Amino acids
Amino acids are the basic units that combine to form proteins. When you eat foods that contain protein, the digestive juices in your stomach and intestines break down the protein into amino acids. Then...
Your Health. Your Lifestyle. Vitamins and Minerals
Vitamin C
Vitamin C, which is also called ascorbic acid, is a vitamin that your body requires for good health. Your body uses it to form collagen in bones, cartilage, muscle, and blood vessels and to...
Vitamin C and Scurvy
Scurvy, a fatal vitamin C deficiency that ravaged the British navy in the eighteenth century, caused extensive suffering and death for sailors at sea. But one valuable thing did come out of the epidemic:...
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 is a nutrient that your body requires for optimal health. It’s needed to make red blood cells, to help your nervous system work properly, and to synthesize DNA, which is the genetic...
Natural Sweeteners
These days, sugar is public enemy number one, blamed for the epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes and more. But does sugar deserve its unfavorable reputation? And even if it does, who wants to...
Turmeric, Blood Sugar and Diabetes
Diabetes is becoming an epidemic in the United States – the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases reports that 23.6 million American (nearly 8 percent of the population) had diabetes in...
Turmeric
What do Worcestershire sauce, mustard and Middle Eastern cuisine have in common? All feature turmeric, the yellow, peppery spice commonly associated with Indian curries. And new research suggests that turmeric may be good for...
Pomegranate
Pomegranates have been grown in the Middle East since ancient times. They have also been cultivated in the Mediterranean region, Europe, Asia, Africa and India. The pomegranate tree was introduced to California in the...
Goji Berry
The power of the goji berry is no secret in China, where the berry has been used for its many healing properties for thousands of years. According to the Ben Cao Gang Mu, a...
Superfruits
Everyone should eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Scientific evidence reveals that fruits and vegetables, which are rich sources of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other phytonutrients, can help prevent disease and boost...
Vitamin D Help on Disease Prevention
Can vitamin D help with the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS)? Will vitamin D supplementation delay the progression of MS in someone who has MS? Patients with multiple sclerosis are often vitamin D deficient....
Vitamin D Treatment – Disease, Disorders, and Special Conditions
Once you are diagnosed with cancer, does it help to take vitamin D supplements? We don’t know whether increasing vitamis D once a diagnosis of cancer is made provides any benefit in reducing the...
Vitamin D for Pregnancy and Newborns
Consult Your Doctor BEFORE taking any recommended Vitamin D on your own. What are the recommendations for vitamin D during pregnancy? It is recommended that all pregnant women take the prenatal vitamins that contain...
What does vitamin D toxicity look like?
Vitamin D toxicity is often difficult to diagnose. The diagnosis is made based on the blood biochemistries that include elevated blood calcium (usually above 10.4 milligrams per deciliter) along with a markedly elevated level...
Vitamin D How Much to Take and When
The major issue with obtaining vitamin D from a pill is that you have to remember to take the pill. Nowadays, it’s easy to find supplements with 1,000 IU or even 2,000 IU per...
The Benefits of Boosting Calcium: All the Way to Weight Loss
An estimated 44 percent to 87 percent of Americans don’t get enough calcium, including children, who are falling severely short on this mineral critical for proper growth and development. Unfortunately, there are not usually...
The Diet Factor
Given the general state of our dietary habits, whereby processed foods take center stage in the lives of millions. A plausible argument to explain why many Americans fail to meet their calcium needs is...
The Role of Calcium in Their Everyday Function
Calcium is required for skeletal and cardiac muscle contraction, blood-vessel expansion and contraction, secretion of hormones and enzymes, and transmission of impulses through the nervous system. The body strives to maintain constant concentrations of...
The Dynamic duo of Calcium and Vitamin D Can Sustain Your Life
Virtually everyone can recite the milk industry’s campaign slogan: It does a body good. Much of this goodness no doubt hinges on the calcium content of milk. Calcium is the most abundant mineral in...
Blood Sugar and Metabolic Syndrome
High blood pressure. High blood sugar. Unhealthy cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Excess abdominal (belly) fat. If you were to look into a crowd of Americans, say, at a football game or large concert, and...
Colon Cancer
Cancer of the colon and its neighboring area, known sometimes as colorectal cancer, affects both men and women. Like breast cancer and prostate cancer, colorectal cancer is seen much more frequently than skin cancers...
Prostate Cancer
Only heart attacks and lung cancer kill more men than cancer of the prostate, which every year claims more than fifty thousand lives in the United States alone. Prostate cancer kills one in four...
Breast Cancer
Here’s a staggering statistic: Women who are deficient in vitamin D at the time they are diagnosed with breast cancer are nearly 75 percent more likely to die from the disease than women with...
What is Vitamin D?
Naturally, we’re disposed to think about vitamin D as vitamin – a substance that we get from our diets, like vitamin C or niacin, and that participates in biological reactions to help the body...
Vitamin D – Dosage
How long does it take to increase 25-vitamin D levels after starting supplementation? Healthy adults taking 1,000 IU of vitamin D a day reach their peak blood level within five to six weeks. When...
Q&A Vitamin D
What happens when you cook foods rich in Vitamin D, like wild salmon? Do you lose their potency? Vitamin D is relatively stable in foods. Storage, processing, and cooking have little effect on its...
Cranberries Anti-Adherence Benefits
Ulcers Most gastric ulcers are caused by Heliobacter pylori bacteria, which adhere to the lining of the stomach wall. Results from a 2002 in vitro study published in the journal Critical Reviews in Food...
Cranberries
Cranberries are delicious, whether dried and sweetened or served in cranberry sauce, cranberry juice cocktail or cranberry muffins. But there are other reasons to love cranberries. Current scientific research reveals that the tart red...
Green Tea – Protecting Against Cancer
The anticancer properties of green tea are largely the result of the ability of polyphenols to black the formation of carcinogenic compounds in the body. In addition, polyphenols trap and detoxify enzymes that produce...
Green Tea
For thousands of years, green tea has been popular throughout Asia for its pleasant, soothing taste and time-honored health benefits. Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have recommended green tea since 3000 BC, and green...