food that has been minimally processed and manipulated – contain so many symbiotic micronutrients that work together to produce the end result. The moment you start taking these ingredients apart, you lose the overall nutritional value, and you change how the nutrients operate inside your body.
Take the Mediterranean diet, for example. It consists mainly of whole, fresh foods like fruits and vegetables, along with fish, whole grains and unsaturated fats like virgin olive oil.
This type of diet has repeatedly been found to help lower your risk of heart disease and stroke. And although it’s low in saturated fats, perhaps the most significant thing about the Mediterranean style diet is the absence of processed foods, which are loaded with sugars and dangerous trans fats.
So, essentially, a healthy diet is quite simply a natural diet of REAL foods. And that’s the type of “eating pattern” you’ll want to strive for, if you want to be optimally healthy.
Confusing the Facts About Saturated Fats
Part of the scientific confusion about saturated fats relates to the fact that your body is capable of synthesizing the saturated fats it needs from carbohydrates, and these saturated fats are principally the same ones present in dietary fats of animal origin.
However, and this is the key, not all saturated fatty acids are created equal.
There are subtle differences that have profound health implications, and if you avoid eating all saturated fats you will suffer serious health consequences. There are in fact more than a dozen different types of saturated fat, but you predominantly consume only three: stearic acid, palmitic acid and lauric acid.
It’s already been well established that stearic acid (found in cocoa and animal fat) has no effect on your cholesterol levels at all, and actually gets converted in your liver into the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid.
The other two, palmitic and lauric acid, do raise total cholesterol. However, since they raise “good” cholesterol as much or more than “bad” cholesterol, you’re still actually lowering your risk of heart disease.
Yes, You DO Need Saturated Fat!
Foods containing saturated fats include:
Meat
Dairy products
Some oils
Tropical plants such as coconut and palm trees
These (saturated) fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet, and they provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances.
When you eat fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes.
Saturated fats are also:
The preferred fuel for your heart, and also used as a source of fuel during energy expenditure
Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid)
Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti fungal agents (lauric acid)
Useful to actually lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)
The Link Between TRANS FAT and Heart Disease
Now, it is still clear that there is some association between fat and heart disease. The problem lies in the fact that most studies make no effort to differentiate between saturated fat and trans fat. Additionally, the other primary processed food that typically is associated with trans fat is sugar, specifically fructose.
What Ancel Keys, and other researchers have failed to do in their multivariate analysis is control for each of these two variables. If researchers were to more carefully evaluate the risks of heart disease by measuring the levels of fructose, trans and saturated fat, they would most likely find the true answer.
You see,fructose and trans fat known to increase your LDL levels, or "bad" cholesterol, while lowering your levels of HDL, known as "good" cholesterol, which, of course is the complete opposite of what you need in order to maintain good heart health. It can also cause major clogging of arteries, type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems.
Your body needs some amount of saturated fat to stay healthy. It is virtually impossible to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet that has no saturated fat. What you don’t need, however, are trans fats and fructose in excess of 15 grams per day. Since the average adolescent is now consuming 75 grams of fructose per day, one can begin to understand why we have an obesity and heart disease epidemic.
Contradictory Results SUPPORT Nutritional Typing
Studies also clearly show that despite great compliance to low saturated fat diets, there is a wide difference in biological responses. The question is, what does this mean? Does it mean the studies are flawed? And if so, which ones?
Interestingly enough, perhaps they’re all “right,” because these contradictory results actually support nutritional typing, which predicts that one-third of people will do very well on low saturated fat diets (which supports the studies showing that they work), but another one-third of people need high saturated fat diets to stay healthy.
Healthy Fat Tips to Live By
Remember, you do need a certain amount of healthy fat, while at the same time you’ll want to avoid the unhealthy varieties.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply eliminate processed foods, which are high in all things detrimental to your health: sugar, carbs, and dangerous types of fats.
After that, these tips can help ensure you’re eating the right fats for your health:
Use organic butter (preferably made from raw milk) instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads. Butter is a healthy whole food that has received an unwarranted bad rap.
Use coconut oil for cooking. It is far superior to any other cooking oil and is loaded with health benefits. (Remember that olive oil should be used COLD, drizzled over salad or fish, for example, not to cook with.)
Following my nutrition plan will automatically reduce your modified fat intake, as it will teach you to focus on healthy whole foods instead of processed junk food.
To round out your healthy fat intake, be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.
Related Links:
The Truth About Saturated Fat
7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat
Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

Understanding the Relationship between Health and Obesity

The following article just confirms what we thought we already knew, that being fat kills. Obesity may rate as the number one health problem in the United States - especially among Blacks and other minority people. The dislike of fat people is often in evidence in jokes and demeaning caricatures in movies and on TV. The fat guy or the fat girl, may be funny and laughable, but the obese are rarely portrayed as heroic or even intelligent. They are usually presented as hapless losers, lacking in self esteem and confidence.

Although this article scientifically shows that the obese die of heart disease at almost twice the 'normal' rate, obesity is associated with poor health across the board. High blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid disease, endocrine abnormalities, asthma, cancer, etc. For the obese and most of us are at least over-weight- this is old hat, but it is also misleading.

It is misleading because it engenders the idea that people are unhealthy because they are obese. Wrong! They are obese because they are unhealthy!

That's the reason why almost all diets and other weight loss gimmicks ultimately fail:

They do not make the obese person healthy! If you can get the person who is obese - obesity being but a sign of ill health- healthy, then the weight will take care of itself. Putting the cart before the horse makes matters much worse because if the only goal is to get the number on the scale to go down, then all kinds of metabolic tricks will be resorted to to accomplish that, but at a great price - an even greater deterioration of health. In other words, taking a person from what is already bad, to what is worse. So if weight is a problem that you are struggling with then know that your priority is to get healthy first, and the weight loss will follow.

If you are struggling with this problem, then give us a call at Abundant Life. We can help.

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Remember, a healthy body cannot be made obese.

It must be made sick first, then it can be made obese!

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Obesity more deadly than previously thought
Being overweight is more deadly than previous thought as scientists discover increasing bodyweight increases the risk of dying from heart disease almost two-fold.
By Rebecca Smith

Recent studies found that being overweight may increase the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 82 per cent. Photo: PA
A study of one million father and son pairs found that being overweight may increase the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 82 per cent.
The research carried out by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and published online in the British Medical Journal attempted to iron out mistakes in previous studies and used the child's body mass index in association with the parent's cause of death.

This was to stop problems where certain diseases such as cancer that can cause weight loss, making it appear that thin people were at greater risk of dying.
It was found that this was not the case for lung cancer and being overweight, not underweight, made it more likely they would die from lung cancer. The results also showed that obesity posed a far greater risk for dying of heart disease than previously thought.