Nutrition

ScienceDaily – Studies in recent years have claimed multiple health benefits of pomegranate juice, including that it is a good source of antioxidants and lowers both cholesterol and blood pressure, especially in diabetic and hypertensive patients. A preliminary study now suggests that it can ward off a number of complications in kidney disease patients on dialysis, including the high morbidity rate due to infections and cardiovascular events, according to a paper being presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition in Denver, CO.

Batya Kristal, MD, FASN (Western Galilee Hospital, in Nahariya, Ruth & Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel), PhD candidate, Lilach Shema, and colleagues studied 101 dialysis patients who received either pomegranate juice or another placebo drink at the beginning of each dialysis session, three times a week for one year.

Laboratory tests showed that patients who drank pomegranate juice experienced reduced inflammation and the damage of oxidative stress caused by free radicals, was minimized. Furthermore, pomegranate juice drinkers were less likely to be hospitalized due to infections. These findings support other studies that suggest pomegranate juice has potent antioxidant properties.

Recent analyses of data not included in this abstract, revealed that those who drank pomegranate juice also showed an improvement in cardiovascular risk factors, such as reduced blood pressure, improvement in lipid profile and fewer cardiovascular events, suggesting that they had better heart health. These results are in agreement with other studied populations and particularly important for hemodialysis patients, because most kidney disease patients die either from cardiovascular-related causes or infections.

The authors say their findings suggest that drinking a controlled amount of pomegranate juice with a safe and monitored content of potassium may help reduce the complications that often occur in dialysis patients. It is important to consider the risk involved in potassium overload, especially in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with dietary potassium restriction.

“Considering the expected epidemic of CKD in the next decade, further clinical trials using pomegranate juice aimed at reducing the high cardiovascular morbidity of CKD patients and their deterioration to end-stage renal disease should be conducted,” said Dr. Kristal.

Study co-authors include Ronit Geron, MD, Galina Shapiro, Shifra Sela, PhD (Western Galilee Hospital), and Liora Ore (University of Haifa).

The study was supported by the Chief Scientist Office of the Ministry of Health, Israel; Jess & Midred Fisher Family Cardiology Research Fund, and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research, Technion, Israel.

“One Year of Pomegranate Juice Consumption Decreases Oxidative Stress, Inflammation and Incidence of Infections in Hemodialysis Patients,” [TH-FC059] will be presented as an oral presentation on November 18, 2010 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO.

Editor’s Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Society of Nephrology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

A look at how microwaved food can negatively affect your health

by Catherine Ebeling – RN, BSN & Mike Geary – Certified Nutrition Specialist
co-authors – The Fat Burning Kitchen
Do you know what (besides a television) is in almost every home in America? It’s a microwave oven. Because microwave ovens are quick and easy and don’t take up much space, they are used for meal preparation in the home, at the office, and even restaurants. Even your favorite healthy restaurant may depend on these electrical devices to quickly heat up or cook foods. So, the question here is —

Are microwave ovens safe, and is it ok to eat the food cooked in them?

Before we look at the science of how microwaved food can affect your blood chemistry and negatively affect your health, let’s look at a bigger picture, common-sense thought process about this…

If you think about it from this perspective, the human digestive system evolved over tens of thousands of years to digest food that was either raw or cooked in water or by heat.  However, food cooked via microwaves is a totally alien and unknown cooking method to the human digestive system.

It’s just common sense that such a radically different cooking method will alter the chemistry of the food to negatively impact our health.

Now onto a little more science…

Let’s take a look at how microwaves ovens work

Microwaves are a part of the whole electromagnetic spectrum of energy that includes light waves and radio waves. They travel at the speed of light–which is about 186,282 miles per second. So how does that oven heat up the food so fast?

Inside the microwave oven, there is a “magnetron” which is a tube full of electrons. The electrons in the microwave oven react with magnetic and electronic energy and become micro wavelengths. This is the radiation that interacts with the molecules in food.

Food molecules have a positive and negative end, kind of like the way a magnet has a north and a south polarity. The electrons from the magnetron produce wavelengths that react with the positive and negative parts of the food molecules. The food molecules then start vibrating, up to several million times a second. This molecular “vibration” is what creates the heat in the food.

This agitiation deforms the molecules in food and creates new unnatural radiolytic compounds previously unknown to nature. These strange foreign compounds in microwaved food have been shown to damage the blood, the digestive system, and our immune systems.

Microwave ovens have been actually been around for about 40 or so years, but so far, only a couple of in-depth scientific studies have been done on them.

Research showing negative health impacts of eating microwaved food

Extensive research, though, was conducted in both Switzerland and Russia on microwaved foods and their effects on the human body. Both studies concluded that microwaving foods significantly deteriorated the nutrient value of the food, distorted protein molecules in the food, and created new, radically unnatural compounds. Most alarming, however, was that the subjects’ health deteriorated from eating the microwaved foods.

Their findings included:

• Blood hemoglobin (the extremely important oxygen-carrying component of the blood) decreased significantly after eating microwaved foods.
• White blood cell count rose, (as it does in response to an infection).
• LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) increased, and HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) decreased.
• Carcinogenic (cancer-causing) agents in foods increased.
• Higher incidence of digestive system cancers.

The Russian scientists found the microwave oven significantly scary enough to actually ban its use–up until recently.

When food is cooked in a microwave oven, it has:

• Significantly less B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, essential minerals and fats.
• Broken down and de-natured proteins.
• Loss of vital enzymes and phytochemicals.

And here is a really interesting study—done on grain germination:

The grain watered with microwaved (and cooled) water would not not even germinate or grow! It’s pretty obvious that microwaving changed the water chemically and destroyed its ability to nourish a plant.

Ok, so maybe it’s ok to just heat leftovers in the microwave oven once in a while?

NO! Actually, food heated in a microwave is heated unevenly creating super-heated spots and cool spots. Those cool spots may actually harbor bacterial growth such as salmonella, and you end up with food poisoning.

In addition, when you use plastic containers or plastic wrap in contact with your food, you end up getting all sorts of nasty chemicals like di(ethylhexyl)adepate, or DEHA, (a carcinogen), Bisphenol-A or BPA (a cancer-causing agent in plastics) and xenoestrogens (synthetic estrogens) in your food!

In one recent study, it was found that carcinogenic ingredients in plastic wrap were 10,000 times the FDA limit for safety!

Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to cause reproductive problems and erectile dysfunction, and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.

Xenoestrogens are really nasty synthetic estrogens that seem to show up everywhere. In men, xenoestrogens can cause low sperm counts and feminization (like the dreaded “man boobs”) and breast cancer and reproductive problems in women. Xenoestrogens promote weight gain around the belly and chest in men, and in women, it shows up as fat in the butt, hips, thighs and the back of arms.

So, in addition to being really unhealthy, microwaved foods can make you fat!

Parents should never warm breast milk or formula in the microwave oven—not only can it superheat the milk and burn the baby, but microwaving destroys the very valuable nutrients, enzymes and protein vital to babies’ growth!

And here is something really scary: in 1991, a patient received blood that had been warmed in a microwave oven. That patient died of a severe anaphylactic reaction to the blood. The microwaving created something totally unrecognizable by the body!

If you want to be safe, healthy and LEAN, avoid your microwave—totally.  Personally, I threw out my microwave about 6 years ago and haven’t even missed it!

There are far healthier and better alternatives:

• Eat vegetables and fruit raw preferably, or if cooked, sauté lightly (with a little water and some grass-fed butter) or steam until tender crisp in a pan on the stove.
• Heat water for tea, etc in a pan or tea-kettle instead of the microwave—or, better yet– is to get a steaming hot water tap—I love these things!
• Plan ahead and defrost frozen foods in the refrigerator.
• Heat up ALL leftovers over low heat in a pan or in a toaster oven in aluminum foil (it still only takes 4-5 minutes to heat leftovers)
• If you must use a microwave (and I don’t know why you would!), use only glass containers instead of plastic.

Or you may want to try this–small countertop convection ovens are great for cooking foods faster and more evenly than a regular oven or on the stove. My favorite little convection oven is the Flavorwave oven from US Wellness Meats, a GREAT site for grass-fed beef too!

You can actually cook a frozen 15-oz. ribeye is in 20 minutes, and it is delicious; browned, tender and juicy. These little convection ovens will broil, bake, fry, roast, grill or steam your favorite foods, including meat, chicken, and vegetable. It takes 20-30% less time than a regular oven, and uses about 75% less energy.

This is a far healthier option than a cancer-causing, nutrient-robbing, microwave oven!