People who have struggled with their weight for most of the lives oftentimes claim to have a slow or damaged metabolism. They believe that if they could just heal this aspect of their health, then weight loss was be a cinch and robust health would surely follow. Oh, if it were only that simple to figure out. The fact is the functions of our body, including our metabolism, have much less to do with the genetics we were born with and more to do with what we do to it. Years of poor dieting advice in the form of high-carb, low-fat, calorie-restricted diets have only made the problem worse, not better. And nutrition and exercise science expert Maria Emmerich understands this dynamic better than most professionals in her field of work. She realizes there are consequences to consuming sugar and other culprit carbohydrates while neglecting the all-important fats our bodies need to be healthy and she shares the right way to eat and why in her book Secrets to a Healthy Metabolism.

This topic hits close to home for Maria starting off in Chapter 1 where she discusses what it was like being an overweight teenager who had to overcome the poor nutritional advice she was given to shed the pounds and get herself healthy. That drive to learn the truth has propelled her to use that experience to now help others who are dealing with weight and health issues. In Chapter 2, she explains the function of your metabolism and quickly moves into what you can do to feed it properly in Chapter 3. Ideas like eating more protein and fiber, consuming healthy fats while ditching the sugar and HFCS which she says is “destroying your metabolism” (Maria got an e-mail from the Corn Refiner’s Association lady, too!), forgoing the alcohol and fast food, and questioning the health claims about milk. The difference between what most people think is “healthy” eating and what Maria means by that phrase are worlds apart and you get to see the side-by-side comparison of what she’s advocating on pages 75-77.

Click here to read the rest of my review of Maria Emmerich’s Secrets To A Healthy Metabolism.

According to the latest statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association, a total of 5.3 million people are currently afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease at an annual cost of $172 billion in medical-related expenses. It is the 7th leading cause of death in 2010 and mortality rates have risen a whopping 46.1 percent from 2000-2006 (meanwhile death rates from stroke, prostate cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, and HIV have all DROPPED during that same period). With the baby boomer generation coming of age, the incidence of Alzheimer’s has unfortunately become more and more prevalent with the rates expected to nearly triple by the year 2050. But what if you could actually heal Alzheimer’s disease through some simple changes in diet and supplementation? That’s exactly what a woman from Bedford, Indiana named Nita Scoggan wanted to find out.

In 1999, Nita noticed that her husband Bill began exhibiting behaviors that had her very concerned about the condition of his brain health. She scheduled an appointment to see a series of doctors who all confirmed her worst fears–Bill was quickly approaching an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Nita was told to prepare Bill to live with this for the rest of his life but she refused to think the man she loved would be in a virtual vegetative state for his remaining days. So she began reading all studies that she could get her hands on about nutrition and supplements as it relates to Alzheimer’s disease. What she discovered and had never heard about before absolutely astounded her!

One of my longtime readers told me about this remarkable story earlier this year and they graciously welcomed me into their home with open arms enthusiastically ready to share their miraculous story of love, determination, and a pursuit of the truth about Alzheimer’s disease. This truly is a breathtaking tale of triumph for healthy low-carb living and in finding natural ways to combat the diseases that plague modern society. Let this tale of love starring Bill and Nita Scoggan encourage you today as you listen to them share what it was like going through this experience–in their own words–and how they are now helping others who are going through a similar fate.

Click here to watch a four-part video series featuring what is arguably one of the most remarkably uplifting and inspiring interviews I have ever and probably will ever conduct and I’m privileged to share it with you today!

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In Episode 388 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we hear from a nutritional anthropologist named Geoff Bond who wrote a book about the history of diet called Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between Our Health and Our Food. His early career had him living in east Africa examining the habitat of our original ancestors from 60,000 years ago with a specific look at what they ate to survive and thrive. Listen to Geoff share about how our bodies today are nearly identical to our hunter-gatherer forefathers, the analysis of the bones and teeth he used to determine the foods consumed and other lifestyle factors of early man, what a nutritional anthropologist (aka “Paleo” nutritionists) is and what the purpose of this work is, the educational information he provides at his web site, why the “8 glasses of water” recommendation is a ridiculous marketing ploy, the bastardization and selectivity of the nutritional studies used by food companies, how Ancel Keys turned “lead into gold” in the minds of people regarding nutrition and health, how the farming revolution led us down the spiraling path we find ourselves on with our food supply, the influx of grain foods in our modern food supply despite being a novelty in the history of the human diet, the poisons that grains contain that require us to avoid them in our diet to avoid health mischief, why nobody should be eating gluten whether they have Celiac disease or not, why the plants grown today are devoid of the rich nutrition of the plants our early ancestors consumed, why the negative effects of grains are being ignored by the experts promoting Dietary Guidelines, the fear of nutrition professionals to counter anything that runs against conventional wisdom, why he thinks the message of avoiding grains will be commonplace in 20 years, why breakfast doesn’t have to be traditional high-carb “breakfast” foods, what he would recommend people eat if they want to consume a diet like our ancestors, why grass-fed beef is a much better option for people than grain-fed, and why he says dairy is not a part of a healthy diet.

Click here to enjoy my hour-long interview with the delightful nutritional anthropologist Geoff Bond!

It’s the first weekend of August and that means it’s time to go visit the in-laws for a week! Christine’s family hails from the great state of Indiana and we’ve made it a tradition to go there every year since we don’t know how much longer her grandparents will be with us. They’ve both been having health problems with their heart and strokes, so I’ve made a deliberate effort to get her to visit them as often as possible. Christine’s mom, dad and sister will be coming along with our cute little niece and we can’t wait to enjoy the reunion on Sunday, cookouts every night, and a week of rest and relaxation. It’ll be a great time for us to enjoy being with family. I’ll be checking in from time to time on my Twitter and Facebook pages since we’ll also be doing some work stuff while we’re in Bedford, Indiana. And I’m even gonna bring my desktop computer to do some blogging since we’ll be staying at a hotel down the road from the family that has FREE Wi-Fi. I usually take a week off from blogging with this trip, but I did that a few weeks ago when we went to Washington, DC for the USDA testimony…but I’m not doing that to you again so soon. I’ll sneak in a post here and there during the “down” time (or when I want to hide from the in-laws! HA! Just kidding!).

On Saturday, August 7, 2010 from 1-4PM we’ll be having a meet-and-greet at the home of my fellow low-carb blogger and cookbook author extraordinaire Dana Carpender. We’ll also have “Healthy Low-Carb Living” blogger Amy Dungan there as well–and we’d LOVE to have YOU there, too, if you live in the Bloomington area. If you’re planning on coming, then please RSVP with Dana by dropping an e-mail to august7@holdthetoast.com. She will send you the directions via e-mail so you can be a part of the festivities! Can’t wait to see you there! Then on Tuesday, August 10, 2010, Christine and I will be visiting a man who overcame his Alzheimer’s disease by making some simple changes in his diet and basically was cured of the ramifications of this terrible disease. We’ll be shooting some YouTube video footage during an interview with this lovely couple who just happen to live in the same town where we’ll be visiting family. FORTUITOUS!

Although I just did a big new low-carb and health blogs update last month, I’ve already got 23 more to toss your way this time around. Keep in mind these are blogs that I find interesting and worth taking a good look at if you are interested in the subject of healthy living. Some you’ll love and others you’ll probably never visit again–but that’s true with just about anything so take it for what it’s worth. I’m just happy to give these blogs a little extra exposure so they can reach a wider audience than normal. As always, if you like what you see make sure to leave them a comment on their blog because you’ll make their day. Just in case you missed any of my previous low-carb and health blog listings, you can access them by clicking here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and here.

Click here to check out these 23 more new low-carb and health blogs for August 2010.

ATTENTION SUPER FANS OF THE LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOW-CARB SHOW: We are coming up on our historic 400th Episode set to air on September 9, 2010 and we want YOU to be a major part of the show that day! If this podcast has helped motivate you to change your dietary habits, lose weight, and get healthy, then we most DEFINITELY want to hear from you and share your story on one of the top health podcasts on the Internet today! E-mail me your name, landline telephone number or Skype username, and the best time to contact you to record a 2-5 minute segment celebrating our 400th episode. If your life has been changed because of a guest you heard on “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show” and you want the whole world to hear about it, then let me hear from you soon. I’ll be recording these in a couple of weeks and look forward to sharing them next month. THANK YOU for your participation!

In Episode 387 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we hear from certified nutritionist Jolene Park from a corporate wellness consulting company called Healthy Discoveries dedicated to helping employees learn how to be healthier, more productive workers. Listen to Jolene talk about how she merged her love for communications and nutrition, the influence of Dr. Loren Cordain, Dr. Mike Eades, and Dr. Jonny Bowden on her thinking about diet and health, why she confidently bucks the trend of her colleagues in the nutrition industry, the reaction she gets from her clients to promoting a high-fat, low-carb message for health, how she breaks the cultural health paradigms with the employees she teaches, the way she makes learning about nutrition concepts fun, why consumers buy into the health marketing claims on food packaging, why she felt like there was a health consulting void existed in corporate wellness, her “big break” with a Fortune 500 company, the concept of the “wellness wheel,” what she is teaching people about health that is most important, why she doesn’t believe in the “cookie-cutter” approach to diet, what the biggest problems she is seeing with her clients, the most invaluable health book she promotes to her clients, her focus on “hunter-gatherer” whole food Paleolithic eating, why she gave up eating gluten although she doesn’t have Celiac disease, the influence that growing up on a cattle farm had on her as well as The Weston A. Price Foundation, and why she’s not a fan of soy.

Click here to get excited about a nutritionist like Jolene Park who is promoting the right ideas regarding healthy living to corporate employees from coast to coast.

A whole lot has been going on lately in the news and blogosphere about health and low-carb living that I’ve just been dying to share with you here at my blog. If you could only see the huge stack of stuff I have that I’d like to be blogging about, I could literally write 100 blog posts from that stuff alone–oh to have more hours in the day! Unfortunately, because of the nature of the beast that is my work schedule with podcast recordings, YouTube videos, and all the day-to-day stuff that warrants my time, there’s just way too much of it and too little time in my schedule to write in-depth individual columns about all that’s been happening. I sincerely appreciate all of the e-mails, tweets, Facebook messages and more from you whenever you see an article of interest, so keep those coming to livinlowcarbman@charter.net. Most of the time I stay on top of what is important and get that stuff out there whenever I can. But to remedy the current backup of stuff to blog about, I’ve decided to share a few quick low-carb bits and bytes from my collection of articles that have caught my attention in August 2010.

We’ve all see it happen in television commercials, in magazines, and even right there on the front packaging of foods–HEALTH CLAIMS of all shapes and sizes flung around as a way to market products to consumers. It’s as if food companies are eager as a beaver to put something positive about their products in an effort to woo consumers into purchasing their products, even if those products are not what anyone would ever consider “health” food. While I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with the capitalistic idea of marketing and selling to the buying public, sometimes the envelope gets pushed just a wee bit too far with some of these messages being spread about foods. That was the inspiration behind why Christine and I embarked on a 10-part video series over the past couple of weeks we call “Health Claims Gone Wild!” as part of our “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb On YouTube” videos.

In Episode 89-98, we visited local grocery stores in our area to walk up and down the aisles looking for any health claims that looked kinda funny and they were a-plenty! What we found on some of these packages was nothing short of astounding (Fruity Pebbles promoted as “an excellent source of Vitamin D” with a mere 100IU per serving, for example) and we documented all of it in the following videos. In total, we went to four supermarket chain stores, a health food store, and even a pet food store to show how egregious the health claims being made on the foods we eat has become. We end the series with a video we call “Health Claims Gone Right!” showing how to discover the truly healthy foods that will nourish your body (hint: most of the time these foods don’t contain a label at all!). Hopefully you will find this adventure we took both entertaining and educational as you discover why the food manufacturers don’t have your best health in mind when marketing their products. ENJOY!

Click here to watch this special 10-part video series about the dastardly marketing health claims that food manufacturers are putting on the front packaging of foods and why they’re so unhealthy.

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In Episode 386 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we hear from nutritionist Dr. Kaayla Daniel who promotes herself as “The Naughty Nutritionist” because she debunks many of the most common health myths that exist out there, including the claim that soy is a health food. She’s written a bestselling book on this subject called The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food to warn people about why eating soy-based foods is not the way to go. Listen to Dr. Daniel share about how she transitioned from a plant-based diet to an omnivorous eating plan thanks to the influence of The Weston A. Price Foundation, the growing new trend of high-fat nutrition education, why animal fat is so vilified, why a low-fat, high-carb diet is more about profit than health, the myths supporting vegetarianism and why they are so misguided and unhealthy, how a raw vegan is ruining their health, the influence of vegetarians like The China Study author Dr. T. Colin Campbell on the discussion regarding animal-based foods, the raw milk debate, why we should support the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the curiously ironic story behind how she became involved with The Weston A. Price Foundation, how soy became considered a health food, the subtle way soy is being marketed now in light of the negative health consequences that have appeared in published studies, what foods containing soy are people completely unaware of, the response she’s received about The Whole Soy Story, what the deal is with her new moniker “The Naughty Nutritionist,” the infertility issues that are becoming more prominent, and the use of grain-based meats vs. plant-based foods.

Click here to listen to Dr. Kaayla Daniel speak about the health dangers associated with consuming soy.

Some of the harshest criticism about low-carbohydrate diets such as Atkins has been the supposed negative heart health implications due to elevations that take place in the cholesterol levels of dieters who restrict their carbs in favor of more fat and protein. Additionally, it is presumed that any weight loss that occurs on a high-fat, low-carb diet is quickly gained back making it a uniquely ineffective means for managing weight. Finally, bone health is supposed to suffer for people following a carbohydrate-restricted diet because the higher protein content allegedly promotes bone loss. However, all of these theories about low-carb diets have been summarily shot down by a brand new study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in the August 3, 2010 edition of the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Lead researcher Gary D. Foster, PhD, director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education and professor of Medicine and Public Health at Temple University, and his team of researchers noted that previous studies comparing low-fat diets with low-carb carb diets have failed to take into account the need for behavioral treatment as part of their dietary instruction which has resulted in poor weight loss outcomes. So they embarked on a 2-year randomized trial study of 307 participants placed on either a low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet combined with a “comprehensive lifestyle modification program” that took place in three academic medical centers, including the University of Colorado in Denver, Colorado, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The average age of the study participants was 45 years old with a mean body mass index (BMI) of 36.1. The study participants were split up into one of two diet categories:

LOW-CARBOHYDRATE DIET GROUP (153 participants)
Carbohydrate intake was limited to 20 grams daily with unrestricted consumption of fat and protein during the first 12 weeks of the study. Permissible carbohydrates were limited to mainly low-glycemic index vegetables. Participants were encouraged to eat 4-5 small meals every few hours and to use butter, mayonnaise and vegetable oils instead of margarine and they were discouraged from trying to “do a low-fat version of the program as it will disrupt weight loss.” At the end of the first 12 weeks, study participants were allowed to increase their carbohydrate consumption by 5 grams daily each week in the form of more vegetables, some fruit, and even whole grains and dairy products until their weight became stabilized. The principles outlined in the all-time #1 bestselling low-carb diet book Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution were encouraged, but the study participants were never provided with a copy of the book. They were told to watch their carbohydrate intake primarily while urged to consume foods that are “rich in fat and protein” to satiety. The behavioral modification implemented with this group was “to limit carbohydrate intake.”

LOW-FAT DIET GROUP (154 participants)
Calories were limited to 1200-1500 daily for women and 1500-1800 daily for men with a fat/protein/carbohydrate ratio of 30/15/55. Study participants were strongly encouraged to keep their calorie intake reduced with a specific focus on cutting down on their fat consumption. The behavioral modification implemented with this group was “limiting overall energy intake.”

Click here to see the surprising results of this latest head-to-head battle between the low-fat and low-carb diets!

ATTENTION SUPER FANS OF THE LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOW-CARB SHOW: We are quickly approaching our landmark 400th Episode set to air on September 9, 2010 and we’ve got a great idea for that show that involves YOU! If this podcast has positively impacted your life and health in a way that you’d like to share with your fellow listeners, then e-mail Jimmy Moore your name, landline telephone number or Skype username, and the best time to contact you so he can get in touch about recording a very brief segment celebrating our 400th show. So many of you have e-mailed some truly amazing stories about the life-changing impact this podcast has made in your life and now it’s time to highlight those for this special episode. Thank you for supporting the #1 low-carb podcast on the Internet today!

In Episode 385 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we welcome back to the podcast pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Larry McCleary (author of the 2007 book The Brain Trust Program) who became so intrigued by something the past couple of years that he describes as the brain-belly connection it quickly became apparent he needed to detail more about it in a book he recently released called Feed Your Brain Lose Your Belly (read my review). Listen to Dr. McCleary share about an update on what he’s been working on the past couple of years with childhood cancer patients, why brain problems associated with obesity piqued his interest so much so that he wanted to write a book about it, the hormone relationship to the brain-belly connection, the greater significance of the hormone insulin in these metabolic pathways, why the leptin hormone is not as important as people like Dr. Ron Rosedale think it is, the farmer’s ability to know exactly how to fatten up their livestock, why carbohydrates are so addictive, the reason hypoglycemia hits when you consume carbohydrates by themselves, a diet comparison study and the impressive results comparing various levels of macronutrients, why a “starvation” diet is actually a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet when the body feeds itself, why eating a cruise ship diet makes you hungrier and hungrier (think high-insulin!), why we overeat because we’re fat and don’t get fat from overeating, why doctors fail to communicate the negative role of carbohydrate on insulin levels, how to change the mind of a skeptical medical professional, why hunger doesn’t happen in the belly but rather it’s a brain state, what foods should be consumed for good brain-belly health (HINT: don’t skimp on the fat or eat up on carbohydrates!), why farmers who were feeding cows coconut oil to fatten them up actually made them lose weight, the consequences of not feeding your brain properly, why herbs and spices are so vital to an effective meal plan for variety and their antioxidant properties, his thoughts on whether eating the taste of “sweet” (even non-caloric ones) will make them crave sweet even more, his skepticism about the use of artificial sweeteners (Splenda alone is 750 times as sweet as blood sugar), why exercise is the “new horizon” for the brain and body (although he notes diet is much more important than exercise for weight loss), the clinical trial studies he conducted on real people to prove the concepts he discussed in his book are effective, and his use of a “weight loss accelerator” supplement he developed called Vi-texxa.

Click here to listen to one of the leading health voices on behalf of high-fat, low-carb diets today in Dr. Larry McCleary!