Click to Lose Weight - A Natural Diet Guide

Click2LoseWeight offers lifestyle changes healthy option to North America's diet-crazed society. Natural diet guide tackles teenage, adult obesity, illnesses and diseases of malnutrition. Creative ways of cooking, healthy meals, easy breakfast, lunches and snacks prepared for busy lifestyles. Simple exercises 20-30 minutes built effortlessly into each day. Lose weight easily without guilt, eating unprocessed food, small portions, drink natural iced teas, natural fruit shakes, recipes kids love

Monday, May 29, 2006



Almonds or Statin Drugs for High Cholesterol?

It is great to see that the University of Toronto played a key role in the recent study of how eating almonds, soy protein and vegetables could lower one's cholesterol as effectively as statin drugs. We have long advocated to our friends and family that we are what we eat. The things we do to our bodies we would not do to our cars.

For example, would we run our car without a tune-up at certain mileage intervals? The body's tune-up is cleansing at certain intervals - perhaps, at the change of each season or could be when we switch to Daylight Saving Time. Would we run our car without oil changes? The oil change for our body is daily physical activity to keep our motor (heart) working in peak condition and keep oxygenating our blood so it can flow easily.

Recently, a colleague used a natural diet guide (my accumulated knowledge and creative cooking recipes) that is very similar in composition to the Portfolio Diet, along with 40-minutes of exercise 4-times a week to lose weight. She had not been following her own advice - had been working 16-hour days and neglecting "herself" to her own detriment.

She was lucky that we saw the warning sign (unexplained hypertension). She had done her annual physical and all her results were good: normal cholesterol levels, etc. except that she was overweight. For her medium frame, she was carrying several pounds over the normal maximum of 140-pounds and she knew. After all, she had never been so heavy even when she was pregnant with her children. Her body was screaming, "Help Me!” we listened, followed-up with immediate action to restore her health and rescue her from imminent heart disease.

If only we can get more doctors to encourage overweight individuals to look seriously at diet and exercise as a way to heart health and not look to weight loss surgery, we would be well on the way to "an ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure".

This study was conducted during American Heart Month (February) and just in time for National Nutrition Month (March). Thanks to the Almond Board of California, the University of Toronto Research team, (Dr. David Jenkins and Dr. Cyril Kendall) Loblaws Brand and all who made this study possible for bringing it to the attention of us, the public.

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Saturday, May 27, 2006



Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy - Sudden Death in Young Athletes

When a young athlete now known to the world as Jair Dynast, pronounced Jah-Air Die-Nast, was diagnosed in 1998 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, it ended his promising basketball career. Jair had played basketball from around 1987 and developed on the court as an intense point guard. He had had numerous physical examinations throughout his playing career and never had any heart abnormality present in any of his tests results.

It was at Prep School, Milford Academy, CT in a damp, moldy room that he noticed he was constantly sick (upper respiratory conditions). One day during a game, he felt so sick that he vomited and had to be pulled from the game. This passed and he was later granted a full athletic scholarship at South Plains College, TX to study Engineering.

During his first year of play, he was preparing to run "the mile for time" and found that he could not complete it in the time in spite of pushing himself physically. He complained of experiencing a severe burning in his chest. He underwent an examination by the team's doctor - it was felt he could have asthma so he was given various medication in puffers but his condition didn't improve.

In December 1998, he returned to his hometown, Toronto to consult local physicians. He had an electrocardiogram and there was a significant abnormality in the reading. His family physician referred him to a cardiologist near his home. The consulting doctor was so concerned that the news would end Jair's career as a basketball player that he wanted a second opinion from the top cardiac specialist. This specialist said he saw his first case of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy back in the '60s as a young graduate from the University of Toronto.

These details are being recounted to give an account of how mysterious and unforeseen this heart condition can be. It can develop suddenly - environmental factors may contribute to it but it's still uncertain in Jair's case what caused his hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to develop. Was he the lucky one? Definitely, he could have been one of the statistics for sudden death on the basketball court. Jair is now an emcee-producer and narrates his story about the sudden death of young athletes in his song; "Struggle" to bring worldwide awareness of this disease to High School basketball coaches, student-athletes and underground hip hop fans.



Parents, guardians, caregivers and coaches of young student-athletes need to be aware, be educated (the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association is a good resource for information about this disease) and look for any sign of abnormality in an otherwise healthy teenage athlete that is participating in sporting activities.

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