In October of 2001, my sister started getting very sick She had stomach spasms and she was having a hard time getting around. Walking was a major chore. It took everything she had just to get out of bed; she was in so much pain.

By March 2002, she had undergone several tissue and muscle biopsies and was on 24 various prescription medications. The doctors could not determine what was wrong with her. She was in so much pain, and so sick she just knew she was dying.

She put her house, bank accounts, life insurance, etc., in her oldest daughter’s name, and made sure that her younger children were to be taken care of.

She also wanted her last hooray, so she planned a trip to Florida (basically in a wheelchair) for March 22nd.

On March 19, I called her to ask how her most recent tests went, and she said they didn’t find anything on the test, but they believe she had MS.

I recalled an article a friend of mine e-mailed to me and I asked my sister if she drank diet soda? She told me that she did. As a matter of fact, she was getting ready to crack one open that moment.

I told her not to open it, and to stop drinking the diet soda! I e-mailed her an article my friend, a lawyer, had sent. My sister called me within 32 hours after our phone conversation and told me she had stopped drinking the diet soda AND she could walk! The muscle spasms went away. She said she didn’t feel 100% but, she sure felt a lot better.

She told me she was going to her doctor with this article and would call me when she got home.

Well, she called me, and said her doctor was amazed! He is going to call all of his MS patients to find out if they consumed artificial sweeteners of any kind. In a nutshell, she was being poisoned by the Aspartame in the diet soda and literally dying a slow and miserable death.

Continue reading:  http://rhondagessner.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/a-killer-in-your-fridge-sweet-poison-a-must-read/

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Prompts Considerably More Weight Gain

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322121115.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

Eat cake or cookies with breakfast to lose weight, study suggests

"Typically carbohydrate is 100 percent converted to sugar within an hour in the body, causing your blood glucose to spike and then crash quickly, leading to increased hunger," Murray told HealthPop in an email. "The addition of protein-enriched foods slows this process down, reduces the feeling of hunger, which in turn can help individuals from snacking in response to sugar crashes."

Smith says, "I definitely wouldn't recommend to my patients to start eating dessert to breakfast."

Source

Sorry to disappoint those who thought cake or cookies for breakfast is a good idea. ;)

Low-carb, high-fat diets add no arterial health risks to obese

Good news, I would say:

Low-carb dieters showed no harmful vascular changes but also on average dropped 10 pounds in 45 days, compared to an equal number of study participants randomly assigned to a low-fat diet. The low-fat group, whose diets consisted of no more than 30 percent from fat and 55 percent from carbs, took on average 70 days, nearly a month longer, to lose the same amount of weight. [...]

However, Stewart does contend that an overemphasis on low-fat diets has likely contributed to the obesity epidemic in the United States by encouraging an overconsumption of foods high in carbohydrates. He says that high-carb foods are, in general, less filling and that people tend to get carried away with how much low-fat food they can eat. More than half of American adults are estimated to be overweight, with a body mass index of 26 or higher; a third are considered to be obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher. 

Full article here.

3 simple weight loss tips

What is the main cause of failed dieting?

I'd say it is hunger. And cravings. Also our body adapts to diets and weight-loss tends to plateau.

3 simple tips I used when the above happened:

1. Eat a good breakfast. A heavy whipping cream omelette and bacon has worked best for me. Keeps me full late into the afternoon.
   
   
2. Follow the 80/20 rule. Eat "right" 80% of the time and indulge 20% of the time. I had some ice-cream or other treat on the weekend. Keeps you sane and it's easier to stay motivated. Nobody likes to feel like their "life is over" and they will never be able to eat what they like the most again. Just don't go overboard, all in moderation.
   
   
3. When and if you plateau in your weight-loss, the body needs a wake-up call. When I first started with Low Carb High Fat, I plateaued after about 2.5 months. I did some research and decided to do the opposite of what I was doing. So for 3-4 days, I ate nothing but High Carb food, pasta, potatoes, sugar and so on. Then back to Low Carb High Fat. It worked. I started losing weight again.

List of fruit from low to high in sugar

Pretty handy list for those who crave fruit, but still want to keep down the carbs.

Fruits Lowest in Sugar
Small Amounts of Lemon or Lime
Rhubarb
Raspberries (more about berries on low carb diets)
Blackberries
Cranberries

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/whattoeat/a/whatfruit.htm

Diet may ’reverse kidney failure’ in diabetics

Researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found a "ketogenic diet" could reverse the damage caused to tubes in the kidneys by too much sugar in the blood. 

For their study, the researchers used laboratory mice with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.  Once kidney damage had developed, half the mice were put onto the ketogenic diet, which is 87 percent fat and mimics the effect of starvation. 

After eight weeks, the researchers noted that kidney damage was reversed in those rodents which were on the highly controlled diet, the leading news channel reported.

http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=178316