Ice Cream Addiction: How the CR Way to calorie restriction can help

I remember him well, how he used to love to sit on the red couch and watch TV after dinner. Tall, handsome, with a dark, thick head of hair – and about 20 pounds overweight. The grey suit he wore to work did a good job of hiding his extra weight.

Before he sat down, he would go to the freezer to get his ice cream fix: Chocolate, vanilla – the freezer usually had a backup carton or two of his favorite flavors. Then there were the exotic flavors of the moment that caught his attention – English toffee, Oreo cookie, watermelon.

It was amazing to watch the ice cream man eat his dinner, before he had his ice cream fix. He was capable of downing some the most delicious meals within the blink of an eye, then leaving the table for the emotional respite from work pressures: ice cream, sometimes with a piece of pie or cake or whatever his wife had fixed for dessert.

The fat and the sugar from the ice cream would make him dozy, so as he progressed into his fifties he would often fall asleep after his ice cream, unless there was a really interesting TV program that caught his attention. By 10 or 11  o’clock he would wake up to listen to the news. Fired up by his0 nap and what he’d hear on the news, he would often have another bowl of ice cream, sending blood to his stomach and making him fall asleep quickly.

Five to six hours later, he would wake up tired. Then a few jolts of coffee was enough to help him get his day started sometimes – wondering why he slept so poorly.

For a few decades, time seemed suspended for the ice cream man. Good genes may have helped him get by with his ice cream habit and seemingly little price to pay. Yet there were unheeded warning signals: less energy, high blood pressure, vision loss – reducing his quality of life, something that many people grow to accept.

Then in his early sixties, the dark side of ice cream addiction began to rear its ugly head. At first, it was manageable. He had a few minor strokes, which produced blurring of vision, a warning of what was to come.

Then the ice cream man had some bad luck: A young driver lost control of her car and hit his car from behind. He saw her car in the rear view and ducked below the seat just in time to avoid serious injury or so it seemed. But the stress and adrenaline from the accident caused him to have a major stroke, causing loss of control of his left leg – for the rest of his life.

From there hell broke lose. Bleeding diverticula in his gut caused him to pass out on the bathroom floor. He was lucky to make it to the hospital in time to save his life, but part of his colon had to be removed. He returned home with strong warnings from doctors to change his diet.

The next time was worse. His limping, unsteady gait somehow caused him to fall down hard on his kitchen floor. This time his stay at the hospital was marked by a heart attack. Several bypasses were necessary to keep his plaque-clogged arteries from killing him.

The next time I saw him, he looked like a ghost. Bent over with gray skin, he struggled with a walker to get to the bathroom every 20 minutes or so. From there the end of life came quickly – with a few difficult years that included cancer.

The ice cream manufacturers use combinations of flavors, and textures to make an ice cream experience so pleasurable you’ll want more and more.  Even the name of the flavor will make you laugh, helping you rationalize eating it. One study suggests that ice cream is addictive – like cocaine.

Frequent ice cream consumption is associated with reduced striatal response to receipt of an ice cream-based milkshake.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2012 Apr;95(4):810-7. Epub 2012 Feb 15.

Burger KS, Stice E.

Source

Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, OR.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Weight gain leads to reduced reward-region responsivity to energy-dense food receipt, and consumption of an energy-dense diet compared with an isocaloric, low-energy-density diet leads to reduced dopamine receptors. Furthermore, phasic* dopamine signaling to palatable food receipt decreases after repeated intake of that food, which collectively suggests that frequent intake of an energy-dense food may reduce striatal response** to receipt of that food.

[* A phasic receptor is a sensory receptor that adapts rapidly to a stimulus.

** The dorsal striatum of the brain plays a role in food- consumption reward, and striatal dopamine receptors are known to be reduced in obese individuals.]

OBJECTIVE:

We tested the hypothesis that frequent ice cream consumption would be associated with reduced activation in reward-related brain regions (eg, striatum) in response to receipt of an ice cream-based milkshake and examined the influence of adipose tissue and the specificity of this relation.

DESIGN:

Healthy-weight adolescents (n = 151) underwent fMRI during receipt of a milkshake and during receipt of a tasteless solution. Percentage body fat, reported food intake, and food craving and liking were assessed.

RESULTS:

Milkshake receipt robustly activated the striatal regions, yet frequent ice cream consumption was associated with a reduced response to milkshake receipt in these reward-related brain regions. Percentage body fat, total energy intake, percentage of energy from fat and sugar, and intake of other energy-dense foods were not related to the neural response to milkshake receipt.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our results provide novel evidence that frequent consumption of ice cream, independent of body fat, is related to a reduction in reward-region responsivity in humans, paralleling the tolerance observed in drug addiction. Data also imply that intake of a particular energy-dense food results in attenuated reward-region responsivity specifically to that food, which suggests that sensory aspects of eating and reward learning may drive the specificity.

PMID:2233803, NIH. NLM, PubMed access to Medline bibliographic citations

CR Way additions in [brackets]

 

Here’s what the tabloids say about it:

Study: Ice cream as addictive as cocaine

But ice cream addiction has a vulnerable underbelly. Unlike  some  addictive foods, like doughnuts or cookies, the protein in ice cream blocks serotonin production – the satisfaction neurotransmitter that helps you stop eating. So some ice cream addicts tend to eat more and more ice cream to feel satisfied.

A first step to breaking ice cream or other food addiction is to learn how to increase serotonin with healthful CR Way foods. When you do that, letting something like ice cream go is much easier. The extra serotonin will help you maintain your resolve to stick with your diet. In fact, many who travel the CR Way to Healthful Weight Loss report that they no longer feel the craving for comfort foods.

The April Healthful Weight Loss Getting Started teleconferences begin tomorrow night, Friday, April 20. That call focuses on increasing serotonin and other brain chemicals that help you feel satisfied and happy. Day Two, Saturday,  Sunday, April 21, shows you how to manage your foods with the NutriBase CR Way Edition Software, so you don’t have to guess about how to follow a CR Way diet. No accident — the Software includes serotonin-producing recipes.

Day Three, Sunday, April 22, focuses on glucose control with a special emphasis on weight loss and increasing another hormone that helps people break food addictions.

To see the details of the conferences, go to the Teleconference Schedule forum thread.

If you are a CR Way to Healthful Weight Loss member, send a note to LongevityCenter@LivingTheCRWay.com from your e-mail address that’s associated with your membership, requesting the call-in details.

For more, see Making Healthful Foods Irresistible

Radioactive Drinking Water

This excellent in depth report from a local Texas television station is indicative of what is happening all  over the U.S. and in  many parts of the world. The good news is that an excellent distiller can remove  radioactive substances from drinking water.

We chose the Pure Water distiller because it is used by U.S. Embassies to protect the water supply from terrorist attacks with contaminants.

Find out more about Pure Water distillers

 

 

 

 

 

Paul

Mildly Elevated Glucose Impairs Cognition

This New York Times article reinforces the case for blood sugar control for improved cognition.

Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: December 31, 2008

Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate gyrus, an area of the brain within the hippocampus that helps form memories, a new study reports.

High glucose seemed to affect the dentate gyrus, part of the hippocampus

Researchers said the effects can be seen even when levels of blood sugar, or glucose, are only moderately elevated, a finding that may help explain normal age-related cognitive decline, since glucose regulation worsens with age.

 “If we conclude this is underlying normal age-related cognitive decline, then it affects all of us,” said lead investigator Dr. Scott Small, associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center. “The ability to regulate glucose starts deteriorating by the third or fourth decade of life,” he added.

“But the elevations in blood glucose seen in the new study are more subtle and would not be considered a disease state,” Dr. Small said.

“It’s part of the normal process of aging, much like wrinkling of skin,” he said. “It happens to all of us inexorably, and it worsens progressively across the life span.”

…

This article reports on the following research paper:

The brain in the age of old: the hippocampal formation is targeted differentially by diseases of late life.

Wu W, Brickman AM, Luchsinger J, Ferrazzano P, Pichiule P, Yoshita M, Brown T, DeCarli C, Barnes CA, Mayeux R, Vannucci SJ, Small SA.

Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, USA

Annals of Neurology. 2008 Dec;64(6):698-706.

A relevant excerpt from the full paper:

Showing that blood glucose selectively targets the dentate gyrus is not only our most conclusive finding, but it is the one most important for ‘normal’ aging—i.e., hippocampal dysfunction that occurs in the absence of disease states, such as AD, infarcts, and diabetes. Indeed, cognitive studies have established that normal age-related hippocampal dysfunction begins quite early, typically during the 4^th decade of life, before the onset of age-related diseases. Furthermore, age-related hippocampal dysfunction occurs in all non-human mammals, who do not typically develop AD, stroke, or diabetes. Consistent with this, our cross-species findings document that the detrimental affects of glucose on the hippocampus occurs independent of AD and infarcts, and our monkey findings in particular suggest that it occurs independent of overt diabetes.

Beyond the obvious conclusion that preventing late-life disease would benefit the aging hippocampal formation, our findings suggest that maintaining glucose control, even in the absence of disease, should be strongly recommended to preserve cognitive health. More specifically, our findings predict that any intervention that causes a decrease in blood glucose should increase dentate gyrus function and would therefore be cognitively beneficial. In fact, separate studies examining the effects of physical exercise support this prediction. Imaging studies in humans and mice have documented that among all hippocampal subregions physical exercise causes a differential improvement in dentate gyrus function. By improving glucose metabolism, physical exercise also reduces blood glucose. It is possible, therefore, that the cognitive enhancing effects of physical exercise are mediated by the beneficial effect of lower glucose on the dentate gyrus. Whether through physical exercise or other behavioral or pharmacological interventions, our results suggest that improving glucose metabolism is a clinically tractable approach for ameliorating the cognitive slide that occurs in all of us as we age.

Read the full paper.

The researchers suggest exercise as a way of lowering glucose levels, but in our opinion exercise should not be the be all and end all for maintaining healthy glucose. Nor is high glucose an inevitable disease of aging. Great glucose control is being achieved by livingTheCRWay.com members of all ages. Users of the CR Way to Great Glucose Control rely on food selections, meal timing, and tease meals to jump start insulin production – examples of the many proven techniques to lower glucose.

The CR Way: Better than a weight-loss drug

If you are weight challenged, the temptation to a take a drug to lose weight increases. However, the U.S. FDA warns that weight-loss medications should not be taken unless you are at medical risk because of your weight. The reason is straightforward: too many side effects, some of them serious.

 

Drugs currently approved for weight loss

Table 1
Generic Name	Food and Drug Administration Approval for Weight Loss	Drug Type	Common Side Effects
Phentermine	Yes; short term (up to 12 weeks) for adults	Appetite Suppressant	Increased blood pressure and heart rate, sleeplessness, nervousness
Diethylpropion	Yes; short term (up to 12 weeks) for adults	Appetite Suppressant	Dizziness, headache, sleeplessness, nervousness
Phendimetrazine	Yes; short term (up to 12 weeks) for adults	Appetite Suppressant	Sleeplessness, nervousness
Orlistat	Yes; long term (up to 1 year) for adults and children age 12 and older	Lipase Inhibitor	Gastrointestinal issues (cramping, diarrhea, oily spotting), rare cases of severe liver injury reported
Bupropion	No	Depression Treatment	Dry mouth, insomnia
Topiramate	No	Seizure Treatment	Numbness of skin, change in taste
Zonisamide	No	Seizure Treatment	Drowsiness, dry mouth, dizziness, headache, nausea
Metformin	No	Diabetes Treatment	Weakness, dizziness, metallic taste, nausea

 

Notice that many of the drugs are not approved for long-term use, In three instances, the user is supposed to take them only for a maximum of 12 weeks – not long enough for most people to achieve significant weight loss benefits. And what do people do when they stop taking it? Unless they change their eating habits, they will gain the weight right back, possibly ending up heavier than before taking the drug.

The CR Way to Happy Dieting is far more effective than diet drugs. This happiness diet plan changes the biochemistry of the brain’s weight loss control center – helping decrease the desire to eat unhealthful comfort foods. Healthful Weight Loss Members, mark your calendar and make sure to join us Friday, March 30, for the first of three Healthful Weight Loss teleconferences. This one is the most important. Follow the advice and you will increase forever your enjoyment of food and ability to lose weight and then maintain it.

Software for managing optimal organ function

The opportunity for extending life grows brighter. While advances in the CR Way approach to caloric restriction and stem cell activation offer a whole-body approach to slowing aging, strategies to optimize the function of the body’s vital organs are also part of the CR Way approach.

For example, consider last night’s teleconference, which launched the CR Way Healthy Kidney Project. To slow and possibly reverse the age-related decline of kidney structure and its vital filtration function, we discussed how pure water and additional fluid intake can play an important role. Here, use of the NutriBase CR Way edition software to manage fluid intake is very helpful.

The soon-to-be-released NutriBase CR Way Software Edition 10 will add a new Kidney Stone Profile, which helps users evaluate the content of their fluids to make sure that oxalates and other dietary intake that may affect kidney function and plaque build-up are not excessive. It will also emphasize more advanced nutrient monitoring. Going beyond simple evaluations, along with vitamin and mineral intake, we will encourage users to be on the cutting edge by using the customized analysis, offered by the software’s “My Fields” function.

Consider this diagram that shows the approximate oxalate content of 100 grams of sweet potatoes, 29 mg. It’s an example of how you can use the flexible “My Fields” function to enter oxalate content of your favorite CR Way  foods.

 

Addition of the oxalate content allows analysis of one’s daily oxalate intake. Dietary oxalates are a prime risk factor for kidney stones, which occur among 2 million Americans every year and are increasing rapidly worldwide. See this:

Kidney Stones a Global Picture of incidence, prevalence and risk.

Romero V, Akpinar H, Assimos DG.
Reviws in Urology 2010 Spring;12(2-3):e86-96.
PMID:  20811557

Oxalates may also be involved in plaque accumulation:  Atherosclerotic Oxalosis in Coronary Arteries

“There are many forms of oxalosis, with deposition of oxalate crystals in various organs, including arteries. In this retrospective study we describe deposition of calcium oxalate crystals within atherosclerotic plaques in coronary arteries of four patients, a site of oxalate deposition not previously reported. We suggest the phrase “atherosclerotic oxalosis” for this finding.

Knowing the oxalate content of your diet is a first step in oxalate management. Citrate and fluid intake should also be monitored. The NutriBase CR Way Edition 10 will make oxalate management easier and ultimately improve kidney function and possibly preventing deadly oxalate build up in other tissues. And if you are at risk for painful kidney stones – you will have a new tool that helps you avoid them.

What if You Have Cancer?

If you have cancer, we will try our best to help you – working with you and your doctors to provide dietary and lifestyle approaches that have helped others fight the disease. We will need to know the type of cancer you have and any special risk factors that may have shown up in your blood tests.

We can then devise a special CR Way protocol that is customized for what is going on in your body.

Following a CR Way type of diet has been known for years to decrease cancer risk and slow metastasis. Other studies show that keeping glucose low may thwart some forms of cancer (See High Glucose Increases Cancer Risk)

Still others have found that lowering protein levels can affect cancer outcomes.

The CR way combines all of these dietary protocols as well as Daily Limited Fasting to give cancer patients the best chance to combat their disease.

Going beyond diet, the CR Way help you identify  holistic support so you have the best chance for healthful recovery.

Currently, the Web site has many resources that you can put to use immediately:

Cancer Page and sections in LivingTheCRWay.com

Cancer

Fighting Cancer

         Fasting Strategies

Countering Risk Factors

·  Excess Protein

·  High Glucose

·  PSA – Risk and Rate-of-Aging Indicator

Carcinogens

Recipes

            Cancer-fighting recipes

Foods to Choose

            High Anthocyanin, Flavanol, and Proanthocyanidin Content

 

Cancer blogs

Exercise, cancer, and p53

CaReFOR – a Breast Cancer Research project

Centenarians – Low cancer, slow cell division, long life

Wine – Cancer, Heart Disease, and Longevity Effects

Cancer Prevention Forums

Even as we write this, the field is changing, and we think our current research focus on microRNAs with Drs. Stephen Spindler and Joseph Dhahbi holds great promise for extending life – with practical application to combating cancer.

In addition to dietary interventions, eliminating any contaminants that might affect your body’s ability to fight cancer and/or are cancer-causing themselves is critically important.

Please see Carcinogens under cancer and the latest content on Pure Water both essential to reducing cancer risk.

Pure Water!

Bromine and Fluorine: Thyroid Disruption

The CR Mardi Gras was so much fun! It’s wonderful to see CR Way practitioners who actually look younger than when we saw them almost a year ago. As usual, this CR Way party was filled with enriching conversations.

Certainly one of them was with our good friend, Anthony, who brought up concerns about bromine (bromide, bromate), displacing iodine in the thyroid and thus causing thyroid malfunction. Anthony reminded us that bromine is a halogen – the same family of elements as fluorine, chlorine, and iodine. Bromine is more reactive than iodine, so in the body, bromine might end up binding to cellular receptors usually used by iodine.

That would have profound health consequences because iodine plays leading roles in tissues and organs throughout the body. So, thank you, Anthony, for your logical and well supported ideas about bromine.

He also described bromine’s use in pesticides (which end up in vegetables) and breads (used as a “bread improver,” which gives the bread bigger volume and better shape – other bread improvers are available, e.g., ascorbic acid. Regulators have begun to consider bromine’s potential danger, and millers and bakers have begun switching even though it changes the timing of their processing). As we began to research it, we found bromine sources everywhere – plastics, medications, and polluted air for example. The good news is that most CR Way travelers do not eat some of the worst bromine-containing foods like soft drinks and baked goods with bromine added.

An EPA assessment of bromine in medicines indicates that it is well tolerated, but that is not reassuring if it has a long-term effect of occupying receptors that iodine “should” be using to benefit our good health. In fact, research has established that if your iodine intake is low to moderate (like most people), bromine will interfere with production of  thyroid hormones:

 

Effects of sodium bromide on the biosynthesis of thyroid hormones and brominated/iodinated thyronines.

Journal of Trace Elements and Electrolytes in Health and Disease. 1990 Mar;4(1):25-30.

Buchberger W, Holler W, Winsauer K.

Paracelsus-Institut, Chemische Abteilung, Bad Hall, Austria.

 

  Abstract

The influence of bromide on thyroid function was studied in iodine-deficient rats, fed on a diet containing 4-16 g/kg sodium bromide for 4 weeks.

Measurement of total and free thyroxine and thyroid-stimulating hormone in blood, as well as the thyroid hormones in the thyroid gland, revealed typical signs of hypothyroidism, which were significantly enhanced by bromide intake. Special attention was paid to the possible formation of bromo/iodosubstituted thyronines in the thyroid. These measurements were performed by high-performance liquid chromatography with off-line radioimmunoassay detection. Such thyroid hormone analogues could be detected in all groups of animals with additional bromide intake, but the amounts were found to be too low to compensate adequately for the reduced amounts of thyroid hormones. The results of this study also indicate that bromide toxicity is dependent upon the state of the iodine supply, which should be taken into account for evaluation of acceptable daily intake values for bromide.

PMID: 2135954, NIH, NLM, PubMed access to MEDLINE citations

 

On the way home from the CR Mardi Gras we also wondered about fluorine, which is even more reactive than bromine. Wouldn’t fluorine be as bad as or worse than bromine? Could fluoridated water contribute to an unhealthy thyroid and  result in a cascade of other problems? The research results were even worse than expected, for example:

Fluoride toxicity and status of serum thyroid hormones, brain histopathology, and learning memory in rats: a multigenerational assessment.

Biological Trace Elements Research. 2011 Dec; 144(1-3):1083-94.

Basha PM, Rai P, Begum S.

Department of Zoology, Bangalore University, Bangalore, 560 056, India.pmbashabub@rediffmail.com

Abstract

High-fluoride (100 and 200 ppm) water was administered to rats orally to study the fluoride-induced changes on the thyroid hormone status, the histopathology [the study of the microscopic anatomical changes in diseased tissue] of discrete brain regions, the acetylcholine esterase activity, and the learning and memory abilities in multigeneration rats. Significant

·         decrease in the serum-free thyroxine (FT4) and free triiodothyronine (FT3) levels and

·         decrease in acetylcholine esterase activity [disabling the cholinergic signaling, which is important in both peripheral nerves and the central nervous system: think memory!]

in fluoride-treated group were observed.

·         Presence of  [all of the following examples of brain deterioration and damage:]

o   eosinophilic [readily stained with acidic dyes such as eosin]  Purkinje cells [neurons of the brain’s cerebellar cortex],

o   degenerating neurons,

o   decreased granular cells, and

o   vacuolations [vacuoles – small cavities or spaces in tissue, especially in nervous tissue as the result of disease]

were noted in discrete brain regions of the fluoride-treated group.

 

In the T-maze experiments,

·         the fluoride-treated group showed poor acquisition and retention and higher latency when compared with the control.

·         The alterations were more profound in the third generation when compared with the first- and second-generation fluoride-treated group.

Changes in the thyroid hormone levels in the present study might have imbalanced the oxidant/antioxidant system, which further led to a reduction in learning memory ability. Hence, presence of generational or cumulative effects of fluoride on the development of the offspring when it is ingested continuously through multiple generations is evident from the present study.

PMID: 21755305, NIH,NLM, PubMed access to M EDLINE citations

This is serious. We will discuss this and the new How to Avoid Thyroid Disruptors page on tonight’s  (February 29, 2012) teleconference. The page and the teleconference are accessible to full members.

For a start, a good strategy may be to include an iodine source in your diet that approaches the RDA of 150 mcg. on most days of the week. Please note that excessive iodine intake can also artificially depress thyroid hormones. For this reason, daily intake of iodine may not be optimal. Any artificial reduction of thyroid function by bromine or fluorine interferes with the true assessment of whether your thyroid is healthfully lowered because of following the CR Way and may seriously damage your health.

Irresistible Calorie Restriction Diet Plans

Healthy Thyroid Function for Calorie Restrictors