Liz Bonis is a registered dietitian, a certified nutritionist, a certified personal trainer, and a diabetes educator with a master's degree in public communication.

Vitamin Essentials
6/25/08

Adding a few supplements to your daily regimen might be a good idea, especially if you’re “of a certain age”. Scientists have discovered that as we get older, we are deficient in some vitamins, especially if we don’t eat certain types of food.

Government guidelines and nutritionists at UCLA recommend taking these supplements daily:

A multivitamin: Multis ensure we get the nutrients we need, even when we don’t eat the right kinds of food each day.

Vitamin D: Researchers with the National Institutes of Health found nine out of 10 people between the ages of 51 and 70 are deficient in vitamin D, mainly because they don’t get enough sunshine.

Calcium: It’s important not just for bones, but also for muscles and balancing blood pressure.

Fish oil: Unless you are getting at least two 3 oz. servings of fatty fish a week, you probably aren’t getting enough fish oil in your diet. But you should, because it can help your heart and your brain, and may also play a role in regulating your mood.

Can You Beat The Genetic Lottery?
Environmental Nutrition
6/17/08

Hereditary illness may not be inevitable. Promising new research has shown that you may be able to turn on or off some of your genetic tendencies by altering your lifestyle just a little bit.

The practice, known as epigenetic modification, alters genetic tendencies through changes in your diet and your activity level.

Scientists at Duke University recently looked at certain genes in mice, which were bred to have an on/off switch near the genes that determine predisposition to gaining weight, getting diabetes, or even being diagnosed with cancer.

When researchers supplemented the diets of those mice when they were pregnant, they essentially “turned off” the gene in the offspring that made them susceptible to all of those health problems.

More research is needed to figure out the best way to incorporate these changes in people, but this field shows such promise that the National Institutes of Health has launched a five-year study to find out more.

For now, however, you can make some simple changes to your own lifestyle to help prevent developing some diseases, even if they run in your family.

First—no surprise—eat more fruits and vegetables. At least five servings a day is a good start, but you probably need more like nine to 11 servings to help reduce genetic tendencies toward certain illnesses.

Second, get more whole grains into your diet—wheat bread, bran cereals, even corn and barley are good grains.

Third, add more beans and nuts to your meals. These foods, including kidney beans, navy beans, white beans, and peanut butter, appear to have natural disease-fighting compounds.

Fourth, eat at least three servings of low-fat dairy foods each day. The vitamin D in dairy products may help with cancer prevention, and the calcium in dairy is good for your blood pressure, muscles, and bones as well.

Finally, stay physically active and maintain a healthy weight. People who are more physically fit appear to have lower rates of certain diseases, and they may be better able to overcome their genetic tendency for obesity, cancer, and diabetes. Plus they sleep better!

How To Drop 10 Pounds (Without Really Trying)
6/6/08

Two new studies have shown that it is possible to drop 10 pounds quickly and with very little effort—without dieting!

The first thing to do is eat more vegetarian or soy-based meals. Because soy and grains are higher in fiber, they help you feel full, so you eat less.

Experts from the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center, who conducted the first study, found that eating more vegetarian meals, even just once a week, can help you drop five pounds a year. And those who ate a vegetarian lunch on a regular basis took in 400 fewer calories and 30 fewer grams of fat a day.

Let’s add that up: If dropping 100 calories a day can help you drop 10 pounds in a year, eating 400 fewer calories a day means you can lose those 10 pounds in just a few months!

The second study was conducted by researchers who compared the dietary habits of people in France with those of people in the U.S.—specifically, the “French paradox”, where French people eat more food yet weigh less than Americans.

In a comparison of 300 people from France and the U.S., the researchers found that one in five Americans are overweight, yet only five out of every 100 people in France are above their ideal body weight. In addition, the French people in the study weighed, on average, 21 pounds less than the Americans.

Here’s the secret: The French don’t avoid bread, pastries, and other foods they love, but they do listen to internal cues and stop eating when they feel full, so they simply eat less of their favorite foods.

On the other hand, the Americans in the study kept eating until all the food in front of them was gone...even when they didn’t like what they were eating! They tended to ignore their internal cues and instead paid attention to external cues—they were “finished” when the TV show they were watching, or when the lunch hour, was over.

So if you want to shape up this summer, eat more meatless meals, and stop eating when you’re full. It can’t get much simpler than that! Give it a try!

“C” Your Way To Lessen Risk Of Stroke
6/2/08

If you have a family history of stroke, there are some things you can do to lower the odds that you’ll have a stroke as well. You probably know that you need to keep your weight and blood pressure down to normal levels, but as a new study shows, you also need to get more vitamin C.

Researchers in the United Kingdom tracked 20,000 people and found that those who ate the most fruits and vegetables with vitamin C had a 42 percent lower risk of stroke compared to those who ate the least.

Now here’s the interesting part: According to the following list (published in Prevention magazine), there are plenty of other foods that have more vitamin C than oranges and orange juice. So you can vary your diet and get even more of that essential vitamin. Try adding some of the following foods to your diet.

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