Arecent cover of a popular magazine portrayed a still life of pills. What a fitting record of this, The Medicated Age. From each pill, a line extended outward to the margin, identifying the target of that prescription medicine, from anxiety and depression to erections that aren’t quite so erect anymore. . . . About the only thing missing was a pill to make you taller. Researchers are no doubt working on that, too.
A cover filled with a bunch of fruits, vegetables, fresh fish, and whole grains wouldn’t have sold as many copies, but it would have painted a better picture of what really makes you healthy: food. As it turns out, Mom was right. You should eat your vegetables, as well as other healthy foods (although perhaps not for the reasons she thought). Hot peppers can reduce your risk of heart disease. Grapefruit can make blood flow more easily through your arteries, if they’ve begun to accumulate plaque. Green tea can combat those viral infections that seemingly wipe out a few weeks of your life most winters. Oranges can help reduce the length and intensity of cold symptoms. Yogurt can kill bacteria that contribute to colorectal cancer, and celery can prevent constipation.
This is just a sampling of the overall effect that eating a balanced diet can have on the health of your body. Imagine going a whole year or more without getting sick. Imagine needing fewer over-the-counter medicines and remedies, like antacids and laxatives. If you have the misfortune of undergoing surgery for an injury, imagine amazing even your expert therapists by recovering faster than they have ever seen.
It’s all possible, thanks to better eating. In chapter 7, we’ll look at how food can help you live longer. For now, let’s focus on how food can help you today—this hour, even this minute.
Although the use of food as a day-to-day cure for minor problems has been all but forgotten over the past, say, 50 years, the tradition actually goes back millennia. Garlic was used in ancient Egypt to ward off disease. Hippocrates, known as “The Father of Medicine,” prescribed myriad foods for healing and is famous for saying “Let food be thy medicine.” Herbs like rosemary were the health aids of choice in Medieval Europe, and 17th-century Englishmen believed that bird meat had the ability to heal, as well as improve the voice, help the appetite, and even aid breathing.
Of course, most of us don’t roast a turkey when we feel a flu coming on. Over the past century, we’ve increasingly turned to drugs to treat our illnesses and our infirmities. But although drug manufacturers have introduced some miraculous products—let’s all clap for penicillin—they haven’t found a way to fix a big problem with drugs: side effects. Drugs aren’t discriminating and can’t target just one thing. Many of their unintended effects are bad, and many of them affect the gut. Because the pharmaceutical industry is predicated upon risk-to-benefit ratios, there’s no guarantee a drug will come free of dangerous side effects.
Sometimes the risk is worth taking. Metoprolol, for instance (known as Lopressor or Toprol XL by patients), is used to lower high blood pressure. Patients with blood-pressure problems get to choose: Take it, and possibly feel dizzy or experience diarrhea or even develop a rash; don’t take it, and possibly die. Not a hard choice to make. But frustration over side effects from drugs that aren’t saving our lives—for instance, a drug for irritable bowel syndrome that’s also habit-forming—has started to create a backlash. We’re learning that our magic pills aren’t always worth a headache, an upset stomach, or a rash, especially when the right vegetable or protein can do the job without side effects.
Before I even get to the wonder foods for daily recovery, we need to look at water and hydration again. There are going to be times when you just generally don’t feel good but aren’t sure why. Allow me to make a suggestion: Drink a glass of water or two and see if the feeling passes. About 50 percent of the time, that’s probably all you’ll need.
Dehydration is a common problem, although not one that most people take too seriously. Most of us will never experience acute and severe dehydration—the kind that causes disorientation, coma, and sometimes death—and therefore don’t think about it much. It’s something that nags us after a hard workout, something that sneaks up on us after a long day at the beach.
But mild dehydration is a problem, and a common one at that. Too many of us make poor hydration a way of life. Day to day, this can be a bigger problem than you realize. It’s a simple equation: Water is the body’s most important nutrient. It is critical to our bodies in so many ways: controlling our blood volume, distributing nutrients to the body, and aiding in digestion, joint lubrication, and reproduction. Even if you’re only mildly dehydrated most of the time—the equivalent of being down 1 to 2 percent of body weight in fluid loss—you could suffer cardiovascular and thermoregulatory responses that have real health consequences.
There’s a major link between the development of urinary tract stones and mild dehydration. These excruciatingly painful ailments are more common than you probably think. Anywhere from 12 to 15 percent of the general population will form a kidney stone at some time, and men are at a higher risk than women are.
The link between water and kidney stones comes down to urine. The less water you drink, the lower your urinary volume, and the less fluid you pass. The more concentrated your urine, the greater the chance that solids, like minerals, will precipitate out and form stones. Studies show that stone patients who increased their urine output to 2 liters daily had a significantly lower level of recurrence than patients who didn’t increase their water intake. If you think about it, that’s incredible: You don’t have to take any medicine. You don’t have to have any kind of treatment. Just drink more water. There’s probably no other health problem we know of that’s affected so dramatically by drinking more water.
How much more? The researchers recommended that people at risk for urinary stone formation consume at least 250 milliliters (roughly 1 cup) of fluid with each meal, between meals, before bedtime, and if and when they get up at night to go to the bathroom. That’s about 8 cups a day.
Another weapon in the arsenal against stone formation is something called black-currant juice. German researchers found that it can increase the pH level of your urine, making it less likely that you’ll develop kidney stones.
As I’ll discuss later, increased water consumption is linked with a decreased risk of heart attack and stroke. The short-term effects of dehydration hint at this: As a general rule, the greater your fluid volume, the lower your blood pressure. For example, researchers have found that mild dehydration can induce mitral valve prolapse (a.k.a. a heart murmur). When cells aren’t fully hydrated, they lack something called turgor: enough fluid pushing against the cell wall. The same thing keeps plants erect, and when it’s lacking they fall over. Assuming the plant isn’t dead, once it’s watered the cells are again volumized, and the plant stands up. The effect is similar to that of a balloon, which can be blown up or deflated, making it very tight or flaccid. That’s exactly what happens to the cells in your body. Think of the heart as a muscle with valves that open and close; when you’re dehydrated, they don’t close tightly but become wobbly.
If a guy isn’t predisposed to this condition, dehydration probably won’t trigger it; then again, if he is, it might. I’ve spoken with cardiologists who say that many men who come to see them in a dehydrated state—whether it’s from a gastrointestinal flu, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea—have a heart murmur. If you test them a month later, after they’re rehydrated, the heart murmur is gone. It’s really important for guys to know this in advance because you could be misdiagnosed just because you’re dehydrated. It doesn’t mean it happens in everybody, but it can happen.
If you have gut problems, water alone may not do the trick (see this page). Then again, dehydration may be the one thing keeping you from regularity. Not only does fluid keep everything lubricated and moving through the gut, but it also combines with dietary fiber to make your solid waste bulkier. This may not sound terribly desirable, but I assure you it is. Imagine for a moment the gut during peristalsis, the alternating contracting and releasing of the smooth muscle that surrounds the gut. If there’s nothing there for it to squeeze and work on, that smooth muscle gets flaccid and out of shape—sort of how your abs would look if you never exercised: flabby, detrained, and unhealthy. Then you’re not totally healthy. When you’ve got a larger stool, your gut has something to work against, which keeps it much healthier. You don’t have to strain as much, and things get pushed through much more efficiently. That’s also how you’ll avoid hemorrhoids and other abnormal features that develop in the walls of your intestine that not only are uncomfortable, but can potentially become precursors to life-threatening ailments.
I’m amazed by how many people brush their teeth three or four times a day but never think to drink extra water to keep their teeth clean. Water has a big effect on oral health and hygiene, specifically because you need it to create saliva. Having saliva wash over your teeth is part of the natural process of keeping your teeth cleansed. If you get dehydrated and produce less saliva, you’ll be at higher risk for dental problems ranging from cavities to periodontal disease. This is especially important at meals, so try to drink some water at each one. If you don’t like drinking water with food, simply drink some soon after.
If you are suffering from a headache, you might want to reach for a glass and the tap before you reach for Advil. A few years back, a study was done with a group of chronic-headache sufferers. Half the people took water and aspirin; the other half, water and a placebo. Those taking water and a placebo showed the same improvement as those taking water and aspirin. Logically, the researchers concluded that the headache sufferers lacked water, not aspirin. They were dehydrated.
Wondering how long it takes to find out? Next time you get a headache, drink a glass or two of water and wait 30 minutes. If your headache hasn’t begun to subside, then reach for the aspirin.
Burning eyes, dry mouth, fatigue, and, in some cases, a burning sensation in the stomach are signs of dehydration. Ask the average guy, and he probably gets these symptoms most every afternoon. To compensate, he drinks a cup of coffee.
He should hit the water bottle first. Granted, coffee is not the diuretic people once thought it to be. Fewer than three cups of coffee won’t flush water from most well-hydrated people, research has shown. However, a German study done a few years ago found that six cups of coffee had a definite dehydrating effect on the drinker. If you are already dehydrated, caffeine can only make things worse. Bottom line: When you are feeling that mid-afternoon slump, reach for a glass of water or two instead of the coffee. If you still need a pick-me-up, then go ahead and have some Joe.
On the flip side of caffeine is alcohol. No guy who has ever pounded a 12-pack by his lonesome needs to be told he’ll be in pain the next day, and most of us know that the pain—commonly called a hangover—is directly related to dehydration. How exactly does he come to be a few pints short after downing beer all night?
It helps to know a little more about how the kidneys work. These smallish organs contain tubules through which fluids and then minerals and electrolytes are filtered. As fluids pass through these filters, balance is maintained in other parts of the body through the secretion of enzymes and hormones. They come to the kidneys for their marching orders, basically. Do we need more salt, or less? Do we need more potassium, or less? Do we need more calcium, or less? Do we need more fluid, or less?
One of the key players in this dance is called the anti-diuretic hormone (ADH), which turns off or on, depending on whether the body needs more or less fluid. If the body is becoming dehydrated, ADH turns on, telling the kidneys to absorb more fluid back into the body, rather than letting it flush out into the bladder and exit as urine.
Add alcohol, however, and suddenly your ADH turns off, regardless of your body’s needs. Virtually all of the fluid passing through the kidneys will get excreted rather than reabsorbed, resulting in dehydration.
How much fluid you lose depends on how much alcohol you drink and how long the potency stays in your bloodstream. Assuming that you have normal liver function and body fat levels, alcohol is cleared from the bloodstream at a rate of one drink per hour. At that pace, the effect of one glass of wine will be fairly insignificant, but draining a six-pack of beer will take a toll.
To help work the alcohol out of your system and replace your fluid losses, choose a beverage (or even a food) that contains some of the minerals you’re losing. Here’s a quick rundown of some of your options.
Flavored water. Consumer research has shown that given a choice, guys will take a flavored beverage over old-fashioned water. Flavor usually means sugar, though, and sugar means added calories. A new breed of “fitness” waters may provide the answer: They contain vitamins and minerals, taste pretty good, and have 10 to 30 calories per 8 ounces. Propel, Aqua-Lean by Pinnacle, Reebok Fitness Water, and Dasani Nutriwater are among my favorites.
Sports drinks. Sports drinks are a great option for your big night out because they contain minerals and electrolytes, which can help replace what your body loses. Try slipping a bottle of Powerade or Accelerade in between the Jack-and-Cokes, and you won’t feel quite so trashed in the morning.
Watermelon. This may not always be available, especially at times other than summer, but watermelon is more than 90 percent water, making it great for rehydration purposes. As an added health bonus, it’s loaded with the antioxidant lycopene, which has been shown in studies to help prevent prostate cancer.
Iced tea. A little of this can help, but don’t go crazy with it—too much caffeine and you’ll get that secondary diuretic effect. Opt for unsweetened teas rather than sugary alternatives.
Cucumbers. If the place where you’re drinking has a salad bar or serves appetizers, munch on cucumbers between or with drinks. They’re almost all water—96 percent.
Tap water or bottled water with added minerals. There are no data regarding what type of water is best for rehydrating after drinking alcohol. In principle, you will always rehydrate better when there is sodium in the fluid. Avoid purified water, and head for the tap water or a bottle of mineral water.
There are some problems that hydration alone can’t fix. When it comes to boosting your immune system, food is the way to go.
We’re used to thinking of the immune system in mysterious terms—your body somehow “builds resistance” to a disease or “fights off” the flu. In reality, the immune system is a very real network of cells and molecules whose job is to maintain the well-being of our bodies and kill (or at least isolate) foreign particles, like bacteria, that find their way in. It’s become standard practice today to bolster our immune systems with a barrage of antibiotics and other drugs, a practice that some argue will hurt our immune systems in the long run. One thing is for certain, though: Eat right, and you’ll need antibiotics a whole lot less.
Plenty of foods can kick bacteria’s butt and jump-start your immune system, and I’ll give you the best of them later in this section. But I can’t go any further without making this point:
The number-one way to protect your immune system through food is to just eat.
If you aren’t getting enough calories, your body switches to starvation-adaptation mode. That means it effectively decides to channel calories to body parts that need them most, like your heart and your brain. The flip side is that your body slowly begins to stop feeding the systems that aren’t critical to staying alive at the moment. Your immune system is toward the top of that list. If you have only so much energy to go around, and you have to keep your heart beating and your blood pumping, the immune system is secondary. It’s not critical to staying alive at the moment. That’s why immune function diminishes in people who starve themselves thin. Test their immune function and you won’t get much response.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t be on a weight-loss diet. It means there’s a point at which you won’t have enough critical calories to go around. To help you understand how many calories your body needs, do a simple test.
1. Figure out your Resting Energy Expenditure (REE—the number of calories you would need for survival if your daily routine consisted of nothing more than watching television and sleeping) by multiplying your weight times 11.
2. Use the chart below to pick your Activity Factor (AF—a number that scientists use to represent the amount of activity you do in a day).
3. Multiply your REE times your AF. That is your base number of calories per day, known as your Total Energy Expenditure (TEE).
To maintain your health, I’d recommend straying no more than 300 calories from your daily TEE and definitely no more than 500 calories. For example, a 180-pound guy with an activity factor of 1.7 has a TEE of 3,397. To lose weight, he should eat around 3,097 calories, and he must eat at least 2,897 per day. On the other hand, if he wants to gain muscle, he should eat between 3,697 and 3,897 calories. (If you are truly inactive and have no plans to exercise, make sure you never consume fewer calories than your REE, unless a doctor tells you otherwise. Note: I would never recommend this kind of lifestyle.)
All three macronutrients (and most micronutrients as well) are important for immune function, but let’s forget the carbs and fats for a minute. Next to generic calories, nothing is more important for defending your body than proteins. These are the building blocks of the cells, enzymes, cytokines, hormones, growth factors, and antibodies that make up and control the immune system. Without enough protein, the critical cells of the immune system can’t function. An extreme example of this can be seen in patients with HIV, whose damaged immune systems have difficulty creating antioxidants to fight decay in their bodies. In a recent study, scientists gave whey protein supplements with key amino acids to HIV patients and found that their immune systems were strengthened.
The average sedentary man needs about 0.36 grams of protein for every pound he weighs. That’s about 65 grams of protein per day for a 180-pound man. As I’ve said before, men who want to build muscle will need much more, but 0.36 gram per pound will keep you in basic health.
Once you’ve got the basics down—eat, and eat protein especially—there are still plenty of ways to boost your immune system. Below, you’ll find some of the more reliable foods, vitamins, and minerals.
Get to zincing. Study after study has shown that zinc is vital for nearly every aspect of your immune system, from fighting off disease to healing wounds. Without it, your body works slower and loses effectiveness when fighting illness; in extreme cases, zinc deficiency has been shown to stunt growth and significantly delay healing. Ideally, you should consume around 11 milligrams (mg) of zinc a day, and no more than 40 mg; take too much and your body will act as if you are zinc deficient. Foods rich in zinc include meat, liver, eggs, and seafood (especially oysters). Whole-grain products also contain zinc. Vegetarians may need more zinc than meat eaters do.
Mind your magnesium. Your body’s need for magnesium resembles its need for zinc. According to some nutrition scientists, it is one of the most important micronutrients and is intimately involved in the immune system, from fighting inflammation to breeding new cells and prolonging the life of older cells. Men ages 19 to 30 should try to get 400 mg each day, and men over 30 should get 420 mg. For best results, try to get no more than 350 mg from supplements daily. The best food sources of magnesium are green leafy vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, meat, seafood, and milk.
Bet on beta-carotene. Beta-carotene and the other carotenes are potent antioxidants your body needs to fight free radicals (potentially dangerous substances in your cells that I’ll talk about soon). There are no established recommendations or limits for beta-carotene; 2,500 international units (IU) from supplements are safe, although daily intakes of 20,000 IU from either food or supplements over several months may cause skin yellowing. There are hundreds of carotenoids in nature, found mostly in orange and yellow fruits and vegetables, and in dark green vegetables. You should include these with abundance in your diet, and depend on food and not supplements to meet your needs.
Don’t go easy on the green. Green tea, that is. The catechins in green tea wage war against viral infections by enhancing the immune system and acting as an antioxidant. Research on mice has shown that catechins decrease the risk of certain types of cancers. It is difficult to say how much green tea you should drink each day, because the research has been done almost exclusively with extracts, and potency varies. But if you are drinking a cup or two each day, you are probably helping the cause.
Load up on yogurt. Though this area is still somewhat controversial, it appears that several bacteria in yogurt, known collectively as probiotics, have a beneficial effect on the health of the intestinal lining by decreasing the inflammatory processes in the gut. Among their benefits, probiotics appear to reduce the diarrheal symptoms of gut infections and irritable bowel syndrome, and even reduce the risk of colon cancer. Eating a daily yogurt labeled as containing “Live active cultures” or using a probiotic supplement appear to be equally effective.
Selenium, copper, and manganese. Your body contains certain disease-fighting enzymes, called metalloenzymes, that can’t function without these three minerals. You can easily get enough of all three if you eat whole grains, egg yolks, green leafy vegetables, and seafood regularly.
Inflammation is a tricky subject. Maybe you associate it with the zit on your nose that appeared miraculously as you headed out the door for a hot date last week, or with a painful ingrown nail. My coauthor, Jeff, associates it with the color his grapefruit-size ankle turned the last time he went up for a rebound and landed funny.
Red, puffy, and sore to the touch—that’s how most of us experience inflammation. In fact, beneath the skin’s surface, it is one of the body’s most constant underlying phenomena. Your body is filled with tissues, and anytime they become irritated or damaged, they also become inflamed. The sources of this irritation are nearly endless—an injury, a hard workout, lack of sleep, a fat-laden meal, and pretty much everything in between.
When this happens, your body reacts fast. The inflammatory response kicks in, and blood flows with haste to the damaged tissue, permeating it with nutrients and immune cells, whose job it is to clean up the microscopic materials that are causing the inflammation. This is all part and parcel of the healing process.
Many of the offending materials that immune cells clean up are free radicals. To understand free radicals, think back to high school chemistry. Your cells are full of atoms and molecules. Sometimes, these atoms become unstable—caused by any number of things, from cigarette smoke and UV rays to damage, stress, or simply breathing—and let off an errant electron. That electron will bounce around until it can latch onto another atom, which becomes a temperamental, highly reactive structure: a free radical. At the same time, the new free radical lets off an electron of its own, sparking a chain reaction of new free radicals. We’re not talking about a bad apple here and there, either. Every breath you take, for example, produces some 10,000 of these molecules within each of your body’s cells. When you exercise, you create even more (see “The Exercise/Free Radical Connection” on this page).
Over time, the effects of free radicals on your body are far-ranging and can be quite dangerous. We’ll get to that later. For now, all you need to know is that anytime you experience inflammation, be it a swollen knee, a bee sting, or a sore throat, free radicals are playing a part.
A lot of guys scratch their heads with this seeming contradiction: “So, on the one hand you’re telling me to exercise, and on the other you’re telling me that exercise creates millions of free radicals that could harm me in the long run?”
Actually, no. In reality, it’s exactly the opposite: Because of exercise, your body is better equipped to fight harmful free radicals, even when there are more than usual to deal with. Over time, your body adapts to oxidative stress by boosting its internal antioxidant production. That’s why you don’t see world-class athletes, who train constantly, contracting cancer left and right, or succumbing to heart disease prematurely. That’s also why sedentary people, whose sloth has minimized free radical production, don’t live to a ripe old age.
To combat free radicals, turn to foods rich in antioxidants, which work in several different ways to fight free radicals and reduce lipid peroxidation (a.k.a. oxidation of fats in your cells.) For instance, beta-carotene can actually destroy free radicals after they are formed. Vitamin C keeps free radicals from destroying the outermost layers of cells. Vitamin E scavenges free radicals, saving tissues from damage.
The best-known antioxidants come at the end of a fork or in pill form: vitamins C and E; beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A; and minerals such as copper, zinc, manganese, and selenium. Getting most of your antioxidants from whole foods has major advantages—you get not only the antioxidants but also a whole host of other nutrients. Although the science of antioxidants is still unraveling, researchers suspect that your body may best absorb and use antioxidants when these other nutrients are present. When isolated and placed in a pill, they don’t seem to have the same effect on the body.
The easiest way to point you toward foods packed with antioxidants is to show you the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) chart (see next page). The title is confusing, but the idea is simple: The chart ranks the top antioxidant-rich foods, starting with the very best and working down to the very good. We’re not going to bore you with a dissertation on every food on the list, but I would like to hand out a few “Antioxidant Awards.”
Best overall. It’s hard to find a better snack than raisins, dried plums, or any of the dark-colored fruits, especially when it comes to antioxidants. Prunes (now officially called dried plums) are the king of the hill. Yes, those shriveled purple blobs are the butt of more jokes than any other food (except possibly baked beans), but they have twice the antioxidants of raisins, which are ranked second. Both foods are nearly devoid of water, making their antioxidants heavily concentrated. Incidentally, the antioxidant content of red grapes helps explain why red wine reduces the risk of heart disease better than white wine, liquor, or beer.
Best for fighting pain. Cherries are another amazing inflammation fighter. They rank among the top 10 in terms of antioxidant content, making them a powerful anti-inflammatory. A study at Michigan State University found that eating tart cherries could relieve inflammatory pain as capably as aspirin or ibuprofen but with less potential stomach irritation. And because there are only 51 calories per cup, you can forget about getting heavy and concentrate on getting healthy.
Runners-up. One antidote for a sprained ankle or a broken tibia might be eating beef, chicken, seafood, and other foods high in B vitamins. In animal trials, vitamins B1, B6, and B12 seemed to disrupt the transmission of pain signals between the rest of the body and the brain. Olive oil and nuts also have anti-inflammatory action that can help minimize sprains and tendinitis. In contrast, the saturated fat in meats can aggravate such problems.
Most underrated antioxidant. The award here goes to herbs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently tested dozens of culinary herbs and spices for antioxidant content and found that many of them outpace fruits and vegetables in this department. For example, Mexican, Italian, and Greek oregano all outscored vitamin E when measured for antioxidant activity. Bay, dill, coriander, thyme, and rosemary scored nearly as well. Keep in mind that because herbs and spices tend to be sprinkled lightly on whatever you happen to be eating, they’re not a substitute for the quantities found in fruits and vegetables. But it’s an easy way to amp up your overall antioxidant consumption, with the added bonus of making your food tastier.
Supplements can help fill in some of the holes in your diet, particularly when it comes to vitamin E. The current recommended daily allowance for men is 30 international units (IU), but studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 200 to 400 IU reduces the risk of heart disease significantly. Because we still don’t know exactly how much vitamin E is safe and healthy, limit yourself to 100 to 200 IU per day.
Best for stopping muscle cramps. There may be a number of different causes of muscle cramps, but one that you can easily eliminate is dehydration and loss of salts, especially sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Slathering a banana with some salted natural peanut butter and drinking a huge gulp of water is a great antidote for your muscle cramps. If the cramps persist, seek medical advice.
Best for curing headaches. Ginger may help relieve standard headaches, as well as migraines. It may work as an analgesic and halt the headache prophylactically by inhibiting the release of serotonin into the brain. For migraines, enjoy some nuts, beans, whole grains, and even spinach. All contain magnesium, which a recent study on children suggests can ease the length and severity of migraine pain.
Most likely to beat arthritis. Here’s yet another malady whose sufferers may benefit from a Mediterranean-style diet. Norwegian researchers recently found that when arthritis patients switched from a standard American diet to one emphasizing fruits, vegetables, and fish, their joint pain decreased by half.
That would be consistent with the anti-inflammatory effects attributed to those Mediterranean foods. The omega-3 fats in fatty fish, for example, have been shown to help people with autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
Most likely to prevent cavities. Again, green tea is great here. Its catechins combat the bacteria that cause tooth decay. Primarily, catechins inhibit the bacteria’s ability to attach to the tooth, along with a number of other factors that diminish the risk of tooth decay.
Runner-up. Another way to support the integrity of your teeth is by strengthening your gums with calcium. So grab a quart of milk and drink up. Researchers at the State University of New York found that guys who take in 800 milligrams of calcium or more per day have half the risk of periodontal disease as compared with men consuming 500 milligrams a day or less. However, most men consume only half the recommended three servings a day of dairy.
Next time you’re strolling around a drugstore, discreetly looking for the condoms or the Rogaine, notice the far more visible section jammed full of purported remedies for heartburn. The shelves are lined with these products from one end to the other, and no wonder: As the years pass, I hear about so many people taking antacids and related products that I wonder if maybe I’m in the wrong business. In meetings, people literally break into a sweat and excuse themselves from the table because they’re so horribly uncomfortable.
I firmly believe that a lot this discomfort can be fixed if guys would just pay better attention to what they are eating. Almost all stomach upset, heartburn, and gas (and even things like chronic constipation and some irritable bowel syndrome) can be traced back to food and, specifically, a guy’s food intolerances and food allergies. Recognizing these can help relieve unnecessary pain and discomfort in the short run. In the longer run, some of these nagging problems can be a prelude to life-threatening conditions like cancers of the gut, which I’ll discuss in the next chapter.
The logical questions here: What is the difference between a food intolerance and a food allergy, and how do I know if I have one? To answer these questions, you have to understand how intestines work. Think of your intestines as a long, porous hose. As your digestive system breaks food into nutrients, the intestinal wall allows those nutrients to pass through and enter your bloodstream, which in turn takes the nutrients to your organs. Conversely, your intestinal lining is also an incredibly important barrier, keeping foreign particles from invading the inside of your body where your organs are housed.
The size of the particles that can get through the lining of your intestines varies depending on your age. When you were born, your gastrointestinal system was not quite fully developed, allowing bigger molecules to pass through. This is why infants are fed mainly a protective diet of breast milk or formula and water. Their bodies cannot handle the huge protein molecules in cow’s milk. The proteins in breast milk and processed formula are smaller and are more easily digested and broken down.
One of the theories behind the development of food allergies relates to this early stage of gastrointestinal development. Scientists theorize that exposure to certain complicated proteins in infancy or early childhood may startle the immune system. Recognizing these large molecules as foreign bodies, the immune system develops antibodies and immunoglobulins to fight them off. Even after the gut lining is fully developed, the immune system still recognizes these food proteins as intruders and creates an immune reaction, or a true allergic reaction, to the food.
These reactions can range from annoying disturbances like hives and eczema to life-threatening reactions like anaphylactic shock. The most common foods that cause allergies are peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, eggs, shellfish, milk, and soy.
More common than food allergies are food intolerances. These are not caused by your immune system. Instead, they are usually either metabolically based (as in lactose intolerance, when an ingredient cannot be fully digested or absorbed), or they are abnormal, almost inexplicable responses to food (as in sulfite-induced asthma, where exposure to sulfites results in severe difficulty breathing). Food intolerances are generally not as severe as true food allergies, but the symptoms can resemble those of an allergy, ranging from abdominal cramps and diarrhea to anemia (low iron and red blood cells).
Adults with true food allergies usually know their trigger foods and avoid them. On the other hand, symptoms of food intolerance can often go unnoticed or ignored. Many people live a lifetime with gut problems and think it’s a normal thing. Others realize that certain foods make them uncomfortable but won’t stop eating them.
I’m here to suggest paying more attention to these problems. The constant barrage of foods that cause disturbances in the gut may ultimately lead to inflammation of the gut lining and discomfort that can no longer be ignored. The same holds true for any kind of viral or bacterial infection that you may have encountered, like a bout with intestinal flu. You need to heal any damage that occurred. Luckily, both disturbances can be handled naturally: the first by learning what to include in your diet to promote better gastrointestinal (GI) health, and the second by learning what might need to go.
There’s little fiber in the typical American diet, another reason that you should try extra-hard to get more of it down your throat. There are two primary types of fiber: water-soluble and water-insoluble. It’s the water-insoluble fiber that really helps you stay regular. We mentioned before that fiber makes for a bulky stool, a very good thing. Now let’s get more specific.
Unless you’re actively tracking it, it’s hard to know how much fiber you’re consuming. The general recommendation from organizations such as the American Heart Association is 25 to 35 grams a day, but they usually base that on a diet of 2,000 calories. We want you to eat more than that, so your fiber intake should be higher, too. The diets I design tend to be very high in fruits and vegetables, and those foods alone can contribute 50 grams or so of fiber a day.
Adding fiber to your diet if you didn’t consume much before is best done in short steps. If you add 35 or 40 grams of fiber to your diet, when you were consuming only 5 or 10 grams total before that, you’ll blow up like a balloon. The body will adapt and adjust to the extra fiber, but it’s going to take some time. Start by trying to add about 10 grams a day. You might have to live through some intestinal discomfort—gas—for a week or two, but thankfully for you (and anyone who knows you) that should subside. Then you can add more.
In the real world, a hearty slice of whole-grain bread contains 3 grams of fiber, and two oblong biscuits of Shredded Wheat contain 5½ grams. When you’re reading the side of a food box or package, something that’s a good fiber source should have at least 2 to 3 grams.
There’s no downside to being a little bit higher than normal on your fiber intake. Being very, very high will eventually interfere with your ability to eat enough food—you’ll be too full to continue. Adding fiber supplements can also be tricky—at a minimum, you have to drink enough fluid to avoid getting an obstruction, which does happen. Some guys get carried away and add a ridiculous amount of wheat bran to their daily diet, or double-fist fiber tablets all day. Do that without drinking enough and you’ll get an obstruction. Painful? Let’s put it this way: It’s probably the closest a guy will ever come to experiencing childbirth. I add 2 to 3 tablespoons of wheat bran to my cereal in the morning. That’s enough for most people.
The irony is that guys who have irritable bowel syndrome often have been eating a low-fiber diet because they’re afraid of all these foods. They think fiber is going to make their gut hurt, so they avoid it, and things gets worse. This is true only if your gut has become so inflamed that you’re approaching an ulcer. Then you need to cut fiber out of your diet and just let everything quiet down. It would be like having a wound on your knee, only you keep bending it and reopening it—the wound never heals. If you keep your knee straight for a while, it can mend. The same goes for your stomach. Usually, the easiest thing for guys to do at that point is to follow a liquid or soft diet for a little bit and then slowly begin adding bulkier foods back in. If you think that this describes your problem, you should definitely get a referral to a registered dietitian, who can help you design a nutritionally sound liquid or soft diet, and then work you back onto whole foods.
Certain foods can help improve the odds that your stomach contents will move through your intestines without a hitch. Here are some tips for your daily diet.
Buy more broccoli. Perhaps no food presents a better introduction to the health intersection of nutrition and the GI tract as broccoli. It has long been known that many compounds found in vegetables inhibit the growth of pathogens, but as it turns out, perhaps none is as powerful as broccoli. The stomach contains bacteria, called Helicobacter pylori, that have been implicated in stomach ulcers and stomach cancers. Broccoli contains the chemical sulforaphane, which kills these potentially deadly bacteria. It’s so strong, in fact, that it even kills helicobacter that are resistant to antibiotics. What’s more, lab tests have revealed that there’s probably enough sulforaphane in the broccoli we eat to do the job. Try to eat several servings (1 cup raw or ½ cup cooked) each week.
Eat more strawberries and oranges. Since high levels of vitamin C have been linked to a reduced risk of developing an ulcer, a handful of strawberries or some orange slices also help fight ulcers. Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center found that individuals with the highest levels of vitamin C in their blood are one-fourth less likely to be infected with H. pylori. Try to have at least one serving of vitamin C–rich foods every day.
Try turmeric. Those suffering from inflammatory intestinal diseases might try turmeric, a spice used in curry. Researchers at the Hamamatsu University School of Medicine in Japan found that the spice contains an anti-inflammatory agent called curcumin, which appears to help colitis sufferers, as well as sufferers of certain neurological diseases. Along with traditional foods like Indian and Thai, add it to squash soups, stews, roasted vegetables, and even mashed potatoes. A couple times a week would be a huge increase from what most people eat now. If you are heading to the hospital for elective surgery, add it to your menu before and after surgery.
Make friends with pectin. If you’ve got diarrhea, make pectin your pal. This water-soluble fiber helps absorb the extra water in your large intestines that, for some reason (infection, food intolerance) has appeared in higher abundance than usual. As pectin moves through your intestines, it dissolves in water and turns into a gel-like structure. This helps reduce that flushing process, just as it turns runny cooked strawberries into strawberry jam. Apple skins are high in pectin.
Eat more celery. The insoluble fiber found in celery helps prevent constipation and gallstones. In truth, any fiber will do, but celery is particularly high in fiber for the calories it contains. And three-quarters of the total fiber content is insoluble. An 8-inch stalk of celery is only 6 calories and gives you about 1 gram of fiber. If you went all-out and ate five stalks of celery, you’d have eaten 5 grams of fiber and a measly 30 calories! To get the same amount of fiber in broccoli, you’d have to eat 50 calories worth, and only one-half of the total fiber would be insoluble.
Get your peppermint. Peppermint oil is a spasmolytic, meaning that it relaxes the smooth muscle lining of the stomach and intestines. Drink some peppermint tea, and you’ll reduce bloating and cramping by avoiding gas buildup. (Note: If the reason for your upset stomach is esophageal reflux, stay clear of peppermint. It won’t help, and it may injure the esophageal lining.)
Know your calcium alternatives. For anyone with lactose intolerance, yogurt is a great way to get calcium. Many people who can’t drink milk or eat ice cream can still tolerate 6 to 8 ounces of yogurt because the bacterial culture actually consumes much of the lactose for its own nutrition. The same goes for other cultured dairy products, like kefir and ripened cheeses.
A classic case of food intolerance goes something like this: The offending particle (let’s say it’s the lactose from a piece of American cheese) enters the stomach and proceeds through digestion. In most cases, guys aren’t actually allergic to lactose (a.k.a. milk sugar), but they don’t produce enough of the enzyme lactase, which is what it takes to break down the lactose molecule into the monosaccharides glucose and galactose, allowing them to be absorbed across the intestinal barrier and metabolized. Lactose-intolerant guys don’t metabolize those molecules normally, so they get down lower into the gut.
Once there, lactose becomes a feast for bacteria living in that part of the body. Normally, these bacteria never see lactose molecules. As a result of their newfound food, the bacteria reproduce at a much faster rate than normal, and the by-product of that metabolism is a lot of gas and digestive acids. Also, all that sugar low down in the gut changes the concentration of the solids dissolved in the fluid passing through the gut. The body tries to improve digestion by adding more fluids to the mix, but that ends up causing diarrhea. The end result is an inflammation—there’s that word again—of the gut.
Your best bet is to figure out which foods are hurting you—and stop using them. The gut is a moist setting, and once you get rid of the offending element, it heals incredibly rapidly, just as your mouth recovers comparatively quickly from oral surgery. You should see marked improvement over 1 week, and total healing by the end of 3 weeks.
Some guys think they can just tough it out, but here’s something to think about: If you constantly abuse that lining, you’re always going to have impaired nutritional absorption, like a wound never being allowed to heal. It’ll be constantly inflamed, and this ongoing hyperimmune response will result in so much cellular damage that you’ll increase the risk of some kind of mutation happening in that area. In a worst-case scenario, that kind of cell damage can increase the risk of something catastrophic occurring, like the formation of cancer cells. Here are some major culprits:
When it comes to intestinal turmoil, fructose is Public Enemy No. 1 these days. It sounds harmless enough. After all, isn’t it basically just fruit sugar? Yep, fruit sugar is the largest natural source of fructose, and it’s also found in vegetables and the saps of some trees—honey and maple syrup, to be precise.
But today we have high-fructose corn syrup, a highly engineered sugar that has hijacked the average American diet. (If you’ve skipped to this chapter and haven’t read about the dangers of high-fructose corn syrup already, please see this page before you continue.)
At the same time, the incidence of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in the country is exploding (no pun intended). As the name implies, IBS is a constellation of symptoms affecting the large intestine, including cramping, bloating, gas, diarrhea, and constipation. In reality, labeling someone with IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. It isn’t like cancer, where your doctor takes a biopsy and says, “Okay, you’ve got a malignant tumor.” He or she will diagnose you with IBS, in all likelihood, only after exhausting all of the other options that could conceivably affect the bowel.
Nobody really knows with any certainty what causes IBS. Is it stress? Lactose intolerance? If it were well understood, a portion of IBS sufferers could be categorized and “cured” thusly—but not others. Is it an allergy to, say, wheat? People who suffer from something called gluten allergies do so because of an inflammatory process in the bowel that produces horrible discomfort: diarrhea, gas, pain—the whole nine yards. Again, when the offending food or foods are subtracted from the diet, the bowel irritation disappears with them.
Yet there is a whole other group of men for whom elimination diets don’t work. Until recently, doctors hadn’t been able to tease out what causes IBS in them. Some researchers set their sights on high-fructose corn syrup as a stealth culprit in IBS, however, and the results of a handful of studies suggest that they may be on to something. In fact, it now appears that at least 40 percent of the people who “present” with irritable bowel syndrome are actually fructose intolerant. Eliminate all sources of fructose, including high-fructose corn syrup from their diet, and in short order their guts settle down and heal. Then, when fruit is reintroduced into their diet, they can handle a natural amount. The real problem—which should be avoided—is the soda, fruit-ades, and highly sweetened cereals loaded with high-fructose corn syrup. Even soup and pasta sauce contain the stuff now. It’s everywhere.
There’s no reason guys need to feel like they have to avoid fruit. What they do need to avoid is sitting down and eating two pints of strawberries, or drinking a quart of orange juice or apple juice. (The latter is particularly high in fructose.) That may disturb them. In fact, when a client tells me he can’t drink apple juice without diarrhea, I know immediately that he’s fructose intolerant.
When it comes to gut health, a huge bell should be ringing about this issue.
If you are lactose intolerant, you have plenty of company, as the condition affects a significant portion of the world’s adult male population. The severity of the condition varies widely, according to the body’s ability to secrete lactase. Some guys can drink one glass of milk with no problem, but they can’t drink two or three glasses without feeling queasy. Others can drink a glass in the morning and another at night and feel okay but get sick when they have more. Still others can’t handle so much as a pat of butter on a slice of bread or they risk becoming deathly ill. Those people who have no tolerance at all are lactase deficient.
The more that food scientists learn about lactose intolerance, the better the solutions they offer. In fact, the lactase-replacement enzyme found on grocery store shelves allows most people who are lactose intolerant to consume dairy products in normal amounts. You might have to take more than the amount suggested on the side of the box—perhaps even double or triple that amount—to get the amount of the enzyme you need. (Every guy secretes lactase at different rates and in different amounts, so while one guy might do just fine with the dosage in the instructions, another guy might need considerably more. Taking more is fine; it can’t hurt you.)
Booze also affects the lining of the gut, impairing its ability to absorb nutrients, which is one reason alcoholics are often deficient in B vitamins. For some guys, alcohol carves into the gut lining, making it really, really inflamed, and perhaps even causing an ulcer if the abuse persists long enough. A bleeding ulcer can lead to iron deficiency, and at a certain point the gut can even rupture. Suddenly your insides are full of all kinds of bacteria that otherwise never get into the rest of the body, and in worst-case scenarios, can result in death.
How much alcohol is too much? There’s a question for the ages, huh? We don’t know a one-size-fits-all answer to that question, but two drinks a day is a good limit for almost every guy. None of the data showing health benefits from alcohol refer to any more booze than that. Moreover, drink beyond that cutoff point and the alcohol starts to have a significant influence on your body’s physiology—most of it negative. There’s some play here depending on a guy’s size and even his background.
But men who drink three alcoholic beverages on weekdays are probably drinking more than that on weekends. There’s no good reason to drink regularly like that unless you’re looking to ruin your body (not to mention your mind).
Most of the discussion about the relationship between fats and your arteries arguably applies more to longevity than to short-term health. After all, it usually takes a while to clog an artery. (To learn more, turn to the next chapter.) Increasingly, however, researchers think that high-fat meals can present an immediate danger.
The potential problem comes when you consume a meal containing more than 50 grams of fat. (This may seem like a high threshold. After all, when people enter a hospital to see if they have a problem with fat absorption, they receive a loading dose of approximately 100 grams of fat, which is supposed to be extraordinarily high, but gourmet and fast food meals alike frequently exceed 50 grams of fat. And people who eat junk all day spend much of their day above that level.) All of that fat enters your body, driving up the level of triglycerides in your bloodstream while simultaneously driving down HDL, the good cholesterol that ushers fat out of the body. Regarding the triglycerides, we’re not talking about a little bump in the night, either, but a surge that can persist for up to 8 hours. That’s assuming you don’t take in even more fat, pushing triglyceride levels into the stratosphere.
The short of it is, if you are on the threshold of a heart attack, one 50-fat-gram meal could cause your ticker to stop ticking—on the spot.
Provocative new research has found that post-meal surges in blood fats increase the “coaguability” of blood by making blood platelets stickier. The smooth muscle cells lining the arteries suddenly lose some of their ability to contract, and if those arteries are already somewhat hardened, the odds rise that a blockage will form, which could lead to a stroke or a heart attack.
Keep in mind that alcohol can play a role in this scenario. People who drink a lot of alcohol tend to have high triglyceride levels. The medical community used to be more preoccupied with cholesterol, with triglycerides considered a secondary concern, but the latter is now also seen as key, specifically because of their platelet-aggregation effect, which can lead to clotting.
The best thing you can do to make sure that your arteries remain open thoroughfares, free from bottlenecks, is to reduce the amount of saturated fat in your diet. In the shorter term, though, these foods can help blood flow more freely.
Eat fatty fish. Your heart’s best friend is fatty fish like herring, mackerel, salmon, and tuna. A study in the journal Circulation found that fatalities from heart attacks or heart disease were cut in half among those who ate tuna or other fish three times or more each week.
Granted, fish eaters tend to have healthier lifestyles in general. They tend to be better educated, less inclined toward saturated fat and more toward fruits and vegetables, and much less likely to smoke. Still, even after researchers statistically adjusted these factors, fish stood out as a major heart helper.
Chomp on celery. A substance inside these stalks, called 3-butylphthalide, helps prevent blood vessels from constricting, as they do after high-fat meals.
Get garlic and onions. Nothing stinks about these where cardiac health is concerned. The adenosine contained in garlic can lower blood pressure, as can the ajoene in garlic and onions.
Up your ginger. This root will protect you from the blood clots that eventually cause heart attacks and strokes. It works in a similar manner to aspirin, thinning the blood by making your blood platelets less sticky. Because ginger is also an effective anti-inflammatory, reducing the body’s inflammatory-response chemicals helps to decrease risk of cardiovascular disease.
Buy more bananas. Potassium, found in large quantities in bananas (about 500 milligrams per fruit), is well known for helping lower blood pressure and is getting noticed for its ability to protect against stroke as well. In a study of men and women over age 50, those who took in more than 3,500 milligrams of potassium daily were less likely to die from stroke than those who consumed less than 1,950 milligrams daily.
Switch to whole grains. The magnesium they contain helps regulate your heartbeat and, studies show, may restore damaged blood vessels’ ability to open up when the body needs more blood.
Eat licorice. The coumarone it contains also lowers blood pressure.
Food cannot only help keep you from getting sick, it can assist in the recovery process from illness, even after something as invasive as surgery.
The best postoperative nutrition strategy begins well before you ever enter a hospital. First, stockpile nutrients ahead of time. This can have a huge impact on the outcome. Surgery isn’t always predictable and foreseeable, but if it is, ask your doctor for a day or two to prepare for it nutritionally. If it’s an elective surgery, you’ve got weeks to plan ahead. Eating well ahead of time makes an enormous difference.
One goal should be to consume plenty of foods that have an anti-inflammatory effect, that break down the materials that cause inflammation in the body’s tissues. After all, usually after some kind of treatment, surgery, illness, or soreness, a doctor will give you a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Everyone reacts differently to these drugs. Some people take them and have no problems, and some people take them and have horrible gut problems as a result. (For example, if I take a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory for more than a day or two, I get terrible mouth ulcers.)
For those who do have problems with these drugs, an alternative is food that naturally produces an anti-inflammatory effect. So if you’re getting ready to go into the hospital for some kind of surgery, consume those foods for several weeks ahead of time to build up levels of those nutrients. That will help you build up effective levels of anti-inflammatory in the blood. (Drugs, in contrast, require less preparation and work faster—in some cases, almost immediately. Unfortunately, so do many of the negative side effects.)
The first place you should turn is to foods rich in bioflavonoids. If you want to keep inflammation to a minimum, these are the guys that do it. Every day, bioflavanoids help protect your cells by fixing and strengthening the cell membrane. They really get to do their stuff when inflammation hits, though. Think of inflammation as an invading army and your cells as a fort under attack: You need soldiers to protect the fort internally and soldiers to abate the enemy outside. Here, the soldiers are your bioflavonoids. While maintaining the integrity of your cells, they go out to stop pro-inflammatory enzymes. The more you’ve got, the less damage you incur and the more healing that occurs.
You may ask, “Doesn’t the inflammatory response serve an important function, though?” Yes, but sometimes the inflammatory response itself can inhibit the healing process by causing more cell damage. The free-radical-fighting qualities of bioflavanoids are so desirable because they decrease cell damage while maintaining the integrity of the cell membrane.
Soy, onions, kale, green beans, apples, citrus foods and juices, and prunes are all good sources of bioflavanoids. You may also want to turn to herbal remedies, like China’s wogonin. In a study where researchers used wogonin as a topical treatment for skin inflammation, it was shown to have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect on inflamed skin.
Another nutrient that’s great before and after surgery is bromelain. Found in pineapple, bromelain is an enzyme that breaks down protein. It also increases the anti-inflammatory chemicals in the body, decreasing clotting, walling off injured areas, improving drainage, and diminishing swelling. It also decreases pro-inflammatory mediators, so it offers benefits on both sides of the inflammatory process.
Other foods and nutrients with anti-inflammatory properties are the omega-3s found in fatty fish, the antioxidant vitamins, algae, wheat germ, and the minerals iron and zinc. The latter two present a good reason to eat red meat and the dark meat of poultry, which are the most efficient sources of those minerals. That doesn’t mean you have to have something fat-laden like brisket. Instead, go for lean sources and, in the case of chicken, remove the skin.
So if you know you have surgery coming up, there are some very specific things you can do with your diet to enhance the outcome. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, including pineapple every day. The new “gold” varieties of pineapple from Hawaii are lower in acid than the common varieties, and they are incredibly sweet. Sprinkle some wheat germ or ground flaxseed on your cereal. Have fatty fish as often as possible, and eat lean beef and chicken occasionally.
All of your dietary choices before and after surgery should be made in consultation with a medical professional. Ask to meet with one of the hospital dietitians before you go under the knife, and set up a plan. Some meal-replacement products, like various formulations of Ensure, have been formulated specifically with ill populations in mind. Go with whatever the hospital dietitian recommends—he or she will know best if you need low fiber or specific medium-chain fatty acids for some reason, as well as what diet or supplement is formulated specifically for the type of procedure you are undergoing.
Here’s one final word about nutrition and surgery: creatine. This muscle-building supplement has received a bad rap in the past for being ineffective and possibly even dangerous. That’s all unscientific mumbo-jumbo. Data from a 2001 study show that using this supplement before an operation and then continuing to use it postoperatively can speed up your recovery.
If you’re going to have surgery for any kind of injury, the smartest strategy you can employ is something called “prehab,” where you see a physical therapist prior to surgery. The idea is that by exercising that area beforehand, you’ll be able to maintain as much muscle as possible there after the surgery, when function will be limited and the body part in question will be subject to atrophy. When they do actually get you moving again—which they’ll want to do as soon as possible—your rehab will progress relatively quickly, and you’ll have the best outcome.
Now researchers are finding that, by supplementing with creatine during your prehab and then continuing to use the supplement during your rehab, you get an improved outcome in the form of less muscle lost.
My personal experience is only anecdotal, of course, but I took creatine during the two weeks preceding surgery for an ACL (for the uninitiated, that’s the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee) that I tore skiing. (Doctors often don’t want to do the surgery immediately after the injury occurs. They want to wait for the inflammation to go down a little bit after your injury.) I didn’t do a loading phase; I took the standard daily dose of 5 grams of creatine daily. I continued taking it into my rehab, and I had the sort of accelerated recovery shown in the study. Several of my therapists said, “Oh, my! I’ve never seen anyone rehab so quickly.” There is no question in my mind that I had a faster recovery than I would have had without taking creatine.
If you’re interested in pursuing that strategy yourself, always ask your physician before taking creatine or any supplement you may take before or after surgery. For example, vitamin E is a fantastic supplement, but you don’t want to take extra before or immediately after surgery because it’s a blood thinner. Too much bleeding is not a good thing around surgery.
We said this earlier in another context, but if you really want to eat healthy, you have to get your act together. What I mean by that is that at some point, the responsibility is squarely on your shoulders. Nobody can do this for you. All we can do is prescribe. You have to do it.
That brings us to the subject of obesity. In this era of political correctness, in some circles you can’t even talk about the reality of being fat. Not horizontally challenged, not large-size, and not pleasantly plump. Fat. Well, here’s the deal: If you’re fat, you’re almost certainly going to get sick, both in the short term and the long term. A researcher at the Cooper Institute looked into the whole notion of being fit and fat, meaning someone who’s overweight but who exercises and has chronic-disease risks that are low, and can thus be deemed healthy. After studying the phenomenon, he estimated that it applies to a very small percentage of the overweight population. Those rare individuals probably are genetically predisposed to carry high amounts of muscle tissue to begin with, and they probably exercise a lot on top of that. Why they’re obese, we don’t really know.
Other researchers have also found that fitness and fatness are in fact separate risk factors for heart disease. Even if you are fit, if you are fat you have a great risk of succumbing to the illnesses associated with heart disease. If you’re seriously overweight and you’re reading this now, let’s just assume you’re not among the miniscule percent of the population that may be fit and fat. That means you’re too fat right now. It’s not sizism or anything else other than medical fact. Telling people that they’re okay at any size isn’t okay. They may be good people, but that’s not the issue; people who are obese are going to get sick and contribute to the huge strain on the whole medical system, which has become a huge strain on the country’s economy. Ultimately, overweight people die before their time. Is that really how you want your epitaph to read?
We can’t overemphasize this enough. You have to do it yourself. If your diet is unhealthy and you’ve been putting off fixing it till “tomorrow” for 10 years now, wake up. You don’t have to change everything at once—and, in fact, trying to do it that way is probably setting yourself up for failure. But you have to start somewhere.
Special note: If you’ve been reading the other chapters and meal plans, you’ll find that they have been fairly consistent in labeling proteins, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and so forth. For instance, a garbanzo bean was labeled as a “very lean protein plus one bread.” But in this chapter, you’ll be using foods a little more precisely. Instead of a very lean protein, for example, we might indicate that you need a specific number of bean or soy servings or certain types of vegetables daily. This will help you to use those foods to treat and prevent illnesses, much like a prescribed drug. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it’s not terribly difficult—just a few more details to remember.
THE KEY HERE IS TO HAVE A FLUID PLAN, just as you have a food plan. You need a minimum of 9 to 11 cups of fluid each day, with at least 5 of those cups being water. Additional fluids, at least a couple of cups, will be needed if you travel or get sick. Eat foods that are high in fluid, specifically fruits, soups, and vegetables, and you can cut out several cups of fluid. And remember: stay away from alcohol.
The diet for the hypertensive guy (this page) is a good one to follow for the dehydrated guy.
Wake Up
1 cup water |
Breakfast
2 cups fluid | 1 cup fat-free milk and 1 cup orange juice; or 1 cup fat-free milk and 1 cup coffee* or tea* |
Snack
2 cups water | Sparkling water, or any bottled, filtered, or tap water |
Lunch
1 to 2 cups fluid | Water, fat-free milk, tea*, coffee*, soda*, or fruit juice; 1 cup soup may be included here |
Pre-Workout Snack
2 cups water |
Workout
7 to 10 ounces every 10 to 20 minutes, more in extreme temperatures |
Post-Workout
At least 2 cups fluid | A better guideline: Weigh yourself before and after exercise; drink 2 to 3 cups fluid within 2 hours after exercise for every pound of body weight you’ve lost |
Dinner
1 to 2 cups fluid |
*2 to 3 caffeinated beverages per day can be included as part of your total fluid intake. If you drink more than 3 caffeinated beverages per day, those above the first 3, as well as any alcoholic beverages, should not be counted toward your total daily fluid intake.
THE FOUNDATION OF THIS DIET IS ADEQUATE FLUIDS, protein, and calories; enough carbs to spare protein; an array of fruits and vegetables; and a healthy assortment of fats to get all the vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants associated with keeping the immune system operating at peak levels. Then there are some special added attractions to enhance healing, decrease oxidative damage, diminish inflammation, and boost your natural anti-inflammatory processes. Last but not least, daily moderate exercise will also boost your immune function. So even if you’re in the healing phase, as long as your doc says its okay, get out and move.
2,500 calories
305 grams carbohydrates
163 grams protein
73 grams fat
4 bread
6 fruit (2 citrus, 2 berry, 2 other)
4 milk
1 yogurt
8 teaspoons added sugar
6 vegetable (3 carotenoid, 2 brassica, 1 allium)
6 poultry
4 fish
1 medium-fat protein
4 fat
1 bean
2 nut
2 soy
Note: Occasionally, a fat-free product, like mustard or cooking spray, is included on the menus. These do not count toward your daily breakdown but should not be overused.
*Use every day.
†Based on a 185-pound man.
Breakfast
2 bread | 1 cup Shredded Wheat |
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice |
1 berry | ¾ cup fresh blueberries |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg, scrambled in a nonstick pan |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water | |
Oil-free cooking spray (for egg) |
Snack
2 soy | 1 cup edamame |
1 carotenoid | 1 cup carrot sticks |
Tea |
Lunch
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
2 carotenoid | Salad with 1½ cups romaine lettuce, ½ cup tomato, ½ cup cucumber |
6 poultry | 6 ounces turkey |
1 bean | ½ cup garbanzo beans |
1 fat | 1 tablespoon oil and vinegar dressing |
1 other fruit | Peach |
2 nut | 20 peanuts |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
Post-Workout
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | 1¼ cups frozen whole strawberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
Dinner
2 bread | Small ear corn on the cob |
Small whole-wheat roll | |
1 other fruit | Apple |
2 brassica | 1 cup steamed broccoli and cauliflower |
1 allium | ½ cup grilled onions |
4 fish | 4 ounces salmon, grilled |
2 fat | 8 Kalamata olives |
1 teaspoon olive oil | |
2 teaspoons added sugar | 2 teaspoons sugar or honey |
Tea |
Breakfast
Combine yogurt, fruit, and honey. Combine muffin and egg for sandwich.
2 bread | 1 whole-wheat English muffin |
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free unsweetened yogurt |
2 fruit | ½ cup grapefruit juice |
1¼ cups fresh whole strawberries | |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg, hard-cooked |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water |
2 nut | 1 tablespoon peanut butter |
1 carotenoid | 1 cup carrot sticks |
Tea |
Lunch
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
2 carotenoid | 1 cup lettuce, ½ cup tomato, ½ cup roasted red pepper |
6 poultry | 6 ounces skinless white-meat chicken, grilled with lime juice |
1 fat | 1 teaspoon olive oil (for roasted vegetables) |
2 tablespoons fat-free dressing |
Pre-Workout Snack
1 other fruit | Plum |
2 soy | 2 ounces soy nuts |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
Post-Workout
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | ¾ cup frozen blueberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
Dinner
2 bread | 1 cup cooked pasta |
1 other fruit | Pear |
2 brassica | 1 cup Brussels sprouts, cooked |
1 allium | ½ cup shallots and garlic, grilled (with shrimp) |
1 bean | ½ cup kidney beans |
4 fish | 4 ounces shrimp, grilled |
2 fat | 2 teaspoons olive oil |
2 tablespoons fat-free dressing (for Brussels sprouts) | |
2 teaspoons added sugar | 2 teaspoons sugar or honey |
Tea |
Breakfast
2 bread | 2 slices whole-wheat bread |
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free cottage cheese (on bread) |
1 citrus | 4 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice (with pulp) |
1 berry | ¾ cup blueberries |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg, cooked sunny-side up in a nonstick pan |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water | |
Oil-free cooking spray (for egg) |
Snack
2 soy | 2 ounces soy nuts |
1 carotenoid | ½ cup V8 juice |
Tea |
Lunch
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
2 carotenoid | 2 cups spinach and bok choy, stir-fried |
6 poultry | 6 ounces chicken, stir-fried with ginger and garlic |
1 bean | ½ cup black beans |
1 fat | 1 teaspoon oil (for stir-frying) |
Pre-Workout Snack
1 other fruit | Nectarine |
2 nut | 10 cashews |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
Post-Workout
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | 1 cup frozen raspberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
2 bread | 1 ounce croutons (for salad) |
1 cup chicken noodle soup | |
1 other fruit | 1 slice watermelon |
2 brassica | 1 cup steamed cauliflower and broccoli |
1 allium | ½ cup onion (for salad) |
4 fish | 4 ounces swordfish, grilled with ginger and scallions |
2 fat | 2 teaspoons olive oil (for fish) |
2 teaspoons added sugar | 2 teaspoons sugar or honey |
Tea |
Breakfast
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk (½ cup for French toast) |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice |
1 berry | 1 cup raspberries |
FRENCH TOAST (See recipe directions on this page.)
2 bread | 2 slices whole-wheat bread |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water | |
Oil-free cooking spray |
Snack
2 nut | 1 tablespoon almond butter |
1 carotenoid | 1 cup carrot sticks |
Tea |
Lunch
1 milk | 1 ounce skim milk mozzarella |
2 carotenoid | 2 cups tomatoes with balsamic vinegar |
6 poultry | 6 ounces turkey |
1 fat | 1⁄8 avocado |
Tea |
1 other fruit | 1 apple |
2 soy | 1 cup edamame |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
Post-Workout
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | 1¼ cups frozen strawberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
Dinner
2 bread | 1 hamburger bun |
1 other fruit | 17 grapes |
2 brassica | 1 cup coleslaw |
1 allium | ½ cup onion, garlic (for seasoning) |
1 bean | ½ cup baked beans |
4 fish | 4 ounces salmon burger |
2 fat | 8 Kalamata olives |
Included (in coleslaw) | |
2 teaspoons added sugar | Included (in baked beans) |
Tea |
Breakfast
2 bread | 1 cup quick oats (not instant) |
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice |
1 berry | 1 ¼ cups whole strawberries |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg, hard-cooked |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water |
Snack
2 soy | 1 cup edemame |
1 carotenoid | ½ cup V8 juice |
Tea |
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
FAJITAS
Combine ingredients.
2 carotenoid | 1 cup sautéed peppers |
2 tablespoons salsa | |
6 poultry | 6 ounces skinless white-meat chicken, grilled with lime juice |
1 bean | ½ cup fat-free refried beans |
1 fat | 1 teaspoon olive oil (for cooking) |
Pre-Workout Snack
1 other fruit | 1 pear |
2 nut | 1 tablespoon almond butter (mix into yogurt) |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
Post-Workout
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | 1 cup frozen blackberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
Dinner
2 bread | 1 small pita |
½ cup couscous | |
1 other fruit | 1 cup honeydew melon |
2 brassica | 1 cup broccoli slaw |
1 allium | ½ cup combined onion, shallot, garlic (in couscous) |
4 fish | 4 ounces fresh trout (stuff with couscous) |
2 fat | 2 tablespoons vinaigrette |
2 teaspoons added sugar | 2 teaspoons sugar or honey |
Tea |
Breakfast
2 bread | 2 slices multigrain toast |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg, hard-cooked |
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice |
1 berry | 1 cup raspberries |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water |
Snack
2 nut | 1 tablespoon peanut butter |
1 carotenoid | 1 cup carrots |
Tea |
Lunch
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
2 carotenoid | 1 cup tomato, 1 cup spinach |
6 poultry | 6 ounces turkey |
1 fat | 2 tablespoon reduced-fat ranch dressing |
Pre-Workout Snack
1 other fruit | 1 small banana |
2 soy | 2 ounces soy nuts |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
Post-Workout
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | 1 cup frozen raspberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
2 bread | 2 slices rye bread |
1 other fruit | 1 cup cantaloupe |
2 brassica | 1 cup coleslaw |
1 allium | ½ cup chopped onion (mix into tuna) |
1 bean | ½ cup fava beans |
4 fish | 4 ounces tuna in olive oil, drained |
2 fat | 2 tablespoons mayonnaise (mix into tuna) |
2 teaspoons added sugar | 2 teaspoons sugar or honey |
Tea |
Breakfast
2 bread | 2 cups Kashi |
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup grapefruit juice |
1 berry | 1 cup blackberries |
1 medium-fat protein | 1 egg, hard-cooked (for egg salad) |
1 fat | 1½ tablespoons ground flaxseed |
Water |
Snack
2 soy | 1 cup edamame |
1 carotenoid | 1 cup red pepper sticks |
Tea |
Lunch
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
2 carotenoid | 1 cup romaine lettuce, 1 cup tomato |
6 poultry | 6 ounces skinless white-meat chicken, grilled with lime juice |
1 bean | ½ cup pinto beans |
1 fat | 2 tablespoons fat-free ranch dressing |
1 teaspoon oil (to cook chicken) |
Pre-Workout Snack
1 other fruit | 17 grapes |
2 nut | 10 walnuts |
1 yogurt | 1 cup plain fat-free yogurt |
SMOOTHIE
Blend until smooth.
1 milk | 1 cup fat-free milk |
1 citrus | ½ cup orange juice with calcium |
1 berry | ¾ cup frozen blueberries |
6 teaspoons added sugar | 2 tablespoons honey |
Dinner
2 bread | 3-inch square of corn bread |
1 other fruit | 1 pear |
2 brassica | 1 cup broccoli, steamed |
1 allium | ½ cup leeks (for salmon) |
4 fish | 4 ounces salmon, poached |
2 fat | 1 teaspoon olive oil |
Included (in corn bread) | |
2 teaspoons added sugar | 2 teaspoons sugar or honey |
Tea |