The concept of the value and benefit of gluten-free food has been gaining momentum for the last 10 years. Discussion related to gluten-free diets goes back to the mid-1950s, but those peer-reviewed articles were primarily focused on the treatment of celiac disease and related gastrointestinal disorders. Today gluten-free diets are being adopted as an overall health-promoting measure by broad segments of the population. Is this trend merely a fad or are there actual advantages for the average person in cutting down on gluten intake?

Gluten is a structural protein found in wheat that provides a glue-like property and helps dough stick together. Gluten-containing wheat works best for bread making, and a few thousand years ago gluten-containing wheat became the standard wheat crop. Similarly, the protein in barley and rye is predominantly gluten. Researchers posit that tens of thousands of years ago our digestive systems were optimized genetically to process a diverse diet of grains. But a modern diet is mostly composed of uniform, gluten-containing grains. Our digestive systems were not designed to process such a heavy load of gluten, and the result is the development of a range of gluten-sensitivity disorders and autoimmune diseases.¹

Gluten sensitivity has been proposed as a culprit in numerous conditions, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and infertility.^2,3 The link to such conditions is not clearly understood, but case reports identifying gluten sensitivity as a causal factor have appeared in numerous professional journals for more than 10 years.

For children, adolescents, and adults with such disorders, it may be appropriate to adopt a gluten-free diet to eliminate a potential source of tissue inflammation. Other persons with various nonspecific digestive complaints may also benefit from a gluten-free nutrition plan. For example, if you experience frequent, or even periodic, upset stomachs or other gastrointestinal problems, consumption of gluten may be part of the clinical scenario. Two months on a gluten-free food plan should be sufficient to determine whether gluten protein is a contributing factor to such complaints.

Going gluten-free takes a lot of dedication, time, and effort. The first step is to learn which foods in your diet contain gluten. As noted, wheat, barley, and rye are primary sources of gluten protein. Quinoa, teff, buckwheat, millet, and amaranth are gluten-free replacements for gluten-containing grains. It's important to bear in mind that many foods contain wheat and represent hidden sources of gluten, including beer, potato chips, brown rice sugar, soy sauce, and processed food such as deli meats, frozen burgers, and bread crumbs. Being gluten-free requires diligence, but the payoff may be substantial in terms of overall health and well-being.

¹Sapone A, et al: Spectrum of gluten-related disorders: consensus on new nomenclature and classification. BMC Med. 2012 Feb 7;10:13. doi: 10.1186/1741-7015-10-13
²Isasi C, et al: Fibromyalgia and non-celiac gluten sensitivity: a description with remission of fibromyalgia. Rheumatol Int 2014 Apr 12. [Epub ahead of print]
³Herfarth HH, et al: Prevalence of a gluten-free diet and improvement of clinical symptoms in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. Inflamm Bowel Dis 20(7):1194-7, 2014

Kids don't have that strong a relationship to vegetables. Kids will go through the motions, pushing broccoli spears and lima beans around their plate a few times, but few veggies actually reach the inside of a kid's mouth.

And yet, we want our kids to eat vegetables on a regular basis. The best way to do this is to serve fresh veggies daily, and make sure WE eat all the vegetables on our plates!

Why bother? It turns out that vegetables - all kinds of vegetables - contain super-powerful ingredients that help keep us healthy and help us ward off a wide range of serious illnesses.^1,2 These magical substances - phytochemicals - give fruits and vegetables their big nutritional kick!

"Phyto" is Greek for "plant". Brightly colored fruits and vegetables contain the most nutrients and the most phytochemicals.

Well-known phytochemicals include lycopene, found in tomatoes; isoflavones, found in soy; and flavonoids, found in fruits such as blueberries and cranberries.³ Phytochemicals have wide-ranging effects - some are antioxidants, others stimulate enzyme activity, and others have hormonal action. All phytochemicals act to enhance health and well-being and human performance.

Antioxidants provide significant protection for your body's cells against the destructive oxidation potential of free radicals. Free radicals are produced by normal metabolic activities, and they are neutralized by antioxidants which we obtain in a well-balanced diet.

But if we're not consuming our daily requirement of fruits and vegetables, our reserves of antioxidants are decreased, and free radicals can destroy cells and create disease. For example, certain types of cancer are linked to free radical damage.

Bottom line - broccoli spears are much more than flowery green things your Mom used to make you eat. Broccoli is a superfood, rich in antioxidants and rich in cancer-fighting ability.

Carrots - another superfood- are rich in beta-carotene, an important antioxidant. Your body converts a portion of beta-carotene into Vitamin A, which helps strengthen the immune system and protects the digestive tract.

Tomatoes round out the list of the top three super-veggies. Tomatoes are rich in lycopene - a potent antioxidant. Lycopenes give tomatoes their rich, red color. These phytochemicals have proven health benefits in the areas of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

Eating vegetables daily provides so much benefit for people of all ages. Five to nine portions of fruits and vegetables are recommended in a balanced nutritional program.

Your chiropractor is an expert on nutrition and will be glad to help you construct food plans that work for you and your family.

¹Hayes JD, et al: The cancer chemopreventive actions of phytochemicals derived from glucosinolates. Eur J Nutr 47(Suppl 2):73-88, 2008
²Nair S, et al: Natural dietary anti-cancer chemopreventive compounds: redox-mediated differential signaling mechanisms in cytoprotection of normal cells versus cytotoxicity in tumor cells. Acta Pharmacol Sin 28(4):459-472, 2007
³Vinson JA, et al: Cranberries and cranberry products: Powerful in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo sources of antioxidants. J Agric Food Chem June 2008 (in press)

The mystery writer Raymond Chandler, author of "The Big Sleep" and "The Long Goodbye", famously extolled a "California breakfast" of orange juice and a cigarette. Of course, this was back in the bad old days when lighting up was part of most people's morning ritual. Today, although the orange juice might remain, a healthy breakfast consists of various nutritious replacements for the non-nourishing cigarette.

The importance of eating a good breakfast has been widely promoted in countless public health campaigns, yet many people persist in rushing past this critical meal, jumping right in to their daily work activities while bolting down an oat bran muffin or, worse, a toaster pastry. Such behavior does not support a healthy lifestyle and is especially deleterious for children and teenagers.

From the adult perspective, a lack of sufficient nutritional energy resources will negatively impact a person's work performance. In the absence of appropriate blood glucose levels, your body will seek out other energy sources such as stored fat. The metabolic demands of utilizing fat for energy are much greater than those of processes that use glucose. Over the course of a morning, such inefficient metabolism leads to tiredness, fatigue, and even a headache. Other body systems suffer, especially the digestive system and the nerve system.1,2 For example, the primary source of energy for your brain is glucose. If you've had a less-than-nutritious breakfast, the supply of glucose reaching your brain is substantially reduced. As a result, your thinking gets muddled. Creativity and decision-making processes degrade. Your overall effectiveness as a human being becomes markedly reduced.3 The negative consequences can only be imagined.

It may be fairly considered that young people depend even more on their brains than do adults. Their brains are responsible, in addition to everything else, for coordinating the growth and development of their entire bodies. The nerve system is the body's master system and the brain is the command and control center of the nerve system. Proper nutrition, critical for long-term health and well-being of all persons, is even more important for children and teenagers. Habitual lack of a healthy, nutritious breakfast leads to an unending list of problems for young people as they get older and become adults.

It is a truism that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Every meal is necessary and valuable, but a complete breakfast sets the tone for how things will go for the next 12 to 18 hours. Taking the time for breakfast is well worth the effort. When your energy stores have been replenished, you're ready for action. You might need to get out of bed 15 minutes earlier, but this change in routine will soon become a useful new habit. All of your family members will benefit by taking this time to take care of themselves.

As all real estate brokers know, a fresh coat of paint will make any property look good. Whether your home is a row house in Baltimore, a Paris atelier, or even a Winnebago, a new coat of paint will bring a shine to the interior and put a smile on the faces of both residents and guests. You may find that a similar smile will appear on your face and the faces of your friends and family members when you engage in activities that provide you with a metaphorical fresh coat of paint. Specifically, you'll obtain your "new look" by incorporating a healthy diet and regular, vigorous exercise in your daily routine.^1,2

But what exactly is "a healthy diet," and what is really meant by "regular, vigorous exercise"? A healthy diet consists in a daily practice of consuming food from all five food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and dairy. Importantly, a healthy diet includes at least five daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Overall, the more colors on your plate, the better. If you're consistently eating yellow, green, red, blue, orange, and purple foods such as squash, corn, grapefruit, kale, broccoli, apples, peppers, blueberries, carrots, oranges, potatoes, and eggplant, you're well on your way toward a lifelong healthy diet.

The grains food group contains whole grains such as whole wheat, brown rice, bulgur, and barley. For those who require gluten-free whole grains, the numerous choices include amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, brown rice, and teff. The protein food group includes beef, lamb, chicken, eggs, fish, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds. There are plenty of protein sources for vegetarians and others who don't eat meat or other foods derived from animals such as eggs and milk. The dairy group is included to provide sources of calcium.³ These foods include low-fat and fat-free choices such as milk, yoghurt, and cheese. If you're a vegetarian or have allergies to dairy products, other sources of calcium include kale, collard greens, spinach, salmon, sardines, blackstrap molasses, and beans. For men and women aged 19 to 50, the recommended daily requirement for calcium is 1000mg. For women over age 50 and men over age 70, the recommended daily requirement for calcium is 1200mg.

Regular, vigorous exercise means doing at least 30 minutes of exercise five days a week. Walking, running, bike riding, swimming, using an elliptical machine or treadmill, and weight training are all good choices. Lifting weights three times a week and doing some form of aerobic exercise two times a week is one example of such a program of vigorous daily exercise. For some people, walking five days a week for at least 30 minutes each day represents an optimal program. Find out what works best for you and do that consistently. Change your program every few months to keep both your mind and body challenged. Again, the specific form of exercise is not critical. What works for one person will not work for another. The key is consistency. Five days a week, at least 30 minutes a day.

Your fresh coat of paint is not merely metaphorical. Once your new lifestyle changes take effect, probably within three to six weeks, you'll begin to develop an inner glow and an outer glow that will be visible for all to see.

¹King DE, et al: Impact of healthy lifestyle on mortality in people with normal blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and C-reactive protein. Eur J Prev Cardiol 20(1):73-79, 2013
²Lopresti AL, et al: A review of lifestyle factors that contribute to important pathways associated with major depression: diet, sleep and exercise. J Affect Disord 148(1):12-27, 2013
³Nachtigall MJ, et al: Osteoporosis risk factors and early life-style modifications to decrease disease burden in women. Clin Obstet Gynecol 56(4):650-653, 2013

It's the rare child who actually wants to eat fruits and vegetables. Kids are bombarded by television and radio ads for cereals, candy, and chips that contain huge amounts of sugar and large quantities of saturated fat. The sugar craving begins in childhood - kids quickly develop a taste for sweets. To a child's sugar-sensitized palette, the complex sugars contained in fruits and vegetables are a poor substitute.

We carry these habits into adulthood and our long-term health suffers as a result. Twenty-four hours is not enough time in the day for most of us, and many consistently choose fast foods as a means of satisfying our need for food and a method for limiting the amount of precious time we spend on meal preparation.

But fast foods are not really food in the sense that the nutrition they provide is minimal. Fast foods are essentially empty calories.

In the 1950s and 1960s a well-known health-related slogan was "an apple a day makes the doctor away". This advice represented ancient folk wisdom. Today, decades of research has shown that apples - and all fruits and vegetables - have remarkable health-promoting and disease-fighting properties.

Most fruits and vegetables are packed with magical biochemicals called phytochemicals - "phyto" means plant. Phytochemicals give fruits and vegetables their color, so the more colorful a food, the more phytochemicals it contains.

Ongoing research studies show that phytochemicals - of which there are thousands of varieties - provide protection against the development of many chronic diseases, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and arthritis.

Many phytochemicals are antioxidants and neutralize free radicals in human cells. Others have anti-inflammatory properties - these help slow the aging process.

Fruits and vegetables are so important for our health and well-being that many national organizations have promoted the "five to stay alive rule" - the recommendation is to eat at least five portions of fruits and vegetables each day.

Portions could include any of these - an apple, an orange, a banana, a cup of grapes, a cup of blueberries, a yam, a couple of carrots, a couple of tomatoes, and a couple of tablespoons of broccoli.

For many of us, "five to stay alive" would be a radical departure from our old habits. It might take a little effort to develop new shopping and eating habits, but once you're in the groove it's likely you'll be feeling so much better you'll wonder why you didn't start this healthy-eating plan sooner.

Your chiropractor is an expert on nutritional health and will be glad to help you create a food plan that works for you and your family.

¹de Kok TM, et al: Mechanisms of combined action of different chemopreventive dietary compounds: a review. Eur J Nutr 47(Suppl 2):59-59, 2008
²Ware WR: Nutrition and the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer: Association of Cytochrome P450 CYP1B1 With the Role of Fruit and Fruit Extracts. Integr Cancer Ther December 2008
³Liu RH: Potential synergy of phytochemicals in cancer prevention: mechanism of action. J Nutr 134(Suppl 12):3479S-3485S, 2004

We all know we should eat a "good breakfast". Most of us can still hear the voice of our third grade teacher ringing in our ears - "Did everyone eat a good breakfast today?" - the kindly, inquiring tone usually accompanied by a penetrating stare. But as unlikely as it was then that most kids ate a good breakfast, it is even more unlikely now.¹ For those of us who are adults, breakfast is frequently a mere cup of coffee. Or possibly a glass of orange juice and a bagel or a muffin. Maybe a "breakfast sandwich" at a fast-food chain. Regardless, not many of our choices can be construed as nutrition that will support us in being the champions that we want to be.

Everyone knows why a good breakfast is important. First, your gas tank is near empty. If you don't refuel, you'll be running on fumes. Every cell in your body requires high-quality nutrition. Most especially, your brain cells and your muscle cells require plenty of glucose. If you don't have enough energy in your fuel tank, your body feels sluggish and your brain feels as if it's trying to swim upstream against a strong current. Worse, you don't have enough cellular energy to sweep away the metabolic end-products that build up from normal functioning. You can't do maintenance and toxins accumulate. Now you need even more energy to deal with the toxic build-up and a vicious circle develops. You feel run-down, you develop muscle tension and a headache, and your whole day starts to deteriorate. This scenario is typical for many people and it continues day after day. Projecting into the future, the long-term results include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and overweight/obesity.² What can be done?

For those of us who recognize a problem and are willing to take action on our own behalf, the first step is to be willing to actually eat a nutritious breakfast. We want food that will help us be healthy, rather than "food" that instead adds to our health-related problems. If we choose to take such action, we can follow several easy guidelines. An energy-filled breakfast could consist of whole-grain cereals, fruit, cheese, eggs, nuts, and even meat.³ Not all of this, certainly, but enough to make a breakfast consisting of 300 or 400 calories. The prospect seems daunting, particularly when breakfast has been an afterthought for many years. But the process actually becomes easy once you get used to having this meal.

For example, two slices of whole-grain toast plus a tablespoon of peanut butter and a tablespoon of organic jam makes a great breakfast. You've got approximately 300 calories and you're combining protein with complex carbohydrates. Or two scrambled eggs and a side of 1/2 cup of steel-cut oatmeal (that you've prepared overnight) with a tablespoon of honey mixed in. This meal, too, provides approximately 300 calories and an energy-producing combination of protein and complex carbohydrates. You get the idea - a creative, attractive small meal that is composed of complex carbohydrates and protein. You've now consumed an energy source that will be "slow-burning" and provide high-quality fuel for the next three to four hours. You're ready to have a great morning of productive activity.

Being healthy takes work. It doesn't happen by chance. Having a good breakfast, a "breakfast of champions", is a key component of this overall, life-affirming process.

In decades past, very few urban kids had ever even heard of a parsnip, a fennel bulb, or a bunch of kale. In those days, fruit and vegetable consumption typically consisted of apples, bananas, corn, potatoes, peas, and lettuce. Oranges were infrequent and grapefruit was a rarity. Today a veritable cornucopia of produce is available year-round, providing the possibility for substantial variety in a family's daily diet. But with the exception of families that include dedicated foodies, most diets could still be considered reasonably barren with respect to consumption of a range of healthful fruits and vegetables. Importantly, taking the single step of providing a variety of produce for the daily table will lead to multiple benefits in terms of health and wellness.

Eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is so valuable that this daily habit ranks high on the list of federal health and public policy recommendations focusing on nutrition. In the United States, the Department of Agriculture has launched the ChooseMyPlate campaign to support public policy, highlighting the five main food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy. The ChooseMyPlate program recommends that fully one-half of every plate of food consist of fruits and vegetables.

Physiologically, all bodily systems, most especially the gastrointestinal system and immune system, depend on nutrition gained from fruits and vegetables. Consuming fresh produce daily enables the gastrointestinal system, that is, your stomach, small intestine, and large intestine, to process food effectively and facilitate the transit of food throughout the stomach and intestines. Deficiency of fresh fruits and vegetables will slow transit time, resulting in blockage, bloating, and compromised regularity. Similarly, immune system functioning depends critically on the availability of specific nutrients derived from fresh produce. These nutrients, known as phytochemicals, provide biochemicals that aid immune system cells such as neutrophils, macrophages, and natural killer cells in defending the body against bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic disease-causing invaders.

Nature has provided us with an easy means of identifying the types of produce that contain the most healthful nutrition: the more colorful the fruit or vegetable, the more phytochemicals and other nutrients it contains. For example, foods rich in phytochemicals include blueberries, carrots, greens such as kale and chard, broccoli, apples, oranges, beets, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. Produce such as bananas do not contain many phytochemicals, but are still valuable sources of complex carbohydrates.

Thus, all of us, both children and adults, need our daily portions of fresh fruits and vegetables. Of course, merely having this information is not sufficient. Action is required. A four-week trial of adding fresh produce to your family's daily diet should provide many indicators of the available health benefits of these marvelous foods. Such evidence will likely be sufficient to cause a healthful long-term shift in your family's dietary habits with numerous positive outcomes in the years to come.

Sources

1. Zhang YJ, et al: Antioxidant Phytochemicals for the Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Diseases. Molecules 20(12): 21138-21156, 2015
2. Guillermo Gormaz J, et al: Potential Role of Polyphenols in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases: Molecular Bases. Curr Med Chem. 2015 Nov 27. [Epub ahead of print]
3. Ghosh N, et al: Chronic Inflammatory Diseases: Progress and Prospect with Herbal Medicine. Curr Pharm Des. 2015 Nov 12. [Epub ahead of print]