Is there really an anticancer diet? Right now, the answer seems to be a definite
maybe. The problem is that cancer isn’t one disease; it’s many. Some
foods seem to protect against some specific cancers, but none seem to protect
against all. For example:
Fruits and vegetables: Plants contain some potential anticancer substances,
such as antioxidants (chemicals that prevent molecular fragments
called free radicals from hooking up to form cancer-causing
compounds); hormone-like compounds that displace natural and synthetic
estrogens; and sulfur compounds that interfere with biochemical
reactions leading to the birth and growth of cancer cells. (For more
about these protective substances in plant foods, see Chapter 12.)
Foods high in dietary fiber: Human beings can’t digest dietary fiber, but
friendly bacteria living in your gut can. Chomping away on the fiber, the
bacteria excrete fatty acids that appear to keep cells from turning cancerous.
In addition, fiber helps speed food through your body, reducing
the formation of carcinogenic compounds.
For more than 30 years, doctors have assumed that eating lots of
dietary fiber reduces the risk of colon cancer, but in 1999, data from the
long-running Nurses’ Health Study at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s
Hospital and Harvard’s School of Public Health threw this into question.
By 2005, several very large studies — one with more than 350,000
people! — confirmed that dietary fiber has no protective effect against
colon cancer. But even if dietary fiber doesn’t fight cancer, it does prevent
constipation. One out of two ain’t bad.
Low-fat foods: Dietary fat appears to increase the proliferation of various
types of body cells, a situation that may lead to the out-of-control
reproduction of cells known as cancer. But all fats may not be equally
guilty. In several studies, fat from meat seems linked to an increased risk
of colon cancer, but fat from dairy foods comes up clean. In the end, the
link between dietary fat and cancer remains up in the nutritional air . . .
so to speak.
The American Cancer Society Advisory Committee on Diet, Nutrition, and
Cancer Prevention issued a set of nutrition guidelines that shows how to use
food to reduce the risk of cancer. These are the American Cancer Society’s
recommendations:
Choose most of the foods you eat from plant sources. Eat five or more
servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Eat other foods from plant
sources, such as breads, cereals, grain products, rice, pasta, or beans,
several times a day.
Limit your intake of high-fat foods, particularly from animal sources.
Choose foods low in fat; limit consumption of meats, especially high-fat
meats.
Be physically active. Achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Be at least
moderately active for 30 minutes or more on most days of the week. Stay
within your healthy weight range.
If you drink alcohol, drink in moderation. Chapter 9 lays it out:
Moderate consumption means no more than one drink a day for a
woman, two for a man.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Examining Diets with Absolutely,
Some foods and some diet plans are so obviously good for your body that no
one questions their ability to keep you healthy or make you feel better when
you’re ill. For example, if you’ve ever had abdominal surgery, you know all
about liquid diets — the water-gelatin–clear broth regimen your doctor prescribed
right after the operation to enable you to take some nourishment by
mouth without upsetting your gut.
Or if you have type 1 diabetes (an inherited inability to produce the insulin
needed to process carbohydrates), you know that your ability to balance the
carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in your daily diet is important to stabilizing
your illness.
Other proven diet regimens include
The low-cholesterol, low-saturated-fat diet: The basic version, known as
the Stage 1 Diet, is used as a first step in lowering a person’s cholesterol
level. The diet limits cholesterol consumption to no more than 300 milligrams
a day and total fat intake to no more than 30 percent of your
total daily calories (see Chapter 16).
326 Part V: Food and Medicine
A nifty bonus to this diet is that it’s a relatively painless way of losing
weight.
The high-fiber diet: A high-fiber diet quickens the passage of food
through the digestive tract. This diet is used to prevent constipation. If
you have diverticula (outpouchings) in the wall of your colon, a highfiber
diet may reduce the possibility of an infection. It can also alleviate
the discomfort of irritable bowel syndrome (sometimes called a nervous
stomach). Extra bonus: A diet high in soluble fiber also lowers cholesterol
(see the preceding section, “Defining Food as Medicine”).
The sodium-restricted diet: Sodium is hydrophilic (hydro = water; philic =
loving). It increases the amount of water held in body tissues. A diet low in
salt often lowers water retention, which can be useful in treating high
blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and long-term liver disease.
By the way, not all the sodium in your diet comes from table salt. Check
out Chapter 16 for a list of the sodium compounds used in food.
The extra-potassium diet: People use this diet to counteract the loss
of potassium caused by diuretics (drugs that make you urinate more frequently
and more copiously, causing you to lose excess amounts of potassium
in urine). Some evidence also suggests that the high-potassium diet
may lower blood pressure a bit.
The low-protein diet: This diet is prescribed for people with chronic
liver or kidney disease or an inherited inability to metabolize amino
acids, the building blocks of proteins. The low-protein regimen reduces
the amount of protein waste products in body tissues, thus reducing the
possibility of tissue damage.
one questions their ability to keep you healthy or make you feel better when
you’re ill. For example, if you’ve ever had abdominal surgery, you know all
about liquid diets — the water-gelatin–clear broth regimen your doctor prescribed
right after the operation to enable you to take some nourishment by
mouth without upsetting your gut.
Or if you have type 1 diabetes (an inherited inability to produce the insulin
needed to process carbohydrates), you know that your ability to balance the
carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in your daily diet is important to stabilizing
your illness.
Other proven diet regimens include
The low-cholesterol, low-saturated-fat diet: The basic version, known as
the Stage 1 Diet, is used as a first step in lowering a person’s cholesterol
level. The diet limits cholesterol consumption to no more than 300 milligrams
a day and total fat intake to no more than 30 percent of your
total daily calories (see Chapter 16).
326 Part V: Food and Medicine
A nifty bonus to this diet is that it’s a relatively painless way of losing
weight.
The high-fiber diet: A high-fiber diet quickens the passage of food
through the digestive tract. This diet is used to prevent constipation. If
you have diverticula (outpouchings) in the wall of your colon, a highfiber
diet may reduce the possibility of an infection. It can also alleviate
the discomfort of irritable bowel syndrome (sometimes called a nervous
stomach). Extra bonus: A diet high in soluble fiber also lowers cholesterol
(see the preceding section, “Defining Food as Medicine”).
The sodium-restricted diet: Sodium is hydrophilic (hydro = water; philic =
loving). It increases the amount of water held in body tissues. A diet low in
salt often lowers water retention, which can be useful in treating high
blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and long-term liver disease.
By the way, not all the sodium in your diet comes from table salt. Check
out Chapter 16 for a list of the sodium compounds used in food.
The extra-potassium diet: People use this diet to counteract the loss
of potassium caused by diuretics (drugs that make you urinate more frequently
and more copiously, causing you to lose excess amounts of potassium
in urine). Some evidence also suggests that the high-potassium diet
may lower blood pressure a bit.
The low-protein diet: This diet is prescribed for people with chronic
liver or kidney disease or an inherited inability to metabolize amino
acids, the building blocks of proteins. The low-protein regimen reduces
the amount of protein waste products in body tissues, thus reducing the
possibility of tissue damage.
Protecting the Nutrients in Cooked Foods
Myth: All raw foods are more nutritious than cooked ones.
Fact: Some foods (such as meat, poultry, and eggs) are positively dangerous
when consumed raw (or undercooked). Other foods are less nutritious raw
because they contain substances that destroy or disarm other nutrients. For
example, raw dried beans contain enzyme inhibitors that interfere with the
work of enzymes that enable your body to digest protein. Heating disarms
the enzyme inhibitor.
But there’s no denying that some nutrients are lost when foods are cooked.
Simple strategies such as steaming food rather than boiling, or broiling rather
than frying, can significantly reduce the loss of nutrients when you’re cooking
food.
Maintaining minerals
Virtually all minerals are unaffected by heat. Cooked or raw, food has the
same amount of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, selenium,
copper, manganese, chromium, and sodium. The single exception to
this rule is potassium, which — although not affected by heat or air —
escapes from foods into the cooking liquid.
Those volatile vitamins
With the exception of vitamin K and the B vitamin niacin, which are very
stable in food, many vitamins are sensitive and are easily destroyed when
exposed to heat, air, water, or fats (cooking oils).
To avoid specific types of vitamin loss, keep in mind the following tips:
Vitamins A, E, and D: To reduce the loss of fat-soluble vitamins A and E,
cook with very little oil. For example, bake or broil vitamin A–rich liver
oil-free instead of frying. Ditto for vitamin D–rich fish.
B vitamins: Strategies that conserve protein in meat and poultry during
cooking also work to conserve the B vitamins that leak out into cooking
liquid or drippings: Use the cooking liquid in soup or sauce. Caution: Do
not shorten cooking times or use lower temperatures to lessen the loss
of heat-sensitive vitamin B12 from meat, fish, or poultry. These foods
and their drippings must be thoroughly cooked to ensure that they’re
safe to eat.
Do not rinse grains (rice) before cooking unless the package advises you
to do so (some rice does need to be rinsed). Washing rice once may take
away as much as 25 percent of the thiamin (vitamin B1). Toast or bake
cakes and breads only until the crust is light brown to preserve heatsensitive
Bs.
Vitamin C: To reduce the loss of water-soluble, oxygen-sensitive vitamin
C, cook fruits and vegetables in the least possible amount of water. For
example, when you cook 1 cup of cabbage in 4 cups of water, the leaves
lose as much as 90 percent of their vitamin C. Reverse the ratio — one
cup water to 4 cups cabbage — and you hold on to more than 50 percent
of the vitamin C.
Serve cooked vegetables quickly: After 24 hours in the fridge, vegetables
lose one-fourth of their vitamin C; after two days, nearly half.
Root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes) baked or boiled
whole, in their skins, retain about 65 percent of their vitamin C.
Fact: Some foods (such as meat, poultry, and eggs) are positively dangerous
when consumed raw (or undercooked). Other foods are less nutritious raw
because they contain substances that destroy or disarm other nutrients. For
example, raw dried beans contain enzyme inhibitors that interfere with the
work of enzymes that enable your body to digest protein. Heating disarms
the enzyme inhibitor.
But there’s no denying that some nutrients are lost when foods are cooked.
Simple strategies such as steaming food rather than boiling, or broiling rather
than frying, can significantly reduce the loss of nutrients when you’re cooking
food.
Maintaining minerals
Virtually all minerals are unaffected by heat. Cooked or raw, food has the
same amount of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, selenium,
copper, manganese, chromium, and sodium. The single exception to
this rule is potassium, which — although not affected by heat or air —
escapes from foods into the cooking liquid.
Those volatile vitamins
With the exception of vitamin K and the B vitamin niacin, which are very
stable in food, many vitamins are sensitive and are easily destroyed when
exposed to heat, air, water, or fats (cooking oils).
To avoid specific types of vitamin loss, keep in mind the following tips:
Vitamins A, E, and D: To reduce the loss of fat-soluble vitamins A and E,
cook with very little oil. For example, bake or broil vitamin A–rich liver
oil-free instead of frying. Ditto for vitamin D–rich fish.
B vitamins: Strategies that conserve protein in meat and poultry during
cooking also work to conserve the B vitamins that leak out into cooking
liquid or drippings: Use the cooking liquid in soup or sauce. Caution: Do
not shorten cooking times or use lower temperatures to lessen the loss
of heat-sensitive vitamin B12 from meat, fish, or poultry. These foods
and their drippings must be thoroughly cooked to ensure that they’re
safe to eat.
Do not rinse grains (rice) before cooking unless the package advises you
to do so (some rice does need to be rinsed). Washing rice once may take
away as much as 25 percent of the thiamin (vitamin B1). Toast or bake
cakes and breads only until the crust is light brown to preserve heatsensitive
Bs.
Vitamin C: To reduce the loss of water-soluble, oxygen-sensitive vitamin
C, cook fruits and vegetables in the least possible amount of water. For
example, when you cook 1 cup of cabbage in 4 cups of water, the leaves
lose as much as 90 percent of their vitamin C. Reverse the ratio — one
cup water to 4 cups cabbage — and you hold on to more than 50 percent
of the vitamin C.
Serve cooked vegetables quickly: After 24 hours in the fridge, vegetables
lose one-fourth of their vitamin C; after two days, nearly half.
Root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes) baked or boiled
whole, in their skins, retain about 65 percent of their vitamin C.
Refueling: The Cycle of
Your body does its best to create cycles of activity that parallel a 24-hour day.
Like sleep, hunger occurs at pretty regular intervals, although your lifestyle
may make it difficult to follow this natural pattern — even when your stomach
loudly announces it’s empty!
Recognizing hunger
The clearest signals that your body wants food, right now, are the physical
reactions from your stomach and your blood that let you know it’s definitely
time to put more food in your mouth and — eat!
Growling and rumbling: Your stomach speaks
An empty belly has no manners. If you do not fill it right away, your stomach
will issue an audible — sometimes embarrassing — call for food. This rumbling
signal is called a hunger pang.
Hunger pangs actually are plain old muscle contractions. When your stomach’s
full, these contractions and their continual waves down the entire
length of the intestine — known as peristalsis — move food through your
digestive tract (see Chapter 2 for more about digestion). When your stomach’s
empty, the contractions just squeeze air, and that makes noise.
This phenomenon first was observed in 1912 by an American physiologist
named Walter B. Cannon. (Cannon? Rumble? Could I make this up?) Cannon
convinced a fellow researcher to swallow a small balloon attached to a thin tube
connected to a pressure-sensitive machine. Then Cannon inflated and deflated
the balloon to simulate the sensation of a full or empty stomach. Measuring the
pressure and frequency of his volunteer’s stomach contractions, Cannon discovered
that the contractions were strongest and occurred most frequently
when the balloon was deflated and the stomach empty. Cannon drew the obvious
conclusion: When your stomach is empty, you feel hungry.
Getting that empty feeling
Every time you eat, your pancreas secretes insulin, a hormone that enables you
to move blood sugar (glucose) out of the blood and into cells where it’s needed
for various chores. Glucose is the basic fuel your body uses for energy. (See
Chapter 8.) As a result, the level of glucose circulating in your blood rises and
then declines naturally, producing a vague feeling of emptiness, and perhaps
weakness, that prompts you to eat. Most people experience the natural rise
and fall of glucose as a relatively smooth pattern that lasts about four hours.
Like sleep, hunger occurs at pretty regular intervals, although your lifestyle
may make it difficult to follow this natural pattern — even when your stomach
loudly announces it’s empty!
Recognizing hunger
The clearest signals that your body wants food, right now, are the physical
reactions from your stomach and your blood that let you know it’s definitely
time to put more food in your mouth and — eat!
Growling and rumbling: Your stomach speaks
An empty belly has no manners. If you do not fill it right away, your stomach
will issue an audible — sometimes embarrassing — call for food. This rumbling
signal is called a hunger pang.
Hunger pangs actually are plain old muscle contractions. When your stomach’s
full, these contractions and their continual waves down the entire
length of the intestine — known as peristalsis — move food through your
digestive tract (see Chapter 2 for more about digestion). When your stomach’s
empty, the contractions just squeeze air, and that makes noise.
This phenomenon first was observed in 1912 by an American physiologist
named Walter B. Cannon. (Cannon? Rumble? Could I make this up?) Cannon
convinced a fellow researcher to swallow a small balloon attached to a thin tube
connected to a pressure-sensitive machine. Then Cannon inflated and deflated
the balloon to simulate the sensation of a full or empty stomach. Measuring the
pressure and frequency of his volunteer’s stomach contractions, Cannon discovered
that the contractions were strongest and occurred most frequently
when the balloon was deflated and the stomach empty. Cannon drew the obvious
conclusion: When your stomach is empty, you feel hungry.
Getting that empty feeling
Every time you eat, your pancreas secretes insulin, a hormone that enables you
to move blood sugar (glucose) out of the blood and into cells where it’s needed
for various chores. Glucose is the basic fuel your body uses for energy. (See
Chapter 8.) As a result, the level of glucose circulating in your blood rises and
then declines naturally, producing a vague feeling of emptiness, and perhaps
weakness, that prompts you to eat. Most people experience the natural rise
and fall of glucose as a relatively smooth pattern that lasts about four hours.
Why Fast Weight Loss Leads to Failure
If you’ve tried “quick weight loss” diets, you know the truth: when you lose
pounds quickly, you put them back on just as fast. Worse yet, when you end
a diet, you usually gain back more weight than you lost. That’s because your
body reacts to an intense period of semistarvation by making you crave large
amounts of “forbidden” high-calorie, high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.
Thousands of years of evolution have taught your body that starvation is
dangerous. Because of this, you react to a restricted diet in the same way as
your Neanderthal ancestors did: you grow ravenously hungry, because your
body wants you to store extra fat. Worse, your body goes into survival mode,
slowing your metabolism, hoarding fat, and even putting on water weight to
make weight loss harder. Your body doesn’t know that your food shortage is
artificial; it thinks there’s a real danger that you’ll starve to death, and it pulls
out all the stops in an effort to save you.
Even when you “wise up” and stop dieting, it takes time to reset your
metabolism so you can burn calories more easily. Chronic dieting sends your
body the message “Conserve body fat at all costs!” To reverse this process, you
need to convince your body that the danger of starvation is over—and that
won’t happen overnight.
In addition, you need to allow time for both your body and your mind to
recover from the stress of dieting. New research shows that stress itself can
put on pounds, which is another reason the ordeal of dieting usually results,
ironically, in added weight and inches. To understand this pattern, let’s look
at how stress changes your body in ways that promote weight gain—and why
it takes time to reverse this process.
pounds quickly, you put them back on just as fast. Worse yet, when you end
a diet, you usually gain back more weight than you lost. That’s because your
body reacts to an intense period of semistarvation by making you crave large
amounts of “forbidden” high-calorie, high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.
Thousands of years of evolution have taught your body that starvation is
dangerous. Because of this, you react to a restricted diet in the same way as
your Neanderthal ancestors did: you grow ravenously hungry, because your
body wants you to store extra fat. Worse, your body goes into survival mode,
slowing your metabolism, hoarding fat, and even putting on water weight to
make weight loss harder. Your body doesn’t know that your food shortage is
artificial; it thinks there’s a real danger that you’ll starve to death, and it pulls
out all the stops in an effort to save you.
Even when you “wise up” and stop dieting, it takes time to reset your
metabolism so you can burn calories more easily. Chronic dieting sends your
body the message “Conserve body fat at all costs!” To reverse this process, you
need to convince your body that the danger of starvation is over—and that
won’t happen overnight.
In addition, you need to allow time for both your body and your mind to
recover from the stress of dieting. New research shows that stress itself can
put on pounds, which is another reason the ordeal of dieting usually results,
ironically, in added weight and inches. To understand this pattern, let’s look
at how stress changes your body in ways that promote weight gain—and why
it takes time to reverse this process.
Truth in Dieting Analysis
1. Take several sheets of paper. At the top of each sheet, list the name of
a diet you’ve tried. This should include any plan that imposes limits on
what you can eat. (For instance, Dean Ornish’s book Eat More, Weigh
Less contains a section on what you should and shouldn’t eat, making
it a diet plan.) On additional sheets of paper, list diet pills or diet foods
you’ve used.
2. On each sheet, list your recollections of how you felt before beginning
the diet or using the diet product. Did you buy a book promoting the
diet? Did the book list many impressive-sounding scientific reasons why
the diet would work? (For instance, did it promise that the combination
of foods it allowed contained special chemicals that would “melt off”
your fat or say that you would lose weight by putting your body in a
state of ketosis?) Did the pills or diet foods promise miracle results in a
convincing way?
3. Describe how you felt when you began each diet or started using each
diet product. Were you hopeful, excited, optimistic?
4. Describe what happened during the first few weeks that you dieted or
used the diet product. Did you lose weight quickly? Did you enjoy the
compliments of friends and family? Did you believe that the diet would
solve your weight problems—perhaps all of your problems—for good?
5. Describe what happened as you continued to diet or use the diet pills or
foods. Did the diet or diet product continue to work, and did you lose
the weight you had hoped to lose and keep it off? Or did you regain the
weight and possibly even more? If so, how did you feel, physically and
emotionally, when your diet failed?
6. Now look at your list and make several estimates. First, calculate how
much time you invested in each diet or diet product and how much
weight you lost over the long term as a result. Second, calculate the
amount of money you spent on each diet or diet product. In addition,
note the emotional effects of each diet you tried.
If you’re a typical “serial dieter,” your results will show that you’ve invested
a tremendous amount of time and hundreds if not thousands of dollars for
no long-term benefit at all. In fact you probably weigh more now than you
did when you first decided to lose weight! In addition, your list will reveal the high emotional price of the diets that failed you. Typical postdiet emotions
that dieters list in point 5 are “sadness,” “tiredness,” “a sense of failure,”
“a feeling of hopelessness,” and “self-loathing”—a poor reward for weeks or
months of deprivation.
What does this mean? It means that unnatural cultural expectations have
suckered you into becoming a perpetual dieter and that the diet industry is
benefiting by taking you for hundreds (or possibly thousands) of dollars—
while you wind up feeling overweight, ugly, and defeated. You’re a victim of a
one-two whammy: a society that holds up impossible images of beauty and a
profit-crazed industry that uses those images to sell you modern-day snake oil.
a diet you’ve tried. This should include any plan that imposes limits on
what you can eat. (For instance, Dean Ornish’s book Eat More, Weigh
Less contains a section on what you should and shouldn’t eat, making
it a diet plan.) On additional sheets of paper, list diet pills or diet foods
you’ve used.
2. On each sheet, list your recollections of how you felt before beginning
the diet or using the diet product. Did you buy a book promoting the
diet? Did the book list many impressive-sounding scientific reasons why
the diet would work? (For instance, did it promise that the combination
of foods it allowed contained special chemicals that would “melt off”
your fat or say that you would lose weight by putting your body in a
state of ketosis?) Did the pills or diet foods promise miracle results in a
convincing way?
3. Describe how you felt when you began each diet or started using each
diet product. Were you hopeful, excited, optimistic?
4. Describe what happened during the first few weeks that you dieted or
used the diet product. Did you lose weight quickly? Did you enjoy the
compliments of friends and family? Did you believe that the diet would
solve your weight problems—perhaps all of your problems—for good?
5. Describe what happened as you continued to diet or use the diet pills or
foods. Did the diet or diet product continue to work, and did you lose
the weight you had hoped to lose and keep it off? Or did you regain the
weight and possibly even more? If so, how did you feel, physically and
emotionally, when your diet failed?
6. Now look at your list and make several estimates. First, calculate how
much time you invested in each diet or diet product and how much
weight you lost over the long term as a result. Second, calculate the
amount of money you spent on each diet or diet product. In addition,
note the emotional effects of each diet you tried.
If you’re a typical “serial dieter,” your results will show that you’ve invested
a tremendous amount of time and hundreds if not thousands of dollars for
no long-term benefit at all. In fact you probably weigh more now than you
did when you first decided to lose weight! In addition, your list will reveal the high emotional price of the diets that failed you. Typical postdiet emotions
that dieters list in point 5 are “sadness,” “tiredness,” “a sense of failure,”
“a feeling of hopelessness,” and “self-loathing”—a poor reward for weeks or
months of deprivation.
What does this mean? It means that unnatural cultural expectations have
suckered you into becoming a perpetual dieter and that the diet industry is
benefiting by taking you for hundreds (or possibly thousands) of dollars—
while you wind up feeling overweight, ugly, and defeated. You’re a victim of a
one-two whammy: a society that holds up impossible images of beauty and a
profit-crazed industry that uses those images to sell you modern-day snake oil.
Using supplements as insurance
Healthy people who eat a nutritious diet still may want to use supplements tomake sure they’re getting adequate nutrition. Plenty of recent research supports
their choice.
Protecting against disease
Taking supplements may reduce the likelihood of some types of cancer and
other diseases. After analyzing data from a survey of 871 men and women, epidemiologists
at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center found that people
taking a daily multivitamin for more than ten years were 50 percent less likely
to develop colon cancer. In addition, selenium supplements seem to reduce
the risk of prostate cancer, and vitamin C seems to lower the risk of cataracts.
Supplementing aging appetites
As you grow older, your appetite may decline and your sense of taste and
smell may falter. If food no longer tastes as good as it once did, if you have to
eat alone all the time and don’t enjoy cooking for one, or if dentures make
chewing difficult, you may not be taking in all the foods that you need to get
the nutrients you require. Dietary supplements to the rescue!
If you’re so rushed that you literally never get to eat a full, balanced meal,
you may benefit from supplements regardless of your age.
Meeting a woman’s special needs
And what about women? At various stages of their reproductive lives, they,
too, benefit from supplements-as-insurance:
before menopause: Women, who lose iron each month through menstrual
bleeding, rarely get sufficient amounts of iron from a typical American diet
providing fewer than 2,000 calories a day. For them, and for women who
are often on a diet to lose weight, iron supplements may be the only practical
answer.
Iron is a mineral element, so it may be called “iron” or “elemental iron”
on the label. Iron pills contain a compound of elemental iron (“ferrous”
or “ferric,” from ferrum, the Latin word for iron), plus an ingredient such
as a sulfur derivative or lactic acid to enable your body to use the iron.
On the label, the combination reads “ferrous sulfate” or “ferrous lactate.”
Different iron compounds dissolve at different rates in your stomach,yielding different amounts of elemental iron, so supplement labels usually
list the iron this way: Ferrous sulfate 325 mg/Elemental iron 65 mg.
Translation? This pill has 325 milligrams of ferrous sulfate, yielding 65
milligrams plain old iron. Sometimes the label omits the first part and
simply says: Iron 65 mg.
If your doctor says, “Take one 325-milligram pill a day,” she means 325
milligrams iron compound, not plain elemental iron.
During pregnancy and lactation: Women who are pregnant or nursing
often need supplements to provide the nutrients they need to build new
maternal and fetal tissue or to produce nutritious breast milk. In addition,
supplements of the B vitamin folate now are known to decrease a
woman’s risk of giving birth to a child with a neural tube defect (a defect
of the spinal cord and column).
Never self-prescribe supplements while you’re pregnant. Large amounts
of some nutrients may actually be hazardous for your baby. For example,
taking megadoses of vitamin A while you’re pregnant can increase
the risk of birth defects.
Through adulthood: True, women older than 19 can get the calcium
they require (1,000 milligrams/day) from four 8-ounce glasses of nonfat
skim milk a day, three 8-ounce containers of yogurt made with nonfat
milk, 22 ounces of canned salmon (with the soft edible bones; no, you
definitely should not eat the hard bones in fresh salmon!), or any combination
of the above. However, expecting women to do this nutritional
balancing act every single day may be unrealistic. The simple alternative
is calcium supplements.
their choice.
Protecting against disease
Taking supplements may reduce the likelihood of some types of cancer and
other diseases. After analyzing data from a survey of 871 men and women, epidemiologists
at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center found that people
taking a daily multivitamin for more than ten years were 50 percent less likely
to develop colon cancer. In addition, selenium supplements seem to reduce
the risk of prostate cancer, and vitamin C seems to lower the risk of cataracts.
Supplementing aging appetites
As you grow older, your appetite may decline and your sense of taste and
smell may falter. If food no longer tastes as good as it once did, if you have to
eat alone all the time and don’t enjoy cooking for one, or if dentures make
chewing difficult, you may not be taking in all the foods that you need to get
the nutrients you require. Dietary supplements to the rescue!
If you’re so rushed that you literally never get to eat a full, balanced meal,
you may benefit from supplements regardless of your age.
Meeting a woman’s special needs
And what about women? At various stages of their reproductive lives, they,
too, benefit from supplements-as-insurance:
before menopause: Women, who lose iron each month through menstrual
bleeding, rarely get sufficient amounts of iron from a typical American diet
providing fewer than 2,000 calories a day. For them, and for women who
are often on a diet to lose weight, iron supplements may be the only practical
answer.
Iron is a mineral element, so it may be called “iron” or “elemental iron”
on the label. Iron pills contain a compound of elemental iron (“ferrous”
or “ferric,” from ferrum, the Latin word for iron), plus an ingredient such
as a sulfur derivative or lactic acid to enable your body to use the iron.
On the label, the combination reads “ferrous sulfate” or “ferrous lactate.”
Different iron compounds dissolve at different rates in your stomach,yielding different amounts of elemental iron, so supplement labels usually
list the iron this way: Ferrous sulfate 325 mg/Elemental iron 65 mg.
Translation? This pill has 325 milligrams of ferrous sulfate, yielding 65
milligrams plain old iron. Sometimes the label omits the first part and
simply says: Iron 65 mg.
If your doctor says, “Take one 325-milligram pill a day,” she means 325
milligrams iron compound, not plain elemental iron.
During pregnancy and lactation: Women who are pregnant or nursing
often need supplements to provide the nutrients they need to build new
maternal and fetal tissue or to produce nutritious breast milk. In addition,
supplements of the B vitamin folate now are known to decrease a
woman’s risk of giving birth to a child with a neural tube defect (a defect
of the spinal cord and column).
Never self-prescribe supplements while you’re pregnant. Large amounts
of some nutrients may actually be hazardous for your baby. For example,
taking megadoses of vitamin A while you’re pregnant can increase
the risk of birth defects.
Through adulthood: True, women older than 19 can get the calcium
they require (1,000 milligrams/day) from four 8-ounce glasses of nonfat
skim milk a day, three 8-ounce containers of yogurt made with nonfat
milk, 22 ounces of canned salmon (with the soft edible bones; no, you
definitely should not eat the hard bones in fresh salmon!), or any combination
of the above. However, expecting women to do this nutritional
balancing act every single day may be unrealistic. The simple alternative
is calcium supplements.
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