Calcium and Vitamin D

What is calcium and vitamin D?
Calcium is one of the many minerals that you need to be healthy. Calcium is very important to ensure strong, healthy bones and teeth. It also helps muscles and nerves to work properly. In addition, calcium may help you to manage your weight and blood pressure, and play a role in preventing colon cancer. Vitamin D helps you to absorb and use calcium and has other health benefits.

How much calcium and vitamin D do I need?
Recommended Calcium Intake
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Age (Male and Female)
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0-6 months 210 mg/day
7-12 months 270 mg/day
1-3 years 500 mg/day
4-8 years 800 mg/day
9-18 years 1300 mg/day
19-50 years 1000 mg/day
Over 50 years 1200 mg/day


Recommended Vitamin D Intake
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Age (Male and Female)
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0-1 year 400 IU/day
1-50 years 200 IU/day
51-70 years 400 IU/day
Over 70 years 600 IU/day

Note:
People with osteoporosis may need more calcium and vitamin D. Check with your doctor.


What foods contain calcium?
Breastfeeding is the best way to meet your baby's calcium needs. Infant formula provides calcium for babies who cannot be breastfed.

Dairy foods are very high in calcium, especially milk, yogurt and cheese. Other good sources include calcium-enriched orange juice, rice beverages, and soy beverages. For more information, see Food Sources of Calcium below.

What foods contain vitamin D?
There are only a few food sources of vitamin D. Good sources of vitamin D are fortified foods and beverages like milk, soy drinks, and margarine. Check the labels on these foods. Fish, liver, and egg yolk are the only foods that naturally contain vitamin D.

If you do not eat vitamin D rich foods often, you may want to consider taking a vitamin D supplement. Most multiple vitamin supplements contain vitamin D. Breastfed babies under 1 year of age need 400 IU of vitamin D from a supplement each day. People over 50 need extra vitamin D and should take 400 IU from a supplement each day.

Food Sources of Vitamin D
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Food Serving Vitamin D (IU)
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Milk 1 cup 100
Fortified rice or soy beverage 1 cup 80
Fortified orange juice 1/2 cup 45
Fortified margarine 2 tsp 51
Egg yolk 1 25
Herring or trout, cooked 75 g 156
Mackerel, cooked 75 g 80
Salmon, Atlantic, cooked 75 g 225
Salmon, canned or cooked* 75 g 608
Sardines, Atlantic, canned 75 g 70
Sardines, Pacific, canned 75 g 360
Tuna, canned, light or white 75 g 41
Tuna, canned, yellowfin (albacore, ahi) 75 g 105
Tuna, skipjack, cooked 75 g 381
Tuna, bluefin, cooked 75 g 690
*includes Chinook, Coho, Humpback (pink), Sockeye

What if I do not eat dairy foods?
Every day, choose a variety of foods from the Food Sources of Calcium list below. Plan your food choices carefully. If you find it difficult to get the recommended amounts of calcium and vitamin D from foods, a combination of food sources and supplements is recommended.

Food Sources of Calcium
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Dairy Foods Serving calcium (mg)
Milk, with added calcium 1 cup 430
Milk, whole, 2%, 1% skim 1 cup 300
Milk, evaporated 1/2 cup 367
Cheese, hard 50 gm 360 (average)*
Processed cheese spread 4 Tbsp 348
Cheese, processed slices 50 gm 276
Cottage cheese, 1 or 2% 2 cups 310
Cottage cheese, <0.1% 2 cups 156
Yogurt, plain 3/4 cup 290 (average)*
Yogurt, fruit bottom 3/4 cup 233 (average)*
Frozen yogurt, soft serve 1 cup 218
Ice cream 1 cup 194
*calcium content varies, check label

Beans and Bean Products Serving calcium (mg)
Tofu, medium firm or firm, made with calcium sulphate 150 gm 347
Tofu, firm, made with calcium sulphate and magnesium chloride 150 gm 234
White beans 3/4 cup 119
Navy beans 3/4 cup 93
Black turtle beans 3/4 cup 75
Pinto beans, chickpeas 3/4 cup 58

Nuts and Seeds Portion calcium (mg)
Tahini (sesame seed butter) 2 Tbsp 130
Almonds, dry roast 1/4 cup 93
Almond butter 2 Tbsp 88
Sesame seed kernels, dried 1/4 cup 50

Meats, Fish, and Poultry Serving calcium (mg)
Sardines, Atlantic, canned with bones 75 gm 286
Sardines, Pacific, canned with bones 75 gm 180
Salmon, canned with bones 75 gm 208

Grains Serving calcium (mg)
Bannock 1 med 84
Oats, instant, regular, no sugar added 1 pouch 165

Non Dairy Drinks Serving calcium (mg)
Fortified rice or soy beverage 1 cup 319**
Orange juice fortified with calcium and vitamin D 1/2 cup 165
Regular soy beverage 1 cup 110
**added calcium sometimes settles at the bottom of the container; shake well before drinking

Vegetables (all measures for cooked vegetables) Serving calcium (mg)
Turnip greens 1/2 cup 104
Chinese cabbage/bok choy 1/2 cup 84
Okra, frozen 1/2 cup 65
Mustard greens 1/2 cup 55
Kale 1/2 cup 49
Chinese broccoli (gai lan) 1/2 cup 46
Rutabaga 1/2 cup 43
Broccoli 1/2 cup 33

Fruit Serving calcium (mg)
Orange 1 med 52


Other Serving calcium (mg)
Brown sugar 1 cup 198
Blackstrap molasses 1 Tbsp 179
Regular molasses 1 Tbsp 44

Asian Foods Serving calcium (mg)
Dried fish, smelt 35 gm 560
Soy bean curd slab, semisoft 100 gm 308
Daylily flower 100 gm 303
Sea cucumber, fresh 100 gm 285
Soy bean milk film, stick shape 100 gm 77
Seaweed, Wakame, raw 1/2 cup 63
Seaweed, dry (agar) 1/2 cup 50
Fat-choy, dried 1/4 cup 50
Soy bean milk film, dried 100 gm 48
Boiled bone soup 1/2 cup negligible

Sunburn

If you have ever sunbathed, swum in tropical waters, had a summers picnic, or any one of a million ther activities, it is quite likely you have had sunburn - that itchy, painful, smarting ugly redness that tells us we have overdone it in the sun.

But, what is sunburn, what does it mean and what can we do about it?

When the suns rays strike the skin, they penetrate through the uppermost layer (the epidermis), which sonsists largely of dead, old skin cells, to the dermis, the living, growing part of the skin that creates new skin cells.

These young, newly-formed cells are particularly sensitive to sunlight, which, when over-exposed, can dehydrate them, damage the cell walls, leading to disease and even cause severe damage to the DNA of the cell itself, which is one of the recognised starting points of skin cancer. As the heat persists in the skin, it causes further damage, literally "cooking" these new skin cells as they emerge.

These different forms of irritation all require a healing response, whose design is to stop us from causing further damage, whilst giving the skin time to repair itself. If we continue to gets lots of sun exposure, the skin will gradually darken, increasing its melanin content in the form of a suntan to filter out some of the harmful rays and protect us from chronic skin damage.


The image on the felt, shows some of the damaged cells in sunburnt skin.

In the short-term, however, the result is sunburn - probably the single most effective way of getting us to keep out of the sun (the body is VERY clever like that :-)

Like many other problems, children's skin heals more quickly from sunburn, but is also less likely to contain protective melanin. As we age, the components of our skin change in the same way that other parts of our body do, generaly making them less efficient at what they do.

So what can you do about sunburn?

The most obvious point is not to get burnt in the first place, either by not getting overexposed, or by using a high-quality, reflective suncreen (unlike most sunscreens, which can actually CAUSE skin cancer), but that isn't always possible.

The vast majority of aftersun products concentrate on remoisturising the skin, helping dissipate the heat at the same time as soothing the pain and itching. Some traditional remedies such as lavender or aloe vera oil can actually reduce the extent of the burn as they do for conventional burns (tip - ALWAYS keep lavender oil in the kitchen - you'll be amazed at how effective it is on burns!), but do little to help the healing process.

Recently, however, new preparations have appeared that actually stimulate the healing process and help repair the DNA damage that can be so dangerous if left unchecked.

This is a remarkable advance on previous treatments and can actually halt the damage in its tracks, not only reducing the pain, swelling, redness and itchiness of sunburn, but also helping resolve the dangerous DNA damage that can be the start of skin cancer.

The visual results are just as impressive. In the images below, the left-hand photo is of a man who has developed sunburn after overexposure. The right-hand image is of the same man the next day after applying DNA repair creme the night before. As you can see, the results were dramatic and enabled him to venture out the next day, which his friends who had been equally burnt could not.

HIV AIDS

No-one can have escaped the controversy surrounding the recent decision by South Africa to provide anti-retroviral drugs to the massive number of HIV AIDS sufferers in that country. Many will consider this to be a victory for the HIV AIDS lobby in South Africa, but is it?
Or are we about to see a massive jump in AIDS deaths from the use of these dangerous, toxic drugs.

The following is a summary of what the public generally believes about AIDS today:

AIDS is a disease arising from an infection from the virus known as HIV.

The virus is spread in humans either through promiscuous, unprotected homosexual sex, through sexual contact with an HIV-infected member of the opposite sex, through the sharing of intravenous drug users' contaminated needles or through contaminated blood supplies.

Pregnant women who test positive can pass the virus on to their unborn child

HIV can also be transmitted to the baby outside of the womb through breast-feeding.

The AIDS test is a simple and accurate method of detecting HIV.

In the West, HIV infection is spreading among women and heterosexual men and is increasing exponentially every year.

Drugs are available to treat AIDS patients but they are very expensive. A new range of anti-HIV drugs, the 'protease inhibitors', are now believed to be more effective.

AIDS is devastating the Third World.

There is currently no cure for AIDS.
With the exception of AIDS drugs being expensive, everything you have just read in the above summary is ENTIRELY FALSE and has no scientific validity whatsoever.

In this astonishing new book, FIND OUT...

Why, in spite of the millions it has spent, medical science still cannot find and isolate a human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV)

Why AIDS is NOT a sexually transmitted syndrome

Why the HIV=AIDS=DEATH hypothesis is fraudulent

Why the 'AIDS test' routinely throws up 'false positives'

How a positive 'AIDS test' result is being used to traumatise patients and coerce them into taking highly toxic drugs

What REALLY is causing the immune suppression

How the man who 'popularised AIDS' was subsequently convicted of science fraud

Why Africa is NOT being devastated by HIV

The real story behind these African illnesses

The real story behind the Western-led AIDS 'agenda'

How 'AIDS sufferers' who learn the truth are curing themselves of HIV AIDS

Open the windows after you enter your car

In brief, the above article says: According to research done by a U.C., the car dashboard, sofa, air freshener will emit Benzene, a cancer causing toxin (carcinogen). In addition to causing cancer, it poisons your bones, causes anemia, and reduces white blood cells. Prolonged exposure will cause Leukemia, increasing the risk of cancer. May also cause miscarriage.

Acceptable Benezene level indoors is 50 mg per sq. ft. A car parked indoors with the windows closed will contain 400-800 mg of Benezene. If parked outdoors under the sun at a temperature above 60 degrees F, the Benezene level goes up to 2000-4000 mg, 40 times the acceptable level. The people inside the car will inevitably inhale an excess amount of the toxin.

It is recommended that you open the windows and door to give time for the interior to air out before you enter. Benzene is a toxin that affects your kidney and liver, and is difficult for your body to expel.

Correct way cooking instant noodles

Ah... Instant noodles, it's bad for health, counting the calories and the sodium and MSG inside, but in the busy cities of most countries, and with the way how marketing side is promoting, instant noodles has become quite a norm to the society.

I know many may disagree that we should continue to consume instant noodles, but when we just can't avoid having a quick fill of the stomach and ahead with the rush of assignments we have in hand, there are some tips and reminders you need to know about cooking instant noodles.

Normally, we cook the instant noodles byputting the noodles into a pot with water, throw in the powder and let it cook for 3 mins.

Believe it or not, this is the WRONG method of cooking the instant noodles.

By doing this, when we actually boil the ingredients in the powder, normally with MSG, it will change the molecular structures of the MSG causing it to be toxic. The other thing that you may or may not realized is that, the noodles are coated with wax and it will take around 4 to 5 days for the body to excrete the wax after you have taken the noodles.


The Correct Way
which you may or may not know

1. boil the noodles in a pot with water.

2. once the noodles is cooked, take out the noodles, and throw away the water which contains wax.
3. boil another pot of water till boiling and put the noodles into the hot boiling water and then shut the fire.

4. only at this stage when the fire is off, and while the water is very hot, put the ingredient with the powder into the water, to make noodle soup.

5. however, if you need dry noodles, take out the noodles n add the ingredient with the powder and toss it to get dry noodles.

Hope this piece of information is of importance to your health in relation to eating instant noodles and please apply this cooking method with immediate effect.

Omega-3 Fatty Acid

Omega-3 fatty acids are extraordinarily important to health. Whilst their cousins, the Omega-6 fatty acids are abundant in all sorts of vegetable oils and meats, the omega-3's (including EPA) are much harder to come by. They can be found in oily fish (salmon, mackerel, trout) as well as some seeds and nuts, including walnuts, flax seeds and pumpkin seeds. Unfortunately, however, most of us are not including enough of these items in our diet - if we are including any at all!
A recent study discovered that, in the USA, 25% of adults tested had so little Omega-3 fatty acid in their blood that it was undetectable, i.e. there was none present. Now, that would be bad for any nutrient, but Omega-3 fats are the main building block of the brain and nervous system, so if you haven't got them . . . . don't expect your brain or nervous system to work as well as it should!

Firstly, you can try to add into your diet the foods that contain EPA, listed above, to which can be added grass-fed beef (grain-fed beef has NO omega-3 content). In doing this, bear in mind that some Governments, such as the UK are now recommending that you eat no more than 200g of sea-fish a week, due to the levels of toxins such as dioxin and mercury in fish, especially fish livers, where toxins concentrate.

Secondly, and this goes for most people, you should add a high-quality EPA supplement to your diet. Be sure that the fish oil used to produce it is from sources that filter out all the toxins (we only know of one manufacturer that uses this expensive process, but charges no more for their oil than others), is PURE Omega-3 and is not diluted with other oils, e.g. vegetable oils.


Essential qualities of Omega-3 Fatty acid

Make sure it is PURE Omega-3
Check it is undiluted
Ask if dioxin has been removed
Pregnancy warning.

By the time most mothers come to term, their bodies are completely exhausted of the Omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA, which are the main building blocks of the baby's brain and nerves. For a healthy baby, and to help prevent premature birth you MUST include these supplements in your diet, taking note of the required qualities above.

Heart Disease

Although heart disease takes many forms, we are concerned here with ischemic heart disease (IHD) in its various guises.
Ischemia (lack of oxygen due to low blood flow), causes many problems, from angina to Myocardial Infarction (MI, Heart Attack) and strokes to gangrene. What is clear is that none of these consequences are pleasant and most are life-threatening.

All cells in our body require oxygen and glucose to survive. When the supply of these vital nutrients is cut off (or severely reduced, so that the cell can't function properly), two things happen. First of all, the cell goes into "survival mode", reducing its activities so that it conserves what little oxygen and glucose it has. Some cells may be able to last longer than others in this mode. However, few, if any cells will be able to carry out their normal functions under these conditions and most will start to malfunction.

Once the internal stores of oxygen and glucose are used up, the cell can no longer survive and dies (called necrosis). This may not be too bad if we are talking about a hair follicle, but can be catstrophic if we are talking about, for example myocardial (or heart muscle) cells, as is the case with ischemic heart disease.

What is worse is that, these problems rarely affect single cells, they usually affect whole groups of cells, or even whole organs. Clearly, the bigger the area afected, the worse the consequences are likely to be. If the heart disease is severe enough to affect the whole heart, total necrosis results and the consequence is a massive heart attack, which is invariably fatal.

So what causes heart disease and what can we do about it?
Perhaps one of the biggest scandals of the twentieth century is the way we have been led to believe that cholesterol causes heart disease. This fabrication, created by the propaganda machines of the food oil industry, was put together in the 1940's and 50's, when hydrogenation of vegetable oils was discovered and enabled the creation of butter replacements.

A market had to be found for these new-fangle margarines, and sothe public and the medical fraternity alike were fed a bunkum story that saturated fat led to clogged arteries and therefore heart disease. The fact that we had been eating saturated fat (from butter, cheese, eggs and meat) for centuries, even milennia WITHOUT heart disease (which only appeared when margerines were introduced!) was deemed irrelevant and after the AHA, everyone else jumped on the bandwagon that has careered out of control for decades.

The truth is that saturated fat PROTECTS against heart disease, and artificial, chemically changed fats such as margerines are a leading CAUSE of heart disease. Unfortunatel, the researchers who have proved this time and time again are not only starved of research funding (by "health" organizations largely supported by the food oil industry), they are also prevented from publishing their results in the "prestigious" journals controlled by the same bodies!

So what is the real cause of heart disease?

Cholesterol is not the CAUSE of heart disease, it is merely the SIGN of a bigger problem, namely nutritional deficiency, specifically of vitamin C.

What's that? Heart disease can't be caused by food, you say? Then why believe it is caused by cholesterol?

Simply put, we do not take in enough vitamin C these days to maintain our artery walls (vitamin C is the main component of collagen, from which arteries are constructed). To stop us from bleeding to death, the continual damage being done to our artery cells means they have to be repaired. However, if we can't make collagen (because we don't have enough vitamin C), we can't repair the holes.

Enter cholesterol. Cholesterol acts as the body's "band-aid", repairing the holes in the artery wall by sticking to the hole and blocking it. It is when this happens repeatedly that cholesterol build up in the artery, blocking it and leading to heart disease.

But saying that cholesterol causes heart disease is like saying liver spots cause old age - it is merely a sign that something else is going on!

So what about margerines? How are they involved?

Well, the trans-fats that are created when vegetable oils are hydrogenated are not like normal fats. Normal, CIS-fats are a curved molecule, which means that one side is "open" for the binding of enzymes required for many cell functions. However, due to their structure, trans-fats are flat, straight molecules, that the enzyme can't bind to.

Normally, this might not be such a bad thing, but when these fats are taken up by cells, such as the artery cells, and used in the cell-wall structure, this means that these cells can't respond to the enzymes they normally would, as the enzymes can't bind to them - this is a VERY bad situation and causes all sorts of cell dysfunction.

In addition to this, the trans fats, instead of being supple and strong, are brittle and weak. this means that where cells have used these fats in their structure, the cells are weak and can easily be pushed aside, ruptured or stetched, like a balloon.

When this happens in an artery cell, and it is stretched by the high-pressure blood flowing in the artery, the cell stretches and eventually ruptures, leading to yet-more of the damage that cholesterol must repair, and eventually various forms of heart disease.

It is for this simple reason that margerines are known to be directly related to heart disease, and why everyone, but especially those with heart disease should AVOID MARGERINE AND ALL HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS.