10 Cancer-causing foods

Many common food items have been scientifically shown to increase cancer risk. Here are the 10 of the most unhealthy, cancer-causing foods:

1) Processed meats. Most processed meat products, including lunch meats, bacon, sausage and hot dogs, contain chemical preservatives such as sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate that make them appear fresh and appealing, but that can also cause cancer. Both sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate have been linked to significantly increasing the risk of colon and other forms of cancer, so be sure to choose only uncured meat products made without nitrates, and preferably from grass-fed sources.

2) Microwave popcorn. The U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes the perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in microwave popcorn bag linings as “likely” carcinogenic, and several independent studies have linked this chemical to causing tumors. Similarly, the diacetyl chemical used in the popcorn itself is linked to causing both lung damage and cancer.

3) Soda pop. Loaded with sugar, food chemicals, and colorings, soda pop acidifies the body and literally feeds cancer cells. Common soda pop chemicals like caramel color and its derivative 4-methylimidazole (4-MI) have also specifically been linked to causing cancer.

4) ‘Diet’ foods, beverages. Research studies found that aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, causes a range of illnesses including birth defects and cancer. Sucralose (Splenda), saccharin and various other artificial sweeteners have also been linked to causing cancer.

5) Refined ‘white’ flours. A study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Mile Markers, and Prevention found that regular consumption of refined carbohydrates was linked to a 220 percent increase in breast cancer among women. High-glycemic foods in general have also been shown to rapidly raise blood sugar levels in the body, which directly feeds cancer cell growth and spread.

6) Refined sugars. Fructose-rich sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) tend to rapidly spike insulin levels and feed the growth of cancer cells. Since cookies, cakes, pies, sodas, juices, sauces, cereals and many other processed food items are loaded with HFCS and other refined sugars, this helps explain why cancer rates are on the rise these days.

7) Apples, grapes, and other ‘dirty’ fruits. It looks a bit surprising. Many think that they are healthy. But unless these fruits are organic or verified to be pesticide-free, they could be a major cancer risk. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that up to 98 percent of all conventional produce, and particularly the type found on its “dirty” fruits list, is contaminated with cancer-causing pesticides.

8) Farmed salmon. Farmed salmon is another high-risk cancer food, according to Dr. David Carpenter, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany. It not only lacks vitamin D, but it is often contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), flame retardants, pesticides and antibiotics.

9) Hydrogenated oils. Hydrogenated oils alter the structure and flexibility of cell membranes throughout the body, which can lead to a host of debilitating diseases such as cancer.

10) Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). Both GMOs and the chemicals used to grow them have been shown to cause rapid tumor growth.

Why do We Suffer from Cancer?

Cancer rates are skyrocketing. Currently, more than one-third of us will develop cancer in our lifetime while one-fourth will die from the disease. There are many reasons for this. However, some cancers are due to avoidable exposures to industrial carcinogens in the food we eat and the cosmetics and household products we use.

However, current product labeling provides no warning for cancer and other chronic health risks. Food is labeled for cholesterol, but not for carcinogens. Cosmetics are labeled for major ingredients, but not for those that form carcinogens or contain carcinogenic contaminants. Except for pesticides, household products contain no information on their ingredients.

In the case of food we eat, for example, Beef Frankfurters contain Unlabeled Toxic Ingredients such as
BENZENE HEXACHLORIDE, Carcinogenic.
DACTHAL, Carcinogenic (can be contaminated with dioxin); irritant; strong sensitizer.
DIELDRIN, Carcinogenic; xenoestrogen.
DDT, Carcinogenic; xenoestrogen.
HEPTACHLOR, Carcinogenic; neurotoxic; reproductive toxin; xenoestrogen.
HEXACHLOROBENZENE, Carcinogenic; neurotoxic; teratogenic.
LINDANE, Carcinogenic; neurotoxic; damage to blood forming cells.
HORMONES: Carcinogenic and feminizing.
ANTIBIOTICS: Some are carcinogenic, causing allergies and drug resistance.
Labeled Ingredient
NITRITE, Interacts with meat amines to form carcinogenic nitrosamines which are a major risk factor for childhood cancers.

Whole Milk contains Unlabeled Toxic Ingredients:
DDT, Carcinogenic; xenoestrogen.
DIELDRIN, Carcinogenic; xenoestrogen.
HEPTACHLOR, Carcinogenic; neurotoxic; reproductive toxin; xenoestrogen.
HEXACHLOROBENZENE, Carcinogenic; neurotoxic; reproductive toxin.
ANTIBIOTICS: Some are carcinogenic, cause allergies and drug resistance.
RECOMBINANT BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE and IGF-1: Also, risk factor for breast, colon and prostate cancers.

Exercise for building muscle or losing weight - Squats

If you are serious about getting in shape and/or losing weight, one of the best exercises is squats.

Squats work practically every single muscle in your body.  And so more calories will be burned during and after exercise. A particular good one is Y-Squat.

The ways to do it are:

• Hold your hands over your head in a “Y” formation at all times.

• Keep your upper back and shoulders tensed throughout the exercise.

• Stand with your feet just greater than shoulder-width apart.

• Start the movement at the hip joint. Push your hips backward and “sit back into a chair”. Make your hips go back as far as possible.

• Squat as deep as possible, but keep your low back tensed in a neutral position.

• Don’t let your lower back become rounded.

• Push with your glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps to return to the start position.

Regular squatting improved knee stability, strengthened connective tissue, and made connective tissue tighter and stronger than those who don’t squat. More recently, physiologists at the Mayo Clinic have found that squats actually place less stress on your knees than leg extensions.

In summary, the benefits of Squats include:

1.     Maintain Mobility and Flexibility. Squats build muscles and promote muscle growth across the rest of your body. Nearly 90% of athletic injuries involve the weaker stabilizer muscles, ligaments, and connective tissue and so squats can reduce the risk of injury. And researchers at Ball State University say that leg strength is critical for maintaining mobility as we age.

2.     Increase Functional Strength and Improve Balance. Squats force your body’s nerve networks to work your muscles more efficiently. Also, as we age, nerve endings and connective tissue degenerate naturally. Squats have been proven to improve the communication between your brain and your body’s major muscle groups, and improve muscle memory. This carries into your later years and goes a long way in preventing falls and broken hips.

3.   Increase Sprint Times. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research published a study in 2002 stating that squatting allowed participants to increase their sprint times by a significant degree.

4.  Sports and Performance. Not only will it make you jump higher and sprint faster, it will make you stronger and more explosive no matter what your particular sport is

5.    Entire Body Workout. No other exercise that works more muscles than Squats.

6.    Increase Upper Body Strength. Growth Hormones and Testosterone are vital for muscle growth and squats stimulate your body to produce these more than any other exercise. Due to the large amounts of growth hormone and testosterone released by squatting, your upper body will grow larger and stronger than it would had you not regularly implemented squats into your workouts.

7.    Tone and Tighten Your Butt and Give You Great Abs.    

Psoralea Corylifolia - Valuable for men

Psoralea Corylifolia is valued in Chinese herbal medicine as a tonic remedy and is used to improve general vitality. It is also of value in the treatment of skin disorders, including vitiligo. However, some caution should be employed when applying the herb externally.

 

This one-seeded fruit is highly regarded as an aphrodisiac and tonic to the genital organs. The seed is anthelmintic, antibacterial, aphrodisiac, astringent, cardiac, cytotoxic, deobstruent, diaphoretic, diuretic, stimulant, stomachic and tonic. It is used in the treatment of febrile diseases, premature ejaculation, impotence, lower back pains, frequent urination, incontinence, bed wetting etc.

 

The seed and fruit contain psoralen. The root is used for treating dental caries. The plant yields a useful medicinal oleoresin, it treats kidney disorders, impotence, lumbago. It is also used externally to treat various skin ailments including leprosy, leucoderma and hair loss. The antibacterial action of the fruit inhibits the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is the third most popular spice, only behind pepper and mustard. It is an aromatic spice made from the peeled, dried, and rolled bark of a Southeast Asian tree.  China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam together produce about 98% of the world’s cinnamon.

Most important, it is full of nutrients—calcium, iron, potassium, zinc, vitamins A, B1, B2, B3 and C as well as others. Consuming cinnamon is beneficial because it can:

- Relieve diarrhea and nausea

- Counteract congestion

- Aid circulation

- Warm the body

- Fight fungal infection

- Lower blood sugar

- Fight bad breath

- Effective for menstrual pain and infertility

- Reduce pain linked to arthritis

- Useful for weight loss, yeast infection and uterine hemorrhaging

 

However, for women, it should not be used in large amounts during pregnancy.

Do you feel sleepy in the afternoon after meals?

Around 3-4 pm each day in the office, do you find yourself having difficulty in keeping yourself awake? You feel sleepy and just could not continue with your work. Why we experience this way is because excessive energy is needed to digest the food we ate for lunch.

Different foods are digested differently. Starchy foods require alkaline digestive medium and proteins foods like meat require an acidic medium for digestion. But when we mix both together, for example, we eat meat and potatoes together, or fish with rice, milk with cereal, the medium neutralizes with each other. Our digestion is impaired or completely arrested. This is very destructive to our body as more energy is required to digest the same amount of food.

During 3-4 pm, as our organs have already worked hard for half a day, but we still need extra energy to digest our lunch, our body would feel tired and naturally needs to take a rest from it.

In order not to let the foods rob us of excessive energy, we need to eat the right food combination and not mixing the wrong foods together, for example, not eat starchy foods and meat in the same meal. In this way, we shall feel much more healthy than ever before.

Chocolate improves memory in elderly

Chocolate contains cacao , which is packed with healthy chemicals like flavonoids and theobromine. Previous studies found that cocoa (which is cacao in its roasted, ground form) flavanols help improve blood circulation and prevent heart disease. Now, it was also found to have a positive effect on the memory of elderly.

In a small study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, 37 respondents with ages from 50 to 69 were divided into two groups. One group was asked to drink a mixture high in cocoa flavanols for three months while the other group drank a low-flavanol mixture for the same period. 

After three months, those who drank high-flavanol mixture performed better on a memory test than respondents who drank a low one. On average, the high-flavanol drinkers performed about 25 percent better than the low-flavanol group.

Besides improvements on the memory test — a pattern recognition test involving the kind of skill used in remembering where you parked the car or recalling the face of someone you just met — researchers found increased function in an area of hippocampus of the brain called the dentate gyrus, which has been related to age-related memory change.

However, there was no increased activity in another hippocampal region, the entorhinal cortex, which is impaired early in Alzheimer’s disease. This reinforces the idea that age-related memory decline is different and suggests that flavanols might not help Alzheimer’s, even though they might delay normal memory loss.

In addition, “you would have to eat a large amount of chocolate,” along with its fat and calories, said Hagen Schroeter, director of fundamental health and nutrition research for Mars Inc.